Minutes ticked by. Livia’s heart slowed, then raced again in a new agitation, a sharp dread that everything would be in vain.
“I don’t think we will find anything here,” said Charlotte after some more time.
No one spoke. Frustration choked Livia’s windpipe. Mrs. Watson looked crestfallen.
Charlotte put water to boil. Lord Ingram brought whisky for Mrs. Watson and Livia.
“Maybe clues weren’t hidden in the luggage,” he suggested. “Maybe the contents of the luggage itself are a clue. Maybe they imply that what Mr. Marbleton did in Snowham had to do with photography.”
Charlotte, who had been checking the amount of tea that remained in the tin, stilled. “You may be right, my lord. Livia, can you give an abbreviated account of how you ended up at the Jubilee shop yesterday?”
Livia managed to sum up in five minutes what had taken her nearly half an hour to tell Charlotte.
Charlotte went to the bedroom and came back to the parlor, holding the Stanhope. “Among the things she brought back is this.”
With an indrawn breath, Lord Ingram took the Stanhope from her and peered through the eyehole.
Livia supposed the Stanhope did have something to do with photography. After all, the images inside the optic bijou were photographs that had been shrunk to a very small size, and then magnified by a special lens for the viewer. But why did that matter?
Lord Ingram looked up from the Stanhope, his expression torn between excitement and apprehension. “Are you thinking of the Franco-Prussian War, Holmes?”
What did the Franco-Prussian War, which took place when Livia was still a child, have to do with anything?
Mrs. Watson gasped. “I remember now. During the siege of Paris, the French used pigeons to carry miniaturized dispatches and letters past the German barricade into the city. Why, I paid for one such letter to a friend.”
Charlotte took the Stanhope from Lord Ingram and turned it between her fingers. “The gentleman who took charge of microfilming those dispatches and letters to be carried in by pigeons was none other than the inventor of the Stanhope. It was said that he achieved such reduction by means of special photography that they were able to fit three thousand messages on a pellicule the size of two postage stamps.”
Special photography. Reduction. Messages.
Did this mean—was it possible that—
“Livia, let me have the ticket from Mr. Marbleton.” Charlotte set the Stanhope aside. “Ma’am, my lord, your ticket stubs from today, please.”
Mr. Marbleton’s effort to guide Livia to the souvenir shop at last made sense. He wanted her—or someone, at least—to notice the Stanhopes, which allowed one to view microphotographs without the aid of a microscope. This was as strongly as he dared hint that he had embedded a minuscule image on the ticket stub!
Mrs. Watson and Lord Ingram produced four stubs. With unsteady fingers, Livia handed over the small cloisonnéd jewelry box. The sun had emerged from behind the clouds not long ago. They cleared the desk before the window and pulled back the curtains. Charlotte placed a clean handkerchief on the desk, then laid all the five stubs on the handkerchief.
With a magnifying glass, she examined today’s stubs first, front and back. She then picked up Mr. Marbleton’s with a pair of tweezers and subjected it, too, to a close inspection.
When she was done, she set the four most recent stubs in a row and Mr. Marbleton’s ticket a few inches to the side. “The difference is on this side.”
All the tickets had been arranged so that their front side faced up. On that side, the issuing railway company’s name was printed on top, then the departing and destination stations, the class, and the fare. At the very bottom, the line SEE CONDITIONS ON BACK.
Livia was the first person to step up to the desk. After she’d gone to Snowham with Lord Ingram, she had also searched for differences between the ticket stubs she’d brought back and the one from Mr. Marbleton. But this time, she knew what to look for.
And it was as if she’d been trying to read by the flickering of fireflies earlier, and now she had limelight.
“I could be wrong,” she said, her voice cracking a little, “but on Mr. Marbleton’s ticket, at the end of SEE CONDITIONS ON BACK—is that an extra full stop under this streak of soot?”
On all four stubs brought back today, the line ended with the letter K, and no punctuation mark. But with sunlight, and the squinting of the eye, Livia could barely make out a tiny dot at the end of the phrase on Mr. Marbleton’s ticket.
Charlotte nodded. Livia, on wobbly legs, vacated her spot. When Mrs. Watson and Lord Ingram too, confirmed that they saw the extra dot, Livia asked, “But how can we view it? Lord Ingram, you told me earlier that only something transparent can be viewed with a microscope.”
“In theory we should manage it easily enough,” replied Lord Ingram. He was on his haunches next to the desk, so that his eyes were level with the ticket stubs. “The dot at the end of SEE CONDITIONS ON BACK is film. Mr. Marbleton will have glued it on. If we place the ticket in water and let it sit for some time, the dot will come off the ticket and we can then place it on a glass slide.
He looked up at the three women who surrounded him. “But in practice it could be harrowing. The dot is minuscule. There is a good bit of soot on the stub. We could very well lose sight of the film amidst other debris once everything starts coming off the ticket.”
But they had to proceed.
Mrs. Watson and Lord Ingram returned to Mrs. Watson’s house for a supply of creamware finger bowls that Mrs. Watson had never used at her dinner table. Charlotte brought out her microscope. Livia, perspiring with nerves, snipped out a tiny square of the stub containing the film dot.
When Mrs. Watson and Lord Ingram came back, they brought not only what they had gone for, but a basket of sandwiches that Madame Gascoigne had thoughtfully prepared.
The square Livia had clipped, barely one eighth of an inch on each side, was put to soak in lukewarm water inside a finger bowl. As the company waited, they tucked into the sandwiches. Mrs. Watson also filled Livia in on what had happened at the Garden of Hermopolis.
Livia, agape, turned an accusatory look Charlotte’s way. “You didn’t tell me any of the more interesting events.”
Charlotte only said, “Now you know everything.”
Though the ticket stub had been reduced in size, the soaking water still grew murky. But they knew where the film dot was and were able to verify that it was still in place before transferring the tiny piece of paper to a finger bowl filled with clean water.
The ticket went through three changes of bowls. At last, the dot of film, now under constant surveillance, detached from the paper.
Even the finest pair of tweezers Charlotte owned were still too large at the tips, so she brought Livia a needle. Livia, her teeth clenched tight, used the blunt end of the needle to chase the much-too-small dot around the finger bowl.
At last she closed in on her quarry.
“Bloody hell, it fell through the eye!”
And she could not even care that she’d sworn not only out loud, but in mixed company.
On her third attempt she lifted the dot out but it adhered to the needle. Charlotte patiently applied water with a tiny dropper, in the hope that it could be rinsed off onto the slide below.
The vein at Livia’s temple felt as if it had already burst.