“I have questions.”
“Ah, yes, the lovely amateur sleuth out to solve crimes. Would you care for tea though it is past the hour?”
I didn’t, however I saw no way around it, particularly if I was going to ask questions.
He left for a few moments, then returned. A small woman eventually appeared with a pot and two cups on a tray.
“My sister, Agatha,” he introduced the woman who set the tray on the table in the parlor. We waited until she had poured both cups and then removed the tray.
“You have questions.” Talbot angled me a look as he dropped a cube of sugar into my cup before I could protest.
I didn’t usually take sugar in my tea… For that matter I didn’t drink tea, but preferred coffee.
“I’ve been told that it might be possible to identify a photographer by his particular style.” I took the photographs I’d brought with me from my bag and laid them on the table.
“Have you now? You’ve been quite busy, Miss Forsythe.”
“What can you tell me about the photographer who took these pictures?”
He picked up the first photograph of Amelia Mainwaring taken, I was quite certain, at Wimbledon.
“A pastoral scene that one might find at a park or in the country. The young lady is handsome, though not a beauty.”
This was apparently for my benefit as he looked over at me with that smile that made me recall our first encounter and the feeling now that I needed to get very far away.
“I’m told that artists often recognize the works of other artists,” I added. “Does it remind you of any photographs you might have seen by another photographer?”
He continued to study the photograph. I handed him the second photograph of Amelia Mainwaring, sitting on the park bench in Hyde Park.
“What of this one? At night with very little light, yet quite clear? Taken with a glass plate camera?”
He looked at me with surprise. “Very good, Miss Forsythe.” Then studied the photograph once more.
“Very obviously a death photo,” he replied. “Such a shame.”
“Is there anything about either photograph that is familiar? Something that you might have seen before in another’s work?”
There was that look that I had first seen in the office on the Strand; slightly amused, secretive, as if it was something that only he and the person who had taken that photograph shared.
“Most interesting… The position of the body…” he said then regarding the second photograph.
“And the position of the hands folded together, almost as if in prayer or supplication.”
Supplication? As if asking for forgiveness?
That seemed most strange, yet as I looked at the photo, it did seem as if Amelia Mainwaring’s hands had been deliberately folded before her. She most certainly wouldn’t have folded them after she was dead.
I showed him the photograph of Catherine Thorpe. Her hands were positioned exactly the same way.
“Do you recognize who may have taken the photographs?”
He continued to study them both with interest. “You are quite right, Miss Forsythe. One can usually see a certain style in photographs, much like paintings. Though there are those… artists, who would argue with you that photographs are not art at all.
“I would argue, however,” he continued, “that the photographer must wait for just that moment with the light and the subject, even one who has… passed on. The challenge as well as the art is then the ability to capture that perfect moment. And artists don’t like to share their secrets.”
That seemed an odd thing to say.
Once again I asked if he recognized who the photographer might have been.
