Page:The Viaduct Murder (1926).pdf/96
his pocket, and from a voluminous pocket-book produced with great deliberation the object of their impatience. It represented the head and shoulders of a young woman: the features were refined, and might in real life have been beautiful. The camera cannot lie, but the camera of the local "artist" generally finds it difficult to tell nothing but the truth: and this was the work of a Mr. Campbell, whose studio was no further off than Binver. Meanwhile the photograph was not in its first youth; and the style of coiffure represented suggested (with what could be seen of the dress) a period dating some ten years back. It was not signed or initialled anywhere.
"Well," said Reeves, when the trove had been handed round, "that doesn't prove that we're much further on. But it looks as if we had come across a phase of Brotherhood's life that wasn't alluded to at the inquest."
Gordon shuddered. "Just think if one went off the hooks suddenly, and people came round and tried to dig up one's past from the old photographs and keepsakes one had hidden away in drawers! One should destroy everything—certainly one should destroy everything."
But Reeves was no sentimentalist; he was a sleuth-hound with nose down on the trail. "Let's see," he reflected, "I can't remember at the moment what the present Binver photographer is called."
"You will find it," suggested Carmichael, "on