Agatha Christie - The Moving Finger

"He's not seen much of you."

"He's seen enough apparently to make him cross over if he sees me coming along the High Street!"

"A most unusual reaction," I said sympathetically. "And one you're not used to."

Joanna drove in silence through the gate of Little Furze and around to the garage. Then she said:

"There may be something in that idea of yours. I don't see why any man should deliberately cross the street to avoid me. It's rude, apart from everything else."

"I see," I said. "You're going to hunt the man down in cold blood."

"Well, I don't like being avoided."

I got slowly and carefully out of the car and balanced my sticks. Then I offered my sister a piece of advice:

"Let me tell you this, girl. Owen Griffith isn't any of your tame, whining, artistic young men. Unless you're careful, you'll stir up a hornets' nest about your ears. That man could be dangerous."

"Oh, do you think so?" demanded Joanna with every symptom of pleasure at the prospect.

"Leave the poor devil alone," I said sternly.

"How dare he cross the street when he saw me coming?"

"All you women are alike. You harp on one theme. You'll have sister Aimée gunning for you, too, if I'm not mistaken."

"She dislikes me already," said Joanna. She spoke meditatively, but with a certain satisfaction.

"We have come down here," I said sternly, "for peace and quiet, and I mean to see we get it."

But peace and quiet were the last things we were to have.

It was about a week later that I came back to the house to find Megan sitting on the veranda steps, her chin resting on her knees.

She greeted me with her usual lack of ceremony.

"Hullo," she said. "Do you think I could come to lunch?"

"Certainly," I said.

"If it's chops, or anything difficult like that and they won't go round, just tell me," shouted Megan as I went around to apprise Partridge of the fact that there would be three to lunch.

I fancy that Partridge sniffed. She certainly managed to convey, without saying a word of any kind, that she didn't think much of that Miss Megan.

I went back to the veranda.

"Is it all right?" asked Megan anxiously.

"Quite all right," I said. "Irish stew."

"Oh, well, that's rather like dogs' dinner anyway, isn't it? I mean it's mostly potato and flavour."

"Quite," I said.

We were silent while I smoked my pipe. It was quite a companionable silence.

Megan broke it by saying suddenly and violently, "I suppose you think I'm awful, like everyone else."

I was so startled that my pipe fell out of my mouth. It was a meerschaum, just colouring nicely, and it broke. I said angrily to Megan:

"Now see what you've done."

That most unaccountable of children, instead of being upset, merely grinned broadly.

"I do like you," she said.

It was a most warming remark. It is the remark that one fancies perhaps erroneously that one's dog would say if he could talk. It occurred to me that Megan, for all she looked like a horse, had the disposition of a dog. She was certainly not quite human.

"What did you say before the catastrophe?" I asked, carefully picking up the fragments of my cherished pipe.

"I said I supposed you thought me awful," said Megan but not at all in the same tone she had said it before.

"Why should I?"

Megan said gravely, "Because I am."

I said sharply, "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 odd un-childlike 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 head 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 around the corner of the house.

"Get up," I said savagely. "Go into the house through the drawing room. Go up to the bathroom. Wash your face. Quick."

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

I told her Megan had come to lunch.

"Good," said Joanna, "I like Megan, though I rather think she's a changeling. Something left on a doorstep by the fairies. But she's interesting."

I see that so far I have made little mention of the Reverend and Mrs. 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. Mrs. Dane Calthrop, on the other hand, was quite terrifyingly on the spot. Though she seldom gave advice and never interfered, yet she represented to the uneasy consciences of the village the Deity personified.

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, thus according with her startling resemblance to a greyhound, and as her eyes were always fixed on the distant horizon you felt sure that 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. "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 far away again. She said: