City of Secrets (9 page)

“I will see what I can do. Is there anything else?”

Maddie smiled. “Isn’t that enough?”

#

Oliver went off to carry out Mrs. Malcolm’s request, shaking his head over her odd reaction to Devin Grant but glad that she recognized that they must work together rather than in competition. Yes, that was what was odd—she had never struck him as a competitive sort of woman. In fact, that was what he had liked about her even before he met her.

Louise had talked about her, of course. At first he had seen her as just another society matron who wanted her own way and her husband under her heel, where most of her kind thought the poor devils belonged. But it was not long before he saw the changes she wrought in Louise, who, although she remained outwardly as stiff and undemonstrative as always, had softened noticeably behind that shell of hers, something she had not been able to do, even under Oliver’s care, since her first husband died. Then, when Mrs. Malcolm bought the house in St. Louis as a refuge for abused women, Louise had come home positively glowing, and not, Oliver was fascinated to learn, because she was happy for the new tenants of the Elm Street Residency.

“She’ll be able to get back to her own life now,” Louise had said. “She’ll make it up with that husband of hers, have children, and be as happy as she deserves.”

It didn’t work out that way, of course. A month later, Mrs. Malcolm came to the Pinkerton agency and asked to speak to an agent. She told Oliver that her husband had disappeared and, without resorting to tears or emotional appeals, gave him the facts and asked him to take on her case. But it was the fragility behind that brave exterior—so unexpectedly like Louise’s, in fact, however much the exteriors differed— that prompted the short, unprepossessing little agent also to take on the role of knight errant for the tall, gloriously beautiful Mrs. Malcolm.

At Oliver’s suggestion, and with his client’s consent, Louise had moved into Mrs. Malcolm’s house and begun calling herself a “dresser,” a position that Oliver had never heard of before but that Louise obviously considered an honor. Thereafter both of them had devoted themselves entirely to Mrs. Malcolm’s service, and neither had regretted it since.

Oliver kept his private opinion of Mr. Edward Malcolm even from Louise. It was not his place to have an opinion, only to find the missing gentleman for her. He went about his new assignment with his customary diligence, but with a frustrating lack of results, and when the agency threatened to take him off the case and declare it unsolved, Oliver took the unprecedented step of resigning to go into private service.

When his investigation came to a halt in St. Louis, it was Mrs. Malcolm’s idea to go abroad. Louise had been reluctant—she still was—but loyally agreed to go. Oliver was grateful, and he personally looked for a suitable detective agency in London that might be of help.

But Devin Grant couldn’t help if Madeleine Malcolm didn’t trust him, so Oliver was relieved when she finally allowed him to act as go-between. Besides, there were things he should tell Grant that he had never told Mrs. Malcolm. And he was curious himself about Grant. There hadn’t been any hint in the records about this business with the Prince of Wales, and Mrs. Malcolm was right about his being secretive. Moreover, Oliver hadn’t missed a certain similarity between Mrs. Malcolm’s account of her first meeting with Grant in his office and his own first meeting with her. But neither had he missed the major difference. Grant had doubtless sensed something of the real woman behind that confident, competent exterior—but had he reacted as strongly to her as she had to him?

Oliver had a feeling that monitoring the relationship between Devin Grant and Madeleine Malcolm was going to prove far more engrossing than this wild-goose chase after Teddy Malcolm.

Personally, Oliver would be glad when they proved once and for all that he had drowned in the Seine.

#

Maddie had always made it a point to repay her debts, and she owed something to the photographer Laurence Fox, so after Oliver left her, she had Louise send a message that they would come to his studio that afternoon.

She was not particularly eager to have her face preserved for posterity, but curiosity made her look forward to seeing his studio as she and Louise departed the Savoy in a hansom cab. Louise, as usual, disapproved—even before Maddie told her, as best she could from her own inexperience of such things, what Mr. Fox intended—but it was her duty to chaperon her mistress whenever Mrs. Malcolm ventured out into the commercial world, and nothing would induce her to forego her duty on this occasion.

Mr. Fox’s studio was located at a respectable, almost fashionable, address in Wigmore Street, for which Maddie suspected he paid more in rent than he could strictly afford, for the sake of his clients who were in the main fashionable ladies who did not care to venture east of Covent Garden or north of Marylebone Road, even to have themselves immortalized on celluloid film. Nevertheless, no sooner had the cab halted at the door than Louise insisted on descending first, to scrutinize the neighborhood with her critical eyes before allowing Maddie to set foot in it. Laurence answered the bell himself, which did not meet with Louise’s approbation, but he was respectfully delighted to see both ladies, which did.

“Mrs. Malcolm, how prompt you are, and how perfectly dressed for the occasion! Light colors, you know, make such a more cheerful picture than any other and do not make unbecoming shadows on the face, which is of course the focus of the exercise. Do let me take your wrap, and if you will follow me upstairs….”

The studio, it turned out, occupied the whole of the first floor, and Maddie began to revise her estimate of Mr. Fox’s net worth. He did, however, apologize for the lack of a lift, saying that he would have preferred the top floor, which boasted a skylight, but he could not ask his clients to climb four flights of stairs for the sake of a lighting effect he had learned to duplicate in his present location.

There were, indeed, several large, undraped windows in the half of the room where Mr. Fox’s camera was set up, and an elaborate system of wires and electric globes gave evidence of the eager photographer’s experiments in supplementing natural lighting by that means.

Louise took in the entire room in one comprehensive and disapproving glance, then sat down in a straight-backed wooden chair—despite Mr. Fox’s offer of a more comfortable upholstered armchair—from which she did not move for the rest of the morning, except to attend to Maddie as required. Maddie, however, was intrigued by the paraphernalia that covered several shelves and hung from pegs on the walls. Laurence obligingly—and with some pride, Maddie noted, guessing that very few people troubled to ask about it—explained what everything was, from the mysterious little bottles of chemicals resting in cotton nests to the dozens of glass plates, each plate in its separate narrow wooden sleeve, to the enclosed darkroom which, for the sake of Louise’s scruples, Maddie declined to enter, only peering around the door frame as Laurence explained how he developed his photographs.

At one of the windows stood his most recent acquisition, something he called a panoramic view camera, with which he was experimenting by taking views of Wigmore Street.

“And the windows of the office across the street, I see,” Maddie said. “Have they any pretty little secretary-typists to make it worth your pains?”

“Oh, yes,” Laurence said, unaware that he was being teased. “Several of them have come over on their tea break to have their photos taken, and to take some of their own.”

He showed her a wall covered with lopsided views of empty corridors and circular likenesses of giggling girls taken with someone’s old Kodak, as evidence. “This is why I purchased the panoramic view camera,” he said. “Every shopgirl and earl’s daughter may now take a respectable photograph with the new Kodak. ‘Pull the string, turn the key, press the button’—and presto, no one needs me anymore. I must therefore keep ahead of the new inventions if I wish to make my living as a photographer.”

“Do you do so?” Maddie asked. “Forgive my Yankee crassness, but I did wonder about it.”

“Any photographer who does his work well can succeed at it,” he said, adding with a smile, “but only those who choose the right subjects can make a vocation of it.”

“Of course. And here I am keeping you from your work. Shall we start? Where do you wish me to stand, or sit, or whatever is customary?”

“There is one little ritual to perform first,” he said, disappearing into the darkroom. A moment later, Maddie heard a muffled clatter of china, and Laurence emerged with a tray holding a large flowered teapot, two cups, and a plate of little cakes. He poured a cup of tea and handed it to her, giving the other to Louise, who hesitated only a moment before accepting it. “Now we may begin,” he said.

Maddie laughed but accepted her tea gratefully. Even if this really were a ritual of his, for “shopgirls and earl’s daughters” alike, she thought it a charming one.

He posed her first on a high stool, in her hat, and took a number of plates, all the while talking to her of this and that inconsequential matter to put her at her ease. Then he asked her to remove her hat, and after Louise had tidied her hair, he posed her on a sofa near the window, still talking steadily as he worked.

“You must have a sobriquet by which you will be known,” he said, “just as Lillie Langtry is called the ‘Jersey Lily,’ because she is from the island of Jersey. Something like, for example, the ‘Missouri Magnolia’.”

Maddie laughed at that. “I’m afraid magnolias are few and far between in St. Louis, Mr. Fox.”

“What other flowers are common there, then? What is
your
favorite?”

“I admit a partiality to rhododendrons, but the name lacks a certain romance, I’m afraid. We also have a great many May apples, sweet Williams, and goldenrod, but those are very common, everyday sorts of plants. The state flower is the hawthorn, but that is much the same as the flower of that name here in England. We are also known as the ‘show-me’ state.”

Mr. Fox came out from under his black cloth to give her an aggrieved look.

“And for our mules,” she added mischievously.

“I don’t suppose you would consider moving to California or Mississippi?”

Maddie laughed. “I
am
sorry, Mr. Fox, but I warned you that I’m not prime material to become a ‘famous face’.”

“Nonsense,” he said, vanishing under the cloth again. “Raise your chin a little. Yes, that’s it. We will think of something, ma’am, if we put our minds to it.”

Not being able to catch Mr. Fox’s eye again, Maddie glanced toward Louise and was pleased to see a slight smile softening the stiff line of her mouth. Not wanting to spoil this rare moment, however, Maddie pretended not to notice and concentrated instead on Mr. Fox’s instructions, submitting herself to being photographed from several angles, in various kinds of light, and draped in an assortment of silk scarves and velvet cloaks.

It was a little like sitting for a portrait painter, except that the time seemed to go much more quickly. She was asked to change her posture or her expression several times and was posed before a variety of backdrops, from a velvet drape to an artificial rosebush, rather as if she were a display in a shop window.

“What happens to these images that you produce?” she asked him.

“Whatever you like, Mrs. Malcolm. I shall make up twenty or thirty pictures to sell to the illustrated magazines and the picture postcard companies, which will be responsible for the distribution.”

“Distribution?” That sounded not quite respectable, so she asked what it entailed.

“Oh, it’s perfectly respectable, I assure you,” he said, as if reading her mind. “Ladies are generally eager to have their likeness made up hi this way. Naturally, there are always some less—er, some ladies who, perhaps from motives of jealousy, insist that a lady who poses is no lady, but 1 trust we have got beyond that little prejudice.”

“So do I,” Maddie said. He laughed.

“Nothing will be reproduced that you do not approve, ma’am. Along with the proofs, I will send a contract specifying some possible uses for the prints, from which you may choose those you wish, or do not wish, implemented. You may also choose which poses you are willing to see in print, and of course, you may have any you like to give to your family and friends.”

That made Maddie remember the real reason that she was submitting to this faintly absurd ordeal. She had a sudden vision of Teddy walking down a village street somewhere and catching a familiar face out of the corner of his eye. He would stop to examine her picture in a tobacconist’s window, perhaps, then go in and buy a postcard. He would stand in the street and stare at it for a long time and….

Maddie could not imagine what Teddy might think in such a situation. Would he make up his mind to drop everything and immediately come back to her? Perhaps he could not because he was in debt or some other trouble and did not want to apply to her for help yet again. Perhaps he could not because he was ill or hurt. What if he were lying in bed somewhere and someone else—a woman, certainly— brought him the photograph, but he could do no more than prop it on his bedside table and gaze wistfully at it?

Why are you suddenly so foolishly sentimental?
Maddie scolded herself.
Scenes like that happen only in novels.
Still, she could not prevent tears pricking the backs of her eyes when she thought that she might never see Teddy again.

But why was that easier to imagine than finding him?

#

It was more than an hour before Mr. Fox decided he had enough to go on, apologized for keeping her sitting for so long, and thanked her profusely for coming.

He insisted on making a fresh pot of tea for all three of them before they left, and when he went off to attend to this, Maddie submitted to Louise’s replacing her hat and coat. She noticed as she was confirming her appearance in the wall mirror that there were more photographs displayed on the far wall of the studio, and she walked over to study them.