Close Quarters Read Online Free Page B

had decided, in the best interests of the cathedral, to hush the matter up. Give the boy a few days of real holiday. The Dean, had he known it, held a good deal of human happiness and unhappiness in his hands at that moment.
    Sergeant Pollock secretly approved of his uncle. Indeed, he admired in him several most worldly qualities which that cleric would have been the first to disclaim, but he was determined not to be put down by him. This was to be an ordinary routine job, quite uncomplicated by any considerations of affinity.
    It was going to be awkward enough without anything of that sort. Anonymous letters! Broadsheets! Unknown sign-painters and comic flags! The thing was miles removed from an honest job of police work. He was not even sure what particular crime or misdemeanour any of the incidents amounted to. Obscenity? Threats with intent to procure … what? That was the question. There must be some reason behind the silly business. Criminal libel? On the whole, it would be better to pin it to the letters. “Misuse of His Majesty’s mails” covered a multitude of sins. However, there were consolations. It should prove a respite. A real and badly needed holiday after that rather beastly affair which had been occupying his attention for the last two months. Melchester would prove a decided contrast to Kentish Town. Of course, even in that affair Hazlerigg had done the real work. Good old Hazlerigg. He was the man to have behind you on a nasty case. As solid as the Tower of London, with a first-rate brain behind that deceptively sanguine façade. The finest chief inspector at the Yard. Well, he could manage a little case like this off his own bat, thank you. As a dabbler in amateur psychology he had already classified the affair as “spontaneous social combustion,” the result of a community thrown too much into its own company. It would have been difficult for him to have been more completely wrong.
    The Dean consulted his diary.
    â€˜We’d better take the letters first,’ he said. ‘I’m afraid most of the recipients destroyed them as soon as they got them, but I’ve collected two for you. And mine makes a third. As a matter of fact it was only when the business became public property that I discovered about some of them. As far as I can make it out the sequence was as follows; Canon Hinkey, our Precentor, got the first – it came on the morning of September the ninth. Two days later Canon Bloss got one. Then Parvin got one, on the fourteenth. A very unpleasant little letter accusing Appledown of consorting with Mrs. Parvin. He naturally brought it to me, and actually that was the first one I saw. I advised him to burn it and forget about it. I’m afraid,’ added the Dean parenthetically, ‘that a good deal of valuable evidence was destroyed in that sort of way, but I suppose that’s always the way at the beginning of an affair like this.’
    He referred again to his diary.
    â€˜Canon Trumpington got one on the fifteenth, and Canon Fox got one the day after. Neither of them said anything to me at the time, and I’m fairly certain that both letters were destroyed. Mrs. Judd was the next. She was very upset about it and brought the letter over immediately. It was then that I made inquiries and found out about the earlier ones. There was a lull after that, but I have a note that Canon Prynne showed me one he had received on the morning of Monday the twentieth. He seemed rather pleased about it than otherwise and proposed publishing it in the Diocesan Gazette. However, I dissuaded him from such an unseemly course, and he handed it over to me. That was the last letter.’
    Pollock checked over the notes he had made.
    â€˜Before we go on,’ he said, ‘I had an idea that you had only four canons at Melchester.’
    â€˜That is correct,’ agreed the Dean.
    Pollock looked puzzled, and referred again to his notes.
    â€˜You have