“Ye-es, I think so. Oh, yes; I remember now. The whole thing was typewritten, signature and all.”
“Thank you very much, Mrs. Plant,” Roger said gratefully. “That’s all I wanted to know.”
He sped back to his own room.
“Alexander!” he exclaimed dramatically, as soon as he was inside. “Alexander, the game is on again!”
“What’s up now?” Alec asked with a slight frown.
“That letter sounds like a fake, just the same as the confession. It was all typewritten, even the signature, and it was posted from the village. Can you imagine a man in his sane senses deliberately going down to the village to post his letter, when all he had to do was to push it under her door?”
“He might have had others to post as well,” Alec hazarded, blowing out a great cloud of smoke. “Would Mrs. Plant’s be the only one?”
“H’m! I never thought of that. Yes, he would. But still, it’s rather unlikely that he should have posted hers as well, I should say. By the way, it was that letter which accounted for her change of attitude before lunch. She knew then that she had nothing to fear from the opening of the safe, you see.”
“Well, how do matters stand now?”
“Exactly as they did before. I don’t see that this really affects it either way. It’s only another instance of the murderer’s cunning. Mrs. Plant, and possibly, as you say, one or two others, might raise awkward questions at Stanworth’s sudden death; therefore their apprehensions must be allayed. All that it really does as far as we are concerned, is to confirm the idea that the murderer must have a very intimate knowledge of Stanworth’s private affairs. Of course it shows that the safe was opened that night, and it brings our old friends, the ashes in the hearth, into prominence once more as being in all probability the remains of the blackmailer’s evidence. Curious that that first guess of mine should have turned out to be so near the truth, isn’t it?”