The Moving Finger

The Moving Finger
Agatha Christie

Agatha Christie’s famous Miss Marple mystery, reissued with a striking cover designed to appeal to the latest generation of Agatha Christie fans and book lovers.Lymstock is a town with more than its share of shameful secrets – a town where even a sudden outbreak of anonymous hate-mail causes only a minor stir.But all that changes when one of the recipients, Mrs Symmington, commits suicide. Her final note said ‘I can’t go on’. Only Miss Marple questions the coroner’s verdict of suicide. Was this the work of a poison-pen? Or of a poisoner?

Copyright (#ulink_c264f01e-d9f2-5e11-a4bc-17f028de84c0)

Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)

First published in Great Britain by Collins, The Crime Club 1943

The Moving Finger™ is a trade mark of Agatha Christie Limited and Agatha Christie

Marple

and the Agatha Christie Signature are registered trade marks of Agatha Christie Limited in the UK and elsewhere.

Copyright © 1943 Agatha Christie Limited. All rights reserved.

www.agathachristie.com (http://www.agathachristie.com)

Cover by Nick Castle © HarperCollins/Agatha Christie Ltd 2016

Agatha Christie asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008196547

Ebook Edition © December 2016 ISBN: 9780007422470

Version: 2017-04-12

Dedication (#ulink_34034efd-7693-5085-a6df-1bf85122495b)

To my Friends Sidney and Mary Smith

Contents

Cover (#uf4017cfb-199d-5d77-a1f5-c98c24829118)

Title Page (#uddae29ff-a12b-5129-811f-2b99bfda2620)

Copyright (#u101727a5-80b1-5bfb-b4c0-0c574fe0379f)

Dedication (#u90462e11-c449-5551-b2de-11190c92c7a2)

Chapter 1 (#udb687f54-9c32-5f21-8c26-dedfca91246e)

Chapter 2 (#u40072064-2376-558c-841b-f058e25e170e)

Chapter 3 (#u644fd88d-823d-5348-a43a-a6e951b148e6)

Chapter 4 (#uad0f6592-2dd4-5835-aa85-80c1c22a17ff)

Chapter 5 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 6 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 7 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 8 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 9 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 10 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 11 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 12 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 13 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 14 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 15 (#litres_trial_promo)

Also by Agatha Christie (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER 1 (#ulink_a14a6ee3-9df5-574b-9147-2d46bdb1d9cd)

When at last I was taken out of the plaster, and the doctors had pulled me about to their hearts’ content, and nurses had wheedled me into cautiously using my limbs, and I had been nauseated by their practically using baby talk to me, Marcus Kent told me I was to go and live in the country.

‘Good air, quiet life, nothing to do—that’s the prescription for you. That sister of yours will look after you. Eat, sleep and imitate the vegetable kingdom as far as possible.’

I didn’t ask him if I’d ever be able to fly again. There are questions that you don’t ask because you’re afraid of the answers to them. In the same way during the last five months I’d never asked if I was going to be condemned to lie on my back all my life. I was afraid of a bright hypocritical reassurance from Sister. ‘Come now, what a question to ask! We don’t let our patients go talking in that way!’

So I hadn’t asked—and it had been all right. I wasn’t to be a helpless cripple. I could move my legs, stand on them, finally walk a few steps—and if I did feel rather like an adventurous baby learning to toddle, with wobbly knees and cotton wool soles to my feet—well, that was only weakness and disuse and would pass.

Marcus Kent, who is the right kind of doctor, answered what I hadn’t said.

‘You’re going to recover completely,’ he said. ‘We weren’t sure until last Tuesday when you had that final overhaul, but I can tell you so authoritatively now. But—it’s going to be a long business. A long and, if I may so, a wearisome business. When it’s a question of healing nerves and muscles, the brain must help the body. Any impatience, any fretting, will throw you back. And whatever you do, don’t “will yourself to get well quickly”. Anything of that kind and you’ll find yourself back in a nursing home. You’ve got to take life slowly and easily, the tempo is marked Legato. Not only has your body got to recover, but your nerves have been weakened by the necessity of keeping you under drugs for so long.