Phantom of Blood Alley (12 page)

‘The police weren’t interested, Mr Grimes,’ Carruthers said ruefully. ‘Dismissed my story as the ravings of an old retainer, no doubt. Simple accident, they maintained, and that’s the story the papers all carried …’

Carruthers continued speaking in a low, mournful voice, but I was no longer listening. For as Kaiser tugged agitatedly on the end of his leash, I was staring at the label stitched into the collar of the cloak in my hands.

H. Dodson
, it read.

So the cloak belonged to Dean Henry Dodson, the mysterious academic who had taught both Laurence Oliphant and Crispin Blears. Now, the pair he had tutored were dead, and the cloak clearly implicated the dean in the so-called accident that had killed Sir Crispin. I thought of the hideous face I’d glimpsed in the back window of Laurence Oliphant’s lock-up. What if
that
had been
Dodson also? And what if
both
deaths had been by his hand?

All three men, in their different ways, had been involved with the new discipline of ‘painting with light’, and as PB had pointed out, squabbles were always breaking out between rival academics working in the same field. Perhaps Dodson had become envious and jealous of his former students, envying Crispin Blears’ success and jealous of Laurence Oliphant’s breakthroughs in photography.

I remembered the note the eccentric don had left on his study door.
Have left on important business … Will be gone some considerable time
… I was beginning to suspect he’d planned the whole thing, disappearing from the university and setting off for the city with murder in mind.

First Laurence, and now Sir Crispin Blears. Who would be next? I wondered, as I gazed at the blood-stained cloak in my hands.

Since the dean knew Laurence Oliphant and his pioneering work, he would also have met Laurence’s assistant, Miles Morgenstern – or at the very least heard of his own work in photogravure. What was more, since Albert Hoskins was the primary supplier of the photographic chemicals that all of them required, there was every likelihood that Dodson also knew the owner of A.G. Hoskins Industrial Chemists …

I shivered as I remembered the burglary at Clarissa Oliphant’s house the night after her brother’s murder, and the strange presence I had sensed in his bedchamber. I’d felt it again in Centennial Park on that bright, cold Sunday morning when I fell from Will’s wheelboard, and Kaiser had sensed it too.

‘You lost sight of the wearer, you said,’ I muttered, turning to the old butler.

‘That’s right, sir. The master grabbed the cloak and there was no one there,’ Carruthers
said. ‘Whoever had been wearing it disappeared like … like …’

‘A phantom,’ I breathed.

I handed the cloak back to the open-mouthed butler. Then, tugging on Kaiser’s leash, I left the Moorish mansion of the late Sir Crispin Blears and headed back down the broad, tree-lined thoroughfare of Batavia Park, my mind racing.

Albert Hoskins had told me of chemicals mysteriously going missing from his warehouse, and kept guns and a rapier behind his counter as a result. Sir Crispin Blears had told me his painting had been vandalized, and now he was dead.

Could Albert be in similar danger? I had to warn him, at the very least.

I headed off towards Gastown as fast as I could, with Kaiser trotting along beside me. Half an hour later we cut down Sleat Alley, which led to Coldbath Road, where the industrial chemist’s was situated. We
hurried along the shadowy alley, past a row of rundown workshops, the sounds of hammering, sawing and grinding mingling with the clatter of treadles and looms, and out onto the busy main street at the other end.

I paused and took my bearings. Diagonally opposite, on the corner of Coldbath Road and Tibbalds Lane, was the industrial chemist’s premises. With Kaiser on a short leash, I waited for a brewer’s dray to trundle past before darting out into traffic. I’d got halfway across the street when, all at once and without warning, a blinding white flash lit up the street, followed a second later by an ear-splitting blast.

For an instant, everything seemed frozen. There was a ringing in my ears, and the street around me was unnaturally still. Then everything started moving at once.

People were running in all directions, heads down and hands raised protectively over their heads. Horses reared up, whinnying and
pawing the air, while others bolted, their carts and carriages lurching on the cobbles behind them. Adults were shouting, children were screaming, dogs barked and howled, while a flock of startled pigeons rose up in a great mass from the ledges and lintels of the surrounding buildings. And ahead of me, flames poured out of the shattered windows of A.G. Hoskins Industrial Chemists as a fire took hold, spreading through the building and triggering explosion after explosion as the volatile chemicals inside went up.

‘Albert Hoskins,’ I breathed, my worst fears confirmed, as a tattered, blackened figure appeared at the splintered doors, looking like a sweep’s apprentice fresh from a soot-encrusted chimney, and stumbled into the street.

Blood poured down from a gash at the side of his head, soaking into his smoking shirt front and torn apron and splashing onto the paving stones. He managed half a dozen steps before falling to his knees, then keeled over and collapsed on the ground. Dragging the leash of the trembling boarhound, I dashed towards him, picking my way between the wreckage of two upturned carts.

… a tattered, blackened figure appeared at the splintered doors, looking like a sweep’s apprentice …

‘Mr Hoskins,’ I said, crouching down next to the injured chemist. ‘Albert …’

His eyelids fluttered and he looked up at me, a mixture of pain and bewilderment in his gaze.

‘There was someone there, I swear there was,’ he gasped, wincing with every word. ‘But when I looked, there was nobody …’ His eyes widened. ‘Then I saw it …’

I leaned forward and cradled his head in my arms. ‘What did you see?’ I asked.

Albert Hoskins’ brown eyes grew wider still, and he clutched at my sleeve. His lips parted, but nothing emerged except for a low gurgling sigh from the back of his throat. I put my ear to his mouth.

‘The box of matches,’ he whispered
desperately, ‘floating in midair, they were, and lighting themselves … Nothing I could do … to stop … the flames …’

Albert’s eyes abruptly glazed over and I felt the tension in his body dissolve. His head slumped back.

I laid him gently down on the ground, swallowing hard. Just as I had feared, the phantom who’d murdered Laurence Oliphant and Sir Crispin Blears had struck again, and I had been powerless to prevent him. Now Albert Hoskins was dead. As I climbed to my feet, there was only one thought in my head.

Miles Morgenstern.

‘C
ome on, boy,’ I said, tugging at Kaiser’s leash.

The poor creature had been unnerved by the explosion and kept close to my side as the pair of us ran up Tibbalds Lane. Miles Morgenstern’s garret was on Brazier Street, half a dozen or so roads away, and I kept to the less busy ones, darting from one to the next, my breath coming in puffy clouds.

The temperature had dropped sharply and the previous day’s drizzle had turned to fine, grainy snow. By the time I arrived at the tall, thin building where Miles Morgenstern
worked and lodged, the snow was beginning to settle.

With an unpleasant lurch of the stomach, I noticed that the front door was ajar. I pushed it open and was about to enter the dark hallway when Kaiser let out a bloodchilling howl and braced his front legs, refusing to enter.

‘Come on, Kaiser,’ I said. ‘Heel, boy. Kaiser,
heel!’

But the dog was having none of it. Fur ruffled and eyes rolling in his head, he whined pitifully and jerked back on the leash. I yanked it forward again. Suddenly it was tug-of-war, until all at once, with a resigned sigh, Kaiser stopped pulling.

‘Good dog,’ I said, and was reaching forward to pat him when, with a loud yelp, he leaped away. My shoulder jarred painfully in its socket, the leash slipped from my grip and I was left staring helplessly as the great hound bounded across the road. ‘Kaiser!’ I bellowed after him.
‘Kaiser!’

But the Moravian boarhound was oblivious to my calls. He dashed headlong into a narrow lane opposite and disappeared from view.

Something had spooked Kaiser, but there was nothing I could do for the moment, I told myself. I’d go in search of him just as soon as I had spoken to Miles Morgenstern. Yet as I walked along the gloomy hallway and up the flights of stairs, I too began to feel uneasy, my skin turning as cold and clammy as that of a freshly plucked goose.

I reached the eighth-floor landing to discover that the door to Miles Morgenstern’s garret rooms was also open. It creaked softly when I pushed it, and I poked my head round the side and peered in.

‘Hello?’ I called out. ‘Mr Morgenstern?’

There was no reply. I didn’t like it, I didn’t like it at all. Drawing my sword, I stepped cautiously inside.

The place looked abandoned, with a half-eaten
plate of fried eggs and buttered bread at the end of the mattress-table and a pot of coffee bubbling on the stove. I crept across the floor and was turning off the gas when I heard a muffled thump from the other side of the door that led to his attic laboratory.

Now seriously alarmed, I crossed quickly to the door and opened it, only to freeze with shock.

Miles Morgenstern was before me, suspended in the air, his feet inches from the floor and his body shaking violently like a marionette in the clutches of an invisible puppet master. His face was bright purple and, as his steel-rimmed spectacles were dislodged and clattered to the floorboards, I saw his bloodshot eyes bulging from their sockets.

He was reaching up, his hands clawing at his throat as he gasped for breath. Our eyes met, and his imploring gaze begged me to help him.

The next moment, his neck twisted violently to the side, there was a loud crack, and the light in his eyes was extinguished as his head fell forward. I let out a cry of horror and stumbled back, shocked and frightened, yet unable to look away.

… his feet inches from the floor and his body shaking violently like a marionette in the clutches of an invisible puppet master
.