Strange Images of Death

Chapter Thirty-One

The handwritten notice on the door-‘No admittance. This includes you, Jacquemin’-was greeted by a harrumph of outrage and a pounding with a fist by the Commissaire. Nathan opened the door after what he considered a suitable interval and the three policemen stepped tentatively into the work room.

It was hot and dark and stank of chemicals. Every dimly discerned working surface was crowded with bottles, jars and trays. Strips of celluloid dangled from the ceiling and the whole room was lit by an unnatural red light. Seen so illuminated from above, Nathan’s mischievous features would have given Frederick inspiration for Beelzebub, Joe thought. He was playing with them, of course. The red light was switched on merely to establish his alchemical credentials, his mastery of the space.

They had interrupted no photographical procedure and Nathan replaced the red with the white room lights the moment he judged the intruders had been sufficiently impressed. He seemed pleased with himself.

‘Don’t touch anything and mind where you put your heads and feet,’ he warned. ‘All developments a success. I’ve made prints from the negatives in the two Kodaks, from the slides of my Ermanox and Miss Somerset’s Leica. Right! First in the programme-overture and beginners. The pocket Kodaks, gentlemen.’

He set out two rows of photographs on the bench in front of them.

‘I’ve forgotten which is whose but I think they’re interchangeable,’ he said.

‘Café terrace … that’s in Aix … le Mont Sainte Victoire … the Dentelles …’ said Jacquemin. ‘Landscapes. Some, I see, with added figures.’ He peered more closely. ‘What is going on here, Sandilands?’

Joe peered alongside. ‘Picnicking? Would that cover it?’

‘Mmm … le déjeuner sur l’herbe seems to be a popular theme with you English.’

‘Well, you know the slogan: A friend, a memory and a pastime-a Kodak,’ said Joe, smiling. ‘Next exhibit, Nathan?’

‘Now the Ermanox. My camera. See here: I want you to take a careful look at these. First the pictures taken in the chapel on discovery of the body yesterday.’

He spread out on the counter in front of them the eight reproductions of the Ermanox slides. They were numbered one to eight.

‘Well? What can you see?’

‘I’d no idea you’d got these,’ grumbled Jacquemin. ‘Why didn’t you tell me? That’s withholding evidence. Chalk another one up, Martineau. Oh, and I’m taking these away with me. Very handy. It’ll be some time before we get ours back from the labs. What are we supposed to be seeing? Come on, man, it’s no time for a guessing game.’

Joe saw at once. ‘We’re meant to look at the quality rather than the subject, I think.’

A quick nod from Nathan confirmed this.

‘The first four were taken by a keen amateur,’ Joe said with amused self-mockery, ‘and they’ll just about serve-as a record. But the second four were taken by a professional hand and, if the subject were not so lugubrious, could take their place in the pages of Vogue magazine. I see I must get in closer next time, Nathan, and focus up more precisely.’

Jacquemin peered again. ‘It was you two clowns! Now, I can see that. Get on.’

‘Just preparing you for the next lot. Now-I want you to keep in mind what you’ve just seen,’ said Nathan with the encouraging tone of a stage conjuror.

He removed the prints of Estelle’s death scene and began to place on the counter another and clearly inferior set, one by one.

‘This is the film from the Leica belonging to Cecily Somerset. Number one, crossing the Channel. Rough day? Impossible to keep the camera steady at any rate. Number two. Arrival in France. Water calm but we still have the shakes. The strip of grey matter along the top half-inch is the French coastline. The other five and a half inches are the sea. Number three: jolly group of friends posing at the front door of the Hôtel Ambassadeur in Paris. Pity about the passing cycle. Numbers four and five: a selection of the guests at Silmont. You’ll recognize yours truly, well, half of yours truly, far left on the second one. Cecily herself does not appear. Behind the camera, evidently … And still shaking and still trying to find the f-stop ring.

‘Change of subject for six to twelve. Flowers. They all seem to be roses.’

‘Rosa gallica, Rosa mundi, Rosa damascena …’ Jacquemin pointed out the ones he could identify. ‘My grandmother’s dining room was lined with Redouté’s best. I spent many a boring Sunday lunch memorizing the names.’

‘And here’s one I know,’ said Martineau. ‘Hard to tell in black and white but I think that’s the white rose of Provence.’

‘She made an excursion to a Cistercian abbey near here. It has a collection of old roses,’ said Nathan.

Jacquemin was beginning to paw the ground with impatience.

‘There were six more exposures,’ said Nathan, suddenly serious. He snapped them out one at a time in a row. Again, each print had a number in the corner.

‘Great heavens!’ Martineau broke the stunned silence. ‘Shall I go and bring her in, sir?’ ‘Wait! Wait! I think our friend Jacoby has something more he wishes to impart? Go, on, man, we’re listening.’

* * *

‘Number thirteen is a shot of the chapel. Taken from the side nearest the dry moat-the east. Probably taken from a balanced position halfway down the far slope. An unusual perspective but out of sight of the rest of the castle.

And, looking at the shadows, you can see that the sun is in the south-west and getting low. What we have here is an-accidental? experimental? — essay in contre jour. I think, gentlemen, if you go and scramble about in the moat on the far side of the chapel at just before six this afternoon, you’ll see exactly the same shadow lines.

‘Number fourteen is interesting for its detail. The camera has now moved a few yards on towards the corner and is pointing across the south side of the chapel and over the courtyard. If you look carefully you can just get a glimpse of the stable clock in the distance, between two roof lines. I wonder if this was intended?’

Martineau selected a magnifying glass from a tray on the counter and handed it to the Commissaire.

‘It’s saying six o’clock, near as dammit,’ confirmed Jacquemin.

‘Next up is number fifteen. An unfussy view of the great door. Clearly we go through it and here we have, at number sixteen, a shot of the table-top tomb.’

‘We’re being taken for a walk,’ Martineau observed.

‘Let’s hope it’s not a ride,’ muttered Joe.

‘And the tomb, you’ll see, has only one occupant which dates and times the photographs quite narrowly. Sir Hugues is lying there by himself next to the rough patch of stone where his wife had previously lain. But it’s numbers seventeen and eighteen that are the clinchers, I think you’ll agree?’

‘Good God!’ breathed Martineau. ‘Are they the same? Have you done two prints from one exposure, Jacoby?’

‘No, he hasn’t. They’re different. Very slightly,’ said Jacquemin with benefit of magnifying glass. ‘A whisker of a difference in angle. And again, Jacoby, we must ask-intentional? I’d say they’re separated by a second or two. No more … Very similar to the Ermanox set we’ve just seen. Look at the blood pattern. She’s not play-acting. She’s definitely dead. Can you enlarge the wound area, Jacoby? From such a film?’

Nathan produced further reproductions of the last two shots. ‘I thought you might need these.’

Martineau peered again. ‘Ah, yes! I thought I could just make out … The blood … Here, Sandilands, take a look. There’s a greater quantity on the second of these shots. Not much but enough to make it out. And unless our friend here has been working some of his magic …?’

Nathan looked aggrieved and shook his head vehemently.

‘It’s caught a highlight. The blood’s still shining. These shots were taken moments, seconds, after the girl was stabbed. While the heart was pumping its last. While she was still expiring.’

A silence fell and, in the hot room, three men shivered.

Martineau spoke first in a deadly voice: ‘Now shall I go and get her, sir?’

‘In a moment. We’ll definitely have a few questions to put to Sweet Cecily but, if I’m not mistaken, Mr Jacoby has a further point to make?’

Joe was sure that Jacquemin had seen the truth as quickly as he had himself and was, with unexpected generosity, allowing Nathan to take the stage again to give his expert opinion. Or to check his own conclusion.

‘The first set I showed you-Joe’s efforts followed by mine-made it quite clear that the hand holding the camera, the eye behind the lens, is always individual. I can see the differences in style as clearly as one artist can identify another by his brush strokes. It’s like handwriting. But it only works when you’re familiar with the photographers, of course. Here, I’m working in the dark. I assume the first five to have been taken by Cecily. Careless, expecting the camera to do all the work. Jolly snaps for the album. Really-she’d have been better off with a five guinea Kodak. The next group, the flowers, showed an improvement. Learning had occurred. Perhaps she finds it easier to get the measure of inanimate objects? But the last six-’

‘Were taken by someone different!’ exclaimed Martineau. ‘Even I can see that! They’re not perfect … I mean, they’re not a professional job like Mr Jacoby’s but they’re well focused up and framed and … well … not arty, but sort of businesslike. By someone used to holding a camera and the right sort of brain to operate it.’

‘And the cool nerve of a sniper,’ Joe added.

‘Are we thinking: Cecily Somerset? Most probably not. Ask the lady politely to meet me in the office in ten minutes, will you, Martineau? And tell her nothing of this. I’m sure we’ll all be interested to hear her answer when I ask her to whom she lent her apparatus on the day of the murder,’ said Jacquemin.