Waxwork

by Peter Lovesey

  Mr Cromer, the girl had said, would not be long. He was finishing some work in the studio. Cribb was content to be alone with the picture. From it he derived an impression of Miriam Cromer. A photograph was no substitute for an interview, but it provided contact of a sort, a chance to see her as she had once looked for a few seconds. The camera was objective. If there was much that it could not convey, at least it made an honest statement. Here is a woman was what it said, not Here is a murderess.

  The objectivity ended with the photograph. Cribb used it in a subjective way, beginning by asking himself what could have induced Miriam Cromer to plead guilty to murder. He let the details of that extraordinary confession creep into his mind. He remembered the episode of the improper photographs she had claimed had provoked the blackmail. He could picture her now at twenty, high-spirited, impetuous, taken in by a cheap deception she could not have dreamed would end in murder. He could visualise the outrage in those eyes when Perceval had made his first demand. To be ensnared and physically shamed by a blackmailer could have driven her to devise a way of destroying him.

  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?’

  ‘I wouldn’t put you at forty, sir.’

  ‘Decent of you to say so. There’s Simon, my best man. Doesn’t Miriam look stunning? The dress was by Pingat, in percale, with ecru lace and real pearl buttons. Her father was a wealthy man, a former mayor of Hampstead. He provided a magnificent reception and paid for the honeymoon as well. Fifteen days in Trouville.’ He turned the pages more swiftly. ‘I took my Rouch Eureka hand camera. The definition is not so good as I hoped for. There’s Miriam promenading. The races at Deauville. Outside the Casino. We played chemin-de-fer until it closed most evenings. There’s Miriam on a wagonette.’

  Cribb stopped the page with his finger. It was the first picture in the album with the wistful look he had noticed in the framed portrait. He passed no comment, letting the pages run on. The outdoor pictures gave way to studio portraits of Miriam, always in different clothes.

  ‘Your wife is well provided with gowns, sir.’

  ‘She lacks nothing,’ said Cromer matter-of-factly. ‘It is my custom to give her the material things the fair sex take pleasure in.’ He chuckled. ‘After all, each new gown is an occasion for another portrait, as you will have observed. The accessories too, the fans and hats and jewellery, are continuously replaced. It is a trivial amusement of mine to surprise her by leaving small presents about the house in places where I know she will accidentally find them. A box of chocolates, a mother-of-pearl brooch, a silver charm.’

  Cribb felt a comment was in order but could not supply one. His prosaic style of speech was not equipped for this. The words gushed from Cromer as liberally as his self-attested kindnesses to Miriam. It would have been interesting to have known what her response had been. If the photographs were any indication, it was not wholly favourable.

  ‘She is my inspiration,’ Cromer went on. ‘All my best work is here. Some of it I have enlarged and put in my bedroom, it delights me so. I take a section of a photograph and enlarge it to life size. As a matter of fact, I was making a print of her hands when you arrived. I find it occupies my mind to work. Private work, I must emphasise. I have refused all commissions since the tragedy happened.’

  ‘This unfortunate event must have hit your business hard,’ Cribb observed.

  A sigh. ‘I fear so. For the present, I am not short of funds. There was a substantial legacy when Miriam’s father died which we have not touched.’

  ‘If she had not pleaded guilty, Cribb reflected, counsel for the defence might have taken a slice of that in fees.’ I heard that you built your business up by your own efforts, sir.’

  ‘That’s absolutely true.’ A faint look of self-congratulation passed across Cromer’s features. ‘I am a self-made man. This studio has a reputation second to none on this side of London, or had, until this happened. Without exaggeration, I could show you portraits enough of the nobility to illustrate Debrett. I was planning a second studio in Regent Street.’

  ‘But you won’t give up the trade?’

  Cromer looked injured. ‘Trade isn’t the expression I would use. No, this is my art, and I shall continue to practise it. In twenty-two years I have come a long way in photography. When I began in the sixties, it was the peak of the carte mania. Every gentleman insisted on being posed leaning on a cardboard column, top hat in hand and one leg crossed over the other—an excruciating pose to hold for a thirty-second exposure, as the strained attitudes showed. If anything, the experience was worse for the photographer, who had the job of explaining to the sitter that an iron headrest would be necessary to fix the pose, that red hair would come out black so he would have to be puffed, and that a plate was ruined because he had blinked. I have often said I would sooner be the public hangman.’

  Cribb let the remark pass. It had slipped off Cromer’s tongue as carelessly as his own reference to trade. ‘Have you always lived in Kew, sir?’

  ‘Four years only. My studio here represents many years of tiresome work photographing vicious little boys in sailor suits.’ He gave a cheerless laugh. ‘You would not believe the number of spoilt plates I have sold to glass merchants at a few shillings a ton because of small heads that turned just as I removed the lens cap. At one time I worked from a wooden shed on the promenade at Worthing, but that is in confidence, Sergeant. I would not wish any of my present clients to know of it. I moved about the suburbs a good deal earlier in my career. Bethnal Green, Tooting Bec, Cricklewood—the localities improved with my fortune.’

  ‘I don’t suppose you could afford to employ an assistant in the early days.’

  ‘Good Lord, no. I was on my own for years. I prepared my own paper, sensitised the plates, acted as receptionist, photographer, developer, printer, retoucher and clerk.’

  ‘It’s a wonder you had time to sleep, sir.’

  Cromer grinned. ‘Sleep is not so important when you are young. Eating was more of a problem. I lived on egg-yolks. It takes a devil of a lot of egg-white to albumenise a ream of paper.’

  ‘Was Josiah Perceval your first assistant, sir?’

  ‘The second, actually. The first, certainly, with any photographic knowledge. He was a local man, living in Sheen. I took him on soon after I moved here. The worst mistake of my life.’ Howard Cromer closed the album and gripped it to his chest. ‘The man was a viper, Sergeant, and I failed to see it. As an assistant he seemed to be competent, reasonably conscientious, good with clients. He was uppish at times, I admit. I knew he helped himself to wine, for instance, and I think he used my stationery for personal correspondence. I ought to have checked him at the outset. I was too indulgent by far. I look for the merits in people and ignore their faults. It was quite beyond imagination that he could be persecuting Miriam. If I had got the smallest suspicion … ’ He shook his head slowly. ‘She, poor innocent, suffered alone. She said not a word about him, Sergeant, not one word.’

  ‘Why was that, sir?’

  Cromer drew a deep breath. ‘That is something I have asked myself repeatedly. I have to admit that I failed her. She was afraid to confide in me. My own beloved wife!’ His knuckles whitened with t
he force of his grip on the album. ‘Those words in her confession are seared across my soul. To confide in my husband was no solution. She was unable to turn to me in her torment.’

  ‘There are secrets in most marriages,’ Cribb ventured. He had some sympathy for Miriam Cromer. She was more real to this man as a series of photographs than a wife.

  ‘She was just a child. What secrets could she have had?’ said Cromer more to himself than Cribb. ‘I take all the responsibility for what happened. Mine is an excitable temperament, and Miriam was terrified how I would react if I knew that Perceval had the means to destroy my reputation, my livelihood. It was easier for her to pay him than confide in me. And when his demands became intolerable she tried to resolve the problem in her own way, poor child.’

  Cribb glanced at the picture on the wall. They were not the eyes of a child.

  ‘I can’t believe she was frightened of you, sir. From what you tell me, you never gave her cause for fear.’

  ‘Good Lord, no! I have never uttered a word in anger to Miriam.’

  ‘There were no misunderstandings between you? It’s not uncommon in the first year or two of marriage.’

  ‘Misunderstandings?’ Cromer repeated, and thought a moment. ‘Nothing of any consequence. It is fair to say that she had some difficulty in adjusting to the marriage bond, but that was in the first six months or so, and it was my fault, mine entirely. I lacked imagination. I should have seen what a change her life had undergone. For months we had led an extremely active social life, as I told you a moment ago. We moved in a spirited set of young people, doing everything in the social calendar, and more. After our marriage I wanted Miriam to myself. To see her in my own home, talk to her, photograph her was all I desired. I tried to make this house sufficient for all our needs. What I failed to anticipate was that when I was working, as I was obliged to, she became bored. I engaged a companion for her, Miss Poley, a personable lady in her sixties, proficient at needlework, music and many card games, but in a short time Miriam asked me to dismiss her. With reluctance, I agreed. It was not the answer. We tried to find things Miriam could do in the house without usurping the housekeeper. She agreed to arrange the flowers in the studio and fill the decanters—things a lady could legitimately undertake—but there were still hours when she was unoccupied. She started taking solitary walks in Kew Gardens. I was reluctant—the classic example of a middle-aged husband fearful of losing his pretty young wife—but I gave my consent, and she seemed happier as a result. It appears so trivial now!’