"No." He reaches for the thermos. "You just look and sound like you're right."
This is the first time I've had quality time with Ed in days. I swear he's been avoiding me. So I ask him if he has.
He looks up at me from his task of decanting G'n'T into the thermos lid with large, alarmed, beautifully eye-lash-laden eyes. "Ahhhh," is all he manages to articulate.
"It's a simple 'yes' or 'no' question."
Ed resumes his task and waits until he's finished before replying. "Can I have a 'maybe' option?"
I turn around to face him squarely. "Ed. I need you to help me solve the puzzle of these letters and you don't seem to want to."
He hesitates before saying, "What part of the puzzle?"
"Take your pick. Who's sending the letters. Who they're written by. Who they're to. You might be able to work it out if you spent less time disapproving of the whole thing."
"I don't...it's not exactly that I disapprove of it."
"What is it, then?"
"It's..." He looks out to sea, blinks several times, then turns back to me with, "...complicated."
I throw him a "Don't you shrug me off with 'it's complicated'" look and he adds, "I have mixed feelings about the whole thing. And that's the most you're going to get from me, because I can see that it's making a lot of money that you badly need."
"Right. So you won'tsayyou don't like it, but you're going to act as if you don't anyway."
"Am I?"
"Yeah."
He sips from his cup. "I was never any good at drama in school."
With all the pausing and delaying of his responses, he looks like he's desperately trying to keep it cool. I think I understand. Whatever his objection is, he cares about me. He wants to be a supportive friend, but if there's one thing I can say for sure about Ed Chakrabarti, it's that he is principled to a fault. And something about this, probably all the wooing of the social media masses, or using someone's most private thoughts and feelings without their consent due to their being-dead status is not sitting comfortably with him.
I admire it about him. I really do. It's just very inconvenient at times.
"Please, Ed."
He sighs and rests his cup on his stomach. "Okay. What have you got?"
Reaching for my notebook, I say, "I'm so glad you asked." I open it to the page dedicated to the mode of letter delivery. "All of them, apart from the first one, have been placed in books." Putting it on the table between us, so we can both read it, I try for the millionth time to make sense from it.
The first bullet point reads:
23/7: A book on bird watching calledWinged Wondersby Timothy Dale at Dewey number 598.2, and the letter placed at the start of chapter seven, Finding Exotics. Left in Returns slot.
The other five read similarly – the date, the name of the book, the Dewey number, the chapter the letter was placed inside, and where it was found.
Ed sits back from leaning in to read. "There's a lot of information to try and find meaning from."
"I know, right? There could be clues in any part of it. I wouldn't have the first idea how to tackle a number cipher if the Dewey number's significant. Or what if the clues aren't literal and I have to do word association with the subject matter?"
"Have your viewers been helpful?"
Yes. No. "Plenty of theories. Nothing that allows me to make sense of it."
