The Footsteps at the Lock

It is an undeniable but a mystifying fact of natural ethics that a man has the right to dispose of his own property at death. They can do him no good now, those ancestral acres, those hard-won thousands, nor may any of the trees he planted, save the grim cypress, follow their ephemeral master; yet before the partnership of hand and mind is altogether dissolved, a brief flourish at the tail of a will may endow a pauper or disinherit a spendthrift, may be frittered away in the service of a hundred useless or eccentric ends. No good to him⁠—at least, there was once a theory that a man might be happier in the after state for the use of his means here, but we have abolished all that long since; no good to him, but much to expectant nephews and nieces, much to lifeboat funds and cats’ homes, much to the Exchequer, wilting for lack of death-duties. Of all this he is the arbiter. Yet we have it on the authority of all the copybooks that money does far more harm in the world than good; why, then, do we leave the direction of that harm to the one man who, ex hypothesi, will be out of the way when it happens? Why let the testator arrange for the unworthy squandering of his property, when he is to have no tenure in it henceforward except the inalienable grave?

The morning sun shone on the upper reaches of the Thames with the hazy glow that recalls a night of rain and presages a day of baking heat. It was early July, and the time of day conspired with the season of the year to produce an impression of almost uncanny perfection. The woods that threw out their flanking battalions towards the stream were heavy with consummated leafage; the hay standing in the fields glistened and steamed with the evaporations of yesterday; the larks sang in the unconscious egotism of their perpetual encore; the hedges were still fresh with the year’s last revelation, the dog-rose; white wreaths of cloud sailed lazily across the distance, as if assured that they had no speaking part today. The cows stood whisking their tails gently, reserving themselves for greater efforts in the coming heat; rabbits sunned themselves among the hillocks, and scuttled away, stricken with imaginary fears; schoolchildren dotted the lanes, their heads together in earnest debate over nothing; the air was full of promise and expectation; a wind blew, steady but with no chill, from the southwest.

The sixth was a view of the river, taken from a bridge; this was sufficiently indicated by the appearance of what looked like an iron girder, much out of focus, at the bottom of the picture. In the centre, fully focused, floated a canoe, which seemed to be nearly parallel to the bridge, nearly broadside on to the flow of the river. The water was slightly rippled, and a paddle, lying across the centre of the boat, made no clear reflection. The figure of a man lay sprawling at full length on the floor of the canoe, the knees just under the front thwart; the head was turned sideways, and was propped up by a rest and a cushion. The whole attitude suggested a complete abandonment of repose; something about the bend of the neck, something about the way in which the left arm lay crushed under the body, suggested that it was not the attitude in which a man would naturally have fallen asleep. A hat shaded most of the face, but revealed a clean-shaven chin. The back seat of the boat was empty; the other paddle leaned carelessly against it.

“Is he d-dead?” asked Angela, her hand on her husband’s shoulder.

“Dead, or dead drunk, or drugged, perhaps. I think the person who took this picture meant us to think he was dead, anyhow. He’s not a very pretty sight, you see, in any case. On the face of it, I must say it looks as if somebody had⁠—well, had finished him off and then taken a photograph of him.”

“But that’s rather horrible. It seems so disgustingly cold-blooded.”

But this impression proved only skin-deep. They had scarcely landed, when they found an unmistakable path through the bracken; a path, as they noticed with excitement, such as would be made by the dragging of a weight through the tangled fronds, not the mere casual wake left by a foot-passenger. For a few yards it diverged only a little from the shore, then, behind a screen of overhanging bushes, it climbed up the slope towards the centre of the island, through the thickest of the fern. Here and there was a bare patch of clayey soil, and always the clay was seamed as if by the jutting extremities of some heavy weight dragged over it. Yet the direction was uncertain, as if the man who had made this path had been doubtful of his objective; it had purposeless (or were they purposeful?) windings. It came to a standstill, you might say, close to the summit of the island, where the trees grew thickly, but there was an interval in the carpet of the fern; a bare patch of clay, still wet under the protecting shadow of the branches. And here, it seemed, the burden must have been laid down, for there was a firm though indistinct impress on the clay. Bredon and Leyland drew nearer, scanning the surface for any trace of a more definite outline. “Look!” said Leyland suddenly. About halfway down the area of the disturbance was a tiny depression which only one object could have caused. It was the imprint of a button; to judge by its size, a coat-button.