Patricia Wentworth - The Fingerprint

“What is collaborate?” She said the word slowly, dividing it into syllables.

“Darling, didn’t they teach you anything at school?”

Mirrie’s lashes drooped.

“Oh, I’m not clever. They said I wasn’t.”

“Well, it means two people writing the same book. Or letter.”

“I don’t see how they can.”

“I’ll show you. You’ll see we’ll get along like a house on fire. Who is this letter to?”

She hesitated.

“Well, it’s to Miss Brown.”

“And who is Miss Brown?”

“She was one of the people at school.”

“Do you mean one of the mistresses?”

Mirrie gazed.

“There were two Miss Browns. The letter is to Miss Ethel Brown, because I promised to write to her and tell her how I was getting on.”

“All right, that won’t take us long. How far have you got?”

She picked up a sheet of paper and read from it:

“Dear Miss Brown

I said I would write, so I am writing. I hope you are quite well. This is a very nice place. The house has seventeen rooms without counting the cellars. Some of them are big. There are bathrooms made out of some of the bedrooms because people didn’t worry about baths when the house was built. It is what they call Georgian. There are beautiful things in it, and silver dishes with covers in the dining-room. Everyone is very kind to me, even Georgina. You said she wouldn’t be, but she is quite . Uncle Jonathan is very kind. He gave me a cheque for a hundred pounds to get my dress for the dance and other things. It was the dress with white frills. He has given me a lot of things. I think he has a great deal of money. He says I am to be like his daughter and he is putting it into his will. It is very kind of him.”

She lifted her eyes from the page and said, “That’s as far as I’ve got.”

It took a good deal to surprise Johnny Fabian, but this artless epistle actually startled him. He experienced a strong desire to know more, and most particularly to discover why Miss Ethel Brown should be the recipient of these interesting confidences. When Mirrie, pursuing the theme upon which her letter had ended, said, “It’s dreadfully kind of Uncle Jonathan, isn’t it?” he said yes it was, and enquired,

“But why write to Miss Brown?”

“I said I would.”

Johnny’s eyebrows rose.

“About Jonathan?”

“About how I got on.”

He laughed.

“Well, I should say you had got off! With Jonathan anyhow!”

She repeated what she had said before, but with an added emphasis.

“It’s very kind of him.”

“He really said he was going to adopt you?”

“Oh, no, he didn’t say that. He said he was going to treat me like his daughter, and that I would have what a daughter would have in his will. He said he had told Georgina, and that he wanted everyone to know just how he thought about me.”

Johnny whistled.

“He said that?”

“Yes, he did-after breakfast in his study. I think he had just been telling Georgina. I saw her come upstairs, and I thought she looked as if something had happened.”

“How did she look?”

Mirrie Field said, “As if someone had hit her.”

He had a quick frown for that. It did just slip into his mind to think, “How does she know how a girl looks when someone has hit her?” but he let it go.

“Mirrie, look here, I don’t believe you ought to send that letter to Miss Brown.”

“Don’t you?”

“No, I don’t. I don’t think Jonathan would like it.”

“But he said he wanted everyone to know how he felt about me.”

“I daresay he did. I don’t suppose he wanted everyone to know that he was altering his will. He could be funny about that sort of thing. He mightn’t like to think people were counting on what they were going to get after he was dead.”

“People?” said Mirrie in an ingenuous voice.

Johnny Fabian said, “You, my child!” and laughed.

“Me?”

“Yes, darling. I think you had better tear up that letter to Miss Brown and drop the bits into a nice hot fire.”

Mirrie said, “Oh!” and then, “Oh, I couldn’t! It took me ever so long to write-and I promised.”

Johnny reflected that Miss Ethel Brown was probably a long way off, but he thought he had better find out where she lived. There didn’t seem to be any particular call for tact, so he asked right out,

“Where is this school of yours?”

A good deal to his surprise she changed colour.

“It was the Grammar School. It was at Pigeon Hill.”

“And your Miss Browns taught there?”

“Not exactly. I just knew them. They-they were some sort of relation of Aunt Grace’s. They taught in another school.”

He thought she was making it up as she went along. But in the name of all that was ridiculous, why? He was looking at her curiously.

“Is it your school you don’t want to talk about, or theirs? And why?”

She said in a hurry,

“I didn’t like being there. I don’t want to think about it or talk about it ever.”

Yet she wrote to Miss Brown-a totally unnecessary performance!

“Well, if it’s like that, I think I should let the whole thing fade. People are always saying they’ll write letters that never get written. Why not let it go down the drain?”

Tears welled up in the pansy-brown eyes. She said in a little soft, obstinate voice,

“I can’t.”

Johnny shrugged his shoulders and got up. He said, “Well, it’s your funeral,” and had got as far as the door, when she stopped him.

“Johnny-”

He turned.

“What is it?”

“I didn’t like your saying that about funerals.”

“I am devastated!”

“You’re not-you did it to be horrid! I’ll just send this one letter, and then I won’t write again.”

He said, “I wouldn’t send it at all,” and went out of the room.

Half an hour later he looked from a window and saw a small green figure emerging upon the road. Miss Mirrie Field taking the air? Or going to post a letter? He ran after her and caught her up.

“Air-exercise-or business?”

She had put on the warm topcoat which matched her tweed skirt and pulled a green beret over her curls.

“I just thought I’d like a walk.”

“Then I’d like one too. And after tea we’ll go and do that flick in Lenton.”

She sparkled up at him.

“You are kind!”

The general shop which was also a branch post office was only a few hundred yards away.“ He was wondering whether she had Miss Brown’s letter in her pocket, and whether she would let him see her post it, when she said,

“I just want to go into Mrs. Holt’s and get some safety pins. I think it’s such an amusing shop-don’t you? Sweets, and cauliflowers, and bootlaces, and nailbrushes, and safety pins, and strings of onions-it’s so funny having all those things together!”

The shop stood at the corner where the Deeping road ran off. It was an old crouched cottage with a new shop-front stuck on to it. On one side there was a garage with a couple of petrol pumps, and on the other a frightful little drab brick house which replaced the picturesque but insanitary cottage demolished by a bomb-splinter in ’44, the bomb itself having fallen in the middle of a field without so much as killing a sheep.

As they crossed over to Mrs. Holt’s, Mary and Deborah Shotterleigh came out of the shop with two bull-terriers, an Airedale and a Peke. All the dogs barked joyfully and jumped up. Mary and Deborah could just be heard lifting ineffective voices, but the dogs barked on. When the larger of the bull-terriers sprang up in an attempt to lick Mirrie’s chin she gave a little scream and clutched hold of Johnny.

“Down, Jasper! Down, Jane! Pingpong, you’ll get trodden on! No, Leo!” shrieked the Shotterleigh girls.