A Woman Unknown (38 page)

‘Very droll, Mr Sykes.’

‘I’m stood down for an hour or two. Now that Anthony Hartigan has left our fair city, I don’t believe I shall be needed much longer. The railway police will keep him in view all the way to Southampton.’

‘Shame I didn’t get to say goodbye. I’ll drop you at home, but I have a call to make first.’

‘Shall I come in with you?’ he asked when I stopped outside the
Herald
’s building.

‘No. I’ll be two shakes.’

The reception desk was deserted. It was that twilight time between the day and night shifts.

Without anyone stopping me, or asking my business, I found my way to the basement.

The dark room was a huge cellar, the size any amateur
photographer might envy, but it was unpleasant, with a nasty smell. As my eyes grew accustomed to the dark, I saw that in one corner lay a mountain of discarded plates, and used film curling into waves. A cat shot from it and through the door. So the dark room doubled as the newspaper cat’s lavatory.

A shape appeared. As it came closer, it took on the form of a young man in a brown buttoned-up overall. He was more surprised to see me than I him.

‘Hello. You must be the dark room technician?’

‘That’s right.’ He switched on a low light, revealing himself as pale as a pitman.

‘What’s your name?’

‘Terence Kitchen.’ He wore a tiny affectation of a beard in the centre of his chin, though whether this was to express his Bohemian character or hide a spot there was no way of knowing. ‘No one’s supposed to come in here.’

‘I’m Mrs Shackleton. You developed some negatives earlier. I’m here to collect them.’

‘What negatives?’

‘The negatives that Mr Duffield passed to you.’

‘Mr Duffield’s gone home.’

‘I know. That’s why I’m asking you. It is important. I believe he stressed that.’

‘I take my instructions from the boss. He said nowt about important.’

‘Where is your boss?’

‘Gone home.’

‘Where was he earlier? Didn’t he leave instructions?’

‘He was out.’

This was getting us nowhere. ‘Have you got the photographs or not?’

‘No.’

‘Can you do them now, while I wait?’

He drew back his head and pursed his lips, ‘Oh no, Missis, that won’t be possible.’

‘Then I shall take them back.’

‘I can’t hand over newspaper property.’

‘Outside in a motor car you will see a plain-clothes inspector from Scotland Yard. If you won’t hand them over to me, go tell him why.’

Jim Sykes would be pleased to hear of his meteoric rise.

Terence Kitchen played with a button on his overall. ‘I’ve no printing paper. It’s all locked up till tomorrow.’

That I could believe.

He glanced to his left. I saw that the folder of negatives lay on his table. ‘Do you give it willingly, or shall I take it?’

He gulped.

‘Come with me, Mr Kitchen. The inspector outside will give you a receipt for the folder.’

After dropping off Sykes, I returned to my own dark room, where everything is familiar and to hand. The only strangeness for me was in the thought of developing someone else’s prints; the work of someone I had greatly admired. I felt a trembling sort of nervousness. I must do the artist in Diamond justice, by producing an excellent print. It was as if Len Diamond stood at my shoulder, looking at the negatives. I must choose what to print first.

The pictures were all taken at Somersgill, on the first day of grouse shooting. There was a beautifully framed
shot of Gideon King and a young man, possibly the same beater from the previous photograph, taken near the stable block. King would not be the only man to be grateful that Diamond would click his shutter no more. Perhaps Diamond thought life owed him more than he had achieved. Perhaps he had some dream of spending his life taking different sorts of photographs, or none at all. His work took him among the rich and almost famous, and his record of those lives was ephemeral. It struck me that as an artist, for that is what he was in his way, he had never been given his due, and so had taken it. But it is easy, when a man is dead, to put a kind gloss on ill deeds.

One by one, I glanced at the more innocuous negatives and set each one aside. There was Philippa, with Lord Fotheringham; Everett Runcie, Caroline Windham beside him. And here was another, taken from a wider point of view. It showed Rupert Cromer, half-concealed by shrubbery, shotgun raised and pointing at Everett Runcie. Caroline Windham stood beside Runcie. Diamond had taken no chances. He had clicked his shutter a second time. There were two negatives of Cromer, about to fire, or discharging his shot. In the second photograph, the distance between Everett and Caroline had lessened.

In the instant when Cromer pulled the trigger, Caroline must have moved. Either that or Rupert Cromer was a bad shot. Cromer had denied being at the shoot. I had his own word for that, and I knew that his name had not been on the guest list because Gideon King had told me who was there.

Living close by, on the estate, Cromer could easily have strolled across, carrying his gun, without drawing attention.

These were the negatives I must print. Fortunately, I have several printing frames, two with clear glass suitable for film negatives. I polished the glass of the first frame with a pocket handkerchief and placed the negative in the printing frame, with the printing out paper glossy side downwards on the negative.

I did this twice, and then carried the frames into the light, setting them on the kitchen windowsill where the evening sun obligingly performed its magic. As it did so, I looked out through the window, across my back garden to the wood beyond. This was the place where I had imagined a Rupert Cromer sculpture might stand.

When I had allowed time for the light to do its work, I took the frames back into the dark room, and checked the results. Now it was time for the Hypo, the fixer. But what would I fix? An image of Cromer, deciding to join in the shoot, having an unlucky shot, going away embarrassed by himself. This picture spoke to me of attempted murder. But what would it tell a jury? A clever barrister would sow seeds of doubt, would mock the picture’s veracity, and have the case thrown out. Cromer was admired, with friends in the right places. These images could be dismissed as so much jiggery-pokery.

On the other hand, King, whom I had delivered up to Sergeant Wilson, would make an excellent suspect: an outsider, an American, a man whose private life would not bear too much scrutiny.

I put these thoughts from my mind as I diluted the Hypo in the fixing dish and slid in the printing out paper. The print slowly turned brown. Never had the process of fixing and washing taken so long. And then the prints must be hung to dry.

And I thought of King. Someone was going to hang.

While the prints dried, I went to my bathroom. Yes, I had a spare toothbrush. King might need it.

The strange thing about this photograph was that without other knowledge, one would not know an attempt at murder was about to take place. The man with the gun could have shifted in a second. It was a picture with a narrative, and yet what tale did it tell? The skill of the photographer, the framing of the subjects and the camera angle made it distinctive. It turned me into a witness, and yet that was an illusion. Could the camera lie? Something in the eye of the man with the gun told me that this was no lie of the camera, but an attempt at murder.

When the prints were not quite dry, I picked one up by its edge and took it with me, out to the car.

I needed to get the print to Marcus straight away. But Dad’s Morris decided to behave as my own Jowett sometimes did. Unaccountably, it set off in another direction.

If I put my foot down, I would be able to gather up Caroline Windham and take her along to the Metropole. She had stayed there with Runcie. She would know whether Cromer had also stayed there, and whether he knew Runcie would be at the hotel on the fateful night.

Slowly, the realisation dawned. Cromer had failed to kill Runcie at the shoot. He had succeeded at the hotel.

As soon as Diamond heard about Runcie’s death, he guessed who was responsible and decided to make a little money from his knowledge.

But why would Cromer kill Everett? He had described the man as his best friend.

I remembered back to the Sunday when I broke the
news of Runcie’s death to Caroline Windham, and gave her a lift to Cromer’s house.

I had thought it a trick of my imagination that the face of the Venus Cromer had sketched on his pad bore an uncanny resemblance to Deirdre Fitzpatrick. Now I understood: he had seen her lying asleep in the bed beside Runcie. He knew I had seen the picture and he had re-drawn that page, giving the Venus figure a different face.

Lucky for Deirdre that she had not woken. She too may have ended her life in that hotel room.

There is something forbidding about Somersgill House at dusk. Out of habit, I parked by the side of the mansion. I went to the front door and clanged the bell. By good luck, the maid who answered was the one I had met during my previous call here.

‘Is Miss Windham at home?’

‘She’s not, Miss.’

‘Do you know where she is?’ There was a hesitation. She knew well enough, but did not want to say.

Someone called to the maid from inside the house.

I made a guess. ‘Miss Windham is with Mr Cromer, perhaps?’

She nodded.

I thanked her, and went back to the car.

This changed matters. I should not go blundering in. But then I had a good idea. I would give Caroline Windham the cigarette case and lighter, and tell her that Philippa Runcie wanted to see her. Once we were away from Cromer, I would take her, and the photograph, to Marcus.

As I drove from the big house through the grounds, out of
the east gate, trying to remember my way to the sculptor’s ramshackle cottage and outbuildings, I went over what I would say: tell Caroline the date of the funeral, that there would be people coming from Boston, casually mention that Philippa would like to see her, now, before relations descended and private conversation became difficult.

Having a perfect plan can be both comforting and pointless. Circumstances dictate.

I knocked on the cottage door, bringing me face to face with the still-angry housekeeper; even without dough on her hands she resented disturbance. Irritation must be her permanent state of being. She informed me that Mr Cromer and Miss Windham were in the barn, working. The word
working
was delivered with sneering contempt.

I walked in the direction of her waving arm, along the well-trodden path that ran by the side of the house.

They were indeed working. I saw that through the crack in the door. The adapted barn was lit by half a dozen oil lamps and a host of candles.

I pushed open the door on a scene of intense concentration and great tranquillity. Caroline lay on a sofa, naked, a trance-like look on her face. A single paraffin heater stood a foot away from her, giving off a faint blue haze.

Cromer had his back to me. He was standing at a table, tapping at a piece of stone that followed the shape of her legs, her hips, breasts and head, but which became something more than the model, with a timeless quality, part landscape, part human.

She saw me but did not react. Even so, he sensed some subtle change in her, and turned to look at me.

‘I’m sorry to disturb you. I was looking for you, Miss Windham, I wanted a word, but you’re obviously busy.’

I took a step back. That would be best. Go back to my car, then to the house, telephone Marcus.

The two of them exchanged a look. She said, ‘I need to move. My left leg’s going into cramp.’

He nodded.

She drew a Chinese silk robe around herself, and stood up. ‘I’m going inside, Rupert. I need a drink.’

He would be bound to follow. But he did not.

As we went from the barn, she shivered. ‘He forgets how cold it gets if you’re still for any length of time. Of course he’s working and doesn’t notice.’

‘You’re working too,’ I said, adopting a casual tone, listening out for him.