The Fingerprint by Patricia Wentworth Page A

body has been taken to the mortuary, but there will be photographs for you to see. There is no doubt about its being murder, though there had been an attempt to make it look like suicide. The weapon had been put into his hand so as to get his dabs on it—a tricky business and it hasn’t come off. No one could possibly have shot himself holding a revolver like that, and his dinner-jacket wasn’t singed. Nothing in the room has been touched, except that the curtains have been drawn back, but I can show you just how they were.”
    Frank Abbott stood in the middle of the room and looked about him. He noticed a number of things—a heavy volume on the writing-table—a choked, untidy grate. His light eyes went too and fro, his mind registered what they saw. It was a little time before he said,
    “What was his position?”
    “He had fallen forward across the writing-table. Bullet hole in the left side of his dinner-jacket. Left hand hanging down. Miss Grey, who found the body, says the weapon was lying on the carpet as if it had dropped from his hand. She says she picked it up and put it where it is now, on the table. There are two lots of fingerprints on it.”
    “Frank’s eyebrows rose.
    “I don’t remember his being left-handed.”
    “You knew him?”
    “I stayed in the house for a week-end about a fortnight ago. I came down with Captain Hallam. By the way, is he still here?”
    “Yes, he is. As a matter of fact it was he who rang us up. Miss Grey says she woke up just before one o’clock. This glass door was banging, and she thinks it was either that or the shot that waked her. She looked out of her window, saw the glass door moving, and came down. The study was in darkness and the door on to the terrace open. She says she thought at first that Mr. Field was asleep. When she saw the revolver she picked it up and went to fetch Captain Hallam.”
    Frank Abbott moved nearer to the table.
    “That album was there?”
    “Just as you see it. Nothing on the table has been touched.”
    “Everything been finger-printed?”
    Smith nodded.
    The album lay there open. Frank came round the table and looked at it. It was the one Jonathan Field had had spread out before him when he told his story of a murderer’s confession in a bombed building. As a tale it had gone down well. Frank had found himself wondering how many times old Jonathan had told it. Perhaps many times, perhaps only just that once. Somewhere idly at the back of his mind he also wondered just what the odds were against the two men concerned ever coming across one another again. If he could be said to think about it at all, it might have been that they were very long indeed. He frowned slightly, put two hands on the book to close it, and then opened it again.
    When Jonathan Field had been telling his tale he had opened it like that, but he hadn’t opened it fully. He had said, “It’s too long a story for now—quite dramatic though!” and he had put his hands on the volume, opened it half way, and clapped it to again. What stuck out in Frank’s memory was the manila envelope. The book had opened upon it, and when it shut it had not shut smoothly because the envelope was there. It might have been there as a marker. It was there now. He lifted the envelope, and it was light in his hand. It was light because it was empty. But he was prepared to swear that it hadn’t been empty when Jonathan was telling his yarn. There was something in it. He would have liked very much to know what that something was, and whether it had anything to do with Jonathan’s story. As he turned it in his hand a faint pencilling showed up across one of the narrow ends. He moved it so that it caught the light, and could just make out what had been written and then, it seemed, rubbed out—
    “Notes on the blitz story. J.F.” The notes had been there ten days ago, and they were not here today. Someone must have taken them out. It might have been Jonathan himself. It might have been