“She’s bearing up as well as can be expected,” replied Mr. Copperdock. “She and I got to talking about Jim, and wondering whoever it could have been that murdered him. She was telling me all about the telephone call, and she went on to say that this was the second queer thing that happened just before he died. Naturally I asked her what the first was, and she told me that on the Friday morning before his death, a typewritten envelope came addressed to him. He opened it, and all there was inside was a white counter with the number I drawn on it in red ink. Now what do you make of that?”
Mr. Ludgrove sat silent for a moment under his friend’s triumphant gaze, a thoughtful frown upon his face. “This is most extraordinary,” he said at last. “If your facts are correct—not that I doubt them for a moment, but I know how fatally easy it is to find presages after the event—it means that both Mr. Tovey and Mr. Colburn received, a couple of days or so before their respective deaths, a white counter bearing a numeral in red ink. It is almost certain that both counters were sent by the same person, and, if they were intended as a warning, we may infer, as you said, that both men were murdered by the same hand.”
Mr. Copperdock nodded rather impatiently. “Just what I told you, all along,” he said.
“But, my dear sir, look at the difficulties which that theory entails,” objected Mr. Ludgrove. “We are agreed that it is impossible to think of any motive for the murder of Mr. Tovey, and I at least am inclined to say the same regarding the murder of Mr. Colburn. Yet now we are faced with the problem of finding a man who had a motive for murdering both of them. By the way, do you happen to know if they were ever associated in any way?”
“Never!” replied Mr. Copperdock emphatically. “Although they’d both lived in these parts most of their lives, I don’t suppose they even knew one another by sight.”
“The fact that they had nothing in common makes it all the more puzzling,” said Mr. Ludgrove reflectively. “But perhaps you have thought of a way out of the difficulty?”
A cloud came over Mr. Copperdock’s naturally cheerful face, and there was a marked hesitancy in his tone as he replied. “Aye, I have thought of something, and it’s that that’s been worrying me. Mind, I don’t believe it myself, but I’m in mortal fear lest someone else should see it too.”
“I think I can guess what you mean,” said Mr. Ludgrove gently. “I know as well as you do that it isn’t true, but we’re both of us too well aware of the mischief that can be caused by whispering tongues to treat it as unimportant. You mean that young Colburn was not on good terms with his father, that he and your son are great friends, and that your son sold Mr. Colburn the pipe which is supposed to have been the agency of his death.”
“I do mean that,” replied Mr. Copperdock deliberately. “I mean too that Ted is very sweet on Ivy Tovey, and that poor old Jim wasn’t very keen on the idea. Now you see the sort of lying whispers that might get about if all this was known. And I’m blest if I see what I can do about it.”
“I think you told me that you had some conversation with a Police Inspector last week on the subject of Mr. Tovey’s murder?” suggested Mr. Ludgrove.