The Moving Finger - Agatha Christie [5]
“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.
Two
I
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