The Gentle Art of Murder

by Jeanne M. Dams

  It was out before I realized how rude it sounded, but the man gave a shout of laughter. ‘And how do photographers smell?’

  ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it as an insult. You smell like hypo. Is that what they call it in this country?’

  ‘I know the term. Sodium hyposulfite, a fixing agent. You’re talking about a vanished era, you know.’

  ‘I do know. The world has gone digital. But plainly you still use it, or you wouldn’t have that distinctive aura. I quite like it, by the way. It brings happy memories. My uncles were photographers, too, back in Terre Haute, Indiana. They were professionals, and when my parents and I used to visit, they’d let me spend time with them in the darkroom. I loved those times.’

  He stopped. ‘You like darkrooms?’

  ‘Love them.’

  He turned around. ‘Come see mine, while it still exists.’

  ‘Is your department being threatened with budget problems, too?’ The man had begun striding down the hall and I had to hurry to keep up.

  He stopped and I almost cannoned into him. ‘How do you know about budget cuts? You’re not new staff or something, are you?’

  ‘Or something. My name’s Dorothy Martin and I’m a friend of Gillian Roberts, the new grad assistant in sculpture.’

  He put out a hand. ‘Sam Andrews. I teach photography here, as you will have gathered. So you’ve been talking to young what’s-her-name about the budget?’

  ‘To her and to her boss, Dennis – I’ve forgotten the rest.’

  ‘Singleton. But I still don’t understand why you were discussing the budget. We try to keep that information to ourselves.’

  ‘To be frank, it came up in connection with the death of the head, Mr Chandler.’ I was a little nervous. Here I was alone with a man I didn’t know from Adam, who might have killed Chandler.

  But could a man who smelled like hypo be a killer? That idiotic thought crossed my mind just as he snapped his fingers and said, ‘Oh, now I know why your name sounded familiar! You’re the one who discovered the body in the lift.’

  ‘My husband and I, yes. In the shaft, actually. And it was really the firemen who found him, who got us out when we got stuck … look, let’s back up. My husband, who is Alan Nesbitt, retired chief constable of this county, came with me to the reception for new staff. Some friends of ours know Gillian. She was showing us around the building when the elevator got stuck. I panicked, like a fool, because I’m claustrophobic, and the fire department had to come and get us out. They found the body.’

  ‘So it was you that killed him, really, was it? The lift you were in, I mean.’

  ‘No, thank the Lord! I thought that for a little while, but then everyone realized he’d been dead some time.’ And that, I belatedly realized, was as much as I’d better say about what the police knew.

  But Sam persisted. ‘What did kill him, then? Fell down the shaft somehow? Damfool thing to do, larking about in a lift, and he wasn’t the larking sort.’

  ‘I really don’t know how he got down there, and if you don’t mind, I’d rather not talk about it. The whole thing was an experience I’d like to forget.’

  ‘So you came back to where it happened.’

  He let the statement lie there. We stood in the dark hallway, where he could presumably see far more than I could. There wasn’t another sound in the building except for the pounding of my heart, which I was sure could be heard three streets away.

  At last I sighed. ‘All right. You’ve rumbled me. I came to talk to Gillian, to make sure she was all right, since she was with us in that awful elevator. And I came to nose around. I’m an unregenerate snoop, and I don’t like leaving questions unanswered. I very much want to know how Mr Chandler got where he was found. Right now I also want very much to find someplace where there’s light. Unlike you, I can’t see in the dark, and it makes me nervous.’

  ‘Right. The darkroom’s straight ahead and up a flight of stairs. And it can also be a light room. Follow me.’

  Said the spider to the fly. I tried to remember if my phone was fully charged. Would it be too obvious if I pulled it out of my purse to check?

  But then we were in the darkroom, which I could have identified with no light at all, and Sam had turned on the light and I was surrounded by the familiar and friendly, and my fears felt foolish.

  Sam pointed out his treasures in terms that sounded both familiar and incomprehensible. Thus had Frank told me about the new lens for his enlarger, the superior developing tanks, the film dryer he had concocted using an ancient hairdryer. This darkroom was larger and better equipped than Frank’s very home-made one, but the ideas were the same, and Sam’s enthusiasm was just as fervent as Frank’s.

  It shut off abruptly, though. ‘You didn’t understand a word I said, did you?’

  ‘Not the words. I’m not a techie when it comes to photography. I understood that you’ve put your heart and soul into this darkroom, and everything is the best possible for its purpose.’

  ‘And it’s all going to come to an end. In a week or two, if I can’t get materials, I’ll have to close this darkroom down and go over entirely to digital.’

  ‘That would be a great pity,’ I said, meaning it. ‘A digital print, be it ever so well done, can never have the same range of tone—’

  ‘Exactly! Especially in black-and-white. You must have seen some of the prints on the walls of the studio when you came to that reception.’

  ‘They were beautiful. Reminded me of Ansel Adams and Edward Weston at their best.’

  ‘I made those prints,’ said Sam with justifiable pride. ‘And some of my students can do nearly as well. I teach them all the techniques, you know. I even used to teach tricolour carbro. Ever hear of that?’

  ‘Yes. Colour prints made using a special camera and black-and-white film. Frank tried it once. The water wasn’t quite the right temperature and the whole thing washed down the drain.’

  ‘Yes, it was tricky. Made beautiful prints, though, when you got it right. Permanent colour. No one makes the materials anymore.’

  ‘And no one processes Kodachrome. The world’s changing, Sam.’

  ‘Yes. Do you like it?’

  ‘No. But they didn’t consult me.’

  He was silent, looking around at his precious darkroom, perhaps soon to be dark forever. Then he looked at me. ‘Dorothy, are you afraid of me?’

  ‘No, I don’t believe I am,’ I said after a moment’s thought.

  ‘You were jumpy a little while ago.’

  ‘Yes. It was dark and I didn’t know anything about you.’

  ‘And old Chandler was probably murdered. Am I right about that?’

  ‘Possibly. I really know very little about it.’ I mentally crossed my fingers, though what I said was, technically, true. I didn’t know very much at all. Surmises don’t count, do they?

  ‘I imagine you know more than you’re saying. And I imagine you also know why I’d be a prime suspect.’

  ‘From what I can gather, nearly everyone in the department had a reason to dislike him, at least.’

  ‘The budget. Yes. But it wasn’t just that.’ He hitched one hip up on to the enlarging bench. ‘You see, most of us in Fine Arts here are traditionalists, at least when it comes to technique. We believe in teaching our students the old ways first. They can learn the new methods anywhere, but the art school here at Sherebury has always been a bastion of conservatism. Just as Picasso had to learn to draw properly before he could branch out into Cubism, so we train young artists in traditional methods and then encourage them to march to their own drummers. But Chandler was changing all that. He hadn’t been here very long, you know.’

  ‘I didn’t know, actually.’

  ‘Oh, yes, it would have been three years at the beginning of this term. The old head was getting past it, and I know Dennis thought he’d be promoted, but it didn’t work out that way. Chandler was an award-winning architect, won the Marlowe several years ago, so it was thought he’d bring prestige
to the art school. I suppose he did. He was expected to bring in students, too, but that didn’t go so well. A few new architecture students came, but they didn’t stay long. That was when he began cutting the budget and making gentle and then not-so-gentle hints that our teaching methods were outmoded. It all came to a head at the last staff meeting, when he not only cut all our materials budgets by half – half, mind you – but also told us all, in so many words, that we were “mired in the backwater” of art, that our work was not “relevant” to today’s world. Not content with insulting our art, he fired a nasty personal slur at … well, I’ll let you find that out for yourself. But by the end of that meeting, when Dennis and I went out to drown our troubles, the only soul on this staff who wasn’t ready to do murder was William Braithwaite.’

  ‘Pity,’ I said. ‘He’s the only one I’ve met so far that I’d like to nail.’

  ‘Me, too. Now, dear lady-who-likes-photographers, who on the staff haven’t you met?’

  ‘I don’t know who all is on the staff. I’ve met Dennis, and that painter person, and Gillian, and you.’

  ‘That just leaves Matt, our printmaker, of the senior staff. And of course poor Amy. You know about her, do you?’

  ‘That’s the secretary? Yes, I’ve heard, and it makes my blood boil. Do you think there’s any possibility she might get her job back?’

  ‘Not so long as darling William is in charge.’

  ‘Then I wish he’d be thrown out of charge.’

  ‘Agreed, but it’s not so easy. Anyway, would you like to meet Matt? I think he’s working today, and that would round out your list of suspects.’

  ‘Or non-suspects, as the case may be. Sure.’

  Another half-blind trek through dark, labyrinthine corridors. The difference was that this time I had confidence in my guide. I remembered a sign my husband had once had hanging in his darkroom: Photographers do it in the dark. I giggled.

  ‘What’s funny?’

  ‘Nothing. That was a half-sneeze. It’s dusty in here.’

  ‘The cleaners haven’t been since term ended. Another austerity measure.’

  ‘Not a very intelligent one, it seems to me.’

  Sam grunted, apparently in agreement.

  The print rooms were up one more floor. Sam made no attempt to take me up in the elevator, and I certainly didn’t mention it. I had been in the print department briefly on the day of Gillian’s party, but I didn’t remember a lot of the layout, so I let Sam lead me.

  ‘Matt! A visitor!’ Sam’s voice was less stentorian than Dennis’s, but just as effective. I gathered it was the done thing to shout for one’s colleague rather than go in search. I could understand that when it came to photography. The cardinal sin is to open a darkroom door. But the other arts? I shrugged and let Sam do it his way.

  After a bit a small, dark, intense young man came around a corner, wiping his hands on a rag. ‘Sorry, I was pulling a print and couldn’t stop in the midst of it.’ He looked at me enquiringly.

  ‘Matt, this is Dorothy Something, who found Chandler’s body and wants to meet everyone who hated him.’

  I’ve had more pleasant introductions, but Matt just laughed and extended a hand. ‘Matt Thomas. Don’t mind our Sam. He likes to twist tails.’

  ‘Dorothy Martin’s the name.’

  ‘And you’re American.’

  ‘I was. I’ve lived in England for quite a while now, and I’m married to an Englishman, but apparently I’ll never lose the accent. And you’re Welsh.’

  ‘By my accent or my name?’

  ‘Both, and your appearance.’

  ‘Most Americans can’t tell the difference. They think everyone in the UK looks alike and speaks the same way.’

  ‘Oh, come now! Even the first-time visitor can tell the difference between, say, the Queen and a Glaswegian.’

  ‘Point taken. But you’re more astute than some English. Of course the English have hated the Welsh for centuries.’

  ‘And vice-versa, I believe. Why are we talking about ethnic differences?’

  ‘You started it.’ We both laughed.

  ‘I’ll leave you to it, then,’ said Sam, and disappeared.

  EIGHT

  Once again I was alone with a strange man in a strange place. I was going to have to edit a lot when I told Alan where I’d been and what I’d been doing.

  Or maybe not. Maybe I’d just tell him I had been a bit foolish, and let him fuss. It’s rather pleasant, actually, to have someone care what I do.

  ‘Are you really looking for a murderer, Ms Martin? Or is it Mrs?’

  ‘Mrs, but I prefer Dorothy. And I don’t honestly know quite what I’m doing. I don’t even know for certain that Mr Chandler was murdered, but I’m finding it hard to escape the unhappy fact that I was in the elevator when it landed on the poor man’s body. They say he’d been dead quite a time when that happened, but I still take some personal interest, if not a smidgen of guilt.’

  ‘If you’ve been talking to the staff, I’m sure you’ve come to the conclusion that guilt isn’t quite the term any of us would use.’

  ‘I did get the impression that he wasn’t popular,’ I said cautiously.

  ‘About as popular, my granny used to say, as an Alsatian in a room full of cats.’

  ‘That’s one I’ve never heard.’

  ‘Not surprising, as I just made it up. Would you like to see some of my work?’

  Of course there’s only one answer to that, and I obligingly provided it. ‘Very much.’

  We went into the large classroom/studio where the paraphernalia for various printmaking methods littered tables and benches. Stone slabs I thought were probably lithograph stones were stacked in an open-shelved cupboard made of some very sturdy wood. A workbench had a shelf above it where small tools were ordered neatly. From my teaching days I recognized sharp knives of the sort I used to use for linoleum-block prints; I assumed these were used for the more professional woodcuts. Other tools I didn’t recognize at all, but guessed they were part of the etching process, or engraving, or any of the many, many other ways to make reproducible works of art.

  They all looked very clean. ‘You said you were pulling a print just now. What’s your favourite genre of printing?’

  ‘I’ve grown to love monotypes. Do you know what a monotype is?’

  ‘Just barely. Mono meaning one, it’s a one-off print, but I don’t know more than that, really.’

  ‘One creates a painting on a hard surface, usually a zinc plate, but almost anything, really, so long as the surface is essentially impermeable. You don’t want the paint or ink to soak in. And then you lay paper on top, put the thing in a press, and voilà. There’s your print.’

  ‘But why bother? You could just as well paint straight on to the paper, and it would be a lot easier.’

  ‘True. But there’s a quality to a monotype that simply can’t be achieved with direct painting. Here, take a look.’

  He walked me around the room, showing me prints that were certainly lovely, but to my untutored eye not very different from an ordinary watercolour. Then, in a different section, was a display of breathtaking woodcuts. ‘But these are incredible!’ I exclaimed. ‘They remind me of Dürer.’

  ‘Just imitation of his style,’ said Matt, waving his hand. ‘Nothing original about them.’

  ‘Except of course the subject matter,’ I said drily. ‘I haven’t seen too many Dürers featuring Volkswagens.’

  ‘Oh, well, there’s something about a Beetle that just seems to cry out for the technique, don’t you think? Now would you like to see my etchings?’ He twirled an imaginary moustache and spoke in as lecherous a tone as he could manage.

  ‘Along with a little Madeira, m’dear? Lead on.’ I couldn’t have told you quite why, but by now I was convinced that I, or any other woman, would be perfectly safe viewing Matt’s etchings, even in a more romantic setting.

  The etchings, like all Matt’s other work, were exquisite. Small in size and extre
mely delicate in workmanship, they reminded me of a tiny Renoir I’d seen once in a museum, of two women trying on hats, one helping the other. It had been somewhat fuzzy in outline, though, soft, like many of Renoir’s paintings. Matt’s were crisp and clean, and often featured nude or semi-nude men, which tended to confirm my suppositions.

  When we’d completed the tour, I sat on a grubby chair in the studio. ‘Matt, you’re a superb artist. Was your horrible head after you to change your methods, like all the other staff?’

  ‘Oh, yes. He wanted all this—’ he swept a hand in a wide arc – ‘done away with. Outmoded techniques. Time-consuming. Expensive. I was to teach the modern version of printmaking, the zheeclay print.’

  I pictured the word in my mind as he had pronounced it. ‘What on earth is that?’

  ‘Highfalutin name for a computer printout. Spelt g-i-c-l-é-e, with an accent. French for squirt. Also French for … well, never mind. They’re made on ink-jet printers, which squirt out the colour in tiny dots. If you have a good graphics program and a first-rate printer, you can get some good results. We have neither. The students do the best they can, and some of the work they produce looks gorgeous on the screen, and then they print it and it looks like a bad copy of a magazine page. An old magazine page.’

  ‘How discouraging for them, after all that work.’

  ‘And the worst of it is that the damn machines can make thousands of copies, so the concept of a limited edition turns to nonsense. Or no, that’s not the worse of it. The worst is the soullessness. I make a woodcut, let’s say, and I’m involved in it, start to finish. I choose the wood, and the tools I’ll use. I draw the picture on the wood and cut it, and curse when the tool slips and I cut a gouge where I didn’t want it. Put the spoiled block on the fire and start over. I make the print. It’s mine, start to finish. If it’s bad, I am solely to blame. If it’s good, I can claim the honour.’

  ‘I’ll bet it’s usually good. You’re a gifted artist, Matt, and you know it perfectly well.’

  ‘Yes, well,’ he muttered, embarrassed by the compliment. ‘I try to teach the students proper technique. Then it’s up to them. If they have a good eye and a hand that will realize their vision, they produce good work, and they can take pride in it. Artists and craftsmen, following in the footsteps of all who came before.’