The Fingerprint (10 page)

“In favour of Mirrie Field?”

“Yes. You see Georgina had an anonymous letter—a really hateful one.”

“They are hateful things, my dear.”

Cicely gave a vigorous nod.

“It said everyone knew she was jealous of Mirrie because Mirrie was prettier than she was and people liked her better. And it went on with silly things like saying she had tried to humiliate Mirrie by giving her cast-off clothes. And they weren’t. They were lovely things, and Mirrie was terribly pleased with them.”

“You interest me extremely.”

Cicely sparkled up at her.

“Oh, do I? You don’t know how much I want to!”

“Pray continue. Did Miss Grey take this letter to her uncle?”

“Yes, she did! And there was the most frightful flare-up. He seemed to think it was all true about Georgina being jealous, and about the clothes and everything, and he told her he was going to change his will. And I don’t think he exactly said he was going to leave her out of it, but I think she thought that that was what he was going to do.”

Monica Abbott made a small shocked sound. Miss Silver said gravely,

“I am sure that I need not warn you against repeating such a conjecture, but I think that you would be well advised to warn your friend not to do so.”

“If people hadn’t such perfectly foul minds it wouldn’t be necessary! You know, Mr. Field was like that, he did quarrel with people. But Georgina says he had never done it with her before, and she was most frightfully upset. This was on Monday morning, and he went straight off to London and made another will, and didn’t come back till Tuesday evening in time for dinner.”

“You say he had made another will. Was that known?”

“Yes, it was—he told Mirrie. And after dinner he went into the study and Georgina went after him, and they had a talk. She says he wasn’t angry any more. She told him she was glad about his providing for Mirrie, and he told her about having been fond of Mirrie’s mother! They had a long talk, and I think it made them both very happy. And in the end he said he had been angry and unjust and he had made an unjust will. And he got it out and tore it up and burnt it.”

“In Miss Grey’s presence?”

“Oh, yes. She tried to stop him, but he said he could do what he liked with his own, and he tore it up and put it on the fire.”

“This was on Tuesday evening?”

“Yes.”

“And when did his death occur?”

“Georgina woke up in the night and heard a door bang— or it might have been the shot. She looked out of her window and saw the glass door between the study and the terrace moving in the wind. She went down to shut it, and she found that Mr. Field had been shot.”

All this time Cecily had been sitting back on her heels.

Now, with a characteristically impulsive movement, she thrust at the floor with her hand and came up on to her knees beside Miss Silver again.

“Oh!” she said on a quick-caught breath. “You can see what it looks like—anyone can see what it looks like! She’s got to have someone to help her—she’s simply got to! Miss Silver, you will, won’t you? She must have somebody—she must! Dear, darling angel Miss Silver, say you will!”

Ruth, the parlourmaid, opened the morning-room door and announced,

“Miss Georgina Grey—”

GEORGINA CAME into the room. She had put on a loose dark coat over her jumper and skirt and twisted a scarf about her neck. It was the first that had come to hand, a mixture of soft greys and blues. She was bare-headed and she wore no gloves. As Monica Abbott went to meet her warmth and kindness came with her.

“My dear child—we have been thinking of you so much.”

Cicely scrambled up.

“I’ve told her,” she said. Her feet were so numb from sitting on them that she had to catch at Georgina’s arm to steady herself.

Georgina Grey had eyes only for Miss Silver. She put an arm about Cicely in a purely instinctive way, and she felt Monica Abbott’s kindness as you feel the comfort of coming into a warm room, but all her conscious thought was focussed upon the little elderly person who came a step or two to meet her with some white baby knitting in one hand and the other put out to take her own. The hand was small, the clasp firm and kind.

Georgina said, “How do you do, Miss Silver?” The glowing picture painted by Cicely had been in her thought. She was finding it difficult to relate it to this dowdy little person with her neatly netted fringe and small indeterminate features. Cicely’s enthusiastic phrases floated in her mind—“She’s too marvellous—she is really, darling… She saved my life over that Eternity Ring business, and I expect she saved Grant’s too. They were just going to arrest him, you know… She sees right through people… Frank practically eats out of her hand.” She didn’t know quite what she had expected, but Cicely’s fireworks were fading out and leaving a dull greyness behind them. She took the chair she was being offered and sat down.

Monica Abbott came up to Cicely and put a hand on her shoulder.

“If Georgina wants to consult Miss Silver, I think this is where we leave them.”

Cicely got to her feet, looked a reluctant protest, and met a perfectly plain glance of dismissal from Miss Silver. She bit her lip, followed Monica out of the room, and could be heard saying “Really, Mummy!” in the hall.

Miss Silver turned to Georgina Grey.

“You would like to talk to me?”

Quite suddenly Georgina began to feel that she would. She forgot all about Miss Silver looking like the governess in a family group of the Edwardian period. Mrs. Fabian had a store of old albums. Miss Silver might have stepped out of any one of fifty groups. She had really been a governess once —Georgina knew that—and now she was a private enquiry agent and Frank Abbott regarded her with reverence. In her own mind Georgina made a correction. There wasn’t a Frank Abbott any longer. There was only Detective Inspector Abbott with the cool, cynical gaze which had given her story the lie.

The look which Miss Silver had turned upon her was neither cool nor cynical. It was kind, but it was penetrating. She felt as if it went right through her and out at the other side. Strangely enough, it was not a disagreeable feeling. It might have been had there been anything that she wanted to hide, but since she hadn’t there was a certain relief in feeling that she wouldn’t have to explain too much—Miss Silver would understand.

The searching look melted into the smile which had won the hearts of so many of Miss Silver’s clients. A pleasant voice repeated,

“You would like to talk to me?”

Georgina talked, and found it easier than she could have supposed. Chief Detective Inspector Lamb, who had grown up in a country village not so many generations removed from a firm belief in witchcraft, has been accused of cherishing some uneasy suspicions with regard to Miss Silver’s powers. He would naturally not have admitted to this, and she would certainly have been extremely shocked. What she did possess was an uncommon faculty for producing an atmosphere strongly reminiscent of the schoolroom over which she had once held so benignant a sway.

It was perhaps on this account that Georgina felt it only natural for Miss Silver to be asking her questions, and for her to be answering them as frankly and as accurately as she could. It no longer occurred to her to hold anything back, or to suppose that her answers would be either doubted or misunderstood. Until Jonathan Field, in that painful interview on Monday morning, had shown that he distrusted her it had never occurred to her that anyone could do so. When after Jonathan’s death she discerned that Frank Abbott actually suspected her of being concerned in it, the very foundations of her world were rocked. Now everything was steadying down and coming into focus again. She said,

“You know, I never thought anyone could imagine I had anything to do with it until I was talking to Mr. Abbott in the study and I could see that he did think so.”

Miss Silver shook her head slightly.

“I think you will have to remember to call him Inspector Abbott, since he is here on duty.”

Georgina was remembering with a prick of surprise that he had been a guest at Field End, and that she had thought him amusing and a very good dancer. He had called her Georgina, and she had called him Frank. And Jonathan Field had been alive. It was only ten days ago, and the world had turned upside down since then. She looked at Miss Silver and said,

“It doesn’t seem as if it could possibly have happened.” And then, “There are two things I can’t understand at all.”

Miss Silver pulled on the ball of white wool in her knitting-bag.

“Yes? Pray tell me what they are.”

Georgina leaned forward.

“I don’t know why the glass door on to the terrace was open.”

“Do you mean that it was wide open?”

“Yes, it was blowing to and fro and banging. That is what woke me. I just can’t think why Uncle Jonathan should have opened it.”

Miss Silver was knitting rapidly.

“He might have found the room too hot?”

Georgina shook her head.

“No, he liked a room to be warm.”

“Then we have to suppose that he opened the door in order to let someone in, or else that it was not he who opened it.”

“Who could he possibly have been letting in?”

“I do not know, Miss Grey.”

Georgina said, “I don’t know anyone who would come and see him like that. And if he didn’t open it himself, who could have opened it?”

“There is no one in the house who might have done so?”

“Why should they?”

“I cannot give you the answer to that, but there might be an answer which neither of us can supply. You say that there were two things which you could not account for. The open door was one. Pray, what was the other?”

“He has a collection of the fingerprints of famous people. They are set up in large albums on the bottom shelf of one of the book-cases in the study. They hadn’t been moved when I was there talking to him at about nine o’clock, and Stokes says they were there at ten when he went in with a tray of drinks, but at one o’clock when I found him at his table the second volume was lying open on his right, and Inspector Abbott says a page had been torn out.”

“Dear me! Have you any idea what prints the missing page contained?”

Georgina hesitated.

“I think so, but I’m not sure. Uncle Jonathan had a story about being buried when a house collapsed in the blitz. It’s a very good story, and I’ve heard him tell it quite a number of times. I expect you know we had a dance here about ten days ago. There was a dinner-party first. After dinner some of the people went into the study—Inspector Abbott was one of them. They wanted to see his collection, and he worked round to telling this story. I wasn’t there to start with, but I came in just as he got going. I told him people were beginning to arrive for the dance, and he was vexed at being interrupted. Mirrie was there and she begged him to go on, so I came away.”

“Mr. Field went on with the story?”

“Oh, yes, Mirrie was full of it. He and another man were buried under the ruins of a bombed house, and they didn’t think they had any chance of getting out. The other man lost his nerve completely. He told Uncle Jonathan he had murdered two people, and he told him how he had done it. Mirrie said Uncle Jonathan didn’t get as far as telling them that part of it. I had left the door open and he could hear people coming into the hall, so he just said he thought he would know the man’s voice if he heard it again, and that he had got his fingerprints by passing him a cigarette-case. Mirrie said he half opened the album to show them the prints, and there was a long envelope there marking the place. I knew that because I had heard him tell the story before. What he kept in the envelope was a note of what the man had told him. You know, it’s quite on the cards that Uncle Jonathan made the whole thing up. If he did, I can just see him bolstering it with a lot of notes in an envelope and using it to mark the place where he had put some fake fingerprints. Only—” she hesitated—“why did he, or why did anyone, tear out that page and burn it?”

Miss Silver said, “Dear me!”

“The page is gone. It has been torn out—Frank Abbott opened the album and showed me the rough edge. And there is something else. The long envelope that I told you about was there, but it was empty. The notes Uncle Jonathan kept in it were gone.”

“Did you tell Inspector Abbott that?”

“No, I didn’t. He went straight on to ask about my uncle burning his will. That was when I could feel what he was thinking about me—and of course I couldn’t help seeing why he thought it. It doesn’t sound reasonable for anyone to make a new will and to destroy it the same day. And that is just it —people who do things when they are angry are not reasonable. Uncle Jonathan made that will because he was in a rage with me, and he wanted to show everyone how fond he was of Mirrie. Then when I went in and talked to him after dinner last night the anger just melted away like a bad dream and he couldn’t have been sweeter. He took the new will out of his drawer and tore it up and put the pieces in the fire. I tried to stop him, but he wouldn’t listen, and I didn’t want to make him angry again. He said he would make a new will that would be just to both of us, and that I wasn’t to think he loved me any less because he loved Mirrie too.” Her eyes were full of sudden tears. “Oh, Miss Silver, it doesn’t seem as if it could have happened.”

Miss Silver said very kindly and gently,

“It will always be the greatest comfort to you that any misunderstanding between you and your uncle should have been so completely removed. As Coleridge so truly says—

‘For to be wroth with one we love

Doth work like madness on the brain.’ ”

Georgina bit her lip. For a moment she could not speak. When she could command her voice again she said,

“Miss Silver, Cicely thought—she said—you might consent to come to Field End and help us. Will you?”

Miss Silver laid down her knitting and folded her hands upon it, after which she said in a voice of deceptive mildness,

“In what capacity?”

Georgina was a little taken aback. Perhaps she had offended —perhaps Miss Silver would not come. She was surprised to discover how very much she wanted her to come. She said “Oh—” and then,

“You do take cases, don’t you?”

“You are asking for my professional assistance?”

“Oh, yes!”

“Then I must say to you what I feel it my duty to say to every client. I cannot come into a case with the object of proving the innocence or the guilt of any person. I can come into it only with the object of discovering the truth and serving the ends of justice. I can neither compromise with facts nor gloss them over, and I cannot undertake to conceal material evidence from the police.”

Georgina met her look with one as direct. She said in a steady voice,

“That is all I want—to find out what really happened. I haven’t got anything to hide.”