The Fingerprint

Chapter XXXV

FRANK ABBOTT dropped in at Field End on Tuesday morning. He asked for Miss Silver, and she came to him presently with her knitting-bag on her arm and the white woolly shawl now two thirds of the way towards completion wrapped up in a soft old face-towel-one of those fine white ones with a diaper pattern on it now quite out of date and superseded by cleansing tissues. The much faded date in the corner of this one was 1875, and it had been part of the wedding outfit of an aunt.

Miss Silver took out the shawl, spread the towel over her knees, and turned her attention to Frank.

“The enquiries about Sid Turner? Have they had any success?”

He gave a faint shrug.

“Beyond producing considerable alarm and despondency in Maudsley’s office I should say none, if it were not for the fact that to have a perfectly good alibi for Tuesday night is in itself a suspicious circumstance.”

Miss Silver inserted a second needle into the fluffy white cloud on her lap and began to knit with her usual smoothness and rapidity.

“Sid Turner has an alibi?”

“Certainly. You will remember we agreed that he would have one. Blake went down, or shall I say up to Pigeon Hill and saw his landlady and her husband. Retired railwayman and his wife. Nothing against them. Sid has lodged with them for about six months. Mr. Jenkins said he was all right, and Mrs. Jenkins said he was ever so nice. The alibi consists in his coming in to fetch a raincoat about nine o’clock on Tuesday evening, catching his foot in it, and falling down the best part of a flight of stairs. The Jenkinses depose to finding him unconscious in the hall. They roused him with brandy, and Jenkins helped him to bed. There were no bones broken, and he said he didn’t want a doctor. Mrs. Jenkins produced a couple of sleeping-tablets and told him to knock on the floor if he wanted anything. He replied that all he wanted was to be left alone to go to sleep. So they left him. As you are about to observe, he could have got out of the window and just made Lenton on his motorbike in time to ring Jonathan up from there.”

Miss Silver gave a faint doubtful cough.

“It would have been running it very fine, and he would be taking the risk of the Jenkinses looking in to see how he was before they went to bed.”

Frank nodded.

“According to Blake there wasn’t any risk of their doing that. They sleep in the basement and Jenkins keeps off the stairs as much as he can. He’s got a dicky foot, which is why he left the railways, and Mrs. Jenkins weighs about seventeen stone.”

Miss Silver’s needles clicked.

“Did Inspector Blake see Sid Turner?”

“He wasn’t at home. Asked where he was likely to be, Mrs. Jenkins bridled and said she wouldn’t wonder if he was at the Three Pigeons. Very friendly with the lady there he was-a Mrs. Marsh. Her husband had been dead about a twelvemonth, and there were those who thought she might be going to make it up with Sid. And he’d be doing well for himself if she did. Nice bit of money the husband had left her, to say nothing of the pub.”

“So Inspector Blake went round to the Three Pigeons? Was Sid Turner there?”

“He was, and so were a lot of other people. And do you know what they were doing? Celebrating Sid’s engagement to Mrs. Marsh-drinks on the house and a good time being had by all. Sid is a quick worker!”

Miss Silver looked thoughtful.

“If one of the girls in Mr. Maudsley’s office was friendly with him to the point of giving away confidential information, do you not suppose that she would have let him know about Inspector Blake’s visit to the office?”

“She probably did. Why?”

“I was thinking that it would be a clever move to announce his engagement to this Mrs. Marsh. It would cast doubts on the likelihood of his having had designs upon Mirrie and upon anything she might have inherited from Jonathan Field.”

“It may have been that, or it may simply have been that Mirrie being out of the will, and therefore out of the running, Sid was declining upon the not unattractive Mrs. Marsh, her bit of money in the bank, and her flourishing pub. Blake reports him as being very well pleased with himself-in fact cock-a-hoop to the point of impertinence. Pressed as to his movements on Tuesday night, he gave the same account of his fall as the landlady and her husband. He said it knocked him clean out and left him muzzy in the head. Put his hand to the place and said the bump had gone down but it still felt tender. He had crawled into his bed, and certainly had no desire or temptation to leave it. Well, there you are, and we haven’t got a case. We can prove his knowledge of the fact that Jonathan had signed a will in Mirrie’s favour, and that’s all we can prove. Maggie Bell says that the voice which made the appointment with Jonathan Field during a call from Lenton at ten-thirty on the night of the murder was the same voice which had replied to Mirrie’s call at a quarter past eight. Mirrie admits that the person she called was Sid. The number he had given her for an emergency is the number of Mrs. Marsh’s pub, the Three Pigeons. But what Maggie says is just her opinion, and even if it was admitted as evidence, which I should say was doubtful, I don’t think a jury would look at it unless it was backed up by something a good deal more conclusive. You see, we can’t prove that Sid ever set foot in this house, and to have a case against him that is what we have got to do. We could prove motive, but we should have to prove opportunity. We have got, in fact, to prove that he was here in this room on Tuesday night.”

Miss Silver had been listening with an air of bright attention. She now laid down her hands on the mass of white wool in her lap.

“The album!” she said.

“The album?”

“If it was Sid Turner who tore out the page, he could not have done so without handling the album and leaving his prints upon it.”

“The album was, of course, examined for prints. You’ve got to remember that it had Jonathan’s own prints all over it.”

“And no one else’s?”

“I don’t think so.”

“But, Frank, that is in itself a very suspicious circumstance. Someone tore out that page and took Mr. Field’s notes out of the envelope which marked the place.”

He shrugged.

“Well, someone shot Jonathan and was careful to leave no prints. He could have worn gloves, or he could have protected his hand with a handkerchief.”

She said with unusual earnestness,

“Think again, Frank. To have worn gloves must have appeared highly suspicious. So suspicious that it might have led Mr. Field immediately to ring the bell and alarm the house. To carry out the murderer’s plan, Mr. Field must be lulled into a state of security, induced if he has not already done so to get out the album, and to sit down at the table. I think the murderer would certainly have been obliged to remove his gloves. He may, as you suggest, have protected his hand in some way after the murder had taken place, but I think there must have been a time when his hands were bare, and however careful he was he may during that time have touched some object, let us say a table or a chair. Amongst the prints which were taken from this room on Wednesday morning, are there none which have not been identified?”

“You mean-”

“I have remembered something which should have occurred to me before. When I was speaking to Sid Turner after the funeral we were standing to one side of the dining-room against the sideboard. During the first part of our conversation Sid Turner’s hands were a good deal occupied with his drink. He sipped from it, changed it constantly from one hand to the other, and appeared nervous and jerky in his movements. In answer to his questions I had intimated that, as I understood it, Georgina Grey was the principal legatee under Mr. Field’s will. Looking back, I can see that he must have been on the rack of anxiety as to whether Mirrie had misled him, of if she had not, as to what after so short an interval could have happened to the will under which she inherited.”

“In fact quite a nasty moment.”

“When Sid Turner had set down his drink his restless mannerisms increased. He put his hands in his pockets and took them out again, and then, whilst suggesting that Mr. Field could have been murdered and the page in his album torn out by someone who might be compromised by the fingerprint preserved upon it, he began a kind of nervous tapping upon the edge of the sideboard. He appeared, in fact, to be tapping out a tune. But the tapping was done in an unusual way, and it is to this that I wish to draw your attention. During all the time that I was observing him his hand was held sideways and the tapping was on the under surface of an overlapping edge. It came to me to wonder whether he might not have left his prints in this room, under the arm of the chair in which he sat or under the edge of the table. I do not, of course, know whether this way of tapping was a constant mannerism with him, but he employed it at a moment of tension when he was talking to me, and when I recalled this just now I considered that I had better mention it.”

He said quickly,

“Oh, yes-yes-I’ll go into it with Smith. As to there being any unidentified prints, there were some he was enquiring about.”

Miss Silver inclined her head.

“If it can be proved that Sid Turner was in this room, it will have been proved that he had the opportunity of murdering Mr. Field.”

Frank Abbott drew the telephone fixture towards him and rang up Lenton police station. There was a little coming and going before Inspector Smith was on the line. Miss Silver had resumed her knitting. Frank said,

“That you Smith? Abbott speaking. Those prints in the Field End case-there were one or two which hadn’t been identified. There was something about a man coming up to take measurements for curtains, wasn’t there? You thought they might be his, but there was a difficulty in tracing him- gone off to another job. Have you caught up with him?… Oh, you have? Good! Well, what about it? Are those unidentified dabs his?… Oh, they’re not? Well, well- All right, I’ll come in and have a look at them. Be seeing you.”