‘I’d almost forgotten it,’ he said. ‘I showed it to old Baird. He doesn’t seem particularly impressed. Says it’s not scurrilous, blasphemous, improper, or in any way actionable, so I’ve brought it back with me.’ He produced it and handed it over. ‘It was typed on the machine we’ve heard of before. It was not posted, but was found on the ground outside the post office by young Bob Wootton, and he handed it in. It was stamped, but the stamp had not been cancelled. Sidney Blott obligingly brought it along. That’s all. Here it is.’

‘Very interesting indeed,’ said Mrs Bradley, examining it. ‘Look at the spelling of “inditing”. I remember the same word being used in another of the letters. The spelling – correct enough according to the Concise Oxford dictionary, is in the unusual form “enditing”. Apart from the fact that it is not a word which an uneducated person would commonly use, the rather extraordinary spelling marks it, I think, as the product of an individual mind.’

‘And you mean that it narrows the search?’ said Jonathan. ‘Yes, I can see that, all right, if we take it for granted that the writer is somebody living in the village; but—’

‘Well,’ said Mrs Bradley reasonably, ‘who, living outside the village, would know that I am here?’

‘Don’t be modest,’ said her nephew. Mrs Bradley contented herself by leering tenderly at him, and then she said:

‘Except, of course, Mr Mansell and Mr Obury. And now, take Deborah to bed. “The iron tongue of midnight hath tolled twelve.”’

‘“Lovers, to bed; ’tis almost fairy time,”’ said Jonathan, breathing the words into Deborah’s hair. ‘Yes, and that reminds me,’ he added. ‘That’s the most exasperating thing about this digging business of Mansell’s. Fairy time, indeed! Grown men of the twentieth century, and not Cornishmen or Irishmen mind you, but sober, and, one would have said, God-fearing West-Country fellows.’

‘I say, though! This spelling bee of yours! You don’t mean the vicar?’ asked Deborah. ‘Now that I come to think, that old-fashioned spelling comes in the English liturgy of Edward VI. Would anybody but a clergyman be likely to know that?’

‘Think it out for yourself,’ said Mrs Bradley. Jonathan smacked his knee.

‘Oho!’ he said. ‘I’ve got it! But has he a typewriter?’

‘At any rate, he must have access to one. I should say, on the whole, he must possess one.’

‘Do tell me,’ pleaded Deborah.

‘You use your gump. It was you that recognized the Prayer Book of Edward Tudor!’ retorted Jonathan.

‘Psalm 45,’ said Mrs Bradley.

CHAPTER 13

The Dragon’s Teeth Are Sown

‘On what wings dare he aspire?

What the hand dare seize the fire?’

William Blake