Chapter IX.The Animated Picture“Well,” said Reeves impatiently, as Marryatt came, rather late, into the dining-room, “did you find out?”“Yes, I went round to Campbell’s——”“But it’s early closing day.”“Yes, only . . . only Campbell was open, for some reason. He made no difficulty about identifying the portrait or about giving me the address. When he told me the name and address I remembered quite a lot about her.”“Who is she, then?”“Her name is Miss Rendall-Smith. Her father, old Canon Rendall-Smith, was Rector of Binver for a long time, a learned old man, I believe, but rather a bore. He died some years before the war—I should think it would be about 1910, and left her very badly off; she left the neighbourhood then—that was just before I came. Some time during the early part of the war she came back, apparently in much better circumstances, for she took that old brick house with the white window-frames that stands next the Church and looks as if it was the Rectory but isn’t. She lives there still; she did a good deal of public work during the war, subscriptions and things, but I never actually came across her. She’s a fine-looking woman still, Campbell told me—by the way, there was no reticence about Campbell. He showed me a more recent portrait of her which he was very proud of, and told me he thought it was a pity a lady like that didn’t marry. Altogether, we seem to have struck a public character, and a very good woman, by all that’s said of her.”“H’m,” said Reeves, “and Brotherhood kept a portrait of her—or rather, Brotherhood in his capacity as Davenant kept a portrait of her, and took it away with him when he meant to leave these parts for a bit. It seems to me she ought to be able to tell us something about him.”“Good Lord!” said Marryatt, “you aren’t going to introduce yourself toheras theDaily Mailreporter? Hang it all, it’s one thing to take in Mrs. Bramston——”“And another thing to take in Miss Rendall-Smith, because she’s a lady? I’m afraid that seems to me mere sentimentalism.”“What I meant was, if you present yourself to Miss Rendall-Smith as a reporter, she’ll turn you out of the house.”“Ye-es. There’s something in that. But then, I wouldn’t say I’d come from theDaily Mail; I’d say I’d come from theCounty Herald, and that I was commissioned to do a write-up of Brotherhood as a prominent local personage.”“But how,” objected Carmichael, “would you explain the fact that you were coming to her? Remember, it isn’t certain that she knew Brotherhood at all, that is, in his own person. You see it was not to Brotherhood but to Davenant that she gave the photograph. And natural enough—if I had been in that position, I would sooner have gone courting as Davenant than as Brotherhood.”“I could simply pretend I was coming to her as to one of the oldest residents.”“Tactful Openings, Number One,” suggested Gordon, crumbling his bread. “No, Reeves, it won’t do. I’d like to see you dressed up as a reporter again, because I think there’s something very fetching about it. But I don’t believe that even in that disguise you will win the heart of a mature female. You’ll have to think out some other dodge.”“I suppose you’d like me to burgle her house while she’s out,” said Reeves, with unnecessary irritation.“But you don’t want to see her house,” objected the literal-minded Gordon, “you want to see her.”“Very well, then,” said Reeves, “I shall go and tell her the truth. At least, I shall tell her that we’re investigating Brotherhood’s murder, and that this portrait of her was found on the body. I shall urge her to tell me if she knows of any enemies that Brotherhood had, any secrets which might throw light upon his end.”“That’s far the best principle,” agreed Gordon. “Always tell the truth, and people will never believe you.”“Why shouldn’t she believe me?”“No reason in the world; only as a matter of fact she won’t. It’s rather a satire on humanity, but I’ve always found that the safest way to conceal a fact is to state it quite baldly. Then people always think you’re pulling their legs, or being sarcastic, and the secret is preserved.”“You’re a sceptical old Sadducee. I don’t believe a woman like this would have such a low view of humanity.”“Like what?”“Like the portrait.”“Are you falling in love with her already? Marryatt, it seems to me, between funerals and marriages, you’re going to be a busy man.”“Don’t be a fool,” said Reeves. “I don’t know anything about women, except that some of them are so ugly I recognize them when I meet them in the street. This clearly isn’t one of them. But I have trained myself to judge faces a bit, and this looks to me like the face of a woman who’s straight herself and expects others to be straight with her.”“Let’s have another look,” urged Gordon. Marryatt produced the photograph, and it was passed round once more. “I dare say you’re right,” admitted Gordon. “The curious thing to me is that a good-looking woman like that who’s not actually a beauty—not classic features, I mean—should look so deadly serious when she’s having her photograph taken. I should have thought even Mr. Campbell would have had the sense to make a little photographer’s joke; or at least tell her to moisten her lips.”“You’re right,” said Carmichael. “The look is a very serious one; but I believe a portrait is all the better for that—as a portrait, I mean. Have you ever thought what an advantage the historians of the future will have over us? Think how late portraiture itself comes into history; I think I’m right in saying that a thumb-nail sketch of Edward II in the margin of an old chronicle is the earliest portrait preserved to us in English history. And when portrait-painting did come in, how soon the art was corrupted! You can see that Holbein was telling the truth; but by the time you get to Vandyck it’s all court flattery. Whereas the historians of the future will be able to see what we really were like.”“It looks to me,” said Reeves, “a sad face—the face of a woman who’s had a good deal of trouble. I feel somehow that the serious pose of the mouth was natural to her.”“I don’t think that’s the ordinary impression you’d get from her face,” put in Marryatt.“How on earth do you know?” asked Reeves, staring.“Well, you see, Campbell showed me this later photograph of her, and it wasn’t at all like that.”“Well,” suggested Gordon, “it’s not much good discussing the portrait if Reeves is going to see the lovely original to-morrow. I want to know what’s wrong with a game of bridge?”“Good idea,” said Marryatt, “it’ll take our minds off the murder. You know, I think you fellows are getting rather fanciful about the whole thing.”“All right,” said Reeves, “my room, though, not downstairs. What’s the good of having one’s own fireplace if one can’t light a fire in October?”Reeves’ room deserves, perhaps, a fuller description than it has hitherto been given. It had been the best bedroom of the old Dower-house, and for some reason had been spared when several smaller rooms had been divided up, at the time of the club’s installation. It was, consequently, a quite unspoiled piece of early Tudor architecture; there were latticed windows with deep recesses; dark, irregular beams supported the white-plastered ceiling; the walls were oak-panelled; the fireplace open and of genuine old brick. When the fire, reluctant after long desuetude, had been induced to crackle, and threw flickering reflections where the shade of the electric light gave subdued half tones, there was an air of comfort which seemed to dispel all thought of detective problems, of murderers stalking the world unpunished, of the open grave that waited in Paston Oatvile churchyard.Gordon put down the photograph on a jutting cornice that went round the panelling. “There, Reeves,” he said, “you shall sit opposite the lady, and derive inspiration from her. I cannot ask you to hope that she will smile upon your efforts, but it ought to be an encouragement.”They were soon immersed in that reverential silence and concentration which the game fosters: and if Miss Rendall-Smith’s portrait did not receive much of their attention, it is probable that the lady herself, had she been present, would have been treated with little more ceremony. Reeves, however, was bad at taking his mind off a subject, and when, as dummy, he was given a short interval of unrepose, his eyes strayed to the photograph anew. Was this the face, perhaps, that had lured Brotherhood to his strange doom? Was she even an accomplice, burdened now with the participation of a guilty secret? Or was she the sufferer by the crime; and did she wait vainly for news of Davenant, little knowing that it was Davenant who lay waiting for burial at Paston Whitchurch? Poor woman, it seemed likely in any case that she would have much to bear—was it decent to inflict on her a detective interview and a series of importunate questions? He crushed down the insurgent weakness: there was no other way for it, she must be confronted with the facts. The face looked even more beautiful as you saw it in the firelight, shaded from the glare of the lamp. He strolled over to look at it again just as the last trump was led.“Good God!”The others turned, in all the irritation of an interrupted train of thought, to find him staring at the photograph as if in horror. Then he stepped quickly across to the lamp, and turned it sideways so as to throw the light full on the wall. And then they too turned a little pale. The photograph had smiled.There was, to be sure, only the faintest flicker of a smile on the lips; you could not give any formula of it or trace the lines of it. And yet it was the simultaneous impression of these four men that the whole character, the whole impression of the face before them had changed while they had played three hands of bridge. The whole face was indefinably more human and more beautiful; but you could not say why.“Oh, for God’s sake let’s give the beastly thing up!” cried Marryatt. “It doesn’t do to meddle with these things; one doesn’t know what one’s up against. Reeves, I know it hurts your vanity to leave an inquiry half-finished, but I’m sure it’s a mistake to go on. Brotherhood, you know—he wasn’t quite canny; I always thought there was something uncanny about him. Do let’s give it up.”“The thing isn’t possible,” said Reeves slowly. “It’s the difference of the light, I think; the light wasn’t so strong downstairs. It’s funny how one can imagine these things.”“I was never in a haunted house myself,” said Carmichael, “but I remember very well the College used to own land at Luttercombe, where the De Mumfords lived, don’t you know, and our old Bursar always insisted that he heard screams in the night when he slept there. I don’t believe in these things myself, though; fancy can play such extraordinary tricks.”“But look here, we all noticed the difference,” objected Marryatt.“Well, there is such a thing as collective hallucination. Somebody tells us the face looks grave, and our imagination reads gravity into it; and then somebody says it’s changed, and we can’t see the gravity there any longer.”“That’s it,” said Reeves, who was pouring himself out a stiff whisky-and-soda. “It’s collective hallucination. Must be.”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 over-excited.”“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.
“Well,” said Reeves impatiently, as Marryatt came, rather late, into the dining-room, “did you find out?”
“Yes, I went round to Campbell’s——”
“But it’s early closing day.”
“Yes, only . . . only Campbell was open, for some reason. He made no difficulty about identifying the portrait or about giving me the address. When he told me the name and address I remembered quite a lot about her.”
“Who is she, then?”
“Her name is Miss Rendall-Smith. Her father, old Canon Rendall-Smith, was Rector of Binver for a long time, a learned old man, I believe, but rather a bore. He died some years before the war—I should think it would be about 1910, and left her very badly off; she left the neighbourhood then—that was just before I came. Some time during the early part of the war she came back, apparently in much better circumstances, for she took that old brick house with the white window-frames that stands next the Church and looks as if it was the Rectory but isn’t. She lives there still; she did a good deal of public work during the war, subscriptions and things, but I never actually came across her. She’s a fine-looking woman still, Campbell told me—by the way, there was no reticence about Campbell. He showed me a more recent portrait of her which he was very proud of, and told me he thought it was a pity a lady like that didn’t marry. Altogether, we seem to have struck a public character, and a very good woman, by all that’s said of her.”
“H’m,” said Reeves, “and Brotherhood kept a portrait of her—or rather, Brotherhood in his capacity as Davenant kept a portrait of her, and took it away with him when he meant to leave these parts for a bit. It seems to me she ought to be able to tell us something about him.”
“Good Lord!” said Marryatt, “you aren’t going to introduce yourself toheras theDaily Mailreporter? Hang it all, it’s one thing to take in Mrs. Bramston——”
“And another thing to take in Miss Rendall-Smith, because she’s a lady? I’m afraid that seems to me mere sentimentalism.”
“What I meant was, if you present yourself to Miss Rendall-Smith as a reporter, she’ll turn you out of the house.”
“Ye-es. There’s something in that. But then, I wouldn’t say I’d come from theDaily Mail; I’d say I’d come from theCounty Herald, and that I was commissioned to do a write-up of Brotherhood as a prominent local personage.”
“But how,” objected Carmichael, “would you explain the fact that you were coming to her? Remember, it isn’t certain that she knew Brotherhood at all, that is, in his own person. You see it was not to Brotherhood but to Davenant that she gave the photograph. And natural enough—if I had been in that position, I would sooner have gone courting as Davenant than as Brotherhood.”
“I could simply pretend I was coming to her as to one of the oldest residents.”
“Tactful Openings, Number One,” suggested Gordon, crumbling his bread. “No, Reeves, it won’t do. I’d like to see you dressed up as a reporter again, because I think there’s something very fetching about it. But I don’t believe that even in that disguise you will win the heart of a mature female. You’ll have to think out some other dodge.”
“I suppose you’d like me to burgle her house while she’s out,” said Reeves, with unnecessary irritation.
“But you don’t want to see her house,” objected the literal-minded Gordon, “you want to see her.”
“Very well, then,” said Reeves, “I shall go and tell her the truth. At least, I shall tell her that we’re investigating Brotherhood’s murder, and that this portrait of her was found on the body. I shall urge her to tell me if she knows of any enemies that Brotherhood had, any secrets which might throw light upon his end.”
“That’s far the best principle,” agreed Gordon. “Always tell the truth, and people will never believe you.”
“Why shouldn’t she believe me?”
“No reason in the world; only as a matter of fact she won’t. It’s rather a satire on humanity, but I’ve always found that the safest way to conceal a fact is to state it quite baldly. Then people always think you’re pulling their legs, or being sarcastic, and the secret is preserved.”
“You’re a sceptical old Sadducee. I don’t believe a woman like this would have such a low view of humanity.”
“Like what?”
“Like the portrait.”
“Are you falling in love with her already? Marryatt, it seems to me, between funerals and marriages, you’re going to be a busy man.”
“Don’t be a fool,” said Reeves. “I don’t know anything about women, except that some of them are so ugly I recognize them when I meet them in the street. This clearly isn’t one of them. But I have trained myself to judge faces a bit, and this looks to me like the face of a woman who’s straight herself and expects others to be straight with her.”
“Let’s have another look,” urged Gordon. Marryatt produced the photograph, and it was passed round once more. “I dare say you’re right,” admitted Gordon. “The curious thing to me is that a good-looking woman like that who’s not actually a beauty—not classic features, I mean—should look so deadly serious when she’s having her photograph taken. I should have thought even Mr. Campbell would have had the sense to make a little photographer’s joke; or at least tell her to moisten her lips.”
“You’re right,” said Carmichael. “The look is a very serious one; but I believe a portrait is all the better for that—as a portrait, I mean. Have you ever thought what an advantage the historians of the future will have over us? Think how late portraiture itself comes into history; I think I’m right in saying that a thumb-nail sketch of Edward II in the margin of an old chronicle is the earliest portrait preserved to us in English history. And when portrait-painting did come in, how soon the art was corrupted! You can see that Holbein was telling the truth; but by the time you get to Vandyck it’s all court flattery. Whereas the historians of the future will be able to see what we really were like.”
“It looks to me,” said Reeves, “a sad face—the face of a woman who’s had a good deal of trouble. I feel somehow that the serious pose of the mouth was natural to her.”
“I don’t think that’s the ordinary impression you’d get from her face,” put in Marryatt.
“How on earth do you know?” asked Reeves, staring.
“Well, you see, Campbell showed me this later photograph of her, and it wasn’t at all like that.”
“Well,” suggested Gordon, “it’s not much good discussing the portrait if Reeves is going to see the lovely original to-morrow. I want to know what’s wrong with a game of bridge?”
“Good idea,” said Marryatt, “it’ll take our minds off the murder. You know, I think you fellows are getting rather fanciful about the whole thing.”
“All right,” said Reeves, “my room, though, not downstairs. What’s the good of having one’s own fireplace if one can’t light a fire in October?”
Reeves’ room deserves, perhaps, a fuller description than it has hitherto been given. It had been the best bedroom of the old Dower-house, and for some reason had been spared when several smaller rooms had been divided up, at the time of the club’s installation. It was, consequently, a quite unspoiled piece of early Tudor architecture; there were latticed windows with deep recesses; dark, irregular beams supported the white-plastered ceiling; the walls were oak-panelled; the fireplace open and of genuine old brick. When the fire, reluctant after long desuetude, had been induced to crackle, and threw flickering reflections where the shade of the electric light gave subdued half tones, there was an air of comfort which seemed to dispel all thought of detective problems, of murderers stalking the world unpunished, of the open grave that waited in Paston Oatvile churchyard.
Gordon put down the photograph on a jutting cornice that went round the panelling. “There, Reeves,” he said, “you shall sit opposite the lady, and derive inspiration from her. I cannot ask you to hope that she will smile upon your efforts, but it ought to be an encouragement.”
They were soon immersed in that reverential silence and concentration which the game fosters: and if Miss Rendall-Smith’s portrait did not receive much of their attention, it is probable that the lady herself, had she been present, would have been treated with little more ceremony. Reeves, however, was bad at taking his mind off a subject, and when, as dummy, he was given a short interval of unrepose, his eyes strayed to the photograph anew. Was this the face, perhaps, that had lured Brotherhood to his strange doom? Was she even an accomplice, burdened now with the participation of a guilty secret? Or was she the sufferer by the crime; and did she wait vainly for news of Davenant, little knowing that it was Davenant who lay waiting for burial at Paston Whitchurch? Poor woman, it seemed likely in any case that she would have much to bear—was it decent to inflict on her a detective interview and a series of importunate questions? He crushed down the insurgent weakness: there was no other way for it, she must be confronted with the facts. The face looked even more beautiful as you saw it in the firelight, shaded from the glare of the lamp. He strolled over to look at it again just as the last trump was led.
“Good God!”
The others turned, in all the irritation of an interrupted train of thought, to find him staring at the photograph as if in horror. Then he stepped quickly across to the lamp, and turned it sideways so as to throw the light full on the wall. And then they too turned a little pale. The photograph had smiled.
There was, to be sure, only the faintest flicker of a smile on the lips; you could not give any formula of it or trace the lines of it. And yet it was the simultaneous impression of these four men that the whole character, the whole impression of the face before them had changed while they had played three hands of bridge. The whole face was indefinably more human and more beautiful; but you could not say why.
“Oh, for God’s sake let’s give the beastly thing up!” cried Marryatt. “It doesn’t do to meddle with these things; one doesn’t know what one’s up against. Reeves, I know it hurts your vanity to leave an inquiry half-finished, but I’m sure it’s a mistake to go on. Brotherhood, you know—he wasn’t quite canny; I always thought there was something uncanny about him. Do let’s give it up.”
“The thing isn’t possible,” said Reeves slowly. “It’s the difference of the light, I think; the light wasn’t so strong downstairs. It’s funny how one can imagine these things.”
“I was never in a haunted house myself,” said Carmichael, “but I remember very well the College used to own land at Luttercombe, where the De Mumfords lived, don’t you know, and our old Bursar always insisted that he heard screams in the night when he slept there. I don’t believe in these things myself, though; fancy can play such extraordinary tricks.”
“But look here, we all noticed the difference,” objected Marryatt.
“Well, there is such a thing as collective hallucination. Somebody tells us the face looks grave, and our imagination reads gravity into it; and then somebody says it’s changed, and we can’t see the gravity there any longer.”
“That’s it,” said Reeves, who was pouring himself out a stiff whisky-and-soda. “It’s collective hallucination. Must be.”
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 over-excited.”
“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.