“I wish you hadn’t,” she said nervously, as she made mechanical preparations with pot and kettle. “It would only make matters worse if my uncle came in now.”
“But he wasn’t back on Friday before ten or eleven.”
“You never know!”
Pocket spoke out with a truculence which his brothers had inherited, but not he, valiantly as he might try to follow a family example.
“I don’t care! I can’t help it if he does come. I’ll tell him exactly what I’ve done, and why, and exactly what I’m going to do next. I give him leave to stop me if he can.”
“I’m afraid he won’t wait for that. But I wish you had waited for his leave before printing his negative.”
Pocket jumped up from table, and ran to the printing-frame in the sunny room at the back. He had been reminded of it only just in time. It was a rather dark print that he first examined, one half at a time, and then extracted from the frame. It was meshed with white veils, showing the joins of the broken plate. But it had been an excellent negative originally. And it was still good enough to hold Pocket rooted to the carpet in the sunny room, until Phillida came in after him, and stood looking over his shoulder.
“I know that place!” said she at once. “It’s Holland Walk, in Kensington.”
He turned to her quickly.
“The place where there was a suicide or something not long ago?”