“Well,” Rebecca said, “I suppose it’s nothing, but my darkroom door opens into the basement, and there’s a curtain hanging just inside that door, so that when you open the door to come into the darkroom, you don’t let light in.”
“You mean the curtain is far enough behind the door so you can open and close the door before you go through the curtain?” Tragg asked.
“That’s right.”
Tragg said, “It’s a very nice darkroom you have.”
Rebecca beamed with pride. “It has the finest equipment! And we’ve made it ourselves. I have a daylight enlarger, so I can use diffused daylight in enlarging my pictures and...”
“But there was something about the darkroom itself you were going to tell me?” Tragg asked.
“That’s right, there was.”
“What was it?”
“Well,” she said, “I had some cut film lying in a box on the darkroom shelf. I hadn’t developed some exposed film in the other plate holders, and I was going to put this new film in...”
Mrs. Gentrie interposed to say to Lieutenant Tragg, “She thinks that the officers were careless. They opened the door of her darkroom, and then pulled the curtain all the way back. That let light into the darkroom, and fogged...”