Peter Lovesey - Waxwork

‘You were old enough to know your own mind, sir,’ Cribb concurred.

‘Quite. And Miriam knew hers,’ Cromer emphasised, ‘else I might have hesitated. I was enraptured with her from the beginning-what man with a sense of beauty would not be? — but I needed to be reassured that I would be an acceptable husband. She convinced me that I was the only man alive that she would consider marrying. That was music to my ears-to know that I might see her marvellous face each day of my life, in countless places, by daylight, gaslight, moonlight, discovering new aspects of her beauty. It was all I could desire. It made a young man of me. I don’t look too bad in my morning suit, do I?’

‘I wouldn’t put you at forty, sir.’

‘Decent of you to say so. There’s Simon, my best man. Doesn’t Miriam look stunning? The dress was by Pingat, in percale, with ecru lace and real pearl buttons. Her father was a wealthy man, a former mayor of Hampstead. He provided a magnificent reception and paid for the honeymoon as well. Fifteen days in Trouville.’ He turned the pages more swiftly. ‘I took my Rouch Eureka hand camera. The definition is not so good as I hoped for. There’s Miriam promenading. The races at Deauville. Outside the Casino. We played chemin-de-fer until it closed most evenings. There’s Miriam on a wagonette.’

Cribb stopped the page with his finger. It was the first picture in the album with the wistful look he had noticed in the framed portrait. He passed no comment, letting the pages run on. The outdoor pictures gave way to studio portraits of Miriam, always in different clothes.

‘Your wife is well provided with gowns, sir.’

‘She lacks nothing,’ said Cromer matter-of-factly. ‘It is my custom to give her the material things the fair sex take pleasure in.’ He chuckled. ‘After all, each new gown is an occasion for another portrait, as you will have observed. The accessories too, the fans and hats and jewellery, are continuously replaced. It is a trivial amusement of mine to surprise her by leaving small presents about the house in places where I know she will accidentally find them. A box of chocolates, a mother-of-pearl brooch, a silver charm.’

Cribb felt a comment was in order but could not supply one. His prosaic style of speech was not equipped for this. The words gushed from Cromer as liberally as his self-attested kindnesses to Miriam. It would have been interesting to have known what her response had been. If the photographs were any indication, it was not wholly favourable.

‘She is my inspiration,’ Cromer went on. ‘All my best work is here. Some of it I have enlarged and put in my bedroom, it delights me so. I take a section of a photograph and enlarge it to life size. As a matter of fact, I was making a print of her hands when you arrived. I find it occupies my mind to work. Private work, I must emphasise. I have refused all commissions since the tragedy happened.’

‘This unfortunate event must have hit your business hard,’ Cribb observed.

A sigh. ‘I fear so. For the present, I am not short of funds. There was a substantial legacy when Miriam’s father died which we have not touched.’

‘If she had not pleaded guilty, Cribb reflected, counsel for the defence might have taken a slice of that in fees.’ I heard that you built your business up by your own efforts, sir.’

‘That’s absolutely true.’ A faint look of self-congratulation passed across Cromer’s features. ‘I am a self-made man. This studio has a reputation second to none on this side of London, or had, until this happened. Without exaggeration, I could show you portraits enough of the nobility to illustrate Debrett. I was planning a second studio in Regent Street.’

‘But you won’t give up the trade?’

Cromer looked injured. ‘ Trade isn’t the expression I would use. No, this is my art, and I shall continue to practise it. In twenty-two years I have come a long way in photography. When I began in the sixties, it was the peak of the carte mania. Every gentleman insisted on being posed leaning on a cardboard column, top hat in hand and one leg crossed over the other-an excruciating pose to hold for a thirty-second exposure, as the strained attitudes showed. If anything, the experience was worse for the photographer, who had the job of explaining to the sitter that an iron headrest would be necessary to fix the pose, that red hair would come out black so he would have to be puffed, and that a plate was ruined because he had blinked. I have often said I would sooner be the public hangman.’

Cribb let the remark pass. It had slipped off Cromer’s tongue as carelessly as his own reference to trade. ‘Have you always lived in Kew, sir?’

‘Four years only. My studio here represents many years of tiresome work photographing vicious little boys in sailor suits.’ He gave a cheerless laugh. ‘You would not believe the number of spoilt plates I have sold to glass merchants at a few shillings a ton because of small heads that turned just as I removed the lens cap. At one time I worked from a wooden shed on the promenade at Worthing, but that is in confidence, Sergeant. I would not wish any of my present clients to know of it. I moved about the suburbs a good deal earlier in my career. Bethnal Green, Tooting Bec, Cricklewood-the localities improved with my fortune.’

‘I don’t suppose you could afford to employ an assistant in the early days.’

‘Good Lord, no. I was on my own for years. I prepared my own paper, sensitised the plates, acted as receptionist, photographer, developer, printer, retoucher and clerk.’

‘It’s a wonder you had time to sleep, sir.’

Cromer grinned. ‘Sleep is not so important when you are young. Eating was more of a problem. I lived on egg-yolks. It takes a devil of a lot of egg-white to albumenise a ream of paper.’

‘Was Josiah Perceval your first assistant, sir?’

‘The second, actually. The first, certainly, with any photographic knowledge. He was a local man, living in Sheen. I took him on soon after I moved here. The worst mistake of my life.’ Howard Cromer closed the album and gripped it to his chest. ‘The man was a viper, Sergeant, and I failed to see it. As an assistant he seemed to be competent, reasonably conscientious, good with clients. He was uppish at times, I admit. I knew he helped himself to wine, for instance, and I think he used my stationery for personal correspondence. I ought to have checked him at the outset. I was too indulgent by far. I look for the merits in people and ignore their faults. It was quite beyond imagination that he could be persecuting Miriam. If I had got the smallest suspicion … ’ He shook his head slowly. ‘She, poor innocent, suffered alone. She said not a word about him, Sergeant, not one word.’

‘Why was that, sir?’

Cromer drew a deep breath. ‘That is something I have asked myself repeatedly. I have to admit that I failed her. She was afraid to confide in me. My own beloved wife!’ His knuckles whitened with the force of his grip on the album. ‘Those words in her confession are seared across my soul. To confide in my husband was no solution. She was unable to turn to me in her torment.’

‘There are secrets in most marriages,’ Cribb ventured. He had some sympathy for Miriam Cromer. She was more real to this man as a series of photographs than a wife.

‘She was just a child. What secrets could she have had?’ said Cromer more to himself than Cribb. ‘I take all the responsibility for what happened. Mine is an excitable temperament, and Miriam was terrified how I would react if I knew that Perceval had the means to destroy my reputation, my livelihood. It was easier for her to pay him than confide in me. And when his demands became intolerable she tried to resolve the problem in her own way, poor child.’