Inspector Graves smiled mournfully. I reflected that a life spent in the pursuit of anonymous letter writers must be singularly depressing. Inspector Graves, however, showed a kind of melancholy enthusiasm.

“They’re all the same, these cases,” he said in a deep lugubrious voice like a depressed bloodhound. “You’d be surprised. The wording of the letters and the things they say.”

“We had a case just on two years ago,” said Nash. “Inspector Graves helped us then.”

Some of the letters, I saw, were spread out on the table in front of Graves. He had evidently been examining them.

“Difficulty is,” said Nash, “to get hold of the letters. Either people put them in the fire, or they won’t admit to having received anything of the kind. Stupid, you see, and afraid of being mixed up with the police. They’re a backward lot here.”

“Still we’ve got a fair amount to get on with,” said Graves. Nash took the letter I had given him from his pocket and tossed it over to Graves.

The latter glanced through it, laid it with the others and observed approvingly:

“Very nice—very nice indeed.”

It was not the way I should have chosen to describe the epistle in question, but experts, I suppose, have their own point of view. I was glad that that screed of vituperative and obscene abuse gave somebody pleasure.

“We’ve got enough, I think, to go on with,” said Inspector Graves, “and I’ll ask you gentlemen, if you should get anymore, to bring them along at once. Also, if you hear of someone else getting one—(you, in particular, doctor, among your patients) do your best to get them to come along here with them. I’ve got—” he sorted with deft fingers among his exhibits, “one to Mr. Symmington, received as far back as two months ago, one to Dr. Griffith, one to Miss Ginch, one written to Mrs. Mudge, the butcher’s wife, one to Jennifer Clark, barmaid at the Three Crowns, the one received by Mrs. Symmington, this one now to Miss Burton—oh yes, and one from the bank manager.”

“Quite a representative collection,” I remarked.

“And not one I couldn’t match from other cases! This one here is as near as nothing to one written by that milliner woman. This one is the dead spit of an outbreak we had up in Northumberland—written by a schoolgirl, they were. I can tell you, gentlemen, I’d like to see something new sometimes, instead of the same old treadmill.”

“There is nothing new under the sun,” I murmured.

“Quite so, sir. You’d know that if you were in our profession.”

Nash sighed and said, “Yes, indeed.”

Symmington asked:

“Have you come to any definite opinion as to the writer?”

Graves cleared his throat and delivered a small lecture.

“There are certain similarities shared by all these letters. I shall enumerate them, gentlemen, in case they suggest anything to your minds. The text of the letters is composed of words made-up from individual letters cut out of a printed book. It’s an old book, printed, I should say, about the year 1830. This has obviously been done to avoid the risk of recognition through handwriting which is, as most people know nowadays, a fairly easy matter…the so-called disguising of a hand not amounting to much when faced with expert tests. There are no fingerprints on the letters and envelopes of a distinctive character. That is to say, they have been handled by the postal authorities, the recipient, and there are other stray fingerprints, but no set common to all, showing therefore that the person who put them together was careful to wear gloves. The envelopes are typewritten by a Windsor 7 machine, well worn, with the a and the t out of alignment. Most of them have been posted locally, or put in the box of a house by hand. It is therefore evident that they are of local provenance. They were written by a woman, and in my opinion a woman of middle age or over, and probably, though not certainly, unmarried.”