The Trojan Horse

CHAPTER TWO

By the time I had reached the bottom of the stairs I was almost running. I had my torch, but outside that reassuring beam the house pressed about me, dark and silent. The blank doorways on the landings seemed to crowd forward to watch me pass, shadows leapt back as I flashed my torch and the walls threw the sound of my footsteps back at me as though, hurry as I might, I should never leave the house. It was a childish fancy. But a strange house is like that. So long as you ignore it, it will take no notice of you. But once you become aware of it, it closes round you, colouring your imagination with its own atmosphere. This house was unfriendly, and it was with a sense of relief that I pulled open the door and went out into Greek Street.

But even in the street, I could not shake off that feeling of being watched. It was very dark and the houses rose on either side, blank like walls. I sensed rather than saw the movement of people about me. They were vague shadows, distinguishable only by the flicker of a torch until they appeared suddenly in the light of my own torch, passed me and were swallowed by the darkness again. A woman’s voice spoke to me and for a moment I saw white, red-lipped features at my side as she shone her torch on her face. And all the time I was walking towards Shaftesbury Avenue, I had that sense of being watched. It was as though I were being followed.

I became so certain of this that I turned sharp left towards Charing Cross Road and slipped into the doorway of a tobacconist. Several figures passed along the pavement. None of them were anxiously peering ahead or hurrying as though to catch someone up. Mentally I pulled myself together. The house and my discovery that Schmidt’s rooms had been searched had obviously got on my nerves. I began to think of food, and decided on Genaros on the other side of Charing Cross Road.

I left the shelter of the tobacconist’s and continued along the pavement. As I came out into Charing Cross Road, I was checked by a flood of people crossing my path. They had been held up by a car and had just crossed the road. And as I slowed up, a man hurrying in the direction of Cambridge Circus, cannoned into me. I only just managed to keep my feet and I felt the book slide from underneath my arm. I made a wild clutch at it and it fell to the ground. ‘I’m so sorry,’ a voice said. A torch was flicked on to the book where it lay, face up on the muddy pavement, and the man bent quickly down to retrieve it. I saw a hand dart into the beam of the torch as I dived for the book. The white line of a scar showed across the knuckles. The fingers were almost closing on it when the feet of the passers-by suddenly swung closer and a foot kicked against it, sliding it towards me across the pavement. In an instant my hand had closed on it.

I straightened myself, the blood drumming in my ears. The man said, ‘So sorry, I’m afraid it’s got dirty.’ I swung my torch up towards him, but he had disappeared into the crowd. The incident left me with an uneasy feeling. Either I was being a fool or else the man who had searched Schmidt’s digs had failed to find what he had known to be there, and waited to see if anyone would come to show him what it was. I hurried across Charing Cross Road and into New Compton Street. I remembered how the Jew, Isaac Leinster, had hesitated at the foot of the stairs leading up to Schmidt’s room whilst I stood waiting for him at the top. I remembered, too, how he had come up the stairs from his own room so quietly that it was his breathing and not his footsteps that I had heard. Small though he was, he was a heavy man and the stairs were uncarpeted. And there was the unfriendly watchfulness of the house as I had left it. Had that all been imagination?

I turned into the entrance of Genaros and in the warm friendliness of the place, my fears melted away. As I ordered my dinner, I thought of a time when I had been scared on Dartmoor for no earthly reason. Anything can seem curious if your senses are keyed up to misinterpretation. I chose my dinner carefully. Then, having wiped the dirt off the back of the book, I opened it and began to look through it for some mark that would indicate what I was expected to find.

There was nothing. The pages were as virgin as they had been when Schmidt had bought the book, though soiled on the outer edges where it had fallen on the pavement. There were no pencil marks, and though I searched diligently through it from cover to cover, whilst at the same time attempting to deal adequately with the courses as they were laid before me, I could see no signs of any markings or pinpricks under selected words. At the end there were several blank pages, but there was not a mark on them. By the time I had reached the sweet, I had decided that the only thing to do was to read the book through. There must be some clue in the writing. I turned to the chapter headings and glanced through them to see whether they suggested anything. One called Cranston Develops the Message seemed promising.

I finished the zabaglione and, having ordered a Grand Marnier with my coffee and lit a cigarette, I settled down to discover what it was Schmidt had wanted me to find in the book. Of its kind, it was good, and though I had dipped into it near the middle, I was soon absorbed in the search of a representative of M.I.5, called Cranston, for a message he was certain had been left for him by one Barry Hanson, who had been murdered. The only clue Cranston had was given him in a telephone conversation he had had with his friend a few days previously. Hanson had told him he was on to something pretty big and that, if he should get snuffed out, Cranston would find all the details in the Figurehead of the Orient. Barry Hanson had been duly snuffed out and Cranston had trotted round to his digs to seek out the Figurehead of the Orient. And this was where I began to see a similarity between my own experiences and Cranston’s. Of course, Cranston was on the point of leaving Hanson’s digs without having found what he wanted, when suddenly he caught sight of a book called The Figurehead of the Orient. He looked through it, and there were blank pages at the end. He took it back to M.I.5 and had the blank pages placed under a mercury vapour light. The message, which was written in a solution of anthracene and was invisible to the naked eye, then became fluorescent and it was possible to photograph it. It was all about a secret organisation headed by a personage described as the Face from the Barbican.

I put the book down and found that my coffee had grown cold. I sipped slowly at my liqueur and then, after marking the passage with my pencil, turned to the end of the book. The blank pages stared up at me, innocent of any mark. Was it conceivable that, if they were placed under a mercury vapour lamp, invisible writing would be revealed? Technically I presumed that it was quite possible. But the whole thing was too absurd. I had that placid feeling of well-being that comes after a good meal. Schmidt had admitted to an interest in criminology. Had his interest taken the form of reading thrillers and detective stories, and then attempting to transmit them into real life? That was the sort of kink a man’s brain might take. I might almost have been Cranston, routing around in another fellow’s digs with the feeling that I might be murdered at any moment.

I thought of David Shiel, who ran a photographic studio and dark-rooms in Shaftesbury Avenue. It was only a few minutes’ walk. And I had a sudden urge to see whether or not Schmidt had gone to the length of actually writing something on those blank pages and, if so, what he had written. I rose and collected my coat and paid the bill. Then, with the book stuffed safely in my overcoat pocket, I went out into New Compton Street and made for Cambridge Circus.

I no longer had a feeling of being followed, but I tried to pretend that I had. My brain was excited and I was reluctant to miss any of the sensation of adventure in following up the clues I had been given.

Five minutes later the aged lift was staggering up with me to the top floor of 495 Shaftesbury Avenue. With the aid of an assistant and a secretary, David carried on a great deal of photographic work from the studio. He went all over the place, taking films as the spirit and the film companies moved him, and in his more prosaic moments he hired out cameras, executed any still work that came his way and let his dark-rooms out to all and sundry. By my sister’s marriage into a Border family, he was technically my nephew, but he had never evinced any signs of respect on that account, and he was a friend rather than a relation. Many a cheerful evening I had spent at somewhat Bohemian parties that had spread haphazardly from his rooms to the studio. He rented the entire top floor and lived on the premises, partly because his camera-hire service was a day and night service and partly because it was cheaper and more convenient.

The antiquated lift stopped with a jerk and I stepped out into a bare corridor. At the end was a glass door with ‘David Shiel’s Photographic Centre’ painted on it in black, and four empty milk bottles ranged against the wall below it. He answered my ring himself and let out a whoop at the sight of me. ‘The very man,’ he said. ‘Come right in, Andrew. If there’s any man I could have wished to see it would have been a lawyer.’

‘I’m a barrister,’ I reminded him as he dragged me into the room. He was a great bear of a man with long dark hair and a wide friendly face.

‘What the hell’s it matter?’ he said, as he helped me off with my coat. ‘You know your legal onions, so to speak, and I want advice. How do you get money out of a company that’s less yielding than a stone?’ He crossed over to a barrel that was a permanent office fixture and returned with a foaming tankard of beer. ‘There, drink that and tell me what I do. I’ve received a red slip from the telephone people. They’re going to cut me off if I don’t pay them by the 23rd — that’s Friday. And these bastards owe me a hundred quid, and they won’t pay.’

‘What’s the matter?’ I said. ‘Are you broke?’

He buried his face in his tankard and shrugged his shoulders. ‘Business is pretty bad and this place eats money, what with the rent and Miriam and the telephone bills. John has joined up — he’s under the reserve age, that’s one blessing. If I can hold on for another six months, I’ll be all right. There’ll be plenty of work when the American stock is exhausted and it’s all-British films. But, in the meantime, I can’t carry on without the phone. It makes you curse when you’re owed the better part of four hundred pounds and can’t get the money because people are too bloody lazy to pay up. Meanwhile, I’m short of cash and that means a camera will have to go, and what sort of price will it fetch now? I haven’t got a single one out on hire.’

I said, ‘Give me their address and I’ll see what I can do. What do they owe you the money for anyway?’

‘That’s very nice of you, Andrew. I did some film work for them. The company is Calboyd Diesel. I went up to their Oldham works to take shots for publicity purposes. They beat me down to a lousy price as it was.’

‘Calboyds,’ I murmured. The hand of Fate, it seemed. Then I said, ‘Look, David, I want you to do something for me.’ I pulled The Face from the Barbican out of the pocket of my overcoat. ‘Did you know there was a solution which can be used as an invisible ink and which only becomes visible when placed under a mercury vapour light?’

‘Several,’ was the reply. ‘But I never heard of them being used as invisible inks. They’re of the genus tar and are soluble in benzine. They become fluorescent under an ultra-violet ray.’

‘And a mercury vapour lamp gives off an ultraviolet ray?’ I asked.

‘Certainly.’

‘Then I wonder if you’d mind placing the blank pages at the end of this book under an ultra-violet ray?’ I passed the book over to him and he opened it and glanced at the blank pages. Then he looked at me.

‘So,’ he said, ‘you are the master mind behind the British Secret Service? I always knew you couldn’t really be a lawyer. Or perhaps you’re a spy? Anyway we can discuss that when we’ve found what’s written in the Book of Books.’ He drained his tankard. ‘My God!’ he said, as he glanced at the title, ‘you have a lurid taste in thrillers.’ Then he glanced across at me. He was suddenly serious. ‘You really mean there’s some writing here?’

I nodded.

He rose to his feet. ‘Well, we’ll soon see if it’s one of the benzine solutions,’ he said, and led me to the largest dark-room.

He soon had the first of the blank pages fixed under the enlarger. Then he switched out the light and turned on the mercury vapour lamp of the enlarger. Instantly, the blank page became covered with parallel luminous lines, as though a snail had drawn itself backwards and forwards across it. ‘By God, yes,’ David said, ‘we’ve got something here all right.’ I leaned closer, peering at the page, so that the brightness of it hurt my eyes. I could see that the luminous lines were of writing, but it seemed a jumble of unintelligible letters.

‘The first thing to do is to photograph the paper,’ David announced. ‘Then we’ll be able to see what it’s all about.’

He got a Leica and set to work. When he had taken photographs of all six of the blank pages, he said, ‘You go outside and swill some beer. I’m going to develop them now.’

I left the dark-room very conscious of his capability at his job. I suppose I had always taken his photographic centre for granted before. I had never been here when he was actually working. My only clear recollection of the man was of him lounging around in the most amazing clothes, drinking vast quantities of beer and telling dirty stories. But I had heard from friends how he had built the business up from nothing, starting with a single camera in a cellar office in Frith Street. I knew, too, that he had decorated the studio himself with the help of an odd carpenter.

It was a big room, running the whole length of the frontage, and it was panelled throughout in a good oak plywood. The dark-rooms were on the inner wall. There were four of them, well appointed, with their own sinks, enlargers, lights and telephones. The place was cluttered with apparatus. I knew, of course, that he must be capable to stand on his own two feet in such a precarious profession. It was just that I had not been conscious of it before. I had taken him as I had found him, a good-natured friendly fellow, who led rather a peculiar life and ran a somewhat unusual business.

Now that I had seen him at work, I looked at him from a different angle. He was, as I have said, a great bear of a man. The wide shoulders and the fine head, with its mane of dark hair, made him a striking figure. He wore a pair of old brown corduroys, a dark-green polo sweater and sandals. But though his height and breadth were striking, it was his hands I had noticed. They were fine hands, with long and slender fingers. They were the hands of an artist, but capable hands.

When he had hung the films in the drying cupboard, he came over to where I was sitting, obediently drinking beer. ‘Now,’ he said, ‘whilst that’s drying off, perhaps you’ll tell me something of what it’s all about — or is that a deadly secret?’

‘No, it’s not altogether a secret,’ I said. ‘At any rate, I’ll tell you something of what it’s about.’ So I told him that part of Schmidt’s story which was directly connected with the book. I did not tell him who my visitor had been. But I told him sufficient to explain the book. And when I had finished, he shook his head and said, ‘Mon, if I didna ken ye were a guid Scotsman, I’d say ye had been drinking. It all sounds very melodramatic, but at least you’ve got the writing in the book to prove your story.’ Then he got up and went over to the drying cupboard and took out the negative. ‘Now let’s have a look at it under the enlarger.’ He led the way back into the dark-room and closed the door behind us. Then he switched on the enlarger and a square of light was flung on to the printing table. He fitted the end of the negative into the slot below the lens of the instrument and immediately the blurred outline of the photograph appeared on the white paper clamped to the printing table. He manoeuvred it into position and then adjusted the enlarger. And suddenly the photograph was in focus and the lines of print, written lightly with a pen, showed below it.

But it made no sense at all. The first line ran: SDGME DOLI R BXONSOVCO NGN XCOH BSOH. And the rest of it was the same jumble of meaningless letters. Yet, even in these printed letters, I thought I could discern the neat hand of Schmidt. David shifted the negatives along to the next photograph. They were all much the same as the first, though the last negative was blank and the one before it only two-thirds completed. He ran the whole length of celluloid through the enlarger and in all the five pages, with their lines of closely printed words, there was not one that made sense.

‘Your boy friend is either pulling your leg,’ said David, ‘or else this is in code. Don’t you know something about codes?’

I shook my head. ‘Not much,’ I admitted. ‘But one thing I do know, and that is that, if you don’t know the key, a good code takes three to six months’ hard work by experts to break down.’

‘Well, I’ll take a print of each one of these, and then we’ll see whether we can make anything of it.’

But we couldn’t. I copied the first few lines of the first page from the image cast by the light from the enlarger, and worked on this whilst David took a print of it. But it was no good. I knew something about the theory of codes and I tried to break it down by the usual method of picking out the letters that occurred most frequently and changing them to the letters most commonly in use. But I had no success by the time David had completed the print. I decided that the clue was probably in the book. I flicked through the pages to see if at any point the author had given a method for breaking down a code. Rows of meaningless capital letters would have stood out quite clearly against the background of ordinary print. But there was nothing of that sort and I realised that the only thing to do was to read through the book. I told David so and he grunted. He was absorbed, as I had been for the last half-hour, in trying to work it out for himself.

I read that book through from beginning to end and, in the whole story, there wasn’t a single mention of codes. When I had finished, I threw it from me in disgust. David was no longer in the studio and I heard the rattle of tea-cups in the back premises. The print he had been working on was lying amongst a heap of old stock and hypo dishes. I lit a cigarette. A moment later he came in with tea. He glanced at the book lying sprawled on its side on the couch. ‘You don’t seem to have been any more successful than I have,’ he said.

‘I’m fed up with the thing,’ I replied savagely.

‘Never mind,’ he said, as he poured out some tea, ‘I gathered you enjoyed the book. Whilst I was working, I heard several appreciative chuckles.’

That was true enough. I had enjoyed the book. But, as so often happens, the return to reality had produced a mood of depression. I felt convinced that the supposed code had no meaning, that Schmidt was mad and had been living melodrama in real life. I told David so and he shrugged his shoulders. ‘You know best,’ he said. ‘But don’t you know anyone who understands codes? I mean, after all, we’ve only been working on this a very short time and we’re not experts. I know something about them, and I haven’t nearly exhausted the possibilities. I tried the Playfair Code — you know, the one that depends on a keyword and you put the letters down in fives together with the rest of the alphabet and then work on rectangles. It’s one of the few you can’t break down by placing the letter that recurs most frequently. I tried using The Face from the Barbican as the key-word, but that didn’t make much sense. If there is any sense in the words, it must be a code like that. I can’t believe a man who was just jotting down meaningless letters would have gone on with it for five whole pages.’

‘You may be right,’ I said, ‘but I’m still fed up with the whole business.’

‘Well, it’s your affair, not mine. But don’t you know anyone at the Foreign Office? They have decoding experts.’

I stretched myself and clambered stiffly to my feet. ‘Yes, I suppose it would be worth trying. There’s Graham Aitken, he’d be able to get them to have a look at it for me.’

‘All right then. If not, there’s my godfather, Sir Geoffrey Carr, at the Home Office. Anyway, leave the book with me and, if you come round any time after, say eleven tomorrow, I’ll have some good prints for you. I want to retake two of the pages, as they haven’t come out very well.’ He picked the print he had been working on up from the litter in which it lay. ‘You might like to take this to bed with you. Nothing like sleeping on a puzzle.’

I nodded and tucked it into my overcoat pocket. Then I thanked him and said I’d be round some time after eleven. I don’t remember leaving the studio. The beer on top of my dinner had made me very sleepy. But the cold air of Shaftesbury Avenue soon woke me up. I decided to walk back to my rooms, and I cut down into Leicester Square, where a nearly full moon sailed serenely over the trees and the dark outline of the Odeon tower.

Back at my rooms in the Temple, I found the walk had driven away my sleepiness. I lay in bed and struggled ceaselessly for the clue to the code. With my sleepiness I found my incredulity had also vanished. I reviewed the whole evening and began to wonder once more whether it had been just an accident that that man had cannoned into me in the Charing Cross Road. But for the chance of a passer-by, his hand would have closed on the book, and I wondered whether he would have given it back to me. My mind drifted back to Schmidt himself and I tried to deduce from what he had told me whether or not he was mad. His story had been convincing and I came back, of course, to the melodramatic close of the interview.

I heard him saying once more, ‘Will you go round to my lodgings and take The Face from the Barbican.’ Well, there had been nothing phoney about that. The Face from the Barbican had been there all right and, what was more, his rooms had been searched. But then Leinster might have searched them for valuables. I was beginning to feel drowsy. My brain, tired with the excitement of the evening, was beginning to think in circles. What had Schmidt said then? ‘You are clever. You will understand.’ And then-

Suddenly I was wide awake. I jumped out of bed and hurried into my dressing-gown. I switched on the light and the electric fire and went out into the hall, where my overcoat lay over a chair. I pulled the photograph that David had given me from the pocket and hurried back into my bedroom. Then, huddled over the fire with a pencil and paper, I tried the Playfair Code.

What Schmidt had said was, ‘The clue is cones of runnel.’ Why cones of runnel, I did not know. It had always seemed a bit daft and for that reason, probably, had not fixed itself in my memory. But the essence of the Playfair Code was a key-word or words, and here it was. I wrote down CONES and underneath FRUL, which were the letters in ‘of runnel’ which had not already been given in ‘cones’. Then I added A to that line and continued with the letters of the alphabet that had not already been used, setting them down in blocks of five, leaving out Y, which, I remembered, was regarded as i. This was the result:

I then jotted down the opening letters of the message in pairs, thus: SD GM ED OL IR BX ON SO VC. Starting at the beginning, I took the rectangle made in the code formed by SD and transposed the vertically opposite letters of the rectangle, getting 10. GM, being in a vertical line, I took the nearest letters to each, making uw, ED made HO, OL made RE, and soon.

The resulting letters I put down without gaps, and not as they had been in the code. The result was: IOUWHOREADTHESENOT. My excitement was tremendous. Reading Y for i, I found I had got, ‘You who read these not-’

I then settled down to the job in real earnest, and after half an hour’s steady work I had decoded the whole of that first page. I sat back and read through the result.

‘You who read these notes,’ it ran, ‘must decide for yourself whether or not there is sufficient evidence for the matter to be placed in the hands of the authorities. I fear, however, that I shall not live to complete my case.’ That, I remembered, was what he had told me last Monday. ‘I am being watched now and it is only a matter of time. Why did I not go to the authorities myself? I was wanted for murder. If I had gone to them and said the Calboyd Diesel Company is controlled by Germany and the murder was committed by their agents, I should have been considered mad. But day by day I shall add to these notes, and as my inquiries reveal new facts, I shall hope that, by the time this comes into your hands, there will at any rate be sufficient evidence to convince you of my sanity and of the seriousness of the position I have discovered.

‘I shall probably have explained to you how I was discredited at the Air Ministry by Calboyds. This should not be difficult to verify. When I tell you that the diesel engine on which I have been working and which has now reached the stage of final tests is a third of the weight of the ordinary diesel and develops nearly twice the power of present engines at five hundred revolutions, you will begin to appreciate its importance in war-time. I can confidently state that whichever side first obtains this engine and produces it on a large scale will have air superiority. These claims were presented to the Air Ministry last July. Calboyds told them I was a crank. They had been trying to get me to reveal the secret of the special alloy and the design. Those who control the company wanted the engine for Germany.

‘You will say this is fantastic. But I have heard that in the early summer of this year Britain is going over to diesel engines on a large scale. The Calboyds factories are being extended for this purpose and two shadow factories are being built for the company. They will be the sole producers and the engines will be of their own design. The design is superior to that used in the Heinkels and Dorniers at the present time. But it is definitely inferior to the engines that are being fitted to the latest German bomber and fighter aircraft, which have not yet taken the air. I believe that an order for ten thousand of their diesel engines will be given to Calboyds within the next few months. If that order goes through and Calboyds are allowed to start production Britain will be …’

I put the paper down. The rest would have to wait till tomorrow when David would have the prints of the remaining pages. But what I had read was enough to set me thinking. The man might be mad, but if Calboyds were really controlled by Germany- It didn’t bear thinking about. One thing I could check up on and that was whether or not Calboyds were to receive a big order for diesel aero engines. Crabshaw of the Ministry of Supply could tell me that. But it was fantastic. Schmidt was right when he had said he would have been considered mad if he had approached the authorities with a story like that. It was too incredible. Old Calboyd was an industrial figurehead. Supposing I told the story to Crisham or wrote to the Prime Minister? They’d think I was going off my head, even though I had led a perfectly blameless life. And why had Llewellin been murdered? It was stupid to frame a man by murdering another.

I gave it up and went back to bed, putting the photograph and the paper on which I had decoded it in the pocket of my jacket.

My man woke me as usual at eight. I had a shower and, after a hurried breakfast, took a taxi round to David’s studio. His secretary, Miriam Chandler, opened the door to me. David I found already at work on some stills. ‘Have you got the other prints?’ I asked. I was eager to decode the rest of the message.

He said, ‘Sorry, you’re a good deal earlier than I expected. The fact is I’ve got to take them all again. I left that negative on the desk over there. I didn’t notice it, but there was a bottle of hydrochloric just by it. I came in this morning to find it tipped on its side. Awful mess. Look at the linoleum there, and the negative of course was completely destroyed. It was that bloody cat, I expect.’ He indicated a shabby tortoisehell curled up placidly on the couch. ‘It keeps the mice down, but it’s always upsetting things in the process. I shan’t be long though. Give him a cigarette, Miriam, and stroke his fevered brow, he looks as though he’s had a bad night. Did you dream of codes and jumbled letters like I did all night?’

‘No, I solved it,’ I said triumphantly.

He swung round from the big sink. ‘You solved it? Well, grand — good for you. How did you get at it?’

I told him and he cursed me good-humouredly. ‘Why the hell didn’t you say the fellow had said that? May I have a look at it?’

I shook my head. ‘No,’ I said. ‘Wait until you’ve got the other prints out and I’ve decoded the rest, then maybe I’ll tell you the whole story.’ I had an idea that his resourcefulness might be an asset if I found it necessary to make further inquiries on my own before handing over to the authorities.

He said, ‘You’re enough to drive a person crazy.’ Then he went into the big dark-room, taking The Face from the Barbican with him. I had suddenly remembered that I had promised to help him extract money from Calboyds, and I asked Miriam to produce the correspondence. When I had run through it, my mind was made up. Providence isn’t always kind enough to hand things to you on a platter. This would make a good excuse for going up to Oldham and seeing Calboyds for myself.

David suddenly emerged from the dark-room. ‘Funny,’ he said. ‘These pages seem absolutely blank now.’

I crossed the room and went into the dark-room. The blank pages of the book lay under the light, but there was no fluorescence. They were just blank. He turned to another page. It was blank. ‘Is it the same lamp?’ I asked.

‘Certainly.’

I had a sudden sense of uneasiness, the sort of feeling a man has when he has mislaid a Treasury note and knows it was just plain carelessness. I ripped the book from the stand to which it was clamped. The back of it was smeared with mud, but when I ran through the pages, looking for the passage I had marked, I could not find it. After careful searching through the chapter I knew it to be in, I eventually found the passage. But there was no pencil mark against it.

I turned to David. ‘This isn’t my book,’ I said.

‘Don’t be silly,’ he replied. ‘It’s got The Face from the Barbican at the top of every page.’

‘Yes, but it’s not my copy.’ I explained about the pencil marking and showed him the passage.

‘Are you certain?’ he asked. ‘You were awfully sleepy last night.’

‘Yes, I’m certain all right,’ I said. ‘This isn’t my copy. And that bottle of hydrochloric wasn’t tipped over by the cat. Where did you put the negatives when you went to bed?’ I asked him.

He frowned. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Where I found them this morning, I think.’

‘And what about the hydrochloric — was that just beside them?’

He shook his head. ‘Honestly, old boy, I don’t know.’ He went to the door of the dark-room. ‘Miriam,’ he said, ‘can you remember whether that bottle of hydrochloric was on the table there last night?’

‘I don’t know,’ she replied. ‘Depends on whether you used it after I’d gone yesterday. I tidied up as usual and left it on the shelf over there, where it belongs.’

‘And I didn’t have it out.’ He swung round on me. ‘No, I didn’t use it last night. You’re right — somebody moved that bottle from the shelf over by the window there and deliberately spilt the contents over those negatives.’