Patricia Wentworth - Danger Point

“And what did you get?” enquired Miss Silver with interest.

“More than I’d bargained for. Look here – here are the prints of the Jerningham family.” He picked up a small case, opened it, and took out a sheaf of papers. “We needn’t bother about the women. Mrs. Jerningham’s prints and Cissie’s own were on the front of the coat. But it’s the back that’s interesting. Here is Dale Jerningham’s hand print I took at Tanfield – here is his cousin Rafe’s – and here is Pell’s. Well, I can’t show you the coat, so you’ll just have to take my word for the prints on it. Pell’s prints are all over the place. One very clear indeed, right across the shoulder seam up by the collar. He might have had his arm round her neck, or he might have caught her there to push her over the edge.”

“Very shocking indeed,” said Miss Silver.

“Then, right in the middle of the back between the shoulders, Dale Jerningham’s hand – at least I think it’s Dale Jerningham’s hand. It’s not a good print because it’s all messed up with Pell’s prints. But – though there’s no certainty of this – all the three people who have seen them incline to the belief that the Jerningham print is superimposed upon the Pell prints.”

“There is no certainty of that?”

He shook his head.

“There is no certainty of anything. It is all very confused, and, as you were about to observe, nothing in the world could be more natural than to find a print of Dale Jerningham’s hand on his wife’s coat.”

Miss Silver said without looking up.

“It is a most shocking idea, but if Mr. Dale Jerningham mistook this young woman who was wearing his wife’s coat for Mrs. Jerningham and pushed her over the cliff, that is in fact where you would naturally expect to find an impression of his hand.”

March flung down the papers he was holding and turned from the gimcrack table which supported his attaché case.

“And what do you suppose I should look like if I produced that theory on this evidence – a new-fangled American process which not one person in a million has ever heard about, and the confused and doubtful prints of a man’s hand on a coat which only passed out of his wife’s possession an hour before the murder took place!”

Miss Silver continued to knit.

“When did Mrs. Jerningham last wear the coat?”

“I asked her that – rang up before the inquest. I didn’t want the question raised there if I could help it.”

“And when did she wear it?”

“Sunday evening,” said March.

“Sunday to Wednesday – would a print last all that time?”

“If there was nothing to disturb it – and there wasn’t. She put the coat in a cupboard, and Cissie Cole went away with it over her arm folded inside out. Also you’ve got to consider that the weather has been particularly favourable for making a good print. Everybody’s hand would be on the moist side.”

“What are you going to do?” said Miss Silver in an interested voice.

He threw himself into his chair again.

“I don’t know. Consider my position for a moment. I’ve just come here with a bit of a feather in my cap for which a good many thanks are due to you. Old Black, the Superintendent here, is away sick. I’m told he won’t come back, and I’ve been given to understand that I’m likely to step into his shoes. I’m a reasonably ambitious man and I’ve got my foot on the ladder. Well, what happens if I lead off with a set of more or less unsubstantiated accusations and suggestions against one of the leading families in the county? There isn’t a jury in the world that would consider that handprint as evidence against Dale Jerningham. There isn’t a jury in the world that wouldn’t hang Pell on what we’ve got against him – motive, opportunity, subsequent guilty behaviour – he bolted right away – threats uttered in the presence of witnesses. What have I got to put up against all that – and whistle my prospects down the wind to do it?”

Miss Silver put down her knitting and rested her hands upon it. Her small greyish eyes regarded him in an acutely intelligent manner. From what he had said she plucked one word.

“Family,” she said – “you spoke of something against the family. Did you use the expression as a synonym for Mr. Dale Jerningham, or in a wider sense?”

He stared at her.

“How did you get at that?”

“It was not at all difficult to see that you were keeping something back. I really think it would be better if you were to tell me everything.”

He put up a protesting hand.

“Oh, I was going to, I was going to. But you don’t give one time. I just wanted to dispose of Dale Jerningham before we went on to the others. When I spoke of the family I meant the family. Dale and Lady Steyne were together all the evening. If he pushed the girl over that cliff, she must know something about it. If she didn’t see him do it, she must have the very strongest suspicion. I gather that they are on flirting terms – she was at some pains to make me think so. I wondered why at the time, and it has occurred to me since that she wanted to impress me with the fact that they were too much taken up with each other to notice a little thing like a murder, even if it was happening within a few hundred yards of them. And then there’s Rafe Jerningham-”

“The good-looking cousin – yes?”

“I didn’t want him called at the inquest, because on the face of it he had nothing to say. His own account for his movements on Wednesday evening is that he talked for a short time to Mrs. Jerningham after she had seen Cissie and then he went out for a walk along the beach. He admits that he walked in the direction of Tane Head, but says he turned back half way because the light was failing and the going bad. He did not enter the house until a very late hour – he could not say how late. He accounts for the intervening time by saying that he was down by the sea wall. This is in the grounds of Tanfield Court and affords a fine view-point. He says he was looking at the sea. Sounds a bit queer, doesn’t it?”

“People do look at the sea,” said Miss Silver in a mild voice.

“Yes – but listen.” He leaned forward. “I’ve been over the ground. There are steps which lead from the sea wall to the beach. It’s two miles from there to the place where Cissie was found, and with the sort of going you get there it takes three-quarters of an hour to walk it. Rafe Jerningham put it at that, and that’s what it took me. But – and this is what he did not tell me – a quarter of a mile from the steps there’s a rough track from the beach to what they call the cliff path, and that’s a very different affair. It runs right along the edge of the cliffs to the headland, and though it’s no shorter than the beach way it’s a path with a good hard surface, and an active young fellow could run the distance in about half the time – and if Rafe Jerningham did that, he could have reached the spot from which Cissie fell in time to have pushed her over.”

“And why should he have pushed her over, my dear Randal?”

“I don’t know. That’s one of the maddening things about this case. Threats, motive, opportunity – everything right for Pell. And then you produce Dale as one red herring, and I produce Rafe as another. There’s your story – and the evidence of Mrs. Jerningham’s coat. And whether it’s evidence for a jury or not, it’s evidence for me, and it’s evidence I can’t get away from.”

“Did you find Rafe Jerningham’s prints on the coat?” said Miss Silver.

“Two of them,” said Marsh – “and the clearest of the whole blessed lot. And where, I ask you – where?”

“My dear Randal, it is no use asking me.”