I had brought the carton of photographs home from the shop and was looking forward to digging into it. But when I opened the box, I discovered that there were only about a dozen photographs, when I had been expecting more. The rest of the box was filled with what looked like a random, haphazard collection of yellowed newspaper clippings from the early days of the Enterprise. I sorted the clips from the photos and put the clips back in the box. They would have to wait for another night.
I spread the photos on the kitchen table, under the bright overhead light. I added the one that had startled me with its appearance on the bulletin board at the shop earlier that day: the baby in the lace-paneled christening dress and cap. I propped the photo against the saltshaker and stared at it. The photo had showed up on my bulletin board for a reason—but darned if I knew what it was. If it was meant as a clue to a mystery, I didn’t get it. Was it the baby who was important? Or the lacy dress? Did the dress in the photo have any connection with the dress Lori’s aunt had given her? I shook my head at that, since any connection between them seemed wildly far-fetched.
Still, it would be good to rule out the possibility. So I took out my cell phone and snapped a photograph of the baby’s picture, then texted the image to Lori, suggesting that she compare the lace insert in the photo to the lace in the baby’s dress her aunt had given her. I didn’t try to tell her why I was asking—the explanation was simply too implausible. After I’d done that, though, I remembered that Christine hadn’t been able to reach Lori, so maybe this message wouldn’t get through, either.
While I was looking at the baby’s picture, I thought again of those mysterious sprigs of fresh lavender that had been left on the bulletin board with both photos. I remembered that nineteenth-century Victorians had invented a fanciful “language of flowers” that they used to send “secret” messages to one another. The Victorians—and my ghost seemed to belong to that era—viewed lavender with a certain ambivalent caution. The blossom signified devotion, loyalty, and fidelity, yes—and hence was often used in wedding bouquets, along with rosemary and baby’s breath, which carried a similar message. But at the same time, lavender also signified suspicion and distrust. It seemed to suggest that beauty could not be trusted, for beneath it lay treachery, betrayal, danger, perhaps even death. Was that the meaning here?
All of which reminded me that Ethel had glimpsed a woman in a long dark skirt and white blouse in the garden, picking lavender. Had she actually seen my ghost? If so, who was—
Your Honor, please. My skeptical lawyer self again, leaping to her feet. Assumes facts not—
Yes, I know, I know. Facts not in evidence. And yes, there was a part of me that simply could not accept the idea that I was dealing with a ghost. But the real photographs I had found stuck to my bulletin board—they were a kind of evidence, weren’t they? Of course they were, as were the others spread on the table, like exhibits ready to be put before a jury.
I gave the photos another, closer look. Four of them were taken inside my building, in its early years as a family residence, but none had names or dates on the front or back. The two most interesting pictured the room that was now my shop. In one photograph, five women of different ages, all wearing late-nineteenth-century dress, were seated in a semicircle with needlework in their laps, like a sewing club. While they worked, they seemed to be listening to a sixth woman, also seated, who was reading aloud from a book. I went to McQuaid’s office, found his magnifying glass, and used it to study the photo, finally making out the book’s title: A Study in Scarlet, which I knew was by Arthur Conan Doyle. I had to smile at that, remembering that it was the first piece of detective fiction in which a magnifying glass was used as a forensic tool.
In the other photo, the reader was on her feet, leaning over the shoulder of one of the needlewomen, pointing out something in the work she held. I studied the reader more closely, again with McQuaid’s magnifying glass. I couldn’t be sure, but I thought she might be the same woman with the Gibson-girl look who appeared in the veranda photograph, holding the baby. I was interested to see that there was a parlor stove in that room, as well as rugs on the floor, curtains at the windows, and some parlor furniture—a sofa and some overstuffed chairs—pushed back against the walls. Mrs. Birkett, earlier that day, had remembered the room as a “workroom.” Why? Was it because the needlewomen gathered there for meetings of their sewing club? Since the Historical Society’s plaque identified this as the Duncan House, perhaps the reader was Mrs. Duncan. But Mrs. Birkett, who knew the owner as an old lady, remembered her as Mrs. Hunt. Which was which?
There were two other photos of the interior. One pictured the room that was now Ruby’s shop, a dining room, back in the day. There was a long dining table in the center, with chairs and place settings for six, two on each side and one at each end. In the middle of the table was a modest silver epergne filled with flowers and fruit. Off to one side stood a woman
