The Moving Finger (16 page)

Joanna asked what I was laughing at and I told her.

“But Jerry, you must have been mad—quite mad!”

“I suppose I was.”

“But, my dear boy, you can't do things like that—not in a place like this. It will be all round Lymstock tomorrow.”

“I suppose it will. But, after all, Megan's only a child.”

“She isn't. She's twenty. You can't take a girl of twenty to London and buy her clothes without a most frightful scandal. Good gracious, Jerry, you'll probably have to marry the girl.”

Joanna was half serious, half laughing.

It was at that moment that I made a very important discovery. “Damn it all,” I said. “I don't mind if I do. In fact— I should like it.”

A very funny expression came over Joanna's face. She got up and said dryly, as she went towards the door:

“Yes, I've known that for some time….”

She left me standing, glass in hand, aghast at my new discovery.

I

I
don't know what the usual reactions are of a man who goes to propose marriage.

In fiction his throat is dry and his collar feels too tight and he is in a pitiable state of nervousness. I didn't feel at all like that. Having thought of a good idea I just wanted to get it all settled as soon as possible. I didn't see any particular need for embarrassment.

I went along to the Symmingtons' house about eleven o'clock. I rang the bell and when Rose came, I asked for Miss Megan. It was the knowing look that Rose gave me that first made me feel slightly shy.

She put me in the little morning room and whilst waiting there I hoped uneasily that they hadn't been upsetting Megan.

When the door opened and I wheeled round, I was instantly relieved. Megan was not looking shy or upset at all. Her head was still like a glossy chestnut, and she wore that air of pride and self-respect that she had acquired yesterday. She was in her old clothes again but
she had managed to make them look different. It's wonderful what knowledge of her own attractiveness will do for a girl. Megan, I realized suddenly, had grown up.

I suppose I must really have been rather nervous, otherwise I should not have opened the conversation by saying affectionately, “Hallo, catfish!” It was hardly, in the circumstances, a lover-like greeting.

It seemed to suit Megan. She grinned and said, “Hallo!”

“Look here,” I said. “You didn't get into a row about yesterday, I hope?”

Megan said with assurance, “Oh,
no,
” and then blinked, and said vaguely, “Yes, I believe I did. I mean, they said a lot of things and seemed to think it had been very odd—but then you know what people are and what fusses they make all about nothing.”

I was relieved to find that shocked disapproval had slipped off Megan like water off a duck's back.

“I came round this morning,” I said, “because I've a suggestion to make. You see I like you a lot, and I think you like me—”

“Frightfully,” said Megan with rather disquieting enthusiasm.

“And we get on awfully well together, so I think it would be a good idea if we got married.”

“Oh,” said Megan.

She looked surprised. Just that. Not startled. Not shocked. Just mildly surprised.

“You mean you really want to marry me?” she asked with the air of one getting a thing perfectly clear.

“More than anything in the world,” I said—and I meant it.

“You mean, you're in love with me?”

“I'm in love with you.”

Her eyes were steady and grave. She said:

“I think you're the nicest person in the world—but I'm not in love with you.”

“I'll make you love me.”

“That wouldn't do. I don't want to be
made.
”

She paused and then said gravely: “I'm not the sort of wife for you. I'm better at hating than at loving.”

She said it with a queer intensity.

I said, “Hate doesn't last. Love does.”

“Is that true?”

“It's what I believe.”

Again there was a silence. Then I said:

“So it's ‘No,' is it?”

“Yes, it's no.”

“And you don't encourage me to hope?”

“What would be the good of that?”

“None whatever,” I agreed, “quite redundant, in fact—because I'm going to hope whether you tell me to or not.”

II

Well, that was that. I walked away from the house feeling slightly dazed but irritatingly conscious of Rose's passionately interested gaze following me.

Rose had had a good deal to say before I could escape.

That she'd never felt the same since that awful day! That she wouldn't have stayed except for the children and being sorry for poor Mr. Symmington. That she wasn't going to stay unless they got another maid quick—and they wouldn't be likely to do that when
there had been a murder in the house! That it was all very well for that Miss Holland to say she'd do the housework in the meantime. Very sweet and obliging she was—Oh yes, but it was mistress of the house that she was fancying herself going to be one fine day! Mr. Symmington, poor man, never saw anything—but one knew what a widower was, a poor helpless creature made to be the prey of a designing woman. And that it wouldn't be for want of trying if Miss Holland didn't step into the dead mistress's shoes!

I assented mechanically to everything, yearning to get away and unable to do so because Rose was holding firmly on to my hat whilst she indulged in her flood of spite.

I wondered if there was any truth in what she said. Had Elsie Holland envisaged the possibility of becoming the second Mrs. Symmington? Or was she just a decent kindhearted girl doing her best to look after a bereaved household?

The result would quite likely be the same in either case. And why not? Symmington's young children needed a mother—Elsie was a decent soul—beside being quite indecently beautiful—a point which a man might appreciate—even such a stuffed fish as Symmington!

I thought all this, I know, because I was trying to put off thinking about Megan.

You may say that I had gone to ask Megan to marry me in an absurdly complacent frame of mind and that I deserved what I got—but it was not really like that. It was because I felt so assured, so certain, that Megan belonged to me—that she was my business, that to look after her and make her happy and keep her from harm was the only natural right way of life for me, that I had expected her to feel, too, that she and I belonged to each other.

But I was not giving up. Oh no! Megan was my woman and I was going to have her.

After a moment's thought, I went to Symmington's office. Megan might pay no attention to strictures on her conduct, but I would like to get things straight.

Mr. Symmington was disengaged, I was told, and I was shown into his room. By a pinching of the lips, and an additional stiffness of manner, I gathered that I was not exactly popular at the moment.

“Good morning,” I said. “I'm afraid this isn't a professional call, but a personal one. I'll put it plainly. I dare say you'll have realized that I'm in love with Megan. I've asked her to marry me and she has refused. But I'm not taking that as final.”

I saw Symmington's expression change, and I read his mind with ludicrous ease. Megan was a disharmonious element in his house. He was, I felt sure, a just and kindly man, and he would never have dreamed of not providing a home for his dead wife's daughter. But her marriage to me would certainly be a relief. The frozen halibut thawed. He gave me a pale cautious smile.

“Frankly, do you know, Burton, I had no idea of such a thing. I know you've taken a lot of notice of her, but we've always regarded her as such a child.”

“She's not a child,” I said shortly.

“No, no, not in years.”

“She can be her age anytime she's allowed to be,” I said, still slightly angry. “She's not twenty-one, I know, but she will be in a month or two. I'll let you have all the information about myself you want. I'm well off and have led quite a decent life. I'll look after her and do all I can to make her happy.”

“Quite—quite. Still, it's up to Megan herself.”

“She'll come round in time,” I said. “But I just thought I'd like to get straight with you about it.”

He said he appreciated that, and we parted amicably.

III

I ran into Miss Emily Barton outside. She had a shopping basket on her arm.

“Good morning, Mr. Burton, I hear you went to London yesterday.”

Yes, she had heard all right. Her eyes were, I thought, kindly, but full of curiosity, too.

“I went to see my doctor,” I said.

Miss Emily smiled.

That smile made little of Marcus Kent. She murmured:

“I hear Megan nearly missed the train. She jumped in when it was going.”

“Helped by me,” I said. “I hauled her in.”

“How lucky you were there. Otherwise there might have been an accident.”

It is extraordinary how much of a fool one gentle inquisitive old maiden lady can make a man feel!

I was saved further suffering by the onslaught of Mrs. Dane Calthrop. She had her own tame elderly maiden lady in tow, but she herself was full of direct speech.

“Good morning,” she said. “I heard you've made Megan buy herself some decent clothes? Very sensible of you. It takes a man to think of something really practical like that. I've been worried about
that girl for a long time. Girls with brains are so liable to turn into morons, aren't they?”

With which remarkable statement, she shot into the fish shop.

Miss Marple, left standing by me, twinkled a little and said:

“Mrs. Dane Calthrop is a very remarkable woman, you know. She's nearly always right.”

“It makes her rather alarming,” I said.

“Sincerity has that effect,” said Miss Marple.

Mrs. Dane Calthrop shot out of the fish shop again and rejoined us. She was holding a large red lobster.

“Have you ever seen anything so unlike Mr. Pye?” she said—“very virile and handsome, isn't it?”

IV

I was a little nervous of meeting Joanna but I found when I got home that I needn't have worried. She was out and she did not return for lunch. This aggrieved Partridge a good deal, who said sourly as she proffered two loin chops in an entrée dish: “Miss Burton said specially as she was going to be
in.
”

I ate both chops in an attempt to atone for Joanna's lapse. All the same, I wondered where my sister was. She had taken to be very mysterious about her doings of late.

It was half past three when Joanna burst into the drawing room. I had heard a car stop outside and I half expected to see Griffith, but the car drove on and Joanna came in alone.

Her face was very red and she seemed upset. I perceived that something had happened.

“What's the matter?” I asked.

Joanna opened her mouth, closed it again, sighed, plumped herself down in a chair and stared in front of her.

She said:

“I've had the most awful day.”

“What's happened?”

“I've done the most incredible thing. It was awful—”

“But what—”

“I just started out for a walk, an ordinary walk—I went up over the hill and on to the moor. I walked miles—I felt like it. Then I dropped down into a hollow. There's a farm there—A God-forsaken lonely sort of spot. I was thirsty and I wondered if they'd got any milk or something. So I wandered into the farmyard and then the door opened and Owen came out.”

“Yes?”

“He thought it might be the district nurse. There was a woman in there having a baby. He was expecting the nurse and he'd sent word to her to get hold of another doctor. It—things were going wrong.”

“Yes?”

“So he said—to
me.
‘Come on, you'll do—better than nobody.' I said I couldn't, and he said what did I mean? I said I'd never done anything like that, that I didn't know anything—

“He said what the hell did that matter? And then he was
awful.
He turned on me. He said, ‘You're a woman, aren't you? I suppose you can do your durnedest to help another woman?' And he went on at me—said I'd talked as though I was interested in doctoring and had said I wished I was a nurse. ‘All pretty talk, I suppose! You didn't mean anything real by it, but this
is
real and you're going to
behave like a decent human being and not like a useless ornamental nitwit!'

“I've done the most incredible things, Jerry. Held instruments and boiled them and handed things. I'm so tired I can hardly stand up. It was dreadful. But he saved her—and the baby. It was born alive. He didn't think at one time he could save it. Oh dear!”

Joanna covered her face with her hands.

I contemplated her with a certain amount of pleasure and mentally took my hat off to Owen Griffith. He'd brought Joanna slap up against reality for once.

I said, “There's a letter for you in the hall. From Paul, I think.”

“Eh?” She paused for a minute and then said, “I'd no idea, Jerry, what doctors had to
do.
The nerve they've got to have!”

I went out into the hall and brought Joanna her letter. She opened it, glanced vaguely at its contents, and let it drop.

“He was—really—rather wonderful. The way he fought—the way he wouldn't be beaten! He was rude and horrible to
me
—but he
was
wonderful.”

I observed Paul's disregarded letter with some pleasure. Plainly, Joanna was cured of Paul.

I

T
hings never come when they are expected.

I was full of Joanna's and my personal affairs and was quite taken aback the next morning when Nash's voice said over the telephone: “
We've got her,
Mr. Burton!”

I was so startled I nearly dropped the receiver.

“You mean the—”

He interrupted.

“Can you be overheard where you are?”

“No, I don't think so—well, perhaps—”

It seemed to me that the baize door to the kitchen had swung open a trifle.

“Perhaps you'd care to come down to the station?”

“I will. Right away.”

I was at the police station in next to no time. In an inner room Nash and Sergeant Parkins were together. Nash was wreathed in smiles.

“It's been a long chase,” he said. “But we're there at last.”

He flicked a letter across the table. This time it was all typewritten. It was, of its kind, fairly mild.

It finished with some mildly obscene language.

“That reached Miss Holland this morning,” said Nash.

“Thought it was funny she hadn't had one before,” said Sergeant Parkins.

“Who wrote it?” I asked.

Some of the exultation faded out of Nash's face.

He looked tired and concerned. He said soberly:

“I'm sorry about it, because it will hit a decent man hard, but there it is. Perhaps he's had his suspicions already.”

“Who wrote it?” I reiterated.

“Miss Aimée Griffith.”

II

Nash and Parkins went to the Griffiths' house that afternoon with a warrant.

By Nash's invitation I went with them.

“The doctor,” he said, “is very fond of you. He hasn't many friends in this place. I think if it is not too painful to you, Mr. Burton, that you might help him to bear up under the shock.”

I said I would come. I didn't relish the job, but I thought I might be some good.

We rang the bell and asked for Miss Griffith and we were shown into the drawing room. Elsie Holland, Megan and Symmington were there having tea.

Nash behaved very circumspectly.

He asked Aimée if he might have a few words with her privately.

She got up and came towards us. I thought I saw just a faint hunted look in her eye. If so, it went again. She was perfectly normal and hearty.

“Want me? Not in trouble over my car lights again, I hope?”

She led the way out of the drawing room and across the hall into a small study.

As I closed the drawing room door, I saw Symmington's head jerk up sharply. I supposed his legal training had brought him in contact with police cases, and he had recognized something in Nash's manner. He half rose.

That is all I saw before I shut the door and followed the others.

Nash was saying his piece. He was very quiet and correct. He cautioned her and then told her that he must ask her to accompany him. He had a warrant for her arrest and he read out the charge—

I forget now the exact legal term. It was the letters, not murder yet.

Aimée Griffith flung up her head and bayed with laughter. She boomed out: “What ridiculous nonsense! As though I'd write a packet of indecent stuff like that. You must be mad. I've never written a word of the kind.”

Nash had produced the letter to Elsie Holland. He said:

“Do you deny having written this, Miss Griffith?”

If she hesitated it was only for a split second.

“Of course I do. I've never seen it before.”

Nash said quietly: “I must tell you, Miss Griffith, that you were observed to type that letter on the machine at the Women's Institute between eleven and eleven thirty p.m. on the night before last. Yesterday you entered the post office with a bunch of letters in your hand—”

“I never posted this.”

“No,
you
did not. Whilst waiting for stamps, you dropped it inconspicuously on the floor, so that somebody should come along unsuspectingly and pick it up and post it.”

“I never—”

The door opened and Symmington came in. He said sharply: “What's going on? Aimée, if there is anything wrong, you ought to be legally represented. If you wish me—”

She broke then. Covered her face with her hands and staggered to a chair. She said:

“Go away, Dick, go away. Not you! Not
you!
”

“You need a solicitor, my dear girl.”

“Not you. I—I—couldn't bear it. I don't want you to know—all this.”

He understood then, perhaps. He said quietly:

“I'll get hold of Mildmay, of Exhampton. Will that do?”

She nodded. She was sobbing now.

Symmington went out of the room. In the doorway he collided with Owen Griffith.

“What's this?” said Owen violently. “My sister—”

“I'm sorry, Dr. Griffith. Very sorry. But we have no alternative.”

“You think she—was responsible for those letters?”

“I'm afraid there is no doubt of it, sir,” said Nash—he turned to Aimée, “You must come with us now, please, Miss Griffith—you shall have every facility for seeing a solicitor, you know.”

Owen cried: “Aimée?”

She brushed past him without looking at him.

She said: “Don't talk to me. Don't say anything. And for God's sake don't
look
at me!”

They went out. Owen stood like a man in a trance.

I waited a bit, then I came up to him. “If there's anything I can do, Griffith, tell me.”

He said like a man in a dream:

“Aimée? I don't believe it.”

“It may be a mistake,” I suggested feebly.

He said slowly: “She wouldn't take it like that if it were. But I would never have believed it. I
can't
believe it.”

He sank down on a chair. I made myself useful by finding a stiff drink and bringing it to him. He swallowed it down and it seemed to do him good.

He said: “I couldn't take it in at first. I'm all right now. Thanks, Burton, but there's nothing you can do. Nothing
anyone
can do.”

The door opened and Joanna came in. She was very white.

She came over to Owen and looked at me.

She said: “Get out, Jerry. This is my business.”

As I went out of the door, I saw her kneel down by his chair.

III

I can't tell you coherently the events of the next twenty-four hours. Various incidents stand out, unrelated to other incidents.

I remember Joanna coming home, very white and drawn, and of how I tried to cheer her up, saying:

“Now who's being a ministering angel?”

And of how she smiled in a pitiful twisted way and said:

“He says he won't have me, Jerry. He's very,
very
proud and stiff!”

And I said: “My girl won't have me, either….”

We sat there for a while, Joanna saying at last:

“The Burton family isn't exactly in demand at the moment!”

I said, “Never mind, my sweet, we still have each other,” and Joanna said, “Somehow or other, Jerry, that doesn't comfort me much just now….”

IV

Owen came the next day and rhapsodied in the most fulsome way about Joanna. She was wonderful, marvellous! The way she'd come to him, the way she was willing to marry him—at once if he liked. But he wasn't going to let her do that. No, she was too good, too fine to be associated with the kind of muck that would start as soon as the papers got hold of the news.

I was fond of Joanna, and knew she was the kind who's all right when standing by in trouble, but I got rather bored with all this highfalutin” stuff. I told Owen rather irritably not to be so damned noble.

I went down to the High Street and found everybody's tongues
wagging nineteen to the dozen. Emily Barton was saying that she had never really trusted Aimée Griffith. The grocer's wife was saying with gusto that she'd always thought Miss Griffith had a queer look in her eye—

They had completed the case against Aimée, so I learnt from Nash. A search of the house had brought to light the cut pages of Emily Barton's book—in the cupboard under the stairs, of all places, wrapped up in an old roll of wallpaper.

“And a jolly good place too,” said Nash appreciatively. “You never know when a prying servant won't tamper with a desk or a locked drawer—but those junk cupboards full of last year's tennis balls and old wallpaper are never opened except to shove something more in.”

“The lady would seem to have had a
penchant
for that particular hiding place,” I said.

“Yes. The criminal mind seldom has much variety. By the way, talking of the dead girl, we've got one fact to go upon. There's a large heavy pestle missing from the doctor's dispensary. I'll bet anything you like that's what she was stunned with.”

“Rather an awkward thing to carry about,” I objected.

“Not for Miss Griffith. She was going to the Guides that afternoon, but she was going to leave flowers and vegetables at the Red Cross stall on the way, so she'd got a whopping great basket with her.”

“You haven't found the skewer?”

“No, and I shan't. The poor devil may be mad, but she wasn't mad enough to keep a bloodstained skewer just to make it easy for us, when all she'd got to do was to wash it and return it to a kitchen drawer.”

“I suppose,” I conceded, “that you can't have everything.”

The vicarage had been one of the last places to hear the news. Old Miss Marple was very much distressed by it. She spoke to me very earnestly on the subject.

“It isn't
true,
Mr. Burton. I'm sure it isn't true.”

“It's true enough, I'm afraid. They were lying in wait, you know. They actually
saw
her type that letter.”

“Yes, yes—perhaps they did. Yes, I can understand
that.
”

“And the printed pages from which the letters were cut were found where she'd hidden them in her house.”

Miss Marple stared at me. Then she said, in a very low voice: “But that is horrible—really
wicked.
”

Mrs. Dane Calthrop came up with a rush and joined us and said: “What's the matter, Jane?” Miss Marple was murmuring helplessly:

“Oh dear, oh dear, what can one
do?
”

“What's upset you, Jane?”

Miss Marple said: “There must be
something.
But I am so old and so ignorant, and I am afraid, so foolish.”

I felt rather embarrassed and was glad when Mrs. Dane Calthrop took her friend away.

I was to see Miss Marple again that afternoon, however. Much later when I was on my way home.

She was standing near the little bridge at the end of the village, near Mrs. Cleat's cottage, and talking to Megan of all people.

I wanted to see Megan. I had been wanting to see her all day. I quickened my pace. But as I came up to them, Megan turned on her heel and went off in the other direction.

It made me angry and I would have followed her, but Miss Marple blocked my way.

She said: “I wanted to speak to you. No, don't go after Megan now. It wouldn't be wise.”

I was just going to make a sharp rejoinder when she disarmed me by saying:

“That girl has great courage—a very high order of courage.”

I still wanted to go after Megan, but Miss Marple said:

“Don't try and see her now. I do know what I am talking about. She must keep her courage intact.”

There was something about the old lady's assertion that chilled me. It was as though she knew something that I didn't.

I was afraid and didn't know why I was afraid.

I didn't go home. I went back into the High Street and walked up and down aimlessly. I don't know what I was waiting for, nor what I was thinking about….

I got caught by that awful old bore Colonel Appleton. He asked after my pretty sister as usual and then went on:

“What's all this about Griffith's sister being mad as a hatter? They say she's been at the bottom of this anonymous letter business that's been such a confounded nuisance to everybody? Couldn't believe it at first, but they say it's quite true.”

I said it was true enough.

“Well, well—I must say our police force is pretty good on the whole. Give 'em time, that's all, give 'em time. Funny business this anonymous letter stunt—these desiccated old maids are always the ones who go in for it—though the Griffith woman wasn't bad looking even if she was a bit long in the tooth. But there aren't any decent-looking girls in this part of the world—except that governess girl of the Symmingtons. She's worth looking at. Pleasant girl, too. Grateful if one does any little thing for her. Came across her hav
ing a picnic or something with those kids not long ago. They were romping about in the heather and she was knitting—ever so vexed she'd run out of wool. ‘Well,' I said, ‘like me to run you into Lymstock? I've got to call for a rod of mine there. I shan't be more than ten minutes getting it, then I'll run you back again.' She was a bit doubtful about leaving the boys. ‘They'll be all right,' I said. ‘Who's to harm them?' Wasn't going to have the boys along, no fear! So I ran her in, dropped her at the wool shop, picked her up again later and that was that. Thanked me very prettily. Grateful and all that. Nice girl.”

I managed to get away from him.

It was after that, that I caught sight of Miss Marple for the third time. She was coming out of the police station.

V