Charles Snow - The Affair

“I want to know whether that was intended for me.” Nightingale’s voice swept across the room.

“Of course,” I said, not replying to him directly, “Getliffe felt justified in saying that the photograph might have been torn out. Not by chance. But he didn’t feel justified in speculating about — by whom? We can’t know. I should think it quite likely that we shall never know. From the point of view of this case, or for those who have been convinced for so long of Howard’s innocence, it doesn’t matter. All that I need remind you of is that this notebook passed through several hands before it looked like this . It’s not my function to attribute motives. I assume, as Getliffe does, as other physical scientists in the college do, but not the Bursar, that there was a faked photograph on that page. That faked photograph could have been seen by several people. As Getliffe said, someone who was pro-Palairet, or anti-Howard, might have desired that photograph out of the way. That is as much as anyone has any right to say. But I think I might remind you of the history of the notebook.”

Carefully, for I had a double purpose, since I had at once to keep the suspicion on Nightingale and leave simultaneously both him and the Court a valuable way out, I went through the history step by step. The last entry was on April 20, 1951. Palairet had died after a long but not disabling illness, on January 5, 1952. He might — I said it casually — but I could feel a jolt — have ripped the photograph out himself. Why not? He might have got tired of being silly. If it were still there when he died, the notebook stayed in his laboratory for months: a laboratory assistant could have had access: would he have known or cared? Palairet was a solitary worker, but there were two or three research students about. No one had thought of talking to them.

“Red herrings,” said Nightingale.

Some time in the summer of ’53, a time probably impossible to define now, I said, the executor had moved the notebook, part of the last batch of scientific remains. The executor was a clergyman of eighty, quite unscientific. On December 11, 1953, the notebook and other papers had reached Palairet’s solicitors. On December 15, 1953, it had arrived at the Bursary.

“And now,” I said to Crawford, “may I ask the Bursar one or two questions?”

“Are you prepared for that, Nightingale?” Crawford asked.

“Of course I am.”

I spoke diagonally across the table. “You were the first person in the college to see the notebook?”

“Of course I was.”

“Do you remember when?”

“Probably the day it arrived.”

“Do you remember — this page?”

“You’ll be surprised to know I do.”

“What did it look like?”

“I might as well say, I hadn’t much time to get down to Palairet’s papers. I happened to be busy at the Bursary. Some of my predecessors managed to do the job in two hours a morning, but I’ve never been clever enough.”

His eyes rolled, so that I could only see crescents of dark against the whites. It was the kind of spite that one used to hear from him when he was a younger man, when everything had gone wrong. It was spite against Winslow, who had been a mediocre Bursar while Nightingale was an exceptional one. It was revenge against Winslow for his speech that morning.

But Nightingale, though at his tensest, sounded matter-of-fact as he went on. “I didn’t have much time to get down to the papers. But I think I remember skimming through the notebook. I think I remember one or two things on the right-hand pages.”

He was speaking like a visualiser. I asked: “You remember this page?”

“I think so. Yes.”

“What did it look like?”

“ Not like that .”

Everyone there was taken right aback. Though I went straight on, I was as astonished as the rest.

“What then?”

“There was a photograph there, top half of the page.”

“What sort of photograph?”

“Nothing like the one in Howard’s thesis. Nothing wrong with the pinhole. Nothing wrong with it at all.”

“What did you do?”

“I just glanced at it. It wasn’t very interesting.”

“You say there was nothing faked in the photograph. What about the caption?”

“I was too busy to worry about that.”

“Too busy?”

“Yes, too busy.” His voice rose.

“You just looked at this photograph? The rest of the page was like this, was it?” I pushed the notebook towards him.

“Yes.”

“You looked at the photograph? Then, what did you do? ”

He stared at me. In an instant he said: “Just put the book back with the rest of the Palairet dossier, of course.”

The night before, in the violence of his feeling, I hadn’t known what I believed. So now, gazing at the empty page, I lost my sense of fact. I could see him, on a December morning, also gazing at the page: either at the photograph securely there, or at the gap after he had torn it out. Everything seemed equally probable or improbable. It was a sort of vertigo that I had felt as a young man, when I did some criminal law: and since, in the middle of official security: or dazzled by the brilliance of suspicion. Somehow, immersed in facts, in the simple, natural facts of a crime, one found them diminish, even take the meaning out of, the lives in which they played a part.

In the midst of the facts of the crime, there were times when one could believe anything. Facts were hypnotic, facts were neutral, facts were innocent. Just as they were for those who had done a crime. If Nightingale had ripped out this photograph, it could seem such a simple, such an innocent act. It might seem unfair that there was all this fuss about it. It was more than possible, it was easy — I had known many who had managed it, I had myself, when I had performed an act which damaged others — to forget, because the act itself was so innocuous, that one had done it at all.

“You put it back with the photograph still there, you mean?”

“Of course I mean that,” Nightingale cried violently.

“But the photograph had disappeared when the notebook was next opened?”

“That’s what we’ve heard.”

Up to that point, Nightingale had given me nothing. Suddenly I saw him enraged, his eyes rolling with hostility again.

“I’m sorry,” I said, “have I misunderstood? The next person to look at the notebook was Skeffington, wasn’t it?”

“I’ve been told so.”

“Well, then, when he looked at the notebook the photograph was missing?”

“We’ve heard a lot,” said Nightingale, “of no one making allegations against any particular person. Two can play at that game. I’m not going to make an allegation against any particular person. But why shouldn’t one of Howard’s friends have taken out the photograph? The perfectly genuine photograph? Just to get this started again? Not to make any bones about it, just to point their fingers at me?”

“But that could only be Skeffington?”

“You’re saying that, I’m not.”

“Could anyone call him one of Howard’s friends?”

“You can answer for them. I’m not going to.”

“Can you imagine Skeffington doing any such thing for any man or any purpose in the world?”

“Some of them have imagined things against me, haven’t they?”

It was past one o’clock. There I left it. As soon as the afternoon sitting began, I knew that, though I hadn’t broken through, I had done something. The last five minutes of the morning, Nightingale’s accusation against Skeffington — those were what Dawson-Hill was trying to wipe out. The accusation was fantastic, Dawson-Hill was as good as telling Nightingale as he questioned him: wouldn’t he reconsider and retract it?