The Fingerprint (12 page)

DETECTIVE INSPECTOR FRANK ABBOTT was at Field End by nine o’clock next morning. The first person whom he saw after Stokes had admitted him was Miss Maud Silver coming downstairs. Since she was hatless and was carrying her flowered chintz knitting-bag, he could come to no other conclusion than that she was staying in the house. He waited for her, received a leisured greeting, and said,

“Is it permitted to ask how you got here?”

“Certainly, Frank. Miss Grey drove me over in her car.”

“I thought you were paying Monica a visit. She seemed to think you were, yesterday when I was there after lunch. You had only just come, hadn’t you?”

She said with composure,

“Miss Grey has retained my professional services.”

He cocked an eyebrow.

“A fast worker. She came, she saw, you conquered— she whisked you back here. All just a little bewildering, don’t you think?”

“She is a friend of your cousin Cicely’s.”

“Which of course explains everything! Have you had breakfast?”

“Not yet. The bell rang as you arrived.”

He stood aside to let her pass.

“I shall be in the study. Perhaps you will look in there when you have finished. I should like to have a word with you.”

Miss Silver made her way to the dining-room, where she found Mrs. Fabian, Georgina, and Anthony. Mirrie arrived a moment later. She was out of breath, because all her life it had been such a crime to be late and she had dropped off again after that early morning cup of tea which was one of the high lights of life at Field End. No more tearing out of bed the minute the alarm clock went, the room all dark, bare feet on an icy floor. Instead, hot tea and a lovely warm snuggle in bed. She didn’t usually go to sleep again, but this morning she had just sunk down into a queer mixed dream in which Johnny and she were being married and someone came up the aisle behind them and said, “No.” She woke up all frightened, because she hardly ever dreamed and she didn’t like it when she did. And then it was late and she got the old rushed feeling, which was silly, because no one would scold her here, no matter how late she was. Uncle Albert and Aunt Grace and Matron were miles and miles away. She need never see them again, she need never go back to them now.

Johnny came in behind her. He put a hand on her shoulder as he passed, and said,

“Sleep well?”

And then they all sat down. Mrs. Fabian was holding forth on the passing of the country house breakfast.

“Three or four things on the hot plate, and eggs just any way you fancied them, and cold ham and cold tongue. Scottish families used to have porridge first, but my dear father always said oats were horse’s food. He disliked them greatly and would never have porridge on his table. And of course there were none of those breakfast cereals before the first world war. Or at least I don’t think there were. Things are so apt to slide together in one’s mind, don’t you think?”

The question appeared to be directed to the company in general. Miss Silver, whose thoughts were far too well ordered to allow of any such slipping and sliding, contented herself with the observation that two world wars had certainly brought about many changes. After which she partook of a medium-boiled egg, two slices of toast, and a cup of tea, and presently came into the study, where she found Frank Abbott at the writing-table. He greeted her with a serious,

“Do you know, I’m sorry Cicely has dragged you into this.”

He was immediately made aware that he had offended.

“I am not in the habit of allowing myself to be dragged into a case.” She was seating herself as she spoke, having first moved the chair a little farther away from him.

He shook his head.

“You know what I mean, and I’m going to tell you why. You like girls. Georgina Grey is an extremely attractive one, but it looks as if there was very little doubt that she shot her uncle.”

“She is aware that you think so.”

He said,

“Look at the evidence. He quarrels with her on Monday morning and tells her he is going to change his will. He tells the other girl too—Mirrie Field. She is enchanted and goes round prattling. Jonathan Field goes off up to town, sees his solicitor, and makes his new will. He comes back here on Tuesday evening and tells Mirrie what he has done. The rest of the family is given to understand that his business has been satisfactorily completed. I imagine they could all put two and two together. Not many hours later Jonathan is shot dead while he is sitting here at his table. Georgina says it was just before one o’clock when she came down and found him. That glass door on to the terrace was open and banging— she says that is what woke her. She also says she picked up the revolver and put it on the table. There are no fingerprints on it but hers. In addition to all this, the grate was full of charred paper, some of it quite easy to identify as part of a legal document. Georgina says it was his new will, and that he burned it himself after a reconciliation scene with her. She did follow him to the study after dinner, and I have no doubt they had a scene, but as to whether it was a reconciliation or another quarrel we have only her word for it. She didn’t shoot him then, because he was alive when Stokes came in at ten o’clock. But if, as seems most likely, she did shoot him at some time during the night, she could very easily have burned the will before she called Anthony Hallam. It all hangs together, doesn’t it?”

Miss Silver had been listening with an expression of extreme gravity. She said,

“Circumstantial evidence often does. I do not think you should make up your mind that Miss Grey is guilty.”

He had to subdue a touch of impatience.

“Do you find it so difficult to believe? It must have been a severe shock to her to find that she was being disinherited. She has been brought up to believe that she will be Jonathan’s heiress. He has no other near relation, and he is fond of her and proud of her. And then everything changes. He comes across Mirrie Field, brings her down on a visit, and falls for her like a ton of bricks. I have no doubt she was jealous.”

Miss Silver coughed gently.

“I could see no signs of it.”

“Oh, well, she would hardly be human if she wasn’t—at any rate to some degree.”

Miss Silver said mildly,

“It is not everyone who has a jealous disposition.”

This time he did not entirely keep the impatience out of his voice.

“Someone seems to have thought that Georgina had one, because she got an anonymous letter accusing her of being jealous of Mirrie and not treating her properly! When she took it to Jonathan he took sides with the letter-writer. That is when he told her he was going to change his will. I suspect that the change was going to be a very drastic one. There was, in fact, a good deal that might have made her see red. And right on top of it he went off to town, made this new will he had told her about, and came back with it in his pocket in time for dinner on Tuesday night. Georgina saw him after that, and she says he burned the will himself. It doesn’t seem very likely, does it?”

Miss Silver said in a thoughtful voice,

“I do not know, Frank. By any interpretation of the facts Mr. Field would appear to have been a person of sudden changes of mood and impetuous decisions. He had taken one such decision when influenced by an unexpected quarrel. Might he not have arrived at another under the influence of a reconciliation?”

He looked at her sharply.

“Then who shot him?”

She said, “That is what remains to be found out,” and as she said it the telephone bell rang sharply.

Frank Abbott leaned forward and took up the receiver. A voice said, “Is that Deeping 10?”

He said, “Yes.”

The voice said, “To whom am I speaking?”

“Detective Inspector Abbott.”

The voice said, “I am Mr. Maudsley, Mr. Jonathan Field’s solicitor. I have just seen the news of his death in the morning papers. I am speaking from Edinburgh.”

The line was very clear and good. Miss Silver was able to hear every word.

Frank said,

“We have been most anxious to get into touch with you.”

“Yes. I was travelling yesterday. I stopped to see a client on the way up and got in late. I am very much shocked at the news,. Is there any possibility of its having been an accident?”

“None whatever. He was murdered.”

Mr. Maudsley repeated the word he had used before.

“How very shocking! Why, he was with me on Monday and Tuesday.”

“Yes, we have been anxious to get into touch with you about that. I believe he made a new will?”

“Yes—yes, he did—but—”

“Your chief clerk says he took it away with him.”

“Yes, he did.”

“It had been signed and witnessed?”

“Oh, yes—but—”

“That was your last contact with Mr. Field?”

“Well, no, Inspector, it wasn’t.”

“You saw him again after he left your office?”

“No—but he rang me up.”

Frank was aware of Miss Silver looking extremely intelligent.

“He rang you? When?”

Mr. Maudsley, speaking in the call-box of his Edinburgh hotel, was perfectly distinct and audible to them both.

“It was at about half-past-nine on Tuesday evening.”

“You are sure about the time?”

“To within five minutes or so.”

“Had the call any connection with the will which he had signed that morning?”

“Yes—a very serious connection. He gave me to understand that he had destroyed it.”

The intelligence of Miss Silver’s expression became intensified. Frank Abbott said,

“He told you that he had destroyed his latest will?”

“He said he had just been burning it.”

“The will which he had only signed that morning?”

“Mr. Field was in some ways a man of impulse. He had acted on impulse when he made this latest will. I may say that I had protested very strongly against some of its provisions. We were old friends, and he let me have my say. When he rang me up in the evening it was to tell me that he had come round to my way of thinking, and that he had just burned the will in the presence of his niece Georgina Grey. He thanked me for the representations I had made, and said he had become convinced that he was on the brink of committing an injustice. He added that there was no real hurry, but he would come and see me as soon as I got back to discuss the details of a will which would be just to everyone concerned.”

“I take it that the will superseded by the one which Mr. Field burned will now stand.”

“Undoubtedly. Have you come across it?”

“It is in a locked drawer of his writing-table. May I ask when you expect to be back?”

“I am booking a sleeper for tonight. I will come straight down to Field End. I am an executor, and it will be more regular if I take charge of the will.”

Frank Abbott hung up the receiver.

“That was Mr. Maudsley the solicitor. He says Jonathan Field rang him up at about half-past-nine on Tuesday evening and told him he had destroyed the will signed only that morning. Mr. Maudsley had made rather strong representations on the grounds of its being unjust. Jonathan had come to feel that this was the case, and he had just finished burning the will.”

Miss Silver inclined her head.

“Yes, I was able to hear most of what was said.”

Frank lifted an eyebrow.

“Very convenient for Miss Georgina Grey. Jonathan Field must have rung up as soon as she left him and went back to the drawing-room, and before Stokes came in with the drinks. Now the question is, did she come down later on and shoot him, or have we got to find another suspect?”

Miss Silver’s voice took on a tone of reproof.

“My dear Frank, with the will destroyed, what possible motive could she have had?”

“My dear ma’am, I don’t think one has to look very far for a motive. He had always allowed her to be considered as his heiress. I have no doubt that under the will of two years ago she would have come in for practically everything. When she saw him destroy the will which, as far as one gathers, put Mirrie Field in her place Georgina was back in the position of sole heiress. And she held that position for just so long as Jonathan didn’t make another will. He had acted on impulse once when he cut her out. He had acted on impulse again when he destroyed his new will. For all she knew, he might cut her out again, if not tomorrow, then the next day, or the next, or at any time when she chanced to vex him or he had an access of affection for Mirrie.”

Miss Silver looked at him very directly.

“Do you really believe her capable of such a line of reasoning?”

“Oh, she is quite intelligent.”

“I think you know very well that I was not referring to her intelligence. What I meant was that so unprincipled a line of thought would never occur to her.”

There was a sardonic gleam in his eye as he said,

“Discharged without a stain upon her character? Then we must have our other suspect. Unfortunately, we are handicapped by the fact that though there is some evidence that he may exist, he is for the moment featureless and nameless. In fact we haven’t a clue as to who he may be, or where to look for him.”

Miss Silver fixed him with a bright, expectant look.

“You interest me extremely. Pray go on.”

He leaned forward to lift the heavy album which contained a part of Jonathan Field’s collection of fingerprints and set it down upon the blotting-pad.

“This album was on the table when Jonathan was shot. You may have heard that he had a very extensive collection of fingerprints. Some of them were in this volume. Anthony Hallam brought me down to a dance here last Saturday week. I stayed the night. There were people to dinner before the dance, and Jonathan brought some of us in here and showed off his collection. He told us a tale about being buried under the ruins of a house during the blitz. There was another man there too. He never saw him, but they could just reach each other. Jonathan said this man was nearly off his head with claustrophobia. He talked all the time. He confessed to a couple of murders, described how he had done them—all that sort of thing. Well, it could have happened. Practically anything could have happened in one of those bad raids and Jonathan could have got the chap’s prints by passing him a cigarette-case as he said he did. But I did think it wasn’t the first time he had told the tale, and I thought it had probably got touched up a bit. He said they got him out unconscious next day, and he came round in hospital with a broken leg. And he said there wasn’t any sign of the other man. He had to hurry over all that part of it, because Georgina came along and said that people were arriving for the dance, but he did just open the album half way to give us a sight of the prints. There was an envelope there marking the place.”

As he spoke he parted the leaves, and there the envelope lay. Miss Silver put out her hand for it. He was interested to notice that it took her no time at all to become aware of the very nearly indecipherable pencilling at one end. She turned it to get the best of the light and read what he himself had seen there—“Notes on the blitz story. J.F.” She said,

“It is empty.”

Frank nodded.

“Yes, it’s empty. But it wasn’t—I could swear to that. Twelve days ago when he brought us in here and spun that tale the envelope was there at the place where he opened the album, and it wasn’t empty then. The notes, whatever they may have been, were inside it. He didn’t open the album wide, you know. He only opened it half way, and when he parted the leaves the envelope fell over on the left-hand side. And it didn’t fall in the way that an empty envelope would have fallen. It dropped because there was something inside it. There was something in it then, and there isn’t anything in it now. But of course whatever was there could have been taken out at any time between then and Wednesday morning. It is convenient to suppose that the notes were removed at the time of the murder—that is, during the night between Tuesday and Wednesday. But there isn’t any proof that this is what happened, any more than there is any proof that the page with the murderer’s fingerprints on it was torn out at the same time.”

“A page has been torn out of the album?”

“The page where the envelope lay.”

He lifted the album over to the edge of the table so that she could see it. She scrutinized it with interest. The page had been somewhat roughly torn out and the jagged edge was plain to see.

“It would be somewhat of a coincidence if the removal of this page and of Mr. Field’s notes upon the fingerprints preserved there had no connection with his death.”

“Coincidence or not, there were all the days between the Saturday night of the dance and the murder when the notes might have been removed and the page torn out. But the door to the terrace was open, and though the revolver with which Jonathan Field was shot may have belonged to him, he had no licence for it, and no one in the house will admit to knowing anything about it. A German make—and heaven knows how how many thousand odds and ends of firearms were smuggled into the country while demobilization was going on! Jonathan may have wangled one in himself. He was in France in ’44—some kind of a Red Cross job. Anthony Hallam was in Africa. Johnny Fabian was turned eighteen when the war ended—he did just get over to France. Either of them could have brought a revolver back as a souvenir. Neither of them had any reason to shoot Jonathan. In fact one is thrown back upon the exasperating theory that the unknown murderer of the blitz story had somehow become aware that Jonathan was in possession of his fingerprints and an account of his confession, and that he was in the habit of regaling favoured visitors with a tale which featured them.” Miss Silver said,

“You would call it an exasperating theory?”

“My dear ma’am, we haven’t a clue as to who the blitz murderer may have been. We don’t even know that there was such a person. Jonathan Field may have dreamt the whole thing after concussion, or he may simply have invented it. From what I used to hear about him, he would have been perfectly capable of it! Then we don’t know how many times he had told the tale before, but when I heard him tell it, there were also present Anthony Hallam, Mirrie Field, Johnny Fabian, the Shotterleigh twins who are local young things, a man called Vincent, also local but a newcomer recently back from South America—lots of money and no family. I may say that he was one of the dullest men I have ever met, and that I nearly passed out with boredom whilst he was telling me how he lost a valuable postage stamp in a rapid. That makes seven of us. Oh, and Georgina Grey came in just as he started the story, but that is neither here nor there, because she had obviously heard it all before. Well, there were seven of us without her, and the only possible candidate for the part of the blitz murderer would be Vincent, because apart from the fingerprints Jonathan’s only chance of identifying the man was by recognizing his voice. He did say he thought he would be able to do that. So you see, that cuts out all the people with whose voices he was familiar, and it really cuts out Vincent too, because there he was, a guest in the house, and Jonathan obviously hadn’t recognized his voice. But when Georgina came in it was to tell him that people were arriving for the dance. She stood there on the threshold with the door open behind her. Jonathan played obstinate and insisted on finishing his yarn, and in the end she said, “Oh, well—” and went off without him. But she didn’t shut the door, and if there had been anyone out in the hall who wanted to listen in, I suppose he could have done so. That would extend the number of people who might have heard about the murderer’s confession and his fingerprints. There could be a further and quite indefinite extension of the number owing to the fact that it had been a very good story, and that any or all of the seven or eight people who had heard it first-hand from Jonathan on Saturday week could have told and retold it a dozen times before his murder took place. So that, in fact, it could have spread like the ripples in a pool.”

Miss Silver had been listening with attention.

“It is certainly the kind of story that people would repeat. You may even have repeated it yourself.”

He laughed.

“I could take credit for having been discreet, but as a matter of fact I was far too busy. The other seven would have had plenty of time to spread the tale, and coincidences do happen. It could have reached the murderer, and he could have decided that his confession and his fingerprints would be better in the fire—especially if there were even the remotest chance of his bumping into Jonathan and giving him the opportunity of identifying his voice. Let us suppose for a moment that that is what happened. We call the chap X. He comes down here, probably by car—there is quite a line in stealing cars for this kind of work. He parks it unobtrusively and walks round the house. He may just possibly have had an appointment with Jonathan—perhaps something in the way of fingerprints to offer. Or, seeing the light, he may have just knocked on the glass door and pitched some likely tale. Anyhow he gets in and they talk. At some period the album is got out and the fingerprints are exhibited. At some point X produces a revolver and shoots Jonathan Field, after which he tears out the page with his own fingerprints, takes the notes out of the envelope, and makes off. I don’t think he would have stopped to burn anything at the time in case of the shot having been heard. Once he was clear there would be nothing to connect him with the crime, and there would be all the time in the world to burn the page and the notes at a safe distance from Field End.”

Miss Silver’s hands were folded in her lap.

“I can imagine no reason why he should have left that revolver behind him.”

“Oh, well, I don’t insist on the revolver being his own. Let us suppose that it belonged to Jonathan. He is having an interview with a man whom he knows to have been a murderer. Wouldn’t it have been natural for him to have taken the precaution of having some means of protection handy?”

Miss Silver said,

“I do not know. I should have said it would be most improbable that Mr. Field would either make an appointment for so late an hour or admit a stranger to his house without one.”

Frank looked a little taken aback.

“Well, someone shot him, and it was someone who knew the story of the man who was buried with Jonathan under a bombed building in the blitz, because otherwise he would have had no motive for tearing out the page with the man’s fingerprints and removing Jonathan’s notes on the incident.”

Miss Silver gave a gentle unobtrusive cough.

“He tore the page from the album and he removed the notes from the envelope. Can you tell me why he left the empty envelope in the album, where it marked the torn-out page?”