Phantom of Blood Alley (2 page)

Moments later, it was opened by a pretty parlourmaid, a strand of curly, blond hair escaping from her laced mobcap, and eyes of deep cornflower blue gazing directly into mine.

‘Barnaby Grimes,’ I announced with a smile, noticing the band of freckles that crossed the bridge of her dainty nose, ‘to see Miss Oliphant. I believe she’s expecting me …’

‘Show him in, Tilly,’ boomed a voice from down the hall behind the maid, who returned my smile shyly and beckoned me to follow her.

She showed me into a small drawing room, where I was confronted by a tall, imposing
woman with small, twinkling eyes and steel-grey hair, pulled back in a tight bun. The tailored navy-blue jacket she was wearing, with its three rows of mother-of-pearl buttons down the front, gave her a somewhat military air, while the long crisply pleated black skirt lent her the appearance of a half-opened umbrella. On her feet was a pair of surprisingly elegant-looking dancing pumps of black patent leather.

She folded her arms across her ample bosom, so broad and level you could have rested a laden tea tray upon it, and tilted back her head. ‘Take a seat, Mr Grimes,’ she said. ‘Raffy spoke very highly of you, though I must admit I was expecting someone a little older …’

I sat down in one of the two worn leather armchairs by the gently smouldering fire, while Clarissa Oliphant took the other. There were glazed porcelain dogs at either end of the mantelpiece, and a large, loudly ticking
clock fashioned from ebony, copper and glass at its centre. It was five to ten, I noticed. I was early. Looking up, my gaze rested upon a magnificent sword, fixed to the wall. Clarissa followed my gaze.

‘An original Dalmatian sabre,’ she said, her deep voice as severe as the expression on her face. Her gaze rested briefly yet knowingly, I thought, on the swordstick attached to my belt. ‘The finest fencing sword money can buy,’ she added, ‘and the tool of my former profession. Before I retired, Mr Grimes, I was a duelling governess.’

‘A duelling governess,’ I repeated, impressed.

I’d heard of these legendary Amazons, but hadn’t actually met one before. A hundred years ago, they’d been all the rage, employed to settle the disputes of their charges, the pampered sons of the nobility, too young to fight duels themselves. These duelling governesses would defend the honour of their charges while they were young, and include in their education the fine art of fencing, so that by the time the little darlings reached maturity, they were able to fight – and win – their own duels.

‘An original Dalmatian sabre,’ she said, her deep voice as severe as the expression on her face
.

‘Of course, we’re a dying breed these days,’ Clarissa Oliphant was saying. ‘Now it’s all Latin primers and horse riding for the sons of the privileged, and swordplay is something taken up by … others.’

Again, her gaze strayed to the swordstick at my side.

‘What is it exactly that you require, Miss Oliphant?’ I asked politely. Clearly the former duelling governess hadn’t asked me to visit her to talk about swordplay.

The clock on the mantelpiece struck ten o’clock. Clarissa waited for the chimes to finish before replying.

‘Each day at roughly this hour, my brother Laurence leaves the house,’ she began, her booming voice now a conspiratorial whisper.

As if on cue, at that moment, there came a dull thud from above our heads, followed by the sound of footsteps. They crossed the room in one direction, hollow and heavy and making the floorboards creak, then doubled back on themselves.

‘My brother, Mr Grimes, has become most secretive,’ she told me. ‘Secretive, one might say, to the point of paranoia. I have no idea where he goes or what he does when he gets there. All I do know’ – she paused dramatically, her small eyes fixed on the ceiling above – ‘is that whatever it is, it is beginning to have an alarming effect on his health, both mental and physical. Oh, he used to be such a wonderful person, Mr Grimes, carefree and open, always ready to confide in his older sister and listen to her advice. But then something changed him … Of course, though I have nothing concrete to go on, I do have my suspicions …’

‘Suspicions?’ I echoed.

‘When Laurence came down from university, he had developed a fascination with the new art of, as he called it, “painting with light”. It was a fascination encouraged by some of his tutors there,’ she told me. ‘He was mesmerized by the idea of using light to capture the image of a person or object, or a scene from life, and experimented with all kinds of materials on which to imprint such images – copper, paper, glass …’

I’d heard of such images, and the strange characters who sought fame and fortune trying to capture them, from my good friend, Professor Pinkerton-Barnes. They went by many different names, such as daguerreotypes, talbotypes, ambrotypes, autochromes and carbon prints, though the most common term was ‘photograph’, taken from the Greek words for ‘light’ and ‘to draw’, and coined by Sir Evelyn Henkel to describe the images he produced.

‘Of course, the production of an image is
not the most difficult part of the process,’ Clarissa Oliphant was saying. ‘It is the permanent fixing of that image which remains the real challenge. After the debacle at the Konigsburg Exposition, where Horst Silberschilling’s magnificent reproduction of the Kaiser’s horse faded away in front of the assembled crowd ten minutes after its unveiling, many believed that it was impossible, and I hoped Laurence had given up his own experiments.’

She glanced down and plucked a piece of lint from the folds of her skirt, rubbed it between her forefinger and thumb and flicked it away. In the room above, the pacing abruptly ceased. Clarissa’s brow furrowed.

‘He certainly stopped talking about his “oliphantypes”,’ she said. ‘But he gave up his position at the law practice and took to disappearing into the city every day and returning late at night,’ she said, her deep voice faltering. ‘And then there was that horrible accident …’

‘Accident?’ I said.

Clarissa grimaced. ‘His face was badly burned down one side,’ she said, the tips of her fingers trailing across her right cheek and round her jaw. ‘Not that he’d tell me what had happened. Refused to even discuss it. He called for Tilly to fetch bandages and dressed the wound himself. The curious thing was,’ she added thoughtfully, ‘despite the obvious pain he was in, he seemed strangely excited, his eyes sparkling more brightly than I’d seen them in months.’ She shook her head. ‘That was three weeks ago, Mr Grimes, and frankly, I’ve had enough of his secrecy!’

Just then, the door in the room above us slammed shut. The next moment, the heavy footsteps were stomping down the stairs. Clarissa Oliphant was on her feet in an instant and marching towards the door.

‘Keep your head down, Mr Grimes,’ she hissed back at me. ‘I don’t want him to know you’re here.’

I sank down in the chair. Clarissa opened the door and stepped into the hallway.

‘Is that you, Laurence, dear?’ she called, her voice booming up the stairwell. ‘Where are you off to?’

‘Out,’ came a quiet, clipped reply.

I peered round the side of the chair and past Clarissa, who was standing in the doorway, her hands on her hips. A gaunt figure appeared on the stairs behind her. He was wearing a baggy overcoat of dark-green fustian weave, narrow breeches and heavy brown boots. Clasped in his right hand was a carved ebony cane. He seemed to be in a hurry.

He spun round the newel post at the bottom of the stairs and swept past his sister, his coat flapping. From what little I could see, he was a handsome man, with his sister’s strong features, though his dark eyes had a haunted look to them and his cheeks were sallow and sunken-looking. I caught a glimpse of an angry red scar on the side of his face, visible
despite the wide-brimmed Brompton pulled down low on his head.

The next moment, the front door slammed shut.

Clarissa Oliphant hurried back inside the drawing room, her face pinched and glowering.

‘He’s quite impossible!’ she exclaimed, reaching into a pocket and taking out a crisp banknote. ‘Follow him, Mr Grimes,’ Clarissa ordered. ‘I want to know where he goes and what he does, and when you have the information, return here to me and you shall have another one of these for your trouble.’

She pressed the note into my hand.

‘Leave it to me, Miss Oliphant,’ I said, jumping up from the chair and heading for the window. ‘I’m on my way.’

I
t felt good to be outside. Standing on the window-ledge at the back of the house, high above the small back garden below, I realized just how oppressive the atmosphere inside had been. Charged with suspicion and recriminations and matters that dare not be voiced, it had clung to me like a cold, rain-sodden blanket. Now, I had thrown it off, and I filled my lungs with the fresh, bright morning.

Behind me, the sash-window lowered with a rumble and a swoosh, and I turned to see Clarissa Oliphant looking back at me through the glass, her face grim. Despite Raffy’s high
opinion of his former governess, I hadn’t warmed to her. She seemed rather overbearing and controlling, and for a moment I found myself sympathizing with her brother’s attempts at privacy.

Then I felt the crisp banknote in the third pocket of my poacher’s waistcoat and imagined a second one, just like it, nestling beside it. Clarissa Oliphant was a concerned sister, I told myself with a sly smile, worried about her younger brother’s welfare …

Twisting round to face the wall, I swung my leg across to the adjacent drainpipe and shinned my way to the top as nimbly as a ferret up a trouser leg. I hauled myself over the jutting gutter, scurried up the firewall, arms outstretched for balance, and crossed over the ridge tiles. On the far side, I peered down into the street below.

Laurence Oliphant was already at the end of the row of houses, his wispy hair and dark-green coat flapping as he rounded the corner
and strode off down the main street. He was walking so fast, I didn’t dare let him out of my sight for a moment, and I knew I would have to use all my highstacking skills to keep up.

I followed him closely, deftly Tuppenny-Stepping my way along the terrace. Then, just before Aspen Row joined Fenugreek Road, I made use of some temporary scaffolding and a jutting buttress to cross the street.

I kept to the shadows wherever possible, my head down, so as not to be seen. Not that I thought Laurence Oliphant was about to notice me. Lost in his own thoughts, the man was marching along the pavement, his cane swinging as he cut a swathe through the other cobblestone-creepers. The local constabulary, on the other hand, was a different matter. The city police took a dim view of highstacking, and the last thing I wanted was to be apprehended by a red-faced plod threatening to throw the book at me.

I followed Oliphant as he turned right at
the old Navy Memorial, then right again where Cutpurse Walk crosses Broadacre. He was heading eastwards, away from well-to-do Hightown towards the altogether less salubrious East End district of Gastown.

There was no wind that day, not a breath. And as the industrial hub of the city came closer, the air grew thick and curdled with the acrid smoke and steam that billowed up from the glue factories and gasworks, forges, foundries and coal furnaces below.