The Fingerprint

Chapter XXXVII

MISS SILVER came down on the same Tuesday morning to find that a note had been dropped in the letter-box for her. It ran-“Off to town to compare fingerprints. Interesting possibilities. Smith has produced three or four prints which may be S.T’s. They don’t belong to the fellow who came to measure the curtains. There is rather a smudged set just under the edge of the writing-table in the study. Blake has S.T’s prints, and we’ll see how they compare.” There followed a scrawled F.A., and that was all.

Miss Silver went on into the dining-room. Finding nobody there, she read the note again and dropped it into the fire. The post arriving just afterwards, she became occupied with a letter from her niece Gladys Robinson, who was Ethel Burkett’s sister but so very unlike her in character. Since Gladys only wrote when she had got herself into difficulties and was looking for someone to help her out of them, she opened the envelope with no very pleasant anticipations.

Mrs. Robinson wrote:

“Dear Auntie

I believe you have more influence with Andrew than anyone else has. He is being most unreasonable. All my friends say they don’t know how I put up with it. He does not give me enough for the housekeeping, and it isn’t any good his saying he does. Betty Morgan says…”

Miss Silver had really no need to read on. The letter followed a pattern which had varied very little for many years. There were always the same complaints about her husband, about money. There was always the unwise friend who encouraged her. A particularly mischief-making one who had recently been eliminated appeared to have been replaced. Betty Morgan was a new name. Reflecting that it was a pity Gladys had not half-a-dozen children to occupy her, and then checking herself with the thought that Providence in its inscrutable wisdom had doubtless hesitated to entrust them to her care, she replaced the letter in its envelope, committed it to her knitting-bag, and turned to bid Captain Hallam good-morning.

The word good, though customary, is sometimes lacking in appeal. It did not appear at all probable that Anthony was regarding the morning in that or in any other favourable light. He had returned to Field End at a late hour on the previous evening, and he now presented a gloomy and preoccupied appearance. Georgina, coming into the room a little later, said,

“Oh, you’ve got back?” After which neither of them seemed to have any further observation to make.

Fortunately Johnny and Mirrie had plenty to say, and Mrs. Fabian, who was last, could always be relied upon for a trickle of conversation.

Johnny had had a letter from a friend with particulars of a very nice little garage business out beyond Pigeon Hill, and Mirrie was being alternately thrilled by a description of the flat that went with it and put off by the reflection that if there was a place she never wanted to see again it was that particular suburb. They wrangled about it in a lively manner all through breakfast.

“Darling, you’ll adore being able to drop in on Aunt Grace and Uncle Albert.”

“I shan’t! I shall hate it!”

Johnny shook his head in a reproving manner.

“Never neglect your relations. You don’t know when you may want to borrow a fiver.”

“Aunt Grace wouldn’t give anyone a fivepenny bus fare!”

“She hasn’t come under my softening influence.”

Mirrie made melting eyes at him.

“I don’t want to go back there-I don’t!”

“Darling, it’s miles away really. And listen-the flat has three rooms and a kitchenette. I’d better catch the first train from Lenton and go up, or someone may snatch it.”

Mrs. Fabian, making the tea and forgetting to fill up the pot, remarked brightly that she hoped Johnny would be careful and not do anything at all without consulting a solicitor.

“Because you know, my dear, there are some very dishonest people, and all sorts of things to look out for like being charged a premium because there’s a bit of torn linoleum on the bathroom floor. I knew a Mrs. Marchbanks who took what she thought was a most delightful flat, but there was a chair which had been left behind she thought because it was broken, in the bedroom, and some cocoanut matting in the passage-such a terrible dust-trap and of course not at all what she wanted. And I think there was something else but I don’t remember what it was, only they wanted her to pay quite a large sum down, and her solicitor said it was an imposition and not to have anything to do with the people.”

Johnny blew her a kiss.

“All right, Mama, I have been warned. No cocoanut matting, no broken chairs. We will go to auctions and pick things up cheap.”

He and Mirrie ate their way gaily through a large breakfast. Georgina drank half of a very nasty cup of tea and crumbled a piece of toast. Anthony ate a sausage with a gloom which it really didn’t deserve, and drank the tea squeezed out by Mrs. Fabian from an unwatered pot as who should say, “If this be poison, let me make an end!” Miss Silver, conversing amiably, reflected that young people really had an uncommon talent for making themselves miserable.

Frank Abbott rang up at two o’clock. He asked for Miss Silver and spoke in the manner of one who is remembering Maggie Bell.

“That you, ma’am?… I thought I’d just let you know that the whatnots are the same. Our friend was certainly there, and Blake and I are hoping to collect him this afternoon. Keep your fingers crossed.”

Aware that this expression was unlikely to meet with approval, he rang off before Miss Silver could express her views upon the subject of what she would certainly regard as a vain superstition.

Johnny Fabian, standing in a queue at Pigeon Hill waiting for a bus which he had been informed would take him within a hundred yards of Rooke’s Garage at the four crossways just beyond the Blue Lion, received a slight set-back at seeing what he took to be Sid Turner emerging from a small eating-house on the other side of the road. Having no desire to renew what could scarcely be described as an acquaintance, he looked away. It occurred to him that, however desirable Rooke’s Garage and the flat over it might be he wouldn’t really want Mirrie to be in the way of knocking up against Sid if she happened to shop in Pigeon Hill. The effect of this wore off presently when he had met Jimmy Rooke and discovered a liking both for him and for the terms on which he was willing to dispose of the garage. It wore off, but it had been there and it was to recur.

What he didn’t know was that Sid Turner had seen and recognized him. At the time Sid was not interested. He recognized Johnny, felt an angry pricking grudge against him, and thought no more about the matter until later, when it suddenly became important. He was not at this time seriously worried about the police and their enquiries. They would nose about for a bit, and when they didn’t get anywhere they would come off it. They might suspect him, but there wasn’t anything they could prove. Absolutely nothing. He had a dangerous smouldering anger against Mirrie Field for blabbing about those two telephone calls. Women! Couldn’t keep their mouths shut, not even when they’d be getting themselves into trouble by talking. All the same they were. He wasn’t all that easy about Bertha Cummins. A pound to a tanner she’d be slopping over to old Maudsley and spilling the beans.

The thought jabbed him, but only for the moment, because if it came to that the beans were spilled already and no great harm done. All she could tell Maudsley that he didn’t know was that it was she and not Jenny Gregg who had given away the terms of Jonathan Field’s will. And all she would get out of that would be the sack, and if she got another job she’d be lucky. But anyhow, and suppose she was bent on her own ruin, he didn’t see how she could do him any particular harm. The police already knew that Mirrie had told him about the will. And so what? He was her aunt’s brother and an old friend-why shouldn’t she tell him, and why shouldn’t he know? The fact that Bertha had told him the same thing was neither here nor there. It was Mirrie who had made a damned fool of herself by blabbing about those two telephone calls. He thought she should have known better than to split on him. He remembered holding her close up to him in a dark alleyway and setting the point of his knife against her throat. He thought she would have remembered it too. Perhaps the time had come to give her another lesson.