The Moving Finger - Agatha Christie [21]
Aimée Griffith went into the International Stores.
Mrs. Dane Calthrop said: “Poor thing.”
I was puzzled. Surely she could not be pitying Aimée?
She went on, however:
“You know, Mr. Burton, I’m rather afraid—”
“About this letter business?”
“Yes, you see it means—it must mean—” She paused lost in thought, her eyes screwed up. Then she said slowly, as one who solves a problem, “Blind hatred…yes, blind hatred. But even a blind man might stab to the heart by pure chance… And what would happen then, Mr. Burton?”
We were to know that before another day had passed.
II
It was Partridge who brought the news of the tragedy. Partridge enjoys calamity. Her nose always twitches ecstatically when she has to break bad news of any kind.
She came into Joanna’s room with her nose working overtime, her eyes bright, and her mouth pulled down into an exaggerated gloom. “There’s terrible news, this morning, miss,” she observed as she drew up the blinds.
It takes a minute or two for Joanna, with her London habits, to become fully conscious in the morning. She said, “Er ah,” and rolled over without real interest.
Partridge placed her early tea beside her and began again. “Terrible it is. Shocking! I couldn’t hardly believe it when I heard.”
“What’s terrible?” said Joanna, struggling into wakefulness.
“Poor Mrs. Symmington.” She paused dramatically. “Dead.”
“Dead?” Joanna sat up in bed, now wide awake.
“Yes, miss, yesterday afternoon, and what’s worse, took her own life.”
“Oh no, Partridge?”
Joanna was really shocked—Mrs. Symmington was not, somehow, the sort of person you associated with tragedies.
“Yes, miss, it’s the truth. Did it deliberate. Not but what she was drove to it, poor soul.”
“Drove to it?” Joanna had an inkling of the truth then. “Not—?”
Her eyes questioned Partridge and Partridge nodded.
“That’s right, miss. One of them nasty letters!”
“What did it say?”
But that, to Partridge’s regret, she had not succeeded in learning.
“They’re beastly things,” said Joanna. “But I don’t see why they should make one want to kill oneself.”
Partridge sniffed and then said with meaning:
“Not unless they were true, miss.”
“Oh,” said Joanna.
She drank her tea after Partridge had left the room, then she threw on a dressing-gown and came in to me to tell me the news.
I thought of what Owen Griffith had said. Sooner or later the shot in the dark went home. It had done with Mrs. Symmington. She, apparently the most unlikely of women, had had a secret… It was true, I reflected, that for all her shrewdness she was not a woman of much stamina. She was the anaemic clinging type that crumples easily.
Joanna nudged me and asked me what I was thinking about.
I repeated to her what Owen had said.
“Of course,” said Joanna waspishly, “he would know all about it. That man thinks he knows everything.”
“He’s clever,” I said.
“He’s conceited,” said Joanna. She added, “Abominably conceited!”
After a minute or two she said:
“How awful for her husband—and for the girl. What do you think Megan will feel about it?”
I hadn’t the slightest idea and said so. It was curious that one could never gauge what Megan would think or feel.
Joanna nodded and said:
“No, one never does know with changelings.”
After a minute or two she said:
“Do you think—would you like—I wonder if she’d like to come and stay with us for a day or two? It’s rather a shock for a girl that age.”
“We might go along and suggest it,” I agreed.
“The children are all right,” said Joanna. “They’ve got that governess woman. But I expect she’s just the sort of creature that would drive someone like Megan mad.”
I thought that was very possible. I could imagine Elsie Holland uttering platitude after platitude and suggesting innumerable cups of tea. A kindly creature, but not, I thought, the person for a sensitive girl.
I had thought myself of bringing Megan away, and I was glad that Joanna had thought of it spontaneously without prompting from me.
We went down to the Symmingtons’ house after breakfast.
We were a little nervous, both of us. Our arrival might