XX
A Reconstruction
“No,” said Bredon as he and Leyland paddled up, it seemed for the fiftieth time, to Shipcote Lock. “I don’t find Nigel Burtell’s story incredible in the least. I was never at a University, but I can quite understand how a creature of poses like that might experience a sudden revulsion just at the end of his time there. In a small world it must be difficult for a self-conscious person not to pose—not to wonder what people are thinking of him and whether people are thinking of him; not to impose upon them a false personality if his true personality is not worth imposing. And to leave all that behind must engender a desire to return to the simple emotions. But then, unfortunately, murder is one of the simple emotions; and I shouldn’t be really surprised to hear that Nigel had returned to that. He’s so confoundedly plausible, you see; I wouldn’t put it beyond him to give us a perfectly genuine analysis of his emotions, and then conceal from us the central fact. And it remains certain that he’s blown his own alibi to bits. If there was only a hole about the size of a pin’s head in the bottom of that canoe, the wind and the stream would carry it no end of a distance before it filled up. And, dash it all, that’s all there was. Why shouldn’t the murder have been done before the canoe left the iron bridge? And if it was, why shouldn’t it have been Nigel that did it?”
“I know, I know. But then, you’ve always been building such a lot on that argument. To me, the whole thing has been a question of the total time involved.”
“Well, we’re going to find out all about that now.”
“Yes; and yet I’m not sure that all this reconstruction business is really a fair test. You see, you go about the business in cold blood, all gingered up beforehand and quite certain what you’re going to do next. Interruptions and sudden afterthoughts don’t put you off your stroke. When you undress by the bank, and dress again afterwards, your stud won’t lose itself in the grass, one sleeve of your shirt won’t pull itself inside out, because you won’t really be in a hurry, only pretending to be in a hurry. To catch a train and do a murder while you’re about it in twenty minutes is all right on paper, but when a man comes to do it he’s bound to lose his head. Look at those two photographs, for example. I dare say you’re right in thinking that the one of the footsteps was only due to an unintentional exposure of the film. But the one of the body in the canoe is an admirable snapshot. Well, you take photographs, don’t you? Think what a confounded lot of sprawling and squinting and shifting one’s feet about there is, before one gets the beastly thing right. Could a man do all that, when he was just catching a train, and it was a matter of life and death to him? That’s my trouble.”
“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. And there was a beast of a barbed wire gate I had to climb over at the farm, which looked as if it ought to have been unlocked. Confound it all, I never realized what a hard time we let Nigel in for when we made him scramble through bracken with bare shins. He may have done it all, but he was a perfect fool if he did.”
“Where you lost time,” said Leyland, “was in clambering up those steps. I calculated that you might have saved three minutes if you’d swum out to the canoe higher up and started paddling at once. What the deuce did the man do it for, considering the waste of time? Burgess can hardly be lying about those footprints.”
“I believe I’m just beginning to understand that. Look at it this way—the sixth photograph, we now know, wasn’t taken till the evening. Hitherto we imagined that the footprints were left on the bridge when Nigel (or somebody) went up to take the photograph of Derek in the canoe. But the footsteps were there in the morning, and the photograph wasn’t taken till the evening. Then why were the footprints there at all? You saw me walking up those steps backwards, and I must have looked a fool as I did it; certainly I felt a fool. It was, as you say, sheer waste, of time. Which makes me suspect that the footprints were left there on purpose, in order to create a certain impression.”
“That’s all very well, but it was a mere fluke that Burgess went along and saw them. If he hadn’t happened to go just then, they’d have made no impression on anyone, because nobody would have seen them.”
“Precisely. And, don’t you see, that’s why it was necessary to photograph them. The marks were made in order that they might be photographed. And the photograph was left about on purpose. Now, what impression was it that the murderer was trying to make?”
“God knows.”
“So do I. The silly part about these footsteps from the first is that they only went up one set of stairs, instead of two, and that they only went one way, instead of coming and going. That suggested to us either that somebody in the canoe had pulled himself up by his arms on to the bridge and walked off it, or else that somebody had walked up the steps, backwards, and then jumped from the bridge into the stream. Either notion is pretty good nonsense, and therefore neither notion is the impression which this rather acute criminal intended to convey.”
“Pity he didn’t take more trouble to make his impressions foolproof.”
“Don’t you see why? He thought that old Burgess would go on rootling in his garden; how was it to be expected that he would suddenly start hen-hunting in the wooded part of the island? Those footprints were not meant to be seen by Mr. Burgess, or by any human eye.”
“Then why on earth—”
“They weren’t meant to be seen, but the photograph was meant to be seen. Now, suppose Burgess had never observed or reported the footprints, and yet we had discovered the photograph, what should we suppose about the footprints?”
“I see what you mean. We should suppose that they went right across the bridge, from one side to the other, and along both sets of stairs. … Yes, I see. They were meant to look like the footprints of a man walking across, barefoot, from the Western bank of the river to the island?”
“Talk sense. If the man was walking that way, and took the photograph as he did it, the film wouldn’t register any footprints, because the footprints wouldn’t have happened yet. You must make your footprints first and photograph them afterwards. No, the film was meant to look as if it represented the tracks of a man walking backwards, from the island to the Western bank. In fact, to suggest that the murderer was somebody who went off afterwards in the direction of Byworth.”
“In other words, that he did not go off by river, nor in the direction of Spinnaker Farm and the station.”
“Exactly. Which recalls to us the interesting fact that there was one person who certainly did go off in the direction of the station, and that was Nigel.”
“Hullo! You are coming down on that side, then?”
“I didn’t say so. But I’m not exactly taking my eye off Nigel just yet, that’s all.”
“Meanwhile, have you got a match?”
“Just used my last. There’s an automatic machine on the other platform, though. We’ll go across and talk to it, and then get back.”
As they stood on the down platform there was a rumble and a whistle from near by, and a desultory porter showed signs of interest. A train puffed in from the Oxford direction, with the self-importance of one who is conscious that he is a rare visitor. A single passenger got out, a tall, well-built young man in a brown aquascutum which half concealed and half revealed the fact that he wore shorts underneath it. Confronted with the desultory porter, he began an exhaustive search of his pockets, and was rewarded at last by the discovery of his ticket; but not before a pink, perforated slip had fluttered to the ground unregarded. Unregarded, I mean, by the principals in the action; Leyland and Bredon exchanged an immediate glance, and the stranger’s back was hardly turned before they pounced upon it.
“This is too good to be true,” said Leyland as they turned it over. “It’s quite, quite certainly the one the man in the punt took at Eaton. F.N.2, as I live—the beastly number would have been found written on my heart if we hadn’t come across this. Quick, what do we do?”
“I’m going back to the canoe and upstream to meet him. He can’t be coming back to pick up the punt. Look, he’s gone off along the road—towards Millington Bridge.”
“I’ll follow, I think, and if he goes downstream you can take me on board when we meet. Here, take the bike. By Gad, this is the end of a perfect day.”