The Moving Finger (Miss Marple 4)

Twelve

I

I don’t know what the usual reactions are of a man who goes to propose marriage.

In fiction his throat is dry and his collar feels too tight and he is in a pitiable state of nervousness. I didn’t feel at all like that. Having thought of a good idea I just wanted to get it all settled as soon as possible. I didn’t see any particular need for embarrassment.

I went along to the Symmingtons’ house about eleven o’clock. I rang the bell and when Rose came, I asked for Miss Megan. It was the knowing look that Rose gave me that first made me feel slightly shy.

She put me in the little morning room and whilst waiting there I hoped uneasily that they hadn’t been upsetting Megan.

When the door opened and I wheeled round, I was instantly relieved. Megan was not looking shy or upset at all. Her head was still like a glossy chestnut, and she wore that air of pride and self-respect that she had acquired yesterday. She was in her old clothes again but she had managed to make them look different. It’s wonderful what knowledge of her own attractiveness will do for a girl. Megan, I realized suddenly, had grown up.

I suppose I must really have been rather nervous, otherwise I should not have opened the conversation by saying affectionately, “Hallo, catfish!” It was hardly, in the circumstances, a lover-like greeting.

It seemed to suit Megan. She grinned and said, “Hallo!”

“Look here,” I said. “You didn’t get into a row about yesterday, I hope?”

Megan said with assurance, “Oh, no,” and then blinked, and said vaguely, “Yes, I believe I did. I mean, they said a lot of things and seemed to think it had been very odd—but then you know what people are and what fusses they make all about nothing.”

I was relieved to find that shocked disapproval had slipped off Megan like water off a duck’s back.

“I came round this morning,” I said, “because I’ve a suggestion to make. You see I like you a lot, and I think you like me—”

“Frightfully,” said Megan with rather disquieting enthusiasm.

“And we get on awfully well together, so I think it would be a good idea if we got married.”

“Oh,” said Megan.

She looked surprised. Just that. Not startled. Not shocked. Just mildly surprised.

“You mean you really want to marry me?” she asked with the air of one getting a thing perfectly clear.

“More than anything in the world,” I said—and I meant it.

“You mean, you’re in love with me?”

“I’m in love with you.”

Her eyes were steady and grave. She said:

“I think you’re the nicest person in the world—but I’m not in love with you.”

“I’ll make you love me.”

“That wouldn’t do. I don’t want to be made.”

She paused and then said gravely: “I’m not the sort of wife for you. I’m better at hating than at loving.”

She said it with a queer intensity.

I said, “Hate doesn’t last. Love does.”

“Is that true?”

“It’s what I believe.”

Again there was a silence. Then I said:

“So it’s ‘No,’ is it?”

“Yes, it’s no.”

“And you don’t encourage me to hope?”

“What would be the good of that?”

“None whatever,” I agreed, “quite redundant, in fact—because I’m going to hope whether you tell me to or not.”

II

Well, that was that. I walked away from the house feeling slightly dazed but irritatingly conscious of Rose’s passionately interested gaze following me.

Rose had had a good deal to say before I could escape.

That she’d never felt the same since that awful day! That she wouldn’t have stayed except for the children and being sorry for poor Mr. Symmington. That she wasn’t going to stay unless they got another maid quick—and they wouldn’t be likely to do that when there had been a murder in the house! That it was all very well for that Miss Holland to say she’d do the housework in the meantime. Very sweet and obliging she was—Oh yes, but it was mistress of the house that she was fancying herself going to be one fine day! Mr. Symmington, poor man, never saw anything—but one knew what a widower was, a poor helpless creature made to be the prey of a designing woman. And that it wouldn’t be for want of trying if Miss Holland didn’t step into the dead mistress’s shoes!

I assented mechanically to everything, yearning to get away and unable to do so because Rose was holding firmly on to my hat whilst she indulged in her flood of spite.

I wondered if there was any truth in what she said. Had Elsie Holland envisaged the possibility of becoming the second Mrs. Symmington? Or was she just a decent kindhearted girl doing her best to look after a bereaved household?

The result would quite likely be the same in either case. And why not? Symmington’s young children needed a mother—Elsie was a decent soul—beside being quite indecently beautiful—a point which a man might appreciate—even such a stuffed fish as Symmington!

I thought all this, I know, because I was trying to put off thinking about Megan.

You may say that I had gone to ask Megan to marry me in an absurdly complacent frame of mind and that I deserved what I got—but it was not really like that. It was because I felt so assured, so certain, that Megan belonged to me—that she was my business, that to look after her and make her happy and keep her from harm was the only natural right way of life for me, that I had expected her to feel, too, that she and I belonged to each other.

But I was not giving up. Oh no! Megan was my woman and I was going to have her.

After a moment’s thought, I went to Symmington’s office. Megan might pay no attention to strictures on her conduct, but I would like to get things straight.

Mr. Symmington was disengaged, I was told, and I was shown into his room. By a pinching of the lips, and an additional stiffness of manner, I gathered that I was not exactly popular at the moment.

“Good morning,” I said. “I’m afraid this isn’t a professional call, but a personal one. I’ll put it plainly. I dare say you’ll have realized that I’m in love with Megan. I’ve asked her to marry me and she has refused. But I’m not taking that as final.”

I saw Symmington’s expression change, and I read his mind with ludicrous ease. Megan was a disharmonious element in his house. He was, I felt sure, a just and kindly man, and he would never have dreamed of not providing a home for his dead wife’s daughter. But her marriage to me would certainly be a relief. The frozen halibut thawed. He gave me a pale cautious smile.

“Frankly, do you know, Burton, I had no idea of such a thing. I know you’ve taken a lot of notice of her, but we’ve always regarded her as such a child.”

“She’s not a child,” I said shortly.

“No, no, not in years.”

“She can be her age anytime she’s allowed to be,” I said, still slightly angry. “She’s not twenty-one, I know, but she will be in a month or two. I’ll let you have all the information about myself you want. I’m well off and have led quite a decent life. I’ll look after her and do all I can to make her happy.”

“Quite—quite. Still, it’s up to Megan herself.”

“She’ll come round in time,” I said. “But I

just thought I’d like to get straight with you about it.”

He said he appreciated that, and we parted amicably.

III

I ran into Miss Emily Barton outside. She had a shopping basket on her arm.

“Good morning, Mr. Burton, I hear you went to London yesterday.”

Yes, she had heard all right. Her eyes were, I thought, kindly, but full of curiosity, too.

“I went to see my doctor,” I said.

Miss Emily smiled.

That smile made little of Marcus Kent. She murmured:

“I hear Megan nearly missed the train. She jumped in when it was going.”

“Helped by me,” I said. “I hauled her in.”

“How lucky you were there. Otherwise there might have been an accident.”

It is extraordinary how much of a fool one gentle inquisitive old maiden lady can make a man feel!

I was saved further suffering by the onslaught of Mrs. Dane Calthrop. She had her own tame elderly maiden lady in tow, but she herself was full of direct speech.

“Good morning,” she said. “I heard you’ve made Megan buy herself some decent clothes? Very sensible of you. It takes a man to think of something really practical like that. I’ve been worried about that girl for a long time. Girls with brains are so liable to turn into morons, aren’t they?”

With which remarkable statement, she shot into the fish shop.

Miss Marple, left standing by me, twinkled a little and said:

“Mrs. Dane Calthrop is a very remarkable woman, you know. She’s nearly always right.”

“It makes her rather alarming,” I said.

“Sincerity has that effect,” said Miss Marple.

Mrs. Dane Calthrop shot out of the fish shop again and rejoined us. She was holding a large red lobster.

“Have you ever seen anything so unlike Mr. Pye?” she said—“very virile and handsome, isn’t it?”

IV

I was a little nervous of meeting Joanna but I found when I got home that I needn’t have worried. She was out and she did not return for lunch. This aggrieved Partridge a good deal, who said sourly as she proffered two loin chops in an entrée dish: “Miss Burton said specially as she was going to be in.”