The Fingerprint (24 page)

WHEN SHE HAD RUN from Sid Turner she was in no case to think or plan. A blind panic drove her. The track led straight to the gravel pit and she followed it. It was only when her foot went over the edge and she lost her balance that she knew anything at all. What came to her then was thought in its simplest, most elementary form—“I’m falling.” And with that she fell, out of thought and out of consciousness.

The first thing she knew after that was something pricking her. She didn’t come to all at once. She had been very badly shocked and frightened, and she had had quite a fall. The pricking became more insistent. Her face and hands were scratched, her shoulder hurt. She heard Sid calling her, softly, cautiously. She lay as still as a rabbit and saw a small round disc of light go dancing by. Sid had a torch and he was looking for her. The thing that was pricking her was gorse. She had rolled, and slipped, and slithered down the side of the pit, and she was lying between two gorse bushes. They covered her against the dancing light, and it passed over her and was gone. The fear that had been holding her rigid relaxed and let her go. She lay in a soft trembling heap and prayed that the light would not return. If she was very good always, if she never told another lie in all her life, if she always remembered to say her prayers, perhaps God wouldn’t let Sid find her.

She drew herself up very, very carefully. She was stiff and sore, but there wasn’t anything broken. When she peered from between the bushes she could see the light going away to the left, sliding to and fro over the gorse, and the blackberry trails, and the yellow side of the pit. Sid was walking away from the place where she had fallen. As he went he shone the light over the edge and looked down and called her name.

“Mirrie, you little fool, where are you? I was only joking, you know. You wouldn’t be afraid of me—not of Sid. Just call back, and I’ll get you up. You don’t want to make me angry, do you? Mirrie!”

She began to crawl out from between the bushes. If he went on round the pit—if she could get out whilst he was on the other side—if she could get back on to the road… She hadn’t fallen very far, but if he heard her he would come back and kill her with the knife. She knew what his hand had gone into his pocket for—it was to get the knife. It opened with a spring. She had seen him open it before, the time he had set the point against her throat. If he caught her now he wouldn’t stop at frightening her, he would kill her dead.

She couldn’t climb in her coat. She slipped it off and let it go. The slope where she had fallen was not a steep one. She crawled on it an inch or two at a time, sometimes a little to the left, sometimes a little to the right, according to the lie of the ground. And then just as she got to the top the flickering light and Sid’s voice calling her. They turned and began to come back again. She got her knee over the edge, her other knee, her foot. If she stood up he would see her. If she didn’t stand up she couldn’t run away. The dancing light would pick her up—Sid would catch her and she would feel the knife.

She stumbled to her feet and ran screaming down the track. It was rough and rutted under foot. She didn’t think, “I mustn’t fall,” she knew it with a kind of shuddering intensity. If she tripped, if she slipped, if she fell, the knife would be in her back. She kept her hands stretched out before her as if they could save her from falling. They did just save her from running into the back of the car. She called out as it brought her up with a jerk, her hands sliding on the paint-work, but she didn’t fall, and through the sound of her own choked breathing she could hear the running steps behind her. She made her last, most desperate effort, pushed back from the car, and stumbled round it, feeling her way, banging into a mudguard, getting clear, and staggering on again towards the road.

She ran right into Johnny Fabian’s arms. He said,

“Mirrie! Oh, Mirrie!” and she said his name over and over again as if she couldn’t stop saying it, as if it was something that would keep her safe as long as she held on to it and didn’t let go. They stood on the edge of the track and held each other.

Miss Silver, coming up at a more sober pace, was aware of them. She had put on her electric torch, but she turned the beam away. And then quite suddenly it was cutting the dark again and she was calling out,

“Mr. Fabian—the car—it’s moving! Take care!”

There was the roar of the engine behind her words. It startled him to action. He jumped Mirrie off the track among the heather roots and saw the black shape of the car lurch past them and out on to the road. With the lights coming on and a dangerous reeling swerve to avoid Johnny’s car Sid Turner was out on the tarmac and away.

Miss Silver, who had also stepped into the heather, now emerged from it. She addressed Mirrie Field.

“My dear child! You are not hurt? It was indeed providential that Mr. Fabian should have been led to come this way. You are quite safe now, and you must try to compose yourself. There must be no delay in getting in touch with the police.” She directed herself to Johnny. “I endeavoured to take the number of the car as it passed me, but the plate had been, no doubt designedly, obscured by what looked like splashes of mud.”

Johnny shrugged.

“He’ll get rid of the car as soon as he can. He’ll have pinched it, so the number wouldn’t have been much help in tracing him. And he’d have had the legs of us even if we could have got off in time to follow him. He’d pick a fast one while he was about it.”

They got into Johnny’s old car and ran back to Field End. Just about the time that the lobby door swung to behind them and they came into the lighted hall Sid Turner went blinding round the corner of Jessop’s Lane into the main road and crashed into the Hexton bus. It was fortunately not very full. The driver had a miraculous escape, and of the few passengers no one was seriously injured, though old Mrs. Bazeley lost her front teeth and could never be persuaded that her son-in-law had not trodden on them on purpose. But the stolen car was what the conductor described as a mess, and Sid Turner was dead.

ANTHONY RANG up from Lenton. The first sound of Johnny’s voice was enough to tell him that Mirrie had been found and was safe.

“And you’d better come back quick or there won’t be anything left to eat. We’re not waiting for anyone, and personally I could cope with an ox.”

Anthony hung up and came out of the call-box. He hadn’t reckoned on Georgina being so close to him. She had insisted on coming, but they had hardly spoken until now when he almost ran into her and she caught him by the arm and said,

“What is it?”

“She’s all right. They’ve got her back.”

Just for a moment they stood close together like that, her hands on his coat-sleeve, her face tilted up to him and the greenish light of a street-lamp turning her hair to silver. She was bare-headed, with a coat thrown round her, and there was no colour about her anywhere, not in her face nor in her lips, nor in the pale glimmer of her hair. Only her eyes were dark and fixed upon his own. She said,

“Thank God!” Then her hands fell and she stepped back from him, and they got into the car and drove away.

But as soon as they were clear of the town she spoke again.

“Anthony, I want to talk to you. Will you draw in to the side of the road?”

“Not here—not now. They’ll be expecting us back.”

There was a moment’s silence before she said, .

“Does that matter to you so much?”

“I think we should get back.”

She had the feeling that if she let him put her away from him now, there would be no time in which they would come together again. She said,

“Anthony, will you stop now if I tell you that it is very important to me?”

They had been so near, and for so long, that she could feel him resisting her. And then quite suddenly the resistance lessened and the car slowed down and stopped. He said without turning towards her,

“I shall be going away tomorrow. I only came back to get my things.”

“Yes, I thought that was what you were going to do. You didn’t feel there was anything you had to say to me?”

“I was going to write.”

“You were afraid to come to me and say that you had let yourself be carried away—that you don’t really care for me the way I thought you did.”

“You know that’s a lie.”

“I know you said you loved me. But you didn’t, did you? You only said so because Uncle Jonathan had hurt me so much and you thought it would comfort me. And now, of course, I don’t need comforting any more”’

“Georgina!”

“That doesn’t get us very far, does it? You are Anthony, and I am Georgina, and I thought you loved me. You did too. I want to know when you stopped. Have you fallen in love with someone else?”

“You know I haven’t.”

A little warmth came into her voice and shook it.

“Of course I know! I shouldn’t be talking to you like this if I didn’t. You’ve loved me for a long time. I knew when you began, and I should know if you were to stop. You haven’t stopped. You’re just offering us both up as a burnt sacrifice to your pride, and it’s a horrible, cruel thing to do and completely senseless.”

“You don’t understand.”

“I understand perfectly. Everyone understands but you. Uncle Jonathan did. That last evening when I talked to him he told me he did. He said he had always wanted us to get married some day. He said he thought we should be very happy, and he had left you something in his will as a mark of his trust and confidence.”

He turned round then for the first time.

“Did he say that? Are you sure he meant it that way? I thought—”

“What did you think?”

“I thought— No, it doesn’t matter. It sounds—”

“You thought you were being put on your honour to keep away from me?”

“No, no—of course not—”

“I knew it was that. You see, I do always know what you are thinking—at least I always have until now. And when you began to lock your doors and bolt yourself away, and I couldn’t get near you—” Her voice broke off short.

He could see that she turned away from him, catching at the edge of the open window and hiding her face against her hands. If he touched her he wouldn’t be able to hold out any more. He had only to take her in his arms and all that obstinate ingrowing pride would melt. He sat where he was and heard the sound of her weeping.

It was not for long.

She sat up, straightening herself and leaning back. Then she said,

“I don’t think you love me very much. I just want to say that there wouldn’t be a terrible lot for your pride to swallow after all. Mr. Maudsley says I can’t give Mirrie any of the capital, but I can make her an allowance of five hundred a year if I like, so that is what I shall do. I don’t quite know how much there will be left by the time all the duties are paid, and Cousin Anna’s legacy. Mr. Maudsley doesn’t know yet, but he says I shall have to pay the income tax on Mirrie’s allowance. Goodbye, Anthony.”

She had spoken in a soft, tired voice and without any expression. On the last word she turned the handle of the door and stepped out into the road. Since he had been trying not to look at her, he was not really aware of what she was doing until it had been done and he saw her walking away from him into the darkness.

Anger. An absolute fury of anger putting paid to the struggle in his mind. She would walk out on him, would she? Walk three lonely miles on the Lenton road in thin evening shoes rather than sit by him another moment and let him drive her home! Didn’t she know how impossible it was for either of them to leave the other? He had wrenched mind and body to do it, only to find how damned impossible it was. He was out of the car, banging the door behind him and catching her up before she had gone a dozen yards.

Georgina heard him come. She went on walking, neither quickening her step nor slowing down. If she had been quite alone she would have walked like that, without hurry and without delay. He took her by the arm and she did not turn her head.

“Come back and get into the car!”

Her heart leapt at the fury of his tone. If this was to be a battlefield, she could fight and lose, or fight and win. It was being alone in a cold wilderness with no voice nor any that answered which had brought her to the breaking-point. She wasn’t afraid of Anthony when he was angry. She wasn’t afraid of anything as long as he was there—not half a universe away in some cold hell of his own making.

“Did you hear what I said? Come back at once!”

“Thank you, I would rather walk.”

Her tone made him the merest stranger.

“Georgina, are you mad?”

“I don’t know. Would it be anything to do with you if I was?”

He experienced a horrifying resurgence of the emotions of primitive man. There was nothing but a little matter of perhaps half a million centuries between him and the male creature who knocked his woman over the head with a lump of stone and dragged her senseless to their cave. A gratifying experience if there ever was one! But the centuries had done their work. He merely stopped her where she stood and made her face him with a bruising grip upon either arm.

“Don’t be such a damned fool!”

She said in a whispering voice,

“You may go away from me, but I mustn’t go away from you?”

“You mustn’t ever go away from me! I can’t bear it! Georgina, I can’t!”

She began suddenly to laugh very softly.

“Darling, you don’t have to. You don’t really, you know. Not unless you want to.”

He put his head down on her shoulder, and they stood like that for a long time until the headlights of an oncoming car picked them up and dazzled them out of their dream.

JOURNEYS END in lovers’ meetings. Anthony and Georgina came in with so radiant an air that no one could have mistaken them for anything else. Mrs. Fabian was delighted.

“And so would dear Jonathan be, I am sure. And of course perhaps he is—we don’t know, do we? But he was so fond of Anthony, and I am sure he would have been quite delighted. Because so many girls get engaged to someone they have only known for a few weeks, if that, and then perhaps it doesn’t turn out at all well, and you can’t really be surprised. Whereas, when you have known each other practically since one of you was in her cradle, you do feel that you know what to expect. I remember old Mrs. Warren telling me her grandmother had a rhyme about it—

‘Marry a stranger,

Marry for danger.

Marry at home,

No ill will come.’ ”

Johnny blew her a kiss.

“Pause, darling, or you’ll be putting your foot in it. Now you’ll have to think up a nice quotation for Mirrie and me.”

Mrs. Fabian smiled in her most amiable manner and replied that for the moment all she could call to mind was a Scottish song which began—at least she thought that was how it began—

‘Bonnie wee thing, cannie wee thing,

Lovely wee thing, wert thou mine,

I would wear thee in my bosom

Lest my jewel I should tine.’

“And I believe the last word means lose. So it is really very good advice for you, my dear boy, because a young girl does need quite a lot of looking after, especially if she happens to be a very pretty one.” She beamed upon Mirrie and continued. “It must be at least forty years since I heard anyone sing that song. My mother had cousins in Scotland, and one of them had a very good tenor voice. I remember his coming to stay with us and singing a number of these Scottish songs until my father was quite put out and wanted to know whether we couldn’t have an English air for a change. It was most embarrassing, because he used the expression ‘Barbarian music only fitted for the bagpipes,’ and Cousin Alec wasn’t at all pleased and wouldn’t sing again. It really was very uncomfortable.”

Frank Abbott came in to see Miss Silver next morning. He found her pledged to come and stay at Abbottsleigh for a double wedding in June.

“I am returning to town this afternoon, but Georgina is most insistent that I should come down again for the wedding.”

He looked at her with a gleam of malice in his eye.

“Extraordinary the attraction these morbid occasions have for what is called the gentler sex. In the days of public executions I believe that quite three quarters of the assembled crowds were women.”

Miss Silver was putting the finishing touches to the white baby shawl. They included a finely crocheted border. She looked across it at Frank and smiled.

“Then you will not be attending the wedding?”

“Well, as a matter of fact Anthony seems to want me to be his best man, and since the case will be closed there isn’t really any reason why I should refuse.”

“None at all. It will be pleasant to meet you on a purely social occasion.”

He leaned back in his chair.

“I think we may all be thankful to be so well out of the affair. There were some nasty moments, and if Sid Turner hadn’t managed to get himself killed in that smash with the Hexton bus, we should still have the trial hanging over us. Mirrie might have been given a nasty time in the box by the sort of chap Sid’s solicitor would have put up for the defence, but as it is, the whole thing can just go down the drain and be forgotten. What I should like to ask you is, how did you tumble to that fingerprint business being a red herring, and when?”

Miss Silver continued to crochet the frail shells which bordered the shawl.

“It is always difficult to say at what moment the faint suggestion of a possibility becomes something more definite. Whereas you had been actually present when Jonathan Field related the supposed history of a murderer’s fingerprint, it only reached me at second hand and without the dramatic emphasis with which he no doubt contrived to invest it.”

Frank laughed.

“Oh, he made it convincing enough, the old blighter! You should have seen us! We were fairly lapping it up! He was a good showman, and he put on a first-class act, I’ll give him that.”

“To my mind the whole thing appeared to be a little too dramatic. It was, of course, necessary to give it the most scrupulous attention, and one or two points presented themselves. According to this story of Mr. Field’s after getting the murderer’s fingerprint on his cigarette-case a second bomb came down in the neighbourhood and he lost consciousness. When he came to he found himself in hospital with a broken leg. As I said before, I found it difficult to believe that any fingerprint would have survived the handling which the contents of his pockets must have received. I also doubted very much whether the existence of a single print with no more to authenticate it than the hearsay evidence of a man who had been taken unconscious out of a heap of ruins in which no trace of any other person had been found could possibly be supposed to carry sufficient weight to supply the motive for a murder.”

This formidable sentence having been achieved, Miss Silver paused to loosen some strands from the ball in her knitting-bag, but before Frank could say anything she resumed.

“As Lord Tennyson so truly says:

‘The end and the beginning vex

His reason; many things perplex

With motions, checks, and counterchecks.’

From the moment Maggie Bell informed me that Mirrie had an appointment with Sid Turner on the night of the dance it was plain that she would have had an opportunity of repeating this story about the fingerprint. It undoubtedly made a deep impression on her. This was clear both from what you had told me and from what Georgina was able to add to it. When it came to a choice between believing that Jonathan Field had been murdered either in order to destroy the fingerprint or to prevent him from revoking the will which made Mirrie his heiress, I could not really consider the fingerprint motive as sufficient or even credible. But if Mirrie within an hour or two of hearing it repeated the story to Sid Turner—and we know now that she did repeat it—it could, and no doubt did, provide him with the idea of using Mr. Field’s collection as a pretext for obtaining an interview. By the Tuesday night of the murder the will in Mirrie’s favour had been signed, but since it might at any time be revoked, Mr. Field’s death was determined upon. Owing to the fact that Maggie Bell overheard the conversation in which Sid Turner introduced himself, we know that he obtained admittance at an unusually late hour by exploiting Mr. Field’s interest in his fingerprint collection. He was admitted by the terrace door and accomplished his wicked purpose. There may have been some talk before the shot was fired—there probably was. Mr. Field was, I think, quite unsuspicious. He had got out his album, and had no doubt opened it and displayed some of the more interesting prints. He may himself have referred to the supposed bombing incident, or the subject may have been introduced by Sid Turner. Be that as it may, we must, I think, assume that the album was opened at that particular page, and that the murderer was prompt to avail himself of the opportunity of diverting suspicion from the real financial motive. By tearing out that particular page and destroying the notes used by Mr. Field to substantiate his story of a murderer’s confession Sid Turner undoubtedly hoped to ensure that the police enquiries would be turned in quite another direction. His own danger lay in any possible connection with Mr. Field’s will and Mirrie’s financial interest in it.”

Frank nodded.

“There’s no doubt his girl friend in Maudsley’s office had given Sid to understand that Mirrie’s chance of inheriting under the will which Jonathan had just signed was a pretty shaky one. Maudsley made no secret of his opinion as to the injustice of cutting Georgina out, and Jonathan, having acted on impulse, was likely enough to go back on it as soon as he had time to think. If Sid wanted to make sure of an heiress he had to strike while the will was valid, and he had a shrewd idea that it wouldn’t be valid for long. So he thought he would go whilst the going was good and came sprinting down here on Tuesday night. As it happened, he was a couple of hours too late and the will had already been destroyed. So he had his crime for nothing, and the Hexton bus has saved the hangman a job.”

He got to his feet.

“Well, I must be off. I suppose you wouldn’t like to invite me to tea on Sunday?”

Miss Silver gave him an indulgent smile.

“We still have a pot of Lisle Jerningham’s honey, and Hannah has the recipe for a new kind of scone.”

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