The Shadow in the North Page 10

  "I suppose you'll want to buy a field next," she said. "You're no better than Fred. Where is he, anyway?"

  "Gone to Elliott and Fry's," said Charles. "Your Mr Bellmann's getting married, and they're taking an engagement portrait."

  "Married?" she said, astonished. The idea of marriage seemed so at odds with the Bellmann she'd seen at Baltic House the week before that she could hardly imagine it.

  "This field idea. . ." began Webster, not interested in Bellmann. "What d'you think, Charles? We'd have to build a wall, and lay the rails perfectly level parallel to it, facing south. We could make it as long as we liked. Roof it over with glass, perhaps, against the weather. . ."

  "Not yet," said Sally. "There's no money for it. Get this studio built and earning as much as you say it will, and we'll see. Mr Blaine, it looks as though you can have your office space. Do you need a full-time clerk? Or would just mornings be enough?"

  The tracking camera that Webster mentioned was an invention of his own, based on an idea from a photographer called Muybridge. It only existed on paper so far, since they hadn't had the space to set it up. It was really a battery of cameras mounted on wheels, which would be drawn on rails past a fixed point and exposed in rapid succession in order to capture the movement of a subject at that point. The idea of photographing movement was in the air at the time; many people were experimenting with different techniques, but no one was close to a breakthrough. Webster believed that he had part of the answer in his tracking camera; Charles Bertram was working on more sensitive emulsions to allow faster exposures. If they could find a way of capturing a negative on paper instead of glass, they might be able to mount a roll of sensitized paper behind one lens, and use that instead of the tracking camera - provided they could make an accurate enough mechanism to pull the paper through without tearing it. If they managed that, they could use the new studio for the zoetrope, as Charles called it. There was a lot to be done.

  Sally and Mr Blaine left the others discussing it happily, and went back inside to think about what they needed in the way of office help.

  Early that afternoon, Lord Wytham's daughter, Lady Mary, was sitting in the Winter Garden of his house in Cavendish Square. Too big to be called a conservatory, this glass-and-iron structure contained palms, rare ferns, orchids and a pool in which swam slow dark fish. Lady Mary was dressed in white: a high-necked ornate dress of silk, with a pearl choker, and everything the colour of snow, like a sacrificial victim. She sat in a bamboo chair under the fronds of a large fern. There was a book in her hand, but she wasn't reading.

  The day was chilly and dry, with a hazy brightness that the glass and greenery diffused into something almost sub-aqueous. From the middle of the Winter Garden Lady Mary could see nothing but green, and hear nothing but the trickle of water that fed the pool and the occasional gurgle of steam in the pipes along the wall.

  Lady Mary's beauty was not a fashionable sort. The taste of the time ran to women built like sofas, with an air of permanence, comfort and stuffing, whereas Lady Mary was more like a wild bird or a young animal - slender and light-boned, with her mother's warm colouring and her father's wide, grey eyes. She was all delicacy and shy fire; and she had discovered already that her beauty was a curse.

  It awed people. Even hardened charmers, eligible young men about town, felt uneasy in her presence, clumsy and dirty and tongue-tied. Quite early on in her teens she had felt intuitively that instead of attracting love, she might even helplessly repel it, through being too beautiful. Already there were shadows of tragedy in her cloud-coloured eyes; and her new engagement was only part of it.

  After she had been sitting still for some time, she heard voices from the library beyond the glass door. She trembled; the book fell from her hand to the iron grille in the floor.

  The door opened and a footman said, "Mr Bellmann, my lady."

  Axel Bellmann, in a grey morning coat, stepped forward and bowed slightly. Lady Mary smiled at the footman.

  "Thank you, Edward," she said.

  The footman withdrew, and the door whispered shut. Lady Mary sat quite still at the edge of the pool, her hands folded in her lap, as quiet as the white water-lily beside her. Bellmann coughed gently; in the palm-laden air of the Winter Garden, it sounded like the soft growl a leopard might make before dropping from a branch on to the frail back of a gazelle.

  He moved towards her and spoke.

  "Am I permitted to wish you a good afternoon?"

  "I see no reason to forbid it."

  He smiled slightly. He was standing two or three yards away, hands behind his back, a shaft of pale sunlight gilding one side of his heavy blond face.

  "You look enchanting," he said.

  She didn't reply at once, but reached up and broke off a piece of the glossy palm leaf that hung just over her head, and shredded it quietly with her nails.

  Then she said, "Thank you." It was little more than a whisper.

  He pulled up another chair and sat down close by. "You will be interested, I hope, to hear my plans for our married life," he said. "We shall live at Hyde Park Gate for the time being, though naturally we shall need a place in the country. Do you enjoy the sea, Mary? Do you like sailing?"

  "I don't know. I have never been at sea."

  "You will enjoy it. I am having a steam yacht built; it will be launched in time for the wedding. We might spend our honeymoon aboard. You could help me choose her name. I hope you will launch her."

  She made no reply. Her eyes were cast down sightlessly; the bits of shredded palm leaf lay on her white lap. Her hands were still.

  "Look at me," he said. His voice was hard and even.

  She looked up at the man she had agreed to marry, and tried to keep her expression empty.

  "The photographers are coming," he said. "I wish to have a picture that expresses pleasure and satisfaction in our betrothal. As my fiancee, as my wife, as the hostess of my house, you will not use any public occasion to express discontent, whatever you might feel privately. Naturally, I hope you will not be discontented anyway. Do you understand?"

  She found herself trembling. "Yes, Mr Bellmann," she managed to say.

  "Oh, not Mr Bellmann any more. My name is Axel, and that is what you will call me. Let me hear you say it."

  "Yes, Axel."

  "Good. Now tell me about these plants. I know very little about plants. What is this one called?"

  Promptly at two-thirty, Mr Protherough of Elliott and Fry's arrived at Lord Wytham's house. His three assistants had an unexpected hour off, with five shillings apiece to keep quiet about it; and in their place were Frederick, and Jim, and Charles Bertram.

  Jim was wearing his best suit and had his hair slicked down flat. Frederick, with darkened eyebrows and cheek-pads to fill his face out, was scarcely recognizable. Mr Protherough, a sandy-haired young man with spectacles, had entered into the spirit of it, but Frederick knew that his job was at risk if anything went wrong.

  The footman who opened the door was disinclined to let them in at first.

  "Tradesmen's entrance," he sniffed, and made to close the door.

  The Honourable Charles, who was dressed with faultless elegance, said, "One moment, my man. Do you know who you're trying to keep out of your master's house?"

  The footman opened the door an inch wider. The trace of a sneer appeared on his face.

  "Yes," he said. "Photographers. Tradesmen. Tradesmen's entrance round the corner."

  "Tell me," said Charles, "when Sir Frederick Leighton was painting Lady Wytham's portrait - did you direct him to the tradesmen's entrance?"

  The footman was now looking apprehensive. "No," he said cautiously.

  "My card," said Charles, extracting it wearily. "Have the goodness to inform your master that the photographic artists have arrived. Did arrive, in fact, promptly at two-thirty, but are now -" he looked at a gold watch, "nearly five minutes late."

  The footman looked at the card, gulped, and shrank at least three inches.


  "Oh. Ah. I beg your pardon, sir, I'm sure. Please come in. I shall inform his lordship of your prompt arrival, sir. This way, if you please, sir. . ."

  Jim assumed a haughty expression (not easy, after a cheerful wink from Charles) and helped Frederick carry in the equipment. They were shown into the Winter Garden. While Mr Protherough organized the setting and checked the light, Frederick and Jim set up the tripod and prepared the plates. They would be wet-collodion pictures; studios preferred the familiar process for large formal photographs - it was fiddly, but it guaranteed a good result. Charles, meanwhile, was talking to Lord Wytham.

  It was warm in the Winter Garden; the sun was thin, but the steam in the pipes kept the air close and moist. Jim, thinking of nothing in particular, mopped his brow as he adjusted the leg of a tripod. He was aware of Bellmann and Lady Mary coming round a corner of the path, and looked up - and then felt as if he'd been struck over the heart with a hammer.

  Lady Mary. She was so perfect he could hardly stand. Lovely wasn't the word - nor beautiful - he felt as if he'd been picked up like a leaf in a hurricane and whirled away helpless, suddenly and totally and utterly in love. It was quite physical, the effect it had; his knees shook and he had to remember to breathe. He wondered (with the part of his mind that wasn't stunned, and could still think) how it was that Bellmann could stand there calmly and talk, while her hand lay on his arm. As if it meant nothing! She was wearing something white and her hair was dark and glossy; her cheeks were warm and her eyes wide and misty. . . He nearly groaned aloud.

  In a dream, Jim moved automatically where Mr Protherough told him, handed a plate to Frederick, held a palm branch out of the way, shifted her bamboo chair nearer the pool, and propped up a white sheet just out of the picture to reflect a little more light on the shadow-side of her face. All the time he talked to her passionately inside his head, and listened with awed delight to her imagined responses. . .

  Bellmann didn't matter a bit. He was irrelevant. She marry him? Ridiculous. It was impossible. Look at the way she sat beside him, proud and separate and dreaming - look at how those slender lovely fingers idly removed a fleck of moss from her skirt and trailed it in the water - look at the warm tenseness of her neck just under the dusky pink ear where the hair curled back waywardly . . . Jim was lost for ever.

  Around him, the photographic session went on smoothly. Mr Protherough dived beneath the camera cloth, exposed the plate, emerged again; Frederick handed him a new plate, took the exposed one back, and Lord Wytham hovered dimly in the background and then left them alone. Charles watched it all with the proprietorial ease of a landowner watching his gamekeepers at work. They took a dozen pictures altogether, including one of Lady Mary alone, for which Jim gave silent thanks.

  When they'd nearly finished, Frederick leant across and whispered:

  "Careful, Jim. You're staring."

  "Oh, God," Jim groaned, and turned away to hand Mr Protherough the last plate. This was for a picture of the couple standing beside some classical goddess, but Charles broke in to suggest that Lady Mary should sit. It would improve the balance of the composition, he said, and Mr Protherough agreed.

  "Bring the chair, please Mr Sanders," said Charles to Frederick, as Jim helped Mr Protherough turn the tripod around. Frederick picked up the bamboo chair from beside the pool and carried it to the statue.

  Suddenly Jim was aware of a silence.

  He looked up to see Bellman holding Frederick's arm and staring at him intently. Frederick was gazing back in innocent bewilderment.

  Oh, keep it up, Fred, thought Jim desperately, he's rumbled you. . .

  "Tell me," said Bellmann (and everyone was still, now, including Mr Protherough) "were you at Lady Harborough's house last week?"

  "Me, sir?" Frederick inquired in a gentle studious voice. "No, indeed, sir."

  "Posing as a guest?" went on Bellmann, with an edge to his voice.

  "A guest at Lady Harborough's? Oh, no, not me, sir. Shall I put the chair this side, or that, sir?"

  "Last week," said Bellmann more loudly, "a man who if he was not you was your double, was at Lady Harborough's house on the evening of her charity concert. That man was prying and watching the other guests in what I thought was a suspicious manner. I ask you again: were you that man?"

  But before Frederick could reply, Lady Mary herself spoke.

  "You're forgetting," she said to Bellmann, "I was there too. I saw the man you mean, and this isn't him."

  "If I may conjecture, sir," Frederick put in diffidently, "you might possibly have seen my cousin Frederick. He's by way of being a private detective, and several ladies and gentlemen have patronized his services where security and the safety of property are concerned."

  He blinked innocently.

  "H'mm," said Bellmann. "Very well. But it is a remarkably close resemblance." He stood aside for Frederick to put the chair down.

  Jim could feel Mr Protherough relax: for if Frederick had been discovered, he'd have lost his job at Elliott and Fry's. They were all taking a risk - and what were they hoping to gain? It was daft.

  But if they hadn't come, he'd never have seen her. She sounded so young; she could hardly be more than sixteen. . . What the hell was going on, that she should marry a man like that?

  Jim looked at Bellmann more carefully as he posed, standing beside the chair and gazing down at her. There was danger in that heavy face, Jim felt; but for whom? Lady Mary was toying with a handkerchief, in a sort of sulky boredom, while Bellmann stood massively over her. He put his hand on her shoulder and obediently she sighed and composed herself, looking steadily through those wonderful cloud-grey eyes at the lens.

  The picture was taken; the plate was put away, and they started to pack up. Charles strolled along the path, talking easily to Bellmann - and then came the moment that Jim had been longing for for twenty minutes, or a lifetime.

  She'd stayed by the statue, lost in thought, while Frederick helped Mr Protherough with the camera and tripod. One hand rested on the back of the chair, the other twisted a curl around her finger; and then she looked up and saw Jim - and her eyes were shining.

  He took a step towards her. He couldn't help it. She looked over her shoulder swiftly, saw they were alone, and leant forward so their faces were only inches apart. He felt dizzy, and he put out a hand to her, and -

  "Is it him?" she said quietly, swiftly. "The man from Lady Harborough's?"

  "Yes," said Jim. His voice was hoarse. "My lady, I -"

  "Is he a detective? Really?"

  "Yes. Something's wrong, isn't it? Can you talk?"

  "Please," she whispered. "Please help. I don't know who else to speak to. I'm all alone here, and I must get away. I can't marry him -"

  "Listen," he said, his heart bursting - "can you remember this? My name's Jim Taylor, of Garland and Lockhart, Burton Street. We're investigating your Mr Bellmann. There's something rum going on. But we'll help, I promise. Get in touch as soon as you can and we'll--"

  "The chair back here, Taylor, if you please," called Mr Protherough.

  Jim picked up the chair and smiled at her. A little answering smile passed across her face and was gone, like the wind in a cornfield, and then she turned away.

  He said nothing to the others as they left. There was nothing he could say; he could hardly believe he was awake, or even alive. He might have felt like singing if he hadn't felt like laughing, and crying bitter tears, all at the same time.

  Later that day, a short, thickset young man was hammering at the door of a respectable lodging-house in Lambeth. Beside him on the step stood another man - a bruiser, to judge by his flattened nose and cauliflower ears. Jim would have recognized them, they were the men he'd rescued Mackinnon from in the Britannia Music-Hall.

  When the door was opened (by an elderly woman in a neat apron) they pushed inside without a word and slammed it shut behind them.

  "Listen carefully," said the young man, holding the handle of a stout cane under the woman's chin. "Youn
g lady with a birthmark on her face. Where is she?"

  "Oh! Merciful Heavens - who are you? What do you want?" gasped the landlady. "Let go of my wrist! What are you doing?"

  The bruiser had her arm behind her. The young man said, "We want to find her. Take us to her - now. And don't shriek out, else my friend here'll break your arm."

  "Oh! Oh, please, don't hurt me! Let me go, please -"

  The bruiser, at a nod from the other, let go, and the landlady fell against the banister in the narrow hall.

  "Upstairs," she gasped. "Second floor."

  "Go on then," said the man with the cane, and she stumbled upstairs ahead of them.

  Mr Harris (for that was his name) prodded the old woman's back with his stick as they climbed.

  "Not quick enough," he said. "What's your name, by the way?"

  "Mrs Elphick," she said with difficulty. "Please - my heart isn't strong -"

  "Oh, dear," said Mr Harris. "Mackinnon broke it, has he?"

  They were on the first-floor landing. She slumped against the wall, her hand to her breast.

  "I don't know what you mean," she said faintly.

  "Stop dawdling and get a move on. We need a woman's pure and guiding light, don't we, Sackville?"

  The bruiser grunted a simian agreement, and prodded Mrs Elphick into movement. They climbed the next staircase and stopped outside the door of the first room.

  "Well now, Sackville," said Mr Harris, "this is where we call upon your particular talents. Mrs Elphick, you are about to witness a scene that may distress you. Bad luck."

  "Oh, no, please -" the lady said, as Sackville the bruiser took a step backwards and then kicked the door hard with the sole of his foot, just beside the lock. It splintered at once and crashed open, to a startled cry from inside. Sackville shoved the broken door aside and held it back for Mr Harris, who walked through slowly, tapping his cane into the palm of his hand and looking around curiously.

  Isabel Meredith, half her face drained of blood and the other half flaring like a fire by contrast, stood by her table, holding some intricate piece of embroidery.

  "What do you want?" she whispered. "Who are you?"

  "Mackinnon's what we want. You're looking after him. Does your landlady know?" said Mr Harris malevolently. He turned to Mrs Elphick. "Did you know, my good woman, that your tenant's been keeping a man in here? I think he's a man, anyway, except that he keeps running away, which a man don't do usually. Is he here at the moment, Miss Birthmark?"