I had the beginning of a headache.
Needless to say, I arrived back at the office on the Strand quite early after a brief visit to the townhouse for a change of clothes and Mrs. Ryan’s sponge cake.
“What are you looking at?” I asked the hound as I arrived, as if I expected a response. He cocked his head and nudged my hand with his nose.
“I do appreciate the sympathy,” I told the beast as Brodie referred to him.
Of course it was the smell of the sponge cake that had caught his attention.
“Ye’re right early, miss,” Mr. Cavendish commented, rolling out from the alcove under the stairs.
“It seemed far safer to come here.” I commented.
“A bit of difficulty at Sussex Square?”
Difficulty. Now there was a word. I thought of rabbits and chickens.
“He has a visitor,” Mr. Cavendish informed me. “Arrived well before first light. An odd one, I say, going about in the shadows and enough to set the hound off. Talbot was the name as I recall. The hound didn’t like ’im and tried to take off a leg before I could call ’im off. But Mr. Brodie has the bloke well in hand.”
Jefferson Talbot! The photographer Lucy Penworth said worked for the Times from time to time, and had taken photographs of at least three of the Whitechapel victims.
I wanted very much to speak with him about how the photographs of Amelia Mainwaring and Catherine Thorpe had been taken. Equally important, I wanted to know his thoughts on who might have done it.
Jefferson Talbot sat in the chair across the desk from Brodie. He was long and lanky and whenever he did stand I was certain that he would very nearly rival Brodie for height. And most interesting, he was dressed in full formal attire including a long-tailed coat. His features were quite thin. Sunken cheeks gave him a gaunt appearance, his prominent jaw covered with a sparse beard.
However, the gaze he turned on me as I entered the office was sharp as a blade, narrowed slightly. But that might have been from the smoke curling about his head from a cigarette in an ivory cigarette holder that he held aloft much like a composer’s baton.
Quite a presentation, I thought. And all before nine o’clock of the morning.
Brodie looked up, his eyes narrowed as well, but hardly from cigarette smoke.
“Mr. Talbot has arrived in response to yer inquiry.”
I set my umbrella in the stand and removed my coat and neck scarf as Mr. Talbot stood, unfolding himself from the chair. He made a theatrical bow, waving the cigarette before him much like that orchestra leader I had first imagined.
“Good day to you, Miss Forsythe.”
We exchanged greetings.
“I was most curious about the note you sent,” he then explained.
“It’s in the matter of an inquiry case that we’ve taken,” I explained. “I have questions regarding how photographs were taken, most particularly at night and outside of a studio, on the street, or in a park.”
“And you thought that I might be able to assist you in some way,” he concluded. “Most… ladies,” he emphasized. “Are not usually concerned with such things.”
“Nevertheless,” I replied as Brodie sat at the desk, chin propped on one hand, listening to our exchange with what appeared to be an amused expression.
“You have been recommended as someone with some knowledge in the matter,” I continued. “You have provided photographs for the Times newspaper in the past, taken at the scene of crimes.
“Your skill with the camera might provide us with valuable information.”
“I would be happy to assist in any way that I can,” he replied with a grand flourish of his cigarette.
I took out my notebook, then asked him to explain just how photographs were made. He smiled with another flourish.
“There are two common types, both made with glass plates,” he began. “A wet plate negative and a gelatin dry plate. Both are created by a light sensitive chemical fixed to the plate then exposed to light through the camera.”
Both glass plate methods could be quite time consuming, according to his description. And quite expensive, he added. He usually reserved that process for families of the upper class, in his studio, or occasionally with a special project.
