Recalled to Life

Chapter 4

THE STORY OF THE PHOTOGRAPHS

The Inspector scanned me close for a few minutes in silence. He

seemed doubtful, suspicious. At last he made a new move. "I believe

you, Miss Callingham," he said, more gently. "I can see this train

of thought distresses you too much. But I can see, too, our best

chance lies in supplying you with independent clues which you may

work out for yourself. You must re-educate your memory. You want to

know all about this murder, of course. Well, now, look over these

papers. They'll tell you in brief what little we know about it. And

they may succeed in striking afresh some resonant chord in your

memory."

He handed me a book of pasted newspaper paragraphs, interspersed

here and there in red ink with little manuscript notes and comments.

I began to read it with profound interest. It was so strange for me

thus to learn for the first time the history of my own life; for I

was quite ignorant as yet of almost everything about my First State,

and my father and mother.

The paragraphs told me the whole story of the crime, as far as it

was known to the world, from the very beginning. First of all, in

the papers, came the bald announcement that a murder had been

committed in a country town in Staffordshire; and that the victim

was Mr. Vivian Callingham, a gentleman of means, residing in his own

house, The Grange, at Woodbury. Mr. Callingham was the inventor of

the acmegraphic process. The servants, said the telegram to the

London papers, had heard the sound of a pistol-shot, about half-past

eight at night, coming from the direction of Mr. Callingham's

library. Aroused by the report, they rushed hastily to the spot, and

broke open the door, which was locked from within. As they did so, a

horrible sight met their astonished eyes. Mr. Callingham's dead body

lay extended on the ground, shot right through the heart, and

weltering in its life-blood. Miss Callingham stood by his side,

transfixed with horror, and mute in her agony. On the floor lay the

pistol that had fired the fatal shot. And just as the servants

entered, for one second of time, the murderer who was otherwise

wholly unknown, was seen to leap from the window into the shrubbery

below. The gardener rushed after him, and jumped down at the same

spot. But the murderer had disappeared as if by magic. It was

conjectured he must have darted down the road at full speed, vaulted

the gate, which was usually locked, and made off at a rapid run for

the open country. Up to date of going to press, the Telegraph said,

he was still at large and had not been apprehended.

That was the earliest account--bald, simple, unvarnished. Then came

mysterious messages from the Central Press about the absence of any

clue to identify the stranger. He hadn't entered the house by any

regular way, it seemed; unless, indeed, Mr. Callingham had brought

him home himself and let him in with the latchkey. None of the

servants had opened the door that evening to any suspicious

character; not a soul had they seen, nor did any of them know a man

was with their master in the library. They heard voices, to be

sure--voices, loud at times and angry,--but they supposed it was Mr.

Callingham talking with his daughter. Till roused by the fatal

pistol-shot, the gardener said, they had no cause for alarm. Even

the footmarks the stranger might have left as he leaped from the

window were obliterated by the prints of the gardener's boots as he

jumped hastily after him. The only person who could cast any light

upon the mystery at all was clearly Miss Callingham, who was in the

room at the moment. But Miss Callingham's mind was completely

unhinged for the present by the nervous shock she had received as

her father fell dead before her. They must wait a few days till she

recovered consciousness, and then they might confidently hope that

the murderer would be identified, or at least so described that the

police could track him.

After that, I read the report of the coroner's inquest. The facts

there elicited added nothing very new to the general view of the

case. Only, the servants remarked on examination, there was a

strange smell of chemicals in the room when they entered; and the

doctors seemed to suggest that the smell might be that of

chloroform, mixed with another very powerful drug known to affect

the memory. Miss Callingham's present state, they thought, might

thus perhaps in part be accounted for.

You can't imagine how curious it was for me to see myself thus

impersonally discussed at such a distance of time, or to learn so

long after that for ten days or more I had been the central object

of interest to all reading England. My name was bandied about

without the slightest reserve. I trembled to see how cavalierly the

press had treated me.

As I went on, I began to learn more and more about my father. He had

made money in Australia, it was said, and had come to live at

Woodbury some fourteen years earlier, where my mother had died when

I was a child of four; and some accounts said she was a widow of

fortune. My father had been interested in chemistry and photography,

it seemed, and had lately completed a new invention, the acmegraph,

for taking successive photographs at measured intervals of so many

seconds by electric light. He was a grave, stern man, the papers

said, more feared than loved by his servants and neighbours; but

nobody about was known to have a personal grudge against him. On the

contrary, he lived at peace with all men. The motive for the murder

remained to the end a complete mystery.

On the second morning of the inquest, however, a curious thing

happened. The police, it appeared, had sealed up the room where the

murder took place, and allowed nobody to enter it till the inquiry

was over. But after the jury came round to view the room, the

policeman in charge found the window at the back of the house had

been recently opened, and the box with the photographic apparatus

had been stolen from the library. Till that moment nobody had

attached any importance to the presence of this camera. It hadn't

even been opened and examined by the police, who had carefully noted

everything else in the library. But as soon as the box was missed

strange questions began to be asked and conjecturally answered. The

police for the first time then observed that though it was half-past

eight at night when the murder occurred, and the lamp was not

lighted, the witnesses who burst first into the room described all

they saw as if they had seen it clearly. They spoke of things as

they would be seen in a very bright light, with absolute

definiteness. This set up inquiry, and the result of the inquiry was

to bring out the fact, which in the excitement of the moment had

escaped the notice of all the servants, that as they entered the

room and stared about at the murder, the electric flash of the

apparatus was actually in operation. But the scene itself had

diverted their attention from the minor matter of the light that

showed it.

The Inspector had been watching me narrowly as I read these

extracts. When I reached that point, he broke in with a word of

explanation.

"Well, that put me on the track, you see," he said, leaning forward

once more. "I thought to myself, if the light was acting, then the

whole apparatus must necessarily have been at work, and the scene as

it took place must have been photographed, act by act and step by

step, exactly as it happened. At the time the murderer, whoever he

was, can't have known the meaning of the flashes. But later, he must

have come to learn in some way what the electric light meant, and

must have realised, sooner than we did, that therein the box, in the

form of six successive negatives of the stages in the crime, was the

evidence that would infallibly convict him of this murder." He

stroked his moustache thoughtfully. "And to think, too," he went on

with a somewhat sheepish air, "we should have had those photographs

there in our power all those days and nights, and have let them in

the end slip like that through our fingers! To think he should have

found it out sooner than we! To think that an amateur like the

murderer should have outwitted us!"

"But how do you know," I cried, "there was ever more than one

photograph? How do you know this wasn't the only negative?"

"Because," the Inspector answered quickly, pointing to a figure in

the corner of the proof, "do you see that six? Well, that tells the

tale. Each plate of the series was numbered so in the apparatus.

Number six could only fall into focus after numbers one, and two,

and three, and four, and five, had first been photographed. We've

only got the last--and least useful for our purpose. There must have

been five earlier ones, showing every stage of the crime, if only

we'd known it."

I was worked up now to a strange pitch of excitement.

"And how did this one come into your possession?" I asked, all

breathless. "If you managed to lay your hands on one, why not on all

six of them?"

The Inspector drew a long breath.

"Ah, that's the trouble!" he replied, still gazing at me hard. "You

see, it was this way. As soon as we found the camera was missing, we

came to the conclusion the murderer must have returned to The Grange

to fetch it. But it was a large and heavy box, and the only one of

its kind as yet manufactured; so, to carry it away in his hands

would no doubt have led to instant detection. I concluded,

therefore, the man would take off the box entire, so as to prevent

the danger of removing the plates on the spot; and as soon as he

reached a place of safety in the shrubbery, he'd fling away the

camera, either destroying the incriminating negatives then and there

or carrying them off with him. The details of the invention had

already been explained to me by your father's instrument-maker, who

set up the clockwork for him from his own designs; and I knew that

the removal of the plates from the box was a delicate, and to some

extent a difficult, operation. So I felt sure they could only have

been taken out in a place of comparative safety, not far from the

house; and I searched the shrubbery carefully, to find the camera."

"And you found it at last?" I asked, unable to restrain my

agitation.

"I found it at last," he answered, "near the far end of the grounds,

just flung into the deep grass, behind a clump of lilacs. The camera

was there intact, but five plates were missing. The sixth, from

which the positive you hold in your hand was taken, had got jammed

in the mechanism in the effort to remove it. Evidently the murderer

had tried to take out the plates in a very great hurry and with

trembling hands, as was not unnatural. He had succeeded with five,

when the sixth stuck fast in the groove of the clockwork. Just at

that moment, as we judged, either an alarm was raised in the rear,

or some panic fear seized on him. Probably the fellow judged right

that the most incriminating pictures of all had by that time been

removed, and that the last would only show his back, if it included

him at all, or if he came into focus. Perhaps he had even been able

unconsciously to count the flashes at the moment, and knew that

before the sixth flash arrived he was on the ledge of the window. At

any rate, he clearly gave up the attempt to remove the sixth, and

flung the whole apparatus away from him in a sudden access of

horror. We guessed as much both from the appearance of the spot

where the grass was trampled down, and the way the angle of the

camera was imbedded forcibly in the soft ground of the shrubbery."

"And he got away with the rest!" I exclaimed, following it up like a

story, but a story in which I was myself an unconscious character.

"No doubt," the Inspector answered, stroking his chin regretfully.

"And what's most annoying of all, we've every reason to suppose the

fellow stole the things only a few minutes before we actually missed

them. For we saw grounds for supposing he jumped away from the spot,

and climbed over the wall at the back, cutting his hands as he went

with the bottle-glass on the top to prevent intruders. And what

makes us think only a very short time must have elapsed between the

removal of the plates and the moment we came upon his tracks is

this--the blood from his cut hands was still fresh and wet upon the

wall when we found it."

"Then you only just missed him!" I exclaimed. "He got off by the

skin of his teeth. It's wonderful, when you were so near, you

shouldn't have managed to overtake him! One would have thought you

must have been able to track him to earth somehow!"

"One would have thought so," the Inspector answered, rather

crestfallen. "But policemen, after all, are human like the rest of

us. We missed the one chance that might have led to an arrest. And

now, what I want to ask you once more is this: Reflecting over what

you've heard and read to-day, do you think you can recollect--a

very small matter--whether or not there were SEVERAL distinct

flashes?"

I shut my eyes once more, and looked hard into the past. Slowly, as

I looked, a sort of dream seemed to come over me. I saw it vaguely

now, or thought I saw it. Flash, flash, flash, flash. Then the sound

of the pistol. Then the Picture, and the Horror, and the awful

blank. I opened my eyes again, and told the Inspector so.

"And once more," he went on, in a very insinuating voice. "Shut your

eyes again, and look back upon that day. Can't you remember whether

or not, just a moment before, you saw the murderer's face by the

light of the flashes?"

I shut my eyes and thought. Again the flashes seemed to stand out

clear and distinct. But no detail supervened--no face came back to

me. I felt it was useless.

"Impossible!" I said shortly. "It only makes my head swim. I can

remember no further."

"I see," the Inspector answered. "It's just as Dr. Wade said.

Suggest a fact in your past history, and you may possibly remember

it; but ask you to recall anything not suggested or already known,

and all seems a mere blank to you! You haven't the faintest idea,

then, who the murderer was or what he looked like?"

I rose up before him solemnly, and stared him full in the face. I

was wrought up by that time to a perfect pitch of excitement and

interest.

"I haven't the faintest idea," I answered, feeling myself a woman at

last, and realising my freedom; "I know and remember no more of it

than you do. But from this moment forth, I shall not rest until I've

found him out and tracked him down, and punished him. I shall never

let my head rest in peace on my pillow until I've discovered my

father's murderer!"

"That's well," the Inspector said sharply, shutting his notes up to

go. "If you persevere in that mind, and do as you say, we shall soon

get to the bottom of the Woodbury Mystery!"

And even as he spoke a key turned in the front door. I knew it was

Aunt Emma, come in from her marketing.