September, 1861
“When was it, exactly, you met Mr. Child?”
“Two years and two months to the day,” I told Tooker.
“You seem to know it very well.”
“I thought I heard you say: exactly.”
“And where was it you knew him first?”
“I met him at a séance in a house in the Back Bay. He was the photographer there and we talked. After that for a while we were friends,” I confessed, “as I’m sure Algernon will attest. If you have him.”
But Tooker did not hear this last or if he did he gave no sign. “Friends for a while, sir, how long do you mean?”
“The next year and a half I would say, give or take.”
“I say that’s considerably more than a while.”
“It was a while to me,” I said.
“And all of a sudden you no longer were?”
“Fairly suddenly,” I said. “We ended on bad terms, in fact. Algernon Child was convinced”—I clasped hands—“that I was in some way suppressing his talent.”
“A case of envy, plain and simple.”
“A case of misconception, sir. For ours was a friendship of mutual honour. But Algernon could not see that.”
“The pictures we have of him,” Tooker went on, “all show him rather worse for wear. In fact, he looks a downright mess. In other people’s pictures, too. And when they came forward suppose what they claimed?”
“If it please you, no,” I said.
The Marshall laughed. “The fools said this: that man is not the man you say. That man is my brother, my nephew, my friend for Mr. Mumler told me so. While others said: that man there, Marshall. That man there is still alive.”
“If that is true,” said I, “produce him.”
“Are you implying,” said the Marshall, “that for some reason, sir, he cannot be produced?”
“Nothing of the kind,” I said. “I myself haven’t seen him since we parted ways. And since I have nothing to fear,” I pressed on, “when it comes to my work being proven a fraud I wonder have you entertained the thought that Algernon is …”
“Dead.” He looked at me wryly and long, his brow twitching. “How very clever of you, sir.”
“But that is purely speculation.”
“We cannot produce him,” he said. “He is missing. Missing,” His Baldness repeated. “Unless … But let us circle back to that. You’re aware that Child went to the college of art? The man was there three years, we’re told. Hazard a guess as to whom he befriended?”
“Why don’t you tell me,” I said.
“A man named Charlie Livermore. A recent patron of yours, no? Livermore and Algernon, the two of them were friends,” he said. “Like you, they had a falling out. All of this started two years after college. Livermore had quit at art. Embraced the banking life full-time. More gainful pursuit than photography, surely. And yet he wished, I do suppose, to keep his finger on the pulse. And so he did what artists do when they resort to making money. He became a board member, if not an aspirant, of the Massachusetts Chapter of the PSAI.”
“He denied Algernon’s application,” I said. “I’d heard as much from Child. But why?”
“In part, I’ve come to understand, for his entanglement with you.”
“I’m not sure that I understand.”
“Before he applied to the PSAI, Child had asked Livermore for a loan,” said the Marshall. “He wanted to finance some process experiments. He wanted to see how you did what you do. But Livermore denied him that. Spirit pictures, it seems, were implausible to him, believer in spirits though he was. And then when Child dropped off the map at the height of his suspect involvement with you, Livermore, feeling guilty, concerned for his friend, looked into the matter of looking at you. He came to us with his results, and we proposed our little sting. Mr. Livermore,” he said, “was suggestible far in decline of his friend. Care to dwell, Mr. Mumler, on some of his theories?”
He did not give me time to answer.
For by then he’d commenced in a sonorous voice, by way of what the banker told him, to enumerate for me the various ways that I was thought to work the trick. When he was done I smiled at him and eased back snugly in my chair.
“… Livermore was full of theories. Here’s another one for you: Algernon happened on methods,” he said. “And that is when you murdered him.”
“Why this must be some grotesque joke.”
“We know that Algernon is missing. Along with the fact that when he disappeared, he was firmly in the business of investigating you. Such relative contingencies may not be overlooked,” he said.
“And yet your logic has a flaw so far as those prints of him go, Mr. Tooker. For if I am a fraud,” I said, “I cannot be a murderer. And if I a murderer, then I can no more be a fraud.”
“And so you admit to the first one,” he said. “Murder’s not your cup of tea?”
“I freely admit to none of them.”
“And that is why, sir, we’ve accused you of both. For if we can’t have you on murder,” he said, “then we will have you on the rest.”
“That will never wash,” I said. “As you say yourself, Algernon has gone missing. I should think that you might have a difficult time convincing a jury my pictures are hoaxes when you cannot produce the man whose very existence is your only proof!”
“Legally speaking, Mr. Mumler, we won’t have to produce him, when we’re done with you. Our experts and lawmen and rival photographers, not to speak of the people whom you have defrauded, are more than ample cavalry to drag you screaming through the mud.”
“And if the charge of fraud should fall,” I asked Marshall Tooker, “you’ll settle for murder?”
“Murder we are working on.”
“Working on,” I said, “indeed. Which is to say you have no case.”
“In point of fact until just now. It’s your accomplice, Mr. Guay. He has just now confessed everything, Mr. Mumler.”