The Moving Finger (Miss Marple 4)

I came upon Mr. Pye by the church. He was talking to Emily Barton, who looked pink and excited.

Mr. Pye greeted me with every evidence of delight.

“Ah, Burton, good morning, good morning! How is your charming sister?”

I told him that Joanna was well.

“But not joining our village parliament? We’re all agog over the news. Murder! Real Sunday newspaper murder in our midst! Not the most interesting of crimes, I fear. Somewhat sordid. The brutal murder of a little serving maid. No finer points about the crime, but still undeniably, news.”

Miss Barton said tremulously:

“It is shocking—quite shocking.”

Mr. Pye turned to her.

“But you enjoy it, dear lady, you enjoy it. Confess it now. You disapprove, you deplore, but there is the thrill. I insist, there is the thrill!”

“Such a nice girl,” said Emily Barton. “She came to me from St. Clotilde’s Home. Quite a raw girl. But most teachable. She turned into such a nice little maid. Partridge was very pleased with her.”

I said quickly:

“She was coming to tea with Partridge yesterday afternoon.” I turned to Pye. “I expect Aimée Griffith told you.”

My tone was quite casual. Pye responded apparently quite unsuspiciously: “She did mention it, yes. She said, I remember, that it was something quite new for servants to ring up on their employers’ telephones.”

“Partridge would never dream of doing such a thing,” said Miss Emily, “and I am really surprised at Agnes doing so.”

“You are behind the times, dear lady,” said Mr. Pye. “My two terrors use the telephone constantly and smoked all over the house until I objected. But one daren’t say too much. Prescott is a divine cook, though temperamental, and Mrs. Prescott is an admirable house-parlourmaid.”

“Yes, indeed, we all think you’re very lucky.”

I intervened, since I did not want the conversation to become purely domestic.

“The news of the murder has got round very quickly,” I said.

“Of course, of course,” said Mr. Pye. “The butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker. Enter Rumour, painted full of tongues! Lymstock, alas! is going to the dogs. Anonymous letters, murders, any amount of criminal tendencies.”

Emily Barton said nervously: “They don’t think—there’s no idea—that—that the two are connected.”

Mr. Pye pounced on the idea.

“An interesting speculation. The girl knew something, therefore she was murdered. Yes, yes, most promising. How clever of you to think of it.”

“I— I can’t bear it.”

Emily Barton spoke abruptly and turned away, walking very fast.

Pye looked after her. His cherubic face was pursed up quizzically.

He turned back to me and shook his head gently.

“A sensitive soul. A charming creature, don’t you think? Absolutely a period piece. She’s not, you know, of her own generation, she’s of the generation before that. The mother must have been a woman of a very strong character. She kept the family time ticking at about 1870, I should say. The whole family preserved under a glass case. I do like to come across that sort of thing.”

I did not want to talk about period pieces.

“What do you really think about all this business?” I asked.

“Meaning by that?”

“Anonymous letters, murder….”

“Our local crime wave? What do you?”

“I asked you first,” I said pleasantly.

Mr. Pye said gently:

“I’m a student, you know, of abnormalities. They interest me. Such apparently unlikely people do the most fantastic things. Take the case of Lizzie Borden. There’s not really a reasonable explanation of that. In this case, my advice to the police would be—study character. Leave your fingerprints and your measuring of handwriting and your microscopes. Notice instead what people do with their hands, and their little tricks of manner, and the way they eat their food, and if they laugh sometimes for no apparent reason.”

I raised my eyebrows. “Mad?” I said.

“Quite, quite mad,” said Mr. Pye, and added, “but you’d never know it!”

“Who?”

His eyes met mine. He smiled.

“No, no, Burton, that would be slander. We can’t add slander to all the rest of it.”

He fairly skipped off down the street.

IV

As I stood staring after him the church door opened and the Rev. Caleb Dane Calthrop came out.

He smiled vaguely at me.

“Good—good morning, Mr—er—er—”

I helped him. “Burton.”

“Of course, of course, you mustn’t think I don’t remember you. Your name had just slipped my memory for the moment. A beautiful day.”

“Yes,” I said rather shortly.

He peered at me.

“But something—something—ah, yes, that poor unfortunate child who was in service at the Symmingtons.’ I find it hard to believe, I must confess, that we have a murderer in our midst, Mr—er—Burton.”

“It does seem a bit fantastic,” I said.

“Something else has just reached my ears.” He leaned towards me. “I learn that there have been anonymous letters going about. Have you heard any rumour of such things?”

“I have heard,” I said.

“Cowardly and dastardly things.” He paused and quoted an enormous stream of Latin. “Those words of Horace are very applicable, don’t you think?” he said.

“Absolutely,” I said.

V

There didn’t seem anyone more I could profitably talk to, so I went home, dropping in for some tobacco and for a bottle of sherry, so as to get some of the humbler opinions on the crime.

“A narsty tramp,” seemed to be the verdict.

“Come to the door, they do, and whine and ask for money, and then if it’s a girl alone in the house, they turn narsty. My sister Dora, over to Combeacre, she had a narsty experience one day—Drunk, he was, and selling those little printed poems….”

The story went on, ending with the intrepid Dora courageously banging the door in the man’s face and taking refuge and barricading herself in some vague retreat, which I gathered from the delicacy in mentioning it must be the lavatory. “And there she stayed till her lady came home!”

I reached Little Furze just a few minutes before l

unchtime. Joanna was standing in the drawing room window doing nothing at all and looking as though her thoughts were miles away.

“What have you been doing with yourself?” I asked.

“Oh, I don’t know. Nothing particular.”

I went out on the veranda. Two chairs were drawn up to an iron table and there were two empty sherry glasses. On another chair was an object at which I looked with bewilderment for some time.

“What on earth is this?”

“Oh,” said Joanna, “I think it’s a photograph of a diseased spleen or something. Dr. Griffith seemed to think I’d be interested to see it.”

I looked at the photograph with some interest. Every man has his own ways of courting the female sex. I should not, myself, choose to do it with photographs of spleens, diseased or otherwise. Still no doubt Joanna had asked for it!

“It looks most unpleasant,” I said.

Joanna said it did, rather.

“How was Griffith?” I asked.

“He looked tired and very unhappy. I think he’s got something on his mind.”

“A spleen that won’t yield to treatment?”

“Don’t be silly. I mean something real.”

“I should say the man’s got you on his mind. I wish you’d lay off him, Joanna.”

“Oh, do shut up. I haven’t done anything.”

“Women always say that.”

Joanna whirled angrily out of the room.

The diseased spleen was beginning to curl up in the sun. I took it by one corner and brought it into the drawing room. I had no affection for it myself, but I presumed it was one of Griffith’s treasures.

I stooped down and pulled out a heavy book from the bottom shelf of the bookcase in order to press the photograph flat again between its leaves. It was a ponderous volume of somebody’s sermons.

The book came open in my hand in rather a surprising way. In another minute I saw why. From the middle of it a number of pages had been neatly cut out.

VI

I stood staring at it. I looked at the title page. It had been published in 1840.

There could be no doubt at all. I was looking at the book from the pages of which the anonymous letters had been put together. Who had cut them out?

Well, to begin with, it could be Emily Barton herself. She was, perhaps, the obvious person to think of. Or it could have been Partridge.