Patricia Wentworth - Poison In The Pen

“Yes, Joyce is very happy about it. He seems to have taken quite a turn. It is so good for him to be with other children.”

She made no comment upon this. After a moment she enquired,

“Do you know whether anyone else in Tilling has received an anonymous letter?”

He appeared faintly startled.

“Why do you ask that?”

“My dear Frank, you must surely see that it is a most important point. Such letters as you describe are instigated by a desire for power, or by either a personal or a general spite. If the motive is a personal one it may wear itself out or at any rate go no farther, but if it proceeds from a desire for power or from a general spite there is no saying where it will stop or how much mischief it may do.”

He said briefly, “That’s what worries me.”

“Mrs. Rodney has not thought of taking the matter to the police?”

He pushed back his chair.

“She wouldn’t hear of it. It would be very much resented in the village. I think it might make her position there impossible. Everyone has been very friendly, and the child is getting on so well.” He got up and put down his cup. “I don’t know why I bothered you about it. It will probably all fizzle out.”

Of the two newspapers subscribed to by Miss Silver it was her habit to peruse the lighter and more pictorial at breakfast, reserving the solid fare provided by the Times for a later and more leisured hour. It was about ten days after Frank Abbott had tea with her that her eye was caught by a headline which displayed the name of Tilling Green:

She had often noticed how singularly an unfamiliar name, once noted, is apt to recur. She read the paragraph with interest. A young woman had been found drowned in a stretch of ornamental water belonging to the grounds of the Manor House. Her name was Doris Pell, and she neither resided at the Manor nor was employed there. She lived with an aunt, and they carried on a business as dressmakers in a small way. The evidence reported her as having been greatly distressed by the receipt of anonymous letters accusing her of immorality, an accusation for which, the Coroner stated, there was no foundation-she was a perfectly respectable girl. The police were pursuing enquiries as to the authorship of the letters.

Miss Silver laid down the paper. A lamentable waste of a young life. She contrasted, not for the first time, the extreme courage and tenacity of purpose with which trouble is encountered in one case, and the ease with which it is succumbed to in another. Since this dead girl had apparently had the support of innocence, why had she put up no fight? The light that beats upon a village is of course sufficiently unsparing-white is white, and black is black, and a character once lost or even breathed upon will continue to be doubted indefinitely. But youth should possess some spring, some power of recovery, some ability to make a new beginning. Her thoughts remained saddened for some time.

It was not until later in the day when she was dealing with her correspondence that the matter was once more brought to her attention. She was engaged with a letter from her niece Ethel Burkett. Raising, as it did, the question of Ethel’s sister Gladys, whose by no means harmonious relations with her husband Andrew Robinson were a perennial source of anxiety, it was affording her grave reason for thought.

“Dear Auntie,” Ethel wrote, “I do not know whether Gladys has written to you, and I hate to trouble you with her affairs, but I really do think you have more influence with her than anyone else. A separation from Andrew would be fatal . He has been most tolerant and long-suffering and he has a horror of any scandal, but I have a feeling that if she were to go so far as to leave him, he would not readily take her back.”

It was at this point, and while Miss Silver was reflecting upon just how far a selfish and headstrong young woman was likely to go in the process of cutting off her nose to spite her own face, that the telephone bell rang. She picked up the receiver and heard Frank Abbott say,

“Hullo! Is that you?”

Having been reassured upon this point, he continued.

“Then may I come and see you?… Thank you. I’ll be right along.”

She had no more than time to write what might be called an interim letter to Ethel setting out the view that Gladys, having no money of her own and being notoriously averse from anything in the nature of work, would, in her opinion, hesitate to separate herself from Andrew’s very comfortable income, when the door opened and Emma announced,

“Mr. Frank-”

She was, as always, affectionately pleased to see him, and he on his side as affectionately at home.

When Miss Silver had settled herself in her chair and taken up her usual knitting, he said,

“Well, I don’t know whether you can guess what has brought me.”

She inclined her head.

“I have seen the paragraph about an inquest at Tilling Green.”

“Stupid, damnable affair. More damnable than stupid, I should say. What gets into any human being to make him- or her-set out to poison and destroy. Do you know, I met this girl when I was down there. She had come in to do some needlework for Miss Wayne. She was a sensitive, shy creature-coloured up to the roots of her hair when I spoke to her. Joyce had been good to her, and the girl obviously adored her.”

Miss Silver had seldom seen him with his surface cynicism so completely broken through. The drawl was gone from his voice and the chill from his glance. She said with a good deal of warmth,

“My dear Frank-”

He nodded.

“I am a fool, but it has got me on the raw. She was such an inoffensive creature-plain, simple, kindly. And someone could take pleasure in destroying her!”

She knitted thoughtfully.

“Is there any suspicion of foul play?”

“Not in the technical sense. The law does not call that sort of thing murder. There seems no reason to doubt that she jumped into the lake and drowned herself-‘Whilst the balance of her mind was disturbed!’ That, as you will have seen, was the verdict. She had taken some work up to the Manor. They say she seemed as usual.” His shoulder jerked. “You may have noticed that people always do say that kind of thing when anything like this happens! There is a place where the drive crosses an ornamental stream. The stream passes under a bridge and falls over rocks to this lake they speak of. She must have jumped over the low parapet on the lake side and hit her head. After which she drowned. As the verdict says, she was off her balance, and the thing that drove her off her balance is patent. That is what I have come to see you about.”

The blue frill which depended from the needles was lengthening. Miss Silver said,

“Yes?”

He spoke with a return to his usual manner,

“You see, we’ve been asked to send someone down there. I don’t know whether you remember, but about five years ago there was a very nasty outbreak of this sort of thing about ten miles away at Little Poynton. They had a couple of suicides there and a lot of other trouble, and it was never satisfactorily cleared up. They ended by calling in the Yard. March has been on to us officially about this Tilling business. It seems that several people have had letters. He has got hold of two. One was posted in London. It is one of the most recent and may provide a clue. After all, only a small number of Tilling people can have been in Kensington on the day when the letter was posted there.”

Miss Silver made a slight negative gesture.

“I do not feel that a hardened writer of anonymous letters would provide so obvious a clue.”

“I don’t know-everyone slips up sometimes. Anyhow it’s all the clue there is. The paper is cheap block stuff-ruled. Envelope rather better. Writing big and thick, clumsy ill-formed letters-the experts say left-handed. A sprinkling of spelling mistakes-probably deliberate. No fingerprints except what you would expect-branch office-postman-recipient. All very helpful!” He leaned forward suddenly. “Now what March suggests is that you go down there with the official blessing and do your stuff. The Chief thinks it is a good idea, and I am here to find out if you will take it on.”