The Fingerprint
A review of The Fingerprint by Patricia Wentworth – 251003
As Patricia Wentworth’s Miss Silver series draws to a close The Fingerprint, the thirtieth of thirty-two and originally published in 1956, treads familiar ground, the consequences of an inheritance and the changing of a will. It is rather an exasperating book as the pieces of the jigsaw are laid out in the early chapters, the culprit is easy to spot, and the book meanders its way to its conclusion, its length amplified by the repetition of key conversations verbatim.
Jonathan Field is wealthy with one peculiar hobby, his penchant for collecting fingerprints, not just of criminals but of those who have never been convicted of a crime or who are entirely innocent. A refusal to contribute to the collection is tantamount to an admission that you have something to hide. The pride and joy of his collection is a set of prints taken from a man who sheltered from an air raid with him and confessed that he had committed two murders for which he had never been brought to account.
Georgina is Jonathan’s niece and is the recognized and accepted heir to his estate, but recently he has taken a long-lost relative, a naïve, seemingly innocent young girl, Mirrie. Provoked by an anonymous letter accusing Georgina of being cruel to Mirrie, Jonathan alters his will making Mirrie the beneficiary, tells the excited girl of her good fortune, but then after some reflection, changes his mind and the new will is destroyed. However, on the night of his return after making his new will, Jonathan is murdered.
Georgina, who finds the body, picks up the gun lying nearby, thus putting her fingerprints on the gun. As the destruction of the new will is not known at the time, Georgina has motive enough to have killed her uncle, but did she? It also emerges that the page of the fingerprint album containing the dabs of the self-confessed murderer has been torn out and the notes of the accompanying story removed. Has the murderer, fearful that their identity would be revealed, returned to recover the evidence?
And so the scene is set for Detective Inspector Frank Abbott and Miss Silver to put their collective minds to solving the problem and unmasking Jonathan’s murderer. Frank, thanks to an extended family, “has more relations than anyone in England” and naturally has an invitation to Jonathan’s party where he both meets Georgina and Mirrie, and hears the story associated with Jonathan’s prized fingerprint. Given his family connections, it is perhaps a surprise that he is allowed to investigate the murder, but at least he has a head start in knowing all the potential suspects. Miss Silver, brought in by Georgina, is equally at home, blending into the background, observing, listening, asking the odd pertinent question and resuming old acquaintances.
Her masterstroke is to cultivate Maggie Bell, whom we first met in Eternity Ring, a disabled girl who passes the time by listening in to the village’s party line, an invaluable source of both gossip and information. All the villagers know of her proclivities but in extremis often forget that what they thought was an intimate conversation could be eavesdropped by others. Oh the days of party lines! With Maggie’s help Miss Silver is able to piece together the flow and content of telephone calls between Field House and the outside world which leads to an illuminating discovery.
Thematically, the book is very similar to The Odd Flamingo, published two years earlier; – a naïve young girl desperate to escape her surroundings and better herself but falling under the malign influence of an unscrupulous petty gangster – for Jimmie Callaghan read Sid Turner – but the atmosphere of the two books is like chalk and cheese. Nina Bawden’s book is dark and brooding while Wentworth’s is still a fluffy, cosy concoction with little shavings of nut to give some bite.
It is readable and Wentworth is a masterful story teller, but for me it was too lengthy in the telling.
