Patricia Wentworth - The Fingerprint

“Yes-please go on.”

It was easier now that she had begun to talk about it. There was even a sense of relief. She said,

“Uncle Jonathan got very fond of her. She has-those sort of ways, you know. And then-he told me last night she is very like her mother. We could all see that he was getting very fond of her. Then one day I got an anonymous letter. It-it was horrible.”

He nodded.

“They mostly are. What did it say?”

Some distressed colour came into her face.

“It said everyone was talking about my not being nice to Mirrie. It-it was trying to make out that I was jealous of her because she was prettier than I was, and because people liked her better-that sort of thing.” The dark grey eyes were honestly indignant.

“Have you got this letter?”

She shook her head.

“I showed it to Uncle Jonathan, and then I burned it. I ought to have burned it at once.”

“Why do you say that?”

A queer blaze of anger came up in her-now, when everything was past and gone and couldn’t be called back again. It warmed her voice as she said,

“Because Uncle Jonathan was angry-not with the person who wrote the letter, but with me!”

“Why?”

“I didn’t know. I thought and thought, but I didn’t know. He had a very quick temper, and it was just as if the letter had set a match to it. He took sides against me with the person who had written it. He seemed to think I had been jealous of Mirrie and had meant to hurt her feelings when I gave her some of my things. And I didn’t, Mr. Abbott-I didn’t! If you’ve got sisters or cousins you know how girls pass things round and it doesn’t mean anything but being friendly and liking a change-it just doesn’t mean anything at all. I suppose things were stiffer in Uncle Jonathan’s time, because he didn’t seem ever to have heard of such a thing.”

“In fact you had a serious quarrel with Mr. Field. What day was this?”

She let the statement about the quarrel go and said in a bewildered voice,

“Monday-it seems as if it was a long time ago, but this is only Wednesday.” Her eyes were suddenly wet. “I’m sorry, Mr. Abbott-it doesn’t seem as if it could have happened.”

There was a big patch-pocket on her skirt. She drove a hand into it, pulled out a handkerchief, and pressed it to her eyes. Then she turned back to him and said, “Yes?”

“You had this quarrel with your uncle on Monday. And then he went to town? Did he tell you he was going?”

“No, Mrs. Fabian told us at lunch that he had gone.”

“And he stayed the night?”

“Yes.”

“Why did he go to town?”

“I didn’t know he was going.”

“But I think you knew why he had gone. Miss Grey, if you are going to tell me any of this, don’t you think you had better tell me all of it? It is bound to come out, you know.”

She said, “Yes, you’re right. I was just trying not to say more than I really knew.”

“Yes, go on.”

“My uncle talked to me about his will. He had got very fond of Mirrie and he was all worked up about her. He said he had been meaning to talk to me about altering his will so as to make provision for her.”

“And you quarrelled about that?”

Her colour came up brightly.

“Oh, no-no! I didn’t mind about it at all-not at all! I told him so. I just wanted him not to be angry with me, not to believe that I was jealous-because I wasn’t, I really wasn’t!

“So you had a reconciliation?”

The bright colour died.

“No, not then. He went on being angry. He said some very cruel things.”

“What sort of things?”

“He said disinterestedness could be overdone, and he asked me if I was going to pretend I shouldn’t care if he was to cut me off without a penny.”

“And what did you say to that?”

“I said that of course I should care, because it would mean that he was terribly angry, or that he didn’t care for me any more, but I should be very glad if he provided for Mirrie. I kept on saying things like that, but it wasn’t any use. He had gone into one of his cold, angry fits and it wasn’t any use, so I came away.”

“And when you heard that he had gone up to town on business you believed that he had gone to see his solicitor?”

“Yes, he said so to Mrs. Fabian.”

Frank thought, “There could be quite a case against Georgina Grey. Quarrel about the other niece-quarrel about the will. I wonder if he got as far as signing a new one. Those unburned scraps of paper in the grate look very much as if one of the wills had been burned there. The question is, which one? And by whom?” He said,

“You did know, then, that Mr. Field had gone to see his solicitor. What happened on his return? And did he say anything about having completed the business he had gone up for?”

“Yes, Mrs. Fabian asked him whether he had. It’s rather a family joke, because she always does it, more or less in those very words.”

“What did he say?”

“He said, ‘Yes.’ ”

“Did you understand that to mean that he had altered his will?”

Georgina said, “Yes, I did.”

He had been making a brief note from time to time. He did so now. Then he looked up at her again.

“Now, Miss Grey, would you care to tell me why you followed your uncle to the study last night, and what passed between you?”

The strain had gone from her pose and from her voice. She said quietly and sadly,

“Yes, I would like to. Uncle Jonathan had coffee in the drawing-room, then he came in here. The more I thought about everything, the more I wanted to go to him. You see, I did think that he had altered his will. Mirrie ran down to meet him when he arrived. I think he told her then that he had altered it. She was terribly pleased, and he put his arm round her-I was up on the landing and I saw them. And afterwards at dinner and in the drawing-room he kept looking at her, and she-you could see that he had told her something. She was all gay and lighted up. So I thought, ‘Well, if that is settled and done with, there isn’t any need for him to go on being angry with me. I can go and talk to him now without his thinking that I am trying to influence him or get him to change his mind. I can go and tell him that I’m glad about Mirrie-really glad, and that the only thing I mind about is that he should be angry with me or think that I ever meant to be unkind to her.’ I thought perhaps he would listen now because he had done what he wanted to. So I came in here and talked to him.”

“What did you say?”

She wasn’t looking at him now. She was looking down at the hands in her lap and the handkerchief they were holding. There was a remembering sound in her voice as if she were speaking more to herself than to him.

“I asked him if he had done what he wanted to do about Mirrie. He said that he had and he didn’t want to discuss it. I said no, I didn’t want to either. I only wanted to say that I was glad, and that I was glad about his being fond of her, because she hadn’t got anyone else and I knew it was making them both very happy. He hadn’t listened to me before, but he began to listen to me then. We talked about Mirrie, and he told me about having cared for her mother. He told me that he had cared for her a lot, but that she had married his cousin. He said he had begun to feel as if Mirrie was his daughter as well as hers. He had quite stopped being angry with me. We didn’t talk about it-it had gone. He was just the same as he had always been to me, except that I felt he was really giving me his confidence in a way that he had never done before. Just at the end he said that it had made him very happy my coming to him like that. Then he said that he had been unjust, and that he had let his unjust anger carry him away. He said, ‘Maudsley told me I was doing wrong, and I was angry with him, but he was in the right of it. I let myself be carried away by some very wrong feelings.’ He said my coming to him like that had touched him very much. He took an envelope out of the drawer in front of me and said, ‘I signed an unjust will this morning, and I’m going to tear it up and burn it!’ I said, ‘No don’t,’ and he laughed and said, ‘I can do what I like with my own,’ and he took a paper out of the envelope and tore it up and dropped the pieces into the fire.”