A Case in Camera - Oliver Onions

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fellows," he said almost appealingly, "you might see I'm a bit worried. I've been trying to hide it, but perhaps it wasn't much of an effort. Not so dashed easy to hide. But if you're suggesting that I've been somewhere else besides in the cellar I can only tell you I haven't. Couldn't for one thing; Rooke's got every key of this house. I had to get the cellar one from him. By the way, what's he doing now?"

      "Looking out your next train. But what I want to know is——"

      He broke off suddenly as sounds were heard over our heads. About the snowslip on the roof other shadowy shapes could be seen. Feet shuffled and moved, and the broken branch was dragged away. They were preparing to get the two men down.

      And until they should have finished our conversation ceased.

      But in the meantime Esdaile did yet another trivial incongruous thing. Moving towards one set of blind-cords he motioned to me to take another set. With short sticking tugs we drew the blinds across a foot at a time, and soon only narrow gold lozenges of sunlight showed among the rafters. All below was a dark blue twilight, as if for an obsequy within instead of for one on the roof.

      Then, when from the cessation of sound all appeared to be over, Hubbard made a fresh appeal. He took the painters arm.

      "Now let's have this out," he said. "No good letting a thing get way on when a few plain words will stop it. A perfectly ordinary thing's happened. Simple parachute accident. No mystery about it whatever. The mystery only begins when you come in carrying your damned candles and dropping jars and coming in here to tidy up instead of going outside to see what's happened. That's where the answer begins to be a lemon, my son. Listen to me. Whether you heard that crash or whether you didn't, at any rate you know all about it now. Then why can't you be just decently upset like the rest of us and have done with it?"

      "Decently upset?" The words seemed to strike him. "Have I been behaving any other way?"

      "You were behaving damnably indecently when you came up out of the orlop there—and that was before you were told a word of all this, remember."

      At last Esdaile saw the point. His behavior had been extraordinary for whole minutes before the situation had been explained to him. One would have thought that during those minutes he had been deliberately trying to find out how much we knew about something or other before committing himself. When next he spoke it was almost apologetically.

      "I see," he said quietly at last. "Yes, you're perfectly right. That was certainly the proper way to take it—just be decently upset. I see now. I must have looked a perfect zany. … Now look here: I want to tell you both all about it, but the trouble is that I can't just at this moment. At present it's somebody else's affair, not mine at all. Must get that cleared up first. I'm not perfectly sure of my ground either; you'll see by and by. But as regards the accident—well, that's the whole point at present. I mean anybody would say it was an accident, wouldn't they? It looked like one, I mean? It would never occur to anybody who saw it that——"

      But here he broke off abruptly as his wife appeared in the doorway.

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      Perhaps at this point I had better tell you who "I" am who write this, and also how our little circle came to choose me for the task.

      As a minor actor in these events you may set me down as a working journalist. Among other things I am one of the sub-editors of the Daily Circus. But that is not the whole of my life. I am also a novelist of sorts. And one of my reasons for sticking to journalism when I could manage at a pinch to do without it is that in this way I escape the doom of having to produce two novels a year whether I have anything to write about or not.

      But that was not their idea in asking me to put into shape the mosaic of differently-colored pieces that constitutes this Case. I believe their idea was that my two capacities might supplement one another—that I might hold fast (so to speak) to the bed-rock facts with my journalistic hand while the other was left free for the less tangible elements. I don't know that I altogether agree with this distinction. I happen to have some experience of how much fiction people swallow when they take up their morning papers, and also of how much mere hurdy-gurdy-grinding they accept as "human nature" when it comes to them in the form of a novel. But that is their look-out. I told them that with their help I would do my best.

      I had to have their help. Obviously I could not always be at the side of this person or that, Rooke or Esdaile or Hubbard, throughout every winding of a complicated chain of events. But I have known Esdaile for twenty years, Rooke for a dozen, and most of the others long enough to have a fairly reliable impression of them, and their accounts are quite trustworthy. If I have any doubt about this I say so.

      I cannot deny that we took a good deal of responsibility when we conspired to hush up the facts of this Case. We have no more right to come between the agents of the Law and their duty than any other set of private persons. And, though many of the beaten tracks are lost in these changing days, and new precedents are making whichever way you turn, I for one don't like making new precedents, especially moral ones. I like tradition to have my homage even when I am resolved to break it. But we are dealing with a fait accompli. The Case is a Case. It became so in spite of laws and customs and institutions. First one person acted as according to the laws of his individual being he had to act, and another did the same, and then another and so on, until the phenomenon was complete.

      So, as my chief business in life is precisely those human accidentals that make us all different beings destined to different acts, perhaps they have chosen their historian more or less rightly after all.

      One caveat (as Mackwith would say) I must enter, however. This is with regard to my own Services in the War that is now over. Most of these services, though as a matter of fact performed in belt and khaki, might just as well have been discharged in a dressing-gown, so unadventurous for the most part were they. Thanks to a "joy-ride," I did just see War, but for the rest I went where I was told to go and did what I was told to do. It is therefore just possible that from the point of view of those who lived in the hell I only briefly visited, one or two of my values may be a little "out." The North Sea cannot be quite the same to me that it was to Esdaile and Hubbard, the air means just what it meant to Maxwell and Chummy Smith. For this I am afraid there is no help. But there is always the chance that if I have minimized, they might have stressed a little unduly. For while our Case has nothing to do with War, War is always antecedent to it, as for a generation to come it will be antecedent to everything.

      So, on this understanding, we may get on with the tale.

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      A slightly embarrassing little scene next took place in that breakfast-room in Lennox Street, Chelsea. Rooke had put down the Time Table, and Mollie Esdaile's face wore an expression of exasperation.

      It appeared that Philip wanted to pack his family off according to program but wished to remain behind himself. For this he gave no reason—or rather he gave several reasons, all of the thinnest description.

      "But how tiresome!" broke from Mollie. "Why on earth do you want to upset everything like this?"

      Philip muttered something about the newly-arrived pictures needing a thorough overhauling.

      "And the children all ready, all but their hats!" Mollie exclaimed.

      "Better hurry them up. … At least seven of them are to frame too."

      "Then there's Monty and Audrey, what about them? When you offer people a house——"

      But at this one of Mrs. Cunningham's slender hands was imploringly raised. Her small mouth was parted in appeal.

      "Oh, please! Don't think of that!

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