Dagger Magic

Peregrine's eyes flicked ahead, still hopeful that someone might leave. "If I said it was merely a fit of artistic caprice, would that satisfy you?"

"I'm afraid you'll have to do better than that," she replied, with a lift of one fair eyebrow.

Peregrine summoned a sidelong grin and rolled his eyes heavenward in an exaggerated show of resignation.

"All right, I'll come clean. I'm really a top secret agent for MIS, and the photographer's shop is a front for our Glasgow operation."

Julia merely echoed his gesture of resignation and returned his grin. They had arrived in Glasgow the previous night, having booked into a period guesthouse not far from here. This morning, after the usual hearty breakfast in which tourists usually indulged, they had set out to begin touring the city's museums, starting with the Burrell Collection, an eclectic and sometimes eccentric assemblage of ceramics, textiles, furniture, stained glass, and a particularly good selection of nineteenth-century French paintings.

But Peregrine had spotted the photography shop the night before, as they pulled into their guesthouse; and it had been an easy matter to slip out this morning, while Julia was in the shower, and drop off the roll of film in question for one-hour processing. He had also had the camera checked; it was working perfectly.

Now, with the necessity to collect the processed film, he was aware of a prickly feeling of anticipation that had nothing to do with his desire to shield Julia from whatever unpleasantness the photos might hold. Ever since leaving Kintyre two days before, he had found himself strangely preoccupied, haunted by the elusive ghost-image that he had sensed hovering over the body of the dead man - an image he had not been able to commit to paper. He wondered if there would be anything in his photos to show that the strange ghost-effect he'd observed was more than a mere trick of his imagination.

"Peregrine?" his wife broke in softly. "Is there something on that roll of film that you don't want me to see?"

The look that went with the question was as blue and unwavering as a kitten's, and Peregrine found himself incapable of dissembling.

"Actually, there is," he admitted with a sigh. "Back on Kintyre, while you were off fetching the police, I took some photos of the dead man. It occurred to me this morning that while we're here in Glasgow, we probably ought to turn the prints over to the Strathclyde Police, in case there's anything in them that might assist them in their investigation."

"Ah," said Julia. "Well, why didn't you say so in the first place?"

Peregrine grimaced. "I thought you could probably do without the reminder."

"Well, that's very gallant of you," she said affectionately, "but it isn't really necessary. How soon we forget! Whatever concerns you concerns me - for better or for worse!''

"Point taken," Peregrine agreed with a sheepish grin, "though I hardly think it need extend to ruining your honeymoon - our honeymoon."

"There you go again!" she declared, leaning over to kiss him on the cheek. "I told you it isn't possible to do that."

He was grinning as they completed their third circuit of the block, but he still had not found any legal place to park.

Switching on his left-turn indicator, he pulled the Alvis into a designated loading zone a short distance up the street from the shop and pulled on the hand brake.

"You'd better shift into the driver's seat, in case a traffic warden comes along," he told Julia. "I'll be back as quickly as I can."

Waiting for traffic before easing open the door, he alighted from the car and sprinted off up the sidewalk to the entrance to the photographer's shop. The premises seemed dim after the bright sunshine outside. The shop's proprietor was at the counter, offering advice to a middle-aged couple who spoke English with an accent that might have been Dutch. When at last they turned and started for the door, Peregrine darted forward and presented his claim slip.

"The name's Lovat," he murmured, watching as the man began rooting in a drawer beneath the counter. "I left in a roll of film earlier this morning for one-hour processing."

"Here it is," the man said, handing over a large yellow-and-orange film envelope. "That'll be six pounds eighty, please."

Peregrine gave the man a ten-pound note, received his change, and pocketed it as he stepped over to the window, pulling the prints out of their envelope to examine them. The photos on top were all views of Kintyre, most of them with him or Julia in the foreground, a few of them showing architectural details of some of the castles and country houses they had visited in the preceding days. These he hurriedly passed over in favor of the more sober forensic studies he was looking for.

The abrupt shift in motifs made him flinch. Though his first instinct was to avert his gaze, he forced himself to take a closer look - and was startled to discover that there was, indeed, more caught in the photos than he had been able to see clearly at the time.