The Moving Finger - Agatha Christie [50]
“Yes.”
“But Partridge never went out that afternoon.”
“We don’t know that. We were out ourselves, remember.”
“Yes, that’s true. It’s possible, I suppose.” Joanna turned it over in her mind. “But I don’t think so, all the same. I don’t think Partridge has the mentality to cover her tracks over the letters. To wipe off fingerprints, and all that. It isn’t only cunning you want—it’s knowledge. I don’t think she’s got that. I suppose—” Joanna hesitated, then said slowly, “they are sure it is a woman, aren’t they?”
“You don’t think it’s a man?” I exclaimed incredulously.
“Not—not an ordinary man—but a certain kind of man. I’m thinking, really, of Mr. Pye.”
“So Pye is your selection?”
“Don’t you feel yourself that he’s a possibility? He’s the sort of person who might be lonely—and unhappy—and spiteful. Everyone, you see, rather laughs at him. Can’t you see him secretly hating all the normal happy people, and taking a queer perverse artistic pleasure in what he was doing?”
“Graves said a middle-aged spinster.”
“Mr. Pye,” said Joanna, “is a middle-aged spinster.”
“A misfit,” I said slowly.
“Very much so. He’s rich, but money doesn’t help. And I do feel he might be unbalanced. He is, really, rather a frightening little man.”
“He got a letter himself, remember.”
“We don’t know that,” Joanna pointed out. “We only thought so. And anyway, he might have been putting on an act.”
“For our benefit?”
“Yes. He’s clever enough to think of that—and not to overdo it.”
“He must be a first-class actor.”
“But of course, Jerry, whoever is doing this must be a first-class actor. That’s partly where the pleasure comes in.”
“For God’s sake, Joanna, don’t speak so understandingly! You make me feel that you—that you understand the mentality.”
“I think I do. I can—just—get into the mood. If I weren’t Joanna Burton, if I weren’t young and reasonably attractive and able to have a good time, if I were—how shall I put it?—behind bars, watching other people enjoy life, would a black evil tide rise in me, making me want to hurt, to torture—even to destroy?”
“Joanna!” I took her by the shoulders and shook her. She gave a little sigh and shiver, and smiled at me.
“I frightened you, didn’t I, Jerry? But I have a feeling that that’s the right way to solve this problem. You’ve got to be the person, knowing how they feel and what makes them act, and then—and then perhaps you’ll know what they’re going to do next.”
“Oh, hell!” I said. “And I came down here to be a vegetable and get interested in all the dear little local scandals. Dear little local scandals! Libel, vilification, obscene language and murder!”
II
Joanna was quite right. The High Street was full of interested groups. I was determined to get everyone’s reactions in turn.
I met Griffith first. He looked terribly ill and tired. So much so that I wondered. Murder is not, certainly, all in the day’s work to a doctor, but his profession does equip him to face most things including suffering, the ugly side of human nature, and the fact of death.
“You look all in,” I said.
“Do I?” He was vague. “Oh! I’ve had some worrying cases lately.”
“Including our lunatic at large?”
“That, certainly.” He looked away from me across the street. I saw a fine nerve twitching in his eyelid.
“You’ve no suspicions as to—who?”
“No. No. I wish to God I had.”
He asked abruptly after Joanna, and said, hesitatingly, that he had some photographs she’d wanted to see.
I offered to take them to her.
“Oh, it doesn’t matter. I shall be passing that way actually later in the morning.”
I began to be afraid that Griffith had got it badly. Curse Joanna! Griffith was too good a man to be dangled as a scalp.
I let him go, for I saw his sister coming and I wanted, for once, to talk to her.
Aimée Griffith began, as it were, in the middle of a conversation.
“Absolutely shocking!” she boomed. “I hear you were there—quite early?”
There was a question in the words, and her eyes glinted as she stressed the word “early.” I wasn’t going to tell her that Megan had rung me up. I said instead:
“You see, I was