“Not till I’ve got some. Tomorrow, you see, if you’re feeling very kind, you are going into Oxford to get that reel of films developed. If you get them done quick, and stand over the man to see that he does it, I suppose you ought to be able to produce some unfixed prints by the afternoon, oughtn’t you? Meanwhile, I shall have been conducting a few experiments.”
“What sort of experiments?”
“Oh, just in drowning myself.”
“Well, don’t be too successful about it. Or if you are, do get found all right; it would be a great bore not to know whether one was a widow or not.”
“You never know. I might get carried down into the paper mill, and come out at the other end in folio lengths. It would be very annoying to have the account of one’s own death printed on one, wouldn’t it? Meanwhile, what do you say to a little bézique before we retire ourselves? I wish you’d let me bring the real cards with me, so that I could have started a patience.”
It was, as a matter of fact, scarcely luncheon-time next day when Angela returned, full of mystery. According to a long-standing compact, they tossed up as to which should make a report first; and the lot fell upon Bredon. “Well,” he said, “I’ve spent my morning in a way very uncommon among English gentlemen. Largely, I may say, in a bathing suit.”
“Better than nothing,” commented Angela. “Start from the beginning.”
“I took the canoe down to the lock just below here, because that’s where they’ve got the Burtell canoe—it’s lying careened on the bank. Of course I wanted the man to let me take it away with me and have all sorts of fun with it, but it appeared to be more than his place was worth. I did, however, by means of a bet, manage to find out what I wanted to know—which was, how long it would take the canoe to fill with a hole that size in its bottom.”
“You mean he let you sink it?”
“No, but we put it in together and let it sink with a rope round each thwart to haul it out again with. I took care to lose my bet, of course. Meanwhile I found out exactly how long it would take to fill. I also noticed how long it would take to get one inch of water in, and so on. Then I went off and did the Archimedes touch.”
“Who’s he?”
“Surely you have not forgotten Archimedes in the Latin grammar, who was so intent on watching the way his bath was overflowing that he did not even notice his country had been captured? I retired to a position where I could undress with decency, got into the canoe in my gent’s University bathing suit, and drifted downstream, baling for dear life. Only I was baling in, not out, if you understand me.”
“But how did you know how much to bale?”
“It was only approximate, of course. But I calculated the time fairly easily by knowing how soon the first inch of water ought to get inside. I don’t know if I ever told you that at school they thought me rather a dab at mathematics.”
“You whispered it in my ear, darling, when we sat making love on the promenade at Southend. But what did all this tell you?”
“Why, approximately how far a canoe would drift, with wind and stream in its favour, when it was sinking at a given rate. It didn’t get very far. Incidentally, I fell out after a bit, which was what I expected. One’s balance is never perfect. However, I swam to shore all right, and dressed. Then I paddled up here, got hold of another canoe, and repeated the same experiment, leaving our canoe to float down empty and baling into it as we went. That showed me how far a canoe would float before it filled when there was no heavy body in it.”
“I still don’t see exactly what use it all was. You don’t pretend to be able to say exactly how far the Burtells’ canoe was paddled down from the lock, and how much it drifted? Or how far it drifted before it got the hole made in it?”
“No, but you can get negative results which are rather important. I tested also, of course, the rate at which a waterlogged canoe floats downstream, getting no help from the wind. And therefore I’m in a position to say that the accident, or whatever it was, can’t possibly have happened higher up the stream than a certain roughly-calculated point—if it had, the canoe wouldn’t have had time to drift down to the place at which it was found. It couldn’t conceivably, for example, have drifted all the way down from the bridge over the lock-stream in the time given, with that hole in it. Body or no body.”
“In fact, whatever else happened at the iron bridge, it wasn’t there that the boat was scuttled? I see you’re trying to exculpate Mr. Nigel Burtell.”
“I’m not trying to prove anything. But my experiments do seem to suggest that he can’t have had a hand in it.”
“That’s a tiny bit disappointing. Because, you see, my experiments do very much suggest that Mr. Nigel Burtell had a hand in it.”
VII
The Camera Cannot Lie
Angela brought out six prints. She laid them before her husband one by one, tantalizing his curiosity by insisting that he should have a good look at each as it came.
The first print represented a board with the title “Church Notices”; and underneath this title appeared a lurid poster of a cinema performance, combining a maximum of thrill with a minimum of clothing. It was obvious that the finger of the humorist had been at work; that two photographs had been taken on the same film.
The second was a closeup view
