“How did you know who she was? Did she tell you?”

“Oh, no. She would hardly have talked so freely if she had suspected that I knew who she was.”

“And did you know who she was?”

“Oh, immediately. There was a photograph of her – really a very good photograph – in the magazine which Ethel had very kindly given me to read on the journey. There was one of those ill-mannered gossipy paragraphs as well. It gave me quite a lot of information. Mr. Dale Jerningham owned Tanfield Court. He had been married twice, and both his wives had money. It even gave their names. The whole thing was in quite incredibly bad taste.”

March said, “I see-” Then, after a pause, “The first wife made a will in his favour and had a climbing accident – the second wife makes a will in his favour and is nearly drowned. Suggestive of course, but-”

Miss Silver said, “Exactly.”

“I could bear to know more about the drowning accident.”

She nodded gravely.

“What do you mean?”

“Mrs. Mottle, the landlady of the Green Man where I had tea, informs me that Mrs. Jerningham had narrowly escaped being killed, I think she said on Tuesday, when the steering of her car broke clean through – I use her own expression – on the hill above the village. I gathered that this is by common consent attributed to a piece of spite on the part of this man Pell, who may have considered that Mrs. Jerningham had something to do with his dismissal. He had been heard to utter threats about getting even with those who thwarted him, and it would, I imagine, have been quite simple for him to obtain access to the car and tamper with the steering.” She looked up with faint, prim smile. “You see, Randal, it is not easy.”

“Easy! I should say not! And such a nice straightforward case as it looked. Everything points to Pell. Cissie Cole’s murder falls into one of the common classes – it all looks as easy as shelling peas. And then you turn up with one red herring – you don’t mind a few mixed metaphors, do you? – and I rather think I’ve got another by the tail.”

Miss Silver’s needles clicked briskly.

“I think it very probable that the red herrings will have a sufficiently strong flavour to spoil your peas,” she observed.

He laughed a little ruefully.

“They’ve done it already. Look here, I was in two minds whether to tell you or not, but I’m going to – and I won’t insult you by telling you that what I’m going to say is strictly confidential and hush-hush.”

“That sounds very interesting.”

He sat forward and dropped his voice.

“Well, I suppose it is. A little too much if you ask me. The question is, do you really know everything? I used to think you did when I was about eight, and I am beginning to have a horrid suspicion that I was right.”

“An exaggerated way of speaking, Randal.”

He gave her rather a charming smile.

“Not altogether. But I will come to the point, which is this. Does your omniscience extend to the Hudson processes?”

“I dislike exaggeration,” said Miss Silver mildly. “I certainly do not pretend to omniscience. I have a naturally retentive memory and I have cultivated it. I presume that your allusion is to the Professor Hudson who gave evidence in the Hauptmann trial. He had invented an iodine gas process which brought to light fingerprints which under the ordinary method remain invisible. I believe the jury rejected his evidence. Juries are extremely suspicious of scientific evidence – they do not understand it, and therefore they do not like it. But I do not see how the iodine gas process could be applicable to the present case. I believe, however, that Professor Hudson has also made some interesting experiments relating to fingerprints on cloth. If I am not mistaken, there is a process that can be applied to woollen materials. Perhaps that is what you have in mind.”

March laughed aloud.

“I was certainly right – you do know everything!”

Miss Silver smiled.

“Silver nitrate is used, if I remember rightly. It changes the salt in the fingerprint to silver chloride. The cloth is soaked in a solution, wrung out, and exposed to the action of sunlight, which turns the silver chloride black, and I believe some quite interesting results have been obtained.” She lifted her eyes suddenly to his face. “Am I to understand that you are thinking of having that poor girl’s coat submitted to this test, or that you have already done so?”

“I have already done so,” said March.

“With what result?”

He got up, pushing back his chair to the imminent danger of the bamboo plant-stand. It creaked, and the palm rocked perilously in its bright blue pot.

“Maddening!” he exclaimed. “Damnably interesting, and completely maddening!” Miss Silver said, “Dear me!”

Chapter 33

LOOK here,” cried March – “when I went up to Tanfield Court to get their statements I had this business of the coat in my mind – the tests were in fact already being made – so before I came away I got all their handprints. Not that the faintest suspicion attached to anyone except Pell at that time, but the coat having so recently passed out of Mrs. Jerningham’s possession, the probability of finding her own prints and those of her family were strong, and to be certain of Pell’s it would be necessary to identify these others. That was what was in my mind – nothing else. I got the prints and I came away. The whole thing, you must understand, was just an experiment. I didn’t in fact – I couldn’t in fact – expect it to have any value as evidence, because even if Pell’s prints were all over the coat it wouldn’t prove that he had done the girl in. He was her lover if he wasn’t her murderer. The prints might just as well be there because they had been embracing. In fact I was prepared to play with Hudson ’s process but not to take it into court, where, as you say, any jury would treat it with contempt. I really expected nothing – nothing.”

“And what did you get?” enquired Miss Silver with interest.

“More than I’d bargained for. Look here – here are the prints of the Jerningham family.” He picked up a small case, opened it, and took out a sheaf of papers. “We needn’t bother about the women. Mrs. Jerningham’s prints and Cissie’s own were on the front of the coat. But it’s the back that’s interesting. Here is Dale Jerningham’s hand print I took at Tanfield – here is his cousin Rafe’s – and here is Pell’s. Well, I can’t show you the coat, so you’ll just have to take my word for the prints on it. Pell’s prints are all over the place. One very clear indeed, right across the shoulder seam up by the collar. He might have had his arm round her neck, or he might have caught her there to push her over the edge.”

“Very shocking indeed,” said Miss Silver.

“Then, right in the middle of the back between the shoulders, Dale Jerningham’s hand – at least I think it’s Dale Jerningham’s hand. It’s not a good print because it’s all messed up with Pell’s prints. But – though there’s no certainty of this – all the three people who have seen them incline to the belief that the Jerningham print is superimposed upon the Pell prints.”

“There is no certainty of that?”

He shook his head.

“There is no certainty of anything. It is all very confused, and, as you were about to observe, nothing in the world could be more natural than to find a print of Dale Jerningham’s hand on his wife’s coat.”

Miss Silver said without looking up.

“It is a most shocking idea, but if Mr. Dale Jerningham mistook this young woman who was wearing his wife’s coat for Mrs. Jerningham and pushed her over the cliff, that is in fact where you would naturally expect to find an impression of his hand.”

March flung down the papers he was holding and turned from the gimcrack table which supported his attaché case.

“And what do you suppose I should look like if I produced that theory on this evidence – a new-fangled American process which not one person in a million has ever heard about, and the confused and doubtful prints of a man’s hand on a coat which only passed out of his wife’s possession an hour before the murder took place!”