CHAPTER IV.
THE STORY OF THE PHOTOGRAPHS
The Inspector scanned me close for a few minutes in silence. Heseemed doubtful, suspicious. At last he made a new move. "I believeyou, Miss Callingham," he said, more gently. "I can see this trainof thought distresses you too much. But I can see, too, our bestchance lies in supplying you with independent clues which you maywork out for yourself. You must re-educate your memory. You want toknow all about this murder, of course. Well, now, look over thesepapers. They'll tell you in brief what little we know about it. Andthey may succeed in striking afresh some resonant chord in yourmemory."
He handed me a book of pasted newspaper paragraphs, interspersedhere and there in red ink with little manuscript notes and comments.I began to read it with profound interest. It was so strange for methus to learn for the first time the history of my own life; for Iwas quite ignorant as yet of almost everything about my First State,and my father and mother.
The paragraphs told me the whole story of the crime, as far as itwas known to the world, from the very beginning. First of all, inthe papers, came the bald announcement that a murder had beencommitted in a country town in Staffordshire; and that the victimwas Mr. Vivian Callingham, a gentleman of means, residing in his ownhouse, The Grange, at Woodbury. Mr. Callingham was the inventor ofthe acmegraphic process. The servants, said the telegram to theLondon papers, had heard the sound of a pistol-shot, about half-pasteight at night, coming from the direction of Mr. Callingham'slibrary. Aroused by the report, they rushed hastily to the spot, andbroke open the door, which was locked from within. As they did so, ahorrible sight met their astonished eyes. Mr. Callingham's dead bodylay extended on the ground, shot right through the heart, andweltering in its life-blood. Miss Callingham stood by his side,transfixed with horror, and mute in her agony. On the floor lay thepistol that had fired the fatal shot. And just as the servantsentered, for one second of time, the murderer who was otherwisewholly unknown, was seen to leap from the window into the shrubberybelow. The gardener rushed after him, and jumped down at the samespot. But the murderer had disappeared as if by magic. It wasconjectured he must have darted down the road at full speed, vaultedthe gate, which was usually locked, and made off at a rapid run forthe open country. Up to date of going to press, the Telegraph said,he was still at large and had not been apprehended.
That was the earliest account--bald, simple, unvarnished. Then camemysterious messages from the Central Press about the absence of anyclue to identify the stranger. He hadn't entered the house by anyregular way, it seemed; unless, indeed, Mr. Callingham had broughthim home himself and let him in with the latchkey. None of theservants had opened the door that evening to any suspiciouscharacter; not a soul had they seen, nor did any of them know a manwas with their master in the library. They heard voices, to besure--voices, loud at times and angry,--but they supposed it was Mr.Callingham talking with his daughter. Till roused by the fatalpistol-shot, the gardener said, they had no cause for alarm. Eventhe footmarks the stranger might have left as he leaped from thewindow were obliterated by the prints of the gardener's boots as hejumped hastily after him. The only person who could cast any lightupon the mystery at all was clearly Miss Callingham, who was in theroom at the moment. But Miss Callingham's mind was completelyunhinged for the present by the nervous shock she had received asher father fell dead before her. They must wait a few days till sherecovered consciousness, and then they might confidently hope thatthe murderer would be identified, or at least so described that thepolice could track him.
After that, I read the report of the coroner's inquest. The factsthere elicited added nothing very new to the general view of thecase. Only, the servants remarked on examination, there was astrange smell of chemicals in the room when they entered; and thedoctors seemed to suggest that the smell might be that ofchloroform, mixed with another very powerful drug known to affectthe memory. Miss Callingham's present state, they thought, mightthus perhaps in part be accounted for.
You can't imagine how curious it was for me to see myself thusimpersonally discussed at such a distance of time, or to learn solong after that for ten days or more I had been the central objectof interest to all reading England. My name was bandied aboutwithout the slightest reserve. I trembled to see how cavalierly thepress had treated me.
As I went on, I began to learn more and more about my father. He hadmade money in Australia, it was said, and had come to live atWoodbury some fourteen years earlier, where my mother had died whenI was a child of four; and some accounts said she was a widow offortune. My father had been interested in chemistry and photography,it seemed, and had lately completed a new invention, the acmegraph,for taking successive photographs at measured intervals of so manyseconds by electric light. He was a grave, stern man, the paperssaid, more feared than loved by his servants and neighbours; butnobody about was known to have a personal grudge against him. On thecontrary, he lived at peace with all men. The motive for the murderremained to the end a complete mystery.
On the second morning of the inquest, however, a curious thinghappened. The police, it appeared, had sealed up the room where themurder took place, and allowed nobody to enter it till the inquirywas over. But after the jury came round to view the room, thepoliceman in charge found the window at the back of the house hadbeen recently opened, and the box with the photographic apparatushad been stolen from the library. Till that moment nobody hadattached any importance to the presence of this camera. It hadn'teven been opened and examined by the police, who had carefully notedeverything else in the library. But as soon as the box was missedstrange questions began to be asked and conjecturally answered. Thepolice for the first time then observed that though it was half-pasteight at night when the murder occurred, and the lamp was notlighted, the witnesses who burst first into the room described allthey saw as if they had seen it clearly. They spoke of things asthey would be seen in a very bright light, with absolutedefiniteness. This set up inquiry, and the result of the inquiry wasto bring out the fact, which in the excitement of the moment hadescaped the notice of all the servants, that as they entered theroom and stared about at the murder, the electric flash of theapparatus was actually in operation. But the scene itself haddiverted their attention from the minor matter of the light thatshowed it.
The Inspector had been watching me narrowly as I read theseextracts. When I reached that point, he broke in with a word ofexplanation.
"Well, that put me on the track, you see," he said, leaning forwardonce more. "I thought to myself, if the light was acting, then thewhole apparatus must necessarily have been at work, and the scene asit took place must have been photographed, act by act and step bystep, exactly as it happened. At the time the murderer, whoever hewas, can't have known the meaning of the flashes. But later, he musthave come to learn in some way what the electric light meant, andmust have realised, sooner than we did, that therein the box, in theform of six successive negatives of the stages in the crime, was theevidence that would infallibly convict him of this murder." Hestroked his moustache thoughtfully. "And to think, too," he went onwith a somewhat sheepish air, "we should have had those photographsthere in our power all those days and nights, and have let them inthe end slip like that through our fingers! To think he should havefound it out sooner than we! To think that an amateur like themurderer should have outwitted us!"
"But how do you know," I cried, "there was ever more than onephotograph? How do you know this wasn't the only negative?"
"Because," the Inspector answered quickly, pointing to a figure inthe corner of the proof, "do you see that six? Well, that tells thetale. Each plate of the series was numbered so in the apparatus.Number six could only fall into focus after numbers one, and two,and three, and four, and five, had first been photographed. We'veonly got the last--and least useful for our purpose. There must havebeen five earlier ones, showing every stage of the crime, if onlywe'd known it."
I was worked up now to a strange pitch of excitement.
"And
how did this one come into your possession?" I asked, allbreathless. "If you managed to lay your hands on one, why not on allsix of them?"
The Inspector drew a long breath.
"Ah, that's the trouble!" he replied, still gazing at me hard. "Yousee, it was this way. As soon as we found the camera was missing, wecame to the conclusion the murderer must have returned to The Grangeto fetch it. But it was a large and heavy box, and the only one ofits kind as yet manufactured; so, to carry it away in his handswould no doubt have led to instant detection. I concluded,therefore, the man would take off the box entire, so as to preventthe danger of removing the plates on the spot; and as soon as hereached a place of safety in the shrubbery, he'd fling away thecamera, either destroying the incriminating negatives then and thereor carrying them off with him. The details of the invention hadalready been explained to me by your father's instrument-maker, whoset up the clockwork for him from his own designs; and I knew thatthe removal of the plates from the box was a delicate, and to someextent a difficult, operation. So I felt sure they could only havebeen taken out in a place of comparative safety, not far from thehouse; and I searched the shrubbery carefully, to find the camera."
"And you found it at last?" I asked, unable to restrain myagitation.
"I found it at last," he answered, "near the far end of the grounds,just flung into the deep grass, behind a clump of lilacs. The camerawas there intact, but five plates were missing. The sixth, fromwhich the positive you hold in your hand was taken, had got jammedin the mechanism in the effort to remove it. Evidently the murdererhad tried to take out the plates in a very great hurry and withtrembling hands, as was not unnatural. He had succeeded with five,when the sixth stuck fast in the groove of the clockwork. Just atthat moment, as we judged, either an alarm was raised in the rear,or some panic fear seized on him. Probably the fellow judged rightthat the most incriminating pictures of all had by that time beenremoved, and that the last would only show his back, if it includedhim at all, or if he came into focus. Perhaps he had even been ableunconsciously to count the flashes at the moment, and knew thatbefore the sixth flash arrived he was on the ledge of the window. Atany rate, he clearly gave up the attempt to remove the sixth, andflung the whole apparatus away from him in a sudden access ofhorror. We guessed as much both from the appearance of the spotwhere the grass was trampled down, and the way the angle of thecamera was imbedded forcibly in the soft ground of the shrubbery."
"And he got away with the rest!" I exclaimed, following it up like astory, but a story in which I was myself an unconscious character.
"No doubt," the Inspector answered, stroking his chin regretfully."And what's most annoying of all, we've every reason to suppose thefellow stole the things only a few minutes before we actually missedthem. For we saw grounds for supposing he jumped away from the spot,and climbed over the wall at the back, cutting his hands as he wentwith the bottle-glass on the top to prevent intruders. And whatmakes us think only a very short time must have elapsed between theremoval of the plates and the moment we came upon his tracks isthis--the blood from his cut hands was still fresh and wet upon thewall when we found it."
"Then you only just missed him!" I exclaimed. "He got off by theskin of his teeth. It's wonderful, when you were so near, youshouldn't have managed to overtake him! One would have thought youmust have been able to track him to earth somehow!"
"One would have thought so," the Inspector answered, rathercrestfallen. "But policemen, after all, are human like the rest ofus. We missed the one chance that might have led to an arrest. Andnow, what I want to ask you once more is this: Reflecting over whatyou've heard and read to-day, do you think you can recollect--avery small matter--whether or not there were SEVERAL distinctflashes?"
I shut my eyes once more, and looked hard into the past. Slowly, asI looked, a sort of dream seemed to come over me. I saw it vaguelynow, or thought I saw it. Flash, flash, flash, flash. Then the soundof the pistol. Then the Picture, and the Horror, and the awfulblank. I opened my eyes again, and told the Inspector so.
"And once more," he went on, in a very insinuating voice. "Shut youreyes again, and look back upon that day. Can't you remember whetheror not, just a moment before, you saw the murderer's face by thelight of the flashes?"
I shut my eyes and thought. Again the flashes seemed to stand outclear and distinct. But no detail supervened--no face came back tome. I felt it was useless.
"Impossible!" I said shortly. "It only makes my head swim. I canremember no further."
"I see," the Inspector answered. "It's just as Dr. Wade said.Suggest a fact in your past history, and you may possibly rememberit; but ask you to recall anything not suggested or already known,and all seems a mere blank to you! You haven't the faintest idea,then, who the murderer was or what he looked like?"
I rose up before him solemnly, and stared him full in the face. Iwas wrought up by that time to a perfect pitch of excitement andinterest.
"I haven't the faintest idea," I answered, feeling myself a woman atlast, and realising my freedom; "I know and remember no more of itthan you do. But from this moment forth, I shall not rest until I'vefound him out and tracked him down, and punished him. I shall neverlet my head rest in peace on my pillow until I've discovered myfather's murderer!"
"That's well," the Inspector said sharply, shutting his notes up togo. "If you persevere in that mind, and do as you say, we shall soonget to the bottom of the Woodbury Mystery!"
And even as he spoke a key turned in the front door. I knew it wasAunt Emma, come in from her marketing.