“The law ought to compel people to smoke. In bed, especially—we should have got some very nice indications of what he was really up to if he had smoked in bed. But I see he wasn’t a bedroom smoker in any case; here’s a solitary match which has only been used to light the gas—he hasn’t burnt a quarter of an inch of it.”
“That match worries me too. There’s a box on the mantelpiece, but those are ordinary safeties. This is a smaller kind altogether, and I can’t find any of them in his pockets.”
“The maid might have been in before him and lighted the gas.”
“They never do. At least, Mrs. Davis says they never do.”
“It was dark when he went to bed?”
“About ten o’clock, Brinkman says. You would be able to see your way then, but not much more. And he must have lit the gas, to put the studs in his shirt—besides, he’s left some writing, which was probably done late that night, though we can’t prove it.”
“Writing! Anything important?”
“Only a letter to some local rag at Pullford. Here it is, if you want to read it.” And Leyland handed Bredon a letter from the blotting-pad on the table. It ran:
To the Editor of the Pullford Examiner:
Dear Sir:
Your correspondent, “Brutus,” in complaining of the closing of the Mottram Recreation Grounds at the hour of seven p.m., describes these grounds as having been “presented to the town with money wrung from the pockets of the poor.” Now, Sir, I have nothing to do with the action of the Town Council in opening the Recreation Grounds or closing same. I write only as a private citizen who has done my best to make life amenable for the citizens of Pullford, to know why my name should be dragged into this controversy, and in the very injurious terms he has done. Such recreation grounds were presented by me twelve years ago to the townspeople of Pullford, not as “blood-money” at all, but because I wanted them, and especially the kiddies, to get a breath of God’s open air now and again. If “Brutus” will be kind enough to supply chapter and verse, showing where or how operatives in my pay have received less pay than what they ought to have done——
At this point the letter closed abruptly.