by VL Redmaine
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Notes on this journal extract
19th December 1883
Valentina
The Others
From the Author
DEATH AT THE BOW CHAPEL BONE-YARD
COPYRIGHT
Death at the Bow Chapel Bone-yard
Copyright ©2018 Kevin Partner
All rights reserved
The characters, organisations, and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, are coincidental and not intended by the author. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or otherwise, without written per-mission from the author.
First Edition
Published by Trantor Press
NOTES ON THIS JOURNAL EXTRACT
THERE WERE MANY times in the years since I first met him that I wished with all my heart he’d remained no more than a nodding acquaintance I occasionally passed on the stairs; a ghost haunting the upper landings of the lodging house we shared with other working men.
We first met over thirty years ago, and yet my memory is as fresh as if it had happened yesterday. I also have my diaries to refresh my recollection of the finer details. Grimes never understood my obsession with recording everything that happened during our time in partnership but now, as I sit here and compile my notes, I am grateful for the clarity these journals provide. After all, it would be easy enough to dismiss so much of what we experienced together as the fantasies of a deluded old man with an overactive imagination, but when I see these accounts, written in my own hand and in straightforward, sober, language, I feel the same reassurance as if I were able to witness the events again.
I write this in February 1918, as the Great War continues to squeeze the lifeblood from the young men of Europe and around the world. It is ironic that, as the self-styled forces of freedom struggle with an imperialist tyrant, those same forces seek to suppress the hidden war that has raged for centuries, invisible to those who live out their lives above ground. Except when they become victims.
I am old and my time is limited. I hope that I am spared for long enough to complete my work of arranging these accounts. They will be placed under the care of a trusted friend who has instructions to release them to the public in one hundred years if the government continues to prevent the truth emerging.
Those that are ignorant of history, it is said, are doomed to repeat it. It is my hope that, if living blood flows through your veins, you will be inspired to resist. And yet it is with a heavy heart that I write these words, and a heavy burden I place upon you. Like me, you will find that what you learn here cannot be unlearned. The future you believed lay ahead of you is as much a lie as the security you feel in the solid earth beneath your feet. I am sorry. Perhaps ignorance is bliss for some, but it is also, I fear, likely to be the end of the human race.
These things happened.
John Makepeace
4th February 1918
19TH DECEMBER 1883
I STOOD IN the doorway of my lodging house, wrapped my coat about myself and prepared to brave the weather. The lights of Bow Church shone fitfully, and if there were any sounds of prayer or song, they were drowned in a downpour of religious proportions. As I paused on the threshold, the belltower began to sound the hour of ten, fighting to be heard over the torrent.
I hesitated, torn between staying dry and the welcoming embrace of a pint of porter at The Black Dog. The public house lay less than a hundred yards away on the corner of Payne Road, and yet I knew I would arrive drenched and would sit, miserable, in a corner as I cradled my jug.
Even in this weather, Bow Road was busy and I glanced left and right, waiting until there was sufficient gap in the passing traffic for me to get across without stopping. The last carriage swept past, I took a deep breath, and ran for it.
I was halfway across when a sudden flash of light to my left distracted me. My vision was blurry as my spectacles were wet, but I was certain I’d seen something. To this day, I do not know why I didn’t dismiss it as yet another minor mystery in a city of mysteries and carry on to the warm welcome of the Dog, but I turned on my heels and headed back to the path. The light had come from the direction of the Baptist Chapel but I could see that the place itself was dark.
The rain renewed its efforts to wash me away, but I pulled my hat further down my forehead and followed the street to the foot of the stairs leading up to the chapel. To the left was the alley that led to the graveyard. I’d passed it dozens of times on my way to work and had paid it no heed, but tonight, in that deluge, I felt drawn to that dark patch of ground.
There it was again and this time I was certain that the flash had come from the graveyard. I looked along the street, hoping to find someone to accompany me into the presence of the dead, but the other residents of Bow Road had, quite sensibly, remained dry inside, and I was quite alone save for the passing traffic.
What is it that compels a man to plunge into the unknown guided by nothing but animal instinct and curiosity? Whatever it was, reason or sheer lunacy, I found myself groping along the side-wall of the chapel, feeling my way brick by brick, until I reached the iron gate of the graveyard.
Over the pounding of the rain, I heard a cry - but whether of pain or triumph I couldn’t tell. I fumbled my way through the gate and out among the gravestones. I immediately tripped and barely managed to stifle a cry as I fell onto a stone slab, my hands slipping on the slimy moss. At least, I hoped that’s what it was.
The cry went up again and, mercifully, the rain eased enough to show a light shining from a window in the wall behind the graveyard. By its feeble illumination, I could see two shapes wrestling desperately - the one beneath squat and round, the one atop him lean and angular.
I felt in my coat pockets for any weapon, but turned up nothing. Cursing myself for my stupidity, I nevertheless stepped forward. “Stop this!” I cried. “I said stop it! Do you want blood on your hands? Do you wish me to call the police?”
The figure on top, who seemed, to my feeble eyes, to be smartly dressed in black with patent leather shoes, paid no heed to me. The one beneath, obviously losing the battle, called out: “Help me!”
There was nothing else for it. Abandoning the last vestiges of reason, I ran across the remaining few feet and lunged at the thin man. Pulling on his shoulders, I succeeded in giving the underdog the opportunity to kick away, roll over and get back to his feet. Quite suddenly, the man I was attempting to restrain spun around and threw me bodily across the graveyard.
My intestines turned to ice as he ran at me, his face contorted with rage. A face that seemed to me in that moment to be nothing but pointed teeth and a ravening mouth.
He was upon me before I could recover. Desperately, I tried to push him away, shrinking from the hideous saliva dripping from his wide open jaws as, inch by inch, he overcame my strength, fueled though it was by terror.
With a last heave his jaws were around my neck and I felt his teeth puncture my skin. I cried out in pain and then again as my body crumpled under a sudden weight. The teeth loosed their grip and I felt my attacker rolling from me.
“Are you unharmed?”
The squat man was silhouetted against the wan factory light. He looked down on me before pushing my head to the side and examining my neck. “I reckon you’ve been lucky, my friend. Another half inch and he’d have nipped your jugular.”
I scrambled away from him, raising myself against a gravestone. “What sort of madness is this? Is he a lunatic?” I remembered that Grove Hall, a notorious asylum, lay not far from us.
; “Yeah,” the squat man said.
In a flash, I recognised where I’d seen that shape before. “You’re Mr Grimes, aren’t you?”
He nodded and I noticed how pale he looked. I stood and went over to him, making sure not to look at the lean man with the caved-in skull lying on the ground. Even in the weak light of the factory lamps I could see that Grimes’ left arm was soaked in blood.
“We should get you to the infirmary,” I said.
He shook his head so violently I was forced to wipe the water from my face. “No! It is a mere scratch and I will attend to it myself.”
“And what of him? Should I contact the asylum and have them claim him?”
Grimes swayed a little before steadying himself and looking down at the prone figure. “No.” He regarded his attacker thoughtfully for a few moments as we stood in the mercifully easing rain before looking up at me. “Do you wish to be helpful?”
“If I may,” I said. I didn’t feel compelled to commit myself until I knew what he had in mind.
“Will you help me back to my room so I can clean myself up and treat my wound?”
I nodded. “Yes, of course.”
“And then I would like you to deliver a message, so that this … situation can be dealt with.”
“A message? At this time?”
Grimes’ pock-marked face widened into a smile. “There’s some who don’t sleep, my friend. Those who keep watch when decent folks like you are dozing in their beds, or nursing a pint yonder in the Dog.”
“How do you know where I drink?”
His grin turned into a tired chuckle. “It’s not such a task to work out, but I’m getting the shivers and I’d be grateful to be beside a warm fire if you don’t mind, Mr Makepeace.”
“You know my name?” I said, the shock in my voice obvious.
“I make it my business to know all I can about those who share my roof. You can call it professional curiosity if you like. Come on now, give me your arm.”
So, with difficulty, I helped him out of the graveyard with many a missed step. I cast my eyes to where the attacker lay unmoving and, as the square face of Grimes emerged into the gaslight, I found myself wondering whether I was entirely certain that Grimes had been the intended victim. Then I remembered the teeth and hastened my footsteps towards the warmth of the lodging house.
The rain had finally ceased as we paused for breath outside the factory that was next door to our accommodation. In other circumstances, I would have enjoyed breathing in fresh air cleaned of the smoke and smog of London and the peculiarly insipid aroma of rubber that pervaded the waterproof clothing warehouse we had stopped in front of.
“Just a few more steps,” I told Grimes. He had half sat on the railed wall and looked up at me. My breath caught as, in the yellow glow of the street lamp, I finally saw his face. “By God! Your face is lacerated, Grimes - let me fetch a medic, I beg you.”
He shook his head. “I don’t want a doctor. Just help me upstairs and do me the favour of delivering my message. Then I shall ask no more of you.”
I grabbed his arm and we staggered along the street. He was a solid man with a low centre of gravity and I was struggling to keep us both upright. When we finally arrived at the door, I was forced to lean him against the wall of the porch while I found my key.
There was a window to the left of the door and I used the light escaping from a gap in its curtain to find the right key before feeling for the lock and turning. The door swung open revealing a dark entranceway. The home manager, a drunkard called Derricks, took a perverse pleasure in making it difficult for his tenants to navigate the halls and stairs, especially when they’d downed a few pints at the Black Dog. So it was that we swayed our way along the corridor and up the two flights of stairs. We must have looked like two old soaks coming home from a long drinking session even though we were both stone cold sober.
Grimes and I had rooms on the top floor - above us were lightless garretts that were never used. I wondered why Grimes had chosen to live here amongst the matchbook stampers, general labourers and marble polishers. He didn’t strike me as being a typical working man, for all his rough and ready appearance. There was a rugged intelligence about his features and the sense that he had seen much and knew many. As for myself, I was there because I was practically penniless and living among working men was infinitely preferable to sleeping on the streets or in a workhouse.
“Here, get my key out,” he said as we finally reached the door to his room. I clenched my teeth and felt in his coat pocket before pulling out the key on its small chain and turning it in the lock.
By the dying glow of the coal fire, I navigated him to his bed and helped him as he dropped into it, pulling the coat from his shoulders as I did so. Together we removed his bloody shirt, working wordlessly together as I then squinted at the exposed wound.
“There’s a candle on the mantle,” he said. I found it, lit a taper from the embers of the fire and carried it across.
Holding the flame up to his arm, I wiped away the dried blood to expose a long gash cutting into the point of his shoulder.
“That’s where he grabbed me, the sneaky devil,” Grimes said, wincing as he tried to look sideways. His neck, I noticed, was so wide and so thickly covered with stubble that he looked as though his head, with its unkempt grey locks still dripping with water, had grown out of his broad shoulders.
I dried the wound with my handkerchief and held the candle close.
“Careful, man!” he said, recoiling from the flame.
I pulled the candle away. “I am sorry,” I said, though it didn’t seem to me that I’d got very close at all. “But look here - this wound looks as though it has been made by the talons of a ravening beast.”
“You’re a detective now, are you?” he said with a grunt of derision. “Whatever your profession might be, I suggest you stick to it.”
I stood up and returned the candle to the mantelpiece. “For your information, Mr Grimes, my profession is teaching and my vocation is writing, though I am, at present, working as a clerk at the soap works. And I know a claw mark when I see one.”
Grimes looked across at me as I stood, heated more by rage than the meagre fire, torn between leaving him to sort out his own affairs and my promise to deliver a message.
“Forgive me,” he said. “You have been of uncommon aid to me this night and, without your intervention, there is no doubt but that I would be dead now.”
I nodded curtly, my anger and pride not quite ready to accept his apology with the grace it deserved.
“But you must understand that if I rebuff your questions, it is because of my gratitude for your help and my concern for your wellbeing, not in ignorance of them. Mr Makepeace, I am involved in matters that are dangerous to know and I urge you to keep me at arm’s length, once you have done me one final favour. I’m afraid it is obvious now that I cannot leave this room tonight.”
As he made to lie back, I lifted his legs onto the bed. “Thank you,” he said. “Now, will you be good enough to take down this message, though it will mean little enough to you, and that is how it should remain.”
I took the candle from the mantelpiece again and placed it on a small table by the window. I pulled a sheet of rough paper from the stack and, finding no ink or quill, made do with a somewhat blunt pencil.
“This is to be taken to Mister Jasper Doyle and you’ll find him in the King’s Head on the corner of Marshgate Lane.”
“I know it,” I said. Indeed, I had an enviable knowledge of the public houses of this part of London and, regrettably, those of most other neighbourhoods also.
He smiled at me as if reading my thoughts. “Good. Here is the message. RE- BOW BC. Have you got that?”
I read the message back to him and readied my pencil so that I could write down the remainder. “Yes, please proceed.”
“That is the message. Make sure to deliver it by hand to him and no other. Mr Doyle will know what it means and will take the nece
ssary action.”
“He will contact the asylum? And then the police, presumably?”
With another wolfish smile, Grimes laid himself down and his coal black eyes gazed up at the equally dark ceiling. “He will take the necessary action, Mr Makepeace. Now, if you don’t mind, I would like to sleep.”
I got up rather too quickly and sent the chair flying. Grimes didn’t move and neither did he react when one of the lodgers in the room beneath began to bang on the floor. I picked the chair up and crept past his slumbering form as quietly as I could.
As I opened the door, I turned to look back, as if reassuring myself that these events had, indeed, happened and that I was truly about to go out into the night and find a stranger in a public house to hand a cypher to. I had blown the candle out and the air in the room, fetid enough at the best of times, now smelled of the dying coal fire and tallow smoke. There he lay in the dim glow of the coals.
I went through the door and, as I passed the threshold, I heard him say, “Thank you.”
VALENTINA
I STEPPED ACROSS the landing to my own room, turned the key in the lock and went inside. I’d left a low fire in the grate to welcome me back from the Black Dog and I cannot begin to tell you how much I wished I could slip out of my wet clothes and into the welcoming embrace of my bed. Instead, I achieved only the first of these and was at least able to emerge into the night air dry and somewhat warmed.
I set off along Bow Road heading towards The King’s Head which lay on Stratford High Street, no more than half a mile distant. It was now after eleven and passing traffic was sparse - the hour before midnight being the domain of the swaying drunk making his way back to his lodgings. Some of these night prowlers I knew by sight as being amongst the poor unfortunates in the rooms below those of mine and Grimes. Low though I believed I had become since my days in respectable employment, I thanked heaven that I had not descended so far as to be forced to sleep in a room with a dozen other men. No wonder they drink, I thought. What was my excuse?