Resurrection Row - Anne Perry [67]
“No.” Pitt shook his head, frowning. “They’re not naturalist drawings; they are all repeated at fairly regular intervals, and exactly the same. They are more like hieroglyphics, a sort of code.”
“What for?” The constable screwed up his face. “It ain’t a letter, or anything.”
“If I knew what for, I should know the next step,” Pitt said tartly. “These figures are set out in groups like either dates or money, or both.”
The constable lost interest. “Maybe that was ’is way of doin’ ’is accounts, to keep out nosy ’ousekeepers, or the like,” he suggested. “There’s nothing much over there, just a lot o’ things like you see in paintings, bits o’ plaster made up to look like stone, colored bits o’ cloth, things like that. Ain’t no blood. And they’re all in such a mess you can’t tell whether they been knocked like that, or ’e just threw ’em there, anyway. Seems like hartists is just naturally untidy. Looks as if ’e took photographs as well, as there’s one o’ them cameras over there.”
“A camera?” Pitt straightened up. “I haven’t seen any photographs, have you?”
“No, sir, now as you mention it, I ’aven’t. Do you think ’e sold them?”
“He would hardly sell all of them,” Pitt answered, puzzled. “And there weren’t any in the rest of the house. Now, I wonder where they are?”
“Maybe ’e never used it,” the constable suggested. “It’s in among all them things ’e put in ’is pictures; maybe that’s what it’s for, part of a picture.”
“Doesn’t seem the sort of thing you’d put in a picture.” Pitt climbed carefully over the chair and the urn and the pillars till he came to the black camera on its tripod. “And it’s far from new,” he observed. “So he hadn’t just bought it, unless he got it secondhand. But we can find out from his past clients if anyone had a portrait painted with a camera in it, or if anyone commissioned such a thing for the future.”
“It ain’t a pretty thing.” The constable caught his feet in a piece of the velvet cloth and swore vociferously. Then he noticed Pitt’s face. “Beg pardon, sir.” He coughed in a mixture of embarrassment and irritation. “But maybe ’e took photographs o’ people ’e was goin’ to paint, so ’e could know what they looked like when they wasn’t ’ere, like?”
“And then destroyed them, or gave them away afterwards?” Pitt considered it. “Possible, but I would have thought he’d want to see them in color. After all, an artist works in color. Still, it could be.” He started to examine the camera, pressing the pieces experimentally. He had never worked one himself, although he had seen them used by police photographers a few times and had begun to appreciate their possibilities. He knew the imprint of the picture was made on a plate, which then had to be developed. It took him a little fiddling before he got the plate out of this one, carefully, keeping it wound in the black cloth away from the light, because he was not used to it and did not know how fragile it might be.
“What’s that?” the constable asked dubiously.
“The plate,” Pitt replied.
“Anything on it?”
“I don’t know. Have to have it developed. Probably not, or he wouldn’t have left it in there, but we might be lucky.”
“Probably only some woman ’e was painting.” The constable dismissed it.
“He may have been murdered because of some woman he was painting,” Pitt pointed out.
The constable’s face lit up hopefully. “ ’Avin’ an affaire? Well, now that’s a thought. Bit free with the posin’, you reckon?”
Pitt gave him a dry, humorous look.
“Go and get the servants one by one,” he ordered. “Starting with the butler.”
“Yes, sir.” The constable obeyed, but he was obviously turning over in his mind the limitless possibilities that had just dawned on him. He did not like effeminate men who made a great deal too much money by puddling around in smocks and painting pictures of people who ought to know better, but it was a good deal more interesting than the usual run-of-the-mill tragedies he saw. He did not want to be bothered with servants. He retired reluctantly.
The butler came in a few moments later,