The Moving Finger (18 page)

I understood.

I

M
orning in the High Street.

Miss Emily Barton comes out of the grocer's with her shopping bag. Her cheeks are pink and her eyes are excited.

“Oh, dear, Mr. Burton, I really am in such a flutter. To think I really am going on a cruise at last!”

“I hope you'll enjoy it.”

“Oh, I'm sure I shall. I should never have dared to go by myself. It does seem so
providential
the way everything has turned out. For a long time I've felt that I ought to part with Little Furze, that my means were really
too
straitened but I couldn't bear the idea of
strangers
there. But now that you have bought it and are going to live there with Megan—it is quite different. And then dear Aimée, after her terrible ordeal, not quite knowing what to do with herself, and her brother getting married (how nice to think you have
both
settled down with us!) and agreeing to come with me. We mean to be away quite a long time. We might even”—Miss Emily dropped
her voice—“
go round the world!
And Aimée is so splendid and so practical. I really do think, don't you, that everything turns out for the
best?
”

Just for a fleeting moment I thought of Mrs. Symmington and Agnes Woddell in their graves in the churchyard and wondered if they would agree, and then I remembered that Agnes's boy hadn't been very fond of her and that Mrs. Symmington hadn't been very nice to Megan and, what the hell? we've all got to die some time! And I agreed with happy Miss Emily that everything was for the best in the best of possible worlds.

I went along the High Street and in at the Symmingtons' gate and Megan came out to meet me.

It was not a romantic meeting because an out-size Old English sheepdog came out with Megan and nearly knocked me over with his ill-timed exuberance.

“Isn't he
adorable?
” said Megan.

“A little overwhelming. Is he ours?”

“Yes, he's a wedding present from Joanna. We
have
had nice wedding presents, haven't we? That fluffy woolly thing that we don't know what it's for from Miss Marple, and the lovely Crown Derby tea set from Mr. Pye, and Elsie has sent me a toast-rack—”

“How typical,” I interjected.

“And she's got a post with a dentist and is very happy. And—where was I?”

“Enumerating wedding presents. Don't forget if you change your mind you'll have to send them all back.”

“I shan't change my mind. What else have we got? Oh, yes, Mrs. Dane Calthrop has sent an Egyptian scarab.”

“Original woman,” I said.

“Oh! Oh! but you don't know the best.
Partridge
has actually sent me a present. It's the most hideous teacloth you've ever seen. But I think she
must
like me now because she says she embroidered it all with her own hands.”

“In a design of sour grapes and thistles, I suppose?”

“No, true lovers' knots.”

“Dear, dear,” I said, “Partridge
is
coming on.”

Megan had dragged me into the house.

She said:

“There's just one thing I can't make out. Besides the dog's own collar and lead, Joanna has sent an extra collar and lead. What do you think that's for?”

“That,” I said, “is Joanna's little joke.”

Agatha Christie is the most widely published author of all time and in any language, outsold only by the Bible and Shakespeare. Her books have sold more than a billion copies in English and another billion in a hundred foreign languages. She is the author of eighty crime novels and short-story collections, nineteen plays, two memoirs, and six novels written under the name Mary Westmacott.

She first tried her hand at detective fiction while working in a hospital dispensary during World War I, creating the now legendary Hercule Poirot with her debut novel
The Mysterious Affair at Styles.
With
The Murder in the Vicarage,
published in 1930, she introduced another beloved sleuth, Miss Jane Marple. Additional series characters include the husband-and-wife crime-fighting team of Tommy and Tuppence Beresford, private investigator Parker Pyne, and Scotland Yard detectives Superintendent Battle and Inspector Japp.

Many of Christie's novels and short stories were adapted into plays, films, and television series.
The Mousetrap,
her most famous play of all, opened in 1952 and is the longest-running play in history. Among her best-known film adaptations are
Murder on the Orient Express
(1974) and
Death on the Nile
(1978), with Albert Finney and Peter Ustinov playing Hercule Poirot, respectively. On the small screen Poirot has been most memorably portrayed by David Suchet, and Miss Marple by Joan Hickson and subsequently Geraldine McEwan and Julia McKenzie.

Christie was first married to Archibald Christie and then to archaeologist Sir Max Mallowan, whom she accompanied on expeditions to countries that would also serve as the settings for many of her novels. In 1971 she achieved one of Britain's highest honors when she was made a Dame of the British Empire. She died in 1976 at the age of eighty-five. Her one hundred and twentieth anniversary was celebrated around the world in 2010.

www.AgathaChristie.com

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