The Moving Finger

  “But she’s expecting you, I know, so if you’ll come up and wait, please.”

  This was evidently Faithful Florence.

  We followed her up the stairs and she threw open a door and showed us into what was quite a comfortable sitting room, though perhaps a little over-furnished. Some of the things, I suspected, had come from Little Furze.

  The woman was clearly proud of her room.

  “It’s nice, isn’t it?” she demanded.

  “Very nice,” said Joanna warmly.

  “I make her as comfortable as I can. Not that I can do for her as I’d like to and in the way she ought to have. She ought to be in her own house, properly, not turned out into rooms.”

  Florence, who was clearly a dragon, looked from one to the other of us reproachfully. It was not, I felt, our lucky day. Joanna had been ticked off by Aimée Griffith and Partridge and now we were both being ticked off by the dragon Florence.

  “Parlourmaid I was for fifteen years there,” she added.

  Joanna, goaded by injustice, said:

  “Well, Miss Barton wanted to let the house. She put it down at the house agents.”

  “Forced to it,” said Florence. “And she living so frugal and careful. But even then, the government can’t leave her alone! Has to have its pound of flesh just the same.”

  I shook my head sadly.

  “Plenty of money there was in the old lady’s time,” said Florence. “And then they all died off one by one, poor dears. Miss Emily nursing of them one after the other. Wore herself out she did, and always so patient and uncomplaining. But it told on her, and then to have worry about money on top of it all! Shares not bringing in what they used to, so she says, and why not, I should like to know? They ought to be ashamed of themselves. Doing down a lady like her who’s got no head for figures and can’t be up to their tricks.”

  “Practically everyone has been hit that way,” I said, but Florence remained unsoftened.

  “It’s all right for some as can look after themselves, but not for her. She needs looking after, and as long as she’s with me I’m going to see no one imposes on her or upsets her in anyway. I’d do anything for Miss Emily.”

  And glaring at us for some moments in order to drive that point thoroughly home, the indomitable Florence left the room, carefully shutting the door behind her.

  “Do you feel like a bloodsucker, Jerry?” inquired Joanna. “Because I do. What’s the matter with us?”

  “We don’t seem to be going down very well,” I said. “Megan gets tired of us, Partridge disapproves of you, faithful Florence disapproves of both of us.”

  Joanna murmured, “I wonder why Megan did leave?”

  “She got bored.”

  “I don’t think she did at all. I wonder—do you think, Jerry, it could have been something that Aimée Griffith said?”

  “You mean this morning, when they were talking on the doorstep.”

  “Yes. There’s wasn’t much time, of course, but—” I finished the sentence.

  “But that woman’s got the tread of a cow elephant! She might have—”

  The door opened and Miss Emily came in. She was pink and a little out of breath and seemed excited. Her eyes were very blue and shining.

  She chirruped at us in quite a distracted manner.

  “Oh dear, I’m so sorry I’m late. Just doing a little shopping in the town, and the cakes at the Blue Rose didn’t seem to me quite fresh, so I went on to Mrs. Lygon’s. I always like to get my cakes the last thing, then one gets the newest batch just out of the oven, and one isn’t put off with the day before’s. But I am so distressed to have kept you waiting—really unpardonable—”

  Joanna cut in.

  “It’s our fault, Miss Barton. We’re early. We walked down and Jerry strides along so fast now that we arrive everywhere too soon.”

  “Never too soon, dear. Don’t say that. One cannot have too much of a good thing, you know.”

  And the old lady patted Joanna affectionately on the shoulder.

  Joanna brightened up. At last, so it seemed, she was being a success. Emily Barton extended her smile to include me, but with a slight timidity in it, rather as one might approach a man-eating tiger guaranteed for the moment harmless.

  “It’s very good of you to come to such a feminine meal as tea, Mr. Burton.”

  Emily Barton, I think, has a mental picture of men as interminably consuming whiskies and sodas and smoking cigars, and in the intervals dropping out to do a few seductions of village maidens, or to conduct a liaison with a married woman.

  When I said this to Joanna later, she replied that it was probably wishful thinking, that Emily Barton would have liked to come across such a man, but alas had never done so.

  In the meantime Miss Emily was fussing round the room, arranging Joanna and myself with little tables, and carefully providing ashtrays, and a minute later the door opened and Florence came in bearing a tray of tea with some fine Crown Derby cups on it which I gathered Miss Emily had brought with her. The tea was china and delicious and there were plates of sandwiches and thin bread and butter, and a quantity of little cakes.

  Florence was beaming now, and looked at Miss Emily with a kind of maternal pleasure, as at a favourite child enjoying a doll’s tea party.

  Joanna and I ate far more than we wanted to, our hostess pressed us so earnestly. The little lady was clearly enjoying her tea party and I perceived that, to Emily Barton, Joanna and I were a big adventure, two people from the mysterious world of London and sophistication.

  Naturally, our talk soon dropped into local channels. Miss Barton spoke warmly of Dr. Griffith, his kindness and his cleverness as a doctor. Mr. Symmington, too, was a very clever lawyer, and had helped Miss Barton to get some money back from the income tax which she would never have known about. He was so nice to his children, too, devoted to them and to his wife—she caught herself up. “Poor Mrs. Symmington, it’s so dreadfully sad, with those young children left motherless. Never, perhaps, a very strong woman—and her health had been bad of late. A brain storm, that is what it must have been. I read about such a thing in the paper. People really do not know what they are doing under those circumstances. And she can’t have known what she was doing or else she would have remembered Mr. Symmington and the children.”

  “That anonymous letter must have shaken her up very badly,” said Joanna.

  Miss Barton flushed. She said, with a tinge of reproof in her voice:

  “Not a very nice thing to discuss, do you think, dear? I know there have been—er—letters, but we won’t talk about them. Nasty things. I think they are better just ignored.”

  Well, Miss Barton might be able to ignore them, but for some people it wasn’t so easy. However I obediently changed the subject and we discussed Aimée Griffith.

  “Wonderful, quite wonderful,” said Emily Barton. “Her energy and her organizing powers are really splendid. She’s so good with girls too. And she’s so practical and up-to-date in every way. She really runs this place. And absolutely devoted to her brother. It’s very nice to see such devotion between brother and sister.”

  “Doesn’t he ever find her a little overwhelming?” asked Joanna.

  Emily Barton stared at her in a startled fashion.

  “She has sacrificed a great deal for his sake,” she said with a touch of reproachful dignity.

  I saw a touch of Oh Yeay! in Joanna’s eye and hastened to divert the conversation to Mr. Pye.

  Emily Barton was a little dubious about Mr. Pye.

  All she could say was, repeated rather doubtfully, that he was very kind—yes, very kind. Very well off, too, and most generous. He had very strange visitors sometimes, but then, of course, he had travelled a lot.

  We agreed that travel not only broadened the mind, but occasionally resulted in the forming of strange acquaintances.

  “I have often wished, myself, to go on a cruise,” said Emily Barton wistfully. “One reads about them in the papers and they sound so
attractive.”

  “Why don’t you go?” asked Joanna.

  This turning of a dream into a reality seemed to alarm Miss Emily. “Oh, no, no, that would be quite impossible.”

  “But why? They’re fairly cheap.”

  “Oh, it’s not only the expense. But I shouldn’t like to go alone. Travelling alone would look very peculiar, don’t you think?”

  “No,” said Joanna.

  Miss Emily looked at her doubtfully.

  “And I don’t know how I would manage about my luggage—and going ashore at foreign ports—and all the different currencies—”

  Innumerable pitfalls seemed to rise up before the little lady’s affrighted gaze, and Joanna hastened to calm her by a question about an approaching garden fête and sale of work. This led us quite naturally to Mrs. Dane Calthrop.

  A faint spasm showed for a minute on Miss Barton’s face.

  “You know, dear,” she said, “she is really a very odd woman. The things she says sometimes.”

  I asked what things.

  “Oh, I don’t know. Such very unexpected things. And the way she looks at you, as though you weren’t there but somebody else was—I’m expressing it badly but it is so hard to convey the impression I mean. And then she won’t—well, interfere at all. There are so many cases where a vicar’s wife could advise and—perhaps admonish. Pull people up, you know, and make them mend their ways. Because people would listen to her, I’m sure of that, they’re all quite in awe of her. But she insists on being aloof and faraway, and has such a curious habit of feeling sorry for the most unworthy people.”

  “That’s interesting,” I said, exchanging a quick glance with Joanna.

  “Still, she is a very well-bred woman. She was a Miss Farroway of Bellpath, very good family, but these old families sometimes are a little peculiar, I believe. But she is devoted to her husband who is a man of very fine intellect—wasted, I am sometimes afraid, in this country circle. A good man, and most sincere, but I always find his habit of quoting Latin a little confusing.”

  “Hear, hear,” I said fervently.

  “Jerry had an expensive public school education, so he doesn’t recognize Latin when he hears it,” said Joanna.

  This led Miss Barton to a new topic.

  “The schoolmistress here is a most unpleasant young woman,” she said. “Quite Red, I’m afraid.” She lowered her voice over the word “Red.”

  Later, as we walked home up the hill, Joanna said to me:

  “She’s rather sweet.”

  V

  At dinner that night, Joanna said to Partridge that she hoped her tea party had been a success.

  Partridge got rather red in the face and held herself even more stiffly.

  “Thank you, miss, but Agnes never turned up after all.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry.”

  “It didn’t matter to me,” said Partridge.

  She was so swelling with grievance that she condescended to pour it out to us.

  “It wasn’t me who thought of asking her! She rang up herself, said she’d something on her mind and could she come here, it being her day off. And I said, yes, subject to your permission which I obtained. And after that, not a sound or sign of her! And no word of apology either, though I should hope I’ll get a postcard tomorrow morning. These girls nowadays—don’t know their place—no idea of how to behave.”

  Joanna attempted to soothe Partridge’s wounded feelings.

  “She mayn’t have felt well. You didn’t ring up to find out?”

  Partridge drew herself up again.

  “No, I did not, Miss. No, indeed. If Agnes likes to behave rudely that’s her lookout, but I shall give her a piece of my mind when we meet.”

  Partridge went out of the room still stiff with indignation and Joanna and I laughed.

  “Probably a case of ‘Advice from Aunt Nancy’s Column,’” I said. “‘My boy is very cold in his manner to me, what shall I do about it?’ Failing Aunt Nancy, Partridge was to be applied to for advice, but instead there has been a reconciliation and I expect at this minute that Agnes and her boy are one of those speechless couples locked in each other’s arms that you come upon suddenly standing by a dark hedge. They embarrass you horribly, but you don’t embarrass them.”

  Joanna laughed and said she expected that was it.

  We began talking of the anonymous letters and wondered how Nash and the melancholy Graves were getting on.

  “It’s a week today exactly,” said Joanna, “since Mrs. Symmington’s suicide. I should think they must have got on to something by now. Fingerprints, or handwriting, or something.”

  I answered her absently. Somewhere behind my conscious mind, a queer uneasiness was growing. It was connected in some way with the phrase that Joanna had used, “a week exactly.”

  I ought, I dare say, to have put two and two together earlier. Perhaps, unconsciously, my mind was already suspicious.

  Anyway the leaven was working now. The uneasiness was growing—coming to a head.

  Joanna noticed suddenly that I wasn’t listening to her spirited account of a village encounter.

  “What’s the matter, Jerry?”

  I did not answer because my mind was busy piecing things together.

  Mrs. Symmington’s suicide… She was alone in the house that afternoon… Alone in the house because the maids were having their day out… A week ago exactly….

  “Jerry, what—”

  I interrupted.

  “Joanna, maids have days out once a week, don’t they?”

  “And alternate Sundays,” said Joanna. “What on—”

  “Never mind Sundays. They go out the same day every week?”

  “Yes. That’s the usual thing.”

  Joanna was staring at me curiously. Her mind had not taken the track mine had done.

  I crossed the room and rang the bell. Partridge came.

  “Tell me,” I said, “this Agnes Woddell. She’s in service?”

  “Yes, sir. At Mrs. Symmington’s. At Mr. Symmington’s, I should say now.”

  I drew a deep breath. I glanced at the clock. It was halfpast ten.

  “Would she be back now, do you think?”

  Partridge was looking disapproving.

  “Yes, sir. The maids have to be in by ten there. They’re old-fashioned.”

  I said: “I’m going to ring up.”

  I went out to the hall. Joanna and Partridge followed me. Partridge was clearly furious. Joanna was puzzled. She said, as I was trying to get the number:

  “What are you going to do, Jerry?”

  “I’d like to be sure that the girl has come in all right.”

  Partridge sniffed. Just sniffed, nothing more. But I did not care twopence about Partridge’s sniffs.

  Elsie Holland answered the telephone the other end.

  “Sorry to ring you up,” I said. “This is Jerry Burton speaking. Is—has—your maid Agnes come in?”

  It was not until after I had said it that I suddenly felt a bit of a fool. For if the girl had come in and it was all right, how on earth was I going to explain my ringing up and asking. It would have been better if I had let Joanna ask the question, though even that would need a bit of explaining. I foresaw a new trail of gossip started in Lymstock, with myself and the unknown Agnes Woddell at its centre.

  Elsie Holland sounded, not unnaturally, very much surprised.

  “Agnes? Oh, she’s sure to be in by now.”

  I felt a fool, but I went on with it.

  “Do you mind just seeing if she has come in, Miss Holland?”

  There is one thing to be said for a nursery governess; she is used to doing things when told. Hers not to reason why! Elsie Holland put down the receiver and went off obediently.

  Two minutes later I heard her voice.

  “Are you there, Mr. Burton?”

  “Yes.”

  “Agnes isn’t in yet, as a matter of fact.”

  I knew then that my hunch had been right.

/>   I heard a noise of voices vaguely from the other end, then Symmington himself spoke.

  “Hallo, Burton, what’s the matter?”

  “Your maid Agnes isn’t back yet?”

  “No. Miss Holland has just been to see. What’s the matter? There’s not been an accident, has there?”

  “Not an accident,” I said.

  “Do you mean you have reason to believe something has happened to the girl?”

  I said grimly: “I shouldn’t be surprised.”

  Eight

  I

  I slept badly that night. I think that, even then, there were pieces of the puzzle floating about in my mind. I believe that if I had given my mind to it, I could have solved the whole thing then and there. Otherwise why did those fragments tag along so persistently?

  How much do we know at anytime? Much more, or so I believe, than we know we know! But we cannot break through to that subterranean knowledge. It is there, but we cannot reach it.

  I lay on my bed, tossing uneasily, and only vague bits of the puzzle came to torture me.

  There was a pattern, if only I could get hold of it. I ought to know who wrote those damned letters. There was a trail somewhere if only I could follow it….

  As I dropped off to sleep, words danced irritatingly through my drowsy mind.

  “No smoke without fire.” No fire without smoke. Smoke… Smoke? Smoke screen… No, that was the war—a war phrase. War. Scrap of paper… Only a scrap of paper. Belgium— Germany….

  I fell asleep. I dreamt that I was taking Mrs. Dane Calthrop, who had turned into a greyhound, for a walk with a collar and lead.

  II

  It was the ringing of the telephone that roused me. A persistent ringing.

  I sat up in bed, glanced at my watch. It was half past seven. I had not yet been called. The telephone was ringing in the hall downstairs.

  I jumped out of bed, pulled on a dressing-gown, and raced down. I beat Partridge coming through the back door from the kitchen by a short head. I picked up the receiver.

  “Hallo?”

  “Oh—” It was a sob of relief. “It’s you!” Megan’s voice. Megan’s voice indescribably forlorn and frightened. “Oh, please do come—do come. Oh, please do! Will you?”