The Moving Finger

I felt slightly bewildered and as though I had missed something essential in the conversation.

‘Certainly,’ I said. ‘Won’t you—er—sit down, Mrs Baker? I’m sure I shall be glad to—er help you in any way I can—’

I paused expectantly.

‘Thank you, sir.’ Mrs Baker sat down on the edge of a chair. ‘It’s very good of you, I’m sure. And glad I am that I came to you, I said to Beatrice, I said, and her howling and crying on her bed, Mr Burton will know what to do, I said, being a London gentleman. And something must be done, what with young men being so hot-headed and not listening to reason the way they are, and not listening to a word a girl says, and anyway, if it was me, I says to Beatrice I’d give him as good as I got, and what about that girl down at the mill?’

I felt more than ever bewildered.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘But I don’t quite understand. What has happened?’

‘It’s the letters, sir. Wicked letters—indecent, too, using such words and all. Worse than I’ve ever seen in the Bible, even.’

Passing over an interesting side-line here, I said desperately:

‘Has your daughter been having more letters?’

‘Not her, sir. She had just the one. That one as was the occasion of her leaving here.’

‘There was absolutely no reason—’ I began, but Mrs Baker firmly and respectfully interrupted me:

‘There is no need to tell me, sir, that what was wrote was all wicked lies. I had Miss Partridge’s word for that—and indeed I would have known it for myself. You aren’t that type of gentleman, sir, that I well know, and you an invalid and all. Wicked untruthful lies it was, but all the same I says to Beatrice as she’d better leave because you know what talk is, sir. No smoke without fire, that’s what people say. And a girl can’t be too careful. And besides the girl herself felt bashful like after what had been written, so I says, “Quite right,” to Beatrice when she said she wasn’t coming up here again, though I’m sure we both regretted the inconvenience being such—’

Unable to find her way out of this sentence, Mrs Baker took a deep breath and began again.

‘And that, I hoped, would be the end of any nasty talk. But now George, down at the garage, him what Beatrice is going with, he’s got one of them. Saying awful things about our Beatrice, and how she’s going on with Fred Ledbetter’s Tom—and I can assure you, sir, the girl has been no more than civil to him and passing the time of day so to speak.’

My head was now reeling under this new complication of Mr Ledbetter’s Tom.

‘Let me get this straight,’ I said. ‘Beatrice’s—er—young man has had an anonymous letter making accusations about her and another young man?’

‘That’s right, sir, and not nicely put at all—horrible words used, and it drove young George mad with rage, it did, and he came round and told Beatrice he wasn’t going to put up with that sort of thing from her, and he wasn’t going to have her go behind his back with other chaps—and she says it’s all a lie—and he says no smoke without fire, he says, and rushes off being hot-like in his temper, and Beatrice she took on ever so, poor girl, and I said I’ll put my hat on and come straight up to you, sir.’

Mrs Baker paused and looked at me expectantly, like a dog waiting for reward after doing a particularly clever trick.

‘But why come to me?’ I demanded.

‘I understood, sir, that you’d had one of these nasty letters yourself, and I thought, sir, that being a London gentleman, you’d know what to do about them.’

‘If I were you,’ I said, ‘I should go to the police. This sort of thing ought to be stopped.’

Mrs Baker looked deeply shocked.

‘Oh, no, sir. I couldn’t go to the police.’

‘Why not?’

‘I’ve never been mixed up with the police, sir. None of us ever have.’

‘Probably not. But the police are the only people who can deal with this sort of thing. It’s their business.’

‘Go to Bert Rundle?’

Bert Rundle was the constable, I knew.

‘There’s a sergeant, or an inspector, surely, at the police station.’

‘Me, go into the police station?’

Mrs Baker’s voice expressed reproach and incredulity. I began to feel annoyed.

‘That’s the only advice I can give you.’

Mrs Baker was silent, obviously quite unconvinced. She said wistfully and earnestly:

‘These letters ought to be stopped, sir, they did ought to be stopped. There’ll be mischief done sooner or later.’

‘It seems to me there is mischief done now,’ I said.

‘I meant violence, sir. These young fellows, they get violent in their feelings—and so do the older ones.’

I asked:

‘Are a good many of these letters going about?’

Mrs Baker nodded.

‘It’s getting worse and worse, sir. Mr and Mrs Beadle at the Blue Boar—very happy they’ve always been—and now these letters comes and it sets him thinking things—things that aren’t so, sir.’

I leaned forward:

‘Mrs Baker,’ I said, ‘have you any idea, any idea at all, who is writing these abominable letters?’

To my great surprise she nodded her head.

‘We’ve got our idea, sir. Yes, we’ve all got a very fair idea.’

‘Who is it?’

I had fancied she might be reluctant to mention a name, but she replied promptly:

‘’Tis Mrs Cleat—that’s what we all think, sir. ’Tis Mrs Cleat for sure.’

I had heard so many names this morning that I was quite bewildered. I asked:

‘Who is Mrs Cleat?’

Mrs Cleat, I discovered, was the wife of an elderly jobbing gardener. She lived in a cottage on the road leading down to the Mill. My further questions only brought unsatisfactory answers. Questioned as to why Mrs Cleat should write these letters, Mrs Baker would only say vaguely that ‘’Twould be like her.’