Strange Images of Death (25 page)

‘A second later it’s over. She probably died instantly, according to the pathologist.’

‘And in the excitement of the moment, and the urge to make a swift exit from the scene, the lens cap clutched in her left hand is forgotten,’ Jacquemin muttered. ‘But why ask the victim to hold it in the first place?’

‘Do you take photographs?’ Joe asked.

‘Never. I get someone to take them for me.’

‘I can tell you—lens caps are a damned nuisance. They have to come off at the last moment and be put straight back on again. And is there ever a safe place to park them? Leave them lying about and they get lost or trodden on. There was no flat surface available at the tomb if you remember it. And the appearance of a lens cap in the shot would have ruined the gruesome medieval flavour somewhat. No—the thing to do is what I always do—put it into the nearest available hand. They always remember to return it.’

‘Unless they’ve died clutching it. Hmm …’ Jacquemin poked at the insignificant object on the table with a pencil. ‘Well, Sweet Cecily Somerset! I told you I’d find your wretched lens cap! I’ll take pleasure in returning it. You won’t thank me for the arrest warrant for murder that accompanies it, though.’

Joe frowned. ‘We know
how
it was done. But before we say who did it, we need to find out why, Jacquemin. Why. There has to be a desperately strong motive for plunging a dagger into someone’s chest. Cecily? I very much doubt that—’

He was interrupted by a tap on the door. Martineau came swiftly in, his face flushed with excitement. ‘Sir! Commander! You’re wanted at once up in Jacoby’s studio! He’s got the prints of that film you gave him to develop. The one we took out of Cecily what’s-her-name’s camera.’

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.

Chapter Thirty-Two

Cecily stood in front of the desk, facing up to the Commissaire and Joe, while Martineau sat in an opposite corner of the room taking notes.

In a swift discussion on the way down, the two officers had come to an agreement on technique. The Commissaire was to be obviously in charge of the interrogation, directing his English
confrère.
He made it clear to Joe that he wished to appear remote, implacable, dangerously foreign. Joe’s: ‘Oh, I say—are you sure you can you pull that off?’ had received the frozen stare.

The interview was to be conducted by Joe in English. The Commissaire’s knowledge of the language was perfectly adequate for an understanding but he shied away from the notion of speaking it himself. ‘We must catch every nuance,’ he declared. ‘And Miss Somerset’s French is worse than my English. We will see how we get on.’

‘Yes, Sandilands, I can identify that camera as mine,’ stated Cecily, pointing to the Leica on the desk in front of her. ‘
Again
! It can tell you itself—look at the name on the strap. Come off it, Commander! I’ve done all this already. For that Frenchman.’ She glared at Jacquemin. ‘Is he deaf? Or just being French? Shall I shout louder?’

‘Just a formality, Miss Somerset,’ Joe said mildly. ‘Imagine you’re in Scotland Yard, will you? Helping the police with a very tricky enquiry. Lieutenant, a chair for the lady, please.’

Cecily lowered her dungareed bulk on to the chair with a suspicious glower that was meant to tell Joe she’d got his number and that English smarm was as unwelcome as French froideur.

‘And this is how you can help us.’

He laid out the first twelve shots from her camera and invited her to inspect them.

A few moments of: ‘Good gracious, I never thought you’d be able to do it! Develop them right here on the spot. I was going to take the camera back to London with me and have them done properly. I say, I won’t pay for these, you know … Oh, the roses came out well, didn’t they? However did you manage …?’

‘We had a bit of luck. Nathan Jacoby spent some weeks working in the Leica laboratory in Germany,’ Joe improvised. ‘It was a piece of cake for him.’

‘But I hadn’t finished up the exposures,’ protested Cecily. ‘I’d only taken about half. Now what shall I do for the rest of the hol? I can’t afford to waste half a film just like that, you know!’

Joe smiled. ‘Well, why don’t you come to some arrangement with your friend—the one you lent the camera to and who finished off the rest of the cassette?’

Her face lost its calculating expression, her voice its querulous edge as she replied after a long moment: ‘Friend? What friend? Finished off … I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.’

‘The second half of your film was used by someone else, Cecily. And we’d like to know to whom you gave permission to borrow the camera.’

‘Borrow my camera! Never! Nobody! I wouldn’t … I didn’t!’ she protested. ‘What’s going on?’

Joe produced the shots of the exterior of the chapel and the door. ‘These are the next three from your roll of film. Did you take them?’

‘I’ve told you! No!’ She turned to the Commissaire and said rudely: ‘
Non! Non!
’

Looking back at the photographs, she commented: ‘What’s the point of these, there’s no people in them. And no flowers, which was the whole reason for bringing it. Why would I want to take a picture of a door? I didn’t take these.’

‘And yet they are there on your negative. We must assume someone helped himself or herself to your camera without your knowledge.’

‘I’ll have their guts for garters!’ said Cecily, swelling with rage. ‘Everyone knows my possessions are off limits! I made that quite clear when one of those Russians tried to make off with my nail scissors.’

‘Tell me—where did you keep your camera?’

‘In the general ladies’ dorm. You know where that is. We each have our own chest of drawers. My camera was in the bottom drawer.’

‘So anyone could have entered and taken it away for a few hours, replaced it, and you wouldn’t have noticed it had gone missing?’

‘Yes,’ she admitted. ‘I hadn’t used it for at least a month … six weeks … too busy … and I can’t say I’ve ever got into that silly habit of snapping everything in sight all the time. So common!’ She thought for a bit and, encouraged by Joe’s silent attention, ventured to say: ‘Anyone could have helped themselves, you know. The maids are in and out in the morning and, as if that’s not enough, they let a manservant come in to check that the maids have done their duty … at least that’s what they say … And the steward checks on the menservants. It’s like Piccadilly Circus. You yourself, Commander, are well placed to nip in and take it. Your room is just opposite. Or those children next door. Why don’t you ask your niece Dorcas? It’s the sort of thing she might do. And any one of those women I share with could have taken it. They all knew where it was.’

‘Was any one of these ladies more likely than the rest to take it?’

‘Oh, I’ll say so! But you’re going to have some trouble interrogating
her
! Estelle Smeeth. The dear departed. She hated me.’

‘The reason for this hatred was …?’

‘She couldn’t take a bit of teasing, that’s why.’ Cecily’s features took on an unpleasant truculence. ‘She irritated me from the moment she arrived. I made a mess of her bed on her second night. Nothing much—just the usual dorm foolery. But Miss Smeeth didn’t seem to have the background to understand or appreciate that sort of thing and—my!—did she ever overreact!’

‘Are you saying she retaliated? She got her own back?’

‘With knobs on!’ Snorting with outrage, Cecily confided: ‘She put a snake in my bed!’

‘A moment … you’re quite certain it was
Estelle
who did this dirty deed?’

‘Well, who else? She’d never admit it. Tried to blame Jane Makepeace. But it was
her
bed I’d messed up.
She
was the one with a certain close association with the under-forester … that raffish, curly-haired one who delivers the rabbits. I noticed he always made an appearance whenever there was a sight of Estelle in the offing. And who else would be able to catch one and chop its head off? The snake, I mean. A completely overworked reaction, I think you’ll agree, Commander?’ she finished primly.

‘Head? Off?’ asked Joe faintly. He had a sudden sick feeling that the interview was spiralling out of his grasp.

Jacquemin shot a meaningful look at Martineau who was already scratching a note in his book.

‘The maids were not best pleased to be called up to deal with it,’ Cecily said frostily.

Having listened with a commendably inexpressive face to this embarrassing catalogue of English eccentricity, the Commissaire suddenly lost patience and leaned forward. ‘Miss Somerset,’ he purred in his heavily accented English, ‘a Frenchman always keeps his word to the fair sex. I told you I would find and return to you your lens cap. And here it is.’ He took it from his pocket and placed it in front of her.

Cecily picked it up and examined it. ‘Oh, I say! Thanks so much. Yes, that’s mine. Wherever did you find it?’

‘Clutched in the dead hand of your friend Estelle,’ he said in a doom-laden tone.

Cecily dropped it with a clink on to the floor and squealed.

‘Interview over.’ Jacquemin smiled. ‘For now. I must ask you to hold yourself available, Miss Somerset, for our further entertainment.’

‘I had thought better of the English, Sandilands! A nation that has given the world the Whitechapel Ripper, the Brides in the Bath Smith, the Royston Disemboweller, the Brighton Poisoner, should be ashamed to now offer us the hair-tugging and wrist-slapping exploits of a gaggle of overgrown schoolgirls!’

Joe looked at the cynical face and understood his opposite number. ‘You’re no more fooled by all this flummery than I am, Jacquemin. That was uncomfortable but it had to be gone through. And now, I think we could say we’re moving in for the kill ourselves. The Silmont Slayer is within our grasp,’ he added fancifully.

‘A clever business,’ commented Jacquemin. ‘A blend of careful forward planning and on-the-spot reaction to favourable circumstances.’

‘The qualities of the best generals,’ Joe said. ‘I’ve known a few such. Two of them were even French.’

‘I can see when, how and who,’ said Jacquemin. ‘And certainly that will be thought to be enough to make an arrest. But I cannot yet see
why
it was done. And that concerns me. Where is the profit in it? Where the satisfaction?’

‘I think I’ve got there,’ said Joe. ‘And I can tell you, the profit is great—and material: the satisfaction, twisted up as it is with thick strands of envy and vengeance, enormous. Bad blood, Jacquemin. It’s a case of bad blood.’