Wolf to the Slaughter Read Online Free PDF Page A

writing, obviously disguised. The paper was not dirty nor the words obscene. The distaste Burden felt was solely on account of its author’s cowardice and his desire to titillate without committing himself.
    He read it to himself.
    A girl called Ann was killed in this area between eight and eleven Tuesday night. The man who done it is small and dark and young and he has a black car. Name of Geoff Smith.
    Discarding it with a grimace, he turned to the envelope. ‘Posted in Stowerton,’ he said. ‘Twelve-fifty yesterday. Not very discreet of him, writing it. In our experience, the usual line is to cut words out of newspapers.’
    ‘Assuming the infallibility of handwriting experts?’ Wexford scoffed. ‘Have you ever heard one of those johnnies give a firm opinion one way or the other, Mike? I haven’t. If your recipient hasn’t got a sample of your normal handwriting you might just as well save your newspaper and your scissors. Slope backwards if you normally slope forwards, write large if you usually write small, and you’re perfectly incognito, safe as houses. No, I’ll send this down to the lab but I’ll be very much surprised if they can tell me anything I haven’t deduced for myself. There’s only one thing I haven’t deduced for myself. There’s only one thing here that’ll lead me to my correspondent.’
    ‘The paper,’ Burden said thoughtfully. He fingered its thick creamy surface and its silky watermark.
    ‘Exactly. It’s handmade, unless I’m much mistaken, but the writer isn’t the kind of man to order handmade paper. He’s an uneducated chap; look at that “done it”.’
    ‘He could work in a stationer’s,’ Burden said slowly.
    ‘More likely work for someone who ordered this paper specially from a stationer’s.’
    ‘A servant, d’you mean? That narrows the field a lot. How many people around here employ menservants?’
    ‘Plenty employ gardeners, Mike. The stationer’s should be our starting point and we’ll only need to tackle the high-class ones. That leaves out Kingsmarkham. I can’t see Braddon’s supplying handmade paper and certainly not Grover’s.’
    ‘You’re taking this whole thing very seriously, sir.’
    ‘I am. I want Martin, Drayton, Bryant and Gates up here because this is one anonymous letter I can’t afford to treat as a practical joke. You, Mike, had better see what you can get out of the twenty-nine-year-old genius.’
    He sat beside Burden behind the desk when they were all assembled. ‘Now, I’m not taking you off your regular work,’ he began. ‘Not yet. Get hold of the electoral register and make a list of all the Geoffrey Smiths in the district. Particularly in Stowerton. I want them all looked up during the course of the day and I want to know if any of them are small and dark and if any of them has a black car. That’s all. No frightening of wives, please, and no insisting on looking into garages. Just a casual survey. Keep your eyes open. Take a look at this paper, Sergeant Martin, and if you find any like it in a stationer’s I want it brought back here for comparison . . .’
    After they had gone, Burden said bitterly, ‘Smith! I ask you, Smith!’
    ‘Some people really are called Smith, Mike,’ Wexford said. He folded up the colour supplement with Margolis’s photograph uppermost and tucked it carefully in a drawer of the rosewood desk.
    ‘If I could only find the matches,’ Rupert Margolis said, ‘I’d make you a cup of coffee.’ He fumbled helplessly among dirty crockery, topless bottles of milk, crumpled frozen food cartons on the kitchen table. ‘There were some here on Tuesday night. I came in about eleven and all the lights had fused. That’s not unusual. There was an enormous pile of newspapers on here and I picked them up and chucked them outside the back door. Our dustbins are always full. However, I did find the matches then, about fifteen boxes where the papers had been.’ He sighed heavily. ‘God knows where