I couldn’t speak. The thought of my high-spirited little girl being roughly grabbed, shoved down and knocked out, shocked me as nothing else had. What had been done to her after that? I saw her being wheeled out of the park, past the historical buildings of Stratford, and then—
But Jane was still trying to prove her point. “I said she was dressed like a nurse, but she could have been a nanny. Dressed like one. Why else would she bring an empty stroller to the park with toys in it if she hadn’t been planning something like this?”
“Had you seen her before?”
“When I saw her tonight, I recognized her. So yes, I guess so.”
“But where was I? I couldn’t have been that oblivious.” I had been a worse mother than I thought.
“She didn’t let you see her. She’d planned it all out, I’m sure she had. I think she wanted people to get used to seeing her in the park so they would not remember her as something unusual from that day.”
I nodded. “No one would have noticed a nanny with a carriage in the park. Even if they heard Caitlin crying, they wouldn’t have thought anything of it. Babies cry.”
The moonlight shone on Jane’s face through the windshield. “I didn’t really believe it before. But this means she’s alive somewhere. My sister’s alive!”
She sounded so sure.
I wanted to believe it. I almost believed it. And then I thought of the note: YOUR DAUGHTER DID NOT DROWN.
Could it have been sent from the nanny herself, a deathbed confession to try and make things right?
An explosion of reds, yellows, and blues seemed to light up the sky around us. The fireworks felt so real I could see them reflected in the water. But the lifting of great guilt can cause that. An unfamiliar lightness, a feeling as tangible as throwing off a heavy coat and welcoming the sun.
“Daddy and Hannah will have to believe us now,” Jane said.
“I hope so.”
“We should post Hannah’s picture on Facebook. You know, ‘Have you seen this woman?’ ” Jane said. “If they’re identical twins, someone has to recognize her.”
“But not without Hannah’s permission. And I thought you could only post pictures to people who were your ‘friends.’ ”
“That’s true. But we can ask them to send it to their friends. You know how things go viral on the Internet.”
A car came along the main road, its headlights playing over the pond.
Jane kept thinking. “The nanny said to tell ‘mum,’ so she was probably English. She had a British accent, I know that.”
I thought of something else. “If she came to the park on more than one day, I may have photographed her as part of a group scene. I took a lot of photos trying to get a few good ones.”
We stared at each other.
“Really? You think so? That would be amazing. Where are those pictures?”
“Packed away as rolls. Not developed.” I prayed that I had brought all the film back with me, that I hadn’t tossed it out in a fit of remorse. I told myself I wouldn’t have done that since those rolls would have also held my last pictures of Caitlin.
“You don’t have a darkroom anymore.”
“No. But I think there’s still one at the university.”
“Great! Drop me at the train,” Jane ordered, “and go find that film.”
Chapter Twelve
IT TOOK ME until midnight to find the film from our last week in Stratford. The basement was cold, and with the overhead bulb burned out, I had to use a flashlight. I finally located the three undeveloped rolls wrapped in a yellow plastic supermarket bag, hidden under a stack of tax returns. I held the tiny yellow canisters against my chest and closed my eyes. Dear God, make them still good. Make them have the pictures we need.
It wasn’t a prayer, not exactly, but more than a passing thought.
I was up again at dawn, sipping espresso and wondering how to safely develop the film. It was so old. If I still had my own darkroom and chemicals—but as soon as we returned from England I had turned the room into Jason’s nursery and flushed the chemicals away. It hadn’t seemed safe to keep them around.
Asking Colin for access to the university darkroom was out of the question. The only person who could help me, I decided groggily, was Bruce Adair. Bruce, a long-tenured literature professor with a specialty in the Victorians, was the smartest man I knew. He was a giant in the poetry world, a kingmaker who could, with one favorable review, set a needy young poet on the path to a Guggenheim. He had been congratulatory when Colin’s second volume of poems, Voices We Don’t Want to Hear, was shortlisted for the Pulitzer, but I wasn’t fooled. The two men circled each other like rival chieftains.
Asking Bruce for help brought certain complications, but I decided I could live with them.
I wondered if 7:45 a.m. was too early to call him, then decided to take the chance. Sometimes I suspected Bruce lived in his office, keeping his cottage on the sound only for seduction. He was a quintessential bachelor and ladies’ man, despite severe scoliosis that had curved his back and kept his height at under five feet.
He answered his office phone on the first ring. “Delhi!”
“How did—you must have caller ID.”
“I prefer to call it Scottish second sight.”
“Whatever. Listen, I need a favor.”
“What a surprise.” But he chuckled to soften the blow. “Do you want to stop by? My first class is at 9:10, but I’m here afterward. We could have lunch.”
“No, I need to see you before then.”
“What are you mixed up in now?” Bruce had been immeasurably helpful when my friend Margaret, the original owner of Port Lewis Books, had been attacked, helping me interpret clues I didn’t understand.
“It’s nothing like that. I just need a favor.”
“Oh, is that all.” He laughed again. “See you in ten.”
IT TOOK ME closer to twenty minutes to reach the campus, park in the visitors’ garage, and get to the literature department. When I entered Bruce’s beautiful office, I saw that he had set out two cups, a teapot, scones, and jam.
“Bruce! You didn’t need to—”
“This is my usual pre-seminar snack.” He came around his polished desk and kissed me lightly on the mouth. Then he indicated the shellacked wooden chair across the desk from his own. “Sit.”
I sat down and watched him pour me a cup of tea and nudge the sugar and cream close. He made sure the butter was also nearby. His caretaking brought me close to tears. When you’ve spent your life making sure everyone else has what they need, being cosseted this way will do that to you. That, not having gotten much sleep, and feeling emotional about what you’re going to ask.
I looked around his office and found a lead-in to our conversation. Two hand-tinted photographs from the south of England that I had taken on an earlier trip hung above the waist-high bookcases that ringed the room. I had been given a show in one of the small gallery rooms in the library and Bruce had insisted on buying them.
He reached over and set a box of tissues next to my scone.
I looked at him. We already had napkins.
“I keep them for girls who claim I’ve ruined their lives by giving them a D. You have that look. Is it Colin?”
“Oh. No. No more than usual.” I put down my teacup and told him the story of Caitlin, from her imagined drowning, Jane’s hypnosis, and my certainty that she was alive. Because he was expecting me to, I managed not to break down.
Bruce listened gravely, nodding once or twice.
“So I need to use the darkroom.”
“You need to do a whole lot more than that, Delhi.”
I nodded meekly.
“I always wondered why you stopped taking photographs, but I didn’t know you well enough to ask. I just assumed you’d moved on to better thing
s, and the next time we talked it was rare books. What I don’t understand is why you let this situation drag on so long.”
His clear blue eyes were stern. I was that student deserving of a D.
“Because we believed what the police told us. Colin wanted us to just get on with our lives and I went along. The story of my life: I just went along.”
“I don’t believe that.” He glanced at his understated but expensive watch. “I’ll walk over and show you where the lab is. It’s in Staller.”
“Wait!” My voice cracked with panic. I already knew where the darkrooms were. “You said there were other things I needed to do.”
“There are.” To my relief, he settled back into his chair. “You need to go to Stratford-upon-Avon, back to where it happened. You have to talk to the police and find out everything you can about their investigation. Read all the newspapers. It won’t be pleasant. Ask a lot of questions. See if you can locate this so-called nanny. Most of all you have to find out who sent you that note, and why.”
“I’d thought about going to Stratford when it came.” I’d also wondered how I was going to pay for a plane ticket at premium prices, and accommodations. My finances were nearly on empty and would only sink further as revenue from my book business decreased while I was away. Maxing out my credit cards wouldn’t be that hard.
The boardwalk Gypsy’s prophecy came back to me then. I was surrounded by people with money and didn’t have any myself. Ben and Patience, Marty Campagna, my friend Bianca Erikson. Even Colin had some reserves. Why not me? Had the Gypsy’s words become a self-fulfilling prophecy? Why couldn’t I have found my passion in the stock market?
“Have you made plans yet?”
I sighed and told him the truth. “Being a bookseller is like being a poet. Long in satisfaction, but lacking in cash. I’ll find a way to pay for it though.”
His blue eyes in his rosy, white-bearded face were sympathetic. “Well, I’ll give you fifteen thousand dollars. No strings.”
“You can’t, Bruce, you’re Scottish.” I meant it as a joke, which I assumed his offer was.
He laughed. “I’m serious. I live modestly and I have more money than I know what to do with. Who do I have to leave it to? Besides needy poets. I might as well do something interesting with the money while I’m alive.”
“I can’t take it.”
“I said, no strings. You don’t even have to invite me over for a down-home meal.” There had been a brief time last summer when Bruce had become amorous, thinking we would make an engaging pair. I had been briefly tempted at dinner one night, imagining us as an artistic couple floating in a gondola down the Grand Canal. Me in white organza, Bruce in his straw boater. We were both relieved when it didn’t happen.
I knew I should refuse the money. But I couldn’t.
Chapter Thirteen
“I HAVE TO meet someone at Staller. I’ll walk you over with you, but I don’t know anything about getting into the lab. I have a feeling it’s just for faculty and students.”
“That’s okay. I know where it is. I’ll be fine.” But I was disappointed; I’d imagined Bruce as so powerful, so all-knowing, that he could say the magic password and get me into the darkroom. If I couldn’t get in to develop the film myself, I would have to find a specialist somewhere. The film was too old and too important to mail it to some Internet site and hope for the best.
As it turned out, Bruce ran into a colleague outside the Staller Center for the Arts and I went on into the plain concrete building. I saw by the directory that the darkroom was on the fourth floor, and the photography department on the level below. I went to those offices first and found one that was dark, its door locked. The name on the placard outside said “Annalisa Merck.”
When I reached the brighter, open area, a secretary was just arriving. “Oh—you startled me!”
“Sorry. Is Ms. Merck in yet?”
The secretary, younger than I was, consulted a schedule. “She has a studio class at noon. You could try a little before twelve.”
That gave me three hours. Maybe.
Feeling the way I had when I was in junior high about to steal a lipstick from Rexall Drugs, I climbed the stairs to the fourth floor, and worked my way through the pale green cinder-block corridor. What was I doing? If I got caught sneaking into a darkroom . . . If they found out I was Colin Fitzhugh’s wife . . .
Before I reached the reception area, I came to a door that I was sure led into the darkroom. I moved to it and tried the knob. Locked. But of course it would be. They couldn’t risk people opening the door by mistake and spewing light everywhere.
Like riding a bicycle, darkroom techniques are second nature once you’ve learned them. I was sure that the past twenty years had brought new techniques, new chemicals that could ruin fragile celluloid, but how hard could developing this film be?
As my father used to say with a chuckle, “Fools rush in and don’t know what to do when they get there.”
I entered the reception room and smiled at a young Japanese student who had papers spread out on the desk behind the counter. He jumped up and came over to me.
“Is Annalisa inside?” I asked.
“Ms. Merck? No, not yet.”
“I’m developing some sensitive film with her. Very old.” I showed him, and his eyes widened at the dented yellow canisters. “Is it okay if I go in and get started?”
He hesitated. “You should wait for her.”
“I’m in kind of a hurry. I’d like to get things started.”
Come on, come on, come on.
“Are you in her class?”
“No. Just a colleague.”
Perhaps because I looked old enough for that to be true, perhaps because he couldn’t imagine any other reason for me to be there, he asked if I needed take-up reels.
“Yes. Three, please.”
“Sign here.” He pushed a clipboard with a lined page toward me. Mine would be the first name.
I wrote “Delhi Laine” as illegibly as I could and dated it.
He handed me the black plastic reels and then I was standing in front of a life-sized tube, the type you stepped into to be X-rayed.
“A gift from the medical school,” he said with some pride. “Total darkness so you can extract the film. I guess.”
Holding the empty reels, I stepped inside the cylinder. I knew I wouldn’t like the narrow tube, but it was worse than I expected—as bad as waking up in a coffin and realizing there were several tons of dirt on top of you. No wonder George Washington had left instructions not to bury him for three days after he died.
I fumbled around for the end of the film in the first canister and couldn’t find it. I couldn’t see my hands or the reel either. Pushing everything else into my jacket pocket, I concentrated on bringing one hand to the other. With shaking fingers, I managed to find the piece I needed and wound the first roll of film onto the empty spool.
You won’t die. Just do the other two.
I finally threaded two more rolls of film onto the reels, then was shaken by a new fear. How did I get out of here? I ran my hands along the smooth surface but could not feel a handle. Eventually Annalisa Merck and her class would come to use the darkroom and find my crumpled, oxygen-depleted body. Frantically I started trying to slide the partition in front of me to one side and finally created an opening. Breathing hard, I half-fell into the darkroom. It was blessedly familiar. No lights except for the usual red bulb that glowed as dimly as a signal at the end of a runway. In its glow I could see nine or ten enlargers, several sinks, and other apparatus.
Moving to the center of the lab, I felt exhilarated. I was back in a darkroom, the place I belonged, the place where I hoped today to discover something crucial. If only we had all come safely back from England and I had gone on with my own photographic visions . . .
&n
bsp; No time for regrets now. I had to work fast.
I raced mentally through the steps. Pour developer into a tank, agitate the unrolled film, swish it around with plastic-coated tongs. Lay the film in the first bath for ten minutes, then into the stop, the fix, and a final rinse in the sink. The acrid smell of the chemicals calmed me. I can do this.
Before I put the strips of film in the drying cabinet, I craned my neck to look at the tiny negatives. I could tell there were photos, real images, though I didn’t know how clear they would be. Several seemed to be of the little girls, their faces inverted dark as coal miners with eerily lighter eyes, and I realized the pictures would show what Caitlin was wearing that last day. I braced myself the way I had when we’d opened the cartons at Thanksgiving, but at least now I had hope.
It was hard to see if any of the strips showed a woman dressed as a nanny.
When I was sure the film was dry, I took the negatives out and brought them to the light table. The photos that showed people rowing on the Avon ambushed me with sadness and guilt. Why hadn’t I been paying attention to what truly mattered? I’d been so anxious to capture the two old ladies in frilly white hats and the young man at the oars that I’d ignored everything else.
I plowed on. One photo, just one, seemed to hold a woman in a white uniform at the edge of the frame.
My hand was shaking again as I cut the strip of negatives to fit in the enlarger. Why had I taken only one of her and so many of that damn statue of Shakespeare? The one photo I had would be blurred. The woman had evidently turned her head when she realized she was in my sights. She must have been constantly aware of where I was, what I was doing, knowing when to approach the girls. No one but me would have paid attention to a kindly nanny talking to them.
A Photographic Death Page 6