CHAPTER ELEVEN
Dinner was in preparation, but instead of Richard coming to see Mina after the meal, looking well fed and in good spirits, he arrived before it was announced, his expression piteous, and his posture suggesting the most profound fatigue.
‘Oh, how exhausting work is!’ he exclaimed, throwing himself onto the coverlet beside Mina with such a heavy thump that she almost bounced bodily out of the bed. He stretched out, sighing with relief.
Mina put aside her newspaper. ‘Richard, please take your shoes off, or you will dirty the coverlet and Miss Cherry will be very cross with you.’
He pulled himself into a sitting position and obeyed, puffing with the effort, then tossed his shoes onto the floor and fell back again. ‘Miss Cherry is a tyrant and I would dislike her very much indeed except that she has nice eyes. They are a very pretty sort of green.’
‘But what can you tell me about your day? I would have thought photography was not to be numbered amongst the most arduous of occupations.’
‘Oh it is, it is, far worse than anything that involves a desk. You would think it ought to be possible to make one’s mark in the world without having to slave away for hours!’
‘One has to be very rich in order to make money without labouring for it. Has your new employer been imposing upon you by making you work for your wages? How very cruel of him!’
Richard waved a languid hand. ‘Of course, I knew I would have to do something, but I just thought it would be more fun, and less effort, especially as we are friends.’
‘And what are friends for other than to appoint you to a well-paid sinecure?’ she taunted.
‘Well exactly!’
‘But was the work not interesting at all? I can imagine it would be.’
‘Sometimes it was,’ said Richard, grudgingly. ‘I’ll say this for Beckler, he is always looking for the newest thing in photography. Did you know that there is a way of making the darkness as bright as day so one can take pictures where there is no light? Soon there will be no need at all to wait for the sunshine. There is a kind of ribbon, but it’s made of metal, and you set fire to it. He showed me some. I wouldn’t have believed it unless I had seen it demonstrated. It was just a tiny bit but the light it cast was extraordinary.’
‘That should make séances more challenging,’ said Mina with a smile.
‘No, because Beckler says you could not use it in a drawing room, at least not for long enough to take a photograph, because it makes a lot of smoke, and everyone would choke on it, and then the carpet would be covered in ash which would not please anybody.’
‘Were you not hoping to receive some lady customers so you might talk to them and brighten your wearisome day?’
Even this thought did not cheer her brother. ‘There were some, yes, but the pretty ones mostly came with their husbands and armfuls of crying babies. I have found, however, that Mr Beckler is very adept at making portraits in which plain ladies look much better than they are, and so they are flocking to his door like an army of lost souls begging to be saved.’
Mina looked at him reproachfully. ‘Richard, I hope you are not so shallow as only to find pretty ladies good company? There are many ladies who have not been blessed with beauty who are delightful companions, so much so that with better acquaintance they will become beautiful in your eyes.’
He pulled a sulky mouth. ‘You can’t blame me for my preferences. I am just a weak man and can’t help but admire beauty in a female. It inspires me to gallantry, and poetry too, or it would if I only had the time to write it.’ He rolled onto his side and gazed up at Mina. ‘Mr Beckler thinks you are pretty, you know.’
‘We won’t discuss that.’
‘And clever. And quite alarming, too. He said you threatened to hit him.’
‘Richard!’
He sighed. ‘All right, but you will come around in time I know you will.’ He rolled onto his back and lay like a fallen marionette, gazing at the ceiling.’ I think I may have made a conquest, but it is not one I would boast of,’ he said gloomily. ‘A Mr Hartop came in with his daughter to have her portrait made. She is shaped like a guinea-pig which she closely resembles. The lady is very excitable about everything, declares all she sees to be quite wonderful and expresses this emotion with a sound like the whistle on a railway train. It is a train that threatens to crush the spirit of any man foolish enough to linger in its path. She is single, which came as no surprise to me, although she must be thirty-five if a day, and I think her father hopes to entice a suitor with a flattering portrait. The portrait at least will be silent. When I wrote her name in the register of customers, she gazed at me as if I was a roast joint and made a strange little squeak. Before they left, her father asked for my card.’
‘I didn’t know you had a card.’
‘I don’t, I just gave him one for Scarletti Publishing.’
‘That may have been unwise. They must now imagine that you are the heir to a thriving business. It makes you very eligible.’
‘Oh dear!’ said Richard.
‘And what does Mr Hartop do?’
‘I think he owns a number of lodging houses in Brighton.’ Richard sat up and pulled a card from his pocket. ‘Hartop and Co. North Street, Brighton. Superior accommodation. Unmarried daughter free on application.’ He groaned and replaced the card. ‘I should have told him I was penniless with no prospects.’
‘Given what you have told me about Miss Hartop, he might not feel that to be an obstacle to the match,’ said Mina, teasingly.
Richard groaned again.
‘But apart from that, I can’t imagine that your work was as arduous as you pretend. You are not frail. You have plenty of energy when you choose to employ it.’
‘I suppose it was tolerable enough when I dealt with the clients,’ he admitted, ‘and I spent some time outside, handing out advertising cards to passers-by.’
‘You didn’t take any photographs?’
‘No, he wouldn’t let me. I wasn’t allowed to touch the camera or anything!’
‘That was probably very wise on your first day.’
Richard sat up again and gulped water from the carafe without troubling himself with a glass. ‘Did you know the shop used to be the business of Mr Simpson the portrait photographer? Wasn’t he the man who took the pictures at Enid’s wedding? I thought it looked familiar. How mortifying it must be to have one’s mistakes recorded for posterity. He passed away at the end of last year, and his son has just sold the whole business to Mr Beckler, including a great many old photographs. Oh, and there is a ghost as well. In Brighton every house of the slightest antiquity has to have one. It is the fashion. Old Mr Simpson is supposed to wander about the premises looking for something and muttering to himself.’
‘I take it you have not seen him?’
‘No. Beckler is hoping to capture his spirit in a photograph in order to please Mr Hope, but he hasn’t succeeded so far. He is trying to mix new chemicals which the ghosts will find more to their taste. But it must be hard to photograph a ghost because you have to have a lot of light to make a portrait and everyone knows that ghosts only come out in the dark. As soon as you put the light on, they go away. He did it by accident once, but he doesn’t know how it happened and he hasn’t managed it since. His new idea now, is to leave the camera out all night with the lens cap off and hope to capture the ghost that way.’