Waxwork

SUNDAY, 15th APRIL

There was nothing shifty about James Berry’s eyes. No sideward glance or drooping lids. They were wide and steady. The Telegraph had called them codfish eyes once. After that he had changed to the Graphic.

The eyes were scanning it now, line by line, column by column. The reports on criminal matters, headed Police Intelligence, interested him most. Over the mantelpiece in the front room of his house in Bilton Place, Bradford, were two gilt frames, each filled with eight small photographs of men and women, mounted on best Bristol board. Each was a convicted murderer.

They were a select bunch. They all came in the carte-de-visite size, which showed they were not riffraff. Two were doctors.

This Sunday evening in 1888 his wife was talking about them. ‘I believe I could stand that lot hanging over my front room mantelpiece if there was summat else up there beside them.’

He looked over his paper. ‘What did you have in mind?’

‘A picture of you, love.’

It had never occurred to him to put himself up there.

Now that he considered it, he would not look bad in sepia. At thirty-six, he still had most of his hair. His face was manly, right enough, broad and powerful, with a good growth of black beard. There was a deep scar down the right cheek, but the beard covered most of it. He had a notion that his wife liked the scar. She had never inquired how he came by it, but there were times when she traced it with her fingertips. Ever so lightly.

He told her she was talking rubbish and went back to the Graphic. There was a case of poisoning in Kew.

She said the rogues’ gallery made her flesh creep. She wanted to look up from her sewing once in a while and see an honest, God-fearing face.

He knew why she mentioned the Almighty. They both took a pride in the lay-preaching. Folk sat up in chapel when James Berry went to the pulpit. He could speak with authority on the wages of sin.

‘There’s that elegant studio in Bridge Street,’ she went on. ‘You know-with velvet at the window? I’ve seen what he can do. Beautiful likenesses. You can wear your chapel suit and butterfly collar. You’ll make a grand picture, Jim!’

He told her straight that he did not hold with photography. She said it was no sin as far as she was aware. There was nothing about it in the Good Book that she could recollect.

He did not hold with sarcasm either. If it had not been the Sabbath he would have cuffed her for that. He told her so. She went out to make the cocoa.

The Graphic had a lot to say about the Kew murder. It seemed they had arrested a young married woman. Her people were well-to-do. They would see she was well represented at the trial. Someone of the calibre of Clarke or Russell was expected to lead the defence. A classic trial was in prospect.

When she appeared with his mug and a biscuit he told her why he had no intention of going to the studio in Bridge Street. ‘In my sort of work you don’t go out of your way to be recognised. You get enough of that, without photographs. If I had my picture took in Bradford, inside the hour it would be in t’ shop window with James Berry, Public Hangman in large letters under it.’

She was unimpressed. ‘We’ve no cause to be ashamed, Jim. If folk round here want to see your likeness, why not let them?’

He told her Bradford folk did not matter. They knew him mostly, any road. The trouble would start when some newspaper reporter came by. He would be into that shop like a ferret. Next thing, the picture would be plastered over every paper in the kingdom. It might easily cost them the job.

That silenced her.

No more was said on the matter that evening. Yet Berry did not dismiss it from his mind.