Patricia Wentworth - The Fingerprint

“Mr. Field? You can’t mean it, Inspector! He was here with us only yesterday afternoon. Good gracious me!”

“He was murdered last night. It is important for me to get into touch with Mr. Maudsley as soon as possible.”

“Well now-I hardly know what to say. The fact is, Mr. Maudsley has been ordered to take a short holiday. He has been rather run down, and his doctor-”

“Can you give me his private address?”

“Well, I’m afraid it wouldn’t be any use to you. He was taking an early train to Scotland this morning. He had not really made up his mind as to where he would stay, but there are one or two hotels in Edinburgh -”

Frank took down a couple of names.

“Don’t ring off! You say Mr. Field was with you yesterday afternoon. You had been preparing a new will for him?”

A faint cool note of disapproval tinged the voice that answered him.

“That is so.”

“Mr. Field signed this will?”

“He did.”

“Is it in your custody, or did he take it away with him?”

The disapproval became very decided.

“He took it away with him.”

“I wonder if you can tell me what happened to the will which this one superseded.”

“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.