The Film

The door bangs open and Jones strides in, envelope in hand, his lean face eager. "I got them, James."

I sit back, my face mirroring his, and slide the page covered in impatient doodles into the file at my side. "And? How do they look?"

"I don't know, I haven't looked yet, i wanted to do it with you. I wouldn't know what to look for."

I gestured for him to get on with it. I would know, if I saw it, I was almost certain of it. Jones opened the envelope and slid the pictures onto the table, separating them out with quick, bony fingers.

We stood, side by side, and stared down at the dozen or so squares of evidence on the table.

"What the hell is this?" Jones was the first to speak, shaking his head in disbelief.

"He switched the film." I answered, toneless. "He must've."

Jones was pacing, now. "But how? It was wedged between YEARS growth of vines, you said so yourself."

"And then I said that it was possible he - or someone else, maybe even she, somehow, a mistake, a wish....had grown them in a matter of seconds. My mistake was thinking that he'd done it when he killed her." I stood and shuffled the photographs around on my desk, listless. "No, he did it later, and recreated it. He knew I'd be on his trail. The Butler would've told him that I took the case, and in the event that I were a honest bastard, he prepared for me to investigate him even if it meant not getting paid."

"But..." Jones shook his head again. "Why not just hide the camera? What would this do except make him MORE of suspect?"

"I don't know. Unless...he wanted to me to see that, and to see these...? He wants to be caught?"

I looked down at the table, at the photographs spread there. Every one, in all their black and white glory, was a gorgeously composed shot of a butterfly, or two butterflies. Ten butterflies. A thousand butterflies, nothing but a moving mass of petal-like wings.

"Flowers that grow out of season and don't wish to be cut, photographs I must see, butterflies. Butterflies, in London. He told me not to go in the greenhouses. To keep me out? Or to make me go in?"

What did the young master Rose want?