Peter studied the sheet impassively for a moment, feeling the tension building around him in the quiet room. Then he said, ‘Excuse me for a moment, please.’ He rose and left the room and they heard him climbing the stairs to his study. He was back within seconds, holding an identical white sheet to the one Hook had just shown him. He set it before his visitors without a word.
RESIGN NOW FROM THE FESTIVAL COMMITTEE IF YOU WISH TO REMAIN ALIVE
Lambert looked into the lined, anxious face, which had now lost all traces of pretension. ‘When did you receive this?’
‘It was delivered by hand, at about four o’clock yesterday afternoon. Edwina was out, but I was upstairs in my study. I heard the sound of the letter box but I assumed it was just a circular. As a result, I didn’t find this for another hour.’
He watched fascinated as Hook inserted the sheet carefully into a plastic sleeve identical to the one around Marjorie Dooks’s letter. He started a little as Lambert said quietly, ‘What were you intending to do about this, Mr Preston?’
‘I didn’t take it very seriously. I suppose I considered it preposterous that anyone should be intending real violence towards me.’
Lambert did not give voice to the thought that from what he had seen of Preston he thought it by no means unlikely. Instead, he pointed out, ‘Nevertheless, you chose to retain this message rather than to destroy it.’
‘Yes. My first concern was to keep it from Edwina, who would probably have been much more disturbed by it than I was. Then, as tends to happen during the dark and silent hours of the night, it began to seem a little more serious. I was wondering exactly what I should do about it when the phone call came this morning, announcing that I was to receive a visit from the district’s leading policeman. Dilemma solved, I thought.’
‘Have you any thoughts on the origin of these letters?’
‘Well, my first reaction is a selfish one. I am happy that I am not alone as a recipient. If all and sundry are receiving them, there can surely be no serious threat intended.’
‘That is logical. I think you and the other three people who have received identical letters can take it that this is probably an ill-judged and tasteless prank. But that cannot be the end of the matter for us. You can imagine the impact of this threat on someone like Sue Charles, an elderly lady living alone. She was very disturbed by it. The police cannot allow anyone to threaten people with violence and get away with it.’
‘I’m glad to hear it. You asked me where these might have originated. I would think from their content and their recipients that they must have a connection with the literature festival committee. I–I don’t think I would care to speculate on the sender. I’d rather leave that matter in your capable hands.’
With this shameless piece of flattery, he released them from their uncomfortable tenure of his chaise longue. Lambert left him with the routine instruction to contact them immediately if he had further thoughts on the issue.
Hook reversed the car out of the drive and drove carefully down the tree-lined avenue beyond it before he spoke. ‘I heard you volunteer yourself to be on that platform at the festival, as the representative of real policing.’
‘These things are confidential, DS Hook. There is no reason why my moment of weakness in the face of a very annoying man should be taken any further.’
Bert stared ahead at the road and the burgeoning trees as steadily as his chief, but a smile broke steadily over his rugged features. ‘I think you did the right thing, John. You are much the best man for the task. It’s good to have the matter settled.’
There were long minutes of silence which Hook enjoyed and Lambert did not. Then Hook said, ‘Christine’s on that committee.’
Lambert nodded. ‘And I can confirm first that she has not received one of the notes and secondly that I am confident she is not the sender of them.’
‘The local press will be disappointed about that. It would have given them a lurid story.’
‘If we rule out Christine, it leaves only one member of the committee who has not received one of these threats.’
‘And who thus becomes the leading suspect for the crime of sending them. The man I interrogated about drug offences yesterday. Young Sam Hilton.’
TEN
‘It looks like a squalid little side-show, but we’ve got to follow it up. We can’t allow idiots to go round threatening people, if only because the odd idiot might turn out to a psychopath.’ John Lambert, sitting in his favourite armchair, delivered this judgement on the anonymous notes to his wife.
Christine smiled. ‘Or a paranoid narcissist. That seems to be the latest one for a dangerous man with a firearm.’
‘Do you think there’s anyone on that literary festival committee of yours who’s a potential danger to society?’
‘I notice that as soon as there’s a problem it’s become my committee.’ But Christine was secretly rather pleased; it was the first time in the long years of his police career that she’d had a direct involvement in one of his cases. ‘For what it’s worth, no, I don’t. But that view’s worth very little; sometimes even wives and husbands know nothing about the secret lives and desires of their spouses, so what can we really know of people we meet once every two or three weeks on a committee? You’ve much more experience of the criminal mentality than I have.’
‘Yes. It’s amazing that I remain the relaxed, even-tempered, balanced individual that I am, isn’t it?’
‘Self-delusion must be one of the dangers of prolonged contact with crime, I suppose.’
‘I don’t want this business to get out to the press. Peter Preston may not be paranoid, but he’s certainly a narcissist. If it suits his purpose, he’ll have the local press, and probably radio and television as well, reporting that he’s been threatened — probably with an addendum about police incompetence and insensitivity.’
‘Is there anyone on that committee apart from me who hasn’t received one of these damned notes?’ She noted his hesitation and grinned. ‘I can easily find out, you know. Once you start questioning people, the word spreads pretty quickly.’
The television news and weather were over. Lambert watched three seconds of a lurid trailer for a programme about Miss Nude Australia and switched the set off decisively. ‘Sam Hilton seems to be the only one who hasn’t received one.’
‘So you think he must have sent them.’
‘I don’t think anything. I think the situation has to be investigated. What do you think? You know the young man; I’ve never even met him.’
‘I knew him better when he was ten and in my class at school. He was a rather secretive boy, but good with words. And fascinated by them. He loved poetry. And he loved writing bits of verse of his own, even then.’
‘So at twenty-two, he might well be a writer of anonymous threatening letters.’
Christine Lambert shrugged, wanting to reject the idea but unable to find any strong argument against it. ‘I wouldn’t think so, but you’ll have to decide for yourself. Who knows what goes on in that secret self that we don’t care to show to those around us? I suppose if he wanted to make mischief, words would be the first weapons to suggest themselves to him. I only know that Sam Hilton is now producing some quite interesting poems.’
And supporting his muse by selling illicit drugs, thought her husband. Police work didn’t give many grounds for optimism.
Ten hours later, Chief Superintendent Lambert was preparing to make his own judgements on Sam Hilton.
Nine a.m. prompt. Young men who might have a drug habit were rarely at their best in the first part of the morning. Study them at your leisure, learn whatever you could from their actions and words when they were least prepared for you. None of this was voiced; Lambert and Hook knew each other and their strategies far too well for that.
Hilton lived in the least salubrious area of Oldford, but in a small town no street is as squalid or as desperate as those to be found in the great cities of the country. He lived on the ground floor of a late-Victorian semi-detached house, in what had been one of the most prestigious roads of the town when it had been built. The area had descended steadily in status over the last fifty years. The houses here were now divided into much smaller living units, with transient occupiers, who moved in and out of their rented properties with great frequency.