The Moving Finger

‘Oh,’ I said, ‘I see. I was under the impression that our presence as strangers was resented here.’

‘No, no, it’s nothing to do with that. It’s just—’ He paused and then asked, ‘What did it say? At least—’ he turned suddenly red and embarrassed—‘perhaps I oughtn’t to ask?’

‘I’ll tell you with pleasure,’ I said. ‘It just said that the fancy tart I’d brought down with me wasn’t my sister—not ’alf! And that, I may say, is a Bowdlerized version.’

His dark face flushed angrily.

‘How damnable! Your sister didn’t—she’s not upset, I hope?’

‘Joanna,’ I said, ‘looks a little like the angel off the top of the Christmas tree, but she’s eminently modern and quite tough. She found it highly entertaining. Such things haven’t come her way before.’

‘I should hope not, indeed,’ said Griffith warmly.

‘And anyway,’ I said firmly. ‘That’s the best way to take it, I think. As something utterly ridiculous.’

‘Yes,’ said Owen Griffith. ‘Only—’

He stopped, and I chimed in quickly: ‘Quite so,’ I said. ‘Only is the word!’

‘The trouble is,’ he said, ‘that this sort of thing, once it starts, grows.’

‘So I should imagine.’

‘It’s pathological, of course.’

I nodded. ‘Any idea who’s behind it?’ I asked.

‘No, I wish I had. You see, the anonymous letter pest arises from one of two causes. Either it’s particular—directed at one particular person or set of people, that is to say it’s motivated, it’s someone who’s got a definite grudge (or thinks they have) and who chooses a particularly nasty and underhand way of working it off. It’s mean and disgusting but it’s not necessarily crazy, and it’s usually fairly easy to trace the writer—a discharged servant, a jealous woman—and so on. But if it’s general, and not particular, then it’s more serious. The letters are sent indiscriminately and serve the purpose of working off some frustration in the writer’s mind. As I say, it’s definitely pathological. And the craze grows. In the end, of course, you track down the person in question—it’s often someone extremely unlikely, and that’s that. There was a bad outburst of the kind over the other side of the county last year—turned out to be the head of the millinery department in a big draper’s establishment. Quiet, refined woman—had been there for years. I remember something of the same kind in my last practice up north—but that turned out to be purely personal spite. Still, as I say, I’ve seen something of this kind of thing, and, quite frankly, it frightens me!’

‘Has it been going on long?’ I asked.

‘I don’t think so. Hard to say, of course, because people who get these letters don’t go round advertising the fact. They put them in the fire.’

He paused.

‘I’ve had one myself. Symmington, the solicitor, he’s had one. And one or two of my poorer patients have told me about them.’

‘All much the same sort of thing?’

‘Oh yes. A definite harping on the sex theme. That’s always a feature.’ He grinned. ‘Symmington was accused of illicit relations with his lady clerk—poor old Miss Ginch, who’s forty at least, with pince-nez and teeth like a rabbit. Symmington took it straight to the police. My letters accused me of violating professional decorum with my lady patients, stressing the details. They’re all quite childish and absurd, but horribly venomous.’ His face changed, grew grave. ‘But all the same, I’m afraid. These things can be dangerous, you know.’

‘I suppose they can.’

‘You see,’ he said, ‘crude, childish spite though it is, sooner or later one of these letters will hit the mark. And then, God knows what may happen! I’m afraid, too, of the effect upon the slow, suspicious uneducated mind. If they see a thing written, they believe it’s true. All sorts of complications may arise.’

‘It was an illiterate sort of letter,’ I said thoughtfully, ‘written by somebody practically illiterate, I should say.’

‘Was it?’ said Owen, and went away.

Thinking it over afterwards, I found that ‘Was it?’ rather disturbing.

CHAPTER 2 (#ulink_3a381d34-8c77-53b4-88fa-e0b41cce9624)

I am not going to pretend that the arrival of our anonymous letter did not leave a nasty taste in the mouth. It did. At the same time, it soon passed out of my mind. I did not, you see, at that point, take it seriously. I think I remember saying to myself that these things probably happen fairly often in out-of-the-way villages. Some hysterical woman with a taste for dramatizing herself was probably at the bottom of it. Anyway, if the letters were as childish and silly as the one we had got, they couldn’t do much harm.

The next incident, if I may put it so, occurred about a week later, when Partridge, her lips set tightly together, informed me that Beatrice, the daily help, would not be coming today.

‘I gather, sir,’ said Partridge, ‘that the girl has been Upset.’

I was not very sure what Partridge was implying, but I diagnosed (wrongly) some stomachic trouble to which Partridge was too delicate to allude more directly. I said I was sorry and hoped she would soon be better.

‘The girl is perfectly well, sir,’ said Partridge. ‘She is Upset in her Feelings.’

‘Oh,’ I said rather doubtfully.

‘Owing,’ went on Partridge, ‘to a letter she has received. Making, I understand, Insinuations.’

The grimness of Partridge’s eye, coupled with the obvious capital I of Insinuations, made me apprehensive that the insinuations were concerned with me. Since I would hardly have recognized Beatrice by sight if I had met her in the town so unaware of her had I been—I felt a not unnatural annoyance. An invalid hobbling about on two sticks is hardly cast for the role of deceiver of village girls. I said irritably:

‘What nonsense!’

‘My very words, sir, to the girl’s mother,’ said Partridge. ‘“Goings On in this house,” I said to her, “there never have been and never will be while I am in charge. As to Beatrice,” I said, “girls are different nowadays, and as to Goings On elsewhere I can say nothing.” But the truth is, sir, that Beatrice’s friend from the garage as she walks out with got one of them nasty letters too, and he isn’t acting reasonable at all.’

‘I have never heard anything so preposterous in my life,’ I said angrily.

‘It’s my opinion, sir,’ said Partridge, ‘that we’re well rid of the girl. What I say is, she wouldn’t take on so if there wasn’t something she didn’t want found out. No smoke without fire, that’s what I say.’

I had no idea how horribly tired I was going to get of that particular phrase.

That morning, by way of adventure, I was to walk down to the village. (Joanna and I always called it the village, although technically we were incorrect, and Lymstock would have been annoyed to hear us.)

The sun was shining, the air was cool and crisp with the sweetness of spring in it. I assembled my sticks and started off, firmly refusing to permit Joanna to accompany me.

‘No,’ I said, ‘I will not have a guardian angel teetering along beside me and uttering encouraging chirrups. A man travels fastest who travels alone, remember. I have much business to transact. I shall go to Galbraith, Galbraith and Symmington, and sign that transfer of shares, I shall call in at the baker’s and complain about the currant loaf, and I shall return that book we borrowed. I have to go to the bank, too. Let me away, woman, the morning is all too short.’

It was arranged that Joanna should pick me up with the car and drive me back up the hill in time for lunch.

‘That ought to give you time to pass the time of day with everyone in Lymstock.’

‘I have no doubt,’ I said, ‘that I shall have seen anybody who is anybody by then.’

For morning in the High Street was a kind of rendezvous for shoppers, when news was exchanged.

I did not, after all, walk down to the town unaccompanied. I had gone about two hundred yards, when I heard a bicycle bell behind me, then a scrunching of brakes, and then Megan Hunter more or less fell off her machine at my feet.

‘Hallo,’ she said breathlessly as she rose and dusted herself off.

I rather liked Megan and always felt oddly sorry for her.