The Dark Palace--Murder and mystery in London, 1914 by R.N. Morris Read Free Book Online

Diaz opened up a folding brass eyeglass and held the first of the strips up to the light. When he was satisfied, he passed it on to Inti without comment.
    Inti already had his own magnifying glass at the ready.
    Barely visible against a grey field of tone, a dark spherical object was repeated in each frame. A smaller, lighter-toned disc was just emerging from the centre of the sphere.
    â€˜What do you think?’ said Diaz.
    Inti shrugged without committing himself. He held out his hand for the second test strip.
    The same repeated image, but this time the contrast between the now black sphere and paler background was clearer. The lighter-toned detail in the centre of the sphere was bleached to white, and lacked any internal detail.
    Inti gave the strips back to his uncle. ‘First one not enough. Second one too much.’
    â€˜What about the exposure? Is the exposure correct?’
    â€˜Of course.’
    â€˜How do you know?’
    â€˜Because you shot it, Uncle.’
    Diaz smiled and cuffed his nephew affectionately. He waved one of the strips. ‘This one is not much under. Thirteen minutes should do it. No, say thirteen and a half minutes. Do you agree, Inti?’
    Inti nodded unhesitatingly. Diaz laid the test strips on the winding bench next to the pin-frame and consulted a notebook. This was his shooting record. In it he had written down the length of the shots to be processed and the lighting conditions for each one. In fact, today it had been a simple shoot. One sequence. A stationary object for a detail that Waechter wanted to insert at the last minute into the film they had believed was finished. The lighting had been constant throughout. That meant the film could be processed in one piece, instead of having to be divided up into separate scenes, each needing its own tests and separate times in the development bath.
    Inti had been there at the shoot, working as Diaz’s assistant, turning the camera crank whenever Diaz needed his hands free to pull the focus or move the camera on its tripod. But there had been little that was technically demanding today. They had simply shot the prop from a number of different angles and distances so that Waechter would have a choice when he came to editing.
    The light in the darkroom was switched back to safety. Diaz lifted out the complete reel of film and folded over the end, securing it with one of the pins from his lapel. He fastened this loop of film over one of the central pins on the pin-frame. He nodded for Inti to begin winding.
    And now Inti was the spider, spinning a web of celluloid. When he had spun out the entire length of film, Diaz plucked the other pin from his lapel and created a second loop at this end to fasten the film securely on to the frame.
    Diaz immersed the frame in the bath of developer. Inti began the stopwatch.
    As he watched the second hand in its frantic dash to nowhere, he pictured the images forming in the bath of chemicals.
    A single unblinking eye placed on a table top, endlessly repeated.

SEVEN
    T hick clouds squatted over the city, shutting out the infinite and stifling hope. The sun was nowhere to be seen. They had to settle for a dim, filtered pallor and call it daylight.
    It seemed that spring had ventured out but quickly lost heart and thrown in the towel. An existential chill filled the vacancy. Quinn donned the herringbone Ulster once again and hunkered down in it as if he never intended to come out. Even when it wasn’t raining, you felt that it soon would be. The day was something hostile on the other side of a fragile pane.
    Now that the usurper Coddington had been banished, Quinn felt a need to reassert his right to the trademark garment. He wore it not so much to stay warm and dry, rather to confirm his identity, and even to proclaim his triumph. I am the man who wears the herringbone Ulster , he seemed to be saying.
    Inchball took to the assigned task – of monitoring suspicious German nationals