He looked at Mrs. Endicott. She was evidently waiting for him to speak.
“Today is Thursday,” he said. “Might it not be simply a memorandum?”
“My husband doesn’t print his memorandums, nor is it likely he would use a piece of paper torn from a paper bag.” She added, to clinch her belief, “I can’t imagine Herbert ever having a paper bag.”
“Perhaps he bought something at some haberdasher’s.”
“The paper is too cheap. It’s more like the sort they use at grocers’ or small stationers’.”
“So it is.”
“And there’s a crudeness about the printing. It’s almost an intentional crudeness.” Mrs. Endicott stared fixedly at Lieutenant Valcour. “It’s the sort of printing you’d expect to find in a threat,” she said.
“I have learned to find almost any sort of writing or material used for purposes of conveying a threat,” Lieutenant Valcour said. “People who threaten are invariably unbalanced emotionally, if not actually mentally, and there is never any telling just what they will do. There was a case that recently came to my attention where a woman received a threat which had been engraved on excellent paper and enclosed in the conventional inner envelope one uses for formal announcements or invitations.”
“Really.”
“I’m not, by that, questioning your judgment in the matter of this note, Mrs. Endicott. It might quite well be a threat, as you think.”
“There is nothing else apparent that it could be.”
“When did you find it, Mrs. Endicott?”
“After my husband had left.”