The Fingerprint

by Patricia Wentworth

  Frank did not look overpleased when Johnny walked in. He was immediately presented with an ultimatum.

  “I don’t know what you want to ask her about, and nor does she, but either I stay, or she doesn’t talk. She isn’t obliged to answer a single thing, and don’t you Gestapo lads forget it!”

  Frank looked down his bony nose.

  “I am here on duty, and this isn’t a joke. You can stay, but you mustn’t interrupt. I want to ask a few questions about a telephone conversation which Miss Field had on Tuesday evening a few hours before Mr. Field’s death.”

  Mirrie said, “Oh-” She sat down in one of the easy chairs and Johnny propped himself on the arm. Frank went on speaking.

  “You rang someone up at about a quarter past eight, didn’t you? Mr. Sid Turner, wasn’t it? That conversation was overheard.”

  Mirrie began to shake. Johnny, with a hand upon her shoulder, could feel how the tremor began at the mention of Sid’s name. She said, “Oh-” again. It wasn’t really a word but a quickly taken breath. And then the words came out.

  “They were all in the drawing-room, and the Stokes and Doris were through the swing-door-”

  Frank said,

  “I’m sure you took every precaution, but someone listened all the same. Now look here, there’s nothing for you to be worried about. You weren’t doing anything wrong in ringing up. It just links up with other things, and we want to get it straight. The person who listened in has made a statement, and this is what it amounts to. You rang Sid Turner up at a quarter past eight on Tuesday. You were very much pleased and excited because Mr. Field had just come back from London and he had told you that he had made and signed a new will. You said that he was treating you as if you were his daughter, and Sid Turner said that was a bit of all right, and he had a friend at court who had okayed it, or he might have thought it was too good to be true. Now there wasn’t anything wrong in your saying what you did, but, as I said, we are checking up and I would like to know whether you agree that that is a correct account of the conversation.”

  Johnny’s mind moved quickly. By the time that Mirrie turned imploring eyes on him it was made up. He slipped his arm about her shoulders in a reassuring manner and said,

  “Well, darling, it’s up to you. Is that how it went?”

  She turned the gaze on Frank.

  “He said not to ring him up, but I was so pleased, and I thought he would be too.”

  “This statement about what you said and what he said, is it correct?”

  “Oh, yes it is.”

  “You rang up Sid Turner in London and told him about the alteration in Mr. Field’s will?”

  “He told me not to ring up, but I thought-”

  “Yes-you explained how it happened. I am going to ask you if you will just sign a statement about that conversation. We want to be sure that we’ve got it right.”

  She looked at Johnny again, and he nodded.

  “Better do it.”

  She said, not to Frank but to him, “Sid will be angry.”

  “That’s just too bad, but you’d better do what Frank says. Nasty fellows to get up against, the police, but they’ll see that Sid doesn’t do anything to annoy you.”

  Frank Abbott gave them time for the interlude. If Johnny was prepared to co-operate, his help was worth having. He said,

  “What did you understand Sid Turner to mean when he said he had a friend at court who could okay what you told him about Mr. Field’s will?”

  Mirrie was feeling more confident now.

  “He knew someone in Mr. Maudsley’s office.”

  Frank Abbott took her up on that.

  “The person who was listening to your conversation says you asked him what he meant by that friend at court business. If you knew he meant this person, why did you do that?”

  Her colour rose becomingly.

  “He was just bringing her in to vex me, and I thought I’d let him know I didn’t care who he was friends with or what they told him. And if it was that girl in the office who told him about Uncle Jonathan signing his will, then she hadn’t any business to, and if Mr. Maudsley knew about it he would send her away.” Her colour faded and her voice shook. “If she was telling him things, I didn’t want to hear about it! And it was horrid of him to tell me about her!”

  In a wide experience it had fallen to Frank Abbott’s lot to receive the confidences of a good many damsels, mostly cousins. But for this he might have considered Mirrie’s line of reasoning to be obscure. As it was, he understood perfectly that Sid Turner had mentioned the girl in Mr. Maudsley’s office with intent to annoy, and that Mirrie had very properly snubbed him.

  He considered that this might be the appropriate moment to make a further enquiry, one confidence being apt to lead to another. He said,

  “There’s just one thing. You remember on the night of the dance some of us were in here and Mr. Field was telling us about his collection. He got the albums out and told us a yarn about getting a fingerprint from a man who had confessed to a couple of murders. He said he and this man were buried under a bombed building, and that he got the fingerprint by passing him a cigarette-case. Just at the most exciting point of the story Georgina Grey came along and said that people were beginning to arrive for the dance.”

  Mirrie was looking at him with sparkling eyes.

  “Oh, yes-wasn’t it a shame! It was a most exciting story, and I did so want to hear it properly!”

  Frank nodded.

  “I think we were all keyed up about it. I should have liked to have heard the rest of it myself. Now later on that evening you slipped out of this glass door to meet Sid Turner. He had rung you up at seven o’clock and told you to come out and meet him. He wanted to tell you about new arrangements for writing to him, and you wanted to show him your new dress, so you slipped out.”

  Mirrie’s voice reproached the absent Sid.

  “It was a lovely dress, but he didn’t take any notice of it. I wanted him to come into the study and see it in the light, but he wouldn’t.”

  “Stupid fellow! Now look here, I want to know whether you told Sid Turner this story about the man who confessed to two murders and left a print on Mr. Field’s cigarette-case.”

  Johnny said, “Why should she?”

  Frank lifted a hand and let it fall again.

  “Why shouldn’t she? It was a good story and she was obviously thrilled with it. She might have told him.”

  Johnny said,

  “Well, did you, darling?”

  Mirrie looked from Frank to him and back again.

  “Oh, well, I did.”

  “What did he say when you told him?”

  “He said it was a funny thing collecting fingerprints, and there might be someone who didn’t like to think about his dabs being in an album, and I asked him what dabs were, and he said fingerprints.”

  Frank proceeded to the business of taking down her statement and getting her to sign it. When it was done and she and Johnny had gone back to their flat-furnishing game, he turned to Miss Silver.

  “It begins to look like Sid, doesn’t it? He’d got his eye on Mirrie as a possible heiress and he was all set to get the earliest possible information as to the actual signing of the will. That being the case, he would have an interest in Jonathan’s death. But hang it all, the will was only signed on Tuesday afternoon. The earliest he could have heard of it would be some time after five, when the girl in Maudsley’s office would be free to see him or to ring him up-say somewhere between five and a quarter past eight, when Mirrie rang him up and he already knew that the will had been signed. To my mind Jonathan’s murder was a very carefully planned affair. If Sid was the murderer he must have got off the mark pretty quickly. But why? From his point of view where was the hurry?”

  Miss Silver said equably,

  “The more quickly he acted, the less chance was there that any suspicion would attach to him. He had forbidden Mirrie to ring him up. If she had not done so, and if Maggie Bell
had not overheard their conversation, it could never have been proved that he knew anything about the will which made Mirrie Field an heiress. And if he did not know about the will he had no possible motive for the crime. Since it is now certain that he did know about it, his motive was a strong one. He was, I am sure, completely confident of being able to induce Mirrie to marry him. His influence over her was obviously an established one, and he was unaware that it was being undermined by her growing attachment to Mr. Fabian. As to the need for immediate action, I feel that there were probably cogent reasons for it.”

  Frank was leaning back, his eyes half closed, missing nothing. He was being taught his business, and he had no thought of resenting it. That was the astonishing thing about Maudie-she took a case to pieces before your eyes and then she put it together again, and she did it without feeling clever herself or making you feel stupid. She saw things as they were, and she took you along with her until you saw them too. And she left you with the feeling of being on the top of your own particular world.

  “And what do you imagine those reasons to have been?”

  She smiled.

  “You will, I am sure, have thought of them for yourself. Mr. Field had shown himself to be both changeable and impulsive. We have no actual proof of how much this girl in Mr. Maudsley’s office had been able to repeat, but a young woman bent on eavesdropping could doubtless have picked up a good deal. Mr. Maudsley told Georgina Grey that he had made every effort to deter Mr. Field from signing what he considered to be a most unjust will. He said that the old friendship between them had been strained almost to breaking-point. In the circumstances, there is no difficulty in imagining that the voices of both gentlemen were raised, and that Mr. Maudsley’s office would have had a very good idea of what was going on. I gather that two of the clerks were called in to witness the signing of the will. This girl might have been one of them. I think Sid Turner may well have considered the possibility of another change of mind on the part of Mr. Field. Put yourself in his place. It is Tuesday evening, and he has learned that Jonathan Field has signed a will which makes Mirrie his heiress. He believes himself to be sure of her, and if Mr. Field dies tonight Mirrie is sure of the money. If Mr. Field lives he may change his mind again. But if he dies, Mirrie is an heiress and Sid Turner has only to put out his hand and take her. That is, I think, a fair deduction from the bullying tone which he adopted during their telephone conversations. Maggie Bell was extremely indignant about it, and I think it is safe to say that a man does not adopt that manner towards a girl, and without reproof, unless it has become a habit between them.”

  “I expect you are right. You think he decided to strike while the iron was hot?”

  “I believe that he must have done so. To a person deprived of principle and merely considering his own advantage it would appear to be a natural course of action. A truly shocking example of the consequences which attend the neglect of religion and morality.”

  This was Maudie in her loftiest manner. Frank bowed to it respectfully. Whilst in one corner of his mind a modern imp cocked a snook, its more orderly inhabitants chorused, “That is true.” Aloud he said,

  “So he got on his motorbike, hared down to Lenton, rang Jonathan up from a call-box, sold him a line on fingerprints, and came over and shot him. Definitely a fast worker!”

  Miss Silver said,

  “Yes.” There was a short pause before she went on. “There is no means of knowing at what period it occurred to him that the story about a murderer’s fingerprint repeated to him by Mirrie could be used to his own advantage. He may have thought of it originally as a means of inducing Mr. Field to let him in. Any alarm would be fatal. He remembers that Mr. Field is a collector, and he uses the offer of specially interesting material as a bait. Once Mr. Field has taken it the rest is easy. Jonathan Field lays out the album on his table and waits for him. The talk probably begins with some reference to the story repeated by Mirrie. We know that Mr. Field was particularly fond of telling it. It is probably whilst he is engaged in doing so that Sid Turner conceives the idea of tearing out the page concerned and removing the notes about it from the envelope which marked the place. He would argue that this would suggest a motive far other than the real one. He has come determined on Mr. Field’s death. He shoots him without warning, and once he has torn the leaf from the album, removed the notes, and left the house, he feels that there will be nothing to connect him with the crime.”

  Frank nodded.

  “He left the revolver because there was just a faint hope that the death might be put down to suicide. Jonathan’s prints were on it, but an attempt to get a dead man’s prints in any sort of natural position doesn’t really come off. I think that is where he made a mistake. If he was going to suggest an unknown murderer intent on destroying an incriminating fingerprint, he could have left it at that and taken his gun away. He could always have dropped it in the river after he got back to town. Well, we’ve produced a very pretty jigsaw puzzle between us, and all the pieces seem to fit very nicely, but we’ve still got to make the thing stick together. Jigsaws have a nasty way of coming apart when you try and pick them up. And, to leave the metaphor out of it, we may find that Sid has got a real first-class unbreakable alibi for Tuesday night.

  Miss Silver coughed in a meditative manner.

  “I feel quite sure that he will have provided himself with an alibi.”

  “Any particular reason for thinking so?”

  She said,

  “I think Sid Turner is a very dangerous person. He plans with great attention to detail, and he acts promptly and efficiently. He takes care to establish a connection with Mr. Maudsley’s office, he takes care to maintain his ascendancy over Mirrie Field, he even takes the bold step of coming down to attend Mr. Field’s funeral. I feel sure that he would not have neglected to provide himself with an alibi for Tuesday night. There are a number of ways in which it could be done.”

  “My dear ma’am! I tremble to think of the consequences if you had ever turned your mind to crime!”

  This impropriety was rightly ignored. She said,

  “There is a point which may interest you. It concerns the torn-out page and the missing notes supposed to authenticate the fingerprint upon it.”

  He wondered what was coming, but was hardly prepared for it when it came.

  “ Georgina tells me that the story of a murderer’s confession during an air raid was a great favourite of Mr. Jonathan Field’s, but that he had told her it really had no foundation in fact.”

  “ Georgina told you that!”

  “I already had grave doubts about the story. The fingerprint was supposed to have been left on a cigarette-case passed by Mr. Field to the man who, like himself, had been trapped in the ruins of a bombed building. Mr. Field in his account of the incident was said to have stated that he subsequently lost consciousness, and that when he came to he discovered himself to be in hospital with a broken limb. He would have been undressed, money and valuables removed from his pockets, and I found it impossible to believe that a fingerprint would have survived the handling to which his cigarette-case must have been subjected. In fact the murderer’s confession might possibly have been made as described by Mr. Field, but reason and common sense reject the evidence of the fingerprint. When I said this to Georgina she informed me that the print on the torn-out page was that of Mr. Field’s own forefinger.”

  Frank said, “The old devil!” He received a glance of reproof.

  “I believe that he considered it to be a very good joke. It does undoubtedly remove the possibility that the missing page was torn out for any other reason than to divert attention from the real motive for Mr. Field’s murder.”

  “Bringing us back to Sid Turner. You know, he really did have desperately bad luck-bad and quite unforeseeable. No one-no one could have imagined that Jonathan would destroy his new will only a few hours after he had signed it.”

  Miss Silver looked at him gravely.

  “Sid Turner is a
dangerous and unscrupulous man. I shall be uneasy until I have heard of his arrest.”

  Chapter XXXIV

  FOR AT LEAST ONCE in his life Sid Turner would have endorsed a police officer’s opinion. His luck had been terrible. With every foreseeable detail thought out, every adverse contingency provided against, the one thing which could upset his careful planning had turned up against him. Jonathan Field had destroyed the will which he had signed only a few hours before, and his and Mirrie’s chances had gone up in smoke. Well, no use fighting your luck, and no use crying over spilt milk. Mirrie wasn’t the only pebble on the beach. There were other girls with money coming to them, and if he wanted to play safe, there was Aggie Marsh-getting on a bit, but not bad-looking and as soft as butter. Bert Marsh had left her the pub and twenty-five thousand. He knew that for a fact, because he had been to Somerset House and read the will. He had been considering her very carefully before Jonathan Field had carried Mirrie off from the Home and begun to fall for her in a big way. Well, he would just have to make do with Aggie. She’d have him all right, but he’d better not let the grass grow under his feet. Thanks to careful planning he was in the clear-alibi for Tuesday night and nothing to connect him with the death at Field End as long as Mirrie held her tongue. And she’d be much too frightened to do anything else. For a moment, as he contemplated the possibility of Mirrie blabbing, his thoughts became frighteningly dark.

  Then they cleared again. She had known things about him before and she hadn’t split. Besides it was all to her own advantage to keep a still tongue. Whatever she thought, she’d be too frightened of getting drawn in herself not to keep quiet about it.

  He had reached this comforting point, when his landlady Mrs. Jenkins called up the stair, “Phone call for you, Sid Turner,” and he went down to take it. The telephone was in her front room, and he shut the door before lifting the receiver. It might be Aggie Marsh. There had been something said about his going round for a spot of supper tonight. Well, he didn’t mind if he did.