That is if brandishing her wooden sword with much bravado was enjoying herself.
“And you’re quite in the spirit, my dear.” She laughed at her own little joke.
“You must have your photograph taken and Lily as well. Mr. Laughton is here tonight. He has set up his camera and created a small studio with props, there across the way. He is such a talented man. I had despaired that he might not accept, but there he is.”
Marie Antoinette with her severed head patted my arm. “You must take Lily with you. She will be quite excited to have a photograph. Oh, there is my friend Anne. Oh dear, she’s worn the same costume as last year.”
And she was off in the direction of Anne, who appeared to be the Ghost of Christmas Past, if I remembered correctly from the year before.
I saw Lily once more. The girl was taking great delight in challenging the various ghosts with that fake sword. I crossed the room and hooked my arm through hers.
“My aunt insists on having your photograph taken.” I steered her in the direction my aunt had indicated.
It did require navigating through agrave yardcomplete with headstones, and around that mechanical skeleton that seemed to have acquired an admirer.
The sign at the stand outside the alcove draped with a thick curtain announced the photographer, Paul Laughton.
Beyond the curtain there was a flash of light, then a young woman’s voice that announced the subject would have their photograph within a matter of days.
The curtain parted and Little Bo Peep along with one of the Harlequins I had seen earlier emerged. Bo Peep giggled as they left, and a young woman appeared.
“You wish to have a photograph taken?” she asked.
Lily looked at me.
“Of course,” I replied.
The young woman held the curtain aside and we stepped into the photographer’sstudiothat had been set up in the ballroom.
“I never had me picture taken before,” Lily excitedly said as the young woman led her to a raised platform with a screen behind it.
“My father stepped away for a few minutes,” she explained.
Lily wanted me in the photograph as well, and I joined her with my best imitation of a swashbuckling pirate as I had once read it referred to.
Mr. Laughton had returned by the time his daughter had us positioned for the photograph. He was a slender man with white hair and an equally white complexion— barely any color at all that gave him a bit of a ghostly appearance. He didn’t look at all well and coughed several times into his handkerchief.
His daughter approached him. “If you don’t feel up to it…”
He shook his head. “I’m quite all right, my dear. After all we have a knight in shining armor,” he commented about Lily’s costume. “King Arthur, a future king, and a dashing pirate.”
It took some time to position us just right. Lily handed me my mustache that had come away.
I fixed it back into place, then there was that flash of powder that had been described to me, the shutter of the camera closed, and we were recorded for all posterity— Lily as King Arthur and myself as a pirate. Two more photographs were taken of Lily as she posed with wooden sword drawn.
I lost my mustache again, somewhere into the darkness of the floor. However, I wasn’t about to go crawling about to look for it. Brodie would be pleased, for certain.
When I would have paid for the photographs, the young woman assured me that it was already taken care of by Lady Antonia Montgomery as part of the festivities for the night.
She let us know that the photos would be ready in two days, and they would have them delivered by courier. I provided my aunt’s address at Sussex Square.
As we left, a particularly ghastly misshapen character brushed against Lily on his way presumably for a photograph, and I immediately thought of the character in Victor Hugo’s novel that I had read while in France. The costume was quite impressive.
The man stared at me. I had to admit it was a bit disconcerting then he pushed past and entered the alcove.
“Jingo!” Lily exclaimed. “Did ye see his costume?”
We stayed the night in rooms provided, after attending the festivities that includedtreatshanded out to guests at midnight by hotel staff dressed as ghosts and goblins.
