The Moving Finger - Agatha Christie [69]
“The lady would seem to have had a penchant for that particular hiding place,” I said.
“Yes. The criminal mind seldom has much variety. By the way, talking of the dead girl, we’ve got one fact to go upon. There’s a large heavy pestle missing from the doctor’s dispensary. I’ll bet anything you like that’s what she was stunned with.”
“Rather an awkward thing to carry about,” I objected.
“Not for Miss Griffith. She was going to the Guides that afternoon, but she was going to leave flowers and vegetables at the Red Cross stall on the way, so she’d got a whopping great basket with her.”
“You haven’t found the skewer?”
“No, and I shan’t. The poor devil may be mad, but she wasn’t mad enough to keep a bloodstained skewer just to make it easy for us, when all she’d got to do was to wash it and return it to a kitchen drawer.”
“I suppose,” I conceded, “that you can’t have everything.”
The vicarage had been one of the last places to hear the news. Old Miss Marple was very much distressed by it. She spoke to me very earnestly on the subject.
“It isn’t true, Mr. Burton. I’m sure it isn’t true.”
“It’s true enough, I’m afraid. They were lying in wait, you know. They actually saw her type that letter.”
“Yes, yes—perhaps they did. Yes, I can understand that.”
“And the printed pages from which the letters were cut were found where she’d hidden them in her house.”
Miss Marple stared at me. Then she said, in a very low voice: “But that is horrible—really wicked.”
Mrs. Dane Calthrop came up with a rush and joined us and said: “What’s the matter, Jane?” Miss Marple was murmuring helplessly:
“Oh dear, oh dear, what can one do?”
“What’s upset you, Jane?”
Miss Marple said: “There must be something. But I am so old and so ignorant, and I am afraid, so foolish.”
I felt rather embarrassed and was glad when Mrs. Dane Calthrop took her friend away.
I was to see Miss Marple again that afternoon, however. Much later when I was on my way home.
She was standing near the little bridge at the end of the village, near Mrs. Cleat’s cottage, and talking to Megan of all people.
I wanted to see Megan. I had been wanting to see her all day. I quickened my pace. But as I came up to them, Megan turned on her heel and went off in the other direction.
It made me angry and I would have followed her, but Miss Marple blocked my way.
She said: “I wanted to speak to you. No, don’t go after Megan now. It wouldn’t be wise.”
I was just going to make a sharp rejoinder when she disarmed me by saying:
“That girl has great courage—a very high order of courage.”
I still wanted to go after Megan, but Miss Marple said:
“Don’t try and see her now. I do know what I am talking about. She must keep her courage intact.”
There was something about the old lady’s assertion that chilled me. It was as though she knew something that I didn’t.
I was afraid and didn’t know why I was afraid.
I didn’t go home. I went back into the High Street and walked up and down aimlessly. I don’t know what I was waiting for, nor what I was thinking about….
I got caught by that awful old bore Colonel Appleton. He asked after my pretty sister as usual and then went on:
“What’s all this about Griffith’s sister being mad as a hatter? They say she’s been at the bottom of this anonymous letter business that’s been such a confounded nuisance to everybody? Couldn’t believe it at first, but they say it’s quite true.”
I said it was true enough.
“Well, well—I must say our police force is pretty good on the whole. Give ’em time, that’s all, give ’em time. Funny business this anonymous letter stunt—these desiccated old maids are always the ones who go in for it—though the Griffith woman wasn’t bad looking even if she was a bit long in the tooth. But there aren’t any decent-looking girls in this part of the world—except that governess girl of the Symmingtons.