The Footsteps at the Lock by Ronald A. Knox

Leyland hurried back after luncheon to catch the three-twelve. It was essential for him, he said, to see the solicitors; possible that he would have to break his journey at Wallingford on the way back. Mr. Quirk unexpectedly asked him for a lift into Oxford; it was his idea that something might be done towards tracing the movements of the man in the punt before he reached the river at all. His purchases, probably made at Oxford, of provisions for a river tour might yet be remembered by the shop people. Leyland agreed that such investigations would be best carried out by private effort; he was not anxious to start false alarms, still less true alarms, as to the suspicions entertained by the Force. Bredon also applauded the expedition; he himself had a commission for Mr. Quirk to execute in Oxford; as to its precise nature, Angela was pertinaciously inquisitive, her husband obstinately dumb.

Once they were left to themselves, he insisted that they must take a holiday. He was bored, he said, with the very name of Burtell; he had long since ceased to feel the smallest interest as to the whereabouts of either cousin, in this or in a future existence; they would forget their solicitudes, and spend an afternoon mud-larking on the Windrush. Angela had the gift, rare in her sex, of falling in with masculine moods without affectation; and their day was all the more pleasant for being totally unworthy of record. If Thames banishes care by his easefulness, the tributary Windrush is an even more certain remedy; that tempestuous rush over the shallows, those sudden windings, those perils of overhanging trees, demand entire concentration if you are to make headway against the unruly stream. An afternoon spent on the Thames is spent with an old, tried, mature companion, who refreshes you even by his silence; an afternoon on the Windrush is like an afternoon spent with a restless, inquisitive child; you find in perpetual distraction the source of repose. Both Miles and Angela had been stung with nettles, scratched with brambles, tormented by thistles underfoot, lashed with willow-branches, wetted by sudden inundations, tired out by ceaseless paddling, punting, and towing, before they returned to the Gudgeon; the Burtell mystery seemed, by that time, a remote memory of the past, so much of mimic struggle and of miniature history had been fought through in the interval.