The Fingerprint (7 page)

GEORGINA WOKE and knew that something had waked her. It was a sound, but she did not know what sound it was. There was the vibration of it on the air and in her mind. If it had been an ordinary sound, she would not have given it a thought at all. An owl crying, a dog barking, or the wind blowing about the house, any of these might have waked her, but they wouldn’t have left her with this feeling that something had happened.

She pushed the bedclothes down and sat up. The sound was not repeated. She got out of bed and went to the window. The sky was not as dark as it had been when she looked out before. There might have been a moon behind the clouds. She could discern the outline of the terrace with the raised stone jars at its edge. In summer they would be ablaze with the scarlet of geraniums, but they were empty now. The terrace was empty too. Nothing broke the silence or the grey, even gloom. If anything had moved there it was gone. As she looked out now the study was below her and to the left. In the eighteen-nineties her grandfather had replaced one of the Georgian sash windows with a glass door descending by two steps on to the terrace. He had no sense of the sacredness of a period building and felt himself under no obligation to preserve its character. He wanted to be able to step out into the garden as and when he pleased, and when he wanted to do a thing he did it.

As Georgina leaned from her window she saw this glass door move. The wind had risen. It came round the house in a gust and the door moved, swinging out a handsbreadth and swinging in again. She thought she knew now what it was that had waked her. It was the swinging of this door, moving in the wind and swinging out, and moving again and swinging in. Someone must have opened the door behind the curtain and left it open. It was Stokes’ business to see that all the doors and windows on the ground floor were fastened, so it must have been Jonathan himself who had opened it. There would be nothing unusual about that. She had often looked out as she was looking now and seen him pacing the terrace, or standing and looking at the sky before going in, and so upstairs to bed. But she had never known him to leave the door unlocked. Stokes would have been very much put out if he had, since it was his rooted belief that an unlocked door or window would instantly attract a burglar. It would really be very much better if Stokes didn’t know that the glass door in the study had actually been left swinging to and fro for half the night.

She drew back from the window and put on her dressing-gown and slippers. She couldn’t just leave the door banging like that. If the wind got up any more the glass might break. She opened the door of her room and went along the passage to the head of the stairs. There was no light on this upper landing, but a low-powered bulb burned all night in the hall below. Going down into the lighted hall was like going down into bright water—bright, silent water, very still. She came into the hall, and the old wall-clock beside the dining-room door gave out a whirring stroke. It struck the quarters by day and night, but the sound waked no one in the house, because it was such an old accustomed thing.

Georgina moved until she could see the face of the clock. The hands stood at one, which meant that by the right time it would be about twelve minutes to, since do what you would to it the old clock gained.

She crossed the hall to the study door and opened it. The room was dark, quite dark, with a light wind moving in it. She put on the overhead light, and the draught between the two doors carried the dark red curtains out into the room and sucked them in again. She turned to shut the door behind her, and it was when she was turning back to go and fasten the door on to the terrace that she saw Jonathan Field fallen forward across his writing-table. She would have seen him before if she had looked that way, but her eye had been caught by the bellying curtains.

She had neither eyes nor thought for them now. He must have fallen asleep at his desk. But the banging door would have waked him. If it had waked her on the upper floor, it must surely have waked him here. It was in her mind that he sometimes dropped off in his chair, but not at his desk—not like this. He must have been looking at his fingerprint collection. One of the volumes was there on the right of the table. How strange that he should have got it out to look at, and then have gone to sleep.

She went across to him with a lagging step until she came to the chair where she had sat last night and they had talked. She had got as far as that before she knew why he had not waked. His right arm hung down. A revolver had dropped from the hand and lay upon the carpet. She gripped the back of the chair and stood there quite unable to move. It was the room that seemed to be moving, tilting under her feet as if the solid earth had given way. But she didn’t move, and Jonathan didn’t move. It came into her mind then that he wouldn’t ever move again.

She did not know how long she stood there, but presently the room was steady again. She let go of the chair and came round the corner of the table. She put her hand on the table to help herself whilst she stooped down and picked the revolver up. She had not any intention or purpose in picking it up. It was perhaps the mere instinct which makes any woman pick up anything that has fallen to the floor. She picked it up and she laid it on the table. Then she put her hand upon Jonathan’s hand and found it lax and cold.

Anthony waked to the sound of his opening door. Georgina stood there on the threshold calling him.

“Anthony—Anthony—Anthony!”

He was awake and out of bed at the third repetition.

“Georgina! What is it?”

“Jonathan—something has happened—I think he’s dead!”

He came over, put on the light, flung on a dressing-gown, thrust his feet into slippers, and came back along the passage with her and down the stairs. They came into the study, and the curtains blew out again to meet them. They had not spoken. Now he said,

“Who opened that glass door?”

“I don’t know.”

“What made you come down?”

“I heard it bang.”

It was just quick question and answer. And then he was over at the writing-table, feeling for a pulse that wasn’t there, seeing the bullet hole in the dinner-jacket, and turning round to say,

“He’s gone! We shall have to ring up the police.”

Georgina had remained beside the door. She had shut it behind her. She went back a step now and leaned against it. Her pale thick hair hung curling upon her shoulders. Her eyes were wide and dark, and her face was white. There was no colour in it at all. Her blue dressing-gown hung down open over a white night-dress. Her bare feet were in slippers trimmed with fur. She had so fixed, so rigid a look that Anthony felt a stab of apprehension. He said harshly,

“For God’s sake wake up! I tell you we must ring up the Lenton police!”

She said, “A doctor—”

“They’ll bring one. But it’s no use—he’s gone. They won’t want anything to be touched. You haven’t touched anything?”

Georgina opened her stiff lips and said,

“Only the revolver—”

DETECTIVE INSPECTOR FRANK ABBOTT on his way to Lenton with Sergeant Hubbard emerged from a prolonged silence to remark that he supposed it was too much to expect the locals to warn you when they were going to have a murder and call in the Yard, but it would be a great deal more convenient if they did.

“The trail is always cold before we get on to it. We are never called in until everyone has had time to go over what he is going to say and make sure he isn’t going to say too much. Whereas if we could be served with a nice neat notice something on the lines of ‘A murder has been arranged and will take place at twelve p.m. on the thirteenth prox,’ we should make a point of being on the spot to note any criminal reactions which might be knocking about.”

Sergeant Hubbard allowed himself to laugh. His immediate aim in life was to model himself upon his companion down to the last sock, handkerchief or what-have-you. Since he was dark and stocky, the result of his efforts was merely to try a temper not inclined to suffer fools gladly. Being a cheerful and care-free young man, he continued upon his imitative way without the least suspicion that he was making a nuisance of himself. It was a fine morning, he was a very good driver, and he was being allowed to drive, so all he did was to laugh and say that it might be a pity but he didn’t see how it could be helped.

They drew up in front of Lenton police station at no later than eleven o’clock, and after a brief interview with the Superintendent proceeded to Field End, where Inspector Smith was in charge. Frank Abbott, having worked with him before in . what came to be known as the Eternity Ring case, was prepared to find that all preliminary measures had been meticulously carried out. Smith was, in fact, a most zealous and conscientious officer. It is of course possible to have too much zeal. It is also possible to have too much imagination. Inspector Smith’s most severe critic would not have accused him of this. He was a goodlooking, well set-up man with a fresh complexion and a wooden cast of countenance which was sometimes a useful asset. He took Frank and Sergeant Hubbard into the study and described the scene as he had found it on his arrival in the small hours of the morning.

“The body has been taken to the mortuary, but there will be photographs for you to see. There is no doubt about its being murder, though there had been an attempt to make it look like suicide. The weapon had been put into his hand so as to get his dabs on it—a tricky business and it hasn’t come off. No one could possibly have shot himself holding a revolver like that, and his dinner-jacket wasn’t singed. Nothing in the room has been touched, except that the curtains have been drawn back, but I can show you just how they were.”

Frank Abbott stood in the middle of the room and looked about him. He noticed a number of things—a heavy volume on the writing-table—a choked, untidy grate. His light eyes went too and fro, his mind registered what they saw. It was a little time before he said,

“What was his position?”

“He had fallen forward across the writing-table. Bullet hole in the left side of his dinner-jacket. Left hand hanging down. Miss Grey, who found the body, says the weapon was lying on the carpet as if it had dropped from his hand. She says she picked it up and put it where it is now, on the table. There are two lots of fingerprints on it.”

“Frank’s eyebrows rose.

“I don’t remember his being left-handed.”

“You knew him?”

“I stayed in the house for a week-end about a fortnight ago. I came down with Captain Hallam. By the way, is he still here?”

“Yes, he is. As a matter of fact it was he who rang us up. Miss Grey says she woke up just before one o’clock. This glass door was banging, and she thinks it was either that or the shot that waked her. She looked out of her window, saw the glass door moving, and came down. The study was in darkness and the door on to the terrace open. She says she thought at first that Mr. Field was asleep. When she saw the revolver she picked it up and went to fetch Captain Hallam.”

Frank Abbott moved nearer to the table.

“That album was there?”

“Just as you see it. Nothing on the table has been touched.”

“Everything been finger-printed?”

Smith nodded.

The album lay there open. Frank came round the table and looked at it. It was the one Jonathan Field had had spread out before him when he told his story of a murderer’s confession in a bombed building. As a tale it had gone down well. Frank had found himself wondering how many times old Jonathan had told it. Perhaps many times, perhaps only just that once. Somewhere idly at the back of his mind he also wondered just what the odds were against the two men concerned ever coming across one another again. If he could be said to think about it at all, it might have been that they were very long indeed. He frowned slightly, put two hands on the book to close it, and then opened it again.

When Jonathan Field had been telling his tale he had opened it like that, but he hadn’t opened it fully. He had said, “It’s too long a story for now—quite dramatic though!” and he had put his hands on the volume, opened it half way, and clapped it to again. What stuck out in Frank’s memory was the manila envelope. The book had opened upon it, and when it shut it had not shut smoothly because the envelope was there. It might have been there as a marker. It was there now. He lifted the envelope, and it was light in his hand. It was light because it was empty. But he was prepared to swear that it hadn’t been empty when Jonathan was telling his yarn. There was something in it. He would have liked very much to know what that something was, and whether it had anything to do with Jonathan’s story. As he turned it in his hand a faint pencilling showed up across one of the narrow ends. He moved it so that it caught the light, and could just make out what had been written and then, it seemed, rubbed out—

“Notes on the blitz story. J.F.” The notes had been there ten days ago, and they were not here today. Someone must have taken them out. It might have been Jonathan himself. It might have been someone else. The notes were gone, but the envelope remained. If it was there as a marker, then full or empty it still served its purpose, for close the album as you would, it opened always at the same place. And at that place a leaf had been torn out.

Inspector Smith, standing beside him, gazed wooden-faced at the album, and said,

“Someone seems to have torn one of the pages out.”

GEORGINA GREY came into the study. She had on a dark skirt and a high-necked jumper of white wool. She was very pale indeed and she had used no make-up. Frank Abbott discerned that it was costing her an effort to come into the room in which less than twelve hours before she had found her uncle dead. Now it was he who was sitting at Jonathan Field’s table, and he was there to investigate the circumstances of his death. He rose to meet Georgina, shook hands with her, and spoke his condolences.

“Inspector Smith will have told you that Scotland Yard has been called in. It is all very trying for you, but I am sure you will wish to help us as much as you can.”

She said, “Yes,” and she sat down.

Since he was at the writing-table, there was just the one chair in which she could sit. She put her hands in her lap and waited. She had made a short statement and Frank Abbott took her through it. The events of the previous evening— quiet and domestic—everyone early to bed except Jonathan Field.

“He was in the habit of sitting up late?”

“Oh, yes. Sometimes he would be very late indeed.”

“What would you call very late?”

“If he dropped off in his chair it might be after one o’clock.”

“Did anyone go in to say good-night to him?”

“No—he didn’t care about being disturbed.” She hesitated, and then went on, her breath coming a little more quickly. “I had been in here earlier—I came in to talk to him. I said good-night to him then.”

He let that go and went on with her statement.

“Something waked you—do you think it could have been the shot?”

“I don’t know. I suppose it might have been. I thought it was the door.”

“This glass door?”

“Yes. It was open. I looked out of my window and saw it move. That is what I came down for—to shut it.”

He looked at her statement.

“You came into the room, put on the light, and saw your uncle at his table. How soon did it occur to you that he was dead?”

She said, “I don’t know. I saw him, and I knew he wouldn’t go to sleep like that—and I came over here and saw the revolver.”

“You picked it up, didn’t you? Why did you do that?”

“I don’t know, Mr. Abbott—I really don’t. I thought he was dead, and then I didn’t think at all. I just picked it up and put it on the table.”

“Was it Mr. Field’s revolver?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t know that he had one.”

“You hadn’t ever seen it before?”

“No, I hadn’t.”

“I see. Was your uncle left-handed?”

She had a startled look.

“I don’t know. I mean, I don’t know whether you would have called him left-handed or not. He used his right hand in the ordinary way, but I believe he used to be a left-hand bowler.”

He turned a little in his chair and looked round at the fireplace.

“Mr. Field seems to have been burning papers there. Do you know what they were?”

A little faint colour stained her skin as she said,

“They were—private papers.”

“Anything to do with his fingerprint collection?”

She said in undoubted surprise,

“Oh, no, nothing like that!”

“Miss Grey, when you were in here talking to your uncle, was this album on the table?”

“Oh, no, it wasn’t.”

“Sure about that?”

“I’m quite sure. It’s such a big thing—I couldn’t have missed it.”

“But it was here on the table when you found Mr. Field’s body and picked up the revolver?”

“I suppose it was.”

“You are not sure?”

She shut her eyes for a moment.

“Yes, it was there. I didn’t think about it at the time, but I saw it.”

“Was it open or shut?”

“It was open.”

“And Mr. Field did not tear out a sheet and burn it whilst you were with him?”

She looked steadily at him and said,

“Why do you ask me that?”

“Because a sheet has been torn out and paper has been burned in that grate.”

He opened the album at the place where it was marked and lifted the envelope to uncover the rough edge of the missing page.

“You see?”

“Yes.”

“When was this done, and why?”

“I don’t know anything at all about the torn-out page—it wasn’t done while I was here. But my uncle did burn something.”

“I am afraid I must ask you what it was that was burned.”

She hesitated.

“Mr. Abbott—”

“You are not obliged to answer, but if you have nothing to hide you would be well advised to do so.”

He saw her wince and then stiffen.

“No, of course there is nothing to hide. It is just—it was all rather private.”

There was a faintly cynical gleam in his eye as he said, “When it comes to a case of murder there is no privacy.” He had not thought that she could be paler, but suddenly she was.

“Murder?”

“Did you think it was suicide?”

She said slowly and deliberately,

“When something like this happens you don’t think. It’s there and it has happened—you don’t think about it.” After a pause three words came more slowly still. “It’s—too dreadful.”

He nodded.

“Miss Grey, several of the statements I have here say that when Mr. Field was in his study he was not to be disturbed. You said the same thing yourself when I asked you if you had gone in to say good-night to him, yet earlier in the evening you followed him into the study and remained there for about three-quarters of an hour.”

“I wanted to talk to him.”

“It was quite a long talk. Papers were burned, either by him at the time or by you later on.”

She said quickly, “He burned it himself.”

He raised his eyebrows and repeated her own word.

“It?” There was a moment before he went on. “Half at least of what was burned was on stiff legal paper. There are one or two fragments which were not burned through. Did they by any chance form part of a will?”

There was quite a long pause before she said, “Yes.”

“You came in here and talked to him, and a will was burned. You want to state that as a fact?”

“Yes.”

He came back in a flash.

“Who burned it?”

“My uncle did.”

“Why?”

“He was going to make another.”

“Then you came in here to talk to him about his will?”

“It wasn’t like that.”

He said, “Don’t you think you had better tell me what you did come to talk to him about?”

He saw her brows draw together in something that was not quite a frown. Under them her eyes were dark and intent. After a moment or two she said,

“Yes, I had better tell you. Everyone in the house knows about some of it, so perhaps you had better hear the whole thing. You met Mirrie when you were down here before. I don’t know what Anthony told you about her.”

“Just that she was a distant cousin, and that Mr. Field had taken a great fancy to her.”

She bent her head.

“I think he was in love with her mother, but she married someone else. There was a quarrel. He didn’t know that they had a child. If he had known, he would have done something for Mirrie when her father and mother were killed. It was in the war. She went to some distant relations, and it was all rather wretched. They didn’t want her, and there was very little money. She went to a Grammar School, but she wasn’t any good at exams, so when she was seventeen they got her a job as Assistant Matron at an orphanage, it was really just a fine name for being a housemaid. In the end Uncle Jonathan heard she was there and fetched her away. Most of this is what he told me last night. I didn’t know it before.”

“Yes—please go on.”

It was easier now that she had begun to talk about it. There was even a sense of relief. She said,

“Uncle Jonathan got very fond of her. She has—those sort of ways, you know. And then—he told me last night she is very like her mother. We could all see that he was getting very fond of her. Then one day I got an anonymous letter. It—it was horrible.”

He nodded.

“They mostly are. What did it say?”

Some distressed colour came into her face.

“It said everyone was talking about my not being nice to Mirrie. It—it was trying to make out that I was jealous of her because she was prettier than I was, and because people liked her better—that sort of thing.” The dark grey eyes were honestly indignant.

“Have you got this letter?”

She shook her head.

“I showed it to Uncle Jonathan, and then I burned it. I ought to have burned it at once.”

“Why do you say that?”

A queer blaze of anger came up in her—now, when everything was past and gone and couldn’t be called back again. It warmed her voice as she said,

“Because Uncle Jonathan was angry—not with the person who wrote the letter, but with me!”

“Why?”

“I didn’t know. I thought and thought, but I didn’t know. He had a very quick temper, and it was just as if the letter had set a match to it. He took sides against me with the person who had written it. He seemed to think I had been jealous of Mirrie and had meant to hurt her feelings when I gave her some of my things. And I didn’t, Mr. Abbott—I didn’t! If you’ve got sisters or cousins you know how girls pass things round and it doesn’t mean anything but being friendly and liking a change—it just doesn’t mean anything at all. I suppose things were stiffer in Uncle Jonathan’s time, because he didn’t seem ever to have heard of such a thing.”

“In fact you had a serious quarrel with Mr. Field. What day was this?”

She let the statement about the quarrel go and said in a bewildered voice,

“Monday—it seems as if it was a long time ago, but this is only Wednesday.” Her eyes were suddenly wet. “I’m sorry, Mr. Abbott—it doesn’t seem as if it could have happened.”

There was a big patch-pocket on her skirt. She drove a hand into it, pulled out a handkerchief, and pressed it to her eyes. Then she turned back to him and said, “Yes?”

“You had this quarrel with your uncle on Monday. And then he went to town? Did he tell you he was going?”

“No, Mrs. Fabian told us at lunch that he had gone.”

“And he stayed the night?”

“Yes.”

“Why did he go to town?”

“I didn’t know he was going.”

“But I think you knew why he had gone. Miss Grey, if you are going to tell me any of this, don’t you think you had better tell me all of it? It is bound to come out, you know.”

She said, “Yes, you’re right. I was just trying not to say more than I really knew.”

“Yes, go on.”

“My uncle talked to me about his will. He had got very fond of Mirrie and he was all worked up about her. He said he had been meaning to talk to me about altering his will so as to make provision for her.”

“And you quarrelled about that?”

Her colour came up brightly.

“Oh, no—no! I didn’t mind about it at all—not at all! I told him so. I just wanted him not to be angry with me, not to believe that I was jealous—because I wasn’t, I really wasn’t!

“So you had a reconciliation?”

The bright colour died.

“No, not then. He went on being angry. He said some very cruel things.”

“What sort of things?”

“He said disinterestedness could be overdone, and he asked me if I was going to pretend I shouldn’t care if he was to cut me off without a penny.”

“And what did you say to that?”

“I said that of course I should care, because it would mean that he was terribly angry, or that he didn’t care for me any more, but I should be very glad if he provided for Mirrie. I kept on saying things like that, but it wasn’t any use. He had gone into one of his cold, angry fits and it wasn’t any use, so I came away.”

“And when you heard that he had gone up to town on business you believed that he had gone to see his solicitor?”

“Yes, he said so to Mrs. Fabian.”

Frank thought, “There could be quite a case against Georgina Grey. Quarrel about the other niece—quarrel about the will. I wonder if he got as far as signing a new one. Those unburned scraps of paper in the grate look very much as if one of the wills had been burned there. The question is, which one? And by whom?” He said,

“You did know, then, that Mr. Field had gone to see his solicitor. What happened on his return? And did he say anything about having completed the business he had gone up for?”

“Yes, Mrs. Fabian asked him whether he had. It’s rather a family joke, because she always does it, more or less in those very words.”

“What did he say?”

“He said, ‘Yes.’ ”

“Did you understand that to mean that he had altered his will?”

Georgina said, “Yes, I did.”

He had been making a brief note from time to time. He did so now. Then he looked up at her again.

“Now, Miss Grey, would you care to tell me why you followed your uncle to the study last night, and what passed between you?”

The strain had gone from her pose and from her voice. She said quietly and sadly,

“Yes, I would like to. Uncle Jonathan had coffee in the drawing-room, then he came in here. The more I thought about everything, the more I wanted to go to him. You see, I did think that he had altered his will. Mirrie ran down to meet him when he arrived. I think he told her then that he had altered it. She was terribly pleased, and he put his arm round her—I was up on the landing and I saw them. And afterwards at dinner and in the drawing-room he kept looking at her, and she—you could see that he had told her something. She was all gay and lighted up. So I thought, ‘Well, if that is settled and done with, there isn’t any need for him to go on being angry with me. I can go and talk to him now without his thinking that I am trying to influence him or get him to change his mind. I can go and tell him that I’m glad about Mirrie—really glad, and that the only thing I mind about is that he should be angry with me or think that I ever meant to be unkind to her.’ I thought perhaps he would listen now because he had done what he wanted to. So I came in here and talked to him.”

“What did you say?”

She wasn’t looking at him now. She was looking down at the hands in her lap and the handkerchief they were holding. There was a remembering sound in her voice as if she were speaking more to herself than to him.