7. The Photographer #2
Reid paused. Charlotte felt his surprise, though nothing in his posture betrayed it, twenty years of police work had taught him to keep his reactions internal. “You were expecting us?”
“I never forget a subject I’ve photographed.” Fletcher’s gaze flicked to Charlotte, held for a moment of uncomfortable recognition, then slid away. “A commission like that one doesn’t leave the mind. The composition, the light. My work.”
“You admit to taking this image?” Reid produced the photograph from his coat, holding it so Fletcher could see but couldn’t quite reach.
Fletcher took a step closer, studied it with a professional eye that Charlotte’s magic read as genuine appreciation for his own work.
“I admit to taking an image of these subjects. Whether this is my print or a copy made from my negative, I couldn’t say without examining it more closely.
” He set his cloth on the worktable. “I was hired to photograph a couple in a garden setting. I wasn’t told it was surveillance. ”
Charlotte stepped forward. Her truth magic pressed against his words, testing them for the distortion that accompanied conscious deception.
He believed what he was saying. The truth rang clear, uncontaminated by guilt or evasion.
“Who hired you, Mr. Fletcher?”
Fletcher’s jaw tightened. “I was approached through an intermediary. A clerk from a law firm, Messrs. Parker & Hodge, in the City. He said it was a delicate domestic matter. A husband concerned about his wife’s associations.”
“A husband.” Reid’s voice flattened.
“A concerned party, let’s say. I was paid handsomely, provided with the location and the subjects’ descriptions. I was told to capture images of natural intimacy. Proof of an affair.”
Charlotte’s truth magic flared. Truth, he believes this. But not the whole truth.
“You knew it wasn’t a husband,” she said quietly.
Fletcher met her eyes for the first time. Recognition shifted through his expression, recognition of another kind. “I suspected. The amount I was paid... it wasn’t domestic concern. It was political. Or personal, but not in the way I was told.”
“Did you ask?”
“I was paid not to ask.” Fletcher turned away, adjusting equipment he didn’t need to adjust. “I have children, Miss. Mouths to feed. The work was legal. The subjects were in a public garden.”
“A garden behind a private residence,” Reid corrected.
“I was positioned on the street. Public thoroughfare. My solicitor could argue the point.” Fletcher’s voice hardened. “I’m not proud of the work, Inspector. But I broke no law I’m aware of.”
Charlotte circled the worktable, studying the array of photographs pinned to the walls. Wedding portraits, christenings, formal family groups. All competent. None with the eye that had captured her and Reid.
“You’ve done this before,” she said. “Not just portraits. Surveillance work.”
Fletcher’s shoulders tensed.
“I can feel it in your other photographs. The ones you didn’t hang publicly. The compositions meant to reveal rather than flatter. You have an eye for catching people at their most vulnerable.”
Reid stepped closer to Fletcher. “The law firm you mentioned. Parker & Hodge. Who was your contact there?”
“A Mr. Simmons. Junior clerk. He handled the payment and the instructions.”
Charlotte felt the truth in it, but also the limits. Fletcher knew only what he’d been told, and he’d been told very little.
“Thank you for your cooperation, Mr. Fletcher.” Reid pocketed the photograph. “If you remember anything else, anything about Mr. Simmons or his employer, you’ll contact me at H Division.”
“Inspector.” Fletcher’s voice stopped them at the door. “I didn’t know what the photographs were for. I want that understood.”
Charlotte turned back. “And now?”
Fletcher met her gaze. “Now I suspect I was hired by a man who wanted ammunition. Against you, Miss. Or against the Inspector. I don’t know which concerned party would benefit from such an image, but I know the type who commissions this work.
” He picked up his cloth again, twisting it between ink-stained fingers. “I won’t make that mistake again.”
He means it, her truth magic whispered. Guilt. Shame. A man realizing he’s been used.
Charlotte nodded once and followed Reid down the stairs.
The carriage swayed through London’s afternoon traffic, the February drizzle finally arriving to streak the windows into grey smears.
Charlotte sat across from Reid, James beside her in the shadowed corner where he seemed most comfortable.
The three of them held their separate silences, processing what they’d learned.
Outside, London flowed past in its eternal rhythm, clerks hurrying home with their collars turned up, shopgirls clustered under awnings, costermongers shouting their wares despite the weather.
A city of millions, going about their business with no idea that beneath the surface, a war was being waged for the right to exist.
“Parker & Hodge,” Reid said finally. “I know that firm. They handle property transfers for some of the City’s older families. Discreet work, confidential clients. The sort of solicitors who make their living by not asking questions.”
“The kind of firm that wouldn’t blink at unusual commissions,” James added. His shadow magic had settled into stillness, conserving energy. “Pay them enough, they’ll facilitate anything that isn’t explicitly illegal.”
“The kind of firm Sebastian would use.” Charlotte leaned her head against the worn velvet seat, exhausted in a way that had nothing to do with physical effort.
Her truth magic had been working constantly since they’d left Eleanor’s townhouse, reading every surface and every face, and the strain was beginning to tell.
A headache pulsed behind her eyes, familiar companion to overextended gifts.
“Fletcher was a dead end,” she continued. “He was hired blind, paid through intermediaries, kept ignorant of the purpose. Sebastian learned from Cornelius, never let one hand know what the other is doing. Never leave a witness who knows enough to be dangerous.”
“But Mr. Simmons isn’t a dead end,” Reid said. “He processed the payment. He drew up whatever agreement Fletcher signed. He knows who approached the firm and how they paid.”
“And if Sebastian was clever?—”
“He’s always clever.”
Charlotte met Reid’s eyes across the dim carriage interior.
The lines of his face were sharper than they’d been a year ago, worn by sleepless nights and impossible choices.
She found she knew every angle of him now.
The way he held his jaw when he was thinking, the set of his shoulders when he’d decided, the warmth in his eyes when he looked at her and thought she wasn’t paying attention.
“Then Simmons won’t know either,” she said. “There’ll be another layer. A holding company, a shell corporation, a name that leads nowhere. Sebastian would never sign his own work.”
“Then we follow the money.” Reid’s jaw set in that familiar determined line.
“Every layer of protection is also a layer of evidence. Sebastian thinks he’s untouchable because he’s built walls between himself and his actions.
But walls can be mapped. Paper trails can be followed.
The more complicated he makes his protections, the more traces he leaves behind. ”
James shifted in his corner, shadow magic stirring like smoke. “He knows we’re coming. He left that photograph as a message, and now he’ll know we’ve started tracking its source.”
“Let him know.” Reid’s voice carried an edge Charlotte hadn’t heard before, an edge harder than his usual measured determination.
“Let him understand that we’re not hiding anymore.
He thinks he can threaten us into silence.
He thinks that photograph gives him power over our reputations, our positions, our futures.
” He looked at Charlotte, and his expression softened. “He doesn’t understand what he’s done.”
“What has he done?”
Reid reached across the carriage and took her hand. The touch was brief, James was present, propriety demanded restraint, but his fingers were warm against her cold ones, his grip firm with certainty.
“He’s reminded me what I’m fighting for.”
Charlotte felt the truth of it pulse through his words, unmistakable to her magic. No deception, no hidden agenda, no careful phrasing to obscure his meaning. Just Reid, stubborn, principled, and refusing to bend, speaking plainly because that was who he was.
She turned her hand over and squeezed back. “Tomorrow we visit Parker & Hodge.”
“Tomorrow,” Reid agreed. “And we keep following the trail until we find him.”
James said nothing, but Charlotte felt his approval in the way his shadows settled. The stillness of a predator who’d identified the scent and was prepared to run it down.
The carriage rattled on through the rain.
Charlotte watched the grey streets pass, the gaslight reflections bleeding into wet cobblestones like watercolors running together.
Shop windows glowed with warmth. Pedestrians hunched against the weather.
The ordinary machinery of London grinding on, oblivious to conspiracies and magic and the slow-building confrontation that would determine so many futures.
For the first time in weeks, she felt like they were moving forward rather than merely reacting.
Sebastian had meant the photograph as a threat. A reminder that he could reach them, watch them, capture their private moments and turn them into weapons.
He’d made it a beginning instead. A thread to follow. The first crack in his carefully constructed invisibility.
Charlotte held Reid’s hand, watched the rain on the window, and thought about Fletcher.
Reid’s hand was warm. She did not say it aloud. He would understand it—she knew that with the certainty her magic gave her about very few things. But she did not need to say it. She only needed to hold it, and let the carriage carry them through the dark.