The Fingerprint (9 page)

“I am afraid I have no information on the subject. It would have been in Mr. Field’s possession.”

There was nothing more to be got out of Miss Cummins. He picked up Sergeant Hubbard and went out to get some lunch.

MAGGIE BELL had had a most interesting morning. It had followed upon what she herself would have described as “one of my bad nights.” She hadn’t slept very much, and when she had there were horrid dreams. By a stroke of irony she fell into a heavy sleep just at a time when the telephone would have been of the greatest interest. She was sick, sore and weary by the time her mother had helped her to dress and got her on to the sofa in the window. As a rule she would put in an hour or two during the day oversewing seams and putting on buttons, and hooks and eyes. She couldn’t keep at it for long, but it was surprising what she got through in the day, and Mrs. Bell found it a great help. But this morning she didn’t feel like holding a needle, she really didn’t. And that made the day stretch out before her ever so long, because however fond you are of reading you can’t read all the time. Now if there was something exciting going on that she could listen in to it would be just what she felt like. But of course things never happened the way you wanted them to. Which, as Mrs. Bell said afterwards, only goes to show that you never can tell.

Maggie lay on her sofa with a shawl round her shoulders, a rug drawn up to her waist, and the nearest casement window open so as not to miss anything that might be going on outside. She hadn’t been settled that way for more than five minutes before she heard Mr. Magthorpe call out from the roadway to Mr. Bisset inside the shop. Mr. Magthorpe was one of the best news-gatherers in the district, and being a baker to trade and in the habit of doing his own rounds Mondays, Wednesdays and Saturdays, his opportunities were naturally good. He was a little man with a large voice who sang bass in the choir, so you could be sure of hearing every word he said. And what he was saying was, “Morning, Harry. I suppose you’ve heard what’s happened up at Field End?”

Mr. Bisset hadn’t heard a word. He came right out on his doorstep and said so. And there was Mr. Magthorpe with his face pulled down to half as long again, leaning sideways out of his van to say,

“Murder, that’s what it was. And as fine an old gentleman as ever stepped.”

“Not Mr. Field!” Mr. Bisset was quite out of breath with surprise.

Albert Magthorpe nodded solemnly.

“Murdered in his own study. Setting at his own writing-table.”

“You don’t say!”

Mr. Magthorpe did say, and at considerable length. Maggie, listening spellbound, heard all about Miss Georgina waking up in the middle of the night with the sound of the shot or maybe the banging of the glass door on to the terrace, together with a number of other details imparted to Mr. Magthorpe at the back door by Doris Miller who was one of the two daily helps at Field End and a cousin of Mrs. Magthorpe’s. So of course it was all true, and what a dreadful thing to happen.

Palpitating with interest and alternately listening for the telephone to give one of those clicks which meant that someone on the party line was either ringing up somebody else or being rung up, and leaning as near to the window as she could in order not to miss any of the talk in the street, Maggie hardly had a dull moment. Field End being on the Deeping party line, she was able to hear Inspector Smith ringing up Lenton police station, and Lenton police station ringing up Inspector Smith. In this way she learned that Scotland Yard was being called in, and a little later that Detective Inspector Abbott was on his way from town. To Deeping, who remembered him as a schoolboy, there was actually no such person. He was, as he always had been, Mr. Frank, and the news that he was coming down to enquire into the Field End murder heightened the interest considerably.

Maggie, listening passionately, heard Miss Cicely who was Mrs. Grant Hathaway calling her mother at Abbottsleigh.

“Darling, is that you? Isn’t it too dreadful! I suppose you’ve heard—”

Mrs. Abbott at the other end of the line said she had, and it was, and the milkman had brought the news. Then Miss Cicely again.

“They say that Scotland Yard is being called in. Do you suppose they’ll send Frank down?”

“I don’t know—they might.”

“They did before. Darling, weren’t you having Miss Silver down for a week-end some time about now?”

“Yes, we were, but she wasn’t sure about the week-end because one of her nieces—the one who is married to a solicitor at Blackheath—might have been wanting her to go down there and… Where had I got to?”

“You were just wandering, darling. Is Maudie coming, or isn’t she?”

“Cicely, some day you’ll call her that to her face!”

“Help! I believe Frank did once. Darling, you haven’t told me whether she’s coming or not, but I rather gather she isn’t. What a pity!”

Mrs. Abbott’s voice came over the wire without hurry.

“You shouldn’t jump to conclusions. I didn’t say she wasn’t coming—on the contrary. Your father has just taken the car to meet her at Lenton.”

It was pain and grief to Maggie Bell not to break into that conversation and let Mrs. Abbott and Miss Cicely know that it really was Mr. Frank who was coming down from Scotland Yard, only of course it wouldn’t have done and she knew better than to do it. In theory everyone in Deeping knew that she listened in on the party line, but she had been doing it for so many years that in practice it was generally forgotten. When you are talking in your own room to a friend in hers, the illusion of privacy is quite overwhelming. Besides, as Mrs. Abbott had been heard to remark, “If it amuses Maggie to listen to me ordering the fish in Lenton, she is welcome.” This applying to most other people, Deeping’s telephone conversations continued on pleasantly uninhibited lines, and Maggie Bell went on finding them a great solace.

Maggie went on listening. No less than three calls from Field End to the London solicitor, and two for him by name all the way to Scotland. It seemed to Maggie that the police were in a great hurry to find out about poor Mr. Field’s will. That was what all those calls were about. She had heard Mr. Frank speaking to a lady in the London office herself.

Later she heard Miss Cicely ring up Field End. It was Miss Georgina Grey she wanted, but she had to get past one of the police officers before they would let her come to the phone. Quite a song and dance about it there was, and when Miss Georgina did come, hardly a word out of her, only yes or no. Miss Cicely was being ever so warm and loving. She mightn’t be much to look at, but she had got a real warm heart.

“Georgina, darling—I’m so dreadfully sorry!”

“Yes.”

“Darling, are you all right?”

“Oh, yes.”

“I mean, is there anything I can do? You know you’ve only to say. Would you like me to come over?”

“No.” There was a pause after the word, and then like an afterthought, “You are very kind. Your cousin is here. He thinks—” The voice steadied itself and went off into a foreign language.

Maggie felt seriously affronted, but at her end of the line Cicely was appalled, because the words which Georgina had put into German were “He thinks I did it.” She said in the same language,

“But he can’t!”

“He does.”

“He mustn’t! I don’t care what you say—I’m coming over to see you!”

Georgina was talking on the extension in her sitting-room. She didn’t want Cicely, she didn’t want anyone. She just wanted to be let alone, to tighten the control in which she was holding thought, and will, and action. She heard herself say, “No,” and she heard Cicely say,

“Darling, it’s no good—I’m coming!”

And with that the line was broken and she was left with the receiver dead in her hand.

Only the last sentence was intelligible to the exasperated Maggie, Cicely Hathaway’s determination not to be rebuffed having been expressed quite plainly in English. Maggie would have been at one with Chief Inspector Lamb in his disapproval of lapses into a foreign tongue. What couldn’t be said in your own language was either not worth saying, or else it was something you’d be ashamed for people to understand. The Chief Inspector had never met Maggie Bell, and was never likely to do so, but on this point at least they were two minds with but a single thought.

She hung up the receiver and occupied herself with guessing at what it was that was so secret about what Miss Cicely and Miss Georgina were saying. They were ever such good friends, though there must be a matter of four or five years between them and you’d be put to it to find two that were less alike. Miss Georgina had brought in some things to be altered for her cousin not so long ago. Maggie had admired her very much. Lovely figure she had, and all that pale gold hair, and a real beautiful look about the eyes. Miss Cicely was nothing at all beside her, but the cousin, Mirrie Field, she was a real pretty little thing. Nice ways with her too. She had thanked Mum ever so pretty. “Oh, Mrs. Bell, how beautifully you’ve done it! Nobody would think it hadn’t been made for me, would they?” Ever so nice the things were, but Miss Georgina’s things were always nice and no wonder Miss Mirrie was pleased to have them. What she had on wasn’t at all the thing for anyone that was staying at Field End. Cheap and nasty, that was what Maggie called it, and no good Mum hushing her up either. If there was one thing you did get to know about in the dressmaking line it was the difference between good stuff and bad. Do what you would to a poor material, poor it was going to look and you couldn’t get from it, but a good piece of stuff looked good right through to the end.

FRANK ABBOTT drove away from Field End with Sergeant Hubbard and took him to the Ram for lunch. The hospitality of Field End had been offered and politely but firmly refused. The Ram afforded a good plain meal. When it was over he left Hubbard to take a bus into Lenton and went up to Abbottsleigh to see his relations. A word or two with Monica might be useful.

Ruth, the house-parlourmaid, gave him a beaming smile as she opened the door. Lunch was over, she informed him, and they were in the morning-room. After which she ran ahead and announced him as “Mr. Frank.” He came into the charming small room which everyone preferred to the large, stiff drawing-room furnished in the late Lady Evelyn Abbott’s taste and dominated by her portrait. The morning-room, of a more comfortable size, had been done over by Monica and happily delivered from brocade and gilding. The only family portrait it contained was a charming water-colour sketch of Cicely as a child. Frank always came into it with the feeling that he was coming home. He did so now.

But he had hardly taken a single forward step before he was brought up short by the spectacle of Miss Maud Silver very comfortably ensconced in a low armless chair which might have come out of her own flat in Montague Mansions. He stood where he was, heard Monica laugh, and say as she came forward to slip her arm through his and reach up to kiss him,

“Well, Frank, I hoped you would find time to come in. And look who is here!”

He said,

“I am looking. And quite expecting to see her dissolve into thin air! Now how in the world—”

Miss Silver smiled. Her flowered knitting-bag lay on the floor beside her. She wore a dress of dark green wool made after the same fashion as every other dress in which Frank had seen her—longer in the skirt and straighter in the shape than was the fashion, with a little net front its collar supported by slides of whalebone to fill up the V-shaped opening at the neck. Since she was on a social visit she wore an old-fashioned gold chain and her favourite brooch, a rose carved in bog-oak with an Irish pearl at its heart. She held a coffee-cup in her left hand, and without rising from her chair she gave him the other.

“My dear Frank—how pleasant.”

He seated himself. Ruth came in with another cup. He was given coffee. Colonel Abbott, it appeared, had gone over to see the Vicar on business connected with the church accounts.

Frank said, “I mustn’t stay.”

He looked at Monica, as he always did, with pleasure and affection. Cicely had her brown colouring and her sherry-coloured eyes from her mother, but not the charm, the warmth, the agreeable assembly of features, and certainly not her repose. Frank had once told her that she was the most restful woman he had ever met, and she had laughed and said that what she supposed he really meant was that she was lazy. She poured him out a second cup of coffee, exclaimed that he ought to have come to them for lunch, and arrived at the tragedy at Field End.

“The milkman told the maids. It really does seem too dreadful to be true. And only a fortnight ago we were all there dancing! Have you found out anything about it yet? Was it robbery? Stokes says the glass door on to the terrace was open, and that poor Georgina heard it banging and came down and found him. She was so devoted to him. It must have been a terrible shock.”

He said in a non-committal voice,

“I thought it was the other one Mr. Field was so devoted to.”

Monica put down her cup.

“Oh, well, she is a taking little thing. The rippling sort, you know.”

Miss Silver smiled.

“What an expressive word. It reminds me of Lord Tennyson’s charming poem about the brook—

‘I chatter over stony ways,

In little sharps and trebles,

I bubble into eddying bays,

I babble on the pebbles.’ ”

Frank laughed.

“That’s just what she does! You couldn’t have hit her off better. Go on—isn’t there some more of it?” Miss Silver obliged with another verse.

“ ‘I slip, I slide, I gleam, I glance

Among my skimming swallows;

I make the netted sunbeam dance

Against my sandy shallows.’ ”

Frank picked up the last word and repeated it.

“Shallows—that’s just where you do get ripples, isn’t it?”

Monica Abbott looked distressed.

“That’s too bad. I didn’t mean anything of that sort, and you know it. And Miss Silver was only quoting what Lord Tennyson said about a brook. Mirrie is a dear pretty little thing, and very fond of her uncle too. I don’t think she had ever had much of anything until she came to Field End, and it seemed as if she couldn’t do enough to show how grateful she was.”

He blew her a kiss.

“Calm down, darling. I agree with every word you say. I was just wondering how deep it all went. Alfred’s fault for putting in the word ‘shallows’! Now you can tell me— how do she and Georgina get on?”

Monica said warmly, “Georgina is the kindest girl in the world.” And with that there were footsteps in the hall and Cicely Hathaway came running into the room. She said, “Mummy!” in a protesting childish voice, and then she saw Frank and turned on him.

“Oh, you’re here! Well, I’m glad—” But she didn’t sound anything except angry.

“Cicely darling, you haven’t seen Miss Silver.”

The colour was high under Cicely’s brown skin, the sherry-coloured eyes were blazing. She swung round, holding out both her hands.

“No, I haven’t, have I? I’m frightfully rude, but I’m much too furious to be polite to anyone. You’ll forgive me, won’t you?” She bent, kissed Miss Silver rapidly on the cheek, a mere snatch of a kiss, and straightened up to storm at Frank again.

“I don’t know how you can stand there and look at me—I really don’t!”

He looked back with an infuriating indulgence.

“Actually at the moment you are quite easy on the eye. Being in a temper suits you, but perhaps a little strenuous so soon after lunch. And what is it all about anyway?”

“As if you didn’t know!”

Monica said, “Cicely—”

Cicely stamped her foot.

“If it were anyone else in the whole world! But Georgina! It’s the sheer stupid, ignorant, blind idiocy of it!”

“There was a glint of angry amusement in his pale, cool stare as he said in a leisurely voice,

“One day you’ll run out of adjectives if you squander them like that.”

“Well, I haven’t run out of them now!”

“That, darling, is obvious.”

“And you’re not to call me darling!”

Monica Abbott said, “Cicely—” again. She hadn’t seen Cicely lose her temper like this for years, and under his cool manner Frank was getting angry too. She made a faint helpless gesture and went over to the hearth, where she stood half turned away with the water-colour drawing of a five-year-old Cicely looking down at her. She reflected that people who lost their tempers were never much more than five years old. In the picture Cis wore a white frock and a very determined expression. She hadn’t been easy to manage even then. From behind her she heard Frank say,

“Perhaps you wouldn’t mind telling me what I have done, or what I am supposed to have done to Georgina.”

Cicely blazed back at him.

“You think she shot her uncle!”

“Who says so?”

“She does!”

“My child, you can hardly hold me responsible for that.”

“She wouldn’t say it if it wasn’t true!”

“You mean that like George Washington she cannot tell a lie? Perhaps I had better remind you that the story is now considered to be apocryphal.”

She threw an exasperated “Oh!” at him, and then melted into a sudden change of mood.

“Frank, you can’t really think it—not about Georgina! Even if you’d only met her once you couldn’t! You couldn’t really! She simply hasn’t got it in her—not that sort of thing!”

Monica Abbott looked over her shoulder. Cicely was holding on to Frank’s coat and looking up at him. Her cheeks were scarlet and her eyes brimmed over. Miss Silver had picked up her knitting—something white and fluffy. Frank said quietly,

“What sort of thing, Cis?”

The answer came in a voice that had dropped to a whisper.

“Envy—hatred—malice—and all uncharitableness—”

The words of the Litany stilled the anger that had been between them. Old, beautiful words—“From envy, hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness—Good Lord deliver us.” How many of the people who make a glib response have really turned away from the evil in their thoughts before it breaks into word or open deed?

Frank said,

“You’re a good friend, Cis.” He stepped back from her and went over to Monica.

“Well, I must get back to my job. My love to Uncle Reg. I expect I’ll be seeing him, but at the moment I’m up to my eyes. I’m running out to Lenton now, but I’ll be back again.”

“It’s no use offering you a bed?”

“I think perhaps not. I may have to go up to town.”

Cicely came between him and the door.

“Frank—”

He said, “No use, Cis, I can’t discuss it with you,” and was gone.

Cicely ran to Miss Silver and dropped on her knees beside her.

“You will—you will go and help Georgina, won’t you?”

Miss Silver looked at her kindly.

“You are very much concerned for your friend, my dear.”

“Yes, I am. You see—” She choked on the word—“if you’re going to go by evidence, there is quite a lot that would make anyone with a horrid mind like a policeman—” She choked again.

Miss Silver put her knitting down in her lap. It was a white shawl for the baby expected by Valentine Leigh in a month’s time. The pattern was a new and delicate one, the wool very soft and fine. A silk handkerchief protected it from contact with the stuff of her dress. As it got larger it would require a pillow-case, but for the moment a handkerchief served. She said,

“Won’t you sit down, my dear, and tell me a little more about all this? Evidence which appears very compromising at the outset of a case is sometimes susceptible of quite a natural explanation. Perhaps you would like to tell me what makes you think that Frank suspects your friend.”

Cicely sat back on her heels.

“Well, I suppose anyone would—or at least anyone might if they didn’t know Georgina. You see, she was brought up to be Mr. Field’s heiress—everyone simply took it for granted. And then all of a sudden about six weeks ago he went up to town and came back with Mirrie Field. Her father was a cousin of his, a fairly distant one, and I’ve got a sort of idea that he had been in love with her mother—I seem to remember Gran saying something about it ages ago. Anyhow there was Mirrie like a kitten with a saucer of cream, and Mr. Field getting fonder of her every day. And Georgina was an angel to her—she really was. Mirrie hadn’t anything, and Georgina had some things of her own altered for her—charming things. And it wasn’t Georgina who told me about giving them to her, it was Maggie Bell. I expect you remember her. She’s a cripple, and her mother does dressmaking, which is how Maggie knew about the clothes, because Mrs. Bell had them to alter for Mirrie. Though I expect Maggie would have known anyhow, because she listens in on the party line and she always does know everything.”

Monica Abbott stooped down and put a log on the fire. She said,

“Everyone knows she does it, and nobody thinks about it until something happens, and then we all say we must be careful because of Maggie, but actually no one can be bothered and we go on just the same.” She gave Miss Silver her charming smile and added, “It’s such a pleasure to her, and after all what does it matter?”

“It would matter if you had just been committing a murder,” said Cicely.

“Cis!”

Cicely gave a vehement nod.

“Well, it would, wouldn’t it? That’s why I think Maggie could be useful, you know. I shall go in and see her. I’ve got a lovely smarmy book about a poor persecuted girl with a cruel stepmother and a frightful stepsister straight out of Cinderella, and wedding bells and golden slippers in the last chapter. Quite a shameless copy really, but Maggie will adore it.”

“I really rather like Cinderella stories myself,” said Monica Abbott, “but I like them well done, and of course sometimes they are just sloppy. But anyhow I think they are better for you than the sort of gloomy book which goes on for about six hundred pages and ends up with someone committing suicide or facing a hopeless dawn. Because really, whatever you feel like, in real life you just have to get on with your job.”

Cicely said,

“Darling, you needn’t tell us you’re not Third Programme —we’ve known it for years!”

Miss Silver was knitting. She looked up now to say,

“So Mirrie Field is Cinderella, and Mr. Jonathan Field was a fairy godfather. But according to you Miss Georgina Grey does not fit into the story, my dear?”

Cicely’s eyes widened.

“No, she doesn’t. She has a story of her own, and it’s got to have a happy ending. She just doesn’t come into this business of quarrels and wills and murders. Even if Frank doesn’t know her at all well he ought to know her better than that. And if he doesn’t, he’s got no business being a policeman and interfering in people’s lives and messing them up by accusing them of things which he ought to know they couldn’t possibly have done!” The words came tumbling over each other and left her out of breath.

Miss Silver coughed gently.

“What makes you think that Frank has these suspicions of Miss Grey?”

“Georgina says he has. She isn’t stupid, you know—if a thing is there she can see it.”

Miss Silver gazed at her with an air of mild interrogation.

“Perhaps I did not make myself plain. If it is true that Frank suspects Miss Grey of a connection with her uncle’s death, there must be some reason why he should do so.”

“No one who knows her—”

Miss Silver put up a restraining hand.

“Calm yourself, my dear. I am not pronouncing any opinion as to whether these suspicions are justified or not, but it is a fact that Frank would not entertain them unless there was some supporting evidence. Did Miss Grey tell you what this was?”

“Yes, she did. And of course there is nothing in it, and no one who knew Georgina could think that there was. It’s just that Mr. Field was changing his will.”