The Moving Finger - Agatha Christie [39]
“That anonymous letter must have shaken her up very badly,” said Joanna.
Miss Barton flushed. She said, with a tinge of reproof in her voice:
“Not a very nice thing to discuss, do you think, dear? I know there have been—er—letters, but we won’t talk about them. Nasty things. I think they are better just ignored.”
Well, Miss Barton might be able to ignore them, but for some people it wasn’t so easy. However I obediently changed the subject and we discussed Aimée Griffith.
“Wonderful, quite wonderful,” said Emily Barton. “Her energy and her organizing powers are really splendid. She’s so good with girls too. And she’s so practical and up-to-date in every way. She really runs this place. And absolutely devoted to her brother. It’s very nice to see such devotion between brother and sister.”
“Doesn’t he ever find her a little overwhelming?” asked Joanna.
Emily Barton stared at her in a startled fashion.
“She has sacrificed a great deal for his sake,” she said with a touch of reproachful dignity.
I saw a touch of Oh Yeay! in Joanna’s eye and hastened to divert the conversation to Mr. Pye.
Emily Barton was a little dubious about Mr. Pye.
All she could say was, repeated rather doubtfully, that he was very kind—yes, very kind. Very well off, too, and most generous. He had very strange visitors sometimes, but then, of course, he had travelled a lot.
We agreed that travel not only broadened the mind, but occasionally resulted in the forming of strange acquaintances.
“I have often wished, myself, to go on a cruise,” said Emily Barton wistfully. “One reads about them in the papers and they sound so attractive.”
“Why don’t you go?” asked Joanna.
This turning of a dream into a reality seemed to alarm Miss Emily. “Oh, no, no, that would be quite impossible.”
“But why? They’re fairly cheap.”
“Oh, it’s not only the expense. But I shouldn’t like to go alone. Travelling alone would look very peculiar, don’t you think?”
“No,” said Joanna.
Miss Emily looked at her doubtfully.
“And I don’t know how I would manage about my luggage—and going ashore at foreign ports—and all the different currencies—”
Innumerable pitfalls seemed to rise up before the little lady’s affrighted gaze, and Joanna hastened to calm her by a question about an approaching garden fête and sale of work. This led us quite naturally to Mrs. Dane Calthrop.
A faint spasm showed for a minute on Miss Barton’s face.
“You know, dear,” she said, “she is really a very odd woman. The things she says sometimes.”
I asked what things.
“Oh, I don’t know. Such very unexpected things. And the way she looks at you, as though you weren’t there but somebody else was—I’m expressing it badly but it is so hard to convey the impression I mean. And then she won’t—well, interfere at all. There are so many cases where a vicar’s wife could advise and—perhaps admonish. Pull people up, you know, and make them mend their ways. Because people would listen to her, I’m sure of that, they’re all quite in awe of her. But she insists on being aloof and faraway, and has such a curious habit of feeling sorry for the most unworthy people.”
“That’s interesting,” I said, exchanging a quick glance with Joanna.
“Still, she is a very well-bred woman. She was a Miss Farroway of Bellpath, very good family, but these old families sometimes are a little peculiar, I believe. But she is devoted to her husband who is a man of very fine intellect—wasted, I am sometimes afraid, in this country circle. A good man, and most sincere, but I always find his habit of quoting Latin a little confusing.”
“Hear, hear,” I said fervently.
“Jerry had an expensive public school education, so he doesn’t recognize Latin when he hears it,” said Joanna.
This led Miss Barton to a new topic.
“The schoolmistress here is a most unpleasant young woman,” she said. “Quite Red, I’m afraid.” She lowered her voice over the word “Red.”
Later, as we walked home up the hill, Joanna said to me:
“She’s