The Moving Finger Read Free Page A

’alf! And that, I may say, is a Bowdlerized version.”
    His dark face flushed angrily.
    â€œHow damnable! Your sister didn’t—she’s not upset, I hope?”
    â€œJoanna,” I said, “looks a little like the angel off the top of the Christmas tree, but she’s eminently modern and quite tough. She found it highly entertaining. Such things haven’t come her way before.”
    â€œI should hope not, indeed,” said Griffith warmly.
    â€œAnd anyway,” I said firmly. “That’s the best way to take it, I think. As something utterly ridiculous.”
    â€œYes,” said Owen Griffith. “Only—”
    â€œQuite so,” I said. “Only is the word!”
    â€œThe trouble is,” he said, “that this sort of thing, once it starts, grows.”
    â€œSo I should imagine.”
    â€œIt’s pathological, of course.”
    I nodded. “Any idea who’s behind it?” I asked.
    â€œNo, I wish I had. You see, the anonymous letter pest arises from one of two causes. Either it’s particular —directed at one particular person or set of people, that is to say it’s motivated, it’s someone who’s got a definite grudge (or thinks they have) and who chooses a particularly nasty and underhand way of working it off. It’s mean and disgusting but it’s not necessarily crazy, and it’s usually fairly easy to trace the writer—a discharged servant, a jealous woman—and so on. But if it’s general, and not particular, then it’s more serious. The letters are sent indiscriminately and serve the purpose of working off some frustration in the writer’s mind. As I say, it’s definitely pathological. And the craze grows. In the end, of course, you track down the person in question—it’s often someone extremely unlikely, and that’s that. There was a bad outburst of the kind over the other side of the county last year—turned out to be the head of the millinery department in a big draper’s establishment. Quiet, refined woman—had been there for years. I remember something of the same kind in my last practice up north—but that turned out to be purely personal spite. Still, as I say, I’ve seen something of this kind of thing, and, quite frankly, it frightens me!”
    â€œHas it been going on long?” I asked.
    â€œI don’t think so. Hard to say, of course, because people who get these letters don’t go round advertising the fact. They put them in the fire.”
    He paused.
    â€œI’ve had one myself. Symmington, the solicitor, he’s had one. And one or two of my poorer patients have told me about them.”
    â€œAll much the same sort of thing?”
    â€œOh yes. A definite harping on the sex theme. That’s always a feature.” He grinned. “Symmington was accused of illicit relations with his lady clerk—poor old Miss Ginch, who’s forty at least, with pince-nez and teeth like a rabbit. Symmington took it straight to the police. My letters accused me of violating professional decorum with my lady patients, stressing the details. They’re all quite childish and absurd, but horribly venomous.” His face changed, grew grave. “But all the same, I’m afraid. These things can be dangerous, you know.”
    â€œI suppose they can.”
    â€œYou see,” he said, “crude, childish spite though it is, sooner or later one of these letters will hit the mark. And then, God knows what may happen! I’m afraid, too, of the effect upon the slow, suspicious uneducated mind. If they see a thing written, they believe it’s true. All sorts of complications may arise.”
    â€œIt was an illiterate sort of letter,” I said thoughtfully, “written by somebody practically illiterate, I should say.”
    â€œWas it?” said Owen, and went away.
    Thinking it over afterwards, I found that