Black as Night: A Fairy Tale Retold (38 page)

“I just heard from him, and he said he’d be back at the studio at seven to talk with you,” she informed them proudly.

This was somewhat of a letdown after an entire day of waiting.

“Too late for me,” Fish had said after he had hung up the phone. “There’s a required lecture at the University tonight. Since I’m here, I feel in all conscience I should go.”

“Are you sure you can’t skip it?” Rose had asked, toying with the hat.

Fish had looked at her, mildly disgusted. “Miss Brier, a college education is a privilege not to be taken lightly.”

“Oh,” Rose had said solemnly. “I didn’t know.”

“Of course you wouldn’t,” Fish had said. “No, I don’t think I can afford to miss this lecture. It’s an Austrian professor speaking on the minor poets of the Romantic revival, and she’s about the only decent authority left on the subject. Bear, be a good big brother and drop me off, will you?”

“We’ll call you on your cell phone if we discover anything really important,” Rose promised.

Fish looked at her and rolled his eyes. “Unless it’s Blanche herself, or a culprit ready to confess before a jury, it can wait until I’m done with the lecture,” he said. Bear had steadily refused to discuss his hunch with either of them, so Fish had expressed doubt that this meeting would turn up anything worthwhile.

Thus at seven o’clock Bear and Rose found themselves waiting for Mr. Vincent Van Seuss, the photographer, while Fish attended his lecture. By 7:30, there was still no sign of Mr. Van Seuss.

Renee, who had not recognized Blanche’s photo, had helpfully loaned them several additional books of portraits Mr. Van Seuss had made over the past few years. Rose scanned every single page, but, as Bear had guessed, there were no pictures of Blanche among them.

Now they sat on white wood chairs with black leather cushions, staring at the charcoal-colored carpet, Renee’s empty desk, and the red walls with their rows of faces and bodies.

“What a nice position she has,” Rose indicated the absent Renee. Bear had guessed that Renee was in the back room painting her nails, not wanting her boss’s clients to see how idle she was. “She seems to have nothing to do but sit around in this classy office just in case someone happens to come in.”

“I wouldn’t want her job,” Bear said.

He wondered again about his stonework idea. It was a little extraordinary, he knew, but he had a feeling he could make something of it.
If only everything else works out
, he thought.
If only Blanche...

Rose nudged him. “Someone’s coming,” she whispered, and Bear got to his feet as the studio door opened and a tall, harried-looking man in a tweed suit and a silk shirt with a handsome profile entered the room, carrying several bulky black leather bags. Seeing them, he brightened up.

“Welcome, welcome,” he said, taking each of their hands, speaking with the barest trace of an accent. “I am so very sorry for keeping you waiting so long.”

He chatted with them as he divested himself of the camera equipment, mentioning the fine weather and a bit of what had kept him so long—an attempt to photograph a flock of pigeons flying away from the pier. “It’s not as easy as you might think. Pigeons are not the type of bird you can hurry,” he explained. “You must forgive me for detaining you.”

His easy charm made Bear and Rose feel rewarded for waiting so long. With this personality, it was no wonder Mr. Van Seuss could keep such an unpredictable schedule without frustrating his clients.

He ushered them into his office, which was a bit more disheveled but far more comfortable, with large, soft, black leather chairs. Coffee? A drink? Rose said yes to a soda. He took one himself and then leaned forward on his black wood desk, saying, “Now, how can I make myself of assistance?”

Bear pulled out the photograph of Blanche, and Mr. Van Seuss’ eyes brightened.

“You would want to know if I took this photograph?” he queried.

Bear said he would.

“Yes, I did. Such a lovely girl, isn’t she?” His eyes traveled to Rose. “And you must be related to her.”

Rose admitted that the girl was her older sister.

“Wonderful. A most bewitching family. How else may I help you?”

Bear asked how he had come to take the portrait.

“That is both simple and not as simple to tell. I was asked to go to a home to take a photograph of a man and his wife about two weeks ago. Of course I do not give out my clients’ names. But I will tell you what I can. The man, you see, is very ill, and his wife wanted a last portrait of them together. That portrait did not turn out so well. The man is very ill. He does not look his best. I did what I could. It is very sad.

“Now, as a photographer, I have learned one must be spontaneous in the search for art. Such as today—I have to photograph pigeons, but the pigeons will not cooperate. But while I am waiting for the pigeons, I find incredible puddles along the dockside, with the wind making ripples. So I photograph the puddles and the reflections of the clouds. Just the same thing with this shoot I was telling you of. The beautiful black-haired girl—your sister—she is there. She is visiting the sick man. She is enchanting. So I ask her, may I take your photograph? She does not mind.

“I take the photo, but it is not exactly as I want. So I take some more. Not what I want. So I ask her to sit down for me. She sits on the chair as you see, here, and I photograph her. But her beauty is playing games with me. I cannot capture her as I want. So I move the chair, I play with the light. She is very patient, she smiles, and she has this wonderful ironic smile, like the Lady with a Secret. I try her in a number of poses until I use the whole roll. So much that the lady of the house—whose husband I came to photograph—I think she is becoming annoyed with me. And as I said, that photograph of her and her husband does not turn out so well. But as for these pictures—miraculously beautiful!”

Bear wondered aloud how Blanche came to have the picture.

“Oh, well, of course, when I come back with the photographs for the couple to choose, I bring a few of the girl as well, in case I see her. I should admit I was hoping to see her again. She is so very lovely and with such a gracious manner. One enjoys talking to a girl of that sort, especially when one is my age. And I was happy to find her there. She is so dedicated in visiting the sick man. He says it means the world to him, and I, seeing her, can understand. I showed the girl the pictures, and she is surprised and happy at how they look. She asks me if she may purchase this for her mother, and if she may come to look at the others later on. I gave her the one. Then, you see, the lady of the house—who does not seem to enjoy having such a beautiful young thing so near to her husband—comes in and is cross with me because she does not care for the pictures I took of her husband and herself. So the visit does not end well, but that is not the girl’s fault.”

Mr. Van Seuss rose. “Would you care to see the other pictures I took of her?”

Rose and Bear said they would. Despite what Mr. Van Seuss had said about not giving out his clients’ names, Bear was hoping that he might tell them more.

Mr. Van Seuss sorted through his pictures, each set in its own thick white envelope of textured paper marked with his red and white trademark symbol. Not finding anything, he checked his calendar for the day and consulted with Renee, then re-emerged brandishing another envelope.

“They were in my second-best briefcase!” he exclaimed. He took out a stack of glossy black and whites and smoothed them out on the burgundy leather cover of the desk with a professional hand.

Blanche’s features, white and black, gazed up at Bear from the table. Mr. Van Seuss had indeed managed to capture Blanche’s elusive expressions of quiet allure. Each one was a little better than the previous one, although none was as stunning as the one Blanche had chosen for her mother. Bear wondered to himself that Blanche hadn’t mentioned the photographs to him. Perhaps she had intended to surprise him with one.

He was pulled out of his reverie. “Who is this?” Rose asked, pointing to another photograph that had slid from the envelope.

Bear stared at the black and white image, and felt a tremor run through him as though he had been swiftly and silently rammed by a truck.

“That is the couple whose picture I went to take, as I told you,” Mr. Van Seuss said apologetically. “As I said, it was not a very successful venture.”

The man in the picture looked frail, very frail. But the woman stood beside him, tall and tanned and beautiful, and as archetypal as all the blond beauties lounging on the yachts in the waiting room outside.

He should have known. It had been there all along.

“Thank you very much, Mr. Van Seuss,” Bear heard himself saying as he got to his feet, so unexpectedly that Rose was startled. She said something in a questioning tone to him, but he barely heard what she was saying. It was time to go.

Chapter Twenty

Perhaps they think I look like her, but inside I’m not the least bit like the Blessed Mother,
she thought to herself, walking back to the high school, swept suddenly again by the feeling of self-consciousness she had lost while serving the friars’ neighbors.
But of course, nobody could really be like the Blessed Mother. All of us are sinful, or at least terribly inadequate
—

“Nora!”

She halted, and looked at the door to the friary kitchen. Brother George hurried down the steps to her and handed her a piece of paper and the bottle. “I had one of my old colleagues look up the serial numbers on the pills. Here’s what it is.”

She read the unfamiliar ingredients, and looked up at him quizzically.

“Does your friend have heart problems?” the friar asked.

“No, not at all. He said he was lucky that way.”

“Well, then I’m not sure why he’d have a bottle of these pills. This is heart medication.”

“Heart medication.”

The friar nodded. “It would introduce a subtle toxicity into the patient’s system that over time could cause dizziness, confusion, even hallucinations. He’d be very sick. Not exactly what someone with a brain tumor would need.”

“Would it kill him?”

“It’s hard to say, but it might. It’s not a poison, but it could start heart problems that could kill him or put him into a coma if not used properly.” He paused. “Now, I’m not a doctor, so I don’t know if there might be some other problem he’s having that would require this medication. But I’m going to make an educated guess here. The bottle you gave me was a supply bottle. It may be that he obtained it without a prescription, and didn’t realize the effect it would have.”

“I see,” she said mechanically.

“But on the surface, I would say, he shouldn’t be taking this. Not without specific instructions from a very good doctor.” He looked at her. “This sounds like a bigger situation than a nineteen-year-old girl can handle.”

“It is,” she said.

“I hope you’ll consider getting some help,” Brother George said with concern.

She nodded and took a deep breath. “I will. Maybe Father Francis can help me…First I’ve got to get changed. Then I can think about it—Thanks very much, Brother George,” she called over her shoulder as she hurried on.

“You’re welcome,” Brother George turned to go back up the steps.

Her heart beating faster, she opened the door with the replacement key Father Bernard had given her. “Cappu! Shin!” she called, remembering her promise to Brother Leon to not go off alone. There were no answering barks.

She glanced around the courtyard, but the dogs were not in evidence. Perhaps they were tracking down a rat somewhere.

Well, I can at least go inside and get changed
, she thought.
Then I have to go and see what can be done…

As she opened the door to her room, pulling the bobby pins out of her veil, she heard a faint noise. A rat? She dropped the hood of the veil and looked into the shadows in the corridor beyond. A creeping sensation came over her. Someone was inside the building.

“Who’s there?” she called, in case it was one of the friars.

There was a footstep, and a figure came around the edge of the corner. She could see the green eyeshade.

Run.
She turned, gathered her skirts, ready to run back towards the door.