It was characteristic of Gordon that, without expressing any opinion, he had been the only one of the four who quite liked to go up and touch the photograph. He held it now close under the light, and looked at it from different angles.
“I’m hanged if it doesn’t look different,” he said at last. “Sympathetic ink? No, that’s nonsense. But it’s a dashed rum thing, photography: I wonder if the heat of the room can have brought out some bit of shadow on the face that wasn’t visible before?”
“A damp spot possibly,” said Reeves, “which has faded out. It was rather close to the fire. Oh, what’s the good of worrying? Let’s all go to bed. I’m going to lock the thing up in the drawer here; and we can have another look at it in the morning. We’re all overexcited.”
“That’s it,” said Carmichael, opening the door, “I remember once in Eastern Roumelia—” but, as he managed to fall down the step into the passage, the reminiscence was fortunately lost.
X
In Which a Book Is More Communicative Than a Lady
Morning, as might have been expected, brought division of counsel. Mordaunt Reeves could now find no difference between the photograph as he saw it at the moment and the photograph as he had seen it at dinner the previous night. Carmichael agreed with him, though he still talked a good deal about collective hallucinations. Gordon could not make up his mind one way or the other; only Marryatt was certain that there had been a change. Anyhow, change or no change, Reeves put the once dreaded object in his pocket, and set out after breakfast in Gordon’s sidecar. Gordon volunteered to drive him over, though firmly announcing that he would not go inside Miss Rendall-Smith’s house; Carmichael sought to deter them by wise saws and modern instances, and they left him multa volentem dicere at the clubhouse door.
It must be confessed that Reeves felt a certain misgiving as he waited in Miss Rendall-Smith’s drawing-room. Rooms do echo personalities, and this drawing-room spoke of a forceful one; the furnishing was strategically perfect, the flowers were arranged purposefully, the books were books that had been collected, not simply amassed. The room smelt, Reeves said afterwards, of not having been smoked in. Nor did the lady of the house belie this first impression. Her beauty was still undeniable, but it was something more than beauty which disarmed you. You felt at once that she was kind and that she was competent, but you felt that if a choice had to be made she would be competent rather than kind. She might have been the matron of a big hospital, instead of an unoccupied householder in a small country town.
“Good morning, Mr. Reeves,” she said, “it’s very kind of you to come and see me. I don’t think we ever met, did we? I know the Secretary, of course, and several of the club members, but we’re rather out of the golfing world down here. But my maid says you want to see me on urgent business—please tell me if I can be of any use.”
Mordaunt Reeves, with an unaccountable feeling of being the detected rather than the detective, produced the photograph from his pocket, and asked melodramatically, “Excuse me, Miss Rendall-Smith, but do you recognize this photograph?”
There was just the fraction of a pause, just the suspicion of a gasp. Then she said, “Of course I do! I don’t know whether my looking-glass would, of course … but a thing like this can’t be done behind one’s back, can it? I think it was taken when I was here before, while my father was still alive. What did you want to know about it?”
“I’m afraid it must seem very impertinent of me to be asking questions about it, but the thing is of importance. I think I’d better tell you the whole situation. You’ll have heard, of course, this sad news about poor old Brotherhood, at Paston Whitchurch?”
“I read about it, of course, in the paper.”
“Well, one or two of his friends, that is, of people who knew him down at the club, aren’t quite satisfied with the line the police have taken about it. They think—we think they swallowed the idea of suicide too easily, without examining all the facts; and—well, the thing we can’t feel certain of is that there hasn’t been foul play.”
“Foul play? But why should anybody …”
“Oh, we’ve no suspicion of any motive. We thought, perhaps, that was where you might help us. It was I and some friends of mine who actually found the body, you know, and there were certain indications which suggested to us that Brotherhood had … had been murdered. There was the position of his hat, for example—still, we needn’t go into all that. We did entertain the suspicion very strongly, only the clues we had at our disposal weren’t sufficient to let us follow up our suspicions, if you see what I mean. The only one which we felt might help us to get any further was this photograph. By a mere accident, for which I’m not responsible, it didn’t get into the hands of the police.”
“The police know nothing about it?”
“We have no reason to think they do. But it was found in Brotherhood’s pocket—at least, it was found in circumstances which made it quite clear that it had fallen out of his pocket, when the … when his body was being moved.”
Miss Rendall-Smith took another look at the portrait, which still lay in her hands. “Then,” she said, “what exactly do you want me to do about it?”
“Well, you must understand, of course, that we are very reluctant to open up any subject which may be painful to you. But at the same time, since it seemed likely that you had some knowledge of Brotherhood’s history and circumstances which the world at large doesn’t share, we thought perhaps you would tell us whether you can form any
