Mr. Wagner looked relieved. “Good idea. Good idea. I’ll see you there. Straight this way, you say?” He pointed.
Caitlin nodded. “Third star on the right and straight on ‘til morning.”
“Eh?”
“Straight on, Mr. Wagner. As I said, you can’t miss it. If you do,” she added with a broad smile, “just listen for Mr. Piper.”
Wagner laughed good-naturedly. “Ah, yes. Like Foghorn Leghorn!” He continued laughing softly to himself as he tottered up the street.
At the pharmacy, the ladies were standing at the counter by the window, ‘oohing,’ and ‘ahhing’ over the packet of photographs spread out before them. Mrs. Griffeth was turning a picture this way and that in the light, squinting at it like a Florida vote inspector.
“Well, you didn’t need me after all.”
Mrs. Wagner started slightly, nearly catching her finger in her purse as she snapped it shut.
“I’m sorry,” Caitlin apologized. “You were in a another world.”
Mrs. Wagner patted her bosom. “I certainly was. It’s these lovely pictures Frances has taken.”
Caitlin was prepared to give the little gallery a perfunctory once-over with encouraging comments at appropriate intervals, as she did with all her students, but was at once captivated by the artistry of the pictures. Either Mrs. Griffeth had been hiding her photographic skills under a bushel basket, or she possessed a natural talent for composition that was not merely photographically solid, but genuinely artistic – what painters call the ‘inner-eye’.
The photos, most of an intimate micro-view rather than sweeping vistas of French countryside, were simple and elegant, using natural lighting to create an almost three-dimensional interplay of light and shadow. For a long while, Caitlin was spellbound. There wasn’t a bum shot in the bunch. Most professionals would have gone through rolls and rolls of film trying to capture any one of them.
“These are wonderful, Mrs. Griffeth,” she said at last, feeling at once the inadequacy of her praise. “I’m amazed. Didn’t you tell me you’d never done any serious photography?”
“My husband does all the photography in our house. Which is why he’s missing from the family albums.” She held another snapshot up to the light, squinting at it as if to will it into focus. “I feel positively helpless without my glasses.” She sighed, patting her chest where the glasses usually hung. “One just hopes for a tiny tea set in the shade of a lady slipper.”
Mrs. Wagner quizzed Caitlin with a glance and a twist of her eyebrows. Caitlin turned the query aside with an off-kilter nod.
“Believe me, Mrs. Griffeth, you don’t need fairies. These are beautiful. Really beautiful. Congratulations.”
Mrs. Griffeth flushed modestly. Caitlin had the impression she hadn’t gotten much praise in her life. “Well, I’m glad you like them. Makes me wish I could see them myself.” She hissed and rummaged habitually through her purse for the glasses she knew weren’t there.
“You didn’t run into my husband on your way, did you?” Mrs. Wagner asked, tucking her purse under her arm.
“As a matter of fact, I did. ‘Run into’ being the operative phrase. We nearly collided.”
“Oh, that’s Harold,” Mrs. Wagner apologized. “He’s easily distracted.”
Caitlin smiled. “That makes two of us. He’s with the others by now. Well, Mrs. Griffeth, your French seems to have served you well this time out.”
Mrs. Griffeth shuffled the photographs together and stuffed them unceremoniously into their paper folder. “That girl didn’t understand a word I said. I ended up pointing at my camera, then at the rack of packets on the wall behind her. She’s as thick as a newly-wed’s pudding, and I felt a perfect fool.”
“Oh, you did fine,” said Mrs. Wagner.
Caitlin hesitated. “You did get the right pictures, didn’t you?” A horrible notion sprang to mind that in her confusion the shop girl had given Mrs. Griffeth the wrong pictures.
“Oh, they’re mine all right. See?” she said, holding the photo alternately at arm’s length, then up to her nose, squinting and twisting it into focus, “here’s the picture of the butterfly on Joan-of- Arc’s shoulder. Why do you ask?”
Caitlin clambered nimbly out of the hole she’d dug herself. “Oh, sign language can be so confusing. You know. Well, however you managed it, you communicated, and that’s the important thing. Now, how about that pastry?”
The motion was passed unanimously and from that point on the mood of the day lightened appreciably. Caitlin did notice, however, that Miss Tichyara maintained a distance between herself and Amber. In retrospect, she realized it had been that way since the beginning, when she’d mistaken the blind girl’s reserve for first-day jitters, new places, new people, new language and culture, all filtered through the heightened sensitivity of her handicap.
But there was clearly something else, an emotion impossible to identify, given the girls’ rare proximity to one another. Something.
Joe Webster had built a kidney-shaped swimming pool in the lee of the chateau and Jill, whenever she could grab a spare minute or two, was landscaping the area surrounding the pool to make it seem as much a natural part of the setting as possible. She was sifting compost onto a new flower bed when Caitlin found her.
“I suppose there’s no chance you’ve got Farthing buried there?”
Jill started, in the manner patented so recently by Mrs. Wagner. Caitlin apologized. “I seem to be startling everybody today. Maybe I should get some hobnail boots.”
“Oh, it’s not your fault,” Jill replied quickly. “I think I enter another dimension when I’m gardening.”
She mopped her forehead with her sleeve. “I didn’t hear the van. Have you been back long?”
“Only just arrived. How’s our patient?”
Jill resumed her work. “The doctor came, at long last. It’s a concussion apparently, as Mrs. Capshaw said. A pretty bad one, but a few days’ rest should see him right. He’s been in his room all day. Very quiet.”
“Every cloud has a silver lining.”
“How was your day?”
Caitlin thought a moment, her eyes resting sightlessly on the newly-turned soil, rich and brown. “Unusual,” she declared. “Unusual.”
“Seems an appropriate motto for this group,” said Jill. She stood up and arched her back. “Strange goings on.”
“Ah, there you are!” Mrs. Griffeth’s comic opera trill wrapped itself around them like a lasso.
“Mrs. Griffeth,” said Caitlin. “I see you’ve got your glasses back.”
The woman stumbled a bit in mid-fluster. “What? Oh. Yes. Yes. The girl . . . What is her infernal name? Guinivere? She left them in my room . . . and not a minute too soon. Without them, I’d never have known someone has stolen one of my pictures!” She bustled upon the scene brandishing the packet of snapshots, which she fluttered angrily under Caitlin’s nose.
The last thing Caitlin wanted at the moment was Jeremy Farthing. Thenext to last thing she wanted was Mrs. Griffeth in any mood, let alone snippy. She composed herself hastily, brushing away the tear on her cheek and took the envelope. “The maid’s name is Genevieve, Mrs. Griffeth. And I’m sure you’re mistaken about anybody stealing anything.”
“I amnot. I just counted them. There are only thirty-five, and it was a roll of thirty-six.”
“Yes, well . . . there could be any number of reasons for that. Perhaps it was a bad exposure, or you double advanced. It happened before, you remember?”
Mrs. Griffeth’s fervor abated somewhat. “I’ve been very careful since,” she said doubtfully. “I don’t think I’d’ve made such a mistake again.”
Caitlin struggled to gather her wits about her. There was no doubt Frances Griffeth was meticulous in following the fundamentals she’d learned. In fact, she had the habit of rehearsing them aloud as she set up her shots, to the consternation of the other students. “Then perhaps the film was defective. You remember I said you can often squeeze an
extra shot or two on a roll? Well, I suppose the reverse can happen as well.”
Forced to consider this possibility, Mrs. Griffeth hauteur ratcheted down another step. “Does that happen? I paid full price.”
Caitlin shrugged. She’d never known it to happen, but anything was possible. “It’s possible,” she prevaricated. “Or maybe you just lost it. Did you look in the van?”
Mrs. Griffeth lobbed a withering stare over the top of her glasses. “Ofcourse I looked in the van. That’s where I’ve just come from. I didn’t want to accuse anyone of thievery until I was sure. I assure you, I’m not the type of person who loses things. Mr. Griffeth often says I’d never have lost my virginity but for extenuating circumstances. Nevertheless, I’ve looked everywhere but up the monkey’s what-not.”
The thought that would have occurred to Caitlin earlier, had she not been preoccupied, occurred to her now. She removed the strips of negatives from the envelope. “This will tell us what we need to know.”
“The negatives,” Mrs. Griffeth sighed with admiration. “Now, why didn’t I think of that?”
Caitlin quickly counted six strips, each of which contained six shots. She held them up to the light, one at a time, and studied them. None was blank.
“Well, we know this much,” she said, “there were thirty-six shots on the roll, and none of them’s a dud.”
“Then someonedid steal it?”
“Or you dropped it. Or it got misplaced at the pharmacy. Let’s not jump to conclusions.” Caitlin removed the photos from the packet and spread them out on the patio. Jill looked over her shoulder.
“You took those?” said Jill, almost involuntarily.
“She did,” said Caitlin.
“They’re really quite nice.”
How British, Caitlin thought. She knew gallery owners in San Francisco – the land of hyperbole – who would be rushing to their Thesauri for superlatives at the sight of these pictures.
“Really quate nace,” she chided in her thickest BBC English. “You’re such a toff.”
“I am not!” Jill objected. “They’re really very . . . very nice.”
“Nice?”
Jill ignored Caitlin’s barb and turned to Mrs. Griffeth. “They are excellent photographs, Mrs. Griffeth. You should be very proud.” The glance she tossed at Caitlin said, “And you must be a wonderful teacher. How’s that?”
Caitlin nodded approval, then laughed. “Now,” she said, once more holding the strips of film up to the light and examining them frame-by-frame. “All we have to do is compare them against the prints to find which one is missing, and you can easily have a new print made of it.”
Mrs. Griffeth watched the process with enthusiasm. “You’re so clever.” She turned to Jill. “Don’t you think she’s clever?”
“Isn’t she though?”
“Here it is!” Caitlin put the other negatives down and studied the missing shot carefully. “Number five. Picture of a swan in the moat, it appears.”
“I remember that!” said Mrs. Griffeth gleefully. “It was just after dawn. Everything was shades of blue . . . ”
As she prattled on, Caitlin’s attention was drawn to a light smudge in the upper right hand corner of the negative. She dropped her glasses onto her nose for a closer study. As the image came into focus, she drew a sharp breath.
“What is it?” Mrs. Griffeth said, interrupting herself. Dumbfounded, Caitlin lowered the photograph and handed it to Jill. Mrs. Griffeth had photographed her fairy.
Chapter Fourteen–Things Unseen
The only one-hour processing place within a reasonable distance was on thePlace de la Liberte in Sarlat. Her classes for the day completed, Caitlin excused herself to run some errands. Jill had agreed to play nursemaid to her charges, and to do all she could to keep Mrs. Griffeth from blabbing about her fairy – which would have been impossible had Caitlin not assured her that a trap was being laid to discover who had stolen the picture, and any untimely remarks on her part might jeopardize the investigation.
As she drove, Caitlin was still not convinced anyone had stolen the print. It was more likely it had been dropped at the pharmacy, if not by Mrs. Griffeth, then perhaps by Mrs. Wagner when they were looking at the pictures.
The vignette replayed itself in her mind; Mrs. Wagner, startled by her return, her purse snapping shut.
Why had it been open? Mrs. Wagner hadn’t bought anything in the pharmacy nor, as Caitlin reviewed the memory, had she used a tissue to performed any act of maintenance for which a purse was necessary.
But, the purse had snapped shut.
As mile after mile of narrow, twisting road slipped away beneath the wheels of the van, she considered the implication. What possible reason could there be for Mrs. Wagner to have taken – stolen – one of Mrs. Griffeth’s pictures . . . or that particular print? At the same time, it occurred to her that she was one of the few candidates that made sense. Any of the photography students would have known enough to take the negative as well, assuming that expunging the frame from existence had been their motive.
“What if that was the purpose,” Caitlin said aloud. The lowering sun shone in her eyes from time to time, forcing her to slow down and feel her way along the road through thick puddles of blinding luminescence. “Why would anyone want to destroy a photograph?”
Of course, she’d often destroyed photographs herself, if they were particularly disappointing, but they were her own, not someone else’s. Surely Mrs. Wagner hadn’t objected to the print on artistic grounds.
What, then?
“Something in the picture she didn’t want Mrs. Griffeth . . . or someone else . . . to see?” Her concentration was so sharply focused on the puzzle, she failed to slow down the next time she was blinded by the sun and, before she knew what had happened, had flown through an intersection, narrowly missing a large delivery truck. The driver expressed his displeasure with a few expressive gestures in her rearview mirror.
“Sorry,” she said, meekly tucking her head into the hollow of her collarbones. She wondered why humankind had created so many gestures to register offense, but none to indicate apology. She slowed down.
Mrs. Griffeth hadn’t seen the ‘fairy’ when she was framing the shot, or it would have been the focal point. Was it the fairy-shaped smudge that Mrs. Wagner didn’t want seen? “By whom? Frances? Someone else? Anyone else? But why?”
Given this line of reasoning, it was evident that Mrs. Wagner had deliberately stayed behind with Frances at the pharmacy, in fact had made sure she’d be there when the pictures were opened. Upon consideration, it must have been her idea to open them then and there in the first place. Without her glasses, Frances couldn’t hope to enjoy her work on the spot.
The suspicion sprang to mind, unbidden, that Mrs. Wagner may have been the one who stole the roll of film from Mrs. Griffeth room in the first place. She repeated the thought out loud, finding it easier to examine out in the open. She glanced at the envelope on the passenger seat. “But why?”
Cresting a shallow rise, she was once more blinded by a piercing shaft of sunlight. Shielding her eyes with her free hand, she pressed the brakes and crept toward the shadows. Suddenly a figure appeared in front of her, as if walking out of the sun. She stomped on the brake, screeching to a halt not three feet from a uniformed gendarme.
“M’dam,” he said, with a little salute as the rolled down the window.
“I’m sorry, officer,” she apologized, seeing his face was unnaturally pale. “I couldn’t see you. The sun . . . ”
He looked over his shoulder, making a visor of his hand.
“Ah, I see. I’m lucky you didn’t run me down. Come, pull to the side over here, before we cause an accident. I’ll have my partner move the patrol car down the hill.”
The officer began speaking into the walkie-talkie strapped to his shoulder as Caitlin pulled off the road. He approached from behind as she watched in the outside mirror. His left hand rested on the leather cover of his holster and
he walked slowly, looking carefully through the windows, which were lightly tinted.
He smiled as he drew abreast of the driver’s door, which he opened. “I apologize for thinking you were homicidal. Would you please step out for a moment?”
Too confused to protest, Caitlin complied. “What’s the problem, officer?”
“Please. If you would stand over there for a moment,” he nodded to his right.
“But . . . ”
“Please,” he ordered. “Just for a moment.”
Caitlin did as she was told, watching, bewildered, as the officer drew his gun and began a careful inspection of the interior of the van. After several unnaturally protracted seconds, he climbed out, holstering his weapon as he approached her.
“Sorry for the inconvenience,” he said. His voice was soft now. Genuine.
He was a pleasant-looking man, probably in his mid-forties with a dark complexion – Corsican, probably – and thinning hair. In ten or fifteen years, Caitlin thought involuntarily, he’d be quite distinguished. He needed a mustache. Her hasty appraisal took into account the fact that there was no ring on his finger.
“No problem. What’s this all about?”
His smile dissolved in an instant. “You are a tourist?”
Her accent gave her away. He probably thought she was from the Riviera, where she’d lived years before, when she was learning French. Her friend in Paris often chided her for her heavy Nicoise pronunciation. “More or less. I’m a teacher. I have a class of photography students. Americans, mostly . . . ”
“How long have you been in the area?”
Caitlin was too flustered to remember clearly. “Three or four days.”
“Ah, I see. And, have you heard much local news?”
“Yes.”
The reason for his line of questioning was suddenly clear.
He nodded. “We have road blocks on all roads leading out of the valley. I wouldn’t have mentioned it if you were just passing through. No need to distress the day trippers. That’s what you call them in England, isn’t it?”
Dead and Breakfast (Caitlyn Craft Mysteries Book 1) Page 12
