Free The Moving Finger by Agatha Christie Page A

souffle, and you never order a nice bread pudding.”
    “Ugh!” said Joanna. She went on sadly: “I'm a failure all around today. Despised by our Aimйe for ignorance of the vegetable kingdom. Snubbed by Partridge for being a human being. I shall now go out into the garden and eat worms.”
    “Megan's there already,” I said.
    For Megan had wandered away a few minutes previously and was now standing aimlessly in the middle of a patch of lawn looking not unlike a meditative bird waiting for nourishment.
    She came back, however, toward us and said abruptly, “I say, I must go home today.”
    “What?” I was dismayed.
    She went on, flushing, but speaking with nervous determination:
    “It's been awfully good of you having me and I expect I've been a fearful nuisance, but I have enjoyed it awfully, only now I must go back, because after all, well, it's my home and one can't stay away forever, so I think I'll go this morning.”
    Both Joanna and I tried to make her change her mind, but she was quite adamant, and finally Joanna got out the car and Megan went upstairs and came down a few minutes later with her belongings packed up again.
    The only person pleased seemed to be Partridge, who had almost a smile on her grim face. She had never liked Megan much.
    I was standing in the middle of the lawn when Joanna returned. She asked me if I thought I was a sundial.
    “Why?”
    “Standing there like a garden ornament. Only one couldn't put on you the motto of only marking the sunny hours. You looked like thunder!”
    “I'm out of humour. First Aimйe Griffith ” - “Gracious!” murmured Joanna in parentheses, “I must speak about those vegetables” - “and then Megan beetling off. I'd thought of taking her for a walk up to Legge Tor.”
    “With a collar and lead, I suppose,” said Joanna.
    “What?”
    Joanna repeated loudly and clearly as she moved off around the corner of the house to the kitchen garden:
    “I said 'With a collar and lead, I suppose?' Master's lost his dog, that's what's the matter with you!”

The Moving Finger

Chapter 4
    I was annoyed, I must confess, at the abrupt way in which Megan had left us. Perhaps she had suddenly got bored with us.
    After all, it wasn't a very amusing life for a girl. At home she had the kids and Elsie Holland.
    I heard Joanna returning and hastily moved in case she should make more rude remarks about sundials.
    Owen Griffith called in his car just before lunchtime, and the gardener was waiting for him with the necessary garden produce.
    While Old Adams was stowing it in the car I brought Owen indoors for a drink. He wouldn't stay to lunch.
    When I came in with the sherry I found Joanna had begun doing her stuff. No signs of animosity now. She was curled up in the corner of the sofa and was positively purring, asking Owen questions about his work, if he liked being a G.P., if he wouldn't rather have specialized? She thought doctoring is one of the most fascinating things in the world.
    Say what you will of her, Joanna is a creature capable of listening attentively to anyone. After hearing the outpourings of so many young misunderstood geniuses telling her how they had been unapreciated all their lives, Owen Griffith was easy money. By the time we got to the third glass of sherry, Griffith was telling her about an obscure reaction or leson in such scientific terms nobody could have understood a word of it except a medico.
    Joanna was looking intelligent and deeply interested.
    I felt a moments qualm. It was really to bad. Griffith was too good a chap to be played fast with. Women really were devils.
    Then I caught a sideways view of Griffith, his powerful chin and the thin set of his lips and I doubted that Joanna was going to have it her own way. Anyway, a man has no business to let himself be led by a woman. It's his own lookout if he does.
    Then Joanna said:
    “Do change your mind and stay to lunch, Dr. Griffith,” and Griffith flushed a little and said that only his