The Moving Finger Read online

  “What put the idea into your head?”

  I said slowly:

  “Well, we’ve only her word for it, haven’t we, as to what the girl Agnes said to her? Suppose Agnes asked Partridge to tell her why Partridge came and left a note that day—and Partridge said she’d call round that afternoon and explain.”

  “And then camouflaged it by coming to us and asking if the girl could come here?”

  “Yes.”

  “But Partridge never went out that afternoon.”

  “We don’t know that. We were out ourselves, remember.”

  “Yes, that’s true. It’s possible, I suppose.” Joanna turned it over in her mind. “But I don’t think so, all the same. I don’t think Partridge has the mentality to cover her tracks over the letters. To wipe off fingerprints, and all that. It isn’t only cunning you want—it’s knowledge. I don’t think she’s got that. I suppose—” Joanna hesitated, then said slowly, “they are sure it is a woman, aren’t they?”

  “You don’t think it’s a man?” I exclaimed incredulously.

  “Not—not an ordinary man—but a certain kind of man. I’m thinking, really, of Mr. Pye.”

  “So Pye is your selection?”

  “Don’t you feel yourself that he’s a possibility? He’s the sort of person who might be lonely—and unhappy—and spiteful. Everyone, you see, rather laughs at him. Can’t you see him secretly hating all the normal happy people, and taking a queer perverse artistic pleasure in what he was doing?”

  “Graves said a middle-aged spinster.”

  “Mr. Pye,” said Joanna, “is a middle-aged spinster.”

  “A misfit,” I said slowly.

  “Very much so. He’s rich, but money doesn’t help. And I do feel he might be unbalanced. He is, really, rather a frightening little man.”

  “He got a letter himself, remember.”

  “We don’t know that,” Joanna pointed out. “We only thought so. And anyway, he might have been putting on an act.”

  “For our benefit?”

  “Yes. He’s clever enough to think of that—and not to overdo it.”

  “He must be a first-class actor.”

  “But of course, Jerry, whoever is doing this must be a first-class actor. That’s partly where the pleasure comes in.”

  “For God’s sake, Joanna, don’t speak so understandingly! You make me feel that you—that you understand the mentality.”

  “I think I do. I can—just—get into the mood. If I weren’t Joanna Burton, if I weren’t young and reasonably attractive and able to have a good time, if I were—how shall I put it?—behind bars, watching other people enjoy life, would a black evil tide rise in me, making me want to hurt, to torture—even to destroy?”

  “Joanna!” I took her by the shoulders and shook her. She gave a little sigh and shiver, and smiled at me.

  “I frightened you, didn’t I, Jerry? But I have a feeling that that’s the right way to solve this problem. You’ve got to be the person, knowing how they feel and what makes them act, and then—and then perhaps you’ll know what they’re going to do next.”

  “Oh, hell!” I said. “And I came down here to be a vegetable and get interested in all the dear little local scandals. Dear little local scandals! Libel, vilification, obscene language and murder!”

  II

  Joanna was quite right. The High Street was full of interested groups. I was determined to get everyone’s reactions in turn.

  I met Griffith first. He looked terribly ill and tired. So much so that I wondered. Murder is not, certainly, all in the day’s work to a doctor, but his profession does equip him to face most things including suffering, the ugly side of human nature, and the fact of death.

  “You look all in,” I said.

  “Do I?” He was vague. “Oh! I’ve had some worrying cases lately.”

  “Including our lunatic at large?”

  “That, certainly.” He looked away from me across the street. I saw a fine nerve twitching in his eyelid.

  “You’ve no suspicions as to—who?”

  “No. No. I wish to God I had.”

  He asked abruptly after Joanna, and said, hesitatingly, that he had some photographs she’d wanted to see.

  I offered to take them to her.

  “Oh, it doesn’t matter. I shall be passing that way actually later in the morning.”

  I began to be afraid that Griffith had got it badly. Curse Joanna! Griffith was too good a man to be dangled as a scalp.

  I let him go, for I saw his sister coming and I wanted, for once, to talk to her.

  Aimée Griffith began, as it were, in the middle of a conversation.

  “Absolutely shocking!” she boomed. “I hear you were there—quite early?”

  There was a question in the words, and her eyes glinted as she stressed the word “early.” I wasn’t going to tell her that Megan had rung me up. I said instead:

  “You see, I was a bit uneasy last night. The girl was due to tea at our house and didn’t turn up.”

  “And so you feared the worst? Damned smart of you!”

  “Yes,” I said. “I’m quite the human bloodhound.”

  “It’s the first murder we’ve ever had in Lymstock. Excitement is terrific. Hope the police can handle it all right.”

  “I shouldn’t worry,” I said. “They’re an efficient body of men.”

  “Can’t even remember what the girl looked like, although I suppose she’s opened the door to me dozens of times. Quiet, insignificant little thing. Knocked on the head and then stabbed through the back of the neck, so Owen tells me. Looks like a boyfriend to me. What do you think?”

  “That’s your solution?”

  “Seems the most likely one. Had a quarrel, I expect. They’re very inbred round here—bad heredity, a lot of them.” She paused, and then went on, “I hear Megan Hunter found the body? Must have given her a bit of a shock.”

  I said shortly:

  “It did.”

  “Not too good for her, I should imagine. In my opinion she’s not too strong in the head—and a thing like this might send her completely off her onion.”

  I took a sudden resolution. I had to know something.

  “Tell me, Miss Griffith, was it you who persuaded Megan to return home yesterday?”

  “Well, I wouldn’t say exactly persuaded.”

  I stuck to my guns.

  “But you did say something to her?”

  Aimée Griffith planted her feet firmly and stared me in the eyes. She was, just slightly, on the defensive. She said:

  “It’s no good that young woman shirking her responsibilities. She’s young and she doesn’t know how tongues wag, so I felt it my duty to give her a hint.”

  “Tongues—?” I broke off because I was too angry to go on.

  Aimée Griffith continued with that maddeningly complacent confidence in herself which was her chief characteristic:

  “Oh, I dare say you don’t hear all the gossip that goes round. I do! I know what people are saying. Mind you, I don’t for a minute think there’s anything in it—not for a minute! But you know what people are—if they can say something ill-natured, they do! And it’s rather hard lines on the girl when she’s got her living to earn.”

  “Her living to earn?” I said, puzzled.

  Aimée went on:

  “It’s a difficult position for her, naturally. And I think she did the right thing. I mean, she couldn’t go off at a moment’s notice and leave the children with no one to look after them. She’s been splendid—absolutely splendid. I say so to everybody! But there it is, it’s an invidious position, and people will talk.”

  “Who are you talking about?” I asked.

  “Elsie Holland, of course,” said Aimée Griffith impatiently. “In my opinion, she’s a thoroughly nice girl, and has only been doing her duty.”

  “And what are people saying?”

  Aimée Griffith laughed. It was, I thought, rather an unpleasant laugh.

  “Th
ey’re saying that she’s already considering the possibility of becoming Mrs. Symmington No. 2—that she’s all out to console the widower and make herself indispensable.”

  “But, good God,” I said, shocked, “Mrs. Symmington’s only been dead a week!”

  Aimée Griffith shrugged her shoulders.

  “Of course. It’s absurd! But you know what people are! The Holland girl is young and she’s good-looking—that’s enough. And mind you, being a nursery governess isn’t much of a prospect for a girl. I wouldn’t blame her if she wanted a settled home and a husband and was playing her cards accordingly.

  “Of course,” she went on, “poor Dick Symmington hasn’t the least idea of all this! He’s still completely knocked out by Mona Symmington’s death. But you know what men are! If the girl is always there, making him comfortable, looking after him, being obviously devoted to the children—well, he gets to be dependent on her.”

  I said quietly:

  “So you do think that Elsie Holland is a designing hussy?”

  Aimée Griffith flushed.

  “Not at all. I’m sorry for the girl—with people saying nasty things! That’s why I more or less told Megan that she ought to go home. It looks better than having Dick Symmington and the girl alone in the house.”

  I began to understand things.

  Aimée Griffith gave her jolly laugh.

  “You’re shocked, Mr. Burton, at hearing what our gossiping little town thinks. I can tell you this—they always think the worst!”

  She laughed and nodded and strode away.

  III

  I came upon Mr. Pye by the church. He was talking to Emily Barton, who looked pink and excited.

  Mr. Pye greeted me with every evidence of delight.

  “Ah, Burton, good morning, good morning! How is your charming sister?”

  I told him that Joanna was well.

  “But not joining our village parliament? We’re all agog over the news. Murder! Real Sunday newspaper murder in our midst! Not the most interesting of crimes, I fear. Somewhat sordid. The brutal murder of a little serving maid. No finer points about the crime, but still undeniably, news.”

  Miss Barton said tremulously:

  “It is shocking—quite shocking.”

  Mr. Pye turned to her.

  “But you enjoy it, dear lady, you enjoy it. Confess it now. You disapprove, you deplore, but there is the thrill. I insist, there is the thrill!”

  “Such a nice girl,” said Emily Barton. “She came to me from St. Clotilde’s Home. Quite a raw girl. But most teachable. She turned into such a nice little maid. Partridge was very pleased with her.”

  I said quickly:

  “She was coming to tea with Partridge yesterday afternoon.” I turned to Pye. “I expect Aimée Griffith told you.”

  My tone was quite casual. Pye responded apparently quite unsuspiciously: “She did mention it, yes. She said, I remember, that it was something quite new for servants to ring up on their employers’ telephones.”

  “Partridge would never dream of doing such a thing,” said Miss Emily, “and I am really surprised at Agnes doing so.”

  “You are behind the times, dear lady,” said Mr. Pye. “My two terrors use the telephone constantly and smoked all over the house until I objected. But one daren’t say too much. Prescott is a divine cook, though temperamental, and Mrs. Prescott is an admirable house-parlourmaid.”

  “Yes, indeed, we all think you’re very lucky.”

  I intervened, since I did not want the conversation to become purely domestic.

  “The news of the murder has got round very quickly,” I said.

  “Of course, of course,” said Mr. Pye. “The butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker. Enter Rumour, painted full of tongues! Lymstock, alas! is going to the dogs. Anonymous letters, murders, any amount of criminal tendencies.”

  Emily Barton said nervously: “They don’t think—there’s no idea—that—that the two are connected.”

  Mr. Pye pounced on the idea.

  “An interesting speculation. The girl knew something, therefore she was murdered. Yes, yes, most promising. How clever of you to think of it.”

  “I— I can’t bear it.”

  Emily Barton spoke abruptly and turned away, walking very fast.

  Pye looked after her. His cherubic face was pursed up quizzically.

  He turned back to me and shook his head gently.

  “A sensitive soul. A charming creature, don’t you think? Absolutely a period piece. She’s not, you know, of her own generation, she’s of the generation before that. The mother must have been a woman of a very strong character. She kept the family time ticking at about 1870, I should say. The whole family preserved under a glass case. I do like to come across that sort of thing.”

  I did not want to talk about period pieces.

  “What do you really think about all this business?” I asked.

  “Meaning by that?”

  “Anonymous letters, murder….”

  “Our local crime wave? What do you?”

  “I asked you first,” I said pleasantly.

  Mr. Pye said gently:

  “I’m a student, you know, of abnormalities. They interest me. Such apparently unlikely people do the most fantastic things. Take the case of Lizzie Borden. There’s not really a reasonable explanation of that. In this case, my advice to the police would be—study character. Leave your fingerprints and your measuring of handwriting and your microscopes. Notice instead what people do with their hands, and their little tricks of manner, and the way they eat their food, and if they laugh sometimes for no apparent reason.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “Mad?” I said.

  “Quite, quite mad,” said Mr. Pye, and added, “but you’d never know it!”

  “Who?”

  His eyes met mine. He smiled.

  “No, no, Burton, that would be slander. We can’t add slander to all the rest of it.”

  He fairly skipped off down the street.

  IV

  As I stood staring after him the church door opened and the Rev. Caleb Dane Calthrop came out.

  He smiled vaguely at me.

  “Good—good morning, Mr—er—er—”

  I helped him. “Burton.”

  “Of course, of course, you mustn’t think I don’t remember you. Your name had just slipped my memory for the moment. A beautiful day.”

  “Yes,” I said rather shortly.

  He peered at me.

  “But something—something—ah, yes, that poor unfortunate child who was in service at the Symmingtons.’ I find it hard to believe, I must confess, that we have a murderer in our midst, Mr—er—Burton.”

  “It does seem a bit fantastic,” I said.

  “Something else has just reached my ears.” He leaned towards me. “I learn that there have been anonymous letters going about. Have you heard any rumour of such things?”

  “I have heard,” I said.

  “Cowardly and dastardly things.” He paused and quoted an enormous stream of Latin. “Those words of Horace are very applicable, don’t you think?” he said.

  “Absolutely,” I said.

  V

  There didn’t seem anyone more I could profitably talk to, so I went home, dropping in for some tobacco and for a bottle of sherry, so as to get some of the humbler opinions on the crime.

  “A narsty tramp,” seemed to be the verdict.

  “Come to the door, they do, and whine and ask for money, and then if it’s a girl alone in the house, they turn narsty. My sister Dora, over to Combeacre, she had a narsty experience one day—Drunk, he was, and selling those little printed poems….”

  The story went on, ending with the intrepid Dora courageously banging the door in the man’s face and taking refuge and barricading herself in some vague retreat, which I gathered from the delicacy in mentioning it must be the lavatory. “And there she stayed till her lady came home!”

  I reached Little Furze just a few minutes before l
unchtime. Joanna was standing in the drawing room window doing nothing at all and looking as though her thoughts were miles away.

  “What have you been doing with yourself?” I asked.

  “Oh, I don’t know. Nothing particular.”

  I went out on the veranda. Two chairs were drawn up to an iron table and there were two empty sherry glasses. On another chair was an object at which I looked with bewilderment for some time.

  “What on earth is this?”

  “Oh,” said Joanna, “I think it’s a photograph of a diseased spleen or something. Dr. Griffith seemed to think I’d be interested to see it.”

  I looked at the photograph with some interest. Every man has his own ways of courting the female sex. I should not, myself, choose to do it with photographs of spleens, diseased or otherwise. Still no doubt Joanna had asked for it!

  “It looks most unpleasant,” I said.

  Joanna said it did, rather.

  “How was Griffith?” I asked.

  “He looked tired and very unhappy. I think he’s got something on his mind.”

  “A spleen that won’t yield to treatment?”

  “Don’t be silly. I mean something real.”

  “I should say the man’s got you on his mind. I wish you’d lay off him, Joanna.”

  “Oh, do shut up. I haven’t done anything.”

  “Women always say that.”

  Joanna whirled angrily out of the room.

  The diseased spleen was beginning to curl up in the sun. I took it by one corner and brought it into the drawing room. I had no affection for it myself, but I presumed it was one of Griffith’s treasures.

  I stooped down and pulled out a heavy book from the bottom shelf of the bookcase in order to press the photograph flat again between its leaves. It was a ponderous volume of somebody’s sermons.

  The book came open in my hand in rather a surprising way. In another minute I saw why. From the middle of it a number of pages had been neatly cut out.

  VI

  I stood staring at it. I looked at the title page. It had been published in 1840.

  There could be no doubt at all. I was looking at the book from the pages of which the anonymous letters had been put together. Who had cut them out?

  Well, to begin with, it could be Emily Barton herself. She was, perhaps, the obvious person to think of. Or it could have been Partridge.