Phantom of Blood Alley (14 page)

‘So Dean Henry Dodson had to die! Laurence killed him with a sword thrust through the heart. He died without a whimper, and in that moment Laurence Oliphant died too …

‘And I saw what I had become, Mr Grimes, through my torments. I had become a god! A god, I tell you! And how does the venerable bard put it?
As flies to wanton boys are we to th’ gods, they kill us for their sport
…’

So I had been quite wrong, I realized. This crazed phantom before me was not Dean Henry Dodson! It was none other than Laurence Oliphant himself. Clarissa Oliphant’s brother had not been murdered as everyone had been led to believe. Instead, he was the murderer, killing his tutor in cold blood, then setting off to avenge himself on those he saw
as his enemies, and leaving a trail of death and destruction in his wake.

Now he had captured me. I was in the grip of a madman.

‘I’d been boiling up a solution of the most caustic of chemicals; ammonium citrate and potassium ferricyanide, nitric and sulphuric acids … the same solution you have noticed bubbling in the vat as we speak, Mr Grimes,’ Laurence added, laughing unpleasantly. ‘Normally, I use such a formula to clean my metal photographic plates, but on that day, I decided to use it to eradicate the existence of Dean Henry Dodson, once and for all.

‘I exchanged my clothes for his, then tipped the whole vat over him. And as the corrosive chemicals destroyed his features, I left the lock-up. Laurence Oliphant was dead, and in his place I had unleashed an avenging god on the city.

‘I visited the university and faked the dean’s departure note. I lured Crispin Blears from
his opulent mansion and dispatched him quickly under the wheels of a post coach. At first, I was infuriated to have lost the cape, yet it proved fortuitous, since it seemed to confirm that Henry Dodson, rather than myself, had been involved in the death. Next, I decided to teach Albert Hoskins a lesson. He would learn precisely what it was like to be involved in an explosion. I clubbed the simple fool over the head and tossed matches into his warehouse.’ He chuckled. ‘The whole lot went up like a giant Roman candle. And then there was Miles Morgenstern …’

The phantom’s rasping voice was close to my ear.

‘But then, you know all about that, don’t you, Mr Grimes?’ he said, his voice soft and lulling. ‘I’ll teach you to meddle in my affairs.’

I looked desperately around that hellish lock-up as I fought against the ropes that bound me.

‘I have suffered the torments of hell,’ whispered the phantom. ‘Now it is your turn, Barnaby Grimes.’

The pungent stench of sea-coal smoke and scorched chemicals made my eyes water and caught in my throat. There were splashes of a thick, viscous liquid on the floor at my feet, and the ornate brass gas lamp which jutted from the wall was ablaze.

A length of crimson silk had been wrapped round the lamp’s mantle and glass cowl. It dulled the glare of the gaslight, its muted light casting the whole room in a hellish red glow. It shone on the low, flaking ceiling, on the planks of wood nailed across the single window and on rows of portraits pinned to the walls and hanging from the clothes line above my head.

There were men and women. Old and young. A scrivener with a long quill and inky fingers. A butcher in a spattered apron with a dead rabbit raised in one hand. A milkmaid,
a river-tough, a chimney-sweep’s young lad … They all gazed down at me in that crimson light, like the lost souls of the damned.

To my left, a splintered bench ran the length of the room, a sink at its centre and three large zinc trays beside it. Shelves, bowing under the weight of glass bottles of dark chemicals and glittering powders, lined the wall above it. To my right were two worm-eaten cupboards and a rickety table, its warped top overflowing with equipment. Scalpels, shears and a paper guillotine; bottles of ink and goosefeather quills; a magnifying glass, a cracked clay pipe and a towering stack of paper that leaned against a box-shaped contraption with brass hinges and a glass top …

Directly in front of me was the huge vat, set upon a tripod, its pungent contents bubbling furiously over a white-hot furnace. Thick clouds of crimson steam poured over the side of the cauldron and spilled out across
the floor, writhing and squirming as they snaked towards me.

The toxic red steam coalesced and began to wind itself around my ankles, my calves, my knees. It burned my nostrils and stung my eyes. My head swam; my lungs were on fire. The heat made my skin prickle, and the noxious fumes left me gasping for breath as I fought desperately to free myself from the ropes that bound my hands and feet.

Just then, I felt a hand grasping my throat, pulling me out of the chair and forward onto my knees. A second hand grabbed the back of my head and thrust it forward until my face was inches above the bubbling liquid in the vat.

‘Oh, how it burns, Barnaby Grimes,’ the phantom’s sinister voice hissed, before rising to a high-pitched crescendo. ‘How it burns …’

I was trapped, bound hand and foot, and with a madman forcing my face into a vat of
corrosive chemicals. There was only one thing I could do, so I did it.

‘Help!’ I screamed, at the top of my lungs. ‘HELP!’

‘In Blood Alley,’ the phantom sneered, ‘nobody can hear you scream!’

He pressed my face closer to the seething liquid in the vat. He wanted to destroy me the way he’d destroyed Dean Henry Dodson. The steam burned my lips. My eyes felt as if they were on fire.

‘HELP!’ I bellowed again.
‘HELP!’

All at once, the lock-up trembled with the impact of a colossal blow at the door. The phantom froze. Another blow came, together with the sound of splitting wood. The hinges gave way and the door abruptly slammed back hard against the inside wall as a massive Moravian boarhound burst snarling into the room and leaped at the white coat.

‘Kaiser!’ I gasped. ‘Kaiser, it’s you.’

The phantom screamed as Kaiser sank his teeth into an invisible leg and shook it violently. The white coat flailed in the air as it toppled over. The phantom slammed back against the red-hot metal of the vat, and cried out with a mixture of terror and pain. The vat tilted, sending its contents sloshing over the side and into the furnace flames. They ignited at once, and with a loud
wumph
the whole vat was suddenly engulfed in a ball of fire.

‘In Blood Alley,’ the phantom sneered, ‘nobody can hear you scream!’

‘Kaiser!’ I screamed, desperately flinging myself away from the flames.

I landed heavily on the floor, the burning liquid from the vat spreading across the stone flags towards me as the screams of the phantom filled the air.

All at once, I felt something tugging at my ankles and found myself being pulled across the floor, away from the seething vat and lapping flames. I looked down to see Kaiser, his great jaws clamped round the ropes that bound my feet, dragging me backwards, out of the room.

Above my head, the shelves and cupboards were beginning to smoulder and the splintered bench was ablaze, while the oliphantypes pegged to the clothes line burst into flames, one by one; the scrivener, the butcher, the milkmaid, the river-tough and the chimney-sweep’s lad, staring back at me as their images blackened and curled.

All at once, my spine cracked and my head bounced painfully down as the great boarhound dragged me over the door frame and onto the snowy cobbles outside. Several residents of Blood Alley had already emerged from nearby lock-ups and now came to my aid. As a burly mog-skinner cut the ropes that bound me, there was a massive explosion. The front of the lock-up blew out and the roof collapsed. Flames, fifty feet high, hissed as the thick snowflakes fluttered down into them. And out of the wreckage stumbled a spectral figure, his stained white coat ablaze. He staggered forward, slipping on the
snow-covered cobbles, and tumbled heavily to the ground.

‘Over ’ere!’ a counterfeiter shouted urgently, as he struggled to tear off the figure’s blazing coat. He wrenched one sleeve free, then the other, ripped the buttons off and rolled the body onto its front. He tossed the coat aside. Flames danced over the curious, transparent body beneath. ‘Quick!’ he bellowed. ‘Water, now!’

Two bootleggers came running, a man and a woman, each with a bucket sloshing at their side. They raised them as one and sluiced the water over the burning figure. The flames were doused in an instant and, as the water trickled down over the blistered body, it washed away the mirrorskin, revealing the figure beneath.

I crouched down and, taking hold of a shoulder, rolled the body over. The snowmelt and water trickled down his face, washing away the last of the chemicals that had made
him invisible. The face that appeared looked remarkably calm and, apart from the red scar and singed hair, I felt I was looking at the person Laurence Oliphant had once been: a quiet, mild-mannered man, studious and sympathetic to others …

His eyelids flickered and opened, and he gazed up at me through clear green eyes. Beside me, Kaiser crouched down and licked my hand. Laurence smiled weakly, grimacing slightly as he struggled with the pain that gripped his burnt body. His eyes widened and he grasped my arm.

‘Please,’ he said, his voice husky and faltering. ‘Tell Clarissa … I’m sorry …’

There was a soft rattle in his throat and his head fell back. His eyes closed. Kaiser whimpered and pawed at the body, but in vain. This time there was no doubt, no room for error, no chance of a reprieve.

Laurence Oliphant was dead.

Inspector Clackett listened to my story with rapt attention, occasionally raising a hand to stop me mid-flow as he jotted something down in his notebook. When I was done, he climbed to his feet and paced back and forth across the small room, glancing up at the sinister death masks on the walls. He began talking quickly, quietly, as if to himself.

‘A deranged scientist, driven mad by the toxic chemicals of his trade? After all, it has happened before – with the Mad Hatter murders of ’47. Four murders this time, and Laurence Oliphant had both the motive and the opportunity for each of them. And by faking his own death, he threw us all off the scent …’

He paused and turned to me, as if seeing me for the first time.

‘Well, Mr Grimes, I’ve got to hand it to you,’ he said. ‘You seem to have cracked the case. ’Course, I don’t know about these here
jars of so-called mirrorskin you mentioned. By the time that lock-up fire was finally put out, there was barely a trace of anything left inside.’ He stroked his hooked nose thoughtfully. ‘But the rest of the story certainly stands up. After all, Miss Oliphant can hardly have murdered her brother when he didn’t in fact die until the fire, which happened when she was safely locked up in Whitegate Model Prison …’

‘So?’ I said.

‘So, Miss Oliphant is free to go,’ the inspector said, thrusting his hand out before me. I shook it warmly. ‘And she’s got you to thank for it,’ he added. ‘If it hadn’t been for you, Barnaby Grimes …’ He paused, and pointed to the death masks on the wall. ‘I only hope she appreciates all you’ve done for her.’

She did. The following morning I paid Clarissa Oliphant a visit. Despite being in deep mourning for her brother, she seemed to be bearing up well, and I was pleased to note
that the brief spell in prison hadn’t seemed to do any lasting damage to her indomitable spirit. As Tilly ushered me into the drawing room, the duelling governess cast her fencing manual aside and leaped up from her chair.

‘Mr Grimes,’ she said. ‘Barnaby. I was hoping you’d drop by. I have something for you.’ She reached into the side pocket of the crisp, black jacket she was wearing and pulled out a small pouch, which she pressed into my hands. ‘A reward for your troubles.’

I was about to protest that I hadn’t done it for the money, but she patted my hands.

‘You’ve earned it, Barnaby, my lad,’ she said, and smiled. ‘And you might be pleased to know that I’ve given Tilly the rest of the day off.’

Back in my attic rooms that night, I lay out the contents of the pouch on my table. There were nineteen of them in all – small, round and slightly charred gold sovereigns, part of the hoard recovered from a strongbox in
Laurence Oliphant’s lock-up. There had been twenty of them, but having commissioned a wheelboard from Will Farmer’s blacksmith friend, bought Tilly a new bonnet from Gosney and Daughter, Will a new poacher’s waistcoat, taken Molly, Will and Tilly out for an oyster supper
and
treated us all to a box at the Alexandra Hippodrome, I’d had just enough left for one more thing …

I slipped the remaining nineteen sovereigns back into the pouch and slid it under the mattress. Kaiser lifted his head and looked at me, his thick eyebrows raised and his brand-new collar and nameplate glistening.

‘Nineteen gold sovereigns,’ I told him. ‘A small fortune for the likes of you and me, and I’ve got big plans for us both.’

Little did I know then that Kaiser’s former owner, the new Lord Riverhythe, was going to cross swords with me in the Templeton wing of the city museum on the very night the prophecy of Pharaoh Akanaten III was
due to come true, unleashing a horror on the city few could imagine.

But that, as they say, is another story …