“Absolutely, if the artist was doing a life-size illustration,” she said. “A good artist can draw exactly to scale. When I was a medical illustrator, I did it all the time.”
Exactly to scale: The words sliced through my Avignon theory like a razor, parting and crumbling the hypothesis like ancient, fragile linen.
AN HOUR LATER, I WAS SPRINTING UP THE STAIRCASE of the Hotel Diplomatic and pounding on Miranda’s door. “Miranda, Miranda, wake up!” I drummed again, louder, hoping she hadn’t sallied forth in search of coffee and breakfast.
“Jeez, what the hell? Just a second.” A moment later the door was opened by a bleary-eyed Miranda, wearing only a long T-shirt. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong,” I said. She glared, plucking twists of toilet paper from her ears. “Sorry, I thought for sure you’d be up already.”
“Man, I’d just gotten to sleep,” she grumbled. “Be grateful you got a room on the back side of the building. Away from the sirens and car alarms that blared all night long.” She pressed her palms against her eyes. “So, what’s up—besides you, early bird?”
“This,” I said, stepping aside to show her the Shroud, which I’d unrolled in the hallway again.
“I’m thinking Housekeeping’s gonna do some damage when they run the vacuum cleaner over that,” she said, but I could see her curiosity awakening.
“I just talked to Emily Craig.”
“Emily? In Kentucky?” I nodded. “Just now?”
“Maybe an hour ago.”
“Betcha woke her up, too, didn’t you?”
“Well, yeah. I did wake her up. But that’s not the point.”
“Might’ve been the point to Emily. Are you about to tell me what you think the point is?”
“I am. Emily was explaining how the Shroud could’ve been made. A dust-transfer illustration—like a cave painting, or a brass rubbing.” Miranda nodded, rubbing sleep from her eyes. “She thinks the Shroud was made by a medieval artist named Giotto. Giotto was—”
She fluttered a hand in the air. “Yeah, yeah, Giotto and I go way back. I minored in art history.” She pondered. “Okay, stylistically, Giotto seems plausible.”
“But Giotto’s not the point, either,” I said.
She sighed. “Anybody ever mention that you take a long damn time to get to the point?”
“I’m getting there, I’m getting there. So Emily’s going on about how a good artist can draw to scale. Exactly to scale. Which is just rubbing my nose in the fact that the Shroud guy isn’t our Avignon guy. Can’t be.”
“Because our Avignon guy’s six inches too short.”
“Right. The Shroud guy is ten percent taller. But then, after I hung up, I thought, hmm.”
“Don’t tell me, let me guess. The hmm—that’s the point.”
“Exactly the point, Miss Smarty-Pants. Because after I thought, hmm, I thought, If he can draw exactly to scale, maybe he can scale it up, too. Why not larger than life? So I found a copy shop. Hey, you know the Italian word for ‘photocopy’?” She shook her head wearily. “Fotocopia. Isn’t that great? Anyhow, I found a fotocopia shop. Look.”
I knelt and laid a photocopy over the face on the Shroud. It was a full-frontal image of the Avignon skull. I’d taken the CT scan to the fotocopia shop, enlarged it to 110 percent of actual size, and printed it on clear Mylar film. When I moved out of the way, Miranda gasped. “Oh, my God, it is him—the fit’s perfect now!”
I couldn’t help preening. “See? The hmm was important, right?”
“No shit, Sherlock. Very important.”
The effect created by the overlay was almost like X-ray vision; almost as if we were looking through the face on the Shroud and seeing the bones beneath. I’d used this technique, facial superimposition, in several cases over the years: superimposing photographs of missing persons onto skulls that turned up, seeing if the face fit the skull. Most times the fit was terrible—the eyes floated out beyond the edges of the skull, or the nose hovered in the middle of the teeth, or the skull’s chin was twice as wide as the one in the photo—but sometimes, like now, everything on the face aligned with everything on the skull.