The Moving Finger Read online

  I shrugged my shoulders.

  “A warped mentality.”

  “It seems very sad.”

  “It doesn’t seem to me sad. It seems to me just damnable. And I don’t apologize for the word. I mean just that.”

  The pink had gone out of Miss Barton’s cheeks. They were very white.

  “But why, Mr. Burton, why? What pleasure can anyone get out of it?”

  “Nothing you and I can understand, thank goodness.”

  Emily Barton lowered her voice.

  “They say that Mrs. Cleat—but I really cannot believe it.”

  I shook my head. She went on in an agitated manner:

  “Nothing of this kind has ever happened before—never in my memory. It has been such a happy little community. What would my dear mother have said? Well, one must be thankful that she has been spared.”

  I thought from all I had heard that old Mrs. Barton had been sufficiently tough to have taken anything, and would probably have enjoyed this sensation.

  Emily went on:

  “It distresses me deeply.”

  “You’ve not—er—had anything yourself?”

  She flushed crimson.

  “Oh, no—oh, no, indeed. Oh! that would be dreadful.”

  I apologized hastily, but she went away looking rather upset.

  I went into the house. Joanna was standing by the drawing room fire which she had just lit, for the evenings were still chilly.

  She had an open letter in her hand.

  She turned her head quickly as I entered.

  “Jerry! I found this in the letter box—dropped in by hand. It begins, “You painted trollop….”

  “What else does it say?”

  Joanna gave a wide grimace.

  “Same old muck.”

  She dropped it on to the fire. With a quick gesture that hurt my back I jerked it off again just before it caught.

  “Don’t,” I said. “We may need it.”

  “Need it?”

  “For the police.”

  V

  Superintendent Nash came to see me the following morning. From the first moment I saw him I took a great liking to him. He was the best type of C.I.D. county superintendent. Tall, soldierly, with quiet reflective eyes and a straightforward unassuming manner.

  He said: “Good morning, Mr. Burton, I expect you can guess what I’ve come to see you about.”

  “Yes, I think so. This letter business.”

  He nodded.

  “I understand you had one of them?”

  “Yes, soon after we got here.”

  “What did it say exactly?”

  I thought a minute, then conscientiously repeated the wording of the letter as closely as possible.

  The superintendent listened with an immovable face, showing no signs of any kind of emotion. When I had finished, he said:

  “I see. You didn’t keep the letter, Mr. Burton?”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t. You see, I thought it was just an isolated instance of spite against newcomers to the place.”

  The superintendent inclined his head comprehendingly.

  He said briefly: “A pity.”

  “However,” I said, “my sister got one yesterday. I just stopped her putting it in the fire.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Burton, that was thoughtful of you.”

  I went across to my desk and unlocked the drawer in which I had put it. It was not, I thought, very suitable for Partridge’s eyes. I gave it to Nash.

  He read it through. Then he looked up and asked me:

  “Is this the same in appearance as the last one?”

  “I think so—as far as I can remember.”

  “The same difference between the envelope and the text?”

  “Yes,” I said. “The envelope was typed. The letter itself had printed words pasted on to a sheet of paper.”

  Nash nodded and put it in his pocket. Then he said:

  “I wonder, Mr. Burton, if you would mind coming down to the station with me? We could have a conference there and it would save a good deal of time and overlapping.”

  “Certainly,” I said. “You would like me to come now?”

  “If you don’t mind.”

  There was a police car at the door. We drove down in it.

  I said:

  “Do you think you’ll be able to get to the bottom of this?”

  Nash nodded with easy confidence.

  “Oh yes, we’ll get to the bottom of it all right. It’s a question of time and routine. They’re slow, these cases, but they’re pretty sure. It’s a matter of narrowing things down.”

  “Elimination?” I said.

  “Yes. And general routine.”

  “Watching post boxes, examining typewriters, fingerprints, all that?”

  He smiled. “As you say.”

  At the police station I found Symmington and Griffith were already there. I was introduced to a tall lantern-jawed man in plain clothes, Inspector Graves.

  “Inspector Graves,” explained Nash, “has come down from London to help us. He’s an expert on anonymous letter cases.”

  Inspector Graves smiled mournfully. I reflected that a life spent in the pursuit of anonymous letter writers must be singularly depressing. Inspector Graves, however, showed a kind of melancholy enthusiasm.

  “They’re all the same, these cases,” he said in a deep lugubrious voice like a depressed bloodhound. “You’d be surprised. The wording of the letters and the things they say.”

  “We had a case just on two years ago,” said Nash. “Inspector Graves helped us then.”

  Some of the letters, I saw, were spread out on the table in front of Graves. He had evidently been examining them.

  “Difficulty is,” said Nash, “to get hold of the letters. Either people put them in the fire, or they won’t admit to having received anything of the kind. Stupid, you see, and afraid of being mixed up with the police. They’re a backward lot here.”

  “Still we’ve got a fair amount to get on with,” said Graves. Nash took the letter I had given him from his pocket and tossed it over to Graves.

  The latter glanced through it, laid it with the others and observed approvingly:

  “Very nice—very nice indeed.”

  It was not the way I should have chosen to describe the epistle in question, but experts, I suppose, have their own point of view. I was glad that that screed of vituperative and obscene abuse gave somebody pleasure.

  “We’ve got enough, I think, to go on with,” said Inspector Graves, “and I’ll ask you gentlemen, if you should get anymore, to bring them along at once. Also, if you hear of someone else getting one—(you, in particular, doctor, among your patients) do your best to get them to come along here with them. I’ve got—” he sorted with deft fingers among his exhibits, “one to Mr. Symmington, received as far back as two months ago, one to Dr. Griffith, one to Miss Ginch, one written to Mrs. Mudge, the butcher’s wife, one to Jennifer Clark, barmaid at the Three Crowns, the one received by Mrs. Symmington, this one now to Miss Burton—oh yes, and one from the bank manager.”

  “Quite a representative collection,” I remarked.

  “And not one I couldn’t match from other cases! This one here is as near as nothing to one written by that milliner woman. This one is the dead spit of an outbreak we had up in Northumberland—written by a schoolgirl, they were. I can tell you, gentlemen, I’d like to see something new sometimes, instead of the same old treadmill.”

  “There is nothing new under the sun,” I murmured.

  “Quite so, sir. You’d know that if you were in our profession.”

  Nash sighed and said, “Yes, indeed.”

  Symmington asked:

  “Have you come to any definite opinion as to the writer?”

  Graves cleared his throat and delivered a small lecture.

  “There are certain similarities shared by all these letters. I shall enumerate them, gentlemen, in case they suggest anything to your minds. The text of the
letters is composed of words made-up from individual letters cut out of a printed book. It’s an old book, printed, I should say, about the year 1830. This has obviously been done to avoid the risk of recognition through handwriting which is, as most people know nowadays, a fairly easy matter…the so-called disguising of a hand not amounting to much when faced with expert tests. There are no fingerprints on the letters and envelopes of a distinctive character. That is to say, they have been handled by the postal authorities, the recipient, and there are other stray fingerprints, but no set common to all, showing therefore that the person who put them together was careful to wear gloves. The envelopes are typewritten by a Windsor 7 machine, well worn, with the a and the t out of alignment. Most of them have been posted locally, or put in the box of a house by hand. It is therefore evident that they are of local provenance. They were written by a woman, and in my opinion a woman of middle age or over, and probably, though not certainly, unmarried.”

  We maintained a respectful silence for a minute or two. Then I said:

  “The typewriter’s your best bet, isn’t it? That oughtn’t to be difficult in a little place like this.”

  Inspector Graves shook his head sadly and said:

  “That’s where you’re wrong, sir.”

  “The typewriter,” said Superintendent Nash, “is unfortunately too easy. It is an old one from Mr. Symmington’s office, given by him to the Women’s Institute where, I may say, it’s fairly easy of access. The ladies here all often go into the Institute.”

  “Can’t you tell something definite from the—er—the touch, don’t you call it?”

  Again Graves nodded.

  “Yes, that can be done—but these envelopes have all been typed by someone using one finger.”

  “Someone, then, unused to the typewriter?”

  “No, I wouldn’t say that. Someone, say, who can type but doesn’t want us to know the fact.”

  “Whoever writes these things has been very cunning,” I said slowly.

  “She is, sir, she is,” said Graves. “Up to every trick of the trade.”

  “I shouldn’t have thought one of these bucolic women down here would have had the brains,” I said.

  Graves coughed.

  “I haven’t made myself plain, I’m afraid. Those letters were written by an educated woman.”

  “What, by a lady?”

  The word slipped out involuntarily. I hadn’t used the term “lady” for years. But now it came automatically to my lips, reechoed from days long ago, and my grandmother’s faint unconsciously arrogant voice saying, “Of course, she isn’t a lady, dear.”

  Nash understood at once. The word lady still meant something to him.

  “Not necessarily a lady,” he said. “But certainly not a village woman. They’re mostly pretty illiterate down here, can’t spell, and certainly can’t express themselves with fluency.”

  I was silent, for I had had a shock. The community was so small. Unconsciously I had visualized the writer of the letters as a Mrs. Cleat or her like, some spiteful, cunning half-wit.

  Symmington put my thoughts into words. He said sharply:

  “But that narrows it down to about half a dozen to a dozen people in the whole place!”

  “That’s right.”

  “I can’t believe it.”

  Then, with a slight effort, and looking straight in front of him as though the mere sound of his own words were distasteful he said:

  “You have heard what I stated at the inquest. In case you may have thought that that statement was actuated by a desire to protect my wife’s memory, I should like to repeat now that I am firmly convinced that the subject matter of the letter my wife received was absolutely false. I know it was false. My wife was a very sensitive woman, and—er—well, you might call it prudish in some respects. Such a letter would have been a great shock to her, and she was in poor health.”

  Graves responded instantly.

  “That’s quite likely to be right, sir. None of these letters show any signs of intimate knowledge. They’re just blind accusations. There’s been no attempt to blackmail. And there doesn’t seem to be any religious bias—such as we sometimes get. It’s just sex and spite! And that’s going to give us quite a good pointer towards the writer.”

  Symmington got up. Dry and unemotional as the man was, his lips were trembling.

  “I hope you find the devil who writes these soon. She murdered my wife as surely as if she’d put a knife into her.” He paused. “How does she feel now, I wonder?”

  He went out, leaving that question unanswered.

  “How does she feel, Griffith?” I asked. It seemed to me the answer was in his province.

  “God knows. Remorseful, perhaps. On the other hand, it may be that she’s enjoying her power. Mrs. Symmington’s death may have fed her mania.”

  “I hope not,” I said, with a slight shiver. “Because if so, she’ll—”

  I hesitated and Nash finished the sentence for me.

  “She’ll try it again? That, Mr. Burton, would be the best thing that could happen, for us. The pitcher goes to the well once too often, remember.”

  “She’d be mad to go on with it,” I exclaimed.

  “She’ll go on,” said Graves. “They always do. It’s a vice, you know, they can’t let it alone.”

  I shook my head with a shudder. I asked if they needed me any longer, I wanted to get out into the air. The atmosphere seemed tinged with evil.

  “There’s nothing more, Mr. Burton,” said Nash. “Only keep your eyes open, and do as much propaganda as you can—that is to say, urge on everyone that they’ve got to report any letter they receive.” I nodded.

  “I should think everyone in the place has had one of the foul things by now,” I said.

  “I wonder,” said Graves. He put his sad head a little on one side and asked, “You don’t know, definitely, of anyone who hasn’t had a letter?”

  “What an extraordinary question! The population at large isn’t likely to take me into their confidence.”

  “No, no, Mr. Burton, I didn’t mean that. I just wondered if you knew of anyone person who quite definitely, to your certain knowledge, has not received an anonymous letter.”

  “Well, as a matter of fact,” I hesitated, “I do, in a way.”

  And I repeated my conversation with Emily Barton and what she had said.

  Graves received the information with a wooden face and said: “Well, that may come in useful. I’ll note it down.”

  I went out into the afternoon sunshine with Owen Griffith. Once in the street, I swore aloud.

  “What kind of place is this for a man to come to lie in the sun and heal his wounds? It’s full of festering poison, this place, and it looks as peaceful and as innocent as the Garden of Eden.”

  “Even there,” said Owen dryly, “there was one serpent.”

  “Look here, Griffith, do they know anything? Have they got any idea?”

  “I don’t know. They’ve got a wonderful technique, the police. They’re seemingly so frank, and they tell you nothing.”

  “Yes. Nash is a nice fellow.”

  “And a very capable one.”

  “If anyone’s batty in this place, you ought to know it.” I said accusingly.

  Griffith shook his head. He looked discouraged. But he looked more than that—he looked worried. I wondered if he had an inkling of some kind.

  We had been walking along the High Street. I stopped at the door of the house agents.

  “I believe my second instalment of rent is due—in advance. I’ve got a good mind to pay it and clear out with Joanna right away. Forfeit the rest of the tenancy.”

  “Don’t go,” said Owen.

  “Why not?”

  He didn’t answer. He said slowly after a minute or two,

  “After all—I dare say you’re right. Lymstock isn’t healthy just now. It might—it might harm you or—or your sister.”

  “Nothing harms Joanna,” I said. “She’s tou
gh. I’m the weakly one. Somehow this business makes me sick.”

  “It makes me sick,” said Owen.

  I pushed the door of the house agents half open.

  “But I shan’t go,” I said. “Vulgar curiosity is stronger than pusillanimity. I want to know the solution.”

  I went in.

  A woman who was typing got up and came towards me. She had frizzy hair and simpered, but I found her more intelligent than the spectacled youth who had previously held sway in the outer office.

  A minute or two later something familiar about her penetrated through to my consciousness. It was Miss Ginch, lately Symmington’s lady clerk. I commented on the fact.

  “You were with Galbraith and Symmington, weren’t you?” I said.

  “Yes. Yes, indeed. But I thought it was better to leave. This is quite a good post, though not quite so well paid. But there are things that are more valuable than money, don’t you think so?”

  “Undoubtedly,” I said.

  “Those awful letters,” breathed Miss Ginch in a sibilant whisper. “I got a dreadful one. About me and Mr. Symmington—oh, terrible it was, saying the most awful things! I knew my duty and I took it to the police, though of course it wasn’t exactly pleasant for me, was it?”

  “No, no, most unpleasant.”

  “But they thanked me and said I had done quite right. But I felt that, after that, if people were talking—and evidently they must have been, or where did the writer get the idea from?—then I must avoid even the appearance of evil, though there has never been anything at all wrong between me and Mr. Symmington.”

  I felt rather embarrassed.

  “No, no, of course not.”

  “But people have such evil minds. Yes, alas, such evil minds!”

  Nervously trying to avoid it, I nevertheless met her eye, and I made a most unpleasant discovery.

  Miss Ginch was thoroughly enjoying herself.

  Already once today I had come across someone who reacted pleasurably to anonymous letters. Inspector Graves’s enthusiasm was professional. Miss Ginch’s enjoyment I found merely suggestive and disgusting.

  An idea flashed across my startled mind.

  Had Miss Ginch written these letters herself?

  Seven

  I

  When I got home I found Mrs. Dane Calthrop sitting talking to Joanna. She looked, I thought, grey and ill.