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 to
_her_ as the _Daily Mail_ reporter? 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 the _Daily Mail_; I’d say I’d come from the _County 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.