Patricia Wentworth - The Fingerprint

Maggie’s second source of information came from the fact that her mother took in dressmaking. Clever at it too, and needed to be since it was all she and Maggie had to live on except what came from the accident money. Very smart ladies used to bring her things to copy or to be altered. Mrs. Abbott had brought her in old Lady Evelyn Abbott’s wedding dress to make over for Miss Cicely when she was married. It was the loveliest stuff that Maggie had ever seen in her life -pounds and pounds a yard it must have cost. And wasted on a little brown thing like Miss Cicely-only of course that wasn’t a thing she would say except to her mother, and when she said it to her Mrs. Bell right down snapped her nose off.

The third and most important means by which Maggie kept in touch with everything that went on lay, quite literally, to her hand. It was the telephone. She had it on a long flex so that it could stand on the table by her sofa all day and be moved to beside her bed in the evening. It is not to be supposed that there were many people to ring her up, or that Mrs. Bell could afford any but the most necessary outgoing calls. There were of course appointments for fittings, and enquiries as to the progress of work in hand, but the strength of Maggie’s position lay in the fact that Deeping was furnished with that valuable aid to knowledge, a party line. When the Eternity Ring case was holding the neighbourhood in a state of horrified suspense Maggie had been able to follow the proceedings from the first mysterious call for Mr. Grant Hathaway by a strange woman with a French accent, through two murders and Mr. Hathaway’s impending arrest, down to the final and most startling climax.

She had naturally been a good deal interested in the dance. A good many of the guests had had new dresses for it, but some of the ladies came for alterations to what they already had, Lady Pondesbury for one. You’d think she’d be sick, sore and weary of that old black satin of hers, but in she’d come time after time, and always the same story, somehow or other it had got to be let out. Any money they had went on horses-and why not if they liked it that way? Mrs. Abbott, she had brought in her black lace, and a nice dress it was and didn’t need very much done to it-just a little bringing up to date as you might say. Miss Georgina had had a new dress, a lovely silver one. Maggie would have liked to see her in it. She did hear Miss Mirrie Field talking about it on the telephone. The day before the dance it was. She put through a London call, and it was a man she was talking to, telling him all about the party and how excited she was. She said her uncle had given her a cheque and told her to get a real nice dress, and she had, but it wasn’t as grand as Georgina’s- “Hers is silver and ever so becoming, and mine is white with a lot of little frills. Don’t you wish you could see me in it?” And he said, “Perhaps I shall,” and Miss Mirrie said, “Oh no, you mustn’t do anything silly.” And he said, “I’ve dropped you a line. And you remember what I told you about my letters?” Miss Mirrie said oh, yes, she did, and the man said, “Well, you go on remembering it, or you’ll be finding yourself out on your ear!” and he rang off. Not at all a refined way to talk, Maggie thought. She was surprised at Miss Mirrie putting up with it. She had kept a sharp lookout to see if there were any more of those calls, but if there were she missed them.

The dance was over and there was just the usual amount of ringing up about it afterwards and saying how much they had enjoyed it, but nothing out of the way interesting. Not that week.

It was on the Monday morning a week later that Georgina Grey received her first anonymous letter. It lay beside her plate on the breakfast table, and since she was the first to come down she was alone in the room when she opened it. When she thought about this afterwards she was grateful. She stood there tall and fair in a grey skirt and a twin set of primrose wool, and for a moment she just didn’t accept what was happening. She had torn open a cheap flimsy envelope and dropped it on to the table. She held a cheap flimsy bit of paper in her hand. It had lines on it. In spite of the lines the writing was very bad. She got as far as that, and then her mind seemed to stick. There were words on the paper, but it didn’t seem as if she could take them in. Her mind shut itself against them, and quite without conscious thought she turned the sheet over to look for the signature, but the writing went on right down to the foot of the page, and then it just left off. There wasn’t any signature.

She turned it over again and began to read from where it seemed to begin at the top of the page. There wasn’t an address, and there wasn’t a date. There wasn’t properly speaking any beginning at all. It just started.

“You think pretty well of yourself, don’t you, Miss Georgina Grey? You’ve been brought up soft, and I suppose you think you’ll go on living soft to the end of the chapter. You won’t. You’ve got things coming to you that you’re not going to like. Some of those who are underneath now will be on top, and you will be underneath. When you have never had anything to speak of you don’t miss it so much, but when you have always had everything and then quite suddenly you don’t have anything at all you miss it like hell. Up with the rocket and down with the stick, that’s you. I suppose you think people don’t see how you treat your cousin-looking down your nose at her and being patronizing, and giving her your cast-off clothes. You needn’t think it doesn’t get talked about, or that there aren’t quite a lot of people who are getting up to boiling-point about it. And all because you want everything for yourself and because she is prettier than you are and with much more taking ways, and because A.H. and others have begun to think so. And that hits you where it hurts, doesn’t it? Don’t worry, there will be lots more coming! People don’t like to see a girl spiting another girl and trying to push her down just because she is younger and prettier, and because you think J.F. is getting too fond of her as well as A.H.”

Georgina read it right through to the end. Then she put it back into the envelope. Her first feeling was one of bewilderment. You heard about anonymous letters, but you didn’t get them. They were like a lot of things which you read about in the papers. They happened to other people. They didn’t happen to you. It took her a little time to assimilate the fact that this was happening to her. It was as unexpected and as unbelievable as if she had been slapped in the face in the street by a stranger. She had to go on from there to wondering why anyone should do such a thing, and to the further question of who could have done it. Who could possibly have written her a letter like that? It must be someone who knew about her and about Mirrie, but she couldn’t think of anyone who would do such a thing. She stood there by the breakfast table with the cheap envelope in her hand and felt as if she had missed a step in the dark.

When she heard voices in the hall she went out quickly by way of the service-door and up the back stairs to her room, where she put the letter into a drawer. After which she came down again to find Mirrie and Anthony in the dining-room. They were standing very close together. No, she wouldn’t allow that into her thought-it was Mirrie who was standing very close to Anthony. It was just a way she had of coming right up to anyone-to him, or to Johnny, or to Jonathan Field-to stand like that with her head tilted, stroking a coat-sleeve and looking up. It was an artless, unconscious trick and very engaging, but just at this moment Georgina could have done without it.

Anthony turned to meet her, and Mirrie sparkled and said,