The Fingerprint

Chapter XXXI

JOHNNY FABIAN drove Mirrie up on to the Common and off the road along a sandy track that doesn’t lead anywhere. Such a long time ago that most people had forgotten all about it a man called Sefton had tried to build a house there. The land being common land, he wasn’t allowed to get very far with it, and when he finally threw the whole thing up in disgust and went away, people from all the neighbouring villages came along and cleared the site. There really wasn’t much to take away-a few preliminary loads of bricks, a broken-down wheelbarrow, and a pile of gravel. It didn’t take long for the Common to come back to its own with a crop of loosestrife, and later on with seedlings of gorse, heather and birch. Today the only indication that there had ever been an invading house lay in the track which had led up to it, the rather more luxuriant growth which had followed the digging of the site, and the name of Sefton’s Folly.

Johnny flogged his car to the end of the track and drew up there, remarking that Sefton would have had a fine view if he had been allowed to finish his house. He told Mirrie the story, and she said it would have been very lonely up here without another house anywhere in sight.

Johnny laughed.

“Some people like being all alone on the top of the world.”

“I don’t. I’d hate it.”

“Why?”

“I like people.”

He laughed again.

“Rows and rows of them-all in little houses exactly alike, with an aspidistra in the window?”

Mirrie gazed at him.

“Aunt Grace has an aspidistra. She is very proud of it. I had to sponge the leaves.”

“And you loved it passionately?”

“I didn’t! I hated it!”

“Darling, what a good thing! Because, easy as I shall be to live with, on that point my mind is made up, my foot is down, and my will is law. I won’t share a flat with an aspidistra!”

She went off into a peal of laughter.

“Oh, Johnny, you are funny!”

They were not looking at the view selected by Mr. Sefton. The Common stood high and there was quite a wide prospect. The bells of Deeping church came up into the silence in a very pleasing manner, and the cloud which was later on to break in rain still lay crouched upon the horizon, leaving the sky agreeably dappled with blue and grey. The air was mild and the two front windows of the car stood open to it.

Mirrie and Johnny looked at each other. She wasn’t wearing her new black suit but the grey tweed skirt and white wool jumper, with an old nondescript top coat of Georgina ’s which Johnny had fished out of the cupboard under the stairs. She was bare-headed with a black and white scarf about her neck. If country clothes were not very exciting they were certainly comfortable and warm. She also thought that she looked quite nice in them. Johnny thought so too. He kissed her several times before he said,

“Darling, this is not why I brought you here.”

“Isn’t it?”

“Definitely not. The reason we are here is because I want to talk to you, and this is the sort of place where nobody is likely to butt in.”

“What do you want to talk about?”

“You-me-Sid Turner.”

She winced away from the mention of Sid’s name.

“I don’t want to. Johnny, I don’t.”

“Sorry, darling, but I do. If you didn’t want people to talk about Sid you oughtn’t to have asked him to the funeral.”

“Johnny, I didn’t-I wouldn’t! He just came.”

“And you just took him off into the morning-room.”

“I didn’t! It was he who took me. I didn’t want to talk to him.”

“Then why did you?”

“He made me.”

“Why did you let him?”

“I-I couldn’t help it.”

He took both her hands and pulled her round to face him.

“And now you’re not going to help talking to me! That is why we are here. Nobody’s going to come in and interrupt us, and if you were to scream for help until you hadn’t any more breath to scream with, no one would come. So just stop looking like a scared kitten. I am going to talk, and you are going to talk, and before we start I want to make it quite clear that lies are out.”

Her eyes were like saucers.

“Lies?”

“Yes, darling. Fibs, falsehoods, tarradiddles, and what have you! They’re out, and the reason they’re out is that you can’t put them across. Not with me. Every time you’ve lied to me I’ve known about it. You can’t get away with it, so why bother? I’m an expert liar myself, and you won’t ever be able to take me in. It’s the same principle as set a thief to catch a thief. And that being that, darling, what about Sid Turner?”

“S-S-Sid?”

He nodded.

“Yes, darling-Sid. The boy friend! That was the way he introduced himself, wasn’t it? Do you know, from what you have told me about Aunt Grace I shouldn’t have expected her to approve of him.”

“She d-doesn’t.”

“I’m not surprised. What does he do for a living?”

“I d-don’t quite know.”

Johnny Fabian laughed.

“Don’t you ask no questions and you won’t be told no lies-that’s about the size of it, I should say! Always got plenty of money-better not ask where he gets it! Now to start with, he doesn’t always call himself Sid Turner, does he? That letter you dropped at the post office-that was to him, wasn’t it?”

She raised brimming eyes to his face, and then quite suddenly she put up her hands and covered them.

“Oh, Johnny-”

“All right-that’s as good as a yes. It was to Sid. Now just carry your mind back to the day you wrote that letter and pretended to read it to me.”

“I d-did read it to you.”

“Not all of it, I think. And anyhow what you told me was that you were writing to Miss Ethel Brown who had been your schoolmistress. You told quite a lot of lies about that. First Miss Ethel Brown was your schoolmistress, and then you remembered that wouldn’t do because you went to the Grammar School. And then you said Miss Brown and her sister didn’t exactly keep a school-they had a few pupils, and you had promised to write and tell them how you were getting on at Field End. What you wrote in the part you read out to me was that Uncle Jonathan was so kind and he was going to leave you a lot of money in his will. I don’t know what was in the bits you didn’t read me, but what I do know is that none of it was written to Miss Ethel Brown. Because when you dropped the letter and I picked it up, it was addressed to Mr. E. C. Brown, 10, Marracott Street, Pigeon Hill, S.E. You pretended that he was Miss Brown’s brother, and that she was staying with him. And you might as well have saved your breath. You were just making it up as you went along, and you couldn’t have been doing it worse. So now I’m going to have the truth. The letter was to Sid Turner, wasn’t it?”

She gave a miserable little nod and two of the brimming drops ran down to the corners of her mouth.

“Did he tell you to write and let him know if Jonathan had settled any money on you?”

She nodded again.

“Oh, yes, he d-did.”

“And you always do everything he tells you? Nice obedient little girl, aren’t you! Come along-just what have you been up to with Sid?”

Mirrie burst into tears.

“Johnny, I haven’t-I didn’t-oh, Johnny!”

He went on in the hard new voice which was making her cry.

“It’s not the least use your crying. You’ve got to tell me just how far you’ve gone with him.”

“Oh, Johnny, it was only to the pictures. Aunt Grace never let me go anywhere except to tea with girls she thought it was nice for me to know. I just went to the pictures with Sid, and told her I was with Hilda Lambton or Mary Dean. That’s all-it really is.”

He was watching her, his eyes as hard as his voice.

“He made love to you?”

“Only a l-little.”

“And just what do you mean by that?”

“Oh, Johnny-”

“Out with it!”

“T-treading on my foot and holding hands in the pictures, and k-kissing me good-night. Oh, Johnny, I didn’t like it- I didn’t really!”

He continued to hold her at arm’s length and to watch her. She couldn’t ever tell him about the time when Sid had really frightened her. And right on the top of her thinking about it Johnny was saying,

“What did he do to scare you like this? You’re frightened to death of him, and I’m going to know why!”

She couldn’t tell him why. It had frightened her too much -the little dark alley between the houses and no windows looking that way, and Sid with his knife out and the point sharp against her throat. If she moved, it would go right in and she would be dead. It tickled against her skin, and he was telling her what he would do to her if she split on him. “Near or far, I’d get at you and I’d do you in. You wouldn’t know when it was coming. You’d be walking along feeling safe, and all at once the knife would be in your back and you’d be dead. Dead girls tell no tales.” That was what he had said. And then he had laughed and put the knife in his pocket and kissed her the way she didn’t like to be kissed, holding her right close up against him and almost stopping her breath. She could never tell Johnny about that. And it was all because she had asked a question. There had been a policeman shot and Sid had been going on about it, saying the police were too nosey by half and a good job if one of them got what was coming to him. There was a jeweller’s shop that had been broken into and she and Sid were larking-just a bit of a joke it was, him saying she was to give him a kiss, and her saying she wouldn’t and pushing him away, and just for fun she put her hand in his inside pocket. It was his wallet she meant to snatch, but her hand came back with a little parcel in it instead, and when he tried to get it away from her the paper tore and something fell down between them. Too dark for either of them to see where it was, but Mirrie found it. Her hand came right down on it when she stooped, and she didn’t need a light to tell her what it was! A ring with three big stones, and she slipped it on her finger and wished she could see what it looked like there. That was when she asked that question, pleased and laughing in the dark alley with the ring on her hand. And not thinking anything until the words were out, not thinking anything at all until she heard herself say, “Ooh-that’s a nice ring, and it fits me!” And then she said, “Where did you get it, Sid, and is it for me?” That was when he reached out and caught her in that hard grip and set the knife against her throat. She couldn’t ever tell Johnny about that.

She leaned away from him as far as she could, and he saw the terror in her eyes. He couldn’t go on-not when she looked at him like that. He had always had a soft spot for anything that was frightened or hurt. He let go of Mirrie’s hands and pulled her into his arms.

“Don’t look at me like that, silly little thing! I’m not going to hurt you, I’m going to look after you. I don’t care what anyone has made you do. Do you hear-I don’t care. If this chap has been frightening you, I’ll knock his block off. If he’s blackmailing you you’d better tell me all about it. If you’re in a jam we are in it together. And I’ll get you out- I promise I’ll get you out.”

When he held her like that Mirrie felt it was really true. All the time she was remembering about Sid and the knife she had been getting colder and colder, and stiffer and stiffer. She couldn’t feel her feet and she couldn’t feel her hands. She could only feel Sid’s knife against her throat. But now, with Johnny holding her close, the stiffness and the coldness were going out of her. She was warm again, and she was safe. Sid and the knife were a long way off. Johnny would keep her safe. She pressed her face down into the hollow of his shoulder and told him about the dark alley, and the ring, and the knife that had pricked her throat.