‘No, he hasn’t. They’re different. Very slightly,’ said Jacquemin with benefit of magnifying glass. ‘A whisker of a difference in angle. And again, Jacoby, we must ask—intentional? I’d say they’re separated by a second or two. No more … Very similar to the Ermanox set we’ve just seen. Look at the blood pattern. She’s not play-acting. She’s definitely dead. Can you enlarge the wound area, Jacoby? From such a film?’

Nathan produced further reproductions of the last two shots. ‘I thought you might need these.’

Martineau peered again. ‘Ah, yes! I thought I could just make out … The blood … Here, Sandilands, take a look. There’s a greater quantity on the second of these shots. Not much but enough to make it out. And unless our friend here has been working some of his magic …?’

Nathan looked aggrieved and shook his head vehemently.

‘It’s caught a highlight. The blood’s still shining. These shots were taken moments, seconds, after the girl was stabbed. While the heart was pumping its last. While she was still expiring.’

A silence fell and, in the hot room, three men shivered.

Martineau spoke first in a deadly voice: ‘Now shall I go and get her, sir?’

‘In a moment. We’ll definitely have a few questions to put to Sweet Cecily but, if I’m not mistaken, Mr Jacoby has a further point to make?’

Joe was sure that Jacquemin had seen the truth as quickly as he had himself and was, with unexpected generosity, allowing Nathan to take the stage again to give his expert opinion. Or to check his own conclusion.

‘The first set I showed you—Joe’s efforts followed by mine—made it quite clear that the hand holding the camera, the eye behind the lens, is always individual. I can see the differences in style as clearly as one artist can identify another by his brush strokes. It’s like handwriting. But it only works when you’re familiar with the photographers, of course. Here, I’m working in the dark. I assume the first five to have been taken by Cecily. Careless, expecting the camera to do all the work. Jolly snaps for the album. Really—she’d have been better off with a five guinea Kodak. The next group, the flowers, showed an improvement. Learning had occurred. Perhaps she finds it easier to get the measure of inanimate objects? But the last six—’

‘Were taken by someone different!’ exclaimed Martineau. ‘Even I can see that! They’re not perfect … I mean, they’re not a professional job like Mr Jacoby’s but they’re well focused up and framed and … well … not arty, but sort of businesslike. By someone used to holding a camera and the right sort of brain to operate it.’

‘And the cool nerve of a sniper,’ Joe added.

‘Are we thinking: Cecily Somerset? Most probably not. Ask the lady politely to meet me in the office in ten minutes, will you, Martineau? And tell her nothing of this. I’m sure we’ll all be interested to hear her answer when I ask her to whom she lent her apparatus on the day of the murder,’ said Jacquemin.

Chapter Thirty-Two

Cecily stood in front of the desk, facing up to the Commissaire and Joe, while Martineau sat in an opposite corner of the room taking notes.

In a swift discussion on the way down, the two officers had come to an agreement on technique. The Commissaire was to be obviously in charge of the interrogation, directing his English confrère. He made it clear to Joe that he wished to appear remote, implacable, dangerously foreign. Joe’s: ‘Oh, I say—are you sure you can you pull that off?’ had received the frozen stare.

The interview was to be conducted by Joe in English. The Commissaire’s knowledge of the language was perfectly adequate for an understanding but he shied away from the notion of speaking it himself. ‘We must catch every nuance,’ he declared. ‘And Miss Somerset’s French is worse than my English. We will see how we get on.’

‘Yes, Sandilands, I can identify that camera as mine,’ stated Cecily, pointing to the Leica on the desk in front of her. ‘Again! It can tell you itself—look at the name on the strap. Come off it, Commander! I’ve done all this already. For that Frenchman.’ She glared at Jacquemin. ‘Is he deaf? Or just being French? Shall I shout louder?’

‘Just a formality, Miss Somerset,’ Joe said mildly. ‘Imagine you’re in Scotland Yard, will you? Helping the police with a very tricky enquiry. Lieutenant, a chair for the lady, please.’

Cecily lowered her dungareed bulk on to the chair with a suspicious glower that was meant to tell Joe she’d got his number and that English smarm was as unwelcome as French froideur.

‘And this is how you can help us.’

He laid out the first twelve shots from her camera and invited her to inspect them.

A few moments of: ‘Good gracious, I never thought you’d be able to do it! Develop them right here on the spot. I was going to take the camera back to London with me and have them done properly. I say, I won’t pay for these, you know … Oh, the roses came out well, didn’t they? However did you manage …?’

‘We had a bit of luck. Nathan Jacoby spent some weeks working in the Leica laboratory in Germany,’ Joe improvised. ‘It was a piece of cake for him.’

‘But I hadn’t finished up the exposures,’ protested Cecily. ‘I’d only taken about half. Now what shall I do for the rest of the hol? I can’t afford to waste half a film just like that, you know!’

Joe smiled. ‘Well, why don’t you come to some arrangement with your friend—the one you lent the camera to and who finished off the rest of the cassette?’

Her face lost its calculating expression, her voice its querulous edge as she replied after a long moment: ‘Friend? What friend? Finished off … I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.’

‘The second half of your film was used by someone else, Cecily. And we’d like to know to whom you gave permission to borrow the camera.’

‘Borrow my camera! Never! Nobody! I wouldn’t … I didn’t!’ she protested. ‘What’s going on?’

Joe produced the shots of the exterior of the chapel and the door. ‘These are the next three from your roll of film. Did you take them?’

‘I’ve told you! No!’ She turned to the Commissaire and said rudely: ‘Non! Non!’

Looking back at the photographs, she commented: ‘What’s the point of these, there’s no people in them. And no flowers, which was the whole reason for bringing it. Why would I want to take a picture of a door? I didn’t take these.’

‘And yet they are there on your negative. We must assume someone helped himself or herself to your camera without your knowledge.’

‘I’ll have their guts for garters!’ said Cecily, swelling with rage. ‘Everyone knows my possessions are off limits! I made that quite clear when one of those Russians tried to make off with my nail scissors.’

‘Tell me—where did you keep your camera?’

‘In the general ladies’ dorm. You know where that is. We each have our own chest of drawers. My camera was in the bottom drawer.’

‘So anyone could have entered and taken it away for a few hours, replaced it, and you wouldn’t have noticed it had gone missing?’

‘Yes,’ she admitted. ‘I hadn’t used it for at least a month … six weeks … too busy … and I can’t say I’ve ever got into that silly habit of snapping everything in sight all the time. So common!’ She thought for a bit and, encouraged by Joe’s silent attention, ventured to say: ‘Anyone could have helped themselves, you know. The maids are in and out in the morning and, as if that’s not enough, they let a manservant come in to check that the maids have done their duty … at least that’s what they say … And the steward checks on the menservants. It’s like Piccadilly Circus. You yourself, Commander, are well placed to nip in and take it. Your room is just opposite. Or those children next door. Why don’t you ask your niece Dorcas? It’s the sort of thing she might do. And any one of those women I share with could have taken it. They all knew where it was.’