Read Online The Moving Finger by Agatha Christie - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Agatha Christie
Ads: Link
it?” said Joanna drily.
Mrs. Dane Calthrop turned to her.
“Oh, I think so, dear. If suicide is your idea of escape from trouble then it doesn't very much matter what the trouble is. Whenever some very unpleasant shock had to be faced, she'd have done the same thing. What it really comes down to is that she was that kind of woman. Not that one would have guessed it. She always seemed to me a selfish rather stupid woman, with a good firm hold on life. Not the kind to panic, you would think - but I'm beginning to realize how little I really know about anyone.”
“I'm still curious as to whom you meant when you said 'Poor thing,'” I remarked.
She stared at me.
“The woman who wrote the letters, of course.”
“I don't think,” I said drily, “I shall waste sympathy on her.”
Mrs. Dane Calthrop leaned forward. She laid a hand on my knee.
“But don't you realise, can't you feel? Use your imagination. Think how desperately, violently unhappy anyone must be to sit down and write these things. How lonely, how cut off from humankind. Poisoned through and through, with a dark stream of poison that finds its outlet in this way. That's why I feel so self-reproachful. Somebody in this town has been racked with that terrible unhappiness, and I've had no idea of it. I should have had. You can't interfere with actions - I never do. But that black inward unhappiness - like a septic arm physically, all black and swollen. If you could cut it and let the poison out it would flow away harmlessly. Yes, poor soul, poor soul.”
She got up to go.
I did not feel like agreeing with her. I had no sympathy for our anonymous letter writer whatsoever. But I did ask curiously:
“Have you any idea at all, Mrs. Calthrop, who this woman is?”
She turned her fine perplexed eyes on me. “Well, I can guess,” she said. “But then I might be wrong, mightn't I?”
She went swiftly out through the door, popping her head back to ask: “Do tell me, why have you never married, Mr. Burton?”
In anyone else it would have been impertinence, but with Mrs. Dane Calthrop you felt that the idea had suddenly come into her head and she had really wanted to know.
“Shall we say,” I said, rallying, “that I have never met the right woman?”
“We can say so,” said Mrs. Dane Calthrop, “but it wouldn't be a very good answer, because so many men have obviously married the wrong woman.”
This time she really departed.
Joanna said, “You know I really do think she's mad. But I like her. The people in the village here are afraid of her.”
“So am I, a little.”
“Because you never know what's coming next?”
“Yes. And there's a careless brilliancy about her guesses.”
Joanna said slowly, “Do you really think whoever wrote these letters is very unhappy?”
“I don't know what the damned hag is thinking or feeling! And I don't care. It's her victims I'm sorry for.”
It seems odd to me now that in our speculations about Poison Pen's frame of mind we missed the most obvious one. Griffith had pictured her as possibly exultant. I had envisaged her as remorseful - appalled by the result of her handiwork. Mrs. Dane Calthrop had seen her as suffering.
Yet the obvious, the inevitable reaction we did not consider - or perhaps I should say, I did not consider. That reaction was Fear.
For with the death of Mrs. Symmington, the letters had passed out of one category into another. I don't know what the legal position was - Symmington knew, I suppose, but it was clear that with a death resulting, the position of the writer of the letters was much more serious. There could now be no question of passing it off as a joke if the identity of the writer was discovered. The police were active, a Scotland Yard expert was called in. It was vital now for the anonymous author to remain anonymous.
And granted that Fear was the principal reaction, other things followed. Those possibilities also I was blind to. Yet surely they should have been
Mrs. Dane Calthrop turned to her.
“Oh, I think so, dear. If suicide is your idea of escape from trouble then it doesn't very much matter what the trouble is. Whenever some very unpleasant shock had to be faced, she'd have done the same thing. What it really comes down to is that she was that kind of woman. Not that one would have guessed it. She always seemed to me a selfish rather stupid woman, with a good firm hold on life. Not the kind to panic, you would think - but I'm beginning to realize how little I really know about anyone.”
“I'm still curious as to whom you meant when you said 'Poor thing,'” I remarked.
She stared at me.
“The woman who wrote the letters, of course.”
“I don't think,” I said drily, “I shall waste sympathy on her.”
Mrs. Dane Calthrop leaned forward. She laid a hand on my knee.
“But don't you realise, can't you feel? Use your imagination. Think how desperately, violently unhappy anyone must be to sit down and write these things. How lonely, how cut off from humankind. Poisoned through and through, with a dark stream of poison that finds its outlet in this way. That's why I feel so self-reproachful. Somebody in this town has been racked with that terrible unhappiness, and I've had no idea of it. I should have had. You can't interfere with actions - I never do. But that black inward unhappiness - like a septic arm physically, all black and swollen. If you could cut it and let the poison out it would flow away harmlessly. Yes, poor soul, poor soul.”
She got up to go.
I did not feel like agreeing with her. I had no sympathy for our anonymous letter writer whatsoever. But I did ask curiously:
“Have you any idea at all, Mrs. Calthrop, who this woman is?”
She turned her fine perplexed eyes on me. “Well, I can guess,” she said. “But then I might be wrong, mightn't I?”
She went swiftly out through the door, popping her head back to ask: “Do tell me, why have you never married, Mr. Burton?”
In anyone else it would have been impertinence, but with Mrs. Dane Calthrop you felt that the idea had suddenly come into her head and she had really wanted to know.
“Shall we say,” I said, rallying, “that I have never met the right woman?”
“We can say so,” said Mrs. Dane Calthrop, “but it wouldn't be a very good answer, because so many men have obviously married the wrong woman.”
This time she really departed.
Joanna said, “You know I really do think she's mad. But I like her. The people in the village here are afraid of her.”
“So am I, a little.”
“Because you never know what's coming next?”
“Yes. And there's a careless brilliancy about her guesses.”
Joanna said slowly, “Do you really think whoever wrote these letters is very unhappy?”
“I don't know what the damned hag is thinking or feeling! And I don't care. It's her victims I'm sorry for.”
It seems odd to me now that in our speculations about Poison Pen's frame of mind we missed the most obvious one. Griffith had pictured her as possibly exultant. I had envisaged her as remorseful - appalled by the result of her handiwork. Mrs. Dane Calthrop had seen her as suffering.
Yet the obvious, the inevitable reaction we did not consider - or perhaps I should say, I did not consider. That reaction was Fear.
For with the death of Mrs. Symmington, the letters had passed out of one category into another. I don't know what the legal position was - Symmington knew, I suppose, but it was clear that with a death resulting, the position of the writer of the letters was much more serious. There could now be no question of passing it off as a joke if the identity of the writer was discovered. The police were active, a Scotland Yard expert was called in. It was vital now for the anonymous author to remain anonymous.
And granted that Fear was the principal reaction, other things followed. Those possibilities also I was blind to. Yet surely they should have been
Similar Books
