FOOLISH WAYS an utterly gripping cozy crime mystery by GREENWOOD D.M

Author:GREENWOOD, D.M.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Joffe Ostara Classics Cozy Crime and Mysteries
Published: 2023-05-02T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seven: Pictures from the Past

There was no need to draw the curtains in Harries Bar. The November light was already beginning to fade when Spruce placed a chair for Theodora and Tilby fiddled knowledgably with the projector. The plastic bag had yielded a film-tape and a video cassette. Theodora smoothed the plastic bag on the table; at the bottom she felt a slight thickening.

Tilby said, ‘Here it comes.’ The machine began to whirr. ‘An amateur job,’ he added.

The film was black and white of poor quality, grainy and indistinct. There was a shivering line of white flashes and then the title in gothic character, ‘The Art of the Jester’. The tape ground on, clicking and shuddering, the focus swinging round a number of objects arranged on a table covered by the heavy folds of an old-fashioned velvet tablecloth. The camera picked out a cap and bells, a feather duster, a censer, a candle, a dunce’s cap, what looked like a pestle and mortar but which Theodora recognised as a bowl for shaving soap and a shaving brush. ‘Tools of the Trade’, announced the gothic script. Finally the camera tracked into the middle of the table and focused on a crucifix. Spruce leaned forward. ‘It’s the one,’ he said.

‘Which one?’ Theodora asked.

Spruce took the photograph from Tibor’s wallet and pushed it across to Theodora. ‘Freeze it a minute,’ he said to Tilby. Tilby arrested the progress of the tape. Together they studied the photograph with its crucifix. The wood of the cross was dark, either stained or perhaps ebony; the pale figure nailed to it perhaps ceramic or ivory. Spruce looked back at the screen. ‘Can you enlarge it?’

Tilby did something technical and the crucifix filled the screen, the same dark wood and with the light figure on it.

‘It’s the same,’ said Theodora with conviction and unusual emotion.

‘Roll it on.’ Spruce nodded to Tilby. The three of them strained forward towards the screen. The background got lighter and the words flashed across the screen. ‘Ploys and Positions’. There followed a series of frames showing Joshua in Pierrot costume. He began slowly almost parodying the slow motion of action replays. His physical control was phenomenal. Gradually the speed increased and the movements turned to tumbling, juggling, spinning and leaping. The movements were fast and assured. Theodora was reminded of Marceau, whom she had seen in her youth. The pace and quality of the movement was astonishing, precise yet frenetic, his dramatic projection and the range and vocabulary of physical movement well beyond the scope of the amateur.

Suddenly the full pity of his death hit her. Here was quality, talent not frequent in human society, untimely wiped out. She could feel the two policemen forming a relationship with the flashing figure on the screen and beginning to be drawn into his aura. The last frame was a close-up of the face of the clown, the make-up dead white, the head bare but the short hair standing up as it had been in the photograph with again the crucifix visible above and behind him.

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