Free Death Knocks Three Times by Anthony Gilbert Page A

shall no torment touch them.
     
    The words “righteous” and “diere” were heavily underscored. Indeed, in one place the pen had actually penetrated the paper.
    “When did these come?” inquired Miss Pettigrew, without looking up.
    “I have no note of the exact dates. The first, of course, arrived on her birthday. The second came about a month later. Then there was a time-lag—I think that is the correct expression. Then—say two months later, came a third.
     
    Do you remember how she hated the dark? It must be very dark where she is now.
     
    “Surely that helps us,” exclaimed John.
    “In what way, may I inquire?”
    “It proves that the letters aren’t written by some malicious person out to make trouble, but by someone who did actually know Aunt Isabel. For instance, it would be easy for any one to know the approximate date of your birthday. Aunt Clara, because it was always a fete day. I always came down …”
    “A fete indeed,” murmured Miss Pettigrew ironically.
    John ploughed on, pretending he hadn’t heard. “A special cake was baked, and Stroud, who made it, always had it on show the day before. He liked to show what people could do even in wartime. But Aunt Isabel’s birthday can only have been known to her own immediate circle.”
    “Let us get this quite clear, John,” said Aunt Clara in a deceptively pleasant tone. “You suggest that I wrote these letters to myself?”
    “Of course not.” He sounded genuinely shocked.
    “Then that eliminates one suspect. Now, who else could have the necessary information? There is yourself, of course, but then all the letters were left by hand, so that would involve your paying surprise visits to Brakemouth, and it is too much to believe that no one would have remarked a well-known novelist in our midst. That leaves—let me see—Locket. Or perhaps you and she had a pact.”
    “Aunt Clara, this is absurd.” John found his voice with an effort. “Locket isn’t even in Brakemouth now. She went to her brother in Wiltshire.”
    “That didn’t last long. She was back in three months. The brother was marrying again.”
    “Within three months? Surely a scandal, my dear Clara.”
    “According to Locket it would have been more of a scandal if he hadn’t married. But really, Frances, I cannot concern myself with the private lives of these people.”
    “Then she is actually in Brakemouth now?”
    “I believe so.”
    “You must be sorry you left Seaview, aren’t you?” Like any stoic of old, John opened his breast to his adversary’s spear. “I mean, it was because of Locket leaving that you felt you couldn’t keep the house going.”
    Clara looked at him like a particularly vicious boa constrictor eyeing a particularly inferior rabbit.
    “My dear John, your memory is lamentably short. I told you at the time that my sole reason for maintaining a house and a stafiE at considerable trouble and expense was on account of your Aunt Isabel. She would never have adapted herself to hotel life, but when at last—at last—I could consider my own interests, I was thankful to be able to shelve all that responsibility and leave the management of a household to others. As for Locket, I should not dream of re-employing her even if she asked to come back. The way she went around after my sister died, talking about the house being haunted, hearing voices and Isabel crying at the windows— sheer hysteria, and so I told her. Really, I can hardly blame her brother if he did marry again at injudiciously short notice. It was like having a madwoman in the house. Pull yourself together. Locket, I told her, or you’ll end up in an asylum.”
    “She was very fond of Aunt Isabel,” John protested.
    “Are you suggesting / was not fond of her? If you knew the sac* rifices I have made all my life, first my father, then you as a helpless child abandoned by your parents—no, John, no argument if you please—and then all those years my sister, who was manifestly