Patricia Wentworth - The Fingerprint

Mirrie had got to know the Lambtons at school. Hilda and she were the same age, and Floss two years older. It was the old Grammar School they all went to. There were some quite nice girls there. Some of them had pretty clothes, the sort she would have liked to have herself. They didn’t wear them at school of course, because there was a uniform, but some of them went to the same church as Uncle Albert and Aunt Grace, so she saw them on Sundays. That was when they wore their nice clothes, but she had to go on wearing that hideous uniform. When she was seventeen and hadn’t passed those wretched exams, Aunt Grace got her into the Home. They called her Assistant Matron, but she was really there to do the housework. And she still had to get up at six o’clock. Snuggled down warm in her bed at Field End she could remember just how horrid it was to get up in the dark and the icy cold. Not for anything in the world would she go back-not for anything at all. She remembered the day when Jonathan Field had come to the Home and asked to see her. She had been scrubbing and her hands were red. Matron let her have a clean apron and sent her in. She remembered that she was almost crying because she wanted time to brush her hair until it shone, and to put on her Sunday dress. She had a Sunday dress because she couldn’t wear the school uniform any more. You couldn’t wear it after you had left the Grammar School. The Sunday dress came out of a charity bundle. It was ugly, but it was better than this common print, only Matron said she was tidy enough and sent her in. She had no idea of how much more becoming the print dress was, or just how strong an appeal those little red hands and the tearful brown eyes would have for Jonathan Field. She knew that she was like her mother, because Uncle Albert and Aunt Grace had told her so. They also told her that her mother was flighty and had thrown away her chances, but she had no idea that Jonathan Field was one of the chances that had been thrown away. She walked into the room and into another life. There were interviews with Uncle Albert and Aunt Grace, and with the authorities at the Home. And then Mr. Jonathan Field became Uncle Jonathan, and she went down with him to Field End. It was like a fairy story. The door back into the old life was shut, and barred, and bolted. She would never go back through it again, no matter what anyone said, no matter what anyone did. Never, never, never ! She was warm, she was relaxed. Her mind was made up and set. The door was locked and bolted. She would never go back. This set purpose went with her into a dreamless sleep.

GEORGINA WOKE and knew that something had waked her. It was a sound, but she did not know what sound it was. There was the vibration of it on the air and in her mind. If it had been an ordinary sound, she would not have given it a thought at all. An owl crying, a dog barking, or the wind blowing about the house, any of these might have waked her, but they wouldn’t have left her with this feeling that something had happened.

She pushed the bedclothes down and sat up. The sound was not repeated. She got out of bed and went to the window. The sky was not as dark as it had been when she looked out before. There might have been a moon behind the clouds. She could discern the outline of the terrace with the raised stone jars at its edge. In summer they would be ablaze with the scarlet of geraniums, but they were empty now. The terrace was empty too. Nothing broke the silence or the grey, even gloom. If anything had moved there it was gone. As she looked out now the study was below her and to the left. In the eighteen-nineties her grandfather had replaced one of the Georgian sash windows with a glass door descending by two steps on to the terrace. He had no sense of the sacredness of a period building and felt himself under no obligation to preserve its character. He wanted to be able to step out into the garden as and when he pleased, and when he wanted to do a thing he did it.

As Georgina leaned from her window she saw this glass door move. The wind had risen. It came round the house in a gust and the door moved, swinging out a handsbreadth and swinging in again. She thought she knew now what it was that had waked her. It was the swinging of this door, moving in the wind and swinging out, and moving again and swinging in. Someone must have opened the door behind the curtain and left it open. It was Stokes’ business to see that all the doors and windows on the ground floor were fastened, so it must have been Jonathan himself who had opened it. There would be nothing unusual about that. She had often looked out as she was looking now and seen him pacing the terrace, or standing and looking at the sky before going in, and so upstairs to bed. But she had never known him to leave the door unlocked. Stokes would have been very much put out if he had, since it was his rooted belief that an unlocked door or window would instantly attract a burglar. It would really be very much better if Stokes didn’t know that the glass door in the study had actually been left swinging to and fro for half the night.

She drew back from the window and put on her dressing-gown and slippers. She couldn’t just leave the door banging like that. If the wind got up any more the glass might break. She opened the door of her room and went along the passage to the head of the stairs. There was no light on this upper landing, but a low-powered bulb burned all night in the hall below. Going down into the lighted hall was like going down into bright water-bright, silent water, very still. She came into the hall, and the old wall-clock beside the dining-room door gave out a whirring stroke. It struck the quarters by day and night, but the sound waked no one in the house, because it was such an old accustomed thing.

Georgina moved until she could see the face of the clock. The hands stood at one, which meant that by the right time it would be about twelve minutes to, since do what you would to it the old clock gained.

She crossed the hall to the study door and opened it. The room was dark, quite dark, with a light wind moving in it. She put on the overhead light, and the draught between the two doors carried the dark red curtains out into the room and sucked them in again. She turned to shut the door behind her, and it was when she was turning back to go and fasten the door on to the terrace that she saw Jonathan Field fallen forward across his writing-table. She would have seen him before if she had looked that way, but her eye had been caught by the bellying curtains.

She had neither eyes nor thought for them now. He must have fallen asleep at his desk. But the banging door would have waked him. If it had waked her on the upper floor, it must surely have waked him here. It was in her mind that he sometimes dropped off in his chair, but not at his desk-not like this. He must have been looking at his fingerprint collection. One of the volumes was there on the right of the table. How strange that he should have got it out to look at, and then have gone to sleep.

She went across to him with a lagging step until she came to the chair where she had sat last night and they had talked. She had got as far as that before she knew why he had not waked. His right arm hung down. A revolver had dropped from the hand and lay upon the carpet. She gripped the back of the chair and stood there quite unable to move. It was the room that seemed to be moving, tilting under her feet as if the solid earth had given way. But she didn’t move, and Jonathan didn’t move. It came into her mind then that he wouldn’t ever move again.

She did not know how long she stood there, but presently the room was steady again. She let go of the chair and came round the corner of the table. She put her hand on the table to help herself whilst she stooped down and picked the revolver up. She had not any intention or purpose in picking it up. It was perhaps the mere instinct which makes any woman pick up anything that has fallen to the floor. She picked it up and she laid it on the table. Then she put her hand upon Jonathan’s hand and found it lax and cold.