Die Happy (10 page)

Hook smiled again, his weather-beaten, outdoor features exuding reassurance. ‘My wife is an addict of the detective novel. She speaks highly of your work. Library copies of Sue Charles appear regularly on our bedside table. She'll be impressed to hear I've spoken to you.'

Sue tried not to show her almost childish joy in the compliment. ‘That's nice to hear. Sometimes when you're wrestling with some writing problem, you wonder if anyone actually reads your books.'

Bert gave no sign of his rising impatience. ‘I'm sure you wouldn't be published if they didn't. What can I do for you, Ms Charles?'

‘It's Mrs, actually. But I'm a widow now. Well, as I said, this is probably a waste of your time. It's probably nothing more than mischief.'

‘Perhaps you should let me be the judge of that, Mrs Charles. It's part of my job to decide what is trivial and what might be more serious.'

‘Yes. Well then, I'd be very glad of your opinion on this.' She opened her hand bag and produced the letter she had discovered on the previous evening. ‘I put it back into the envelope it was delivered in. My – my fingerprints will be on it from when I first opened it. I've worn gloves to handle it ever since then. I expect you'll think that's very over the top – I suppose it comes from being a crime writer.'

Bert shook his head and said very seriously, ‘On the contrary, I wish all members of the public would be so careful when handling what might eventually become evidence. You did exactly the right thing, Mrs Charles, just as you did the right thing in bringing this straight to us.'

‘Thank you. I live alone now, you see – well, alone except for Roland, my cat.'

Bert stared at the single sheet on his desk with its stark message and threat. ‘When did you receive this?'

‘Yesterday. I found it in the early evening, when I was about to have my meal. But it could have been dropped through the letter box at any time during the afternoon. I was working on my latest book in my study, you see.'

‘You didn't hear or see anything?'

‘No. My study's at the back of the house. I don't even hear the post arriving, unless it contains something particularly heavy. All I can say with certainty is that it must have been dropped through the letter box some time between one p.m. and seven p.m.'

DS Hook went over to the dispenser at the end of the CID section and donned a pair of thin plastic medical gloves. He examined the printing of the words on the sheet of paper and then held it up to the light, holding it gingerly by its bottom corner. ‘No watermark on the paper. Standard issue A4 printing paper, sold all over the country for use with home printers, I'm afraid. And it will be difficult if not impossible to pin this with any certainty to a particular computer. The days of typewriters, which were almost as individual as fingerprints, are long gone, I'm afraid.'

Sue Charles gave her first smile since she had come into the room. ‘I know. A great boon to crime writers, the old typewriters were. We have to be much more ingenious now than in the good old days, the so-called golden age of the detective novel.'

Bert grinned. ‘I grew up with Dorothy L. Sayers and Agatha Christie as a teenager in a Barnardo's home. The library wasn't very up to date. For some reason, the people there thought murder was good safe reading for impressionable adolescents.'

‘Perhaps they did make an impression. You became a policeman.'

‘Yes. And eventually a detective, of sorts. I never thought there was a connection, though. I think the people who ran the home simply thought that a safe, steady job in the police represented a success for one of their lads.'

‘Perhaps they were right. I should think you're much better at handling worried ladies of sixty-eight than most policemen.'

‘Two things, Mrs Charles. First, sixty-eight is no great age nowadays and you're obviously in full possession of all your faculties. Secondly, you weren't alarmist in coming to the police station today. You did exactly the right thing. We take threats like this very seriously. This almost certainly came either from some idiot who thinks it's a good joke or from someone with a warped imagination who wants to give you a little scare. Either way, the probability is that the sender intends to do nothing further.'

‘That's good to hear. Whoever sent this has already given me a sleepless night.'

‘I can imagine that. And although it's statistically unlikely that the sender intends any further malice, we have to take things like this very seriously. We need to follow it up, if only to show the perpetrator of a tasteless joke that he or she can't get away with it. I need to ask you some fairly personal questions.'

That's all right. I'm relieved to have your help. I thought you might tell me I was overreacting.'

‘If anyone's going to overreact, it will be us, Mrs Charles. We have to take precautions against even the most unlikely possibility. Have you any idea who sent you this?'

There was a slight hesitation before she said ‘No. I've thought about it, inevitably. Thought about it for most of the night, actually.'

To Hook, the hesitation was more significant than the reply. He let it go for the moment. ‘What have you been doing in the last few days? Have you offended anyone? Even a minor incident might be significant. People who write stuff like this usually have no sense of proportion.'

She gave a wry smile as she shook her head. ‘I lead a rather solitary life, since my husband died. People are very kind in general, but when they're planning social gatherings they tend to think in terms of couples. I'm not a churchgoer – there have been moments in the last couple of years when for the first time in forty years I've wished I was, because any sort of religion puts you in touch with a group of sympathetic people.' She was acutely conscious of not wanting to sound like a moaner with narrowing horizons. ‘But most of the time I love my privacy and the time it gives me to work. Writing is a lonely business, as I said, and I need isolation to work on my books.'

Bert Hook pulled her back to his question. ‘But you must have upset someone, even if it was to your mind in a very minor way.'

‘Not consciously, I'm afraid. Do you think that this could be the work of some schoolchild? Perhaps someone who's been reading Agatha Christie, as you did? Youngsters don't always draw very clear lines between fact and fiction.'

‘Not impossible, but unlikely. I think this is the work of someone who knows you and wishes to upset you, even if he or she doesn't intend to do anything further. It may be a longer-standing grudge, of course, but the first thing to do is to check out the people you've seen recently. Let's start with the people you've spoken to in the last week.'

‘Apart from phone conversations with my daughter and David Knight, the crime novelist, there aren't many. I attended a meeting of the Oldford Literary Festival Committee five days ago. I'm getting David Knight to speak on crime writing at the festival at the end of May.'

‘Yes, I know about that. Chief Superintendent Lambert asked me to be on the platform with you, but I think he's the man you need.'

‘Yes. That was the idea of Marjorie Dooks, who chairs our committee, and I think it was a good one.'

Bert stored this up in case he had to argue with Lambert again over the matter. He said with pen poised over his pad, ‘I need to know the names of the other people on that committee.'

‘Yes.' She realized now that she'd known from the first it would come to this, but she had a curious feeling of sneaking, a notion which came back from her schooldays over half a century ago. ‘Well, there's Mr Lambert's wife, of course. But I think we can discount her.'

Bert had a splendid vision of the fun to be had when he warned his wife that her friend Christine was a suspect in this sordid little affair. ‘Nevertheless, we won't discount her at the moment. Who else, please?'

‘Well, there's young Sam Hilton. He looks about sixteen to me, but I'm told he's twenty-two and a poet of some standing. He's getting the northern poet Bob Crompton to come to the festival. I'm sure this threat wouldn't have come from Sam.'

‘Even so, we'll record his name.'

‘And then there's Ros Barker.'

‘The painter?'

‘Yes, she's the one.' Sue could not quite conceal her surprise that a policeman should know who Ros was. ‘But again, I like Ros and I think she quite likes me. I can't think she would send anything like that.' For the first time since she had passed it across the desk, she gestured at that sheet with its thick black print.

‘We'll add her to the list.' Bert wrote down the name in his large round hand, then looked at her expectantly.

‘And of course there's Peter Preston. I expect you've heard of him.'

‘Most people who live in this area know Mr Preston,' said DS Hook rather grimly.

‘Peter regards himself as an expert on the arts. That's a little unfair; I'm quite prepared to accept that he
is
an expert. The trouble is that he doesn't think that anyone's opinion other than his is worth anything.'

Bert realized that like many people, she had left the person she considered the likeliest suspect until the last. He nodded a couple of times and said, ‘Have you had any disagreement with the erudite Mr Preston?'

Sue Charles frowned, trying hard to be fair. ‘He might have seen it as that. I would have said that it was no more than a difference of opinion. He doesn't think detective fiction should be part of a literary festival.'

‘And his reason for that?'

‘He simply doesn't consider crime novels to be what he calls “real literature”. He didn't think I and the rest of the committee should have invited David Knight to speak at the festival, even though he's a leader in our field. Marjorie Dooks shut Peter up rather effectively from the chair by reminding him that this had already been discussed at length and the matter decided at a previous meeting.'

‘But as you write crime books yourself and were the means of persuading Mr Knight to speak in Oldford, Mr Preston's discontent focussed upon you.'

‘I suppose it did, yes. Particularly as he hasn't a high opinion of either Sam Hilton or Ros Barker and I also found myself on their side in the exchanges within the committee.'

‘Mrs Charles, I have to ask you formally whether you think Peter Preston might have sent you this note.'

‘It's inconceivable, to me. It doesn't seem like the sort of thing he would do. But then it seems even more inconceivable that anyone else would threaten me like this, even as a joke. Unless it was kids, of course, who wouldn't realize the distress they were causing. Peter's the only person I've had any sort of dispute with over the last two or three months.'

‘It's important that you don't try to do anything about this yourself. You could accuse entirely the wrong person and end up at best highly embarrassed and at worst losing a friend. Be assured that we shall follow it up. We can be far more impersonal and we have far more resources than you have.'

‘That's why I came here, Detective Sergeant Hook. The days of Miss Marple are long gone, if indeed they ever existed!'

‘I don't wish to be alarmist, but have you anyone who could move into the house with you for a night or two?'

She smiled wanly. ‘I could probably pack up my laptop and go to stay with my daughter for a couple of days. I'm due for a visit.'

‘That would probably be best. If you give me the phone number, I'll make sure someone contacts you to let you know the outcome of our enquiries.'

‘Thank you again for being so understanding.'

Hook stood up. ‘We always treat these things seriously. As I say, it will probably turn out to be some tasteless hoax, but it needs investigation.'

As he prepared to usher her out, a young woman PC appeared in the doorway, looking a little embarrassed. ‘Sorry to interrupt you, DS Hook, but I thought from what this lady said at the desk that her complaint might be related to what you're discussing with Mrs Charles.'

Hook saw behind her a diffident young woman, following the officer somewhat reluctantly into the depths of Oldford police station. A fresh-faced woman, with a few freckles still evident in her small, kitten-like features. Older than he'd thought at first; she was probably in her late twenties, he thought. Bert had many years of experience now in assessing ages, a police skill he had found very difficult when he was as young as the officer who had brought in this woman.

He was about to say that he would speak to her after he had seen Sue Charles out when the new entrant spoke, delivering her message hastily and without pause, as if she feared that she might turn tail and flee if she paused for thought. ‘My name is Kate Merrick. My partner is Ros Barker. This threat was to her, not to me, but she wouldn't take it seriously. I brought it here because I thought you should see it.'

She stood panting, then thrust an envelope towards him with both hands, like a child anxious to be rid of something that frightened her.

Hook looked at her for a second or two without a word as he donned the plastic gloves he had recently discarded to extract the single sheet from within the envelope.

He said tersely, ‘I think Chief Superintendent Lambert should know about this.'

SEVEN

S
pring was advancing quickly. The chestnuts were in leaf; even the oak and the ash were swelling their buds. And the daylight was stretching as the year advanced; only eight weeks now until the longest day.