The Glass at Saltreath
On All Hallows’ Eve, eighteen ninety-one, fraudulent spirit photographer Hester arrives at Saltreath Hall to discover that each exposure brings her elderly client Augusta’s dead twin closer to the living. As Augusta admits she caused her sister’s death and the steward Saul begs them to stop, Hester knowingly pursues a counterfeit echo of her own dead husband’s voice. Her final exposure releases the twin, who kills Augusta and fatally wounds Hester, leaving Saul beside her as the haunting endures.
By MyAudioBooks.ai ·
Listen free: The Glass at Saltreath
Hester pulled at the camera case, and its strap drew tight against the iron catch in the entrance.
The man holding the door put his palm beneath the case. "Give it back an inch. Pulling will cut the leather."
She surrendered the weight. He freed the strap, lifted it clear of the corroded fitting, and returned the case without letting it touch the stone.
At half past four on October thirty-first, eighteen ninety-one, Hester followed him into Saltreath Hall. She had brought the apparatus from her late husband's photographic studio in Liverpool, along with eight glass plates and a collar she hoped to wear for a portrait of her own. Beyond Ely, the hired carriage had carried her through a fenland parish whose scattered houses offered little promise of another customer.
The man shut the door. "Saul. I keep the house for Miss Augusta. The driver says nine tomorrow morning."
"He understands I shall be ready before then?"
"He understands nine."
She adjusted the strap and followed him upstairs. The carriage wheels rattled away before they reached the landing.
Saul conducted her through the western entrance of the long gallery. Cold pressed through her gloves. At its centre an elderly woman sat upright in a carved chair, with her hands spread flat upon the arms. Hester passed her on the way to a table at the eastern end, where an adjoining dressing room had been emptied for use as a darkroom.
The woman addressed Saul before acknowledging Hester. "The lamps must come nearer. She will need to see my face."
Hester set down the case. "Nearer, yes, but to either side. Light directly in front will flatten the features. You are Miss Augusta?"
"I am. You are younger than I expected."
"Twenty-eight. Quite old enough to have learnt my work."
"Your husband taught you?"
"We worked together. I have kept the studio these three years without him."
She took off her gloves and opened the case before Augusta could ask how he had died.
The commission should have required one evening. Augusta had hired her to obtain a portrait with the twin sister who had died in this house sixty years earlier. Hester intended to supply a faint woman behind the chair, let recognition do the rest, and collect the balance before the morning carriage. That balance would keep the Liverpool studio open through November. The advance had already gone to people who had ceased accepting promises.
Augusta indicated a small painted likeness on the table. "You may keep that beside you. My sister stands on the left."
Two young adult women occupied the narrow panel. One rested a hand upon the other's shoulder. Their faces shared a long upper lip and a slight difference in the height of the eyes. The woman on the left held her head at a defiant angle; the other had Augusta's straight-backed composure.
Hester turned the likeness towards the lamps. "Was this painted here?"
"In this gallery. We were twenty-six. You will recognise the stair behind us."
At the far western end, the same square stair posts bordered the opening through which Hester had arrived. She placed her bellows camera on its tripod at the eastern end, facing Augusta's chair and the stair beyond it. The darkroom door lay a few paces to her right.
Hester lifted eight closed plate holders from the case. Each held one dry glass plate. Four had already received a faint exposure of a hired woman in pale drapery; when exposed again upon a sitter, that concealed likeness would develop beside the living subject. Four carried no image at all. She arranged them in an order her hands knew without any visible distinction for a customer to question.
From beneath them she took the clean collar.
Augusta watched her lay it beside the last holder. "What is that for?"
"My own portrait, if there is daylight tomorrow. An ordinary working likeness. I have kept one plate for it."
"You brought eight."
"I brought enough to allow for failures."
"Then failures are part of what I have paid for. All eight belong to the sitting."
Hester folded the collar once. She had bought it instead of replacing the frayed one she wore, imagining that in her own portrait the difference would show.
"The advance secured my journey and attendance. The materials remain mine until used."
Augusta shifted one hand upon the chair arm. "I paid it to obtain a result, not merely your presence in my house. If you consider the arrangement unsuitable, we may end it before you begin."
There would be no balance then, and a demand for the advance to be returned. Hester pushed the collar back beside the case.
"Very well. All eight are available."
Saul had been carrying lamps to either side of the chair. He paused with one still in his hands.
"You can leave before you begin. It is worth knowing that."
"Can I hire anything locally?"
"Not here tonight. There is a house on the road where someone might take you in. Several miles along the drove."
"Could I find it?"
He set the lamp down. "In daylight, likely. The path runs high, with drainage cuts close beside it. I could take you."
Augusta's fingers tapped the wood once.
Saul kept his attention upon Hester. "But I would have to leave her here. I shall not do that."
Hester rubbed warmth into the joints of her hands. The alternative existed: unfamiliar miles carrying glass, a reluctant guide, and an elderly employer left unattended. She preferred the cold gallery and the money.
"Then let us make good use of the evening."
She checked the darkroom while Saul brought water upstairs. A red-glazed lamp stood beside the shallow developing dishes; the window had been covered, and a wooden rack waited above the washing trough. She tested the door for stray light, laid out what she needed, and returned to arrange Augusta's hands.
Augusta drew one back before Hester touched it. "I can place myself."
"Of course. Only turn the wrist a little. That is better. You will need to keep it there for several minutes."
"At eighty-six, I can still sit still."
Hester bowed her head beneath the focusing cloth. On the ground glass at the camera's rear, Augusta appeared upside down, small and sharply arranged between the lamps. The stair opening lay beyond her.
Everything she intended to sell fitted within the frame.
Hester replaced the focusing screen with the first holder, drew its protective slide, and reached for the shutter. Augusta raised her chin.
"Keep your face just so. You may breathe naturally, but keep your hands settled."
She opened the shutter. Saul stood outside the camera's view, his weight upon one foot, listening while the minutes passed. Hester watched the second hand of her small watch, closed the shutter, and replaced the slide.
In the darkroom she removed the plate beneath the red lamp. Developer spread across the glass. Augusta's chair emerged first, then the pale oval of her face. Behind her, close to the stair, another woman took shape.
Hester stopped rocking the dish.
The hired model should have appeared above Augusta's left shoulder, with her hands gathered at her breast. This woman stood lower in the image. One arm hung straight; the other disappeared behind Augusta's chair. Her head tipped at the same angle as the woman in the painted likeness.
Hester tilted the dish. The image remained.
Saul spoke from beyond the closed door. "Do you need more water?"
"In a little while."
She completed the development, fixed the image so ordinary light could no longer spoil it, and washed the plate before carrying it out. Those intervals gave her time to reconsider every movement she had made in Liverpool. She could find no movement that accounted for this face.
Augusta extended her hand. "Bring it here."
Hester held the negative against the shaded lamp, with a pale cloth behind it to make the reversed tones legible.
"This is the glass negative. A paper portrait will take further work."
Augusta leaned forward until the light caught the fine hairs at her mouth.
"That is her."
Hester brought the painted likeness alongside the glass. The uneven eyes matched. So did the upper lip. A dark interruption marred one side of the photographed head, but its small scale concealed the detail.
Saul moved behind Augusta. His hand settled upon the chair back.
"You have what you came for, then."
"She is too far away."
"The first appearance may be tentative. It suggests a willingness to come."
She heard the assurance leave her mouth in the same easy voice she used at home. She had no grounds for it. She wanted Augusta to lean back, satisfied, while she discovered what had happened.
Saul's fingers tightened upon the chair. "Does it suggest that, or do you want it to?"
Hester lowered the plate. "I need another exposure before I can say anything certain."
"Then say nothing certain. Put it away."
"You are not conducting the sitting, Saul."
Hester carried the negative back to the darkroom and placed it on the drying rack. When she returned, she selected an untouched plate. She checked its holder twice, then took it into the darkroom and examined the glass under the red lamp. No prior image could be seen on an undeveloped plate, but she knew which holders she had prepared. This one had never faced a lens.
She closed the holder and brought it to the camera.
Saul waited beside the tripod. "What will this one tell you?"
"Whether something was carried over from earlier work. There may be an ordinary explanation."
"Would you tell her if there was?"
She refitted the focusing screen and put her head beneath the cloth rather than answer.
Augusta's image required almost no adjustment. Hester checked the face, the chair arms, and the western stair. A cough sounded close to her ear.
She lifted the cloth. Saul stood several feet away.
"Was that you?"
"No."
Augusta's mouth had remained closed. Hester lowered the cloth again.
Her husband used to cough lightly before speaking across the studio, a small warning that he wanted her attention. He would tell her to leave that now and come and have her tea. She had often answered without turning round.
Under the cloth, the expelled breath caught upon two low sounds.
Leave that.
She held the focusing knob without moving it. The voice had scarcely enough shape to be called a voice, yet she waited for the rest.
Saul touched the cloth at her shoulder. "Can you hear that breathing?"
Hester emerged too quickly and struck her forehead against the camera's rear frame.
"What breathing?"
"What you have just been listening to."
She steadied the tripod. "There is something carrying oddly along the gallery. Stay where I can see you."
She exchanged the focusing screen for the untouched plate's holder and made the second exposure.
By the time she had developed and fixed it, Saul had brought fresh washing water. He stood beside her while she washed the negative and lifted it from the trough.
The woman had advanced from the stair. Her forward foot now crossed a join in the gallery boards that had lain clear before her in the first image. Her hanging arm showed beyond Augusta's shoulder.
Hester brought the first plate from the rack. Neither woman moved within its glass. The second retained its nearer figure.
Saul held the lamp while she compared them. "Is that your ordinary explanation?"
"No."
The plain answer left her without anything to put before him. She set the first plate back and kept hold of the second.
It had carried no borrowed woman. She had exposed it herself. The face belonged to the painted likeness, and the figure stood nearer.
Saul lowered the lamp. "We can take her downstairs. Leave all this where it stands. You can have your carriage in the morning."
From the gallery Augusta called to them. "I shall need to see it."
Hester turned the wet glass towards the red light once more.
"She has come nearer. That need not mean she intends harm."
"What has she done that means she does not?"
Hester carried the plate through the doorway. She wanted the money still, but the want had lost its clear edges. Beneath the cloth she had heard the beginning of a sentence nobody had addressed to her for three years.
Augusta made Hester hold the second negative at several angles. Saul remained near enough to take it if her hand slipped.
"There is something wrong with her face."
"The light is uneven. The next view may be clearer."
"Then attend to the light."
Hester returned the second negative to the drying rack, then shifted one lamp and its metal reflector. The alteration gave her something precise to do. She measured the distance with her steps, corrected the reflector, and returned to the camera.
Saul intercepted her at the tripod. "You have just said you cannot account for it."
"I cannot account for the figure. I can account for poor illumination. Those are different difficulties."
"And which one are you putting another plate in for?"
"Both, if you will let me work."
She selected the third holder, one of the prepared four. If her model appeared this time, she might at least separate her own work from whatever had intruded upon it.
Under the cloth, Augusta waited upside down upon the focusing screen. Hester adjusted the image and stopped. Her husband's familiar sentence was already present in her thoughts, complete with the small impatience he used when tea had been waiting.
She listened.
The damaged breathing gathered, hesitated, and gave her precisely the beginning she expected: leave that now.
Hester shut her eyes. Her shoulders eased before she could prevent it. For a few breaths she could remember receiving the words without remembering their speaker was dead.
Then she drew the cloth away.
Saul had remained beside the camera. "The focus has been set a good while."
"I was checking the edge of the chair."
He bent enough to see the untouched focusing knob. Hester removed the screen and fitted the third holder.
This time, throughout the exposure, she watched the space beside Augusta's chair. Bare boards and a strip of old carpet occupied it. Augusta's sleeve moved with her breathing. Nothing else could be seen.
Afterwards Saul went briefly downstairs for tea and linen while Hester began development. He returned before she took the plate from the fixing bath.
The woman stood beside the chair.
Her torn cuff hung below the wrist in two narrow points. A deep injury interrupted the temple; beneath it, one side of the jaw sat lower than the other. The mouth had been pulled crooked by the damage. Hester could distinguish a dark gap where the lips should have met.
The face had been damaged before this photograph. That certainty came with the consistency of it: the same notch visible indistinctly in the earlier images, now near enough to recognise.
Saul set the tea on the passage shelf and came into the darkroom.
"Show me."
Hester waited until the fixing was complete, then rinsed the plate and held it up. The glass clicked against the dish when her wrist weakened. Saul supported her forearm without touching the image.
"She is beside the chair now."
"Yes."
"And she is attending to you."
Hester tried to read the reversed eyes. The woman's head turned past Augusta, towards the place occupied by the camera.
"A photographed face commonly appears to follow the viewer."
"Her sister is sitting against her sleeve. She has not turned towards her once."
Augusta summoned them again. Hester took the negative into the gallery, keeping it above the old woman's reach.
Augusta studied it for so long that Hester's arm began to ache.
"That expression will not do."
Hester lowered the glass a little. "You can see the injury."
"I can see it perfectly well. I am speaking of the expression."
"I cannot instruct her to change it."
"Then why did you tell me that she was willing to come?"
Hester had been asked that question in other rooms, about other dead people. Usually the likeness was faint enough to permit whatever answer she needed.
"I spoke too soon."
Augusta settled back. "Then make the next one before you speak again."
Saul stepped between Hester and the camera. "You have seen three. She has come nearer in each. What more do you need?"
Hester held the plate against her skirt, then remembered the damp glass and lifted it clear.
"I need to know whether it happens with every plate. The first and third were from one part of my stock. The second was from another. There may be a difference that only shows when they are compared."
"You said that before the second."
"I said there might be an explanation. I am trying to find it. If we stop with an incomplete understanding, we shall still have these things here and no better idea of what they are."
"We can have no better idea downstairs."
She stepped round him.
The fourth holder contained an untouched plate. She placed the third negative in clean washing water, returned to the gallery, and loaded the camera without going beneath the cloth. Her hand remained on the closed shutter while she considered the space ahead of Augusta's chair.
She could still remove the holder. Saul stood within reach of her elbow.
Hester opened the shutter.
During the long exposure Augusta complained of stiffness. Hester told her when she might move again, closed the shutter, and covered the plate. The ordinary competence of her hands steadied her until she reached the darkroom.
She developed the fourth with Saul just outside the door. Water worked slowly in the trough. From the gallery came an uneven intake of breath followed by a pause too long for comfort.
The image formed ahead of the chair. Augusta's hands showed behind the woman's hips now, and the torn cuff hung clear against the carpet. The damaged face occupied more of the glass. Her mouth remained open.
Hester fixed the negative and washed it, changing the water while Saul brought the third plate to the drying rack. When the fourth was ready to lift, she gripped its edges and supported the smooth glass back with her right index and middle fingertips.
Cold drove through both fingers.
She tried to shift her grip. The fingertips stayed flat against the glass.
"Saul. Take the dish."
He moved it beneath her hands. Hester pulled her fingers back.
Skin stretched from the pads in two pale ridges. A wet red line opened across the index finger, and the pain reached her wrist before she understood what had torn.
"Fuck. Get it off."
Saul caught her wrist as she jerked again.
The pad of her middle finger split. Soft tissue peeled away against the intact glass, leaving a raw depression that filled with blood. A loose flap hung from the index fingertip. She could see the little ridges of her skin remaining upon the plate.
"Get the fucking thing off me."
Saul braced the lower edge against the wooden trough. "Keep your wrist here. Pulling is taking the flesh."
He poured rinsing water over the back of the plate. Hester tried to hold still. The cold had entered the joints, but the torn places burned so fiercely that her knees bent.
Saul supported more of her weight with his shoulder.
"Easy. Let me turn the glass, not your hand."
He eased it a little at a time while water ran over her fingers. The remaining skin released with a small dragging sensation that made her cry out. Blood struck the rim of the dish.
Saul laid the negative down. Its unbroken surface held the woman ahead of the chair, her injured face turned towards the lens.
He folded the linen he had brought with the tea and pressed it against Hester's fingertips. Pressure sent pain up both fingers. She seized his sleeve with her left hand.
"Less. Christ, less."
"It has to stop bleeding. Hold it there while I tear this."
He put her left hand over the compress, then tore the rest of the linen into strips. Hester leaned her shoulder against the eastern doorway. Her right hand had begun to shake independently of the other.
From the chair Augusta called through the gallery. "What has happened?"
Hester pressed her left palm harder against the bloodied linen.
"The plate tore my fingers."
"Has it broken?"
Saul raised his head. "Her fingers are torn. The glass is whole."
He turned back to the bandage before Augusta answered.
Hester let him wrap the index finger first, then the middle. Each needed its own dressing; bringing them together sent a fresh pulse of pain through the exposed pads. He left the other fingers free and told her to keep the injured tips raised.
The fourth negative lay in the dish beside him.
Hester watched him lift it by its edges, rinse it again, and put it on the rack with the other three.
"You expected something."
Saul kept his hands above the trough. "Would I have let you hold it if I expected that?"
"You wanted it stopped before anything had happened to me. What did you know?"
"I knew there was no good in bringing her back."
"That is not an answer. You stood beside me and let me make excuses. What the fuck did you know?"
He dried his hands on the remaining linen. "I was taking lamps away one evening. Years ago. Miss Augusta had someone with her who knew the family then. They thought I had gone down."
"You heard them speak of the death."
"Part of it."
"You have been here all your life?"
"Forty years. I am fifty-three. Her sister was dead before I was born."
Hester shifted against the jamb. She had been ready to accuse him of watching the woman die. The correction left her angry with him and with herself.
"Then tell me the part you heard."
Saul folded the unused linen again, although it was already folded.
"Her sister meant to leave. Miss Augusta said she had only tried to keep her in the gallery. There was something about a sleeve. The other person told her to stop calling it a fall. Then she saw me at the door."
"And you asked nothing afterwards."
"I kept my place."
The answer came without qualification. Hester wished he had offered an excuse she could attack.
Augusta's voice reached them from the chair. "I can hear you speaking. If there is a difficulty, you may bring it to me."
Hester stayed in the doorway.
Saul lowered the linen to the table. "Would you have gone home if I had told you?"
"I might have."
"Before the first plate?"
She could have maintained that she would. Instead she watched a spot of blood appear through the bandage upon her middle finger.
"I came here to put a hired woman's likeness behind her chair. The plates were prepared in Liverpool. Four of them. I have done it for years."
Saul remained beside the rack. His jaw moved once.
"And the others?"
"Untouched. The second and fourth were untouched. Whatever you think of me, that is true."
"You told her the first one meant her sister wished to come."
"I know what I told her."
She had said much the same to a woman who could barely stand after her husband's funeral. To a man who kept his dead brother's boots beneath the bed. She remembered their faces more readily than their names.
Saul reached past her towards the neglected tea. A moth struggled against the cup's inner wall, its wet wings adhering to the china.
He stopped with his elbow close to Hester's injured hand. She moved her shoulder against the jamb to give him room.
He offered the insect the edge of his cuff. It failed to climb, slipped back, then caught the cloth with its forelegs. Saul turned his wrist slowly until it rested clear of the tea. One wing remained folded underneath it.
Hester held the cup steady with her left hand while he eased the wing free with a dry corner of linen. He set the cup back on the passage shelf and kept his cuff away from the damp rim.
From the gallery came the same ragged breath, followed by the scrape of Augusta adjusting herself in the chair.
Hester drew her left hand back.
Saul kept his voice low. "What were you listening to under that cloth?"
She wanted to give a practical answer. The torn fingers prevented her from finding a comfortable place for her hand.
"The beginning of something my husband used to say."
"I heard breathing."
"I know. You told me."
"Did it say anything you had not heard him say?"
Hester shook her head.
He waited until she answered aloud.
"No. Nothing I did not already have in my own head. It coughed, and I remembered him coughing. I thought of the words, and then I heard their beginning. I cannot tell you more than that."
"Then you cannot call it him."
"I have not called it him."
She had nearly done so. Under the cloth, with the familiar address so close, she had been willing to let the distinction wait.
Saul moved nearer the door, leaving the four developed negatives upon the rack behind him.
"We leave it now. No more plates. I can bring a chair here for you, then get her downstairs. You need that hand seen to when the carriage comes."
"She will insist."
"She can insist downstairs."
"And if she will not move?"
"Then she stays in her chair. Nobody has to touch your camera."
Hester could see it from the threshold. The shutter was closed. Four unused holders lay beside the case, two prepared and two untouched. The clean collar remained folded beside the last.
Nothing had come nearer while she stood here.
Saul followed the direction of her attention. "Will you give me your word that you will leave it unused?"
Hester put her left hand upon the jamb. Beneath the fresh bandages, the torn fingertips throbbed with each beat of her pulse.
"I want to hear it again."
Saul's mouth tightened. "After that?"
She held the injured hand clear of her skirt.
"Yes. I know what the glass has done. I know the voice has given me nothing I could honestly offer another person as proof. I still want to hear the rest of the sentence."
The gallery clock showed nine twenty in the evening. Augusta sat beneath the lamps, her hands restored to their places upon the chair arms.
"There are four plates remaining. I paid for eight, and I require the final four to be used."
Hester kept her left hand on the jamb, with Saul inside beside the drying glass and the camera waiting beyond her.
"I will not promise you that."
Hester took her left hand from the jamb and walked towards the camera. The smell of developer followed her into the gallery. She kept her bandaged fingers raised, but the movement of her arm drew a fresh sting through both torn pads.
Saul came out behind her, tucking the unused linen into his pocket. "You need not touch it to leave it here."
She stopped beside the tripod. "I know. I am going to turn it away from her."
"And use another plate."
"If the distance belongs to what the camera sees, changing the view may change it. I can put a wall before the lens. No chair, no stair, no sister sitting between them."
"And if it makes no difference?"
Hester bent to loosen the tripod legs with her left hand. "Then we shall know that."
Saul stayed beside the table while she lifted the apparatus. She supported the camera bed on her right forearm and gathered the legs with her left hand. The weight dragged at her injured fingers even though they gripped nothing.
Augusta turned in her chair as Hester passed. "You cannot make my portrait from there."
"This one will contain neither of you, if it behaves as a photograph should."
Near the west entrance, Hester spread the tripod and faced the camera towards the panelled wall. The stair opening stood behind her right shoulder. She could put her hand upon the wood she meant to photograph; nothing stood between the panelling and the lens.
She fetched the fifth holder from the eastern table, using the closed slide to support its weight against her wrist. It was one of the prepared plates. She knew where her hired woman's image should appear upon it. That knowledge had become useless without becoming less shameful.
Saul followed her west. "Let me put it back in the case."
"Stand clear of the light."
He moved, but remained within reach while she focused upon the panelling. Beneath the cloth, the wood appeared upside down, its scratches distinct. She corrected the focus, emerged, and fitted the holder. Her bandage caught upon its retaining catch. She freed the linen with her teeth rather than ask for help.
The shutter opened upon the wall.
Augusta complained that she could no longer see Hester's face. Saul answered nothing. Hester followed the second hand until the allotted minutes had passed, closed the shutter, and pushed the slide home.
She carried the holder east, past Augusta, and entered the darkroom. Saul followed with the washing jug.
The plate took time to yield its image. Hester rocked the dish with her left hand while her right wrist rested upon the bench. At first she saw a strip of panelling. Then the strip ended beside a woman's shoulder.
Beyond that shoulder lay the gallery.
Augusta's chair stood far behind the figure. Beyond the chair, impossibly, Hester could distinguish the western stair, which had been behind the camera when she exposed the plate. The twin stood nearer than before, her torn cuff clear, her hanging hand enlarged by its proximity to the lens. The damaged jaw cast a dark interval beneath the mouth.
Hester kept the dish moving until the development was complete.
Saul waited through the fixing before speaking. "That stair cannot be there."
"No."
"And she is nearer."
"Yes."
He took the dish while she brought the fourth negative alongside it. The woman in the earlier glass remained ahead of Augusta's chair, occupying exactly the place she had occupied before. Hester checked the third, then the second. Nothing in those images had moved.
She replaced them on the rack, keeping her fingers upon the edges.
Saul lowered the fifth plate into washing water. "You have your answer. Leave it."
Hester pressed her sound fingertips into her palm. She had hoped the alteration would give her permission to hear the voice without bringing the woman closer. The negative offered no such permission.
"I shall put the camera where it was."
"It can stay by the wall."
"I can carry it."
She left him with the washing plate, went west again, and lifted the apparatus. The return journey seemed longer. At the eastern end she spread the legs at the camera’s original station, with the lens facing Augusta and the west stair beyond her. She made no exposure. The shutter stayed closed while she adjusted the camera bed and replaced the focusing screen.
Saul emerged from the darkroom as she drew the cloth over her head.
The small cough came close to her ear.
Hester held the focusing knob. Augusta's inverted face waited upon the screen, but Hester attended to the sound beside it. The voice asked her to leave that now, to come and have her tea. It had the familiar impatience, softened at the end by an expectation that she would answer.
Then it assured her that those who loved her would never come to harm her.
She lifted the cloth.
Saul stood beside the table. "What did you hear?"
"Something I used to tell people."
"Your husband?"
"No. Me. I used to say their dead would never come to harm them. It was useful when they were frightened of what they had asked for."
He waited while she rubbed the cloth between her left finger and thumb.
"It sounds like him. The first part sounds like him. The rest is mine. There is nothing there I could call evidence of another person."
Saul put his palm over the remaining holders. "Then we stop."
She wanted him to move his hand.
"There could still be another figure. An untouched plate would show everything without my own work confusing it."
"Do you expect another figure?"
"I cannot expect what I have never seen."
"That was not what I asked."
Hester reached past his wrist and took the sixth holder. He let her take it. The absence of a struggle made the act worse.
She fitted the untouched plate slowly. Her right hand could steady the holder with its heel, but the injured fingers curled away from the wood. Blood had stiffened the linen where it crossed the middle fingertip.
During the exposure she heard only the damaged breathing. She kept the shutter open for the full interval nevertheless.
She took the covered plate into the darkroom. Saul stayed in the gallery until she called for fresh water, then brought it and remained while she developed the image.
The twin stood within reach of the apparatus. One hanging hand appeared large enough to rest upon the camera bed. Behind her, Hester could distinguish Augusta, the chair, the carpet and the distant stair.
Nobody else occupied the glass.
Hester fixed the plate, washed it, and set it in the rack beside the fifth. She had spent nearly an hour proving what she had expected.
At the doorway Saul blocked none of her way. "Was that what you put it in for?"
"What?"
"Another person."
She passed him and stopped beside the case. The clean collar lay against the last untouched holder. She touched its folded edge with her right hand, felt the bandage drag, and drew the collar beneath the open case lid.
Hester turned to find Saul watching her.
"Don't stand there waiting for the decent answer. I wanted the sound. I expected her on the plate, and nobody behind her, and I put it in to hear him speak."
"You have just told me it cannot be him."
"I know what I fucking told you."
Her voice carried to the chair. Augusta turned towards them, but Hester kept facing Saul.
"I know the difference between a likeness and a person. I have lived by people wanting there to be no difference. Knowing has not made the sound unpleasant."
Saul withdrew his hand from the table. "I shall help with your fingers. I shall bring water. Don't ask me to help you do this again."
Hester tried to straighten the lid over the collar. Her injured fingers failed to hold its edge, and the wood struck the case with a small, hard knock.
Augusta lifted her chin. "If you have finished quarrelling, I should like an account of what remains to be done."
Hester crossed to the chair. She wanted someone else to answer a question without arranging the answer first.
"Tell me how she died."
Augusta settled her hands upon the carved arms. "She fell upon the stair. You have seen the injury more clearly than I ever wished to see it again."
"Saul heard someone tell you to stop calling it a fall."
Augusta looked past Hester as Saul came to stand beside the other chair arm.
"He heard part of a private conversation."
"That is all I heard."
Hester rested her sound hand upon the chair back. "Then tell me the rest. She was leaving."
"She had made arrangements without consulting me. I discovered them when she was ready to go."
"Where were you standing?"
"At the head of the stair."
"In her way?"
Augusta pressed a thumb into the worn carving beneath it. "I wished her to hear me before she left. She attempted to pass."
Hester waited. Beyond the chair, the actual stair opening remained empty.
Augusta continued in the same measured voice. "I took her sleeve. She pulled away. The seam tore, and she said that I would have to grow accustomed to being without her."
"And then?"
"I pushed her."
Saul moved his hand from the chair back. Hester heard his sleeve brush the wood.
Augusta went on. "I put both hands against her. I meant to stop her passing me. She was turning, and her foot went beyond the edge."
"You knew the steps were there."
"I had used them all my life."
"Yet you call it a fall."
"She fell. The word describes what happened after I touched her. It does not describe everything."
Hester took her hand from the chair. The woman in the negatives had carried the same torn cuff through every approach.
Saul spoke towards Augusta. "I let you use that word afterwards. Whenever you spoke of her. I knew there was more, and I let it stand."
"You knew very little."
"Enough to ask. I kept bringing your lamps instead."
Augusta shifted her shoulders against the chair. "I have remained here sixty years. She wished to make an end of us in an afternoon. I have had considerably longer to consider it."
Hester wanted to strike the qualification out of her voice.
"She wanted to leave a house. You pushed her down its stair."
"I have told you what I did."
"Then let it be what you did. Not something she made you do."
Augusta's fingers gripped the chair arms. For a while only the damaged breathing answered.
Hester went back to the eastern table. Two holders remained. She rested her left hand upon the prepared one.
Saul followed her. "What has speaking changed?"
"We can at least make one portrait without pretending about her."
"You were pretending about another figure an hour ago."
"Yes."
He stayed beside her. She could feel the extent of his refusal in the help he withheld.
Hester addressed Augusta across the gallery. "I have never brought back anybody's dead. I prepared these plates with a living model. That is what I intended to sell you."
Augusta's mouth tightened. "Whatever you intended, you have obtained my sister."
"I have photographed her. I cannot promise you anything she feels."
"Then make an accurate portrait."
Hester lifted the seventh holder.
"Say it without calling it an accident. And when the glass is ready, you will not ask me for a kinder expression."
Augusta sat straighter. "I pushed my sister at the head of the stair. I knew the stair was behind her. I wished to prevent her leaving me."
She paused, watching Hester.
"Is that sufficient?"
Hester carried the holder to the camera. "It is what you did."
She fitted the prepared plate. Her bandages had become hard at the tips, and her right wrist ached from holding the fingers clear. She used her left thumb to draw the slide, stopped when the holder shifted, and seated it again before opening the shutter.
Augusta held the pose without complaint.
Hester wanted the photograph to be different. She could supply no reasonable cause for that want. She had asked for exact words and obtained them; now she waited for the glass to give something back.
After the exposure she carried the plate into the darkroom. Saul brought water without speaking. She opened the holder beneath the red lamp and nearly lost her grip upon the glass when a cramp closed her left thumb.
He caught the lower edge before it struck the bench.
Saul kept it between them. "Tell me where you want it."
"The dish. Smooth side down."
He laid it there and stood back.
The damaged face emerged almost against the lens. Its scale excluded much of the body. One uneven eye occupied the upper part of the glass; beside it the broken temple opened into a dark recess. The lower jaw hung at the same wrong angle. What Hester had first taken for darkness beside the mouth resolved into the exposed edges of teeth.
The expression had undergone no change.
Hester completed the fixing and washing. The small work demanded attention even now. She changed the water, waited, drained it, and changed it again while the woman remained where the seventh exposure had brought her.
Saul carried the negative into the gallery and held it before Augusta. Hester stood beside him.
Augusta studied the face. "It is very close."
"Yes."
"I have said everything you required."
"I heard you."
Augusta's gaze stayed upon the glass. "Then what further satisfaction is expected of me?"
Hester let her injured hand drop. Pain travelled into her wrist.
"There is no reunion here that you can buy. There never was. I sold you that expectation, but this is not it."
Augusta turned her face away from the negative without turning away from Hester.
Saul carried the seventh plate back east. Hester followed him to the darkroom doorway and watched him place it in the rack. All seven remained there, each preserving its own distance.
When they returned to the gallery, the clock showed half past eleven.
Saul stopped between Hester and the apparatus. "I can get her downstairs. There is a fire in the little room. You can sit by it with your hand raised until the carriage comes."
Hester pressed the damp bandage against her skirt, then lifted it away.
Saul gestured towards the table. "You need bring nothing. Leave the camera standing. Leave the last plate on the table."
"You think I have not understood you."
"I think you keep doing it."
She stepped aside to pass him. He moved into her path.
Hester raised her face to his. "Get out of my way."
"Come downstairs."
"I heard you the first fucking time."
He kept his hands at his sides. She wanted him to seize her, to make the decision a struggle about his right to touch her equipment. Instead he stood there and waited for her to choose.
Hester turned away. She walked as far as the chair, leaving the eighth holder untouched.
Augusta spoke without looking towards Saul. "He may take you downstairs. I shall remain."
"There is nothing to wait for if I leave the plate unused."
"Then use it."
"Do you want that face at your chair?"
"I want my sister."
Hester stood beside her, hearing the ragged intake and its long, obstructed release. The sound had remained at the same distance throughout the washing. She could go downstairs. She could leave Augusta sitting here and bring Saul back for her once she herself was safely away from the camera.
She took two steps towards the west entrance.
Saul came to the chair. "Give me your arm, Miss Augusta. We are going down."
Augusta drew her elbow inward. "You will not carry me out of my own gallery."
"You can walk with me, then."
Hester stopped near the edge of the carpet.
The cough sounded behind her.
She knew the small interval that followed it. In the studio she would have finished adjusting a mount, or wiped paste from her fingers, before answering. For three years nobody had wanted her to leave her work for so ordinary a reason.
She returned along the side of the gallery to the eastern table.
Saul released Augusta's elbow and straightened. "Leave that where it is."
Hester had taken up the last holder. "I am leaving the collar."
"The plate."
She gripped it against her body. "I know which plate you mean."
He came halfway towards her, then stopped. Augusta had begun to rise behind him, holding the chair arms, and sank back heavily.
Saul turned at the sound. Hester could have put the holder down while his back was towards her. Instead she carried it to the camera.
The brass catch resisted her left thumb. She set the holder upon the camera bed, braced it with the heel of her right hand, and worked the catch until it yielded. Her torn fingers struck the wood. Blood warmed the linen.
She fitted the untouched plate reserved for her own portrait.
Saul spoke from beside the chair. "You know what is coming towards you."
"Yes."
"And you know what that voice is worth."
Hester pulled the cloth over her head. The holder had replaced the focusing screen; there was no image left for her to inspect. She remained beneath the cloth to listen.
The voice began the sentence again. Leave that now. The cadence was exact.
Then came the assurance she had sold to frightened people, spoken in the voice she most wanted to believe.
Hester pushed the cloth back from her face.
"Don't tell me it is false again. Christ, Saul, I know. I can hear my own words in it."
He had Augusta beneath one elbow now, his other hand offered across her body. "Then come and help me."
Augusta gripped the chair. Saul bent his knees to take her weight.
Hester drew the protective slide with her left hand. It came free in small, reluctant movements. She laid it upon the table and checked her watch. It was close to twenty minutes before midnight.
The shutter lever stood beneath her thumb.
She wanted to hear the invitation without disputing it for the few seconds it took to be spoken. That was all she could offer against the face in the seventh negative.
She opened the shutter.
Saul turned at the click. "Close it."
Hester kept her thumb clear.
He tried to lift Augusta. The old woman pulled one hand from his grasp and thrust it back upon the chair arm, insisting upon her balance. Saul spoke to her, then to Hester. His words passed through the damaged breathing.
Hester watched the seconds. She could still close the shutter. Her left hand remained beside the lever while the ordinary sentence gathered, broke, and began once more.
The minutes required by the plate elapsed.
The invitation reached its last word.
A pale hand appeared beyond the lens.
Hester stepped back, striking the table with her hip. The hand hung from the torn cuff. Behind it, a shoulder displaced the empty space before the camera, followed by the bent head and the damaged face.
The imitated voice ceased.
The woman stood bodily before the lens. No plate had been developed. Hester could see the hollow at her temple, the lower jaw dragged away from its proper place, and the wet movement deep inside the crooked mouth. Breath scraped through it without words.
Saul let Augusta settle into the chair.
Augusta extended her hand. "You have come back."
The twin turned.
Her sole dragged across the boards as she went to the chair. Augusta reached farther, offering the hand that had rested upon the carved arm throughout the sitting.
The twin took hold of her head.
Augusta's fingers closed upon the torn sleeve. Her mouth opened to speak, but the hand beneath her jaw drove it upwards. The back of her head struck the carved crest of the chair.
Saul caught the twin's wrist with both hands. "Let her go. Fucking let her go."
The damaged mouth continued to breathe.
Augusta's heels scraped beneath the chair. The twin pressed her head back against the carving until her throat stretched tight above the collar. Hester heard a hard crack, followed by another smaller sound inside the neck.
Augusta's hands opened. Her body slipped lower, but her head remained caught at the wrong angle against the chair back. One eye stayed open. Saul released the twin's wrist to catch Augusta beneath the shoulders.
Hester reached around the camera and closed the shutter.
The click sounded exactly as it always had.
The twin lifted her hand from Augusta's jaw.
Hester closed the lever harder. Her thumb hurt against the brass. The woman remained beside the chair, breathing through her broken mouth.
Hester seized the tripod beneath its head. She pulled it towards her, the camera bed striking her right forearm as the legs folded unevenly. The black cloth slipped over the bellows and trailed upon the boards. She carried and dragged the apparatus along the south side of the gallery, keeping it between herself and the chair.
The west stair lay beyond her. She wanted to reach it before the woman turned.
Saul lowered Augusta into the seat. Her head rolled sideways, showing a sharp fold in the stretched skin beneath her ear. Nothing in her face answered him.
The twin came round the chair.
Hester backed past the carpet, striking one tripod foot against the wall. The camera lurched. She held it up with her sound hand and right forearm, the injured fingertips useless against the polished wood.
Saul moved between them.
The twin struck him across the shoulder. He fell against the boards beside the carpet, his head hitting with a blunt sound that Hester felt through her feet.
She tried to turn towards the stair. The tripod legs caught the western post.
The twin reached past the camera.
Her hand closed over Hester's breastbone and drove her backwards into the rail. Wood met her spine. The pressure upon her chest increased until the camera slipped from her arms.
Something broke beneath her left breast.
Hester tried to shout. The sound came out low and wet. Another rib gave under the hand, and a sharp inward movement cut off the breath she was trying to draw.
The camera struck the fallen cloth beside the rail. Its holder sprang crooked at the catch.
Hester clawed at the hand upon her chest. Her bandaged fingers left red marks upon the sleeve and found no hold. The rail held her back rigid while the pressure crushed her against it.
Then the hand withdrew.
She dropped beside the stair post, knees folded beneath her, unable to take in enough air to cry out.
Saul was moving on the floor. Hester watched him get one knee beneath himself, lose it, and crawl towards her. The twin stood a few paces away, her hanging hand empty.
Hester tried to push herself upright. Her right fingertips touched the boards, and pain forced her hand open. The movement in her chest was worse. A broken end shifted beneath the stays of her dress.
Saul reached her and stopped her rising.
"Stay there. Let me get behind you."
He eased her against his arm instead of the rail. Blood ran from a split above his eyebrow. She could smell the wool of his sleeve and the dusty boards beneath them.
He loosened her collar. His fingers shook at the fastening.
Hester drew a little air. It caught deep in the left side of her chest and came back with blood upon her tongue. She spat weakly against her bodice.
Saul pulled linen from his pocket, the remainder of what he had used upon her hand. He wiped her mouth, then held it uncertainly above her chest.
"Where is it? Tell me where."
She could not point. The whole left side moved wrongly. When he touched it she made a sound that stopped him.
Across the gallery Augusta remained in the chair. Her head lay upon her shoulder at an angle the living neck could never have allowed. Her death had ended nothing. The twin's sole scraped nearby.
Hester tried to get her feet beneath her.
Saul tightened his arm. "No. You cannot stand. Keep still while I—"
He stopped. There was no useful end to the sentence.
The camera lay beside Hester's knee. In falling, the retaining catch had broken loose and the holder had slid halfway out. The holder's split frame rested upon the folded cloth. A corner of glass protruded from the disturbed wooden groove.
Hester moved her left hand towards it, then stopped. She had nothing left to do to the plate.
Saul followed her movement. "Leave that. Keep your hand here."
He put it against his sleeve.
She gripped the wool. Beneath his hand her chest made a small, bubbling sound with each attempted breath. She wanted a full one. She tried again, opening her mouth wider, and obtained less.
The twin stood beyond Saul's shoulder. Hester could see the torn cuff beside his living arm.
She had wanted an ordinary voice to relieve her of knowing what had happened. Now she wanted Saul to speak, though he had nothing to offer that would make the pain smaller.
Hester forced the words out separately. "It was not my husband."
She tried again as Saul bent nearer.
"I knew."
He pressed the linen to her lips when she coughed. His thumb slipped in the blood, and he folded the cloth to find a dry place.
"Don't try to say it again. I heard you."
She could no longer hold his sleeve tightly. Her fingers remained crooked against it after the strength had gone.
Beside her knee, the plate slipped the rest of the way from its holder. It settled intact upon the black cloth, its smooth glass back uppermost, one edge raised by a fold. The slight sound made her turn her head.
No image had been brought out upon it. There was only a faint reflection in the glass: her cheek drawn against Saul's arm, her mouth open, her collar pulled crooked. Her own face, neither prepared nor posed.
Saul adjusted his arm beneath her. The movement hurt, but she lacked the breath to tell him. She watched his other hand flatten upon the boards to brace them both.
The twin took a dragging step.
Saul's voice broke close to Hester's ear. "Hester. Keep your hand on me. Just there. Can you—"
Her last breath escaped without making room for another, and the damaged breathing continued beside them. The reflection of her unposed face vanished with the last of her sight.