The Fingerprint Read online

  “You have been warned! Don’t buy South American mines or listen to the confiding stranger with a gold brick or buried treasure. It’s better to go through life thinking what a wonderful chance you’ve missed than to have to go on telling yourself all the different sorts of fool you’ve been.”

  She looked up, and down again. He had a glimpse of something, he wasn’t sure what. Why on earth had he said a thing like that? If he had wounded her, made her angry- She said, “I don’t think it arises as far as I am concerned,” and he knew that she was reminding him and herself that she was no longer likely to have a fortune either to keep or throw away. It had gone down the wind of Jonathan’s new fancy, and what he had seen in her eyes was a proud reproach.

  On his left Mirrie asked in a small ingenuous voice,

  “What is a gold brick?”

  Whilst Johnny was enlightening her Stokes came back into the room bearing an apple tart.

  Chapter IX

  JOHNNY FABIAN, coming into what they called the morning- room, a convenient family gathering-place when the more formal drawing-room was not in use, found Mirrie there. She was sitting at an old-fashioned secretaire and she was engaged in writing a letter. She lifted a furrowed brow when he came in, stretched her inky fingers, and said in heartfelt tones,

  “Oh, how I do hate writing! Don’t you?”

  He came and sat on the arm of the nearest chair.

  “It depends who I am writing to.”

  Mirrie sighed.

  “I hate it always.”

  “You wouldn’t if you were writing to someone whom you passionately adored.”

  “Wouldn’t I?”

  “Definitely not. Think of your favourite film star and imagine he had just sent you a signed photograph and a flaming love-letter. Wouldn’t the words just come tripping off the pen?”

  Her brown eyes widened.

  “Would they?”

  “Do you mean to tell me they wouldn’t?”

  “I don’t know-I haven’t got a favourite film star.”

  “Unnatural child!”

  She continued to gaze at him.

  “You see, I’ve practically never been to the pictures. The relations I lived with only went to improving films with professors and people like experts showing you things about coal mining or growing beet for making into sugar, and if any of them had written me love-letters I should have put them in the fire.”

  Johnny laughed.

  “Snubs to the whole race of film stars! It’s no use their writing to you! Well, who is the lucky person who is going to get a letter? Let’s collaborate, and then I’ll run you over to Lenton and we’ll do a flick. Perhaps it will make you change your mind.”

  “What is collaborate?” She said the word slowly, dividing it into syllables.

  “Darling, didn’t they teach you anything at school?”

  Mirrie’s lashes drooped.

  “Oh, I’m not clever. They said I wasn’t.”

  “Well, it means two people writing the same book. Or letter.”

  “I don’t see how they can.”

  “I’ll show you. You’ll see we’ll get along like a house on fire. Who is this letter to?”

  She hesitated.

  “Well, it’s to Miss Brown.”

  “And who is Miss Brown?”

  “She was one of the people at school.”

  “Do you mean one of the mistresses?”

  Mirrie gazed.

  “There were two Miss Browns. The letter is to Miss Ethel Brown, because I promised to write to her and tell her how I was getting on.”

  “All right, that won’t take us long. How far have you got?”

  She picked up a sheet of paper and read from it:

  “Dear Miss Brown

  I said I would write, so I am writing. I hope you are quite well. This is a very nice place. The house has seventeen rooms without counting the cellars. Some of them are big. There are bathrooms made out of some of the bedrooms because people didn’t worry about baths when the house was built. It is what they call Georgian. There are beautiful things in it, and silver dishes with covers in the dining-room. Everyone is very kind to me, even Georgina. You said she wouldn’t be, but she is quite. Uncle Jonathan is very kind. He gave me a cheque for a hundred pounds to get my dress for the dance and other things. It was the dress with white frills. He has given me a lot of things. I think he has a great deal of money. He says I am to be like his daughter and he is putting it into his will. It is very kind of him.”

  She lifted her eyes from the page and said, “That’s as far as I’ve got.”

  It took a good deal to surprise Johnny Fabian, but this artless epistle actually startled him. He experienced a strong desire to know more, and most particularly to discover why Miss Ethel Brown should be the recipient of these interesting confidences. When Mirrie, pursuing the theme upon which her letter had ended, said, “It’s dreadfully kind of Uncle Jonathan, isn’t it?” he said yes it was, and enquired,

  “But why write to Miss Brown?”

  “I said I would.”

  Johnny’s eyebrows rose.

  “About Jonathan?”

  “About how I got on.”

  He laughed.

  “Well, I should say you had got off! With Jonathan anyhow!”

  She repeated what she had said before, but with an added emphasis.

  “It’s very kind of him.”

  “He really said he was going to adopt you?”

  “Oh, no, he didn’t say that. He said he was going to treat me like his daughter, and that I would have what a daughter would have in his will. He said he had told Georgina, and that he wanted everyone to know just how he thought about me.”

  Johnny whistled.

  “He said that?”

  “Yes, he did-after breakfast in his study. I think he had just been telling Georgina. I saw her come upstairs, and I thought she looked as if something had happened.”

  “How did she look?”

  Mirrie Field said, “As if someone had hit her.”

  He had a quick frown for that. It did just slip into his mind to think, “How does she know how a girl looks when someone has hit her?” but he let it go.

  “Mirrie, look here, I don’t believe you ought to send that letter to Miss Brown.”

  “Don’t you?”

  “No, I don’t. I don’t think Jonathan would like it.”

  “But he said he wanted everyone to know how he felt about me.”

  “I daresay he did. I don’t suppose he wanted everyone to know that he was altering his will. He could be funny about that sort of thing. He mightn’t like to think people were counting on what they were going to get after he was dead.”

  “People?” said Mirrie in an ingenuous voice.

  Johnny Fabian said, “You, my child!” and laughed.

  “Me?”

  “Yes, darling. I think you had better tear up that letter to Miss Brown and drop the bits into a nice hot fire.”

  Mirrie said, “Oh!” and then, “Oh, I couldn’t! It took me ever so long to write-and I promised.”

  Johnny reflected that Miss Ethel Brown was probably a long way off, but he thought he had better find out where she lived. There didn’t seem to be any particular call for tact, so he asked right out,

  “Where is this school of yours?”

  A good deal to his surprise she changed colour.

  “It was the Grammar School. It was at Pigeon Hill.”

  “And your Miss Browns taught there?”

  “Not exactly. I just knew them. They-they were some sort of relation of Aunt Grace’s. They taught in another school.”

  He thought she was making it up as she went along. But in the name of all that was ridiculous, why? He was looking at her curiously.

  “Is it your school you don’t want to talk about, or theirs? And why?”

  She said in a hurry,

  “I didn’t like being there. I don’t want to think about it or talk about it ever.”
r />   Yet she wrote to Miss Brown-a totally unnecessary performance!

  “Well, if it’s like that, I think I should let the whole thing fade. People are always saying they’ll write letters that never get written. Why not let it go down the drain?”

  Tears welled up in the pansy-brown eyes. She said in a little soft, obstinate voice,

  “I can’t.”

  Johnny shrugged his shoulders and got up. He said, “Well, it’s your funeral,” and had got as far as the door, when she stopped him.

  “Johnny-”

  He turned.

  “What is it?”

  “I didn’t like your saying that about funerals.”

  “I am devastated!”

  “You’re not-you did it to be horrid! I’ll just send this one letter, and then I won’t write again.”

  He said, “I wouldn’t send it at all,” and went out of the room.

  Half an hour later he looked from a window and saw a small green figure emerging upon the road. Miss Mirrie Field taking the air? Or going to post a letter? He ran after her and caught her up.

  “Air-exercise-or business?”

  She had put on the warm topcoat which matched her tweed skirt and pulled a green beret over her curls.

  “I just thought I’d like a walk.”

  “Then I’d like one too. And after tea we’ll go and do that flick in Lenton.”

  She sparkled up at him.

  “You are kind!”

  The general shop which was also a branch post office was only a few hundred yards away.“ He was wondering whether she had Miss Brown’s letter in her pocket, and whether she would let him see her post it, when she said,

  “I just want to go into Mrs. Holt’s and get some safety pins. I think it’s such an amusing shop-don’t you? Sweets, and cauliflowers, and bootlaces, and nailbrushes, and safety pins, and strings of onions-it’s so funny having all those things together!”

  The shop stood at the corner where the Deeping road ran off. It was an old crouched cottage with a new shop-front stuck on to it. On one side there was a garage with a couple of petrol pumps, and on the other a frightful little drab brick house which replaced the picturesque but insanitary cottage demolished by a bomb-splinter in ’44, the bomb itself having fallen in the middle of a field without so much as killing a sheep.

  As they crossed over to Mrs. Holt’s, Mary and Deborah Shotterleigh came out of the shop with two bull-terriers, an Airedale and a Peke. All the dogs barked joyfully and jumped up. Mary and Deborah could just be heard lifting ineffective voices, but the dogs barked on. When the larger of the bull-terriers sprang up in an attempt to lick Mirrie’s chin she gave a little scream and clutched hold of Johnny.

  “Down, Jasper! Down, Jane! Pingpong, you’ll get trodden on! No, Leo!” shrieked the Shotterleigh girls.

  Mirrie continued to clutch and the letter which had slipped from her pocket fell down under the feet of the dogs. By the time that she had run into the shop and Mary and Deborah were explaining that Jasper and Jane were really only puppies and the greatest darlings in the world, Johnny had retrieved it. Well, of course there is only one thing to do with a picked-up letter and that is to post it, always provided it is duly stamped and addressed. This letter was certainly stamped Johnny walked across to the posting-slit which had been let into the old cottage wall and dropped it in. But before he did so he took a look at the address. It may have been one of those instinctive actions, or he may have thought that he would like to know where Mirrie had been at school. Most decidedly and distinctly she had slid away from the question when he asked it, and when anyone won’t answer a perfectly simple question curiosity is sharply pricked.

  He looked at the address, emitted a practically inaudible whistle, and posted the letter. He heard it fall into the box on the other side of the wall and turned round to wave goodbye to the Shotterleigh girls. They were hauling the bull-terriers away by means of handkerchiefs passed through their collars. The Airedale had come to heel, and the Peke’s expression made it plain that he dissociated himself from what he considered to have been a vulgar brawl.

  They were safely on the other side of the road before Mirrie ventured out of the shop. She said, “What dreadful dogs!” After which she put her hand in her pocket and turned bright pink.

  “My letter-oh, Johnny, my letter! It’s gone!”

  He looked at her with laughing eyes.

  “It’s all right-I posted it.”

  She said, “Oh!” They went over the road together.

  When they were on the other side she produced a question.

  “Did you look at it? Did it get muddy?”

  “I looked at it. It had a paw mark in one corner-Jane’s, I think.”

  She didn’t look at him. She was still rather pink. It was very becoming. Johnny said,

  “Perhaps I ought to have asked you before I posted it. It struck me there was something wrong about the address.”

  “Oh-”

  “Your letter was to Miss Brown, wasn’t it? Or wasn’t it?”

  “Of course it was!”

  “Well, it wasn’t addressed to her. It was addressed to Mr. E. C. Brown, 10 Marracott Street, Pigeon Hill, S.E. That’s a London suburb, isn’t it?”

  She looked up at him sideways then, a creature wary of a trap. A squirrel perhaps? No, a kitten playing with a leaf- playing and catching it-playing and being caught. Only he wasn’t so sure that this was play. She gave him a sudden glancing smile and said,

  “Didn’t I put Miss Brown’s name on it?”

  “You did not.”

  She heaved a small sigh.

  “I am stupid. But it doesn’t matter-she’ll get it all right. She is staying with her brother.”

  “Mr. E. C. Brown?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “And she is staying with him in the middle of the school term?”

  She said in a voice of soft reproach, “She hasn’t been well.”

  He laughed in a manner which left her in no doubt as to his scepticism. Then he said,

  “All right, have it your own way, darling. Mr., Mrs., or Miss -I don’t give a damn.”

  Her lashes came down.

  “You oughtn’t to say damn.”

  “And you ought not to write letters to Mr. Brown and tell fibs about them, my poppet. Especially when they are the sort of fibs that wouldn’t deceive a half-witted child.”

  They were turning in at the gate as he spoke. She stamped a small angry foot and ran from him, reaching the front door first and banging it in his face. She was half way up the stairs as he crossed the hall, but she stopped and turned when she heard him laughing, her cheeks scarlet and her eyes bright with tears.

  “I don’t want to speak to you!”

  He blew her a kiss.

  “Darling, you needn’t.” Then, as she stamped again and ran up the rest of the way, he called after her,

  “It’s all right-I won’t tell. Don’t forget we’re going to a flick.”

  He wondered whether she would come, and he wondered about some other things too. Just why had she read him her letter to Miss or Mr. Brown? If for some reason she wanted him to know that Jonathan was prepared to treat her as a daughter, just what would the reason be? Something on the lines of “I’m not a little waif any longer-I’m Jonathan Field’s heiress”? Was she, in fact, extending the baited hook, not only to him but also to the rather supposititious Mr. Brown? And where did all this leave Georgina? Was Jonathan Field going to have two heiresses or only one?

  Mirrie came down smiling as the tea bell rang, and they made a party of four to see the film that was showing at the Rex in Lenton.

  Chapter X

  WHILST THEY WERE out Jonathan Field rang up to say that he would be staying in town for the night. Mrs. Fabian came trailing down the stairs to tell the returning party about it. She was wearing a purple dressing-gown in a flowing style with a long black chiffon scarf which imparted a funerary appearance. Since she had removed the bandeau with which s
he attempted to control her hair during the daytime, it now straggled wildly and she had to keep putting up a hand to push it back from her forehead and out of her eyes.

  “Jonathan will be staying the night in town. I thought I had better come down and tell you. I don’t know if he was speaking from Mr. Maudsley’s office, but the line was extremely bad and I could hardly hear anything he said.”

  Johnny laughed.

  “Darling, I hope you really did hear whether he was coming back or not, because if you’ve mucked it up and he gets home in the middle of the night to find everything locked and bolted he won’t be at all pleased.”

  Mrs. Fabian’s first expression of surprise changed rapidly to one of dismay.

  “Oh, my dears, do you think-oh, I can’t believe-but the line was extremely bad. I couldn’t help wondering whether they turn down the current or whatever it is at night.” Johnny said,

  “Darling, you’re out of your depth. And anyhow that isn’t the point. Exactly what did Jonathan say?”

  She had come to a standstill, and was now draped against the newel after the manner of one of those eighteenth-century ladies so often depicted as leaning over a pillar with an urn upon it. She put a hand to her head with an air of distraction and repeated, “The line was so bad.”

  “Darling, you’re not trying. Just begin at the beginning and go right on.”

  “Well, he said, ‘Is that you?,’ and when I said it was, he asked where all the rest of you were, so I said you had gone to the cinema in Lenton, and he made a kind of tutting noise as if he was vexed, and I’m not at all sure he didn’t say ‘Damn!’ ”

  “We’ll give him the benefit of the doubt. Go on-you’re doing fine.”

  By common consent the other three were leaving her to Johnny. If anyone could get a coherent story out of her, he would be the one to do it. Mirrie had a hand on Anthony’s arm. Georgina sat in the tall carved chair to the right of the door. She had gone with them because she wouldn’t let anyone guess, not even Anthony, at the shock Jonathan Field had given her. It wasn’t a case of more money or less. It was as if the ground had suddenly opened in front of her and swallowed up the foundations upon which her life was built. Nobody must know how dazed and bruised she felt. Anthony said he loved her, but she had thought that Jonathan loved her very much, and now he didn’t seem to love her at all. She wouldn’t have minded what he did for Mirrie-she wouldn’t have minded his being fond of her. But did you have to take love away from one person in order to give it to another? She hadn’t thought so, but it had happened, and there wasn’t anything that she or anyone else could do about it. Nobody must pity her or feel obliged to try and pick up the pieces. She would do that for herself, but she must have time, just a little time, and at the moment she was too tired even to think. She sat up straight, her head against the tall back of the chair, and listened vaguely to Johnny and Cousin Anna. Georgina had called her that when she was three years old. Coming into her mind like this, it was a reminder how deep were the roots that Jonathan Field was tearing up.