Barbara Cleverly - Strange Images of Death

‘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.’

‘Not now, Orlando. Things to do. Can’t it wait?’

Orlando seized him by the arm as Joe, leaving the office, tried to push past him.

‘No, it damned well can’t! This is something you started and when you’ve heard me you’ll perhaps have the good grace to say thank you. You may even admit that what I have to say will make your life easier.’

‘Walk with me, then. I’m just going to the great hall to check that someone I’m interested in is still there in plain sight, obeying the rules. I shouldn’t have asked Dorcas to go ferreting about the castle by herself.’

He quickened his step.

‘No, you shouldn’t! And, yes, this is about Dorcas. I managed to exchange a few words with her before she beetled off running your errands. I tried to countermand your order and told her to stay in the hall but she went off anyway. I begin to think, Sandilands, that she’s too much under your thumb.’