Free Calamity in Kent, A British Library Crime Classic by John Rowland Page A

drawer but the money. I rapidly counted them. There were over a hundred and fifty of them. A hundred and fifty pounds in notes! That seemed to tie up well enough with my suspicion that the late lamented John Tilsley might be in some way connected with the black market in some commodity; after all, the average black marketeer usually deals in cash; cheques do not suit him as a rule.
    I felt pleased at this discovery. Of course, I told myself, there might well be some other explanation; but, as a first guess at what was happening, it might be that my black market idea was a useful one.
    It was with a real thrill that I turned to the other drawer. It was here that some papers might be found. And my guess was right. The drawer was crammed with papers. Letters, visiting cards, and sundry odds and ends. This was what I was after. I pulled the drawer right out, took it over to the bed, and tipped it up. Its contents spread over the bed. I rapidly sorted the stuff out.
    There were about a dozen visiting cards. These I put into one heap. The letters I put into a pile by themselves.
    The letters I thought the best thing to look at first. They were what seemed to me most likely to yield immediate results. And immediate results, which would impress Shelley, were what I was after at the moment. I knew that if I could give the man from Scotland Yard some information that seemed valuable and important well ahead of anything that his minions were able to get, I should be well in with him, and be all the more likely to have a share of whatever information he might have been able to collect in the same time.
    The first two or three letters that I looked at didn’t seem to be very promising. They were the same sort of thing that I had seen in the dead man’s pockets. Just personal notes, saying that the writer hoped John was enjoying his holiday. They were, in fact, the sort of letters that most of us receive when we are on a longish holiday. The people who had been writing to him were living at various London addresses, mostly in the Chelsea and Kensington areas. There was one, I noticed, from Thackeray Court, S.W.5, which I recalled was the address from which Tilsley had come.
    The contents of these letters, as I said, were of no real importance. I thought that the writers were probably mere friends or acquaintances of Tilsley’s and probably had little to do with him in the course of his business. Or, if they had any business with him, their letters gave little indication of it.
    About the fifth letter that I opened, however, was something a little different. It made me raise my eyebrows and whistle again.
    This letter bore no address and no signature. It was typewritten on cheap paper. And it read as follows:—
    â€œAs usual, I suppose, see you on Wednesday, usual place, usual time. And this time see if you can bring along some of the real stuff, my lad. My folk are getting fed-up with the stuff that you sent last time. They said that it wasn’t good enough for them. So I reckon that you’ll have to watch your step in future, or you’ll be running into a packet of trouble.”
    That was all. But it was a very suggestive letter, I thought. It seemed to go quite a long way to support my idea that Tilsley might have been doing something that was on the shady side of the law. Black marketeering might be the explanation; anyhow, whatever it was, that was a letter that Shelley would find interesting. I looked at the envelope. It was postmarked “London,” and was dated a couple of days back. “You’ll have to watch your step in future, or you’ll be running into a packet of trouble.” Well, Tilsley had run into a packet of trouble all right; I wondered if this letter had really had any influence on the murder.
    I thought it at any rate possible that there was some real connection. Shelley might well be a better judge of that than I could possibly be. I pocketed the letter, with the idea to