The Moving Finger - Agatha Christie [19]
It was a childish, oddly pathetic rage.
I heard a step on the gravel round the corner of the house.
“Get up,” I said savagely. “Go into the house through the drawing room. Go up to the first floor to the bathroom. End of the passage. Wash your face. Quick.”
She sprang awkwardly to her feet and darted through the window as Joanna came round the corner of the house.
“Gosh, I’m hot,” she called out. She sat down beside me and fanned her face with the Tyrolean scarf that had been round her head. “Still I think I’m educating these damned brogues now. I’ve walked miles. I’ve learnt one thing, you shouldn’t have these fancy holes in your brogues. The gorse prickles go through. Do you know, Jerry, I think we ought to have a dog?”
“So do I,” I said. “By the way, Megan is coming to lunch.”
“Is she? Good.”
“You like her?” I asked.
“I think she’s a changeling,” said Joanna. “Something left on a doorstep, you know, while the fairies take the right one away. It’s very interesting to meet a changeling. Oof, I must go up and wash.”
“You can’t yet,” I said, “Megan is washing.”
“Oh, she’s been footslogging too, has she?”
Joanna took out her mirror and looked at her face long and earnestly. “I don’t think I like this lipstick,” she announced presently.
Megan came out through the window. She was composed, moderately clean, and showed no signs of the recent storm. She looked doubtfully at Joanna.
“Hallo,” said Joanna, still preoccupied by her face. “I’m so glad you’ve come to lunch. Good gracious, I’ve got a freckle on my nose. I must do something about it. Freckles are so earnest and Scottish.”
Partridge came out and said coldly that luncheon was served.
“Come on,” said Joanna, getting up. “I’m starving.”
She put her arm through Megan’s and they went into the house together.
Five
I
I see that there has been one omission in my story. So far I have made little or no mention of Mrs. Dane Calthrop, or indeed of the Rev. Caleb Dane Calthrop.
And yet both the vicar and his wife were distinct personalities. Dane Calthrop himself was perhaps a being more remote from everyday life than anyone I have ever met. His existence was in his books and in his study, and in his intimate knowledge of early Church history. Mrs. Dane Calthrop, on the other hand, was quite terrifyingly on the spot. I have perhaps purposely put off mentioning her, because I was from the first a little afraid of her. She was a woman of character and of almost Olympian knowledge. She was not in the least the typical vicar’s wife—but that, as I set it down, makes me ask myself, what do I know of vicars’ wives?
The only one I remember well was a quiet nondescript creature, devoted to a big strong husband with a magnetic way of preaching. She had so little general conversation that it was a puzzle to know how to sustain a conversation with her.
Otherwise I was depending on the fictional presentment of vicars’ wives, caricatures of females poking their noses everywhere, and uttering platitudes. Probably no such type exists.
Mrs. Dane Calthrop never poked her nose in anywhere, yet she had an uncanny power of knowing things and I soon discovered that almost everyone in the village was slightly afraid of her. She gave no advice and never interfered, yet she represented, to any uneasy conscience, the Deity personified.
I have never seen a woman more indifferent to her material surroundings. On hot days she would stride about clad in Harris tweed, and in rain or even sleet, I have seen her absentmindedly race down the village street in a cotton dress of printed poppies. She had a long thin well-bred face like a greyhound, and a most devastating sincerity of speech.
She stopped me in the High Street the day after Megan had come to lunch. I had the usual feeling of surprise, because Mrs. Dane Calthrop’s progress