“They’ve all come out splendidly,” she announced, as she returned, wiping her hands, from the improvised darkroom. “There’s one thing, though. If it wasn’t Nigel who took those photographs, won’t he be a bit surprised at your assuming that it was? And if it was Nigel who took them, won’t you rather put him on his guard by letting on where it was you found them?”
“I don’t think we need worry very much over that. You see, I shall explain that I found them by accident, and had to develop them in order to get any sort of idea who they belonged to. Nigel may deny all knowledge of them, but he must admit that it was a reasonable guess of mine to suppose they were his, since he was known to have been up the river as far as Lechlade. And of course I shall have to practise a certain economy of truth in explaining where I found them. I shall have to say that I found them lying in a hedge somewhere near Shipcote Station. That won’t tell him which path they were found on; and if I put on a sufficiently stupid air, he won’t suspect that I suspect anything. But I ought to be able to get a little out of him, I think. Archimedes today, Machiavelli tomorrow.”
VIII
A Common-Room Dinner
By the next afternoon the prints were dry and ready for inspection. Bredon, however, delayed his visit to Oxford until after teatime, to be more certain of finding his man in. He was punished for his delay; a prolonged block detained him at Carfax, and during its inch-by-inch progress he was briskly hailed from the pavement by Uncle Robert. All families keep an uncle or an aunt in Oxford; most families slink about Oxford with guilty consciences when they pay it a visit, because the Uncle or Aunt has not been informed. Uncle Robert’s “What on earth brought you down here?” was distinctly tactless; Bredon had no desire to advertise his mission. In the end, he only got away by promising to dine with Uncle Robert in Salisbury Common-room that evening, after a warning telegram to Angela.
Nigel’s digs were in that state of chaos which can only be achieved when rooms are being dismantled and refurnished simultaneously. All Oxford lodging-house-keepers cling to the illusion that they can let their rooms to undergraduates “furnished”; generations of undergraduates come in, and tactfully extrude the unwelcome ornaments. It need hardly be said that Nigel had made a particularly clean sweep of all the “things” which his landlady had expected him to harbour. Now, Nigel’s darling monstrosities had been swept from the walls, Nigel’s French novels lay in piles about the floor, Nigel’s mauve curtains were folded, never again to look out from those windows; meanwhile the tide of redecoration was already beginning to flow in; The Soul’s Awakening and The Monarch of the Glen stood ready to resume their immemorial places, and in that wilderness the aspidistra prepared to flourish anew. The outgoing tenant had a slight air of Marius sitting on the ruins of Carthage, and Bredon hastened to apologize for the untimeliness of his interruption.
“Not at all,” was the answer. “Life would be unlivable but for the interruptions. You’ll have some absinthe, of course?”
“No, really, thanks. It’s very kind of you. I only looked in about a reel of films which I found the day before yesterday, near the river. I’d no idea, of course, who they belonged to, so I had them developed. It was easy to see the photographs had been taken by somebody who had just been up the river; and of course … the papers … one knew you had been up that way, and I thought perhaps it might have been you who’d dropped them. I was coming in to Oxford anyhow, so I thought I’d look in on the chance.”
There was a perceptible hesitation in the other’s manner, but nothing of fear, it seemed—hardly even of embarrassment. “Most awfully good of you. It’s a bore losing one’s films, isn’t it? They’re one’s children, in a way—or rather, of course, they’re Apollo’s really. So irrevocable. They record moments, and moments are always irrevocable.”
Miles repressed a strong tendency to scream. But he did not want to hasten over the interview; he must, if possible, get a good look at this young man, but the light was bad, and it was difficult to make sure of his face. “I suppose it was a bit of a liberty,” he said, “developing them; but what else was I to do? I’m afraid the last two haven’t come out very well.”
The other still hesitated for a moment; but it was difficult to know whether he was wondering how much the other knew, or merely collecting himself for fresh epigrams. “I can’t remember what they were,” he said at last. “Did they convey anything to you—some wraith of meaning?”
“I’m afraid they were hopelessly fogged.”
“Ah, yes; Apollo turned infanticide once more. The God of light, but he strikes with blindness. I do hope the cows came out? I meant to enlarge that one, and give it to my landlady, if possible with a quotation from Wordsworth underneath.”
Bredon had by now taken the parcel from his pocket and unwrapped it. “Yes, yes,” went on Nigel, “the church at Lechlade! A fantasy, you know; an idea of poor Derek’s—he was fond of faked photographs. And that gargoyle—I took that because it’s the precise image of our Dean. I only wished it had been a rainy day. The cows, as I say, were for the landlady; they are in my simpler manner. But the lock—that is my chef d’oeuvre! A lock-keeper really keeping his lock, really defending it; ‘You shall come through,’ he seems to say, ‘only by playing leapfrog over my living body.’ It’s a souvenir, too, because it was at
