Now she knew that Gabriel Jones had blithely gone about his Arcane Society business, never for one moment considering what the news of his death might have done to her nerves.
Really, men could be so thoughtless.
When she reached the side door through which Burton had vanished, she paused to look back to where Gabriel had been standing a few minutes ago, talking to Christopher Farley. She could no longer see him. Perhaps he had gone outside for some fresh air. She could use some of that commodity herself.
Unfortunately she had a more important task to accomplish. She could only hope that Burton had not left the exhibition hall altogether while she had been obliged to discuss her marital duties with Mrs. Chilcott.
She opened the door and slipped out of the brightly lit hall into a darkened corridor.
She closed the door and stood quietly for a moment, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the deep shadows. There was just enough moonlight seeping through the high windows above the staircase at the end of the passageway to reveal a row of closed doors.
She tried to listen for Burton’s footsteps but all she could hear was the faint, muffled noise of the crowd on the other side of the wall.
She started forward slowly, wondering why Burton had come this way.
This was not her first visit to Farley’s exhibition rooms. She had been here, behind the scenes, on several occasions in recent weeks to discuss business. Christopher Farley had taken an interest in her work right from the start when she had brought him some of her pictures to examine. He had advised her regarding the financial side of the profession and introduced her to some of her first important clients. In return, she had given him some of her photographs to exhibit and sell.
Because of the meetings with Farley, she had a general knowledge of how the rooms and offices were arranged on this floor.
The corridor in which she was standing was intersected by another passage midway along the hall. Farley’s large office was in the other corridor.
She went quietly to the corner and looked down the second, even darker hall. No gaslight showed through the glass panes of the door to Farley’s office. The glow of the moon from the windows inside the room caused the opaque panel to gleam a dull gray against the deeper shadows. The room next to the office was the one used by Farley’s two clerks. It, too, was unlit.
She turned back to the main hallway. She knew that there were three offices, a large storeroom and a darkroom in that direction.
The firm’s clerks used the darkroom to make additional prints of some of the photographs that were offered for sale in the showrooms. Farley was also known to invite talented but impoverished photographers to make use of the facilities. She could not imagine why Harold Burton would enter either the storeroom or the darkroom. He had his own small gallery and possessed his own equipment.
It was possible, of course, that Burton had chosen to depart the exhibition via the stairs at the end of the hall. But if he had wished to leave it would have been a good deal faster to go out through the main entrance, which descended to a gracious lobby and the busy street.
The staircase at the end of the corridor in which she stood led to the alley.
If Burton had left the building via these stairs, she might as well abandon any effort to confront him tonight.
But there was another possibility. Burton’s ethics were not of the highest caliber, she reminded herself. Perhaps he had let himself into Farley’s office to have a look around. There was no doubt a good deal of information on the firm’s clients locked up in that room. Burton was not above helping himself to something that might offer a potential profit.
Moving as quietly as possible so as not to provide a warning, she started along the hallway that led to Farley’s office.
Two steps into the darkness she heard the faint sound of a door opening in the other corridor.
She turned quickly, intending to rush back out into the other passageway to intercept Burton. But a flash of icy intuition made her hesitate.
If that was Burton, he was behaving in what could only be described as a furtive manner. It might pay to see if she could discover what he was about. She needed whatever small advantage she could obtain.
She tiptoed back to the intersection of the two halls and stopped just short of the main corridor.
The muted voices of the crowd in the exhibition galleries suddenly seemed very far away. She felt unnervingly alone in the darkness.
Footsteps sounded in the other hallway. Burton was not coming in her direction. He was going toward the rear stairs. In another few seconds he would be gone. If she did not act now, he would escape.
But something held her back. She was not afraid of Burton, she told herself. She was angry because of what she was sure he had done but she was not frightened. Why was she hesitating?
She gathered her nerve and her skirts, took another step forward and leaned ever so slightly out into the other hall.
The murky moonlight illuminated the silhouette of a man in a long overcoat and a tall hat. He was moving swiftly away from her, striding purposefully toward the stairwell.
Not Burton, she decided. This man was taller. He did not scuttle along in the manner that characterized Burton’s walk. Instead, he moved with a smooth, coordinated, surprisingly graceful ease that suggested strength and power. Not unlike the way Gabriel moves, she thought.
She concentrated intently, looking at the moving figure as though he were a sitter she was about to photograph, trying to catch a glimpse of his aura.
Light and shadow reversed. The corridor became a negative image. A pulsing aura appeared around the man at the end of the hall. Hot and cold shades of energy flashed in the darkness.
Fear lanced through her. Over the years she had seen many different auras, but none had alarmed her the way this one did.
She knew in that moment that she was viewing an erratic, raging energy given off by some strange, abnormal lust. She sensed intuitively that no woman could ever satisfy that unwholesome desire. She prayed that she would never learn the nature of whatever it was that the beast required to sate its terrible hunger.
To her overriding relief the figure plunged down the stairs and disappeared.
For a few more seconds she remained in the sanctuary of the connecting hall, too shaken to move.
Then she remembered Harold Burton.
A sick dread rose within her.
She made herself move out of the hallway and down the corridor to the darkroom.
“Mr. Burton?” She knocked once on the door.
There was no response.
“Are you in there?”
The silence raised the small hairs on the nape of her neck.
There was no point delaying any longer. She knew deep down that something terrible had occurred inside the darkroom. She also sensed that no matter how hard she knocked, Harold Burton was probably not going to answer.
She twisted the knob and opened the door very slowly.
Someone had pulled aside the heavy drape that usually covered the small window of the darkroom. The slanting triangle of moonlight illuminated Burton’s sprawled, unmoving figure. He lay faceup on the floor, staring emptily at the ceiling.
“Dear heaven.”
She crouched beside him, her skirts pooling around her, and felt for a pulse with shaking fingertips. No life beat at the base of Burton’s throat. His skin was already growing unnaturally cold.
Then she saw the brandy bottle and the overturned glass on the counter. Liquid dripped over the edge and splashed onto the floor. She could smell brandy fumes.
“What the devil is going on here?” Gabriel’s voice was low and dangerous.
She leaped to her feet and swung around, barely managing to stifle a small scream.
“What are you doing here?” she gasped.
“I noticed that you had left the hall. When you did not return in a reasonable length of time I decided to see what was keeping you.”
She saw that he had
one hand clenched very tightly around the doorknob. Something odd was happening. She concentrated briefly and saw the pulse of dark energy in the atmosphere around him.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
When she did not respond immediately, he released the doorknob and seized her wrist.
“Answer me,” he said softly. “Are you all right?”
“Yes.” She pulled herself together with an effort. Her normal vision snapped back into focus. “Yes, I’m fine.”
He turned up the gas lamp on a nearby table and looked down at the body.
“Tell me who this man is,” he said.
“Harold Burton. He was a photographer.”
“You came here to meet him?”
The question was ice cold.
“No,” she said, shivering a little. “Well, yes. Not exactly. Not like this.” She abandoned the explanation. “I just walked into the room and found him.”
“Is there a wound?”
“I don’t think so. There is no blood.”
“He did not die of natural causes,” Gabriel said.
She wondered how he could be so certain of that.
“I don’t think so,” she agreed.
He looked at her. “What do you know of this business?”
“Someone left this room just before I arrived. I think he may have had something to do with this. At the very least he will likely know what occurred in here.”
“You saw this person?” Gabriel asked, his voice sharpening.
“I got only a fleeting glimpse as he went down the stairs.”
“Did you recognize him?”
“No.”
“Did he see you?” The question was far more urgent than the previous one.
She shook her head. “I’m sure he did not notice me. As I said, he was moving away from me. I was in the other hallway, watching him from around the corner. No, I’m certain he did not see me. He never even paused.”
Gabriel took a step toward the counter where the spilled brandy dripped.
“Don’t touch that liquid,” she said quickly. “Or the glass, either, for that matter.”
He stopped and looked back at her.
“Why not?” he asked.
Most men would have been annoyed at the notion of a woman giving orders under such circumstances. Ladies were expected to succumb to hysteria and the vapors when they were confronted with situations involving dead bodies.
But Gabriel was not questioning her common sense or good judgment, she realized. He simply wanted to know why she had warned him away from the spilled brandy.
She drew a deep breath. “There are only two possibilities here.” She looked at the empty glass and then at Burton’s sprawled body. “I suppose it could have been suicide. That is certainly the usual explanation in cases like this. But from what I know of Harold Burton, I find it hard to believe that he took his own life.”
“What do you mean, the usual explanation in cases like this?”
“I suspect that the authorities will find that Mr. Burton drank a glass of brandy laced with cyanide.”
Gabriel tightened one hand into a fist and then opened it again in a small, quick gesture, as though trying to rid himself of something unpleasant that clung to his fingers. It struck her as a curiously restless movement for a man who was usually so well controlled.
“I think,” he said, “that you had better tell me exactly what you are doing in this room.”
“It is a somewhat complicated story.”
“I suggest you tell it quickly, before we send for the police.”
“Oh, heavens. The police. Yes, of course.” She would worry about the potential scandal later, she thought.
She explained, very briefly, about the two photographs that had been sent to her anonymously.
“I’m not sure what Burton intended but it occurred to me that he was either attempting to frighten me into abandoning my business or worse.”
“Worse?”
“I did wonder if he intended the photographs as a prelude to blackmail,” she admitted.
“Were the photographs of a compromising nature?”
“No. They were just…unnerving. You would have to see them to understand.”
“You will show them to me later. In the meantime, we will not mention those pictures to the police.”
“But they may be clues.”
“They are also potential motives for murder, Venetia.”
The implications of what he had just said stunned her. She suddenly felt a little light-headed.
“Do you think the police might conclude that I killed Burton because I believed that he was the one who sent me those awful pictures?” she whispered.
“Do not concern yourself, Mrs. Jones. We are going to take steps to ensure that you do not become a suspect in this affair.”
Anxiety knotted her stomach. “But even if we do not tell the police about the pictures, there is no getting around the fact that I was alone in the hallway for some time. I am the one who discovered the body. I cannot prove that there was anyone else in here before I arrived. What is to prevent the authorities from suspecting that I gave Burton the cyanide to drink?”
“Even if the police do decide that this is a case of murder and not suicide, I think it is safe to say that they will not question your innocence.”
She was starting to grow annoyed with his attitude of cool authority. “What makes you so certain of that, sir?”
“Because there is someone who can provide you with an excellent alibi,” Gabriel said patiently.
“Indeed? And just who is that person?”
He spread his hands. “Why, your beloved, recently-returned-from-the-grave husband, of course.”
“But I don’t have a—” She broke off abruptly. “Oh. You.”
“Yes, Mrs. Jones. Me. We found the body together when we stepped out of the overheated exhibition hall to find a bit of privacy. I’m sure everyone will understand.”
“They will?”
“This is my first night home after the unfortunate accident that I suffered on our honeymoon, if you will recall. I have it on good authority that a man in my circumstances would go to great lengths to have even a few minutes alone with the bride he had been parted from for such a great length of time.”
14
THERE IS A REASON why photography has long been known as one of the black arts.” Venetia sank down onto a chair in front of the hearth and slowly stripped off her gloves. “Two reasons, actually.”
“The use of cyanide being one of them?” Gabriel tossed his overcoat across the corner of the desk. He did not remove his evening coat but loosened his tie and unfastened the top of his shirt.
Venetia was remarkably calm, given the ordeal she had just endured, but he could see the anxiety and tension that stiffened her shoulders.
“Yes,” she said. “For years the photographic journals have railed against the practice of using potassium of cyanide as a fixing agent.” She placed the black kid gloves very neatly, very precisely, on a small end table. “It is not as though there is not a perfectly acceptable and safe alternative available.”
“The chemical that you used at Arcane House? I believe you called it hypo.”
“Hyposulphite of soda. It has been around since the earliest days of the medium but there have always been those who insisted that cyanide was better suited to the task. In addition, before the new dry plates became available a few years ago, cyanide was very useful for removing the black stains on carpets and hands and everything else created by the silver bath drippings.”
“The staining problem being the other reason why photography is known as a black art?”
She nodded somberly. “Until quite recently it was said that you could tell a photographer by his fingers. They were frequently blackened from the use of the silver nitrate that was used to prepare the old collodion wet plates. I did not begin my career until after the advent of commercially made dry plates, so I have not had to deal with
the problem of silver stains.”
“There are those who still routinely use cyanide?”
“Unfortunately, yes. It remains a staple in many darkrooms. Certainly no one will think it odd that it was conveniently on hand in Mr. Farley’s establishment tonight.”
Gabriel crouched in front of the hearth and got a small blaze going. “I have noticed the occasional items in the papers concerning the deaths of photographers by cyanide.”
“Not just photographers. Very often the victim is someone else in the household. A child who drinks it out of curiosity, for instance, or a young maid despondent over a failed love affair. Sometimes it is the family dog that is killed. There is no knowing how many people have expired either by accident or by design because of the poison.”
Gabriel rose to his feet and went to the table that held a decanter of brandy. “One would think that if Burton had been looking for a quick exit from this mortal plane he would have taken the cyanide straight. Instead, he drank it mixed with strong spirits.”
She hesitated. “There are those who will say that he probably thought it would be easier to get down that way.”
“True.” Gabriel reflected briefly on the strong, disturbing frissons of violent intent that had clung to the glass knob of Farley’s darkroom door. “But as I said earlier, I am in complete agreement with your conclusion concerning events tonight. Burton was murdered.”
“It would have required only a single swallow,” she said quietly. “A strong dose of cyanide kills very quickly.”
He picked up the bottle of brandy and splashed the contents into two glasses. When he had completed the task, he contemplated the glasses for a few seconds.
“That thought does give one pause, doesn’t it?” he asked, picking up the glasses.
She looked at the brandy that he was holding out to her. “Yes, it does.”
She unclasped her hands and took the brandy from him. He could see that her fingers trembled ever so slightly.
He lowered himself into the other armchair and swallowed some of the contents of his glass. Venetia took a deep breath, wrinkled her nose and tossed back some of the brandy with a bit of a flourish.