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 that lock I had to take leave of my cousin. Did you ever notice how annoying it is to have to talk regretfully about a person you quite particularly disliked?”
“Those last two are very badly fogged, you know,” said Bredon, refusing the invitation to digress. “It looks to me as if there was something wrong with your shutter. You wouldn’t like me to have a look at it, I suppose? I know something about cameras.”
For the first time in the interview, Nigel seemed really taken off his guard. “What? … The camera? … Oh, well, it’s packed. In fact, I believe it’s sent off. It’s extremely kind of you—but of course, you are a sort of foster-father to these picture-children of mine. You must really keep the copies you have taken; I can have some others printed. I wish you would have had some absinthe. By the way,” he continued abruptly, “where was it exactly that you picked up the film? In a hedge, you said?”
“You remind me, I must apologize for forgetting something; I found it wrapped in a waterproof tobacco-pouch, which presumably belongs to you too. Here it is. Yes, I was joining my wife, you know, on a river trip, and she had gone on ahead—she was to pick me up at Shipcote Lock. So I went to Shipcote Station, and took the field path to the weir. You may remember, perhaps, that there is a point at which two paths join, one leading to the weir and the other to a farm. It was just at the junction I found the thing, lying half hidden in the grass. I had read in the papers, of course, that you took the train at Shipcote Station after you had left your cousin. So naturally it occurred to me that the films might be yours.”
“That would be it, to be sure. I was a little hurried, you know, at the end of my walk to the station. The train was there, standing in the station, and one always assumes that a train like that is just about to move—why, I don’t know, for it is contrary to all one’s experience of country trains. Anyhow, I ran, and the films must have been jolted out of my pocket. It is pathetic to think of them in the hedgerow, stretching out their orphaned hands to an unnatural father. And with all those undeveloped possibilities about them! It affects me deeply.”
“Funny the way things do disappear and don’t. It’s more than two days now, isn’t it, since you first missed your cousin, and nothing’s been heard of him alive or dead. You’ll excuse a stranger’s impertinence, I hope, but I should be tremendously interested to know if you yourself have any guess what has happened. One’s always hearing the thing talked of, don’t you know, and it seems so silly to be able to say I’ve met you, without being able to say what you thought about it all.”
“Oh, personally I think he committed suicide. There wasn’t much else to do, you know; he was a hopeless crock, and he couldn’t get on without the dope.”
“But the hole in the bottom of the boat …”
“Ah, there I’m afraid you trespass on family history. I don’t think he wanted it to be known that he’d committed suicide, because there’s some property I should fall heir to if he died. He hadn’t much imagination, Derek, but he hated me with a hatred that was almost artistic. He wanted everybody to think that he had just disappeared. And in his vague, stupid way he thought the canoe had better disappear too. So he dug a hole in the bottom of it, expecting that it would sink.”
“That’s a very interesting idea. Very interesting. But I really oughtn’t to be keeping you from your packing any longer. I suppose you’ll be off tomorrow?”
“Unless they find anything, and there’s an inquest. My last term, you know. Poor Oxford!”
“May I have the envelope back with the prints? I’ve nothing else to take them in. It’s very kind of you to let me keep them as a memento of my little rencontre. No, please don’t come down. I shall find my way out all right. Good evening.” And, as the door closed behind him, Bredon added, “If Providence ever turned out such another ghastly little worm as you, I should begin to doubt whether there was a Providence.” However, he had the picture of Nigel’s appearance, and the imprint, if he wanted it, of Nigel’s thumb, so that the afternoon’s work had not been wasted. His evening, too, for all the hasty anathemas he pronounced against Uncle Robert, was destined to be not entirely uneventful.
A Common-room dinner is an experience which strikes a chill into the heart of the bravest, when it comes to him for the first time. True, it has not all the horrors of High Table; he has not to endure the fancied scrutiny of an undergraduate perspective. But in Common-room the academic atmosphere is all the more pervasive for being concentrated at such close quarters. Who is this man next to you, to whom you have not been introduced? Is he a mere guest like yourself, or is he a Fellow? In the latter case, presumably, there is some subject on which he is a European authority, if only you could find out what it was. Are the frigid advances occasionally made to you an attempt at welcome? And if so, can you gauge from their frequency or heartiness the local popularity of your host? Uncle Robert was a supernumerary member of the Common-room, and a bore at that. His guests were usually men of his own kidney, and there was a general tendency to glare at them without speaking. Bredon felt, in an expressive modern phrase, like something the cat had brought in.
The conversation turned, at first, on greyhound-racing, a subject which the company treated with a broad-mindedness that sprang from inexperience. One very old gentleman had to be convinced, with great difficulty, that it was the hare, not the hounds, which worked by electricity; he was positive of the contrary—it was notorious. The shaded lights cast a decorous radiance; portraits of old Fellows looked down quizzically from their frames, as if enjoying a joke at the expense of their successors; scouts whispered at your elbow in accents which suggested the attempt to achieve efficiency without servility. Exquisite pieces of silver reflected your neighbour’s face at a hundred ridiculous angles. The wine saved the situation; the wine was good.
“Did it ever strike you,” an old gentleman was saying just opposite, in a loud, well-modulated voice that sounded as if it had been designed to control traffic—“did it ever strike you, Filmore, what a very singular thing it is that dogs should bark when they are in pursuit of their prey? Very much as if Nature intended that they should be given warning of their enemy’s approach. Doesn’t work, you know, from the evolution point of view; in a Darwinian world the dog which barks lowest ought to catch the most rabbits, and so the bark ought to disappear, don’t you see? There was a man reading a very interesting paper about that at one of these congresses the other day; and he said, you know, he thought the bark of the dog was intended to drown the squealing of the rabbit, so that the other rabbits shouldn’t know anything disastrous was happening. A most singular idea.”
“Is he a scientist?” asked Bredon in a low voice.
“No. Ancient history,” returned his Uncle. “Man called Carmichael. Always full of odd ideas. Never stops talking.”
The man next Bredon on the other side was now heard to say, in answer to some question, “Yes, Magus men, both of them. The younger one only just going down. Good riddance.” Bredon had the instinct we all sometimes have, that the subject of the conversation would interest him. He stole a look at his neighbour, and suddenly realized why there had been something reminiscent about his appearance. There was only a touch of the Lechlade gargoyle about his face, but it was perfectly unmistakable. This, then, must be the Dean of Simon Magus, and his topic, obviously, the Burtell cousins.
“Suicide, I suppose?” asked a voice from beyond him.
“I don’t think so. Burtell hadn’t enough instinct of tidiness to finish up in that way. No, I think it was a genuine accident, but of course there are any amount of possibilities. Loss of memory, for example—they say he drugged, and I should think it’s possible to bring on loss of memory in that way. He may be anywhere by now; and I don’t think it’s for the College to put on detectives to find him.”
“Talking of detectives,” broke in Mr. Carmichael from the other side of the table, “I had a very curious experience myself once in connection with a murder case.” (As this story has already been told at greater length, even, than Mr. Carmichael used in telling it, I will not even give an abstract of it here.) “Which just shows,” he concluded, “how one’s judgments are apt to go astray. If it wasn’t for that warning, I should be inclined to say that there is no difficulty in solving this Burtell business, no difficulty at all.”
“Oh, good, Carmichael,” chuckled a junior Fellow. “This is in your best form. Tell us all about it.”
“I was wrong. I should have said, it is very easy to see why the Thames watermen have failed to recover the body. Whether the young man is the victim of accident, murder, suicide, or disappearance I don’t know at all. But it’s quite easy to see why the body hasn’t been found. They are looking in the wrong place for it.”
“Oh, come on; where ought they to be looking?”
“Above Shipcote Lock, not below it. They must have found the body by now, if there was a body to find. Yet, if the young fellow had been wandering about between Shipcote and Eaton Bridge, somebody must have come across him. I say, then, his disappearance, whatever its cause, must have taken place above, not below the lock.”
Bredon broke in in spite of himself. “But the elder Burtell was in the canoe when it left the lock. The lock-keeper saw him.”
“I saw the lock-keeper. I make a hobby of these things, you know. I asked the lock-keeper, ‘Could you take your oath in a court of law that the gentleman in the canoe moved?’ And of course he couldn’t. All he saw was the figure of a man, with the hat well drawn down over the face. Very well, then, the figure in the boat was a dummy. Consider, the hole in the canoe shows that the boat was intended to sink, or at least to overbalance, and discharge its load. Why? If there was a dead body in the boat, why not let it be dragged up? Unless of course it was the wrong body, but I dismiss that suggestion as too fantastic. The face, the hands, would no doubt be made of soap. What the clothes were made of I don’t know. But it must have been a dummy. Otherwise there was no motive for letting it sink.”
Bredon excused himself early on the ground that the lights of his car were deficient. “No,” he said to himself as he settled down at the wheel, “Mr. Carmichael has still something to learn about the possibilities of life. But I like his negative criticism. Why did they want the boat to sink, after all?”