a combination I can well do without.’ Kemp sighed. ‘But it’s time I stopped getting paranoic about everyone I meet.’
John Upshire set off for dinner at No. 2, Albert Crescent in the mood of a man with nothing better to do on a Saturday night. It was preferable, marginally, to eating a takeaway meal in front of the television. He was uneasy, however, at the prospect of again meeting Kemp’s wife who he still thought of as Mary Madeleine Blane because of the file on her he had once received from the New York Police Department. That nothing in that file had ever been proceeded with had come as a relief to Inspector Upshire who had no wish to get embroiled in matters best left to the American authorities.
In the event the case had been satisfactorily dealt with by some tricky footwork on the part of Lennox Kemp, the legal complexities of which the inspector did not wish to know, and would not have understood if he had. All the same, Kemp did not have to go and marry the woman …
As Upshire strode through the streets of Newtown he made up his mind that he would distance himself from the new Mrs Kemp. Although this might be construed as resentment at the marriage, it was more a question of how he felt about her as a person. Upshire was not given to analysing his feelings; all he knew was that tonight he had the hump.
Halfway through dinner he realized that he was enjoying himself as he had not done for years. The atmosphere was relaxed, there were no signs of tension between them (he was the only guest), the conversation was agreeable and the food delicious.
John Upshire was amazed to find himself talking to Mary about Betty’s last illness, a thing he had never spoken of before. Mary had nursed many such patients and understood. She listened with quiet sympathy but a calm detachment, showing that her interest was in him rather than the circumstances since his wife’s death had happened some seven years ago.
It was not that becoming Mrs Kemp had changed Mary Madeleine’s appearance. Upshire had considered her a plain, unprepossessing woman the first time he met her, and she still had the same too-wide brow, a narrow, rather stubborn chin, and a general colourlessness which did not make for beauty. But she gave a straight look from her pale grey eyes, and she smiled a lot … It’s the Irish in her, thought Upshire, who was well aware of her parentage, and he admired the way her soft brown hair was cut in a bob so that it swung out like a bell when she turned her head.
She had forbidden any mention of the letters during the meal.
‘My cooking would not be getting the full attention of your mouths if I allowed it,’ she said. ‘Taste first, you can talk afterwards.’
‘Take your port into the study like gentlemen,’ she told them as she began clearing the dishes. ‘I’ll be bringing coffee in a while.’
Kemp spread the letters out on the table, smoothed the brown paper they had been wrapped in, and added his photocopies of the others.
Upshire studied them all closely.
‘I’ve sent a man to fingerprint the Gazette staff – though Mr Grimshaw says only the office boy who took it from the box, himself and Dan Frobisher actually handled the package. It was Frobisher who opened it. And I’ve got a transcript here of the note he took of that phone call. Apparently whoever it was asked for him.’
‘Asked for Frobisher himself?’
Upshire shrugged. ‘It’s well known he’s their crime reporter. He sees to it he gets his by-line …’
‘You know him, John?’
‘Over the years, yes. He’s in and out of the station – that’s his job. Never given us any trouble, though … My men get on with him … Doesn’t badger us, like some … He’ll push for a story if he thinks there’s anything in it …’
‘He’s already tried pushing me,’ said Kemp, grimly.
He told Upshire about the reporter’s visit, at which the inspector raised his eyebrows, sceptically.
‘But that’s a dead duck. Why’d he bring it up now?’
‘Presumably because our secret scribbler has already done so.’ Kemp pointed out certain parts in the letters.
‘H’m … they only hint at something … But surely anyone could find out?’
‘If they thought it worth their while … So far as my profession is concerned, it’s over and done with long ago. But the slur is there … If they had been specific it could do less harm.’
‘I see what you mean.’ The inspector looked again through the letters for a moment. ‘You think this chap’s clever? I think he’s a nutcase.’
‘I’ll not be agreeing with you there, John,’ said Mary Kemp as she brought in the tray. ‘I wish I could … If a person is mentally deranged, they’d give themselves away by doing other crazy things than just writing letters. It’s the sane I’m afraid of.’
‘Mary thinks they could be written by a woman,’ said Kemp.
Upshire shook his head. ‘Looks more like a man to me.’
‘When Michael Cantley read them,’ said Kemp, slowly, ‘he thought there was something odd about the phrasing. The same thing had struck me. It’s as if ideas had been tossed about before being committed to paper, like people do when there’s two of them working on a script …’
‘You think there’s two of them?’ exclaimed Upshire.
‘That’s it,’ said Mary, eagerly. ‘A man and a woman. That would account for the use of phrases that don’t seem to me to quite match up.’
‘You’ve got me out of my depth.’ John Upshire accepted a cup of coffee, piled sugar into it, and drank. ‘When the analysts have done with them, mebbe a shrink should have a look … There’s some nasty threats in there, Lennox, and I don’t mean the ones about revealing your murky past. It’s your immediate future I’ve got in mind …’
He got a grateful glance from Mary for that.
‘It’s what I’m always telling Lennox. If this person, or these persons, really want to harm him, then he’s in danger. That stuff put through our letterbox …’
She told the inspector about what the delivery boy had seen, and he promised to look into it without upsetting the Robsarts. Then he turned to Kemp.
‘That accident to your car, Lennox, we haven’t a hope in hell … The London Road on a wet night, people are skidding all over the place … and you never got a proper look at the van. No, what I have to concentrate on is the theft of your briefcase, and how that ties in with the letters being leaked to the Gazette.’
‘Goes with my theory that there’s more than one person involved … If their object is just to cause me embarrassment, maybe lose me a few jittery clients, they’ve picked the wrong man. I’ll not be done to death by slanderous tongues …’
Mary smiled at Upshire. ‘That’s the wine speaking out of him,’ she said. ‘He’s started on his quotes …’
But Upshire, more perceptive now,
