"You see, tut you do not observe."
Charles Sheridan remained at the lip of the impromptu grave for the next hour, soberly capturing with his camera the progress of the excavation. As the last of the covering dirt was shifted by the student archaeologist, down to shirtsleeves now and sweating in the bright sun that had burned off the cloud, Charles moved his tripod to get a different perspective on the work. While the sergeant and the constable hoisted the stiffened corpse out of the pit, he composed another exposure under the black cloth which covered the back of the camera, and made several others, from different angles, with the body lying faceup to the sun. A knot of curious onlookers was kept well to the street by a second police constable, summoned to control the crowd.
Studying the inverted image on the ground glass screen at the back of the camera, Charles saw that the body was that of a slim, swarthy gentleman of foreign appearance. He had
high cheekbones, an aquiline nose, and thin lips under a waxed mustache, and was dressed for evening in a black frock coat, double-breasted waistcoat, single-wing collar, and striped trousers. Upon one well-cared-for hand was a curious gold ring in the shape of a scarab, such as Charles had seen among recently discovered Egyptian artifacts in the British Museum. That the corpse was not the ordinary inebriated casualty of several hours' pleasant imbibing at the nearby Red Lion was attested by the fact that a substantial amount of dirt had been deposited on top of him by the landslide. It was more unquestionably indicated by a half-inch cut in the man's dirt-soiled waistcoat in the vicinity of the heart. The cut was surrounded by a rich rosette of crusted blood. The floor of the excavation, onto which he had fallen facedown, was blood-soaked.
The sergeant knelt and jabbed a finger at the cut. He spoke without looking at the police constable standing at attention behind him. "Knife, wudn't yer say, Trabb?"
Trabb penciled nervous jottings in a small notebook. "I'd say so, Sergeant Bat'le."
"Inserted once firmly an' withdrawn?"
"So't appears, sir." Trabb turned his head squeamishly aside. "D'yer recognize 'im?"
" Traid not." The sergeant gingerly inserted his hand into the dead man's pockets, one after the other. "Not a Colchester man, I'd warrant. Don't appear t' have a thing in his pockets. Rob'ry, wouldn't yer say?"
"Indeed, sir," Trabb concurred, writing industriously.
Charles spoke in a quiet voice. "Do you think, Sergeant Battle, that a thief would have overlooked the gold ring? It's worth a few guineas, at least."
The sergeant gave Charles a look in which suspicion and deference contended, then turned back to the corpse. "P'raps yer right, sir," he said with an exaggerated courtesy that seemed to suggest its opposite. "More like, th' thief were in a tearin' hurry t' be done wi' th' deed, or cudn't get the bleedin' ring off."
Charles bent over, slipped the ring off the corpse's ring finger, and handed it without a word to the sergeant.
"Right, sir," Sergeant Battle murmured. He pocketed the ring. Trabb's scribble paused momentarily, then continued.
Charles stood back and surveyed the area. He had for the past week spent the daylight hours documenting the progress of Sir Archibald's dig, so he had a good sense of the lay of the land. The northern border of the excavation was bounded by other digs, making the ground in that direction difficult to navigate, especially in the dark of a moonless night, such as the last. On the southern side of the excavation, however, six yards away, was a dirt cart track that led to the street. According to the student archaeologist, the site was unattended after dark.
Shouldering his camera, Charles slowly paced from the pit to the cart track, head down, studying the sandy surface. There had been a drizzle early in the previous evening. Footprints around the excavation-those left after the rain-had already been destroyed by the tramping to and fro of the police. But as he neared the cart track, a line of footprints emerged out of the muddle. He pulled out an ivory folding rule, laid it beside the prints, and took a photograph, then another. Then he walked a few paces to the cart track and, once again using his rule for scale, took several photographs of what seemed to be the wheelprints of a cab or carriage and the hoofprints of a single horse.
As he changed plates, he noticed on the ground a lozenge of old ivory, about the size of his thumb and curiously carved with minutely detailed leaves and flowers, pressed into the loose dirt by a careless foot. He carefully repositioned his camera and photographed the piece of ivory at the closest range the lens would allow, from three different angles. Then he signaled to the sergeant.
"I think this bit might be of interest to you, Sergeant Battle." Charles pointed at the piece of ivory. "It looks as if it were dropped here recently, does it not?"
The sergeant knelt, squinting, then picked up the ivory and slipped it into his pocket. "P'raps," he remarked carelessly. He glanced at the camera and tripod. "Quite a imposin' instrument, that, sir. I see yer've been busy wi' it."
Charles's camera had been made in Paris in 1890. It had a
mahogany front panel which folded down when the camera opened to form the baseboard that supported the square leather bellows and the Eurygraphe Extra-Rapid No. 3 lens. The camera was older and somewhat more cumbersome than others he owned, but was ideal for making detailed exposures where focus was critical and haste in composition no object. It was in his opinion a very fine camera.
"I plan to develop the plates this evening," he said. "If you would find photographic prints of this unfortunate business of use in your investigation, I should be pleased to let you have them."
Charles could see that Sergeant Battle was wary of his offer, and perhaps understandably so. It had been almost seventy years since Daguerre had created his first tantalizingly impermanent images on silver plates coated with a light-sensitive layer of silver iodide, and five years since George Eastman had wound a ribbon of cellulose nitrate on a spool inside a wooden box that he called a "Kodak." The camera was no longer an inventor's novelty used by a handful of eccentrics.
The use of photography in the solving of crime, however, was still relatively unproven in 1894. No doubt Sergeant Battle had heard that Scotland Yard routinely photographed criminals, chiefly as an aid to identification, and perhaps he had even heard a rumor that Alphonse Bertillon, in Paris, was experimenting with detailed photographic records of the crime scene. But the techniques of investigation in the borough police forces were at a decade or more behind those of the Metropolitan Police, which lagged by yet another decade those of the French Surete. Sergeant Battle might well not be able to imagine to what use the photographs of this morning's gruesome discovery could be put. After all, there was the corpse, absolutely and indisputably dead, the means of death unquestionably visible in the bloody shirt front. There was PC Trabb, earnestly and meticulously recording each minute detail of the crime scene in his notebook. And shortly, a qualified medical practitioner would examine the body to ascertain whether any instrument or agency other than a knife might have contributed to the victim's untimely demise, and in due
course would present his report to the coroner and his jury. What possible service could photographs render in this time-honored process?
But Charles observed that the sergeant was a cautious man, not prepared to reject out of hand a gentleman's offer of assistance, whatever he might do with the photographs once they were in his possession. "T be sure, sir," he said with a show of earnestness. "If you'd be so kind as t' bring th' pichures t' th' station, I'll see as they gets put t' good use."
"Then I shall," Charles agreed. He pointed at the cart tracks and footprints. ' 'Perhaps your man might want to have a go at these."
"A-corse, sir," said the sergeant, as he stepped on one of the prints.
Observing that there was nothing left to be learned from the scene and litde additional help he might offer, Charles took his camera and tripod and walked away.