The Moving Finger (5 page)

“Don't be stupid.”

Megan shook her head.

“That's just it. I'm not really stupid. People think I am. They don't know that inside I know just what they're like, and that all the time I'm hating them.”

“
Hating
them?”

“Yes,” said Megan.

Her eyes, those melancholy, unchildlike eyes, stared straight into mine, without blinking. It was a long mournful gaze.

“You would hate people if you were like me,” she said. “If you weren't wanted.”

“Don't you think you're being rather morbid?” I asked.

“Yes,” said Megan. “That's what people always say when you're saying the truth. And it is true. I'm not wanted and I can quite see why. Mummie doesn't like me a bit. I remind her, I think, of my father, who was cruel to her and pretty dreadful from all I can hear. Only mothers can't say they don't want their children and just go
away. Or eat them. Cats eat the kittens they don't like. Awfully sensible, I think. No waste or mess. But human mothers have to keep their children, and look after them. It hasn't been so bad while I could be sent away to school—but you see, what Mummie would really like is to be just herself and my stepfather and the boys.”

I said slowly:

“I still think you're morbid, Megan, but accepting some of what you say as true, why don't you go away and have a life of your own?”

She gave me an unchildlike smile.

“You mean take up a career. Earn my living?”

“Yes.”

“What at?”

“You could train for something, I suppose. Shorthand typing—bookkeeping.”

“I don't believe I could. I am stupid about doing things. And besides—”

“Well?”

She had turned her face away, now she turned it slowly back again. It was crimson and there were tears in her eyes. She spoke now with all the childishness back in her voice.

“Why should I go away? And be made to go away? They don't want me, but I'll
stay.
I'll stay and make everyone sorry. I'll make them all sorry. Hateful pigs! I hate everyone here in Lymstock. They all think I'm stupid and ugly. I'll show them. I'll show them. I'll—”

It was a childish, oddly pathetic rage.

I heard a step on the gravel round the corner of the house.

“Get up,” I said savagely. “Go into the house through the drawing room. Go up to the first floor to the bathroom. End of the passage. Wash your face. Quick.”

She sprang awkwardly to her feet and darted through the window as Joanna came round the corner of the house.

“Gosh, I'm hot,” she called out. She sat down beside me and fanned her face with the Tyrolean scarf that had been round her head. “Still I think I'm educating these damned brogues now. I've walked miles. I've learnt one thing, you shouldn't have these fancy holes in your brogues. The gorse prickles go through. Do you know, Jerry, I think we ought to have a dog?”

“So do I,” I said. “By the way, Megan is coming to lunch.”

“Is she? Good.”

“You like her?” I asked.

“I think she's a changeling,” said Joanna. “Something left on a doorstep, you know, while the fairies take the right one away. It's very interesting to meet a changeling. Oof, I must go up and wash.”

“You can't yet,” I said, “Megan is washing.”

“Oh, she's been footslogging too, has she?”

Joanna took out her mirror and looked at her face long and earnestly. “I don't think I like this lipstick,” she announced presently.

Megan came out through the window. She was composed, moderately clean, and showed no signs of the recent storm. She looked doubtfully at Joanna.

“Hallo,” said Joanna, still preoccupied by her face. “I'm so glad you've come to lunch. Good gracious, I've got a freckle on my nose. I must do something about it. Freckles are so earnest and Scottish.”

Partridge came out and said coldly that luncheon was served.

“Come on,” said Joanna, getting up. “I'm starving.”

She put her arm through Megan's and they went into the house together.

I

I
see that there has been one omission in my story. So far I have made little or no mention of Mrs. Dane Calthrop, or indeed of the Rev. Caleb Dane Calthrop.

And yet both the vicar and his wife were distinct personalities. Dane Calthrop himself was perhaps a being more remote from everyday life than anyone I have ever met. His existence was in his books and in his study, and in his intimate knowledge of early Church history. Mrs. Dane Calthrop, on the other hand, was quite terrifyingly on the spot. I have perhaps purposely put off mentioning her, because I was from the first a little afraid of her. She was a woman of character and of almost Olympian knowledge. She was not in the least the typical vicar's wife—but that, as I set it down, makes me ask myself, what do I know of vicars' wives?

The only one I remember well was a quiet nondescript creature, devoted to a big strong husband with a magnetic way of preaching.
She had so little general conversation that it was a puzzle to know how to sustain a conversation with her.

Otherwise I was depending on the fictional presentment of vicars' wives, caricatures of females poking their noses everywhere, and uttering platitudes. Probably no such type exists.

Mrs. Dane Calthrop never poked her nose in anywhere, yet she had an uncanny power of knowing things and I soon discovered that almost everyone in the village was slightly afraid of her. She gave no advice and never interfered, yet she represented, to any uneasy conscience, the Deity personified.

I have never seen a woman more indifferent to her material surroundings. On hot days she would stride about clad in Harris tweed, and in rain or even sleet, I have seen her absentmindedly race down the village street in a cotton dress of printed poppies. She had a long thin well-bred face like a greyhound, and a most devastating sincerity of speech.

She stopped me in the High Street the day after Megan had come to lunch. I had the usual feeling of surprise, because Mrs. Dane Calthrop's progress resembled coursing more than walking, and her eyes were always fixed on the distant horizon so that you felt sure her real objective was about a mile and a half away.

“Oh,” she said. “Mr. Burton!”

She said it rather triumphantly, as someone might who had solved a particularly clever puzzle.

I admitted that I was Mr. Burton and Mrs. Dane Calthrop stopped focusing on the horizon and seemed to be trying to focus on me instead.

“Now what,” she said, “did I want to see you about?”

I could not help her there. She stood frowning, deeply perplexed.

“Something rather nasty,” she said.

“I'm sorry about that,” I said, startled.

“Ah,” cried Mrs. Dane Calthrop. “I hate my love with an A. That's it. Anonymous letters! What's this story you've brought down here about anonymous letters?”

“I didn't bring it,” I said. “It was here already.”

“Nobody got any until you came, though,” said Mrs. Dane Calthrop accusingly.

“But they did, Mrs. Dane Calthrop. The trouble had already started.”

“Oh dear,” said Mrs. Dane Calthrop. “I don't like that.”

She stood there, her eyes absent and faraway again. She said:

“I can't help feeling it's all
wrong.
We're not like that here. Envy, of course, and malice, and all the mean spiteful little sins—but I didn't think there was anyone who would do that—No, I really didn't. And it distresses me, you see, because
I
ought to know.”

Her fine eyes came back from the horizon and met mine. They were worried, and seemed to hold the honest bewilderment of a child.

“How should you know?” I said.

“I usually do. I've always felt that's my function. Caleb preaches good sound doctrine and administers the sacraments. That's a priest's duty, but if you admit marriage at all for a priest, then I think his wife's duty is to know what people are feeling and thinking, even if she can't do anything about it. And I haven't the least idea whose mind is—”

She broke off, adding absently.

“They are such silly letters, too.”

“Have you—er—had any yourself?”

I was a little diffident of asking, but Mrs. Dane Calthrop replied perfectly naturally, her eyes opening a little wider:

“Oh yes, two—no, three. I forget exactly what they said. Something very silly about Caleb and the schoolmistress, I think. Quite absurd, because Caleb has absolutely no taste for fornication. He never has had. So lucky, being a clergyman.”

“Quite,” I said. “Oh quite.”

“Caleb would have been a saint,” said Mrs. Dane Calthrop, “if he hadn't been just a little too intellectual.”

I did not feel qualified to answer this criticism, and anyway Mrs. Dane Calthrop went on, leaping back from her husband to the letters in rather a puzzling way.

“There are so many things the letters might say, but don't. That's what is so curious.”

“I should hardly have thought they erred on the side of restraint,” I said bitterly.

“But they don't seem to
know
anything. None of the real things.”

“You mean?”

Those fine vague eyes met mine.

“Well, of course. There's plenty of adultery here—and everything else. Any amount of shameful secrets. Why doesn't the writer use those?” She paused and then asked abruptly, “What did they say in your letter?”

“They suggested that my sister wasn't my sister.”

“And she is?”

Mrs. Dane Calthrop asked the question with unembarrassed friendly interest.

“Certainly Joanna is my sister.”

Mrs. Dane Calthrop nodded her head.

“That just shows you what I mean. I dare say there are other things—”

Her clear uninterested eyes looked at me thoughtfully, and I suddenly understood why Lymstock was afraid of Mrs. Dane Calthrop.

In everybody's life there are hidden chapters which they hope may never be known. I felt that Mrs. Dane Calthrop knew them.

For once in my life, I was positively delighted when Aimée Griffith's hearty voice boomed out:

“Hallo, Maud. Glad I've just caught you. I want to suggest an alteration of date for the Sale of Work. Morning, Mr. Burton.”

She went on:

“I must just pop into the grocer's and leave my order, then I'll come along to the Institute if that suits you?”

“Yes, yes, that will do quite well,” said Mrs. Dane Calthrop.

Aimée Griffith went into the International Stores.

Mrs. Dane Calthrop said: “Poor thing.”

I was puzzled. Surely she could not be pitying Aimée?

She went on, however:

“You know, Mr. Burton, I'm rather afraid—”

“About this letter business?”

“Yes, you see it means—it must mean—” She paused lost in thought, her eyes screwed up. Then she said slowly, as one who solves a problem, “Blind hatred…yes, blind hatred. But even a blind man might stab to the heart by pure chance… And what would happen then, Mr. Burton?”

We were to know that before another day had passed.

II

It was Partridge who brought the news of the tragedy. Partridge enjoys calamity. Her nose always twitches ecstatically when she has to break bad news of any kind.

She came into Joanna's room with her nose working overtime, her eyes bright, and her mouth pulled down into an exaggerated gloom. “There's terrible news, this morning, miss,” she observed as she drew up the blinds.

It takes a minute or two for Joanna, with her London habits, to become fully conscious in the morning. She said, “Er ah,” and rolled over without real interest.

Partridge placed her early tea beside her and began again. “Terrible it is. Shocking! I couldn't hardly believe it when I heard.”

“What's terrible?” said Joanna, struggling into wakefulness.

“Poor Mrs. Symmington.” She paused dramatically. “Dead.”

“Dead?” Joanna sat up in bed, now wide awake.

“Yes, miss, yesterday afternoon, and what's worse, took her own life.”

“Oh no, Partridge?”

Joanna was really shocked—Mrs. Symmington was not, somehow, the sort of person you associated with tragedies.

“Yes, miss, it's the truth. Did it deliberate. Not but what she was drove to it, poor soul.”

“Drove to it?” Joanna had an inkling of the truth then. “Not—?”

Her eyes questioned Partridge and Partridge nodded.

“That's right, miss. One of them nasty letters!”

“What did it say?”

But that, to Partridge's regret, she had not succeeded in learning.

“They're beastly things,” said Joanna. “But I don't see why they should make one want to kill oneself.”

Partridge sniffed and then said with meaning:

“Not unless they were
true,
miss.”

“Oh,” said Joanna.

She drank her tea after Partridge had left the room, then she threw on a dressing-gown and came in to me to tell me the news.

I thought of what Owen Griffith had said. Sooner or later the shot in the dark went home. It had done with Mrs. Symmington. She, apparently the most unlikely of women, had had a secret… It was true, I reflected, that for all her shrewdness she was not a woman of much stamina. She was the anaemic clinging type that crumples easily.

Joanna nudged me and asked me what I was thinking about.

I repeated to her what Owen had said.

“Of course,” said Joanna waspishly, “he would know all about it. That man thinks he knows everything.”

“He's clever,” I said.

“He's conceited,” said Joanna. She added, “Abominably conceited!”

After a minute or two she said:

“How awful for her husband—and for the girl. What do you think Megan will feel about it?”

I hadn't the slightest idea and said so. It was curious that one could never gauge what Megan would think or feel.

Joanna nodded and said:

“No, one never does know with changelings.”

After a minute or two she said:

“Do you think—would you like—I wonder if she'd like to
come and stay with us for a day or two? It's rather a shock for a girl that age.”

“We might go along and suggest it,” I agreed.

“The children are all right,” said Joanna. “They've got that governess woman. But I expect she's just the sort of creature that would drive someone like Megan mad.”

I thought that was very possible. I could imagine Elsie Holland uttering platitude after platitude and suggesting innumerable cups of tea. A kindly creature, but not, I thought, the person for a sensitive girl.

I had thought myself of bringing Megan away, and I was glad that Joanna had thought of it spontaneously without prompting from me.

We went down to the Symmingtons' house after breakfast.

We were a little nervous, both of us. Our arrival might look like sheer ghoulish curiosity. Luckily we met Owen Griffith just coming out through the gate. He looked worried and preoccupied.

He greeted me, however, with some warmth.

“Oh, hallo, Burton. I'm glad to see you. What I was afraid would happen sooner or later has happened. A damnable business!”

“Good morning, Dr. Griffith,” said Joanna, using the voice she keeps for one of our deafer aunts.

Griffith started and flushed.

“Oh—oh, good morning, Miss Burton.”

“I thought perhaps,” said Joanna, “that you didn't see me.”

Owen Griffith got redder still. His shyness enveloped him like a mantle.

“I'm— I'm so sorry—preoccupied—I didn't.”

Joanna went on mercilessly: “After all, I
am
life size.”

“Merely kit-kat,” I said in a stern aside to her. Then I went on:

“My sister and I, Griffith, wondered whether it would be a good thing if the girl came and stopped with us for a day or two? What do you think? I don't want to butt in—but it must be rather grim for the poor child. What would Symmington feel about it, do you think?”

Griffith turned the idea over in his mind for a moment or two.

“I think it would be an excellent thing,” he said at last. “She's a queer nervy sort of girl, and it would be good for her to get away from the whole thing. Miss Holland is doing wonders—she's an excellent head on her shoulders, but she really has quite enough to do with the two children and Symmington himself. He's quite broken up—bewildered.”

“It was—” I hesitated—“suicide?”

Griffith nodded.

“Oh yes. No question of accident. She wrote, ‘I can't go on' on a scrap of paper. The letter must have come by yesterday afternoon's post. The envelope was down on the floor by her chair and the letter itself was screwed up into a ball and thrown into the fireplace.”

“What did—”

I stopped, rather horrified at myself.

“I beg your pardon,” I said.

Griffith gave a quick unhappy smile.

“You needn't mind asking. That letter will have to be read at the inquest. No getting out of it, more's the pity. It was the usual kind of thing—couched in the same foul style. The specific accusation was that the second boy, Colin, was not Symmington's child.”

“Do you think that was true?” I exclaimed incredulously.

Griffith shrugged his shoulders.

“I've no means of forming a judgment. I've only been here five years. As far as I've ever seen, the Symmingtons were a placid, happy couple devoted to each other and their children. It's true that the boy doesn't particularly resemble his parents—he's got bright red hair, for one thing—but a child often throws back in appearance to a grandfather or grandmother.”

“That lack of resemblance might have been what prompted the particular accusation. A foul and quite uncalled for bow at a venture.”

“Very likely. In fact, probably. There's not been much accurate knowledge behind these poison pen letters, just unbridled spite and malice.”