A Fragment of Fear by John Bingham Page A

some sense into ’em, as it were.”
    He began to move towards the door again.
    “It’s not as simple as that,” I said again. “It’s difficult to explain. I travelled down with her and listened to a lot of emotional trouble, and she talked of suicide.”
    “A bit unstable mentally, I suppose, like they thought down at the police station, between you and me. I mean, she wasn’t no beauty, I’m told, and directly I saw you, and this flat, if I may say so, I thought ‘Well, if he wanted to start any nonsense like that he would choose something a bit different from her.’ Not that you can always tell, of course.”
    He had reached the door and had his hand on the door knob. He had a fixed idea of how things were, and he wasn’t interested, and I felt I had to talk rapidly to detain him.
    “She gave me a note in a buff envelope. Just before we parted in Victoria Station. I want to show it to you. There’s a very odd thing about it.”
    I picked up the note on my desk, and he came over reluctantly.
    “You don’t want to give your name and address to odd people you meet on trains, if I may say so, sir, not if they seem a bit cranky. It always leads to trouble of some sort. I suppose you felt sorry for her.”
    I handed him the note, and said:
    “I didn’t give her my name and address—that’s another point I might mention. But read that, and then I’ll tell you about it.”
    He stood by the window, holding the note a long way from his face, as long-sighted middle-aged people do when they can’t be bothered to get out their spectacles, and when the telephone rang I left him frowning down at it.
    It was Juliet’s father, again, confirming that I was going to meet her at the airport at four-thirty that afternoon, and not at the air terminal. I listened to the man’s snuffly voice droning on about the evening’s arrangements.
    “So you’ll be back here about six o’clock, old man?”
    “That’s right, squire,” I said.
    “Then we’ll go straight out to dinner, after a drink, old boy?”
    “Splendid.”
    “Look forward to seeing you, old boy.”
    “Me too,” I said.
    He always called me “old boy.” He tagged it on at the end of almost every sentence he spoke to me.
    “That was my future father-in-law,” I said, as I put the receiver down. “He doesn’t like leaving things to chance. He’s a great organiser. He’ll tell you so himself, if you ask him, or even if you don’t ask him.”
    I didn’t think the remark witty, but I thought it merited a polite smile. However, he didn’t smile.
    “This note you’ve shown me,” he said. I could detect the awakened interest in his voice. “This note you said she gave you, sir. I’ve been looking at the type and I happened to glance at the type of this bit of writing you’ve left in your typewriter, and at the typing paper.”
    I nodded eagerly.
    “That’s right. It’s the same. So is the typing paper, and so is the envelope. That’s what I wanted to tell you.”
    “What did you want to tell me, sir?”
    “That the note she gave me was typed on my machine, and on my typing paper, and put into one of my envelopes.”
    He looked at me, puzzled, trying to sort out the implications.
    “That’s what’s so odd,” I added.
    “This message you typed,” he began, but I cut him short.
    “I don’t think you quite understand what I’m getting at. I didn’t type it.”
    “You didn’t say that when you gave it to me to read, sir.”
    “I was going to but the ’phone rang.”
    He picked up the piece of paper again, and glanced at my typewriter again, because I think he felt he ought to do something. He said gloomily:
    “Well, I don’t know what you’re getting at, sir. Are you suggesting that this lady who complained about you somehow got into this flat, got hold of your name and address, typed this stuff out, took it all the way down to the seaside, came up in the train with you, then gave it to you at Victoria Station, and then came