The Fingerprint by Patricia Wentworth

The Fingerprint by Patricia Wentworth

published 1956

I am near the end of the Patricia Wentworth Miss Silver books, which will be a sad moment. I shan’t know whether to start again (not that I ever read them in order) or head deeper into the non-Silver books (of which I have read a few).

The Fingerprint started well: I had my hopes. Then came a middle period when I was enjoying it, but it felt strangely familiar – surely I hadn’t read it before? But that was resolved: it has the same setting as the earlier book Eternity Ring, published in 1948 – eight years before and with a lot of books in between. At one point ‘Frank met quite a lot of people he knew’ – well so do we. Character overlap.

There is the same idea of the woman who can conveniently hear all local phone calls on her party line. This could have worked well, but I thought didn’t, and the book tailed off into ‘let’s ask Telephone Girl again’, a lot of repetition, and some not very difficult working out by Miss Silver, treated as genius by all around her. Nearly all of this could be solved by any half-conscious being, and a lot of pages back, so we didn’t really need her to explain it for the second time.

So now I am nervous that the remaining two books won’t be great either – although she wrote three very good books the year before.

Anyway – still time to bring out

The Patent Miss Silver Checklist

 

Heartless behaviour

This recently-added category is called into play (while some others are not). The household contains two young women – one of whom, Georgina, was long-established and presumed to be the heiress to the important uncle, Jonathan Field Then Mirrie comes along, very good at making everyone sympathise with her admittedly dismal life to date. She is very good at attracting attention: will she also become the new heiress…?

So then Georgina is sent a vile anonymous letter accusing her of being jealous of Mirrie: she is told she will lose her boyfriend, and her status as heir, that she is not good-looking enough – and that she has been mean to Mirrie.

Georgina plainly should have thrown this letter in the fire with an exclamation of disgust – does she not know how people behave in this era of village crime stories? (She should’ve read my post on the rules of poison pen, here on the blog)

No, instead she takes it to show her guardian. She is very upset. Not half as upset as she is going to be: Jonathan (breaking ALL the rules of poison pen reaction) most unexpectedly takes the letter-writer’s side and says Georgina IS mean and jealous, has treated Mirrie badly, and deserves all that is coming her way. And if people are writing these letters then she obviously MUST HAVE behaved badly and is letting him down in the neighbourhood. So he’s going to disinherit her.

I do say, there’s always something unexpected or intriguing in a Wentworth book, and this was it. It was so hilariously inappropriate (and unbelievable) and wrong-headed.

Ridiculous reason for an engagement/marriage ending, or a couple being forced apart

Not taken too seriously, but there are the usual qualms of poor men marrying rich women, unless they are cads. Someone just disappears for a bit, but then he comes back and it’s alright (ooh, spoiler).

Coughing

Miss Silver coughs 12 times – a low number. Gently, unobtrusively, meditatively, reprovingly. Also ‘timidly’, which we don’t expect, but she is in character at the time, pretending to be a poor hanger-on of the posh family, in order to gather info.

Unusual names

Very  disappointing – just Mirrie, which turns out to be short for Miriam.

Ladylike & other noteworthy occupations

Mirrie has had a horrible job – Assistant Matron in a Children’s Home, really just a glorified housemaid. You know those American books which have weird character lists at the beginning (see this post for an example)? They would say:  ‘She will stop at nothing to avoid going back there, and who can blame her.’ (they always sound like spoilers but are, obviously, not)

Clothes

The two main young women, Mirrie and Clare, are dressed very differently for a big dance:

and there beside them was a little creature in a white dress. She had dark curls, and the dress was all soft fluffy frills. She hung on Jonathan’s arm and looked up at him with pansy-brown eyes.

See top picture. And then:

"a tall girl in a silver dress – a tall fair girl with a lovely figure and pale gold hair."

Their chaperone, Mrs Fabian   is dressed thus

she was wearing what would have been a perfectly good black lace dress if she had not had the bright idea of relieving it with some bits of faded fur, a couple of purple bows, and a large bunch of rather tumbled violets.

 

The picture shows opera singer Emmy Destinn, a Czech opera singer from many years earlier.

Destinn | Library of Congress

Knitting

"There were always babies who needed shawls, and those knitted by Miss Silver were in continual demand."

(This one is specifically for a baby to be born to one of the characters from the previous book, Poison in the Pen)

They have a lacy intricate pattern – at one time these were considered worrying because babies could get their small fingers caught up in them, but presumably Miss S had no time for that kind of Health-&-Safety nonsense. While knitting she has an extra layer – an old linen towel - between the knitting and her skirt to protect one from the other.

 Sociological detail & Etiquette

A good hearty look at what’s suitable to be worn at a funeral.

You would have thought Miss Siler would always be ready for a funeral, carrying the appropriate items around with her, as death follows her round. But no:

A small scarf of black wool kindly lent to her by Mrs. Fabian enabled her to dispense with the rather yellow fur tippet of an even greater antiquity than the coat. It had been a good fur once, and was still most cosy, most comfortable. Since she considered the country draughty, it invariably accompanied her when she left London, but the colour being a little bright for a funeral she gladly accepted the loan of Mrs. Fabian’s scarf.

Mirrie, despite being of course devastated by the death, is quite excited to have a lovely new outfit all in black, which she can carry on wearing:

She would have liked to wear her new black coat and skirt and the little hat with the veiling. Since the funeral was over, she wouldn’t need to be all over dead black right up to the neck. Mrs. Fabian said she could wear a white jumper or a white blouse and the string of pearls that Jonathan had given her. And she needn’t wear black gloves. That was the funny thing about Mrs. Fabian, she wore the oddest things herself, years out of fashion and quite dreadfully ugly, but she knew what was all right for a girl to wear, and what simply wasn’t done.

 

Jewellery

Since she was on a social visit [Miss Silver] wore an old-fashioned gold chain and her favourite brooch, a rose carved in bog-oak with an Irish pearl at its heart.

This is a frequent flier – but it is not clear what it has to do with the social visit. The brooch is clearly mentioned in other books as being worn at all kinds of working meetings and investigations.

So – always something to discuss in a Miss Silver book, but not her finest moment. On to the next one.

Fur tippet from the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland.