In the forests were various beasts still unfamiliar to zoologists, such as the milta, which I have seen twice, a black doglike cat about the size of a foxhound. There were snakes and insects yet unknown to scientists; and in the forests of the Madidi some mysterious and enormous beast has frequently been disturbed in the swamps-possibly a primeval monster like those reported in other parts of the continent. Certainly tracks have been found belonging to no known animal-huge tracks, far greater than could have been made by any species we know.
TWENTY-THREE
Sebastian had returned the moving-picture camera and its developed roll of negative to Stephen Reed, but he’d retained the positive copy. He now had the film roll in his pocket, wound tight in its wrapping of stiff paper, and a number of questions about its content that the fairground people hadn’t been able to answer.
Kelly’s London directory listed several film companies. Most of them were out in the suburbs, but there was a cluster of office addresses in Warwick Court. This was a stone’s throw from the records department of King’s College Hospital, where he intended to begin his inquiries about the medical training of the disagreeable Dr. Sibley, and from the Inns of Court where Evangeline Bancroft had let slip that she had employment.
As it turned out, the King’s College records had all been boxed up and sent across the river, ahead of the hospital’s relocation to Denmark Hill. That would have to be a job for another day. The shortest way to Warwick Court from here would be through Lincoln’s Inn Fields.
The morning was cold and dry. Lincoln’s Inn was a walled enclave of legal offices and chambers made up of town houses, alleyways, and green spaces. The grander chambers had large ground-floor rooms with chandeliers. The others packed in their lawyers from ground to gables, like warehouses of litigation. The adjoining fields were actually a fashionable square with a public garden, like a parade ground to the barracks of a lawyers’ army.
A high wall and a gatehouse separated Lincoln’s Inn from the actual fields. He stopped by the gatehouse and spoke to the porters and other servants of the inn, but none recognized Evangeline by name. As he cut through, looking this way and that on the off chance that he might spot her, black-robed “benchers” flitted through the gardens in their twos and threes like carrion birds, crossing on their way to the Courts of Justice; strollers moved more slowly, and sometimes got in their way.
Like the hospital, Warwick Court was a disappointment, but also a lead onto more promising things. The court itself was little more than a glorified alleyway on the north side of High Holborn, ending in a tall cast-iron gateway with yet more lawyers beyond it. The alley’s buildings were wedding-cake heavy with carved stone features and fancy Victorian brickwork.
In a second-floor film sales agency office that he picked at random, he explained his needs and was given an address and a note of introduction. The address was for the Walton Film Studios, the note of introduction to a Mr. Cecil Hepworth.
He was urged to “tell Cecil that Joe sent you, and sends his regards.”
“I’mlooking for Mister Hepworth?” Sebastian said.
Cecil Hepworth’s Walton Film Studio was so close to the Walton High Street that a two-minute walk out of the center had taken Sebastian some way past it. Walton on Thames, just a twenty-five-minute train ride out of Waterloo, was part riverside boating village, part office workers’ suburb. Along the river were inns, moorings, and great rafts of empty rowboats herded up against the banks awaiting weekend rental. Beyond the main street of shops and public houses spread a semirural outskirts of villas and smallholdings.
The film studio had grown up around one modest dwelling in an outer cul-de-sac, absorbing the other houses in the row and then expanding into the gaps between them and onto the land behind. Now the original buildings contained offices, cutting rooms, and workshops. Blocking out the sky behind these, risen from the suburban clay like airship hangars, were Hepworth’s number one and two covered studio buildings.
A young man in flannels and a cricket jersey led Sebastian from one place to another until they finally located the boss. They found him in an automated film-processing laboratory on the ground floor of one of the studio buildings. The long room was an elaborate and noxious-smelling laundrylike plant of racks and tanks and spindles, with exposed and processed film zigzagging through it in an endless flow. Hepworth was discussing some critical adjustment with one of the women operating it. He proved to be a tall and bookish-looking man, quietly spoken and with a pale gaze.
Sebastian introduced himself, took the small roll of film from his pocket, and explained its significance.
“There’s barely a minute’s worth of activity there,” he said, raising his voice over the clatter of the machinery. “But I need an expert’s opinion on the last picture. There’s a chance that the girls may have photographed their attacker before they were murdered.”
The young man let out a whistle.
Hepworth opened up the roll and drew it out to arm’s length. The young man in the cricket jersey scooted around behind him to look as he held it up to the light.
“What do you reckon, Geoff?” Hepworth said.
“It looks like someone printed a seventeen-point-five neg onto thirty-five mil stock,” the young man said.
Sebastian said, “A lad copied it for me in a show van on a fairground. He said it was unusual. The camera was called a Birtac.”
“That’s Birt Acres’ old camera,” Hepworth said, still studying the images against the light. “He made it for the amateur market about ten years back. Cost about ten guineas and it never took off.” He looked at Sebastian. “You don’t have the negative?”
“It was evidence. I had to give it back. This is all I could keep.”
Hepworth studied the strip again, pulling out several more feet of it until he reached the scene in question. “Is it all like this? It’s very dense.”
The young man said, “We could try making a copy and printing it up a bit.”
Hepworth nodded and Sebastian said, “What does that mean?”
“It means putting more light through it to bring out any detail that’s hiding,” Hepworth said. “But it’s not guaranteed. If it’s not there in the image, then there’s nothing to find. But we can try it for you, if you like.”
Hepworth sent the young man off with the roll, and gave Sebastian leave to wander for the hour or so needed to make and process the copy.
Sebastian went upstairs to look into the studio, hoping to see a scene or two being made, but the doors were wide open and carpenters were at work inside. The interior light on the stage was soft and gray, diffused by the clouded glass of the skylight roof. But there was nothing of great interest to see.
He saw a handcart load of costumes being taken off toward the river, but didn’t follow it. He had more luck in the other studio, where a boy had been posted at the doors to keep out visitors and signal for quiet; from inside the studio came the sound of Gramophone music. The music lasted no more than a couple of minutes and then the doors were thrown open. No one paid any attention to Sebastian as he wandered in and took in the scene.
The studio was airless and hot, due to the electric arcs that burned to supplement the autumn light. There was a crowd of shirtsleeved men around the camera, and a large Gramophone with an enormous brass horn beside it. Two young women, in costumes and heavy white makeup, were studying a song sheet. A man in a checked cap positioned the Gramophone’s needle arm over the record and played them a burst of song, to which they listened intently before exchanging a glance and nodding. One was dressed as some kind of dancer or chorus girl, the other as a suffragette.
Sebastian had spotted something of significant interest to him, and he tried to make his way through to speak to one of the young women; but a cry of “Close all doors!” and the sudden galvanization of all around him made him freeze to the spot. Everyone who’d been lounging, chatting, or arguing out a problem suddenly turned to some professional purpose. Sebastian alone was left without a role.
