The Moving Finger - Agatha Christie [58]
Miss Marple said: “Oh! But the girl was killed with a skewer, so I hear—(very unpleasant!). Well, naturally, that takes all suspicion away from this Mrs. Cleat. Because, you see, she could ill-wish her, so that the girl would waste away and die from natural causes.”
“Strange how the old beliefs linger,” said the vicar. “In early Christian times, local superstitions were wisely incorporated with Christian doctrines and their more unpleasant attributes gradually eliminated.”
“It isn’t superstition we’ve got to deal with here,” said Mrs. Dane Calthrop, “but facts.”
“And very unpleasant facts,” I said.
“As you say, Mr. Burton,” said Miss Marple. “Now you—excuse me if I am being too personal—are a stranger here, and have a knowledge of the world and of various aspects of life. It seems to me that you ought to be able to find a solution to this distasteful problem.”
I smiled. “The best solution I have had was a dream. In my dream it all fitted in and panned out beautifully. Unfortunately when I woke up the whole thing was nonsense!”
“How interesting, though. Do tell me how the nonsense went!”
“Oh, it all started with the silly phrase ‘No smoke without fire.’ People have been saying that ad nauseam. And then I got it mixed up with war terms. Smoke screens, scrap of paper, telephone messages— No, that was another dream.”
“And what was that dream?”
The old lady was so eager about it, that I felt sure she was a secret reader of Napoleon’s Book of Dreams, which had been the great standby of my old nurse.
“Oh! only Elsie Holland—the Symmingtons’ nursery governess, you know, was getting married to Dr. Griffith and the vicar here was reading the service in Latin—(‘Very appropriate, dear,’ murmured Mrs. Dane Calthrop to her spouse) and then Mrs. Dane Calthrop got up and forbade the banns and said it had got to be stopped!
“But that part,” I added with a smile, “was true. I woke up and found you standing over me saying it.”
“And I was quite right,” said Mrs. Dane Calthrop—but quite mildly, I was glad to note.
“But where did a telephone message come in?” asked Miss Marple, crinkling her brows.
“I’m afraid I’m being rather stupid. That wasn’t in the dream. It was just before it. I came through the hall and noticed Joanna had written down a message to be given to someone if they rang up….”
Miss Marple leaned forward. There was a pink spot in each cheek. “Will you think me very inquisitive and very rude if I ask just what that message was?” She cast a glance at Joanna. “I do apologize, my dear.”
Joanna, however, was highly entertained.
“Oh, I don’t mind,” she assured the old lady. “I can’t remember anything about it myself, but perhaps Jerry can. It must have been something quite trivial.”
Solemnly I repeated the message as best I could remember it, enormously tickled at the old lady’s rapt attention.
I was afraid the actual words were going to disappoint her, but perhaps she had some sentimental idea of a romance, for she nodded her head and smiled and seemed pleased.
“I see,” she said. “I thought it might be something like that.”
Mrs. Dane Calthrop said sharply: “Like what, Jane?”
“Something quite ordinary,” said Miss Marple.
She looked at me thoughtfully for a moment or two, then she said unexpectedly:
“I can see you are a very clever young man—but not quite enough confidence in yourself. You ought to have!”
Joanna gave a loud hoot.
“For goodness’ sake don’t encourage him to feel like that. He thinks quite enough of himself as it is.”
“Be quiet, Joanna,” I said. “Miss Marple understands me.”
Miss Marple had resumed her fleecy knitting. “You know,” she observed pensively. “To commit a successful murder must be very much like bringing off a conjuring trick.”
“The quickness of the hand deceives the eye?”
“Not only that. You’ve got to make people look at the wrong thing and in the wrong place—Misdirection, they call it, I believe.”
“Well,” I remarked. “So far everybody seems to have looked in the wrong place for our lunatic at large.”
“I should be inclined, myself,” said Miss