The Moving Finger - Agatha Christie [54]
No, that wasn’t so likely. I had noticed that when, one day, a clerk from the bank had come to see me, Partridge had shown him into the little study at the back of the house. That was clearly the house routine.
A visitor, then? Someone “of good social position.” Mr. Pye? Aimée Griffith? Mrs. Dane Calthrop?
VII
The gong sounded and I went in to lunch. Afterwards, in the drawing room I showed Joanna my find.
We discussed it from every aspect. Then I took it down to the police station.
They were elated at the find, and I was patted on the back for what was, after all, the sheerest piece of luck.
Graves was not there, but Nash was, and rang up the other man. They would test the book for fingerprints, though Nash was not hopeful of finding anything. I may say that he did not. There were mine, Partridge’s and nobody else’s, merely showing that Partridge dusted conscientiously.
Nash walked back with me up the hill. I asked how he was getting on. “We’re narrowing it down, Mr. Burton. We’ve eliminated the people it couldn’t be.”
“Ah,” I said. “And who remains?”
“Miss Ginch. She was to meet a client at a house yesterday afternoon by appointment. The house was situated not far along the Combeacre Road, that’s the road that goes past the Symmingtons.’ She would have to pass the house both going and coming…the week before, the day the anonymous letter was delivered, and Mrs. Symmington committed suicide, was her last day at Symmington’s office. Mr. Symmington thought at first she had not left the office at all that afternoon. He had Sir Henry Lushington with him all the afternoon and rang several times for Miss Ginch. I find, however, that she did leave the office between three and four. She went out to get some high denomination of stamp of which they had run short. The office boy could have gone, but Miss Ginch elected to go, saying she had a headache and would like the air. She was not gone long.”
“But long enough?”
“Yes, long enough to hurry along to the other end of the village, slip the letter in the box and hurry back. I must say, however, that I cannot find anybody who saw her near the Symmingtons’ house.”
“Would they notice?”
“They might and they might not.”
“Who else is in your bag?”
Nash looked very straight ahead of him.
“You’ll understand that we can’t exclude anybody—anybody at all.”
“No,” I said. “I see that.”
He said gravely: “Miss Griffith went to Brenton for a meeting of Girl Guides yesterday. She arrived rather late.”
“You don’t think—”
“No, I don’t think. But I don’t know. Miss Griffith seems an eminently sane healthy-minded woman—but I say, I don’t know.”
“What about the previous week? Could she have slipped the letter in the box?”
“It’s possible. She was shopping in the town that afternoon.” He paused. “The same applies to Miss Emily Barton. She was out shopping early yesterday afternoon and she went for a walk to see some friends on the road past the Symmingtons’ house the week before.”
I shook my head unbelievingly. Finding the cut book in Little Furze was bound, I knew, to direct attention to the owner of that house, but when I remembered Miss Emily coming in yesterday so bright and happy and excited….
Damn it all—excited… Yes, excited—pink cheeks—shining eyes—surely not because—not because—
I said thickly: “This business is bad for one! One sees things—one imagines things—”
“Yes, it isn’t very pleasant to look upon the fellow creatures one meets as possible criminal lunatics.”
He paused for a moment, then went on:
“And there’s Mr. Pye—”
I said sharply: “So you have considered him?”
Nash smiled.
“Oh, yes, we’ve considered him all right. A very curious character—not, I should say, a very nice character. He’s got no alibi. He was in his garden, alone, on both occasions.”
“So you’re not only suspecting women?”
“I don’t think a man wrote the letters—in fact I’m sure of it