A Photographic Death

by Judi Culbertson

“Who gave this to you?”

  “Swore me to secrecy, he did. Said it was to be a surprise.”

  “Well . . . thanks.”

  I moved on, stepping around ­people, looking for Jane as I walked.

  The booth in the next block that sold decorations and wreaths had been left in the charge of a teenage girl. She stood shivering and sullen in a red wool coat.

  I smiled at her. “Do you have a message for me?”

  She gave me a foggy look, as if I had asked for something not in her job description.

  “Did someone leave a piece of paper with you for me to pick up?” I prompted.

  A shake of the head, then she turned to straighten a boxwood kissing ball.

  I stood watching her, uncertain what to do. If the man at the first booth hadn’t directed me here, I would have moved on and looked for another stand selling greenery.

  “Nobody gave you an envelope,” I confirmed.

  Her eyes flashed. “You didn’t say envelope.”

  I love you too.

  Reaching under the counter, she yanked it out by one white corner, nearly throwing it at me. I didn’t bother to ask any questions about who had left it with her.

  Moving out of reach in case she decided to snatch it back, I extracted the message. Dost thou think because thou art virtuous there shall be no more cakes and ale?

  Cakes and ale? Every second booth seemed to be selling something to eat or drink. How could I possibly stop and ask at each one if they had a message for me? The crazy American lady looking for signs and portents. Do you have a message for me? Yes—­get a life. I reminded myself that this was a matter of life and death, that my ego didn’t count. Think. Not every stand sold alcohol. I could bypass those dedicated to gingerbread castles, gourmet teas, and foods that came in a tin.

  There was a jerk on my jacket sleeve. “Mom?”

  I turned and saw Jane. She was red-­cheeked and breathless and carrying several bags. “You didn’t say you were coming!”

  “I wasn’t. But then I got an e-­mail from Will’s Boy.”

  “Really? He wrote back?”

  “He gave me some ‘clues’ to follow.”

  “Listen, I’m in the midst of getting something, it’s for you, so you can’t see. I was about to pay for it when I saw you. Go on ahead and I’ll catch up.”

  She hurried away and I kept walking, finally understanding that none of the booths was selling beer or ale. Perhaps there was a regulation against it. But up ahead on my left, standing alone beyond the last striped umbrella, was a pub. Was that where Will’s Boy meant?

  As I approached the weathered wooden door of the Singing Bard wreathed in decorative lights of its own, a high-­pitched voice called from the alleyway beyond, “Over here!”

  I stopped. Was Will’s Boy a woman? I had never pictured my correspondent as anything but a young man. Caitlin? Could it possibly be Caitlin herself? Breathless, I moved quickly around to the passageway, but couldn’t see anyone in the darkness.

  There was a laugh. “Don’t be afraid. In here.”

  How long had she been standing in the cold waiting for me? Had she been tracking my progress through the fair, watching me pick up the clues, staying a few feet behind? For all I knew, she had been at my shoulder and darted ahead when I stopped to talk to Jane. It made sense; she wanted me to find her. If she saw I was losing the trail, she might decide to confront me directly or change her plan.

  In contrast to the lights of the Christmas fair, the tinkle of “Good King Wenceslas” coming from a faraway booth, the alley looked cold and dark. But I stepped into it eagerly. I could finally make out the silhouette of a figure slouched against the building. The excitement, bubbling through my chest and into my throat, was choking me. Would I actually meet Caitlin tonight? Now? Had she been here in Stratford all along?

  “Mrs. Fitzhugh?”

  “Yes!” But why was she or he—­now it sounded more like a young man—­calling me by that name? In the spirit of the times, I had never taken Colin’s name, I had never called myself anything but Delhi Laine. I had put no name at all on the poster. But of course—­it was Caitlin’s last name too. Whoever this was knew her name.

  The figure turned toward me wearing the ubiquitous hoodie, but when I saw the face, I nearly screamed. Where the face should have been was a gaudy mask, the visage of Shakespeare, complete with a papier-­mâché mustache and ruffed collar.

  Will’s Boy.

  “So you finally came back.”

  “Caitlin? Is that you?”

  “Mummy?” The figure moved toward me as if for an embrace, then stepped back with a laugh. “What made you come here now?”

  “To find you! What?” The mask muffled a comment I could not make out. “Someone sent a note saying you hadn’t drowned.” I could barely get the words out. “So I came back and found you’d been kidnapped by a woman named Priscilla Waters.”

  The figure stumbled back slightly, then recovered. “Who said that?”

  “It’s a long story. But—­”

  “Tell me.” The voice was suddenly lower, unmistakably male, and I felt a sick disappointment. Not my daughter.

  “The police know we’re here, but I just found out about Priscilla. She’s dead, of course, she got what she deserved, but still—­what happened to Caitlin after she died?”

  “All you can think about is your daughter?” The high-­pitched voice squeaked higher in anger. ”You Americans are such pigs.”

  “Who else should I care about?” My disappointment flared into anger matching his. “Not what happened to some bitch who kidnapped her!”

  Suddenly he was moving around behind me and I was terrified he would leave by the back of the alley. “No, wait!”

  When I felt the zipper of my jacket press against my throat, I wondered what was wrong. Then I realized the pressure was from his arm, bringing me against him. I started to cough, and then was choking. What was he doing?

  Instinctively I bent my knee and jammed my foot against his leg. Too low for his groin, but it caught him off balance and loosened his grip, enough for me to thrust my head forward and then back against his chin. A crack sounded as the papier-­mâché shattered in the cold.

  He yelped as the material pinched his face. “You’re the bitch.”

  I tried banging his leg with my other foot, but this time he was ready, shifting out of the way like a dancer.

  His arm tightened more, and spots pulsed in front of my eyes, red, blue, yellow. Out, out damn spot. I’m going to die. Leaning forward, I made one desperate thrust with my body, pulling us both to the left.

  As we went down, I knew it would hurt.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  THE PRESSURE ON my throat relaxed as his arm hit the ground, just enough to allow me to take a breath. “Help! Somebody help!” I knew it wasn’t loud enough for anyone to hear. Yet I thought I heard, “Mom? Mom!” A sudden excruciating pain on my arm as Will extricated himself and pressed down against me to stand up. A scrape of pebbles on cement as he ran from the light.

  “Mom! Mom, are you okay?” Someone was pulling at my shoulder, creating a fast-­ spreading pain throughout my back.

  I wanted the pain to stop, but I couldn’t say anything. I couldn’t even open my eyes.

  “Is she breathing? What happened?” A deeper voice, a man’s. “Maudie, call the station. Tell them we need the doctor too.”

  “It’s my mother! This guy had her on the ground, choking her. He got up and ran away when I started yelling.” Jane sounded frantic.

  “Here, let me.” A heavier hand, this time on my chest. “Okay now. She’s breathing, she’s okay. Your mother will be okay. The constable will bring a medic.”

  Now I did open my eyes and looked up at a ruddy-­faced man. Jane was kneeling at my other side, many other ­people behind them. I wanted
to say that I was okay but my throat hurt too much to talk.

  “The constable’s on his way,” someone from the crowd of ­people called over.

  I thought about pushing up on one elbow, but I couldn’t make myself move.

  “Did he get your purse, love?” An older woman with frameless glasses was holding on to the kneeling man. Kind, so kind, someone who would serve you a cuppa in a tearoom with a warm smile.

  He hadn’t been interested in my purse. I realized it was the lumpy bulk I was lying on. “No,” I whispered.

  “That’s a blessing.” But she was shaking her head. “For such a terrible thing to happen here of all places, and during the fair!”

  The man again. “What’s keeping that constable?”

  As he pushed himself up, I saw that he was wearing a white bar apron and was in his shirtsleeves.

  The police, yes. I needed the police.

  CONSTABLE BRADFORD, ACCOMPANIED by a man who must have been the doctor, arrived at the Singing Bard shortly after that. The constable didn’t hide his dismay at the attack, stooping down as he watched the doctor examine me and closing his eyes ingratitude when it was ascertained that I was only bruised. By then I had pushed up into a sitting position, Jane supporting my back. But both men insisted I go to the hospital to be checked out.

  The drive to Warwick Hospital through the dark countryside took nearly fifteen minutes. When I shifted, trying to get comfortable in the police cruiser seat the pain was slightly less than at first, but I was dazed, as if I had been dropped from a high building. I had been attacked other times while trying to discover the truth of a situation, but this felt deeply personal, as if he would have enjoyed choking the life out of me. Yet he had seemed friendly enough in the beginning . . .

  I wasn’t allowed to walk into the hospital by myself, an orderly pushed my wheelchair, but I was left in the waiting room with Jane until a doctor could examine me. Constable Bradford, his expressive face etched with concern, once again made sure we had tea. Then he settled himself in the chair next to mine.

  “D’you think this has to do with what you were telling DCI Sampson?”

  “I know it does.” For several minutes I felt too exhausted to explain, too assaulted by the clinically bright lights of the room, but finally I did.

  As soon as I began talking, the constable pulled out a small black notebook and started taking notes. “I’ll make sure DCI Sampson sees my report,” Constable Bradford promised when I was finished and sat back exhausted, eyes closed. Then I reminded him, “Don’t forget the man at the antique instruments booth. He seemed to know who he was.”

  “We’ll check with him first thing,” he promised.

  Given her earlier concern, I might have expected Jane to hover over me, to make sure that answering his questions wasn’t too much for me. To keep checking on how I felt and trying to do things for me. Instead she wandered around the waiting area, stopping now and then to text on her phone. Yet I knew Jane. Given how terrified she had been, how frightened she was that I was dying, she had to believe that I would be fine, needed to act as if that were true.

  And I knew it was true.

  A half hour later a doctor confirmed that nothing had been broken, though much was bruised.

  Bruised, but not broken. The story of my life.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  JANE AND I slept in again the next morning. I finally stirred in the king-­sized bed and moved gingerly to look at the travel clock, then snapped my eyes shut. My neck and shoulders screamed when I moved, my throat hurt when I tried to swallow. My relief at being spared to sell books another day had been overcome by a letdown close to despair. Why couldn’t it have been Caitlin behind the mask? I had hoped for so much and learned so little. For all I knew, Will’s Boy could have seen our flyer and e-­mail and simply decided to have some fun.

  Some fun? That was ludicrous. He had known who I was, why I was there, and was somehow invested in it. I tried to recreate our conversation. Something about why I had come back. There was nothing on the poster that indicated, in our search to reunite with relatives, that we had ever been in Stratford before. He had used the name Fitzhugh. I had the sense, supported by very little, that he had been angry with Caitlin. Had he known her, had she treated him badly? But he also seemed angry when I insulted Priscilla Waters.

  Perhaps he was just an angry young man.

  “How do you feel?” The bed jiggled as Jane sat up.

  “Ugh. I won’t be walking out to anyone’s house today.”

  “First thing, we’re going to the police station like Constable Bradford said. What time do you think Sampson gets there?”

  “Wednesday he came in around nine.”

  “So we have time for a real breakfast?”

  “Bring it on.”

  ANOTHER POLICEMAN WAS on duty at the desk when we came in, polite, but without the warmth of Roderick Bradford. The lights on the desktop tree were still blinking out of sync, and I could hear laughter from an interior room. I wondered if they shut the station down for Christmas.

  After several minutes DCI Sampson appeared and showed us into what must have been an interrogation room. It was plain with pale green walls, an oak table and chairs. The only wall decoration was an evacuation plan.

  When we were sitting facing him, he looked at me as if I were a carton of milk left out all night. “So you had a spot of bother last night.”

  I rubbed my throat. “I thought you said you only had purse snatchings here,” I croaked furiously.

  “He tried to kill her!” Jane burst in, indignant, as if he were a salesman trying a bait-­and-­switch maneuver. “What kind of a place is this, anyway?”

  His gray eyes flickered over her face, unperturbed. “One of the safest villages in England. Roddy tells me it had to do with those flyers you’ve been plastering all over.”

  That’s right, blame the victim.

  I shrugged and was sorry as pain rippled through my shoulders.

  “Roddy said your assailant addressed you by name.”

  “He called me by my husband’s name. And Caitlin’s. It wasn’t on the flyer.”

  Sampson tapped his pen on the table as if he were preparing it to write. “Tell me exactly what he said.”

  I tried to remember. “It was all so fast, and not what I was expecting. He was wearing that Shakespeare mask, and I had to strain to hear.” I couldn’t bear to tell Sampson of my hope that it was Caitlin herself. “He said something about being surprised that I came back. He asked me what I knew. Oh, I mentioned Priscilla Waters and he didn’t like that. Then I asked about Caitlin again and he got angry. That’s when he got behind me and started choking me. I was trying to fight him off when Jane came.”

  He nodded. “Was he a large man?”

  “Taller than me, but not six feet, thin but a muscular build. With the hoodie and the mask, I couldn’t even see his hair color.”

  “Was he wearing gloves?”

  “He must have been. It was cold.”

  Sampson sighed. “Describe the mask again.” He was using the pen now, making notes on a lined pad.

  “Well, it was obviously Shakespeare. It had that domed bald forehead and hair over his ears, a narrow mustache and white collar.”

  “Rubber?”

  “Papier-­mâché. It cracked when I banged against it.” I thought of something. “It reminded me of those figures on the street who pretend to be statues. We saw one of Shakespeare yesterday. But I guess the shops sell a lot of those masks.”

  “Not so many. Considered in bad taste. Not like the States.”

  I thought of the masks I’d seen around Halloween, every image from Richard Nixon to Bernie Madoff, and decided not to defend my native land.

  “You said the mask cracked?”

  “Probably around the nose or chin. It really made him angry.
Angrier. The other thing I told Constable Bradford was about his voice. It was so high-­pitched, it was unusual.”

  “But a man’s.”

  “I think so. His body felt like a man’s. The way he attacked me, that kind of fury. Like someone outside a bar who thinks he’s been insulted. I’m not even sure it was something planned. When he e-­mailed me it was more like a game.”

  He jerked back, startled. “He contacted you over the Internet?”

  Evidently Constable Bradford had forgotten to tell him that part.

  I explained about the treasure hunt and the clues. “The man at the antique instruments seemed to know who he was.”

  “You have the e-­mail address he used?”

  I reached in my bag and handed the address I had copied out.

  For a moment DCI Sampson looked excited. Then he said, “Probably bounced it off somewhere else, making it untraceable. But we’ll check it.”

  “But the man at the instrument booth seemed to know him.” Why not just cut to the chase?

  “Roddy interviewed George last night. Your friend was already wearing his mask.”

  “Is my mom still in danger?” Jane interrupted.

  “I don’t know.” DCI Sampson looked at me directly. “Make sure you stay close to other ­people until we figure this out. Don’t go wandering off by yourself. If he contacts you again, call me right away. Something else.”

  I thought he had another safeguard in mind, but he said, “Why did you mention Priscilla Waters?”

  “Oh.” Jane and I looked at each other, realizing we hadn’t yet had a chance to tell him about that connection. I reached into my bag and took out the manila envelope. Pulling out my photo and the newspaper photocopy, I laid them on the table facing him.

  He read the news stories carefully. “Where did you get that photograph?”

  “I took it. The day my daughter disappeared.”

  “And you believe them to be the same person.”

  “It is!” Jane answered before I could. “That’s the woman who told me to tell my ‘mum’ that Caitlin had fallen into the river. She put her in that stroller when I was getting the flower for her.”