Page 55 of The Secrets of Lord Grayson Child
“Well, I’d thought to find Mr. Quimby in his bed, of course, but it was obvious he hadn’t been in all night. Other than that…well, the wardrobe door wasn’t properly shut. That might seem a small thing, but Mr. Quimby was always very neat—everything exactly as it should be.”
Izzy shot Gray a speculative look.
He shut the window, then turned to Mrs. Cummins. “Did you tell the police about the window?”
She snorted inelegantly. “Them! They said they was here to search his rooms and told me—ordered me, in me own house—to stay downstairs.” She shrugged. “So I did. They didn’t see fit to ask me anything. Just stuck their heads around the kitchen door to tell me they was leaving.” She frowned, then looked at them worriedly. “Here—I won’t get into any trouble, will I? For not telling them about the window?”
Izzy smiled reassuringly. “I wouldn’t worry about the police not knowing. I don’t think anything was taken.”
But Mrs. Cummins had finally worked out what had happened. “But…someone broke in here, didn’t they? Oh, my God!” She clapped her hands to her face. “Was it the killer? Is that why you and the police have come, searching for something like the killer already did?”
Her eyes flared wide. “Mercy me! Here, whoever he is, he won’t be coming back, will he? I don’t want to be murdered in me bed. Surely he found what he wanted?”
Gray confidently stated, “You’re right, and it’s highly unlikely you have anything to fear.” His matter-of-fact tone had Mrs. Cummins instantly calming; he went on in the same vein, “As you say, if there was anything here, although we don’t believe there was, but even if there had been, then whoever broke in would have found and taken it, and they’ll have no further interest in this house.”
Mrs. Cummins thought through that, then exhaled gustily. “Well, that’s a bit of excitement I could’ve done without.”
“Thank you for letting us see the room.” Izzy gently steered Mrs. Cummins to the door. “I really don’t think you’ll have any further trouble.”
Reassured, the landlady led the way downstairs, and with thanks, Gray and Izzy left the house.
Izzy paused on the pavement and pulled on her gloves. “Other than a tenuous link between Quimby and Dorset, I suppose the news of a break-in is a crumb we can offer Baines and Littlejohn if and when we need one, but it certainly puts paid to the notion of any clue being left in his rooms.”
They started down the street, and Gray admitted, “While it seems unlikely Quimby had left anything photographic there, if there’d been any other sort of clue linking him to the killer—a letter or something similar—the killer would have taken it.”
He walked on for a few paces, then said, “However, our foray there did confirm that there’s no reason to suppose there are any other photographic negatives of Quimby’s in existence, other than those at the printing works.”
“True. He does seem to have kept everything photographic there.”
“Except,” Gray reminded her, “for the discarded bits of camera equipment that Littlejohn mentioned, which he and Baines must have removed, but clearly, the killer didn’t want those, anyway.”
“Exactly. That means our hypothesis still holds water. If the killer is desperate to keep the public from seeing something Quimby photographed on Friday, then the photographs we’re printing in the hue and cry edition should contain the revealing information—whatever it is.”
Gray nodded. “It’s all about something in those photographs.”
He hailed a passing hackney, and they returned to the printing works to discover Baines had been as good as his word and had sent over the surgeon’s report.
Gray scanned it, then handed it to Izzy. While she retreated to her desk to finish the obituary, working in a reference to Quimby having a connection to the village in Dorset depicted in the printed card, before settling to incorporate the surgeon’s grisly information into the lead article in a way that wouldn’t shock the readers, Gray, too restless to sit, wandered around the workshop, chatting to the staff and filling them in on what he and Izzy had discovered in Quimby’s rooms.
At one point, he stepped into the darkroom and found a teary-eyed Digby scrubbing basins in the sink. Gray pretended not to notice the tears, propped his hip against the central table, and talking to Digby’s back, told him about their findings in Winchester Street, then asked about the use of the various basins, a topic which, as Gray had hoped, drew the lad from his sorrowful thoughts.
When it came to anything photographic, Digby was a font of eager information; it was clear Quimby had recognized a like mind and had gone out of his way to mentor and encourage the lad.
Finally, it was time for the workshop to close for the day. Izzy farewelled the staff, then declared that her own writing was as complete as it could be, and given Gray was dining in Norfolk Crescent that evening, neither of them dared be late.
By then, another issue had occurred to Gray. He halted in the office doorway, waited while Izzy donned her bonnet and coat, then asked, “The seven calotype negatives—where are they?”
She frowned. “Digby showed me where he put them. They’re in the cabinet with the others.”
He paused, then said, “What I said this morning, about you being a possible target? By extension, once the killer learns of the special edition—hopefully only after it goes out—and gets desperate, this place will also become a target. He doesn’t yet know the negatives still exist, so won’t as yet be seeking to destroy them, but one is a critical piece of evidence. We shouldn’t leave them here, unsecured and unguarded.”
Her lips set, and she waved him out of her way. “I’ll fetch them. Can you look under the counter for an envelope big enough to hold them?”
He rummaged and found one. By then, she’d retrieved the seven negatives and carefully slid them inside the paper sleeve, then closed the top and handed it to him. “You can carry it, at least as far as Woburn Square.”
They walked even more briskly than usual to Mrs. Carruthers’s house. After spending a few minutes regaling the old lady with their day’s adventures, they exited via the back door. In the rear lane, Gray helped Izzy into her carriage, then handed her the envelope.
She blinked at him. “Aren’t you coming?”
