The photograph 7/9

“Sorry I’m a bit late,” said Dave, but the office has given me a new project to work on and it took rather longer than usual to explain. What’s so funny?”

Mary explained what Abigail had done. “I’m sure the man who’s just left was from the Advertiser, so we’ve only just beaten him to it. I bet he’s sending someone down to Essex right now to go and look at the cottage and check out our story.”

Abigail turned up at the back door just after supper that night. “I’ve sorted out the problem with the goblins. Apparently it was the oldest goblin’s birthday and all of them were expected to help with the arrangements, including the one who was supposed to look after the paths! But I still can’t work out how that camera worked. The film fogging spell has been in use for nearly a hundred years and it’s never failed before!”

“That’s it of course!” exclaimed Dave. I bet Adam has a digital camera; they don’t use film at all! Not only that but he’d be able to look at the results straight away. That’s how he got the pictures to the paper so quickly.”

I’ve never heard of a camera that doesn’t use film,” said Abigail, “I hope one of the magicians has managed to find a way of spoiling that sort of picture, however it may work!”

“But we can go on from there," said Dave who was beginning to get quite excited. “I think we might be able to stop all this nonsense at last. One of the points about digital photographs is the ease with which they can be altered. If you take a picture say of a person on the beach and there’s a lump of old wood in the way spoiling the picture, you can just remove it electronically and no one would ever know it had been there. Give me an hour or two and I’m sure I can come up with a way of stopping the newspaper making any more investigations.”

“Well I’ll have to leave it up to you,” said Abigail looking rather puzzled. “I’m sure you know what you’re talking about, but I have no idea what’s going on. Next time you come over, don’t forget to leave from Jennifer Jane’s bedroom, then come and see me and explain what you intend to do”