Phantom of Blood Alley (5 page)

The professor was always fashioning curious contraptions to do with his experiments, and the drawer was stuffed full of various leftover bits and pieces. There were lengths of wire, cogs and chains, rubber tubing and a vast assortment of nuts, bolts and washers …

‘This is zinc, isn’t it?’ I said, waving a small, irregular-shaped sheet of mottled metal in front of him.

He was sitting with one hand pressed gingerly to his swollen jaw. He opened his eyes.

‘Zinc?’ he said. ‘Yes, it is, but …’

‘All in good time,’ I told him.

I seized a pair of scissors from the drawer and, holding up the zinc plate, carefully cut out a small circle about the same size as a thruppenny piece. I could feel PB’s gaze
resting on me as I did so, intrigued, despite the pain of his toothache. I fished in my breeches pocket for a silver tanner.

‘Here,’ I said, placing both the small coin and the smaller disc of zinc in PB’s outstretched hand. ‘Put the two pieces of metal together, and clamp the pair of them next to your bad tooth.’

The professor looked perplexed, but did as he was told. He closed his eyes. A minute later, he opened them again.

‘Ip’s pingling,’ he muttered.

‘Tingling?’ I said. ‘It’s supposed to. Wait a bit longer.’

While PB sat there, the two discs of metal clamped between his jaws, I crossed the laboratory and put a kettle on the stove. I was looking forward to a nice cup of Assam Black more than ever. I was warming the pot when I realized that the professor was standing behind me. I turned to see him grinning broadly.

‘Quite remarkable!’ he exclaimed. He was holding the two pieces of metal in one hand, and the bandage in his other. ‘The pain has gone!’

I smiled, pleased that my little experiment had worked so well.

‘The zinc and silver acted together with your saliva as a galvanic battery. It produced an electric current that worked on the nerves of the tooth, and relieved the pain,’ I told PB proudly. ‘Dalhousie has made some real breakthroughs in the field.’

‘You and your fields of interest never fail to amaze me, Barnaby,’ said PB approvingly. He took over the tea-making duties, swilling the hot water away and adding tea leaves to the pot. ‘I never know what you’re going to come up with next.’

‘Funny you should say that, PB,’ I replied, ‘because just recently I’ve become interested in the science of photogravure.’

‘Is that so?’ said PB. He chuckled as he
poured us each a cup of steaming tea. ‘I have to say that, for me, it is the photographic capture of movement that fascinates me most. It would help so much with my work to be able to analyse the gallop of a horse or the wingbeat of a bird …’

‘Talking of birds,’ I said, as I remembered the reason for my visit, ‘I dropped by to return your notebook, PB. It’s full …’

‘Excellent work, Barnaby,’ he said. He looked up and smiled, his tongs poised over the sugar bowl. ‘Now, is it one lump or two?’ he asked. ‘I always forget.’

‘No sugar for me,’ I reminded him, then stifled a smile as the professor proceeded to put six sugar lumps into his own small cup. He passed me my tea, ushered me across to the wing-back chair at the end of the room and perched himself on the edge of the ottoman opposite.

‘Photogravure,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘Or photography, as I prefer to call it.’ He
stirred his tea. ‘I knew one of its earliest exponents, Dean Henry Dodson. We were up at university together, with adjacent rooms in New College, though he was several years older than me and already writing his doctorate.’

I took a sip of tea, the aromatic liquid bursting with flavour on my tongue. No one, but no one, made tea like Professor Pinkerton-Barnes.

‘A strange fellow, something of a maverick,’ he was saying, ‘and, just like you, Barnaby, he had an interest in a vast range of subjects.’ He frowned. ‘Everything from medieval alchemy to ancient pagan cults, from mechanical calculating machines to apparatus designed to manipulate light …’

‘And he invented photography?’ I asked.

‘Invented,’ the professor repeated softly, and took a sip of his own tea. ‘From my experience, Barnaby, such things are rarely the invention of a single person.’ He smiled.
‘Rather they grow from the accumulated work of many minds all seeking universal truths.’ PB shook his head ruefully. ‘Though there are always squabbles breaking out between rival scientists as to who thought of what first,’ he added. He took another sip of tea. ‘But yes, Barnaby, Dean Henry Dodson is certainly a pioneer of the exciting new science, or art, of painting with light. And fascinating stuff it is, too …’

As so often happened when the professor and I got talking over a pot of Assam Black, we became so immersed in our conversation that we both lost all track of time. Before I knew it, night had fallen and the lamplighters had come and gone. I heard the bells of Montgomery Hall chiming. It was seven o’clock and, as I noted the lateness of the hour, Clarissa Oliphant’s disapproving face suddenly appeared before me. I placed my cup and saucer hurriedly on the table and jumped to my feet.

‘I must go, Professor,’ I said. ‘I’m late. Thank you for my tea.’

‘And thank you, Barnaby, for your cure,’ he replied. ‘I don’t know what I’d have done without you.’

The evening rush, when crowds of cobblestone-creepers compete with countless horse and carriages in the city streets below, was all but over as I highstacked back across town. The air was still, the sky clear and, with the temperature dropping fast, I had to be careful not to slip on the roof tiles as a thick hoarfrost formed. Three quarters of an hour later, a perfectly executed Drainpipe Sluice brought me down in front of 12 Aspen Row. It was a little late for the genteel folk of Hightown to be receiving unannounced visitors, but I guessed that for me, Clarissa Oliphant would make an exception.

I was right.

‘Mr Grimes!’ she exclaimed enthusiastically when Tilly the pretty maid showed me
into the drawing room. ‘Tell me what you have been able to discover.’

Seated before a roaring fire, I told her everything I’d found out that day. Everything, that is, except for my outlandish thoughts about the ghastly apparition that had stared out at me from the window which, in the clear light of day, seemed too fantastical to put into words.

‘I glimpsed a figure at the window,’ I told her simply. ‘A strange figure that I don’t think was your brother, Miss Oliphant, though I couldn’t be absolutely sure …’

‘A strange figure!’ exclaimed Clarissa Oliphant, then paused, for at that moment the door opened and in strode her brother, Laurence Oliphant. The collar of his baggy green overcoat was up, the wide brim of his Brompton down, while a thick, tartan scarf covered his mouth and nose. He glanced across at me, and in that fleeting moment, I saw a flicker of recognition in his eyes.

He glanced across at me, and in that fleeting moment, I saw a flicker of recognition in his eyes
.

‘Clarissa, I think you owe me an explanation,’ he said, turning to his sister.

‘Indeed,’ said Clarissa. ‘Mr Grimes was just leaving.’

She ushered me to the door, pressed that second crisp banknote into my hand with a soft ‘thank you’ and closed the door behind me. I was glad to be out of the room, I can tell you. There had been a look of despair in Clarissa Oliphant’s eyes and, for a moment, I felt guilty about my original thoughts that she was overbearing and controlling. This was a proud and concerned sister, at the end of her tether. What was more, despite the heat from the fire, the look that Laurence Oliphant had given me had chilled me to the marrow in my bones. I was heading for the front door, when Tilly the maid came out of the scullery and took me by the arm.

‘Oh, Barnaby!’ she exclaimed, her pretty eyes clouded with concern. ‘They’re going to have one of those rows of theirs. And
I hate it when they argue, I really hate it!’

In the drawing room, I could hear Laurence’s voice, shrill and peevish, growing increasingly agitated, and Clarissa, speaking firmly, endeavouring to calm him down. It wasn’t having the desired effect.

‘Stop trying to control me!’ Laurence protested.

‘But, Laurence, dear …’

‘Snooping round and prying into my affairs. It’s intolerable.’

‘But I worry so for your well-being,’ said Clarissa. ‘You don’t look after yourself, and you never had the strongest of constitutions, even as a boy. I’m concerned you’re making yourself ill.’

‘Well, don’t be,’ he snapped. ‘I’m fine. And anyway, you’re my sister, not my governess, and I’m not one of your precious pampered charges. Do you understand, Clarissa? I don’t want your concern.’

‘But my dear Laurence,’ boomed Clarissa,
‘all I want – all I have ever wanted – is what’s best for you.’

‘Then give me the money I need,’ he shouted. ‘I’ve made a great breakthrough, Clarissa, and I need funds to exploit its full potential. You have that strongbox full of gold sovereigns that Lord Riverhythe bequeathed you, which you hoard like a miser, while I, your own flesh and blood, have to beg and borrow to fund my work …’

‘But what
is
this work, Laurence?’ Clarissa asked beseechingly. ‘You won’t talk of it. It’s making you ill, and yet you ask me to invest my nest egg in it …’

‘Well, if you won’t cough up the gold,’ screamed Laurence Oliphant, ‘I’ll take something I can sell, at least!’

‘No, Laurence!’ Clarissa Oliphant exclaimed, the motherly tone to her voice replaced by fierce emotion. ‘Not that! You know how much it means to me.’

‘And you know how much my work means
to me,’ he shouted. ‘I’m going to my studio. Do not attempt to follow me!’

The drawing-room door flew open and he stormed past Tilly and me in a blur of movement, his fustian weave overcoat flapping behind him.

‘Laurence, dear,’ Clarissa called after him.
‘Laurence!’

The front door slammed shut. Tilly and I exchanged glances. The next moment, Clarissa Oliphant appeared in the hallway.

‘Bring me my smelling salts, Tilly,’ she said wearily, ‘I’m feeling a little faint.’ She turned to me. ‘Mr Grimes,’ she said, a single eyebrow arched. ‘You’re still here, I see.’

I nodded as Tilly hurried off to the scullery, drying her eyes on her apron.

‘My nerves,’ she said, pushing behind her ear a strand of hair that had come loose from her bun. ‘I don’t know how much more of this I can take.’

‘If there’s anything I can do?’ I told her.

She nodded, and I saw the resolve in her pursed lips. ‘There is, Mr Grimes,’ she said, her voice booming once more. ‘Tomorrow morning, first thing, I want you to take me to this lock-up of Laurence’s. I intend to have it out with him. It’s time to put a stop to this nonsense once and for all.’

F
irst thing, she’d said, and first thing, I was there, knocking at 12 Aspen Row at eight o’clock on the dot. The door flew open and Clarissa Oliphant stood before me, dressed for the cold in a heavy calf-length greatcoat and an oversized green tam-o’-shanter. Her face was drawn and there were bags under her eyes. It didn’t look as though she’d got a moment’s sleep all night. She twirled an umbrella in her hand and thrust it forward.

‘Lead on, Mr Grimes.’