Phantom of Blood Alley (4 page)

‘I’m going to rescue you, whether you like it or not,’ I told it
.

It had worked like a dream. As for the cat, it offered no further resistance, instead lying still in the darkness at the bottom of my coalstack hat. I tucked the hat under my arm and descended the fire escape, planning to release the cat when I reached the bottom.

That was when I discovered I’d had an audience. I heard the sound of clapping hands and an excited voice calling out from below.

‘Bobbin! Bobbin!’ the voice cried, and I looked down to see a slim, even-featured woman staring up at me, her blue eyes radiant with happiness and relief.

I jumped down beside her and proffered my hat. ‘This cat is yours, I take it.’

The woman reached inside, pulled the cat out and dangled it before her. It went limp and purred loudly.

‘Bobbin, you naughty cat,’ she said, shaking her head in mock anger. She tucked him inside her shawl. ‘He’s mine, all right,’ she told me, smiling brightly as I replaced my hat on my head. ‘Thank you so much for rescuing him, Mr …?’

‘Barnaby Grimes, tick-tock lad,’ I told her, smiling back. ‘Glad to be of assistance.’

The woman frowned. ‘But your waistcoat,’ she said, her face creasing with concern. ‘It’s completely ruined.’

I looked down. The bolt I’d snagged my waistcoat on had caused considerable damage. Three of the pockets were hanging by a thread, while a fourth was missing completely, and there was a gaping hole down the right-hand seam.

‘It is a bit of a mess,’ I conceded. ‘I’ll have to take it to the tailor to be repaired …’

‘I wouldn’t hear of it,’ she said, and seized me by the sleeve. ‘One good turn deserves another.’

Taking me by the arm, she led me along the sidewalk, talking nineteen to the dozen as we went. Her name, she told me, was Mrs Clare Gosney, and she was a bespoke seamstress by profession. She ran a little shop with her daughter, Molly, and her beloved Bobbin was, as I’d thought, a Persepolis blue, and rather valuable into the bargain.

‘Though absolutely priceless to me,’ she added, and hugged the purring bundle wrapped up in her shawl.

We came to a small shop at the end of the street, its front window overflowing with rolls of lace, bolts of material and an assortment of wooden tailors’ dummies, the finely cut clothes they were modelling somewhat spoiled by the way they leaned drunkenly
against one another. Above the door was a sign, painted in elegant serif lettering.
Gosney and Daughter : Fine Millinery and Dressmaking
.

‘Here we are,’ she announced.

A doorbell jangled as she shouldered her way inside. I followed her and found myself in a small room, made smaller by the number of tailors’ dummies and bundles of cloth which filled every available inch of space. There was an oak counter directly in front of me, piled high with folded items of clothing, each one with a card of neatly written instructions pinned to it. A black leather-bound book lay beside them. Behind the counter were three tables. Two of them were laid out with pieces of crimson material, white chalk marking the places from which collars, sleeves and sides would be cut out. At the third table sat a girl, fourteen or fifteen years old, with a long braided pigtail and the brownest eyes I had ever seen.

She put down her needlework and leaped from her stool. ‘You
found
her!’ she exclaimed.

‘Not me, Molly,’ said Mrs Gosney. She hung her shawl on a hook behind the door. ‘It was Barnaby here. Mr Barnaby Grimes, a tick-tock lad. He rescued Bobbin from the top of a fire escape, didn’t he, Bobbin?’ she said, and pressed her nose into the cat’s face. ‘And he ruined his poacher’s waistcoat in the process.’

She placed Bobbin down. The cat trotted over to the glowing coal fire on the far side of the room, and curled up on the rug in front of it. Mrs Gosney watched him indulgently for a moment, a smile on her lips, then turned to her daughter.

‘So I’m going to make him a brand-new one,’ she announced.

‘Really,’ I said, ‘there’s no need to—’

But she silenced me, pressing the tip of her finger to her lips. She pulled a cloth tape
measure from around her neck and turned to me.

‘Take off your jacket.’

I did as I was told and she took my measurements, one by one. Under my arms, across my shoulders and around my waist, noting everything down in the black leather book. Then, stepping back, she looked me carefully up and down, and made a charcoal sketch of the waistcoat’s design, noting every pocket, every loop and clasp, every button, toggle and hook.

‘There,’ she said at last. ‘Leave your old waistcoat with me. If you come back in a few days, I’ll have the new one ready for you—’

Her words were abruptly drowned out by something clattering noisily down the cobblestones outside. I poked my head out of the open door, only to jump back again as a familiar figure sped past in a blur, skidded wildly and crashed headlong into the lamppost on the corner.

I hurried over to the stricken figure, Mrs Gosney and her daughter close on my heels.

‘Will?’ I said softly. ‘Will Farmer!’

At the sound of my voice, Will Farmer’s eyes snapped open. He sat bolt upright.

‘Barnaby!’ he said, and grinned. ‘What do you think of my new invention?’

I
helped my good friend, Will Farmer, to his feet and he dusted himself down, seemingly none the worse for wear. Will was a tick-tock lad just like yours truly, and had rooms next to mine on Caged Lark Lane.

‘Well?’ he said. ‘What do you think, Barnaby?’

He pointed to the object lying in the gutter. I’d never seen anything like it before. It consisted of a bevelled board about a yard long and a foot wide, with four spoked wheels that had been attached to the underside with two stout brass axles.

‘This,’ said Will proudly, ‘is a little
something I’ve been working on.’ He flipped the board over with his boot and stamped down on one end, sending the contraption leaping into the air. He caught it with one hand. ‘I call it a wheelboard.’

‘A wheelboard?’ I repeated.

‘I made it myself,’ he said, nodding. ‘Out of a piano lid and four perambulator wheels. Gaffer Jones, that ironmonger down Solder Lane, made up the axles for me to my own design. It’s brilliant for getting around town. I got the idea when I saw a piano fall off a delivery cart at the top of Coppervane Hill last week and roll all the way down to Goose-fair Square.’

‘So this is all your own work,’ I said, impressed.

It looked intriguing, and was far less cumbersome than a horse and carriage, though clearly far trickier to bring to a halt.

‘I’m still getting the hang of it,’ added Will, ‘but it’s really good fun. And given time,
Barnaby, I believe wheelboarding could become all the rage!’

Will stopped and his mouth flopped open like a pond carp on a paving stone. I followed his gaze. He was staring at Molly Gosney, who stared back, her face flushed.

‘Will Farmer,’ I said. ‘Allow me to introduce Mrs Clare Gosney and her daughter, Molly.’

‘P-p-pleased t-to meet you,’ stuttered Will.

‘Come, Molly,’ said Mrs Gosney, smiling and giving me a wink. ‘We’ve got a waistcoat to make. Mr Grimes, Mr Farmer, good day to you both.’

They turned and started walking away.

‘Will,’ I told him, ‘I’ve got to be going. I’ll see you back at Caged Lark Lane.’

‘Uh-huh,’ he muttered, but I knew he hadn’t heard a word. He had ears and eyes for Molly Gosney alone. I waited. But it was only when the bell above the shop door jangled
softly and the object of his attention followed her mother inside that Will looked round. ‘You said something, Barnaby?’

I laughed and bade him goodbye a second time, and we went our separate ways. Will clattered off down the hill on his wheelboard, while I returned to the fire escape on Prospect Avenue. I noticed a couple of the business cards I’d dropped lying on the pavement, together with a small leatherbound notebook which my friend, Professor Pinkerton-Barnes, had given me to aid my research into one of his hare-brained theories.

The professor – or PB, as he liked his friends to call him – had all sort of theories on animal behaviour, everything from bipedal voles to choral-singing crows. Recently, he’d theorized that sparrow hawks were abandoning their farmland habitat and venturing into the city to prey off the vermin that lived there. He’d asked me to keep a running tally of any nesting sites I saw at the top of the tallest
buildings while highstacking, so that he could compile comprehensive tables. I’d had the notebook for more than a month, jotting down the size and location of each one I spotted. And I’d spotted quite a lot. As to how many exactly, I wasn’t sure, but the notebook was practically full.

I pulled my fob-watch from my coat pocket and checked the time. It was a quarter past one. I had to return to Clarissa Oliphant’s house in Hightown, but since I was quite close to the professor’s university rooms, I decided to drop in on him first. Quite apart from anything else, it had been a long and tiring morning, and I was in need of a cup of PB’s excellent Assam Black tea.

I arrived on the roof of the imposing white-stone academy minutes later and shinned down a drainpipe to the window sill of the professor’s laboratory. Peering through the grimy glass, I saw PB stooped over a workbench, his back towards me. I tapped on
the window, and he turned. I don’t know who was more surprised; PB to see me crouching there on his window sill, or yours truly to see his swaddled head.

‘Barnaby,’ he said, striding to the window and opening it.

‘PB,’ I said, grinning as I jumped inside. ‘What’s with the new bonnet?’

The professor grimaced. ‘Toothache, Barnaby,’ he said. ‘A rather tiresome case of toothache.’ Despite the bandage, which he’d wrapped over his ears, round his chin and secured at the top of his head with a floppy bow, I could see that the left side of his jaw was badly swollen.

He returned to the workbench behind him. A cluster of open bottles stood at its centre, a pipette lying in front of them and a test tube in a retort standing to their right.

‘I was just preparing a little something,’ he explained, ‘to ease the pain.’

I sniffed the air. ‘Cloves,’ I said.

‘Oil of cloves, indeed,’ he said. ‘Among other things. Tincture of iodine, camomile and lavender. Anise … And a splash of laudanum,’ he added.

I peered over his shoulder as he continued working, counting off the drops of the various liquids and shaking them together. He was clearly in a lot of pain, his face grimacing with every movement he made.

‘Let me, PB,’ I told him, taking the pipette from his shaking hand. ‘Now, how many drops of this exactly?’

‘Twelve,’ he said miserably. ‘Though I doubt it’ll help. It’s the third batch I’ve made in as many days, and the pain’s as bad as ever.’

I nodded thoughtfully.

‘I’ve got an idea, something I came across in Dalhousie’s
Handbook of Dentistry
the other day,’ I said, turning to him. ‘I’ll need a small piece of zinc and a stout pair of scissors.’

Wincing with pain, the professor waved a
hand at the drawer. ‘You’ll find everything you need in there,’ he said, and added wearily, ‘I’m going to sit down for a moment.’