‘The next thing, sir, was the alphabet book,’ said Fatty. ‘And, as I daresay you’ve noticed, the alphabet letters in such a book are always in capitals. A is for Apple, and so on. So I guessed that book had been bought as a kind of reference book for capital letters, by somebody who wasn’t quite sure of the difference in shape of big and small letters. The capital letter G, for instance, is quite different from the small letter g. Naturally the anonymous letter-writer didn’t want to give away the fact that she hadn’t had enough education to know the difference.’
‘Well worked out, Frederick, well worked out,’ said the Inspector, most interested. ‘What about this?’ He held up the copybook.
‘That’s easy, sir,’ said Fatty. ‘Even Bets could read that clue now!’
‘Yes, I can!’ called Bets. ‘That’s a copybook Mrs. Moon must have bought to practise writing capital letters in. There’s lots of capitals printed there in pencil.’
‘I expect if you ask at the stationer’s, Inspector, you’ll find that Mrs. Moon did buy a copybook there some weeks ago!’
‘Make inquiries, Goon,’ said the Inspector. Goon hurriedly made a note in his notebook.
‘The bus time-table was an easy clue,’ said Fatty. ‘I guessed I’d find that 10.15 bus marked. And this bit of torn paper, sir - used as a bookmark in the dictionary, I should think - must have been torn from a recipe of some sort. I knew that as soon as I read the words - “spoonful” - “stir” - “oven”. I expect you will find that they are in Mrs. Moon’s ordinary handwriting, and torn from her kitchen recipe-book.’
‘A most ingenious reading of rather peculiar clues!’ said the Inspector, looking really pleased. ‘What a pity, Mr. Goon, you didn’t take the trouble to look carefully through the clues yourself, and deduct from them all that Frederick has done.’
‘Thought they was all false clues,’ muttered Mr. Goon. ‘Made me angry, they did.’
‘It’s a mistake to let anger cloud your thinking, Goon,’ said the Inspector. ‘If you had only examined these clues carefully, you might have arrived at the same conclusions as Frederick here - but again, you might not!’