CHAPTER TWO — A WINDOW MADE TO LIE
Samuel’s sister Liza worked in the sewing room on the second floor of Vale House.
She was nineteen and had learned to place stitches so evenly that Catherine’s visitors sometimes admired the dresses without seeing the person who made them.
At dawn she brought Samuel his breakfast in a tin bowl and found him examining the outside wall of the old schoolroom.
“You look like you expect the bricks to start speaking,” she said.
“Someone intends to make a picture that tells a lie.”
“Then you’ve come to the right house.”
Samuel almost smiled.
He told her about the envelope, leaving out nothing that might affect her choices.
Liza listened without interrupting.
When he repeated the sentence about removal, she set the bowl on a fence post.
“Did Mistress Catherine offer to protect you?”
“She offered to tell me what to do.”
“That’s what I thought.”
Liza studied the schoolroom windows.
The photographer had covered the eastern panes with black cloth, leaving one tall western window uncovered.
A painted wooden panel leaned against the wall, decorated to resemble the upstairs sitting room.
“They’ve been asking me about her blue cloak,” Liza said.
“Which blue cloak?”
“The one with silver braid.”
“Where is it?”
“In the sewing room with every stitch still attached.”
A kitchen boy named Ben came around the corner carrying a basket of firewood.
He was twelve, observant, and generally dismissed by white adults because he seemed too young to notice their arrangements.
“Mr. Kersey told the photographer to put the chair against the painted window,”
Ben said.
Liza told him not to stop working while he talked.
Ben moved toward the woodpile and continued in a conversational murmur.
“They’ve got a curtain hanging across half the room.”
“Who has?” Samuel asked.
“The fellow with the black box and Mr. Kersey.”
“Have you seen Mistress Catherine there?”
“No.”
“Have they asked you to stand by the window?”
Ben hesitated.
“The photographer told me a man would have to stand behind a lady and hold something blue.”
Samuel looked at Liza.
The photograph would not capture two people by accident.
Someone would position them carefully, control the light, and create an appearance that witnesses could later swear they had seen.
Perhaps the blue cloak would identify Catherine even if the woman in the photograph was someone else.
Perhaps Samuel’s face would be hidden, leaving the accusation dependent on the viewer’s imagination.
“What did the photographer say about the man’s face?” Liza asked.
Ben frowned.
“He said it didn’t matter.”
That frightened Samuel more than the rest.
He had been chosen not for anything he had done but because the image required a figure who could be called Samuel afterward.
He could refuse to enter the room, yet Julian could force another man to pose and still say the silhouette belonged to him.
“I need to see the room,” he said.
Liza shook her head.
“You need to be somewhere they cannot move you.”
“Where would that be?”
She had no answer.
From the front drive came the scrape of carriage wheels.
A messenger from town stopped at the steps with a narrow parcel.
Julian’s steward, Mr. Pritchard, came out and signed for it.
The messenger was accompanied by a Black woman in a gray traveling dress who carried a wooden case of folded cloth.
Samuel recognized her immediately.
Her name was Mrs. Ida Bell, and she owned a small laundry in the nearby town of Alder Creek.
Ida had been born free, and she dealt with the Vales only when business required it.
She had once taught Samuel’s mother how to remove iron stains from linen without destroying the fabric.
As the messenger rode away, Ida paused at the garden gate.
She looked at Samuel and lifted one eyebrow.
He gave the smallest possible nod toward the stable.
Ten minutes later, she appeared beside the mare’s stall under the pretext of collecting stained blankets.
“Liza says something has gone badly wrong,” she said.
Samuel told her about the letters and the picture.
Ida’s eyes narrowed.
“Does the photographer have a name?”
“Armand Pike.”
“He made portraits for a hotel in Richmond last winter.”
“Can he make a person appear somewhere they never stood?”
“He can make a picture tell nearly any story if he controls who poses and what is shown around them.”
“Then how do we stop him?”
“First we find out who commissioned the result.”
Samuel told her he had no permission to leave the property.
“I did not ask you to leave,” Ida said.
“I asked you to tell me what you know.”
She took one dirty blanket and rolled it tightly beneath her arm.
“Don’t touch that photograph room yet.”
“Why not?”
“Because a broken camera can be replaced, and a frightened gentleman can accuse anybody of breaking it.”
Ida started toward the kitchen.
At the gate she turned once more.
“And Samuel, make certain your sister isn’t wearing anything blue when she goes upstairs.”
