The Moving Finger - Agatha Christie [57]
So poor little Agnes Woddell, having had her hour of limelight, was duly buried in the quiet old churchyard and life in Lymstock went on as before.
No, that last statement is untrue. Not as before….
There was a half-scared, half-avid gleam in almost everybody’s eye. Neighbour looked at neighbour. One thing had been brought out clearly at the inquest—it was most unlikely that any stranger had killed Agnes Woddell. No tramps nor unknown men had been noticed or reported in the district. Somewhere, then, in Lymstock, walking down the High Street, shopping, passing the time of day, was a person who had cracked a defenceless girl’s skull and driven a sharp skewer home to her brain.
And no one knew who that person was.
As I say, the days went by in a kind of dream. I looked at everyone I met in a new light, the light of a possible murderer. It was not an agreeable sensation!
And in the evenings, with the curtain drawn, Joanna and I sat talking, talking, arguing, going over in turn all the various possibilities that still seemed so fantastic and incredible.
Joanna held firm to her theory of Mr. Pye. I, after wavering a little, had gone back to my original suspect, Miss Ginch. But we went over the possible names again and again.
Mr. Pye?
Miss Ginch?
Mrs. Dane Calthrop?
Aimée Griffith?
Emily Barton?
Partridge?
And all the time, nervously, apprehensively, we waited for something to happen.
But nothing did happen. Nobody, so far as we knew, received anymore letters. Nash made periodic appearances in the town but what he was doing and what traps the police were setting, I had no idea. Graves had gone again.
Emily Barton came to tea. Megan came to lunch. Owen Griffith went about his practice. We went and drank sherry with Mr. Pye. And we went to tea at the vicarage.
I was glad to find Mrs. Dane Calthrop displayed none of the militant ferocity she had shown on the occasion of our last meeting. I think she had forgotten all about it.
She seemed now principally concerned with the destruction of white butterflies so as to preserve cauliflower and cabbage plants.
Our afternoon at the vicarage was really one of the most peaceful we had spent. It was an attractive old house and had a big shabby comfortable drawing room with faded rose cretonne. The Dane Calthrops had a guest staying with them, an amiable elderly lady who was knitting something with white fleecy wool. We had very good hot scones for tea, the vicar came in, and beamed placidly on us whilst he pursued his gentle erudite conversation. It was very pleasant.
I don’t mean that we got away from the topic of the murder, because we didn’t.
Miss Marple, the guest, was naturally thrilled by the subject. As she said apologetically: “We have so little to talk about in the country!” She had made-up her mind that the dead girl must have been just like her Edith.
“Such a nice little maid, and so willing, but sometimes just a little slow to take in things.”
Miss Marple also had a cousin whose niece’s sister-in-law had had a great deal of annoyance and trouble over some anonymous letters, so the letters, also, were very interesting to the charming old lady.
“But tell me, dear,” she said to Mrs. Dane Calthrop, “what do the village people—I mean the townspeople—say? What do they think?”
“Mrs. Cleat still, I suppose,” said Joanna.
“Oh no,” said Mrs. Dane Calthrop. “Not now.”
Miss Marple asked who Mrs. Cleat was.
Joanna said she was the village witch.
“That’s right, isn’t it, Mrs. Dane Calthrop?”
The vicar murmured a long Latin quotation about, I think, the evil power of witches, to which we all listened in respectful and uncomprehending silence.
“She’s a very silly woman,” said his wife. “Likes to show off. Goes out to gather herbs and things at the full of the moon and takes care that everybody in the place knows about it.”
“And silly girls go and consult her, I suppose?” said Miss Marple.
I saw the vicar getting ready to unload more Latin on us and I asked hastily: “But why shouldn’t people suspect her of the murder now? They