Waxwork

Her picture made it seem more credible.

What he could not easily accept was the one thing beyond dispute-the fact that she had confessed. She had refused to capitulate to her blackmailer. Why capitulate to justice?

But now the confession was in dispute. She could not have opened the poison cabinet without possessing a key. If what she had confessed was substantially true, why had she not been frank about the key?

There was the possibility that she was trying to save someone else from the gallows. An accomplice. Had she and Howard Cromer plotted the murder together? It was difficult to credit that a man would allow his wife to be hanged while he went free. Did they believe a beautiful woman telling a story of blackmail might earn a reprieve? A reprieve meant penal servitude for life. The silent system. The treadmill. Oakum-picking.

Cribb looked at the slender hands, pale against the dark fabric of the dress.

Was it quite impossible that she was innocent of the crime? Could someone have persuaded or compelled her to make a false confession? That was difficult to credit. The woman in the photograph was not simple-minded. Nor was she timid.

He turned at the approach of footsteps.

Howard Cromer wore a black velvet jacket and red bowtie. He was pale and deeply lined. His hair was streaked with silver. He spoke breathlessly, from hurrying upstairs. ‘My dear sir, I do apologise for keeping you. Once one has started work in the dark-room it is impossible to stop prematurely without damaging the result. Your name, I was advised, is Cribb, but I know nothing else about you.’

‘Sergeant Cribb, sir.’ He watched the photographer acutely. ‘Of the Criminal Investigation Department.’

The brown eyes widened, but the voice betrayed no alarm. ‘I confess I thought we had seen the last of you gentlemen at Park Lodge. Are you sent by Inspector Waterlow?’

‘In a word, no, sir,’ answered Cribb. ‘Higher authority, you might say.’

The eyebrows jumped at that. ‘Oh. Is that significant?’

‘I wouldn’t place any significance on it at all if I were you, sir. They like to dot their “i”s and cross their “t”s, that’s all. I have been asked to make another check of the statement your wife made. This is the lady, I presume.’

Howard Cromer stepped towards the photograph and stood for a moment staring at it as if he had not seen it before. ‘Taken last year, Sergeant, to mark our second wedding anniversary. She is stunningly beautiful, don’t you agree?’ He took out a handkerchief and touched the corner of one eye with it. In the movement his watch-chain was revealed, an albert, with a small, silver key prominent on it. ‘Two and a half years! That is all we have had together. Every minute was precious. To you it may sound odd, Sergeant, coming from a man of my age, but I am enslaved, utterly enslaved. Merely to look at her is the greatest happiness. Even in that ghastly prison one glance at her exquisite face banishes the surroundings for me. Forgive me. I talk incessantly about her.’

‘Don’t apologise, sir. It’s your wife I came to ask you about.’

‘Sit down, then.’ Cromer showed Cribb to a single-ended sofa and picked up a large volume from a table nearby. ‘Look at this. It will speak more objectively than I.’ He thrust it into Cribb’s hands, a photograph album, morocco with mother-of-pearl inlay. ‘It is all here, the story of our life together. All on record. My most precious possession.’

Cribb opened the book. Photograph albums bored him usually. Not this one.

On the first page was a cabinet-sized family portrait: the father, corpulent and bearded, seated beside the mother, an elegant woman in a large hat decorated with flowers; three tall young men behind them; in front, seated on a footstool at her father’s feet, Miriam, in a white dress and straw hat; beside her, on the floor, a younger sister.

‘The Kilpatrick family complete,’ said Howard Cromer. ‘One April afternoon in 1885 they came to this house, the seven of them, all the way from Hampstead to sit for a family portrait.’

Cribb made the appropriate comment. ‘Your reputation must be widely known, sir.’

Cromer nodded. ‘Mr Kilpatrick had seen my work reproduced in The Tatler and decided that no other photographer should be engaged. Miriam told me later that she herself drew the Tatler studies to her father’s attention. Poor man, he died six months after this was taken, but I believe the portrait gave him a lot of satisfaction. It’s a tolerable result, don’t you think? The three at the back are the brothers: William, in the Merchant Taylors’ blazer, now in the Indian Civil Service, Gerald, the eldest, back from Canada on a visit, and Edgar, who died of influenza the same year. Dreadful, the ravages of fate. Mrs Kilpatrick passed on last winter.’ Sighing, he turned the page. There were two carte-de- visite studies of Miriam, one seated. She had the solemn gaze usual in long exposures. ‘I took these the following week,’ Cromer told Cribb. ‘Isn’t she sublimely lovely? I was so enchanted with her that I plucked up courage and asked her father if I could take an individual portrait of her.’ He smiled. ‘That was after I had treated the parents to madeira wine and fruit cake. I said Miriam was a perfect photogenic subject. She blushed to the colour of the madeira and said she would rather not be photographed alone. Her mother told her not to be sensitive and said that if she was photogenic she had a duty to oblige. I remember Mrs Kilpatrick’s words: “To Mr Cromer you exist simply as an object to be captured on a photographic plate, like a vase of flowers. I shall not flatter you by discussing the matter any further. Papa will accompany you here next week.” The decision was made without her husband uttering a word.’

‘The fair sex have a way of settling things among themselves,’ Cribb commented. He was thinking such a show of modesty was strange from a young lady who had posed unclothed three years previously, but this was not the moment to mention it.

Cromer turned the page. ‘Ah-some of the set I knew before my marriage. The occasion was the fair on Hampstead Heath. Whit Monday, 1885. You can see Miriam in the white Venetian dress. That’s Simon Allingham, our solicitor, with his arm round her waist trying to put the photographer off his stroke. I think he succeeded-it is over-exposed, as you can see.’ He turned over.

The pictures of Miriam in those few months before her marriage interested Cribb, for they conveyed a sense of gaiety that was absent in the framed portraits round the room. There were picnics, river-outings and tennis afternoons. The same young people appeared in the different settings. Allingham, Cribb noticed, was never far from Miriam. He was easy to spot with his straight fair hair and dazzling smile.

‘How long have you known him-young Allingham?’

‘Simon? It must be ten years, certainly before he qualified. We hunted together with the Hertfordshire. First- class fellow. A confirmed bachelor. Simon is the only one of this set I have kept up with. He has been a tower of strength these last terrible months.’

Cribb lifted the next page and found that another came with it.

‘May I?’ said Cromer at once. He took a penknife from his pocket. ‘If the pages stick, one can do irreparable damage by forcing them.’ Sliding the blade between the pages, he found the point and prised them apart. ‘There. No harm done, I think. A spot of glue on the mount.’

It had not escaped Cribb that glue on the mount suggested the page had not been opened since the photograph was put in the album. This was odd, considering Howard Cromer had described the album as his most precious possession. Odder still, considering the photograph was of the wedding.

Cromer gave a quick laugh. ‘Miriam complains that this is the only photograph I appear in. I arranged for Perceval to take it. As you will have noticed, there’s too much of the church wall and not enough of the guests, but it suffices. This was September, 1885. He was fairly new in my employment.’

‘September? Your courtship was brief, then?’

‘But intensely busy,’ said Cromer. ‘The pictures you have seen represent only a fraction of the activity. In five months we did enough for three years-theatre, opera, Ascot, Henley and every coming-out party in North London, I think. I was in my fortieth year, you understand. Miriam was only twenty-three. Convention may have called for a longer engagement, but in the circumstances … ’ He held out his hands.

‘You were old enough to know your own mind, sir,’ Cribb concurred.

‘Quite. And Miriam knew hers,’ Cromer emphasised, ‘else I might have hesitated. I was enraptured with her from the beginning-what man with a sense of beauty would not be? — but I needed to be reassured that I would be an acceptable husband. She convinced me that I was the only man alive that she would consider marrying. That was music to my ears-to know that I might see her marvellous face each day of my life, in countless places, by daylight, gaslight, moonlight, discovering new aspects of her beauty. It was all I could desire. It made a young man of me. I don’t look too bad in my morning suit, do I?’