by Amanda Quick
“Why not?” Fenella’s voice tightened. “You call yourself an artist. They’re notoriously dramatic and emotional. Unstable.”
“Nick Sundridge and my family would never have bought that version of events, trust me.”
“It doesn’t matter because plans have changed. The stairs. Go on. What I have to show you is in the room at the top.”
The overhead fixtures were off in the back room of the gallery and the blinds were closed but the staircase that led to the balcony on the floor above was illuminated by a couple of narrow windows.
Vivian started up the steps, moving as slowly as she dared, trying to buy time to come up with a strategy. Fenella followed close behind but not so close that Vivian could risk trying to shove her down the stairs.
The one thing that was clear now was that Fenella did not want to pull the trigger until after the so-called private viewing.
“Why murder Toby Flint?” Vivian asked.
“I needed him to find you after you and Sundridge disappeared,” Fenella said. “Toby never missed a meeting of the Adelina Beach Photography Club. I waited for him in his car that night. When he came out of the meeting hall I did a deal with him. I offered to pay off his gambling debts if he could find you. It didn’t take him long to discover that you and Sundridge were in Burning Cove.”
“He called my sister in San Francisco. She told him where I was. But that wasn’t enough for you, was it? You made him go to Burning Cove. You told him he had to do one more thing to get his money. He had to place the phone call that would draw me out of the hotel that night. You wanted me on that empty street so that you could run me down with your car.”
“I couldn’t think of any other way to get you out of the hotel. I knew you and Toby were friends. You trusted him.”
“Yes,” Vivian said. A sense of sadness flitted through her. “I did trust him. I thought he called me to warn me that I was in danger. But I guess he needed the money too much.”
“He needed the money all right. His life was at stake. I paid him a thousand dollars in cash. There was to be another thousand afterward. But that bastard betrayed me.”
“What do you mean? He made the call to the hotel, just as you paid him to do.”
“He telephoned you two hours before he was supposed to do it,” Fenella said, her voice rising to a shrill pitch. “I had a feeling I couldn’t trust him. I followed him that night when he left that cheap auto court where he was staying. When he went into that phone booth I knew he had decided to warn you. When he went back to his car I saw my chance to get rid of him and I took it. I knew then I’d lost the opportunity to get you. I had to drive back to Adelina Beach that night because I had to do something about the car. There was so much damage. I had no idea it would be that bad. When I read in the papers that Deverell had been struck and killed by a car it sounded so simple, so easy.”
“Nick was right—there was a connection between the murders of Deverell and Flint. It wasn’t a coincidence. You got the idea for using a car from the newspapers. You copied the technique.”
“The drive back to Adelina Beach was a nightmare with only one headlight and a cracked windshield. I didn’t dare wait until daylight because I was afraid someone here in town would see the car and ask questions.”
“You hid your damaged car in the garage behind your shop.”
“I didn’t know what to do with it. Do you have any idea how hard it is to conceal a well-known automobile that has sustained so much damage? I couldn’t take it to a local repair shop. I didn’t dare drive it to my home. The housekeeper and the gardener would have noticed. I decided to leave it in the old garage behind the gallery until I could figure out what to do with it.”
“You think your car is going to be a problem?” Vivian reached the landing and stopped. “Wait until you have to figure out how to get rid of my body.”
“That’s going to be the easy part, thanks to your snooping around. Open that door.”
Vivian walked halfway along the balcony and stopped in front of the door. She tried the knob.
“It’s locked,” she said.
“Of course it is. Here’s the key.”
Fenella tossed a key onto the floor. Vivian picked it up and inserted it in the lock. She got the door open and took two steps into a long, dark chamber.
“The light switch is to your right,” Fenella said as she stepped in and closed the door. “Turn it on.”
Vivian groped for the switch, found and flipped it. Most of the room remained in shadow but three carefully positioned and focused lights winked on. They illuminated three large, elegantly framed photographs on the wall.
Vivian tried to steel herself because she was almost certain now that she knew what Fenella wanted her to see. But that did nothing to mitigate the shock of raw horror that slammed through her.
She recognized all three pictures. She had shot the same scenes while surrounded by homicide detectives, uniformed officers, and other news photographers. But her front-page photos had revealed the harsh, gritty reality of violent death. The three death scenes on the wall had been manipulated using every trick in the pictorial photographer’s repertoire to make them appear to be paintings.
“You were the photographer who composed the pictures,” Vivian said. “Not Morris Deverell. There were two Dagger Killers, not one.”
“You’re wrong. Until I was forced to get rid of Toby Flint I’d never actually killed anyone. I was the artist. Deverell was just my assistant. I chose the subjects and booked the evening appointments. While we discussed new acquisitions for their art collections I put a little something into their drinks to make them go to sleep. Deverell helped me set up my camera and arrange the lighting. When all was ready, he used his dagger. He loved that part. When I looked through the lens and saw true perfection I took the picture.”
“No wonder you got nervous when you found out the police were looking for a photographer working in the pictorial tradition.”
“Nervous? I was frantic. I couldn’t believe someone had figured it out.”
Vivian studied the image of Clara Carstairs’s body. It was rendered in sepia tones. The picture had been printed using a variety of special effects and tints. The modern furniture behind the ornate sofa in the Carstairs mansion had been painted out and replaced with the scene of an ancient Greek temple.
The photos of the Attenbury and Washfield murders had been manipulated in a similar manner. Attenbury appeared to have been killed in an ancient Roman bath. Washfield looked as if he had been stabbed in an Egyptian pyramid.
“I call the series Dreams of Antiquity,” Fenella said.
“Such a terribly old-fashioned, outmoded style,” Vivian said.
“It’s art,” Fenella hissed. “Fine art. The real thing. I do not make sleazy photos for the front page of a scandal sheet.”
“How did you and Deverell come to know each other?”
“The first time he walked into my gallery there was a spark between us, a certain something. I showed him some of my early work, imaginary death scenes. He had the eye of an experienced collector. He saw my potential but he sensed that my vision could only be truly realized if it was inspired by the reality of death.”
“I get it. He seduced you by pretending to praise your talent.”
“He was my muse.”
“No, he used you as an accomplice to his own crazy murders. You had the connections he needed to get into the homes of his chosen celebrity victims.” Vivian turned to face her. “I suppose it was easy to convince him to go after me.”
“He was thrilled at the thought of killing you. I admit he was becoming very unstable there at the end. I knew the time had come to get rid of him but I thought the least he could do was remove you first.”
“You must have panicked all over again when you found out he had not only failed, he had also managed to get himse
lf arrested.”
“That night was the worst night of my life,” Fenella said grimly. “I thought my only hope was to disappear. I packed a bag and drove to a hotel in L.A. I checked in under another name. I kept the radio on all night. At dawn I heard that Morris had been struck by a hit-and-run driver while attempting to escape. The case was closed. I could hardly believe my good luck.”
“You’re going to botch the job of killing me, you know. You lack the skills needed to cover your tracks.”
“Shut up.”
“Look at how you bungled the business of murdering Toby Flint. You can’t even figure out how to get rid of your damaged car.”
“You were the reason everything went wrong,” Fenella shrieked. “You deserve to pay.”
“You’ve been jealous of me from the first moment you viewed my pictures.”
“That’s a lie. You’re not a real artist. You’re a fraud.”
Vivian smiled. “You know I’m good, a lot better than you ever were, and what’s more, I’m working in the modern style. You’re the one who started the rumors about my crime scene photography, aren’t you?”
“I couldn’t let the other galleries hang your pictures. The only way to stop them was to make it clear that you were just a scandal sheet reporter with a camera.”
“I’m assuming it was Toby Flint who told you about that side of my career.”
“He came to me for money one day shortly after you’d turned him down. He was still mad at you. He said something about how much he’d done for you and now you wouldn’t even give him a small loan.”
“Why would Toby think you would give him money? How well did you two know each other?”
“We were lovers once a long time ago. We both had dreams of becoming true artists with our cameras. Toby actually sold a couple of pictures in good galleries. But in the end his gambling addiction destroyed him.”
“You never made it as an artist, either. That’s why you ended up running a gallery, isn’t it?”
“The damned modernists have ruined photography. The so-called experts don’t appreciate true art. Curators and galleries wouldn’t even look at my work.”
“Hey, trust me, I know the feeling.” Vivian glanced at the door at the end of the gallery. “Is that your darkroom?”
“Yes.”
“Mind if I take a look?”
“Yes, I mind. This has gone far enough. Time for you to stage your dramatic exit.”
“How do you plan to manage that?”
“Simple. There’s going to be another fire. My gallery this time. When they find your body in the ashes, no one will notice the bullet hole.”
Fenella raised the pistol.
Vivian averted her eyes, aimed, and triggered the flash of her camera in a single, practiced move.
The magnesium filament flared, a brilliant, dazzling, white-hot explosion of light in the shadowed room. For a critical few seconds Fenella was effectively blinded.
Vivian threw herself toward the nearest painting on the wall, the framed image of the Clara Carstairs murder scene. She was pretty sure the very last thing Fenella would do was shoot holes in her elaborately manipulated work of art.
Fenella pulled the trigger of the gun once and then a second time. But she was firing blind, the gun aimed vaguely in the direction of where Vivian had been standing a few seconds earlier. Both shots struck the back wall.
Fenella paused, blinking furiously in an effort to clear her vision. She started to turn toward the wall of paintings.
Vivian hurled the sturdy Speed Graphic as if it were a medieval weapon.
Fenella’s vision returned in time for her to see the heavy object flying toward her. She screeched and reeled back, instinctively raising a hand to block the blow.
The big camera did no serious damage but it threw her off balance. She yelped and lurched to the side, stumbling a little in her pumps.
Vivian launched herself at Fenella, who was now so panic-stricken she seemed to have forgotten how to work the gun. She bolted for the door and succeeded in getting it open.
Vivian managed to grab a fistful of Fenella’s jacket.
“Let me go,” Fenella screamed.
She stumbled out onto the balcony, dragging Vivian with her. Fenella whipped around and clawed at Vivian’s face.
Vivian let go of the jacket an instant before Fenella’s nails raked her eyes.
Fenella was unprepared for the sudden release. She lost her balance and fell hard against the old railing. The rusty metal fasteners groaned in protest. There was a wrenching, splintering sound. An entire section of the rotten railing gave way.
Fenella was unable to stop herself. Her momentum sent her over the edge.
She did not even have time to scream before she struck some object below and then fell again, this time onto the floor.
An acute silence ensued.
Vivian picked up her camera, moved cautiously farther out onto the balcony, and looked down. There was enough light seeping in through the cracks in the blinds to reveal Fenella sprawled on the floor next to a massive bronze statue of a nude female goddess. The gun had landed some distance away.
Glass shattered somewhere in the salesroom at the front of the shop.
“Vivian.” Nick’s voice roared through the old house.
Rex barked excitedly.
“In here,” Vivian called. But the words sounded thin and breathless. She took a deep breath and tried again. “Nick. I’m in here.”
She started down the stairs, hugging the wall because in her shaky condition she needed support and she knew now she could not trust the old railing.
Nick and Rex raced through the door that separated the salesroom from the back room. Rex bounded toward the staircase to give Vivian his customary greeting.
Nick hit the light switch and raked the scene in a glance.
“Vivian?” he said.
“I’m all right. Honestly.” She sat down on a step and hugged Rex. “I’m okay.”
Nick grabbed a sheet of paper off a nearby workbench and used it to pick up the pistol. He set it on a table.
“There should be prints,” he said. “She’s not wearing gloves.”
“Yes,” Vivian said.
Nick crouched next to Fenella and felt for a pulse.
Vivian held her breath.
Nick rose, shaking his head. “Looks like she struck her head on the statue on the way down.”
He crossed the room and started up the stairs.
Vivian got to her feet and fell into his arms.
“Nick,” she said.
“You’re sure you’re all right?” he said.
“Yes,” she said. “She’s the one who murdered Toby. Used her Duesenberg. I found it in the garage out back. Lots of damage.”
“That explains a few things.”
Sirens sounded in the distance.
“How did you know about Fenella?” Vivian asked.
“A few loose ends have been bothering me,” Nick said. “Before he died Treyherne gave me a lot of information. He talked freely that night. I think he was having a nervous breakdown. But he never mentioned Flint or the fact that he’d killed Flint. A murder is a big thing to leave out of that kind of conversation.”
“You never got to ask him if he’d used Toby to find me because Treyherne jumped off the cliff.”
“This afternoon I called your family’s home in San Francisco. Your housekeeper said someone who convinced her he was a potential portrait client had telephoned asking how he could get in touch with you. She gave him the number of the Burning Cove Hotel.”
Vivian winced. “Of course. Dorothy would have assumed she was doing me a favor. But that means both Toby Flint and Treyherne tracked me down the same way—by calling my home in San Francisco. Lyra took the call from Toby. Dorothy got
the one from Treyherne.”
“Yes, but I was still left with the fact that someone had used Flint to find you. If it wasn’t Treyherne, who was it? Another thing that’s been bothering me is that the police never found the Dagger Killer’s photos. They discovered some photography equipment but no pictures.”
Vivian glanced up at the gallery door. “I knew there would be a gallery of the death scenes.”
“Today I found some of Flint’s early pictures, the ones he did when he first arrived here in Adelina Beach. Art photos, not spot news work.”
“Toby once had dreams of doing art photography,” Vivian said.
“Fenella was his model. Her name and the dates of the photographs were in the envelope with the pictures. She also took some shots of him that he kept. The fact that there had once been a close connection between the two of them was the missing piece of the puzzle.”
“What do you mean?” Vivian asked.
“If Treyherne hadn’t used Flint to find you, that meant Flint was working for someone else. Someone who was in the picture but not obvious. I couldn’t overlook the fact that you and Flint and Fenella Penfield were connected.”
“And we know you don’t like coincidences.”
“There was one other coincidence I didn’t like. The desk clerk at the hotel mentioned that you had gone off to the Penfield Gallery with your portfolio.”
“All those factors came together to spark your intuition?”
“It would be more accurate to say they scared the living hell out of me.”
The sirens were louder now.
“You called the police?” Vivian asked.
“No, I didn’t want to take the time,” Nick said. “On my way through the lobby I told the hotel clerk to telephone Detective Archer and send him here.”
The sound of vehicles braking sharply in the street and the sudden cessation of the sirens announced the arrival of the police.
Nick looked up at the broken balcony railing. Then he fixed his gaze on Vivian.
“What the hell happened up there?” he asked.
“A lot,” Vivian said. “I’ll wait until Archer gets here. Meanwhile, would you kindly step out of the way? You’re blocking the light and casting a shadow.”