Not Touched

A Maggie B. Casefile

Lower Tissington isn’t the sort of village that leaves things unexplained—at least, not on purpose. But when a single letter tile appears on the WI noticeboard and others begin to turn up in odd corners, Maggie starts to wonder whether someone is leaving more than a puzzle behind. Some messages aren’t meant to be solved. They’re meant to be witnessed.

Not Touched

It began, as many things do in Lower Tissington, with a single, out-of-place letter tile: Q.

It was glued—deliberately—to the WI noticeboard, just above the announcement for the rhubarb chutney demonstration. Audrey Crenshaw noticed it first and reacted as if it were a curse word spelled in letter tiles.

“We are not that sort of village,” she said, brandishing her clipboard. Netta Flinn flinched, dropping her fig bar.

No one was quite sure what that sort of village meant. Maggie didn’t ask. She noted the adhesive—clear craft glue—and the angle: slightly off, as if resisting alignment.

Two days later, a U appeared in the bus shelter. A day after that, an I surfaced in the vestry, tucked behind Shine Jesus Shine on the hymn board, where the dust felt entitled. She reached as if to straighten it, then stopped—habit meeting something older.

Audrey declared war on guerrilla spelling. Netta muttered something about ley lines. Reginald blamed the chess club.

Maggie made a list.

By week’s end:
T – balanced on the bakery window ledge, half-lost behind steam by nine o’clock.
S – wired to the allotment gate, flaking green under her thumb; she let the powder sit.
O – taped beneath a parish-hall folding chair, legs wobbling in sympathy.

The week settled into a rhythm—letters waiting where the eye almost skipped—until coincidence no longer fit.

She resisted mapping them at first. But by the seventh, she was sketching a scatter of dots on the back of a bank slip, transferring it to clean paper, as though it might name something she hadn’t let herself name.

Then came the R, tucked into the biscuit tin beside a ginger nut. Audrey shrieked; Reginald sat down hard and muttered about cursed crosswords.

A week later, the Y turned up under the lamppost outside Robert Pimm’s old house. Maggie’s hand, halfway to her coat pocket, stilled.

Robert had gone in winter. Quietly. After his mother’s funeral. No note. No fuss. Just folded cardigans in neat stacks and a Scrabble board still set mid-game on the table when the estate agent came round. People said Kent. Or nowhere at all. Or that he never quite fit.

She remembered once: a Tuesday evening, drizzle settling in, Robert slipping a word like grace or almost onto the community Scrabble board when no one was looking. He’d glanced at her, just once, to see if she’d noticed. She had.

After that came an I in the library return chute, its edges colder for the metal.
L – wedged beneath the memorial bench.
O – hidden in the candlestick box, dulled with wax.
V – pressed to the rim of the birdbath, where the choir once sang carols—coats, creaking boots.

And finally: a small, worn drawstring bag set square on her garden wall—inside, an E wrapped in paper.

She unknotted the pouch. The letter tiles clicked—small, deliberate—as she set them out on the kitchen table, one by one, as if laying down a breath she’d been holding too long.

SORRY I LEFT
I LOVED YOU ALL
I JUST DIDN’T LOOK LIKE IT

No flourish. No explanation. Just words. A trail of almosts. A voice not entirely gone.

She stood there until the light shifted off the table. Then gathered the tiles back into the pouch—one last clink—and walked them to the church, placing them in the offertory tray beneath a folded paper heart no one had claimed.

Later, Reginald brought over a pot of marrow chutney and two mugs. They drank tea. He glanced at her hands, then away. She didn’t explain.

“Some people say more by going than by staying.”

Maggie nodded. “And some find the right words when there’s no one left to interrupt.”

She opened her grey notebook after he’d gone, flipping past fig-bar disputes, biscuit treaties, and the ghost of a page she’d once left blank on purpose.

Case #21: Not Touched
Observation: Some apologies don’t seek forgiveness. Only recognition.
Outcome: Witnessed.
Additional note: The ones who never found their place leave the clearest trail.

Outside, the ivy shifted in the breeze.

On the windowsill, the Q had returned—already settled.

Some letters stop belonging to the alphabet.

They belong to the quiet, and to the hands that finally set them down.