The Moving Finger Read online

  “This has been a terrible shock to me, Mr. Burton,” she said. “Poor thing, poor thing.”

  “Yes,” I said. “It’s awful to think of someone being driven to the stage of taking their own life.”

  “Oh, you mean Mrs. Symmington?”

  “Didn’t you?”

  Mrs. Dane Calthrop shook her head.

  “Of course one is sorry for her, but it would have been bound to happen anyway, wouldn’t it?”

  “Would it?” said Joanna dryly.

  Mrs. Dane Calthrop turned to her.

  “Oh, I think so, dear. If suicide is your idea of escape from trouble then it doesn’t very much matter what the trouble is. Whenever some very unpleasant shock had to be faced, she’d have done the same thing. What it really comes down to is that she was that kind of woman. Not that one would have guessed it. She always seemed to me a selfish rather stupid woman, with a good firm hold on life. Not the kind to panic, you would think—but I’m beginning to realize how little I really know anyone.”

  “I’m still curious as to whom you meant when you said ‘Poor thing,’” I remarked.

  She stared at me.

  “The woman who wrote the letters, of course.”

  “I don’t think,” I said dryly, “I shall waste sympathy on her.”

  Mrs. Dane Calthrop leaned forward. She laid a hand on my knee.

  “But don’t you realize—can’t you feel? Use your imagination. Think how desperately, violently unhappy anyone must be to sit down and write these things. How lonely, how cut off from human kind. Poisoned through and through, with a dark stream of poison that finds its outlet in this way. That’s why I feel so self-reproachful. Somebody in this town has been racked with that terrible unhappiness, and I’ve had no idea of it. I should have had. You can’t interfere with actions— I never do. But that black inward unhappiness—like a septic arm physically, all black and swollen. If you could cut it and let the poison out it would flow away harmlessly. Yes, poor soul, poor soul.”

  She got up to go.

  I did not feel like agreeing with her. I had no sympathy for our anonymous letter writer whatsoever. But I did ask curiously:

  “Have you any idea at all, Mrs. Calthrop, who this woman is?”

  She turned her fine perplexed eyes on me.

  “Well, I can guess,” she said. “But then I might be wrong, mightn’t I?”

  She went swiftly out through the door, popping her head back to ask:

  “Do tell me, why have you never married, Mr. Burton?”

  In anyone else it would have been an impertinence, but with Mrs. Dane Calthrop you felt that the idea had suddenly come into her head and she had really wanted to know.

  “Shall we say,” I said, rallying, “that I have never met the right woman?”

  “We can say so,” said Mrs. Dane Calthrop, “but it wouldn’t be a very good answer, because so many men have obviously married the wrong woman.”

  This time she really departed.

  Joanna said:

  “You know I really do think she’s mad. But I like her. The people in the village here are afraid of her.”

  “So am I, a little.”

  “Because you never know what’s coming next?”

  “Yes. And there’s a careless brilliancy about her guesses.”

  Joanna said slowly: “Do you really think whoever wrote these letters is very unhappy?”

  “I don’t know what the damned hag is thinking or feeling! And I don’t care. It’s her victims I’m sorry for.”

  It seems odd to me now that in our speculations about Poison Pen’s frame of mind, we missed the most obvious one. Griffith had pictured her as possibly exultant. I had envisaged her as remorseful—appalled by the result of her handiwork. Mrs. Dane Calthrop had seen her as suffering.

  Yet the obvious, the inevitable reaction we did not consider—or perhaps I should say, I did not consider. That reaction was Fear.

  For with the death of Mrs. Symmington, the letters had passed out of one category into another. I don’t know what the legal position was—Symmington knew, I suppose, but it was clear that with a death resulting, the position of the writer of the letters was much more serious. There could now be no question of passing it off as a joke if the identity of the writer was discovered. The police were active, a Scotland Yard expert called in. It was vital now for the anonymous author to remain anonymous.

  And granted that Fear was the principal reaction, other things followed. Those possibilities also I was blind to. Yet surely they should have been obvious.

  II

  Joanna and I came down rather late to breakfast the next morning. That is to say, late by the standards of Lymstock. It was nine-thirty, an hour at which, in London, Joanna was just unclosing an eyelid, and mine would probably be still tight shut. However when Partridge had said “Breakfast at half past eight, or nine o’clock?” neither Joanna nor I had had the nerve to suggest a later hour.

  To my annoyance, Aimée Griffith was standing on the doorstep talking to Megan.

  She gave tongue with her usual heartiness at the sight of us.

  “Hallo, there, slackers! I’ve been up for hours.”

  That, of course, was her own business. A doctor, no doubt, has to have early breakfast, and a dutiful sister is there to pour out his tea, or coffee. But it is no excuse for coming and butting in on one’s more somnolent neighbours. Nine-thirty is not the time for a morning call.

  Megan slipped back into the house and into the dining room, where I gathered she had been interrupted in her breakfast.

  “I said I wouldn’t come in,” said Aimée Griffith—though why it is more of a merit to force people to come and speak to you on the doorstep, than to talk to them inside the house I do not know. “I just wanted to ask Miss Burton if she’d any vegetables to spare for our Red Cross stall on the main road. If so, I’d get Owen to call for them in the car.”

  “You’re out and about very early,” I said.

  “The early bird catches the worm,” said Aimée. “You have a better chance of finding people in this time of day. I’m off to Mr. Pye’s next. Got to go over to Brenton this afternoon. Guides.”

  “Your energy makes me quite tired,” I said, and at that moment the telephone rang and I retired to the back of the hall to answer it, leaving Joanna murmuring rather doubtfully something about rhubarb and French beans and exposing her ignorance of the vegetable garden.

  “Yes?” I said into the telephone mouthpiece.

  A confused noise of deep breathing came from the other end of the wire and a doubtful female voice said “Oh!”

  “Yes?” I said again encouragingly.

  “Oh,” said the voice again, and then it inquired adenoidally, “Is that—what I mean—is that Little Furze?”

  “This is Little Furze.”

  “Oh!” This was clearly a stock beginning to every sentence. The voice inquired cautiously: “Could I speak to Miss Partridge just a minute?”

  “Certainly,” I said. “Who shall I say?”

  “Oh. Tell her it’s Agnes, would you? Agnes Waddle.” “Agnes Waddle?”

  “That’s right.”

  Resisting the temptation to say, “Donald Duck to you,” I put down the telephone receiver and called up the stairs to where I could hear the sound of Partridge’s activities overheard.

  “Partridge. Partridge.”

  Partridge appeared at the head of the stairs, a long mop in one hand, and a look of “What is it now?” clearly discernible behind her invariably respectful manner.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Agnes Waddle wants to speak to you on the telephone.”

  “I beg your pardon, sir?”

  I raised my voice. “Agnes Waddle.”

  I have spelt the name as it presented itself to my mind. But I will now spell it as it was actually written.

  “Agnes Woddell—whatever can she want now?”

  Very much put out of countenance, Partridge relinquished her mop and ru
stled down the stairs, her print dress crackling with agitation.

  I beat an unobtrusive retreat into the dining room where Megan was wolfing down kidneys and bacon. Megan, unlike Aimée Griffith, was displaying no “glorious morning face.” In fact she replied very gruffly to my morning salutations and continued to eat in silence.

  I opened the morning paper and a minute or two later Joanna entered looking somewhat shattered.

  “Whew!” she said. “I’m so tired. And I think I’ve exposed my utter ignorance of what grows when. Aren’t there runner beans this time of year?”

  “August,” said Megan. “Well, one has them anytime in London,” said Joanna defensively.

  “Tins, sweet fool,” I said. “And cold storage on ships from the far-flung limits of empire.”

  “Like ivory, apes and peacocks?” asked Joanna.

  “Exactly.”

  “I’d rather have peacocks,” said Joanna thoughtfully.

  “I’d like a monkey of my own as a pet,” said Megan.

  Meditatively peeling an orange, Joanna said:

  “I wonder what it would feel like to be Aimée Griffith, all bursting with health and vigour and enjoyment of life. Do you think she’s ever tired, or depressed, or—or wistful?”

  I said I was quite certain Aimée Griffith was never wistful, and followed Megan out of the open French window on to the veranda.

  Standing there, filling my pipe, I heard Partridge enter the dining room from the hall and heard her voice say grimly:

  “Can I speak to you a minute, miss?”

  “Dear me,” I thought. “I hope Partridge isn’t going to give notice. Emily Barton will be very annoyed with us if so.”

  Partridge went on: “I must apologize, miss, for being rung up on the telephone. That is to say, the young person who did so should have known better. I have never been in the habit of using the telephone or of permitting my friends to ring me up on it, and I’m very sorry indeed that it should have occurred, and the master taking the call and everything.”

  “Why, that’s quite all right, Partridge,” said Joanna soothingly, “why shouldn’t your friends use the phone if they want to speak to you?”

  Partridge’s face, I could feel, though I could not see it, was more dour than ever as she replied coldly:

  “It is not the kind of thing that has ever been done in this house. Miss Emily would never permit it. As I say, I am sorry it occurred, but Agnes Woddell, the girl who did it, was upset and she’s young too, and doesn’t know what’s fitting in a gentleman’s house.”

  “That’s one for you, Joanna,” I thought gleefully.

  “This Agnes who rung me up, miss,” went on Partridge, “she used to be in service here under me. Sixteen she was, then, and come straight from the orphanage. And you see, not having a home, or a mother or any relations to advise her, she’s been in the habit of coming to me. I can tell her what’s what, you see.”

  “Yes?” said Joanna and waited. Clearly there was more to follow.

  “So I am taking the liberty of asking you, miss, if you would allow Agnes to come here to tea this afternoon in the kitchen. It’s her day out, you see, and she’s got something on her mind she wants to consult me about. I wouldn’t dream of suggesting such a thing in the usual way.”

  Joanna said bewildered:

  “But why shouldn’t you have anyone to tea with you?”

  Partridge drew herself up at this, so Joanna said afterwards, and really looked most formidable, as she replied:

  “It has never been the custom of This House, miss. Old Mrs. Barton never allowed visitors in the kitchen, excepting as it should be our own day out, in which case we were allowed to entertain friends here instead of going out, but otherwise, on ordinary days, no. And Miss Emily she keeps to the old ways.”

  Joanna is very nice to servants and most of them like her but she has never cut any ice with Partridge.

  “It’s no good, my girl,” I said when Partridge had gone and Joanna had joined me outside. “Your sympathy and leniency are not appreciated. The good old overbearing ways for Partridge and things done the way they should be done in a gentleman’s house.”

  “I never heard of such tyranny as not allowing them to have their friends to see them,” said Joanna. “It’s all very well, Jerry, but they can’t like being treated like black slaves.”

  “Evidently they do,” I said. “At least the Partridges of this world do.”

  “I can’t imagine why she doesn’t like me. Most people do.”

  “She probably despises you as an inadequate housekeeper. You never draw your hand across a shelf and examine it for traces of dust. You don’t look under the mats. You don’t ask what happened to the remains of the chocolate soufflé, and you never order a nice bread pudding.”

  “Ugh!” said Joanna.

  She went on sadly. “I’m a failure all round today. Despised by our Aimée for ignorance of the vegetable kingdom. Snubbed by Partridge for being a human being. I shall now go out into the garden and eat worms.”

  “Megan’s there already,” I said.

  For Megan had wandered away a few minutes previously and was now standing aimlessly in the middle of a patch of lawn looking not unlike a meditative bird waiting for nourishment.

  She came back, however, towards us and said abruptly:

  “I say, I must go home today.”

  “What?” I was dismayed.

  She went on, flushing, but speaking with nervous determination.

  “It’s been awfully good of you having me and I expect I’ve been a fearful nuisance, but I have enjoyed it awfully, only now I must go back, because after all, well, it’s my home and one can’t stay away for ever, so I think I’ll go this morning.”

  Both Joanna and I tried to make her change her mind, but she was quite adamant, and finally Joanna got out the car and Megan went upstairs and came down a few minutes later with her belongings packed up again.

  The only person pleased seemed to be Partridge, who had almost a smile on her grim face. She had never liked Megan much.

  I was standing in the middle of the lawn when Joanna returned.

  She asked me if I thought I was a sundial.

  “Why?”

  “Standing there like a garden ornament. Only one couldn’t put on you the motto of only marking the sunny hours. You looked like thunder!”

  “I’m out of humour. First Aimée Griffith—(“Gracious!” murmured Joanna in parenthesis, “I must speak about those vegetables!”) and then Megan beetling off. I’d thought of taking her for a walk up to Legge Tor.”

  “With a collar and lead, I suppose?” said Joanna.

  “What?”

  Joanna repeated loudly and clearly as she moved off round the corner of the house to the kitchen garden:

  “I said, ‘With a collar and lead, I suppose?’ Master’s lost his dog, that’s what’s the matter with you!”

  III

  I was annoyed, I must confess, at the abrupt way in which Megan had left us. Perhaps she had suddenly got bored with us.

  After all, it wasn’t a very amusing life for a girl. At home she’d got the kids and Elsie Holland.

  I heard Joanna returning and hastily moved in case she should make more rude remarks about sundials.

  Owen Griffith called in his car just before lunchtime, and the gardener was waiting for him with the necessary garden produce.

  Whilst old Adams was stowing it in the car I brought Owen indoors for a drink. He wouldn’t stay to lunch.

  When I came in with the sherry I found Joanna had begun doing her stuff.

  No signs of animosity now. She was curled up in the corner of the sofa and was positively purring, asking Owen questions about his work, if he liked being a G.P., if he wouldn’t rather have specialized? She thought, doctoring was one of the most fascinating things in the world.

  Say what you will of her, Joanna is a lovely, a heaven-born listener. And after listening to so many would-be geniuses telling her how t
hey had been unappreciated, listening to Owen Griffith was easy money. By the time we had got to the third glass of sherry, Griffith was telling her about some obscure reaction or lesion in such scientific terms that nobody could have understood a word of it except a fellow medico.

  Joanna was looking intelligent and deeply interested.

  I felt a moment’s qualm. It was really too bad of Joanna. Griffith was too good a chap to be played fast and loose with. Women really were devils.

  Then I caught a sideways view of Griffith, his long purposeful chin and the grim set of his lips, and I was not so sure that Joanna was going to have it her own way after all. And anyway, a man has no business to let himself be made a fool of by a woman. It’s his own look out if he does.

  Then Joanna said:

  “Do change your mind and stay to lunch with us, Dr. Griffith,” and Griffith flushed a little and said he would, only his sister would be expecting him back—

  “We’ll ring her up and explain,” said Joanna quickly and went out into the hall and did so.

  I thought Griffith looked a little uneasy, and it crossed my mind that he was probably a little afraid of his sister.

  Joanna came back smiling and said that that was all right.

  And Owen Griffith stayed to lunch and seemed to enjoy himself. We talked about books and plays and world politics, and about music and painting and modern architecture.

  We didn’t talk about Lymstock at all, or about anonymous letters, or Mrs. Symmington’s suicide.

  We got right away from everything, and I think Owen Griffith was happy. His dark sad face lighted up, and he revealed an interesting mind.

  When he had gone I said to Joanna:

  “That fellow’s too good for your tricks.”

  Joanna said:

  “That’s what you say! You men all stick together!”

  “Why were you out after his hide, Joanna? Wounded vanity?”

  “Perhaps,” said my sister.

  IV

  That afternoon we were to go to tea with Miss Emily Barton at her rooms in the village.

  We strolled down there on foot, for I felt strong enough now to manage the hill back again.

  We must actually have allowed too much time and got there early, for the door was opened to us by a tall rawboned fierce-looking woman who told us that Miss Barton wasn’t in yet.