‘Sheesh! How can you keep so calm? Face to face with a dead body like this? Someone you know?’
‘I’m not calm! I’m as distressed as you are. I’m revolted and angry. It’s just that it’s my job to stare at corpses and make them talk back to me. And, if you’ll be silent and use your keen eye for detail, Nat, she’ll start talking to you as well. She would want us to hear what she has to say. Think of this as the last thing we can do for her.’
In an attempt to dampen the photographer’s spiralling panic, Joe began to involve him in the scene by shooting a series of questions at him. ‘Look at the wound. Focus on it. That’s the idea! Do you see much blood? Come on! Answer me!’
Nathan focused on the spots of dried blood surrounding the blade. ‘No. I’d have expected a gush, a trail … Heart wound-you’d expect a fountain … There’s no more than a spot or two or five. All around the blade. Like a speared rose. And it’s dark brown. She bled some time ago?’
‘Right … “On her left breast A mole cinque-spotted, like the crimson drops I’ the bottom of a cowslip,”’ murmured Joe. ‘That’s the sleeping Imogen in Cymbeline. But this poor girl is beyond sleeping.’
‘You can stand here, quoting bloody Shakespeare at a time like this?’ Nathan’s voice was strangled.
‘I find myself responding to the killer’s imperative-as you do. It’s a scripted craziness. An Elizabethan melodrama we’re being offered. Perhaps if we follow him in his descent to hell, we’ll catch sight of his ugly features.
‘Look again. What’s he telling us? The wound was placed with precision, would you say? Nathan?’
‘Anyone would. I’m sure I’ve never seen a heart wound before, not even a knife wound of any kind, but it does look sort of … meant … placed.’
‘Expertly done, I think,’ Joe confirmed. ‘And what do you make of the hair, spread out like that? And the careful draping of the dress?’
‘Lord knows! It’s crazy! I can only say again-sickness.’
‘Not crazy. I believe it’s very deliberate. Have you seen this white dress before?’
Nathan shrugged and shook his head. ‘It looks very old. Like something an ancestor might have worn. Hey! Where is the original wife?’
Joe pointed to the corner in which the cairn of remains still stood, the shattered head, as before, displayed on its red silk cushion.
It triggered in Nathan the same nauseated revulsion that Joe had felt the previous day. ‘More madness! Anywhere around here a feller can be sick?’ murmured Nathan.
‘No, no! Stiff upper lip, old man!’ advised Joe. ‘Quite enough bodily fluids around here to keep the police busy. Don’t add to them. Tell you what-if you need to pop out for a breath of air, why not go and pick up your bag? You put it down outside. Go and fetch your camera gear. Have you brought a flash?’
‘You’re not thinking …?’
‘I certainly am! First thing we do these days. Photograph the scene. If you object, pass me the equipment and I’ll do it myself. We can be quite certain that the man from Marseille won’t have thought to bring a camera with him.’
‘No! You unfeeling bugger! I won’t do it!’ Nathan protested angrily. ‘I can’t. You’ve no idea what you’re asking. And I’m wondering just exactly when you’re going to get up the courage to speak her name. Or are you waiting for me to say it? Don’t you have to get a close friend to make the identification? I can see you’re going to do everything by the book.’
Joe waited, uncertain whether the American intended ever to address another word to him. He had pushed Joe angrily into the background and his whole attention was focused on the pale features. Finally, he whispered: ‘It’s Estelle. My friend. She’s been lying dead on a cold marble tomb this night when she should have been warm and safe in my bed.’
He turned aside and his body began to shake with dry sobs.
Chapter Eighteen
Nathan was standing frozen and distant, marking his disapproval of the detective’s schemes, when Joe returned with the bag of equipment.
Understanding his revulsion, Joe was almost ready to let the moment pass unrecorded. Professional concern, however, won out over emotion, and he firmly opened the case and took out the Ermanox camera. With relief, he noted that it was the same model as the one owned by his friend Cyril Tate. News photographer and society columnist, raffish Man-About-London, Cyril had nervously agreed to Joe’s borrowing his precious camera for a weekend as a trade-off for information received.
New and very expensive. Joe sensed the same tension he’d provoked in Cyril in every line of Nathan’s body. A true camera-fiend would rather see his lover in Joe’s hands than his camera, he thought grumpily. He affected an air of confidence to reassure the trembling Nathan and was careful to first put the safety strap around his neck. He remembered to allow for the frontal weight of the enormous lens as he adjusted his hands to fit comfortably around the black leather-covered body, his fingers finding their place at once on the buttons and levers. Aware of Nathan’s proprietorial eye on him, he set about his task. His first gesture was to remove the lens cap and automatically put it in Nathan’s waiting hand.
‘Widest aperture, slowest speed,’ Nathan gritted. ‘If you must. You’ll find an exposure meter and a flash attachment in the bag. First plate’s in.’
Joe found what he needed and satisfied himself that the shots he was planning were possible. He silently made some adjustments. ‘These will be no rival for noire et blanche,’ he said awkwardly. ‘The French police will take pictures but I’d like to have our own for reference. Do you have the means of developing these?’
‘Anything. I’ve got a small laboratory next to my studio. The lord provides when he scents success. And he’s interested. He knows a thing or two about photography and he’s got a line to the illustrated journals. You’re standing too far away!’
‘For artistic perfection, perhaps,’ said Joe easily. ‘But for forensic reference, this is just about right. A locating shot. Close-ups will follow.’
As he spoke, he peered through the viewfinder and clicked the shutter. He took an overhead shot of the body and a close-up of the wound, working his way around the three sides of the tomb. At the far end, his foot caught on a solid object. He grunted and bent to examine it.
‘Here’s her attaché case,’ he called to Nathan and, receiving no response, went on: ‘It’s got her red dress in it. The one she was wearing at breakfast yesterday. And here are her shoes. A pair of black espadrilles. She must have brought the change of outfit into the chapel in the case and slipped into Aliénore’s gown and ballet shoes to enact this charade. Why in hell would she do that? Better leave this for the French Inspector to investigate.’
Nathan sighed and forced out words between his teeth. ‘Posing? She was posing! It’s what she did all the time. The outfit’s straight out of the dressing-up chest. She was planning a joke on someone. I’d have guessed-me. Well, it would have worked. I thought for a moment she was going to spring up and laugh at me.’
‘Did you tell her you were coming in to take some slides?’
‘Yes. We talked about it at lunch time.’
‘That may have given her the idea?’
‘Could have. That’s what we’re looking at, Joe-a practical joke. The sort you English like to play on each other … “What a hoot! What a jape! I say, do let’s!”’
Joe was disconcerted to hear in his accent echoes of Estelle’s own very English voice. He ignored the man’s rudeness, sensing his emotions were turning from shock and disbelief and hardening into acceptance and recrimination in a pattern familiar to Joe. Someone was to blame and quite often it was the unfortunate policeman, being on the spot, who was the one to get it in the neck. Joe was prepared for Nathan to demand next to know how he could have let such a thing happen. But he had underestimated the American. Nathan’s mind was running on retribution directed at a deserving target.