Patricia Wentworth: The Fingerprint

She couldn’t climb in her coat. She slipped it off and let it go. The slope where she had fallen was not a steep one. She crawled on it an inch or two at a time, sometimes a little to the left, sometimes a little to the right, according to the lie of the ground. And then just as she got to the top the flickering light and Sid’s voice calling her. They turned and began to come back again. She got her knee over the edge, her other knee, her foot. If she stood up he would see her. If she didn’t stand up she couldn’t run away. The dancing light would pick her up-Sid would catch her and she would feel the knife.

She stumbled to her feet and ran screaming down the track. It was rough and rutted under foot. She didn’t think, “I mustn’t fall,” she knew it with a kind of shuddering intensity. If she tripped, if she slipped, if she fell, the knife would be in her back. She kept her hands stretched out before her as if they could save her from falling. They did just save her from running into the back of the car. She called out as it brought her up with a jerk, her hands sliding on the paint-work, but she didn’t fall, and through the sound of her own choked breathing she could hear the running steps behind her. She made her last, most desperate effort, pushed back from the car, and stumbled round it, feeling her way, banging into a mudguard, getting clear, and staggering on again towards the road.

She ran right into Johnny Fabian’s arms. He said,

“Mirrie! Oh, Mirrie !” and she said his name over and over again as if she couldn’t stop saying it, as if it was something that would keep her safe as long as she held on to it and didn’t let go. They stood on the edge of the track and held each other.

Miss Silver, coming up at a more sober pace, was aware of them. She had put on her electric torch, but she turned the beam away. And then quite suddenly it was cutting the dark again and she was calling out,

“Mr. Fabian-the car-it’s moving! Take care!”

There was the roar of the engine behind her words. It startled him to action. He jumped Mirrie off the track among the heather roots and saw the black shape of the car lurch past them and out on to the road. With the lights coming on and a dangerous reeling swerve to avoid Johnny’s car Sid Turner was out on the tarmac and away.

Miss Silver, who had also stepped into the heather, now emerged from it. She addressed Mirrie Field.

“My dear child! You are not hurt? It was indeed providential that Mr. Fabian should have been led to come this way. You are quite safe now, and you must try to compose yourself. There must be no delay in getting in touch with the police.” She directed herself to Johnny. “I endeavoured to take the number of the car as it passed me, but the plate had been, no doubt designedly, obscured by what looked like splashes of mud.”

Johnny shrugged.

“He’ll get rid of the car as soon as he can. He’ll have pinched it, so the number wouldn’t have been much help in tracing him. And he’d have had the legs of us even if we could have got off in time to follow him. He’d pick a fast one while he was about it.”

They got into Johnny’s old car and ran back to Field End. Just about the time that the lobby door swung to behind them and they came into the lighted hall Sid Turner went blinding round the corner of Jessop’s Lane into the main road and crashed into the Hexton bus. It was fortunately not very full. The driver had a miraculous escape, and of the few passengers no one was seriously injured, though old Mrs. Bazeley lost her front teeth and could never be persuaded that her son-in-law had not trodden on them on purpose. But the stolen car was what the conductor described as a mess, and Sid Turner was dead.

ANTHONY RANG up from Lenton. The first sound of Johnny’s voice was enough to tell him that Mirrie had been found and was safe.

“And you’d better come back quick or there won’t be anything left to eat. We’re not waiting for anyone, and personally I could cope with an ox.”

Anthony hung up and came out of the call-box. He hadn’t reckoned on Georgina being so close to him. She had insisted on coming, but they had hardly spoken until now when he almost ran into her and she caught him by the arm and said,

“What is it?”

“She’s all right. They’ve got her back.”

Just for a moment they stood close together like that, her hands on his coat-sleeve, her face tilted up to him and the greenish light of a street-lamp turning her hair to silver. She was bare-headed, with a coat thrown round her, and there was no colour about her anywhere, not in her face nor in her lips, nor in the pale glimmer of her hair. Only her eyes were dark and fixed upon his own. She said,

“Thank God!” Then her hands fell and she stepped back from him, and they got into the car and drove away.

But as soon as they were clear of the town she spoke again.

“Anthony, I want to talk to you. Will you draw in to the side of the road?”

“Not here-not now. They’ll be expecting us back.”

There was a moment’s silence before she said,.

“Does that matter to you so much?”

“I think we should get back.”

She had the feeling that if she let him put her away from him now, there would be no time in which they would come together again. She said,

“Anthony, will you stop now if I tell you that it is very important to me?”

They had been so near, and for so long, that she could feel him resisting her. And then quite suddenly the resistance lessened and the car slowed down and stopped. He said without turning towards her,

“I shall be going away tomorrow. I only came back to get my things.”

“Yes, I thought that was what you were going to do. You didn’t feel there was anything you had to say to me?”

“I was going to write.”

“You were afraid to come to me and say that you had let yourself be carried away-that you don’t really care for me the way I thought you did.”

“You know that’s a lie.”

“I know you said you loved me. But you didn’t, did you? You only said so because Uncle Jonathan had hurt me so much and you thought it would comfort me. And now, of course, I don’t need comforting any more”’

“ Georgina!”

“That doesn’t get us very far, does it? You are Anthony, and I am Georgina, and I thought you loved me. You did too. I want to know when you stopped. Have you fallen in love with someone else?”

“You know I haven’t.”

A little warmth came into her voice and shook it.

“Of course I know! I shouldn’t be talking to you like this if I didn’t. You’ve loved me for a long time. I knew when you began, and I should know if you were to stop. You haven’t stopped. You’re just offering us both up as a burnt sacrifice to your pride, and it’s a horrible, cruel thing to do and completely senseless.”

“You don’t understand.”

“I understand perfectly. Everyone understands but you. Uncle Jonathan did. That last evening when I talked to him he told me he did. He said he had always wanted us to get married some day. He said he thought we should be very happy, and he had left you something in his will as a mark of his trust and confidence.”

He turned round then for the first time.

“Did he say that? Are you sure he meant it that way? I thought-”

“What did you think?”

“I thought- No, it doesn’t matter. It sounds-”

“You thought you were being put on your honour to keep away from me?”

“No, no-of course not-”

“I knew it was that. You see, I do always know what you are thinking-at least I always have until now. And when you began to lock your doors and bolt yourself away, and I couldn’t get near you-” Her voice broke off short.