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killer could have disarmed her after death, which leaves us with the unsettling possibility that a man
who used a knife the first time, and his hands the second, now has a brand new and far more efficient
toy with which to play.”
“I do wish Mrs. Kirby had been more forthcoming about what or who she was onto,” Trevor
said, leaning forward onto his own thighs and frowning. “I have never understood private citizens
who come to the police and say ‘I suspect something, but I dare not tell you what it is.’ It has always
seemed to me rather like announcing that they wish to become part of the evidence, and not part of the
investigation.”
“But she left the photograph,” Davy said. “It must have some meaning, else she wouldn’t have
gone to such great pains to hide it.”
“Perhaps whatever is in the photograph is what she wanted to discuss with me in our meeting,”
Tom said, now slapping out a new tune with a bit more energy. “Although of course she didn’t have it
with her when she left her room either, did she?”
“Fortunately, she did not,” said Trevor. “Or it would now be in her killer’s possession and not
in ours. It isn’t much, but it appears to be all we have, so let us go over it again.”
The night before they had spent hours taking turns peering at the photograph, but it had as of yet
yielded nothing beyond the sad sight of two beautiful young people, both dead. Trevor now placed it
on a small serving table and the three men stood around it, gazing down.
“The significance of the picture almost has to be the knife in the girl’s hand,” said Tom, pulling
his magnifying glass from his coat pocket and bending to squint at the center of the photograph. “But
she is clutching it so tightly, that the shape of the handle is all but invisible and the blade is lost in the
folds of her nightdress.”
“Can we make the image bigger?” Davy asked.
“Sorry, my friend,” said Tom, shaking the magnifying glass at him. “This thing has sadly limited
powers and I left my microscope back in London at Aunt Gerry’s house. Dear Aunt Gerry. I wish she
was with us now. She would have gotten every gossipy detail from that wretched Kirby woman in
three minutes flat.”
“No, I don’t mean looking at it through a microscope or magnifying glass,” Davy said. “If this
picture was found within these palace walls, then the negative is likely also close at hand. Are there
not ways to make pictures larger, expand them, so that details become more clear?”