The Moving Finger - Agatha Christie [68]
“I never posted this.”
“No, you did not. Whilst waiting for stamps, you dropped it inconspicuously on the floor, so that somebody should come along unsuspectingly and pick it up and post it.”
“I never—”
The door opened and Symmington came in. He said sharply: “What’s going on? Aimée, if there is anything wrong, you ought to be legally represented. If you wish me—”
She broke then. Covered her face with her hands and staggered to a chair. She said:
“Go away, Dick, go away. Not you! Not you!”
“You need a solicitor, my dear girl.”
“Not you. I—I—couldn’t bear it. I don’t want you to know—all this.”
He understood then, perhaps. He said quietly:
“I’ll get hold of Mildmay, of Exhampton. Will that do?”
She nodded. She was sobbing now.
Symmington went out of the room. In the doorway he collided with Owen Griffith.
“What’s this?” said Owen violently. “My sister—”
“I’m sorry, Dr. Griffith. Very sorry. But we have no alternative.”
“You think she—was responsible for those letters?”
“I’m afraid there is no doubt of it, sir,” said Nash—he turned to Aimée, “You must come with us now, please, Miss Griffith—you shall have every facility for seeing a solicitor, you know.”
Owen cried: “Aimée?”
She brushed past him without looking at him.
She said: “Don’t talk to me. Don’t say anything. And for God’s sake don’t look at me!”
They went out. Owen stood like a man in a trance.
I waited a bit, then I came up to him. “If there’s anything I can do, Griffith, tell me.”
He said like a man in a dream:
“Aimée? I don’t believe it.”
“It may be a mistake,” I suggested feebly.
He said slowly: “She wouldn’t take it like that if it were. But I would never have believed it. I can’t believe it.”
He sank down on a chair. I made myself useful by finding a stiff drink and bringing it to him. He swallowed it down and it seemed to do him good.
He said: “I couldn’t take it in at first. I’m all right now. Thanks, Burton, but there’s nothing you can do. Nothing anyone can do.”
The door opened and Joanna came in. She was very white.
She came over to Owen and looked at me.
She said: “Get out, Jerry. This is my business.”
As I went out of the door, I saw her kneel down by his chair.
III
I can’t tell you coherently the events of the next twenty-four hours. Various incidents stand out, unrelated to other incidents.
I remember Joanna coming home, very white and drawn, and of how I tried to cheer her up, saying:
“Now who’s being a ministering angel?”
And of how she smiled in a pitiful twisted way and said:
“He says he won’t have me, Jerry. He’s very, very proud and stiff!”
And I said: “My girl won’t have me, either….”
We sat there for a while, Joanna saying at last:
“The Burton family isn’t exactly in demand at the moment!”
I said, “Never mind, my sweet, we still have each other,” and Joanna said, “Somehow or other, Jerry, that doesn’t comfort me much just now….”
IV
Owen came the next day and rhapsodied in the most fulsome way about Joanna. She was wonderful, marvellous! The way she’d come to him, the way she was willing to marry him—at once if he liked. But he wasn’t going to let her do that. No, she was too good, too fine to be associated with the kind of muck that would start as soon as the papers got hold of the news.
I was fond of Joanna, and knew she was the kind who’s all right when standing by in trouble, but I got rather bored with all this highfalutin” stuff. I told Owen rather irritably not to be so damned noble.
I went down to the High Street and found everybody’s tongues wagging nineteen to the dozen. Emily Barton was saying that she had never really trusted Aimée Griffith. The grocer’s wife was saying with gusto that she’d always thought Miss Griffith had a queer look in her eye—
They had completed the case against Aimée, so I learnt from Nash. A search of the house had brought to light the cut pages of Emily Barton’s book—in the cupboard under the stairs, of all places, wrapped up in an old roll of wallpaper.
“And a jolly good place