“It’s difficult, I grant you. I suppose there isn’t any other conceivable way in which that photograph could have been taken? No. … Wait a moment, though. … I say, Leyland, you haven’t got that print I gave you in your pocket by any chance, have you?”
“Of course I have. We want to get the whole setting of the thing exactly right. It’s in my coat pocket, up there in the bows, if you think you can reach it without upsetting the canoe. Go gently, now.”
Bredon retrieved the print, and looked at it intently for a good half-minute. Then he passed it back over his shoulder to Leyland, with the question: “Do you notice anything funny about the shadows in that picture?”
“You mean … Good Lord, what fools we’ve been! They go from left to right!”
“With the picture facing North … and the time supposed to be nine in the morning. No, it won’t do, will it? I wonder we didn’t think of that before. We know they came back late in the afternoon to cart the body away, and of course it was then that they put it into the canoe and photographed it.”
“That’s all very well, but what about the fifth film, the one that shows the footsteps? That was surely taken in the morning, because it shows the footsteps still wet. We know the footsteps were there in the morning—Burgess swears to them.”
“Oh, the footsteps were photographed in the morning right enough. Otherwise the steps would cast a shadow—they face East, you see. But then, I’ve always believed that film was an accidental exposure. If Nigel (say) was carrying the camera when he walked up the steps, and his foot slipped at the top, the exposure would be over and done with in no time.”
“Yes, if it was accidental. But, now I come to think of it, why shouldn’t they have taken a photograph of the footprints in the evening? All they had to do, don’t you see, was to fake the footsteps on the left-hand side of the bridge, instead of the right. Then a photograph taken in the late afternoon would look as if it had been taken in the early morning.”
“Good for you, Leyland! Only I’m hanged if I see what they could have wanted to do it for. The thing still works out all wrong, you know. Why did these murderers want to leave traces about which made it quite certain that the man had been murdered? What impression did they want to create, which you and I are too stupid to see? Confound it all, they’ve overshot themselves rather badly there. It seems to me just meaningless.”
“Anyhow, we’ve cleared up one point. When you give your little exhibition this morning there’s no need to take a camera with you. All you’ve got to do on your way to the train is to lift the body out of the canoe the quickest way you can and lug it up on to the clay bank. By the way, what are you going to do about a dummy body? I’m hanged if I’m going to understudy the corpse in that act.”
“We’ll have to raise something from Burgess. A roll of carpet will do. Hullo! here’s the good old island. You get out and take your photographs while I paddle up to the lock and covet Mrs. Burgess’ best piece of drugget.”
Very carefully and methodically, Leyland took six photographs of the trail through the bracken, and two closeups of the clay bank with the button-impress. By the time he had finished, Bredon had returned with a substantial roll of oilcloth, which he deposited on the left-hand bank of the island. A few minutes later they had taken possession of the lock. Mr. Burgess, wondering but obedient, was told to go on gardening, keeping a lookout to make sure that all their operations were beyond his range of vision. The lower gates of the lock were opened, and Bredon, standing at the bottom of the steps, gave a long, straight shove to the canoe, which carried Leyland, stopwatch in hand, briskly downstream. Bredon walked at a moderate pace towards the weir bridge. The moment he had crossed it, finding himself hidden from Mr. Burgess’ observation, he ran at full speed some forty yards along the bank, then sat down and undressed to his bathing-suit. He lowered himself without noise into the weir-stream, swam it, and pushed his way recklessly through the undergrowth at the southernmost end of the island. On the lock-stream, Leyland was now floating very slowly; it would clearly take him some time to reach the iron bridge at that rate. Bredon ran to the bridge, walked backwards up the steps, swam up to the canoe, brought it to shore, boarded it, and paddled at full speed past the bridge. Here he landed, and lifted Leyland, none too gently, on shore; then devoted himself to dragging the roll of oilcloth up to the middle of the island. Leyland, when he had tethered the canoe, walked back to the lock, and set out for the station on Mr. Burgess’ bicycle, along the field path. He had only waited a moment or two when a rousing chorus of barks from Spinnaker Farm announced that Bredon, his work done, his clothes resumed, was hurrying up.
“Sorry, sir,” said Leyland gravely, as the panting figure appeared round the corner; “the nine-fourteen’s just away. All the same, you did a pretty good time. Twenty-five minutes, I make it. You know, he might conceivably have caught that train, if it was four or five minutes late. Did you have any checks?”
“Yes; got one of my sleeves inside out. That’s the power of suggestion, confound you.
