Agatha Christie - The Moving Finger

"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's.

"Why ought you to 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 flirtation. 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 wrongdoing here – 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 daresay 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:

"Hullo, 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.

Partridge, who enjoys calamity, came into Joanna's room at an early hour the following morning, and told her with considerable relish that Mrs. Symmington had committed suicide on the preceding afternoon.

Joanna, who had been lost in the mists of sleep, sat up in bed shocked wide awake.

"Oh, Partridge, how awful."

"Awful it is, Miss. It's wickedness taking your own life. Not but what she was drove to it, poor soul."

Joanna had an inkling of the truth then. She felt rather sick.

"Not -?" Her eyes questioned Partridge and Partridge nodded.

"That's right, Miss. One of them nasty letters."

"How beastly," said Joanna. "How absolutely beastly! All the same, I don't see why she should kill herself for a letter like that."

"Looks as though what was in the letter was true, Miss."

"What was in it?"

But that, Partridge couldn't or wouldn't say. Joanna came in to me, looking white and shocked. It seemed worse, somehow, that Mrs. Symmington was not the kind of person you associated with tragedy.

Joanna suggested that we might ask Megan to come to us for a day or two. Elsie Holland, she said, would be all right with the children, but was the kind of person who would, almost certainly, drive Megan half mad.

I agreed. I could imagine Elsie Holland uttering platitude after platitude and suggesting innumerable cups of tea.

A kindly creature but not the right person for Megan. We drove down to the Symmingtons' house after breakfast.

We were both of us a little nervous. Our arrival might look like sheer ghoulish curiosity. Luckily we met Owen Griffith just coming out. He greeted me with some warmth, his worried face lighting up.

"Oh, hullo, 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, nervous 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 judgement. 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."