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 obvious.
Joanna and I came down rather late to breakfast the next morning. That is to say, late by the standards of Lymstock. It was nine-thirty, an hour at which, in London, Joanna was just unclosing an eyelid, and mine would probably be still tight shut.
However when Partridge had said, 'Breakfast at half past eight, or nine o'clock?' neither Joanna nor I had had the nerve to suggest a later hour.
To my annoyance, Aimee Griffith was standing on the doorstep talking to Megan.
She gave tongue with her usual heartiness at the sight of us:
'Hullo, there, slackers! I've been up for hours.'
That, of course, was her own business. A doctor, no doubt, has to have early breakfast, and a dutiful sister is there to pour out his tea or coffee. But it is no excuse for coming and butting in on one's more somnolent neighbours. Nine-thirty is not the time for a morning call.
Megan slipped back into the house and into the dining room, where I gathered she had been interrupted in her breakfast.
'I said I wouldn't come in,' said Aimee Griffith – 'though why it is more of a merit to force people to come and speak to you on the doorstep, than to talk to them inside the house I do not know. Just wanted to ask Miss Burton if she'd any vegetables to spare for our Red Cross stall on the main road. If so, I'd get Owen to call for them in the car.'
'You're out and about very early,' I said.
'The early bird catches the worm,' said Aimee. 'You have a better chance of finding people in this time of day. I'm off to Mr. Pye's next. Got to go over to Brenton this afternoon. Guides.'
'Your energy makes me quite tired,' I said, and at that moment the telephone rang and I retired to the back of the hall to answer it, leaving Joanna murmuring rather doubtfully something about rhubarb and French beans and exposing her ignorance of the vegetable garden.
'Yes?' I said into the telephone mouthpiece.
A confused noise of deep breathing came from the other end of the wire and a doubtful female voice said, 'Oh!'
'Yes?' I said again encouragingly.
'Oh,' said the voice again, and then it inquired adenoidally, 'Is that- what I mean – is that Little Furze?'
'This is Little Furze.'
'Oh!' This clearly a stock beginning to every sentence.
The voice inquired cautiously: 'Could I speak to Miss Partridge just a minute?'
'Certainly,' I said. 'Who shall I say is calling?'
'Oh. Tell her it's Agnes, would you? Agnes Waddle.'
'Agnes Waddle?'
'That's right.'
Resisting the temptation to say 'Donald Duck to you,' I put down the telephone receiver and called up the stairs to where I could hear the sound of Partridge's activities overhead.
'Partridge! Partridge!'
Partridge appeared at the head of the stairs, a long mop in one hand, and a look of 'What is it now?' clearly discernible behind her invariably respectful manner.
'Yes, sir?'
'Agnes Waddle wants to speak to you on the telephone.'
'I beg your pardon, sir?'
I raised my voice: 'Agnes Waddle.'
I have spelled the name as it presented itself to my mind. But I will now spell it as it was actually written:
'Agnes Woddell – whatever can she want now?'
Very much put out of countenance Partridge relinquished her mop and rustled down the stairs, her print dress crackling with agitation.
I beat an unobtrusive retreat into the dining room where Megan was wolfing down kidneys and bacon. Megan, unlike Aimee Griffith, was displaying no 'glorious morning face'. In fact she replied very gruffly to my morning salutations and continued to eat in silence.
I opened the morning paper and a minute or two later Joanna entered, looking somewhat shattered.
'Whew!' she said. 'I'm so tired. And I think I've exposed my utter ignorance of what grows when. Aren't there runner beans this time of year?'
'August,' said Megan.
'Well, one has them any time in London,' said Joanna defensively.
'Tins, sweet fool,' I said. 'And cold storage on ships from the far-flung limits of Empire.'
'Like ivory, apes and peacocks?' asked Joanna.
'Exactly.'
'I'd rather have peacocks,' said Joanna thoughtfully.
'I'd like a monkey of my own as a pet,' said Megan.
Meditatively peeling an orange, Joanna said: 'I wonder what it would feel like to be Aimee Griffith, all bursting with health and vigour and enjoyment of life. Do you think she's ever tired, or depressed, or – or wistful?'
I said I was quite certain Aimee Griffith was never wistful, and followed Megan out of the open French window onto the veranda.
Standing there, filling my pipe, I heard Partridge enter the dining room from the hall and heard her voice say grimly,
'Can I speak to you a minute, Miss?'
'Dear me,' I thought. 'I hope Partridge isn't going to give notice. Emily Barton would be very annoyed with us if so.'
Partridge went on: 'I must apologise, Miss, for being rung up on the telephone. That is to say, the young person who did so should have known better. I have never been in the habit of using the telephone or of permitting my friends to ring me up on it, and I'm very sorry indeed that it should have occurred, and the master taking the call and everything.'
'Why, that's quite all right, Partridge,' said Joanna soothingly, 'why shouldn't your friends use the phone if they want to speak to you?'
Partridge's face, I could feel, though I could not see it, was more dour than ever as she replied coldly:
