Adele Griffin - Picture the Dead

“I studied under the esteemed photographer Monsieur Disderi. Odd fellow but brilliant. Disderi made his money in his portraits of the upper classes, such as the present emperor, Napoleon, who considers him to have procured his very best likenesses. But Disderi will also go to great lengths to authenticate rumors of spirit activity. Why, that gentleman once stood sentinel for twenty-four hours at the Place de la Republique in order to photograph Marie Antoinette’s ghost on the scaffold, in her mobcap and with her hands bound.”

“How did he…when did he…?” A crumb trembles on Aunt’s lip.

“There’d been sightings every October sixteenth, the anniversary of her death. Doubters dismissed these as hearsay. Disderi proved them wrong. One glimpse of this image of the last queen of France would turn your hair stone gray. But that is nothing on Disderi’s journey to Scotland and his singular images of pagan spirits who have haunted Tulloch Castle since the twelfth century.”

Geist’s anecdotes are so captivating that eventually even Quinn leans forward in his chair.

“I want to travel the Continent,” he confesses.

“Go first to the City of Light,” says Geist. “Fill your mind with beauty.” He jumps up to leave the room and returns with a stack of tintypes. “Locke ought to have stayed there. He’s destroyed his sanity. But his images will bear witness to this war long after we are departed.” Geist hands them around for us to examine.

I examine portrait images of young boys with guns high as their chests. Rows of the dying. Rows of hospital beds. A look at Quinn, and I can tell that each image has hit him as a punch.

The pictures have a dizzying effect on me, too. I’m not sure if I’m mesmerized or daydreaming, but the heat is with me all at once as my memory catapults me back to last year, a languid August afternoon. Will and I had strayed from our picnic spot to go boating, and a boy, watching us push off from the bank, had decided to rifle through the belongings we had left behind, including Will’s sketchbook. Ripping out the pages…yes, I remember…the little troublemaker had then set them afloat in the water, and Will had blazed with fury. I’d never seen him in such a temper, and it had taken him the rest of the day to calm himself.

My eyes are staring into Will’s eyes black irises ringed in pale blue.

I open my eyes and Will stands before me in blazing life in his Union uniform. The bottoms of his trousers are wet, and water darkly pools the carpet. His anger is palpable. He is so real, so alive, that I can inhale the tang of the salt water that he has carried in with him. If I reached forward, I could ball my fingers in the rough broadcloth of his jacket, my mouth could find that secret space where the carved notch of his collarbone met his throat and

“Miss Lovell!”

Everyone is looking at me.

I blink. Will is gone. I am slumped in my chair, my teacup has fallen, and its liquid has soaked the carpet.

Quinn has left his chair and is bent on one knee before me.

“Jennie?” he whispers softly. “What’s the matter?”

“Nothing.” I sit up. “I’m sorry.”

“Miss Lovell, are you unwell?” asks Geist.

“No, no, I’m sorry excuse me, I need air.” Quinn helps me to stand, but his hand, gripping bony at my elbow, is no comfort. I shrug him off, but then I am embarrassed, my palms lifted in protest for anyone to follow. I am careful not to look at Aunt Clara as I hasten out.

Alone in the hall, I untie my collar and fan my cheeks with my fingers. Though my fever ebbs, I have little doubt.

Will was here. He was in this house, in that room, if only for a moment. But it was as true a moment as I have ever lived.

On the front hall table rests a small, paper-wrapped package, twine-tied, inscribed with the name Harding . The package is approximately the same size as the plates Geist had inserted and removed from his camera.

A good spy is never afraid to transgress.

I look over my shoulder. Nobody is in the hall.

My heart could take wing, it’s beating so fast as my fingers unpick the twine. The knot gives too slowly. Then I slide a series of identical photos from their wrapping.

Backed and framed in a cardboard slip, a man sits as grim as a tombstone on the same ornate love seat of Geist’s parlor. Above him hovers a delicate, nearly transparent image. Dressed in gauze, a crown of holly leaves twisted through her pale, streaming hair, the angel appears otherworldly and is more exquisite than my most vivid imaginings.

For a moment I am struck paralyzed. Here is a real angel, caught and captured in all her radiant glory, for anyone to see.

Incredible, but true.

I hold it up to the fanlight for a closer look. There is something familiar in the angel’s profile. I decide to take one of the copies, sliding it into my pocket with the rest of my day’s loot before the family comes to collect me. I compose myself, avoiding Quinn’s eye, my own gaze intent on Aunt Clara’s enormous, bustling skirts.

In the carriage, when I dare to look across at Quinn, he ignores me with a cool indifference that makes me miss his brother all the more. How is it that Will even in spectral vision, if that’s what it was can appear more vital and vibrant to me than anyone else in the family?

I don’t look up again for the rest of the ride home, lest anyone see my suffering, which the Pritchetts would only dismiss as a weakness.

In my attic room the light is weak. I move to the window and spread my secreted photograph on the sill. White winter sky exposes the image. And now I can see the slight protrusion of the angel’s front teeth. I retrieve the other photos from my pocket.

The drape of Viviette’s Grecian toga makes a lovely angel’s cloak. I find the downcast eyes, that droplet nose, the bird bones of the neck and wrists, as the angel’s identity reveals herself to me. She is Viviette.

“Maybe Mister Geist listed it as part of her daily chores!” Mavis snorts with amusement.

“Oh, certainly.” I tick off the duties on my fingers. “Lay the grates, polish the andirons, dress up in bedsheets and pose as an angel, dust the bookshelves…”

Mavis presses her knuckles to her mouth so that Aunt Clara won’t hear her giggling fits. We are standing outside Aunt’s bedroom waiting for Madame Broussard to finish taking orders and measurements.

In days past, after Madame has finished with Aunt Clara she attends to me, and so I am waiting on Mrs. Sullivan’s command. “Madame can’t leave this house without seeing to you, Miss Jennie. Hard to say if your frocks are more disrespectful to the living or the dead,” the housekeeper had clucked.

It’s the dismal truth. Both of my mourning dresses are threadbare at the elbow and discolored along the seams. Hardly any of my original buttons and neither of my original collars remain. It has been more than two years since I’ve owned anything new, and my old, black-dyed frocks strain against the predictable directions where I’ve filled out.