It was perhaps on this account that Georgina felt it only natural for Miss Silver to be asking her questions, and for her to be answering them as frankly and as accurately as she could. It no longer occurred to her to hold anything back, or to suppose that her answers would be either doubted or misunderstood. Until Jonathan Field, in that painful interview on Monday morning, had shown that he distrusted her it had never occurred to her that anyone could do so. When after Jonathan’s death she discerned that Frank Abbott actually suspected her of being concerned in it, the very foundations of her world were rocked. Now everything was steadying down and coming into focus again. She said,
“You know, I never thought anyone could imagine I had anything to do with it until I was talking to Mr. Abbott in the study and I could see that he did think so.”
Miss Silver shook her head slightly.
“I think you will have to remember to call him Inspector Abbott, since he is here on duty.”
Georgina was remembering with a prick of surprise that he had been a guest at Field End, and that she had thought him amusing and a very good dancer. He had called her Georgina, and she had called him Frank. And Jonathan Field had been alive. It was only ten days ago, and the world had turned upside down since then. She looked at Miss Silver and said,
“It doesn’t seem as if it could possibly have happened.” And then, “There are two things I can’t understand at all.”
Miss Silver pulled on the ball of white wool in her knitting-bag.
“Yes? Pray tell me what they are.”
Georgina leaned forward.
“I don’t know why the glass door on to the terrace was open.”
“Do you mean that it was wide open?”
“Yes, it was blowing to and fro and banging. That is what woke me. I just can’t think why Uncle Jonathan should have opened it.”
Miss Silver was knitting rapidly.
“He might have found the room too hot?”
Georgina shook her head.
“No, he liked a room to be warm.”
“Then we have to suppose that he opened the door in order to let someone in, or else that it was not he who opened it.”
“Who could he possibly have been letting in?”
“I do not know, Miss Grey.”
Georgina said, “I don’t know anyone who would come and see him like that. And if he didn’t open it himself, who could have opened it?”
“There is no one in the house who might have done so?”
“Why should they?”
“I cannot give you the answer to that, but there might be an answer which neither of us can supply. You say that there were two things which you could not account for. The open door was one. Pray, what was the other?”
“He has a collection of the fingerprints of famous people. They are set up in large albums on the bottom shelf of one of the book-cases in the study. They hadn’t been moved when I was there talking to him at about nine o’clock, and Stokes says they were there at ten when he went in with a tray of drinks, but at one o’clock when I found him at his table the second volume was lying open on his right, and Inspector Abbott says a page had been torn out.”
“Dear me! Have you any idea what prints the missing page contained?”
Georgina hesitated.
“I think so, but I’m not sure. Uncle Jonathan had a story about being buried when a house collapsed in the blitz. It’s a very good story, and I’ve heard him tell it quite a number of times. I expect you know we had a dance here about ten days ago. There was a dinner-party first. After dinner some of the people went into the study-Inspector Abbott was one of them. They wanted to see his collection, and he worked round to telling this story. I wasn’t there to start with, but I came in just as he got going. I told him people were beginning to arrive for the dance, and he was vexed at being interrupted. Mirrie was there and she begged him to go on, so I came away.”
“Mr. Field went on with the story?”
“Oh, yes, Mirrie was full of it. He and another man were buried under the ruins of a bombed house, and they didn’t think they had any chance of getting out. The other man lost his nerve completely. He told Uncle Jonathan he had murdered two people, and he told him how he had done it. Mirrie said Uncle Jonathan didn’t get as far as telling them that part of it. I had left the door open and he could hear people coming into the hall, so he just said he thought he would know the man’s voice if he heard it again, and that he had got his fingerprints by passing him a cigarette-case. Mirrie said he half opened the album to show them the prints, and there was a long envelope there marking the place. I knew that because I had heard him tell the story before. What he kept in the envelope was a note of what the man had told him. You know, it’s quite on the cards that Uncle Jonathan made the whole thing up. If he did, I can just see him bolstering it with a lot of notes in an envelope and using it to mark the place where he had put some fake fingerprints. Only-” she hesitated-“why did he, or why did anyone, tear out that page and burn it?”
Miss Silver said, “Dear me!”
“The page is gone. It has been torn out-Frank Abbott opened the album and showed me the rough edge. And there is something else. The long envelope that I told you about was there, but it was empty. The notes Uncle Jonathan kept in it were gone.”
“Did you tell Inspector Abbott that?”
“No, I didn’t. He went straight on to ask about my uncle burning his will. That was when I could feel what he was thinking about me-and of course I couldn’t help seeing why he thought it. It doesn’t sound reasonable for anyone to make a new will and to destroy it the same day. And that is just it -people who do things when they are angry are not reasonable. Uncle Jonathan made that will because he was in a rage with me, and he wanted to show everyone how fond he was of Mirrie. Then when I went in and talked to him after dinner last night the anger just melted away like a bad dream and he couldn’t have been sweeter. He took the new will out of his drawer and tore it up and put the pieces in the fire. I tried to stop him, but he wouldn’t listen, and I didn’t want to make him angry again. He said he would make a new will that would be just to both of us, and that I wasn’t to think he loved me any less because he loved Mirrie too.” Her eyes were full of sudden tears. “Oh, Miss Silver, it doesn’t seem as if it could have happened.”
Miss Silver said very kindly and gently,
“It will always be the greatest comfort to you that any misunderstanding between you and your uncle should have been so completely removed. As Coleridge so truly says-
‘For to be wroth with one we love
Doth work like madness on the brain.’ ”
Georgina bit her lip. For a moment she could not speak. When she could command her voice again she said,
“Miss Silver, Cicely thought-she said-you might consent to come to Field End and help us. Will you?”
Miss Silver laid down her knitting and folded her hands upon it, after which she said in a voice of deceptive mildness,
“In what capacity?”
Georgina was a little taken aback. Perhaps she had offended -perhaps Miss Silver would not come. She was surprised to discover how very much she wanted her to come. She said “Oh-” and then,
“You do take cases, don’t you?”
“You are asking for my professional assistance?”
“Oh, yes!”
“Then I must say to you what I feel it my duty to say to every client. I cannot come into a case with the object of proving the innocence or the guilt of any person. I can come into it only with the object of discovering the truth and serving the ends of justice. I can neither compromise with facts nor gloss them over, and I cannot undertake to conceal material evidence from the police.”