The Devil's Footsteps. John Burke
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of his eyes, as ebon as a mountain tarn, seemed almost to mesmerize his audience.
Audience...? She groped for the thought, and it was gone.
‘Whatever you have heard, mine host, can assuredly be no more than contemptible tittle-tattle. In a profession such as yours, hearing what you must hear in your own bar day after day, I imagine you know how little substance there is in outpourings of that nature.’
‘It’s not me, sir. Not at all. My regulars....’
‘Your regulars will desert you only when by some stroke of fate their thirst deserts them.’
Bronwen said quietly: ‘Dr. Caspian, having so newly arrived upon the scene, I think you cannot know the full story.’
‘And do not need to at this moment. When I do hear it, I am confident I shall prefer your version to any other.’
The landlord rested his weight on the flap of the bureau, which creaked a protest. Abruptly he forced a smile. It was meant to be ingratiating, but the muscles of his face tugged downwards as if against his will.
‘Right you are, sir. Don’t see why we shonldn’t fit the young lady in.’
Caspian nodded, having taken it for granted that he would get his way. But Bronwen sensed another strange element in the landlord’s swift surrender—a kind of nudge, given to the man by some force he himself didn’t understand, something elusive which seemed about to come into focus but then retreated.
She rubbed her hand across her eyes. Perhaps she would have done better to let herself be bundled unceremoniously on to that train.
‘If you’ll come this way, miss, I’ll show you to your room and get Mrs. Fortrey to see you’ve got all you need.’
The room had a low ceiling with blackened, sagging timbers, and a latticed window overlooking the square. The carpet was worn thin along one edge, and the coverlet on the bed was badly faded; but it was clean and unpretentious, and Bronwen welcomed it as a temporary refuge. A young man brought up her cases, the large camera and her portable dark-tent, stacking them along one wall. He was followed by Mrs. Fortrey, who eyed this paraphernalia dubiously.
‘A towel for you, miss. And I’ll get the girl to fill the washstand jug when she comes in from the scullery.’
‘Thank you.’ Bronwen wanted only to be left alone, to sink into the armchair by the window and recover her scattered and mangled wits.
‘There won’t be any...well, you won’t be splashing acids and things? On our carpets, I mean, miss.’
Bronwen tersely reassured her. She had no intention of throwing acid about. But perhaps, instead of sitting down, she ought to open up her boxes and see what, if anything, had been damaged as the distraught crossing-keeper threw them out of doors and over the fence.
Mrs. Fortrey went to the door, expressing one last disquiet. ‘You’ve got no maid with you, then, miss?’
‘She took herself off. A most unreliable girl. She’ll have no reference from me, that I can promise.’
Mrs. Fortrey raised an eyebrow, evidently sympathizing with the girl rather than her deserted mistress, and left.
Bronwen carefully opened out the folds of cloth around the dark-tent box. Nothing appeared to be leaking. She raised the lid to find one bottle dislodged from its compartment but mercifully undamaged. She had less luck in her plate storage box. Two glass plates of the Church had been cracked diagonally. The scenes would certainly have to be taken again. And here she would stay until they and several others were perfected, ignorant savages or no ignorant savages.
She turned her attention to the camera tripod. The injured leg was the result of the iron ferrule driving up into the wood. Any weight on it would widen the crack.
When water had been brought and she had washed and tidied herself, Bronwen went downstairs. There was nobody about, but she did not trouble to ring the handbell on the bureau. After so many explorations of the village she remembered her way round well enough.
It took only a few minutes to find the carpenter’s shop in West Lane. The sagging fence and the gate yawing on its hinges were no great advertisement for the craftsmanship of the occupant; but from the shed came the pleasing tang of newly sawn wood, and through the gaps in the planking she saw the gleam of yellow deal.
An elderly man within was completing work on a coffin.
When Bronwen pulled the door back he looked up and froze, then began to tap the end of his screwdriver on the lid.
‘I wonder if you could repair a camera tripod for me? One of the legs has split.’
‘That has?’ A shrug, a shake of the head. ‘Got my hands full right now.’
‘I don’t believe it would take long. Even if you could manage only a temporary repair, to keep me going while I’m here, it would be a help.’
He lowered his gaze and contemplated the coffin. ‘I’m likely to be asked for another one. Got to get this finished, and then there’s the talk of me having to do another one this next couple of days.’ His head went on one side, sly and accusing.
‘If it isn’t repaired,’ Bronwen persisted, ‘my work here will take me a lot longer.’
That seemed to strike home. ‘Well, I’d have to see it first.’
‘I’ll bring it round. I do assure you, it’s a fairly simple job.’
‘That do depend.’
‘If I go back and fetch it now—’
‘Leave it till tomorrow art’noon, then.’ He beat out a slow tattoo on the woodwork.
She left before he could change his mind. The light on the church, as she crossed the square, was just right for a picture. Now was as good a time as any to attempt a replacement of those cracked plates and at the same time to check that the camera itself was undamaged. She paced round the edge of the green in search of the best vantage point, and a solid base for the camera.
Of course. The lower platform of the pillory. The camera would need only the slightest tilting to take in the whole church tower, and the rising lens devised by her father would prevent vertical distortion. Bronwen went back into The Griffin and fetched the bulky box and cloth of her portable darkroom. When she had propped it against the pillory she went back again for the camera, glancing twice from her window to make sure that nobody was meddling with the equipment on the green.
In the hall as she came down this time, Dr. Caspian was talking to the barmaid, a plump girl with milky complexion and lips gone slightly sour—lips which now pouted and promised, under the spell of the slim, tall man and his extravagant presence.
‘Them footsteps, sir? Well, they do wholly puzzle every one of us. But we reckon it’s best to say nothing and let ’em go away.’
‘You can tell me exactly where I may observe this manifestation, Leah?’
He spoke her name as if he had been speaking it intimately for years. She swayed enticingly towards him and giggled. ‘Fancy someone coming all this way from London just because of old Josh Serpell’s maunderings!’ She edged herself closer to Caspian and, at the door, took his arm and leaned her left breast against him. ‘Your best way, sir’—her face was turned up to his—‘is turn left outside here...if you could wait till later...wanted me to show you the way....’
Bronwen swept past them and across the cobbles and grass to the pillory.
She balanced the camera carefully and established that she could achieve quite an agreeable composition. Satisfied on this score, she set up the equipment box on its stand, shook out the folds of lightproof cloth, and slid aside the flap of the red-tinted window. Wriggling under the cloth until it was draped over her head and shoulders and down to her hips, she prepared the collodion coating for a plate, and then transferred the plate-holder to the camera. Again she ducked under a cloth, and