These are excuses. My real reason is that I’m afraid of what my hunt will reveal. Maybe I’ll discover that my mother isn’t the only parent who lied to me.
Maybe my father did too.
When I found him, I learned that he, by his own admission, is capable of murder. Maybe the blood on his hands includes Ellen Casey’s. I’m forced to acknowledge the other reason I can’t introduce him to Barrett. It’s because Barrett, with his policeman’s instincts, might think my father is guilty and feel duty bound to arrest him. I can’t let that happen unless I find out, heaven forbid, that it’s true.
On Fleet Street, the headquarters of the Daily World dominates the other tall buildings where rival newspapers have their offices. Its huge size, Greek columns, Moorish arched windows, and Baroque turrets still impress me even after I’ve worked there for more than a year. It rises up among the smoke and steam from printing presses, impervious to the traffic of wagons, omnibuses, and pedestrians. Above the giant clock on the corner, the Mariner insignia—a marble sculpture of a ship—honors Sir Gerald’s past as a shipping magnate.
Inside, on the ground floor, the giant presses and Linotype machines clatter. The whole building vibrates, and I taste the fumes of chemical ink, hot metal, and engine oil. It seems extraordinary that I was married this morning and I’m now at work as usual. Despite the troubles my work has gotten me into, I like it much better than I would a life of nothing but domestic chores. Barrett’s mother wouldn’t understand.
On the second floor are the photography and engraving studios. I find Mick in one of the darkrooms, with negative plates in the rack and wet prints hanging from pegs clipped to a string above the work top.
“I haven’t developed the crime scene photos yet,” he says. “I did the pictures of your wedding first. The society editor wants ’em for tomorrow’s paper.”
I hate the idea of my wedding splashed across the society page, and not only because I need my privacy. Publicity about me could lead to more coverage of Ellen Casey’s murder and more calls for information regarding my father’s whereabouts.
Mick points to the prints. “I think they turned out pretty good.”
“Yes, splendid.” He’s done a good job with composition, focus, and lighting, but I wince because my face so clearly reveals my emotions. I feel as exposed as if I were naked. And Mick didn’t neglect to get a shot of Barrett and me kissing.
“Don’t give the editor that one,” I say.
Mick grins and nods.
“Let’s develop the crime scene photos.” I set down my satchel, which contains, amid the necessities I carry around, my father’s photograph of Sally and me. It’s another that will never appear in the paper.
“Ain’t you got other things to do on your weddin’ day?” Mick says.
“I’m not meeting Barrett until later.”
We pour fresh chemical solutions into trays, set out the four flat cases that contain the negative plates from Charles Firth’s cameras, and turn off the gaslights. Accustomed to working in complete darkness, by touch, we open the cases one by one, remove the plates, and immerse them in the solutions. The darkness makes it easier to talk about personal matters.
“I’m sorry about Catherine,” I say.
Mick pauses before he says, “Yeah, well.”
“I’ll give her a talking-to next time I see her.”
He sighs. “Don’t bother. Come to think, I’m glad she gave me the air. Showed me it’s high time I gave up.”
I’m sorry that I’m happily in love while he’s not. “There’ll be someone else for you.”
“Right.” Mick doesn’t sound convinced.
With the negative plates safely in the fixer solution, we put the lights on and study the results. The dark and bright values are reversed, but we can see that three images are of the empty crypt.
“If there were any ghosts, he didn’t get ’em,” Mick says.
The fourth shows Charles Firth. It’s very light—underexposed—and out of focus, as if he moved while the shutter snapped. I shiver, knowing it’s the last photograph of him alive.
“He musta taken his own picture by mistake while he was setting up,” Mick says.
“It doesn’t look like there are clues in these. But let’s print them just to make sure we don’t miss anything.”
Working in the red light of the safe lamp, we enlarge and make duplicate prints of the four photographs. In those of the empty crypt, the rough texture of the brick walls and the carved ornamentation on the stone sarcophagi are visible; they’re long exposures. When we behold the photograph of Charles Firth, Mick says, “Whoa!”
Sometimes a print is so different from the negative, it’s as though photography is a magician’s act. The reversal of the values is a black cloak, and the secrets behind the cloak are revealed when the printing process restores the values to normal. This print is still out of focus and too dark, but it reveals subtle details that we missed in the negative. Charles Firth stands with his body tilted and arms out to his sides, as if he’s stumbled off-balance. The air hose on the self-timer device is a fuzzy line connecting his right hand to the camera outside the frame. A pale figure, blurred by motion, assaults him. It’s vaguely human in shape, only its head distinguishable from its amorphous body. Firth’s face is blurred too, but I can see that his eyes are wide, his mouth open as if in a scream of shock and pain.
“Is that a ghost?” Mick says, his voice hushed with awe.
My skepticism provokes me to immediate resistance. “Of course not.” A ghost in the photograph would lend more credence to the theory that a supernatural force is responsible for the crime. The waters are getting muddier, the logical process of identifying suspects and motives more complicated. But the photograph is an astonishing and not entirely unwelcome new clue. “But it looks as if Charles Firth took a photograph of his own murder.”
* * *
Sir Gerald’s office is located on the top floor of the building. Although it’s past six o’clock, Mick and I aren’t surprised to find him there; he often works late. In addition to the newspaper, he runs the banking empire that earned him his second fortune. His first fortune came from his shipping fleet. He now owns several newspapers around the kingdom, and he’s building himself a news empire. It’s the rags-to-riches story of a cabin boy from Liverpool.
Now, the helmsman of all his businesses, he sits in his leather chair, reading glasses perched on his nose, studying documents by the light of a lamp suspended over his massive wooden desk. The telescope on the windowsill points toward a view of the city’s rooftops as they vanish in the fog. Business isn’t the only thing that keeps him at his desk long after dark. Hugh tells me that Sir Gerald is devastated because his son Tristan fled to Switzerland. After Tristan quit the priesthood, Sir Gerald had put him to work at the bank, intending for him to learn the ropes at all the Mariner businesses and prepare to take charge after his father’s retirement. Tristan’s departure has dashed Sir Gerald’s dearest hopes as well as broken Hugh’s heart. Sir Gerald doesn’t want to go home and face his loss.
Now, as Mick and I hover outside his door, Sir Gerald says, “Come in.”