The Moving Finger (14 page)

He turned sharply as Owen Griffith came into the police station.

“Hallo, Nash. I heard you were round asking for me this morning. Anything important?”

“Inquest on Friday, if that suits you, Dr. Griffith.”

“Right. Moresby and I are doing the P.M. tonight.”

Nash said:

“There's just one other thing, Dr. Griffith. Mrs. Symmington was taking some cachets, powders or something, that you prescribed for her—”

He paused. Owen Griffith said interrogatively:

“Yes?”

“Would an overdose of those cachets have been fatal?”

Griffith said dryly:

“Certainly not. Not unless she'd taken about twenty-five of them!”

“But you once warned her about exceeding the dose, so Miss Holland tells me.”

“Oh that, yes. Mrs. Symmington was the sort of woman who would go and overdo anything she was given—fancy that to take twice as much would do her twice as much good, and you don't want anyone to overdo even phenacetin or aspirin—bad for the heart. And anyway there's absolutely no doubt about the cause of death. It was cyanide.”

“Oh, I know that—you don't get my meaning. I only thought that when committing suicide you'd prefer to take an overdose of a soporific rather than to feed yourself prussic acid.”

“Oh quite. On the other hand, prussic acid is more dramatic and is pretty certain to do the trick. With barbiturates, for instance, you can bring the victim round if only a short time has elapsed.”

“I see, thank you, Dr. Griffith.”

Griffith departed, and I said goodbye to Nash. I went slowly up the hill home. Joanna was out—at least there was no sign of her, and there was an enigmatical memorandum scribbled on the telephone block presumably for the guidance of either Partridge or myself.

I raised my eyebrows and went into the drawing room. I sat down in the most comfortable armchair—(none of them were very comfortable, they tended to have straight backs and were reminiscent of the late Mrs. Barton)—stretched out my legs and tried to think the whole thing out.

With sudden annoyance I remembered that Owen's arrival had interrupted my conversation with the inspector, and that he had just mentioned two other people as being possibilities.

I wondered who they were.

Partridge, perhaps, for one? After all, the cut book had been found in this house. And Agnes could have been struck down quite unsuspecting by her guide and mentor. No, you couldn't eliminate Partridge.

But who was the other?

Somebody, perhaps, that I didn't know? Mrs. Cleat? The original local suspect?

I closed my eyes. I considered four people, strangely unlikely people, in turn. Gentle, frail little Emily Barton? What points were there actually against her? A starved life? Dominated and repressed from early childhood? Too many sacrifices asked of her? Her curious horror of discussing anything “not quite nice”? Was that actually a sign of inner preoccupation with just these themes? Was I getting too horribly Freudian? I remembered a doctor once telling me that the mutterings of gentle maiden ladies when going off under an anaesthetic were a revelation. “You wouldn't think they knew such words!”

Aimée Griffith?

Surely nothing repressed or “inhibited” about her. Cheery, mannish, successful. A full, busy life. Yet Mrs. Dane Calthrop had said, “Poor thing!”

And there was something—something—some remembrance… Ah! I'd got it. Owen Griffith saying something like, “We had an outbreak of anonymous letters up North where I had a practice.”

Had that been Aimée Griffith's work too? Surely rather a coincidence. Two outbreaks of the same thing. Stop a minute, they'd tracked down the author of those. Griffith had said so. A schoolgirl.

Cold it was suddenly—must be a draught, from the window. I turned uncomfortably in my chair. Why did I suddenly feel so queer and upset?

Go on thinking… Aimée Griffith? Perhaps it was Aimée Griffith,
not
that other girl? And Aimée had come down here and started her tricks again. And that was why Owen Griffith was looking so unhappy and hag ridden. He suspected. Yes, he suspected….

Mr. Pye? Not, somehow, a very nice little man. I could imagine him staging the whole business…laughing….

That telephone message on the telephone pad in the hall…why did I keep thinking of it? Griffith and Joanna—he was falling for her… No, that wasn't why the message worried me. It was something else….

My senses were swimming, sleep was very near. I repeated idiotically to myself, “No smoke without fire. No smoke without fire… That's it…it all links up together….”

And then I was walking down the street with Megan and Elsie Holland passed. She was dressed as a bride, and people were murmuring:

“She's going to marry Dr. Griffith at last. Of course they've been engaged secretly for years….”

There we were, in the church, and Dane Calthrop was reading the service in Latin.

And in the middle of it Mrs. Dane Calthrop jumped up and cried energetically:

“It's got to be stopped, I tell you. It's got to be stopped!”

For a minute or two I didn't know whether I was asleep or awake. Then my brain cleared, and I realized I was in the drawing room of Little Furze and that Mrs. Dane Calthrop had just come through the window and was standing in front of me saying with nervous violence:

“It has got to be
stopped,
I tell you.”

I jumped up. I said: “I beg your pardon. I'm afraid I was asleep. What did you say?”

Mrs. Dane Calthrop beat one fist fiercely on the palm of her other hand.

“It's got to be stopped. These letters! Murder! You can't go on having poor innocent children like Agnes Woddell
killed!
”

“You're quite right,” I said. “But how do you propose to set about it?”

Mrs. Dane Calthrop said:

“We've got to do something!”

I smiled, perhaps in rather a superior fashion.

“And what do you suggest that we should do?”

“Get the whole thing cleared up! I said this wasn't a wicked place. I was wrong. It is.”

I felt annoyed. I said, not too politely:

“Yes, my dear woman, but what are you going to
do?
”

Mrs. Dane Calthrop said: “Put a stop to it all, of course.”

“The police are doing their best.”

“If Agnes could be killed yesterday, their best isn't good enough.”

“So you know better than they do?”

“Not at all.
I
don't know anything at all. That's why I'm going to call in an expert.”

I shook my head.

“You can't do that. Scotland Yard will only take over on a demand from the chief constable of the county. Actually they
have
sent Graves.”

“I don't mean
that
kind of an expert. I don't mean someone who knows about anonymous letters or even about murder. I mean someone who knows
people.
Don't you see? We want someone who knows a great deal about
wickedness!
”

It was a queer point of view. But it was, somehow, stimulating.

Before I could say anything more, Mrs. Dane Calthrop nodded her head at me and said in a quick, confident tone:

“I'm going to see about it right away.”

And she went out of the window again.

I

T
he next week, I think, was one of the queerest times I have ever passed through. It had an odd dream quality. Nothing seemed real.

The inquest on Agnes Woddell was held and the curious of Lymstock attended
en masse.
No new facts came to light and the only possible verdict was returned, “Murder by person or persons unknown.”

So poor little Agnes Woddell, having had her hour of limelight, was duly buried in the quiet old churchyard and life in Lymstock went on as before.

No, that last statement is untrue. Not as before….

There was a half-scared, half-avid gleam in almost everybody's eye. Neighbour looked at neighbour. One thing had been brought out clearly at the inquest—it was most unlikely that any stranger had killed Agnes Woddell. No tramps nor unknown men had been noticed or reported in the district. Somewhere, then, in Lymstock,
walking down the High Street, shopping, passing the time of day, was a person who had cracked a defenceless girl's skull and driven a sharp skewer home to her brain.

And no one knew who that person was.

As I say, the days went by in a kind of dream. I looked at everyone I met in a new light, the light of a possible murderer. It was not an agreeable sensation!

And in the evenings, with the curtain drawn, Joanna and I sat talking, talking, arguing, going over in turn all the various possibilities that still seemed so fantastic and incredible.

Joanna held firm to her theory of Mr. Pye. I, after wavering a little, had gone back to my original suspect, Miss Ginch. But we went over the possible names again and again.

Mr. Pye?

Miss Ginch?

Mrs. Dane Calthrop?

Aimée Griffith?

Emily Barton?

Partridge?

And all the time, nervously, apprehensively, we waited for something to happen.

But nothing did happen. Nobody, so far as we knew, received anymore letters. Nash made periodic appearances in the town but what he was doing and what traps the police were setting, I had no idea. Graves had gone again.

Emily Barton came to tea. Megan came to lunch. Owen Griffith went about his practice. We went and drank sherry with Mr. Pye. And we went to tea at the vicarage.

I was glad to find Mrs. Dane Calthrop displayed none of the
militant ferocity she had shown on the occasion of our last meeting. I think she had forgotten all about it.

She seemed now principally concerned with the destruction of white butterflies so as to preserve cauliflower and cabbage plants.

Our afternoon at the vicarage was really one of the most peaceful we had spent. It was an attractive old house and had a big shabby comfortable drawing room with faded rose cretonne. The Dane Calthrops had a guest staying with them, an amiable elderly lady who was knitting something with white fleecy wool. We had very good hot scones for tea, the vicar came in, and beamed placidly on us whilst he pursued his gentle erudite conversation. It was very pleasant.

I don't mean that we got away from the topic of the murder, because we didn't.

Miss Marple, the guest, was naturally thrilled by the subject. As she said apologetically: “We have so little to talk about in the country!” She had made-up her mind that the dead girl must have been just like her Edith.

“Such a nice little maid, and so willing, but sometimes just a
little
slow to take in things.”

Miss Marple also had a cousin whose niece's sister-in-law had had a great deal of annoyance and trouble over some anonymous letters, so the letters, also, were very interesting to the charming old lady.

“But tell me, dear,” she said to Mrs. Dane Calthrop, “what do the village people—I mean the townspeople—say? What do
they
think?”

“Mrs. Cleat still, I suppose,” said Joanna.

“Oh no,” said Mrs. Dane Calthrop. “Not
now.
”

Miss Marple asked who Mrs. Cleat was.

Joanna said she was the village witch.

“That's right, isn't it, Mrs. Dane Calthrop?”

The vicar murmured a long Latin quotation about, I think, the evil power of witches, to which we all listened in respectful and uncomprehending silence.

“She's a very silly woman,” said his wife. “Likes to show off. Goes out to gather herbs and things at the full of the moon and takes care that everybody in the place knows about it.”

“And silly girls go and consult her, I suppose?” said Miss Marple.

I saw the vicar getting ready to unload more Latin on us and I asked hastily: “But why shouldn't people suspect her of the murder now? They thought the letters were her doing.”

Miss Marple said: “Oh! But the girl was killed with a
skewer,
so I hear—(very unpleasant!). Well, naturally, that takes
all
suspicion away from this Mrs. Cleat. Because, you see, she could ill-wish her, so that the girl would waste away and die from natural causes.”

“Strange how the old beliefs linger,” said the vicar. “In early Christian times, local superstitions were wisely incorporated with Christian doctrines and their more unpleasant attributes gradually eliminated.”

“It isn't superstition we've got to deal with here,” said Mrs. Dane Calthrop, “but
facts.
”

“And very unpleasant facts,” I said.

“As you say, Mr. Burton,” said Miss Marple. “Now
you
—excuse me if I am being too personal—are a stranger here, and have a knowledge of the world and of various aspects of life. It seems to me that you ought to be able to find a solution to this distasteful problem.”

I smiled. “The best solution I have had was a dream. In my dream it all fitted in and panned out beautifully. Unfortunately when I woke up the whole thing was nonsense!”

“How interesting, though. Do tell me how the nonsense went!”

“Oh, it all started with the silly phrase ‘No smoke without fire.' People have been saying that
ad nauseam.
And then I got it mixed up with war terms. Smoke screens, scrap of paper, telephone messages— No, that was another dream.”

“And what was that dream?”

The old lady was so eager about it, that I felt sure she was a secret reader of Napoleon's Book of Dreams, which had been the great standby of my old nurse.

“Oh! only Elsie Holland—the Symmingtons' nursery governess, you know, was getting married to Dr. Griffith and the vicar here was reading the service in Latin—(‘Very appropriate, dear,' murmured Mrs. Dane Calthrop to her spouse) and then Mrs. Dane Calthrop got up and forbade the banns and said it had got to be stopped!

“But that part,” I added with a smile, “was true. I woke up and found you standing over me saying it.”

“And I was quite right,” said Mrs. Dane Calthrop—but quite mildly, I was glad to note.

“But where did a telephone message come in?” asked Miss Marple, crinkling her brows.

“I'm afraid I'm being rather stupid. That wasn't in the dream. It was just before it. I came through the hall and noticed Joanna had written down a message to be given to someone if they rang up….”

Miss Marple leaned forward. There was a pink spot in each cheek. “Will you think me
very
inquisitive and
very
rude if I ask just
what that message was?” She cast a glance at Joanna. “I
do
apologize, my dear.”

Joanna, however, was highly entertained.

“Oh, I don't mind,” she assured the old lady. “I can't remember anything about it myself, but perhaps Jerry can. It must have been something quite trivial.”

Solemnly I repeated the message as best I could remember it, enormously tickled at the old lady's rapt attention.

I was afraid the actual words were going to disappoint her, but perhaps she had some sentimental idea of a romance, for she nodded her head and smiled and seemed pleased.

“I see,” she said. “I thought it might be something like that.”

Mrs. Dane Calthrop said sharply: “Like what, Jane?”

“Something quite ordinary,” said Miss Marple.

She looked at me thoughtfully for a moment or two, then she said unexpectedly:

“I can see you are a very clever young man—but not quite enough confidence in yourself. You ought to have!”

Joanna gave a loud hoot.

“For goodness' sake don't encourage him to feel like that. He thinks quite enough of himself as it is.”

“Be quiet, Joanna,” I said. “Miss Marple understands me.”

Miss Marple had resumed her fleecy knitting. “You know,” she observed pensively. “To commit a successful murder must be very much like bringing off a conjuring trick.”

“The quickness of the hand deceives the eye?”

“Not only that. You've got to make people look at the wrong thing and in the wrong place—Misdirection, they call it, I believe.”

“Well,” I remarked. “So far everybody seems to have looked in the wrong place for our lunatic at large.”

“I should be inclined, myself,” said Miss Marple, “to look for somebody very sane.”

“Yes,” I said thoughtfully. “That's what Nash said. I remember he stressed respectability too.”

“Yes,” agreed Miss Marple. “That's
very
important.”

Well, we all seemed agreed.

I addressed Mrs. Calthrop. “Nash thinks,” I said, “that there will be more anonymous letters. What do you think?”

She said slowly: “There may be, I suppose.”

“If the police think that, there will have to be, no doubt,” said Miss Marple.

I went on doggedly to Mrs. Dane Calthrop.

“Are you still sorry for the writer?”

She flushed. “Why not?”

“I don't think I agree with you, dear,” said Miss Marple. “Not in this case.”

I said hotly: “They've driven one woman to suicide, and caused untold misery and heartburnings!”

“Have you had one, Miss Burton?” asked Miss Marple of Joanna.

Joanna gurgled, “Oh yes! It said the most frightful things.”

“I'm afraid,” said Miss Marple, “that the people who are young and pretty are apt to be singled out by the writer.”

“That's why I certainly think it's odd that Elsie Holland hasn't had any,” I said.

“Let me see,” said Miss Marple. “Is that the Symmingtons' nursery governess—the one you dreamt about, Mr. Burton?”

“Yes.”

“She's probably had one and won't say so,” said Joanna.

“No,” I said, “I believe her. So does Nash.”

“Dear me,” said Miss Marple. “Now that's
very
interesting. That's the most interesting thing I've heard yet.”

II

As we were going home Joanna told me that I ought not to have repeated what Nash said about letters coming.

“Why not?”

“Because Mrs. Dane Calthrop might be It.”

“You don't really believe that!”

“I'm not sure. She's a queer woman.”

We began our discussion of probables all over again.

It was two nights later that I was coming back in the car from Exhampton. I had had dinner there and then started back and it was already dark before I got into Lymstock.

Something was wrong with the car lights, and after slowing up and switching on and off, I finally got out to see what I could do. I was some time fiddling, but I managed to fix them up finally.

The road was quite deserted. Nobody in Lymstock is about after dark. The first few houses were just ahead, amongst them the ugly gabled building of the Women's Institute. It loomed up in the dim starlight and something impelled me to go and have a look at it. I don't know whether I had caught a faint glimpse of a stealthy figure flitting through the gate—if so, it must have been so indeterminate that it did not register in my conscious mind, but I did suddenly feel a kind of overweening curiosity about the place.

The gate was slightly ajar, and I pushed it open and walked in. A short path and four steps led up to the door.

I stood there a moment hesitating. What was I really doing there? I didn't know, and then, suddenly, just near at hand, I caught the sound of a rustle. It sounded like a woman's dress. I took a sharp turn and went round the corner of the building towards where the sound had come from.

I couldn't see anybody. I went on and again turned a corner. I was at the back of the house now and suddenly I saw, only two feet away from me, an open window.

I crept up to it and listened. I could hear nothing, but somehow or other I felt convinced that there was someone inside.

My back wasn't too good for acrobatics as yet, but I managed to hoist myself up and drop over the sill inside. I made rather a noise unfortunately.

I stood just inside the window listening. Then I walked forward, my hands outstretched. I heard then the faintest sound ahead of me to my right.

I had a torch in my pocket and I switched it on.

Immediately a low, sharp voice said: “Put that out.”

I obeyed instantly, for in that brief second I had recognized Superintendent Nash.

I felt him take my arm and propel me through a door and into a passage. Here, where there was no window to betray our presence to anyone outside, he switched on a lamp and looked at me more in sorrow than in anger.

“You
would
have to butt in just that minute, Mr. Burton.”

“Sorry,” I apologized. “But I got a hunch that I was on to something.”

“And so you were probably. Did you see anyone?”

I hesitated. “I'm not sure,” I said slowly. “I've got a vague feeling I saw someone sneak in through the front gate but I didn't really
see
anyone. Then I heard a rustle round the side of the house.”

Nash nodded.

“That's right. Somebody came round the house before you. They hesitated by the window, then went on quickly—heard
you,
I expect.”