The Black Crow Conspiracy

by Christopher Edge

  Penelope frowned, unnerved by the soldier’s silence. According to his regimental record, Sergeant Major Middleton hadn’t seen active service for more than a decade. His comfortable billet at the Tower of London was a far cry from his days fighting in the Indian Mutiny. A ghost who walked through walls, that’s what Drake said the Keeper of the Keys had seen, but how could that be? She had to find out exactly what Middleton had witnessed. Penny glanced down again at the empty glasses. In vino veritas, she prayed.

  “Do I know you, miss?” The sudden sound of Middleton’s voice made Penny’s heart skip a beat. His quavering tone seemed strained, as if he was in pain. “I have come here to find some peace, not be lectured about scripture and the merits of temperance.”

  Penny stared back at him in confusion before the realisation slowly dawned. Middleton must have mistaken her for a member of the British Women’s Temperance Association: the do-gooders who visited taverns encouraging drinkers to seek salvation in the arms of the Lord and mend their ways at last.

  “No, sir, you are mistaken,” Penelope began and then paused to try to gather her thoughts. What exactly was she going to tell him? She could hardly say that she had heard he had seen a ghost steal the Crown Jewels. She thought back to what she had learned from the Chief Warder’s regimental record: tours of duty in India, Afghanistan and the Nile; Middleton had even served on the North-West Frontier, just like her father…

  Unbidden, the image of her father’s face crept into her mind, his dark whiskers neatly trimmed in the military style. She could picture him in his officer’s uniform, his arm draped around her mother’s elegant shoulders as the regimental photographer captured their portrait. She recalled the yellowish tint of the telegram that brought her news of their deaths, her father and mother both murdered in the bloody North-West Frontier Uprising. Her heart ached, the pain of her loss undimmed by the passing of the years.

  “Then what is your business here?” the old soldier demanded, his trembling fingers clinging to his pint glass as if seeking sanctuary there. “Can you not leave me in peace?”

  Penny racked her mind, desperately seeking an answer that would make Sergeant Major Middleton take her into his trust. Apart from his military medals, The Penny Dreadful was all she had left of her father now. If finding out exactly what Middleton had seen could somehow help her save the magazine, then she was prepared to say almost anything – even lie if that would bring her closer to the truth.

  Suddenly in her mind, Penny heard the echo of her father’s voice. She could picture him sitting in the chair next to her bed, soft shadows falling across his face as he read to her from the book of poetry in his hand, so different from the tales of mystery and adventure that they usually shared.

  “A lie which is all a lie may be met and fought with outright, but a lie which is part a truth is a harder matter to fight.”

  In her father’s words, Penelope suddenly realised how she might gain Middleton’s trust: a lie wrapped in the truth. There was one thing that Sergeant Major Middleton and her father both shared…

  “My father said I should find you, sir,” she said, primly seating herself on one of the vacant chairs at the table. “He was under your command on the North-West Frontier. He told me you were the truest officer he ever had the privilege of serving with.”

  As Alfie joined them at the table, Middleton’s stare softened a little, this mention of an old army comrade taking his thoughts back to simpler times.

  “The Gordon Highlanders,” he murmured. “Finest men I have ever known.”

  His gaze focused on Penelope again.

  “What did you say your father’s name was, miss?”

  “Tredwell,” Penny replied, her eyes glistening in the gloom of the snug. “His name was Lieutenant Archibald Tredwell.”

  As the old soldier scratched at his prodigious beard, trying to place the name through an alcoholic fug, Penelope fought back her own tears. Since her parents’ funeral all those years ago, Penny hadn’t allowed herself to grieve. Instead she had poured out her misery into the pages of The Penny Dreadful. Now she had to make sure that her father’s magazine lived on in tribute to his memory.

  “I’m afraid I don’t recall a Lieutenant Tredwell,” Middleton finally replied, the words half slurred into the depths of his glass as he took a final swig. “Tell your father that he must have mistaken me for another man.”

  Wiping a tear from the corner of her eye, Penny slowly shook her head.

  “I can’t do that, sir,” she said, her voice cracking a little. “My father has been dead for the past five years.”

  A baffled look stole across the old soldier’s features.

  “I’m terribly sorry,” he began, bowing his head in sympathy. “But how then could your father have told you to find me?”

  On the wall of the snug, a tattered poster gave Penelope her answer.

  “I’ve seen her, sir,” Penelope replied, gesturing over Middleton’s shoulder to the poster behind him. “Miss Palladino – the medium. She told me that my father had a message for me – a message from the other side.” Penny stumbled over her words, her mind spinning the lie almost as quickly as she could speak it. “He told me that I needed to seek out Sergeant Major Middleton, the man who tried to save his life back at the Malakand Pass. He said that he owed you a debt of thanks and I now had to help you in your hour of need.”

  Beneath his silvering thatch of hair, Middleton’s brow furrowed with anxious thought.

  “My hour of need,” he murmured. “What exactly do you mean?”

  Penelope fixed him with a sympathetic stare.

  “He said you were haunted by a ghost, sir – a ghost who could walk through walls.”

  The blood drained from Middleton’s face, his deathly-pale features crumpling in horror.

  “My God,” he breathed. “You know about the spectre who stole the Crown Jewels.”

  His eyes darted past Penelope’s face, casting a furtive glance around the room as if fearful of who might have overheard him. Then the old solider gestured for Penny to come closer, leaning forward himself until the distance between them was only a matter of inches.

  Penelope wrinkled her nose as she smelled the stale stench of ale on his breath, but as Middleton began to speak again, his voice a low whisper, all thoughts of this disappeared as she listened to him recount what had happened on that fateful night.

  “It was the night of the tenth of May, an ordinary night just like any other, as I carried out my duties at the Tower. The gates were locked, as they always are, at eight minutes to eleven. First the Middle and the Byward Towers, then as I walked across the cobbles beneath the Bloody Tower I caught my first glimpse of him. At first I thought he was just a waif and stray who had somehow got lost in the Tower, but then when I stepped forward to challenge him, I saw his face beneath his scarf…”

  Middleton’s voice trailed into silence, his eyes glazing over as he relived that terrible moment again.

  Penelope leaned forward, eager to find out more. “What did you see?” she asked.

  “His face,” Middleton murmured, his distant gaze staring into the gloom. “It glowed.”

  Seated next to her, Penny heard Alfie stifle a chuckle and she shot him a warning glance. Middleton, however, didn’t even show that he’d heard this, his voice a cracked whisper as he continued to speak.

  “As a child I’d heard stories about the radiant boys – glowing ghosts that told of disasters to come. My grandmother used to say they were angels of death, and any man who saw them was destined to die.”

  Radiant boys… The echo of these words rang in Penny’s mind. She had heard this somewhere before. As she groped for the answer, Sergeant Major Middleton slowly pulled up the sleeve of his greatcoat, presenting his right arm to Penelope. She saw with a shudder the burn that covered his forearm: the shape of five fingers pressed against puckered flesh, the skin beneath a brilliant red. “I felt his touch, Miss Tredwell, and it wasn’t the touch of a mortal man.


  It still burns, and I fear that this wound will be the death of me. You cannot help me now. I have failed the King and the shame will follow me to an early grave.”

  With a pained grimace, Middleton pulled back his sleeve, hiding the burn once more. “Leave me now,” he said, a note of command returning to the old soldier’s voice. “I want to be left in peace with my sins.”

  Penelope opened her mouth to ask another question, but before she could speak, she felt Alfie rest his hand on her shoulder.

  “We should leave now,” he said, his face almost as pale as the soldier’s. Behind him, Penny could see the huddle of labourers rising from their chairs, angry stares darting in their direction. Leaving Sergeant Major Middleton staring into the bottom of his empty glass, Penny and Alfie hurried for the door.

  “So what now?” Alfie asked once they were safely outside the tavern, the two of them hastening up Horselydown Lane. “We still don’t know who might have stolen the Crown Jewels.”

  Blinking in the late afternoon sunlight, Penelope shaded her eyes with her hand. In her mind, she could still see the image of the burn seared across the old soldier’s skin, the impossible echo of his words haunting her still. Glowing ghosts… Angels of death… The radiant boys… Her mind whirred, the words finally clicking into place. She now knew where she had heard this before. In the offices of The Penny Dreadful, scattered amidst the countless competition entries, she remembered the torn newspaper clippings reporting sightings of strange wraiths and radiant boys haunting the streets of London.

  She turned back towards Alfie. “Oh, but we do,” she replied with a smile. “We’re looking for the radiant boys.”

  VIII

  Penelope studied the newspapers fanned out across the reading-room table in front of her: The Times, The Morning Post, The Illustrated London News and countless more. Newsprint stained her fingertips as she leafed through the pages of the Evening Standard. Beneath its masthead, the date Monday, May 12, 1902 could be read. Two days after Sergeant Major Middleton said the Crown Jewels had been stolen.

  Penny’s eyes scanned the rows of columns, flicking past each article and report in turn, searching for the clue that would bring her one step closer to solving this mystery. Of course, there was no mention of the theft of the Crown Jewels in any of the newspapers she had read; Inspector Drake and his men had made sure of that. No, Penelope was searching for a different sort of story.

  Her gaze snagged on a brief article tucked away at the bottom of page thirteen, its headline telling her that she had found her lead at last.

  A RADIANT BOY HAUNTS BLACKFRIARS

  The neighbourhood of Ludgate Hill has been thrown into a state of extraordinary excitement by the rumour that a supernatural apparition has been sighted. On Saturday night, Henry Chappell, a respectable-looking man, was returning to his lodgings at 6 Carter Lane, Blackfriars, when he reportedly saw an apparition walking through the wall of the Old Bell Tavern. Several other revellers frequenting the tavern attested to witnessing the same, with one even describing how he pursued the apparition along Ludgate Hill where the insubstantial form disappeared without a trace. The description of the spectre given by each of the witnesses is the same – a young man with glowing features dressed in a long flowing coat.

  A small smile of satisfaction played around Penelope’s lips. This was the very same story she had first seen clipped from the pages of this newspaper and posted to her at The Penny Dreadful. At the time she had dismissed it as yet another half-baked competition entry, the person who sent it seemingly believing that Montgomery Flinch could conjure up a tale of the macab from such meagre fare. Her gaze settled again on the headline:

  A RADIANT BOY HAUNTS BLACKFRIARS

  The few scant details reported here seemed to match the description that Sergeant Major Middleton had given her exactly: a young man with glowing features, dressed in a long flowing coat; a boy who could walk through walls.

  The story of The Thief Who Wasn’t There had been here all along, she just hadn’t realised it. This must be the man, if it was a man, who had stolen the Crown Jewels.

  Taking a careful note of where the sighting had been reported, Penny pushed the newspaper to one side. Beneath this lay a map of London, the city’s streets and parks covering most of the table. Seated around her, the other library patrons muttered reprovingly as the rustle of papers disturbed their peace. Ignoring this, Penelope searched out Blackfriars on the map, marking the exact spot with a cross and against this noting the date and time when the sighting had been reported. Clearing the rest of the newspapers out of the way, she studied the map with a sigh.

  The map showed the whole of London pitted with the marks Penelope had made. From Mayfair to Sloane Square, South Kensington to the Elephant and Castle, a graveyard of crosses were scattered across the city. No rhyme and reason, it seemed, to where the ghost of the radiant boy had been seen. These sightings didn’t just date from the night of the tenth of May. Indeed, the reports of strange glowing figures seemed to have plagued the city for the past month, with light-hearted articles detailing ghostly sightings tucked away under News in Brief. But if anyone took the trouble of joining the dots, it looked like an invasion of the dead…

  A sudden gleam of realisation shone in Penelope’s pale-green eyes, the idea coming to her in an instant. That’s what she had to do. Reaching beneath her chair, she lifted her valise up on to the table, unfastening its clasp with a satisfying click. As a chorus of tuts sounded again, Penny drew out a ruler from her bag and placed this on the map. Moving her case to one side, she began to draw a series of lines between each of the ink crosses she had already marked on the map, working through these in order to trace the paths that the ghostly figure must have taken as he slipped through the streets of the city.

  Gradually, a pattern began to emerge as the lines meandered through Westminster, Whitehall and the Mall. By tracing each night’s journey back to its earliest sighting, the lines all seemed to converge on a single spot – a property near the corner of Carlton House Terrace in the heart of St James’s. Penelope frowned. What business could a ghost have in this fashionable street populated by lords, earls and ambassadors?

  She glanced down at her watch. It was half past four. Alfie should be back from the printers now. Even though The Penny Dreadful had been banned from publication, there was still work to be done: printer’s bills to pay, paper orders to cancel, the pulping of returns to oversee. In Wigram’s absence as he tried to free Monty, Alfie had stepped into the breach, taking on the older man’s duties as he and Penny fought to keep the magazine alive.

  Folding up the map, Penelope placed it in her valise, snapping the clasp shut with a determined look. She would pick up Alfie on the way to Carlton House Terrace.

  It was time to go ghost hunting.

  Away from the din and bustle of traffic, Penny and Alfie hurried down Pall Mall. Garlands of flowers and strings of gaily coloured bunting criss-crossed the street; the coronation decorations hung resplendent between the grand palatial buildings. Beneath this finery, a stream of elegantly dressed men strolled down the pavement, hansom cabs dropping their occupants at the doors of one or other of the grand gentlemen’s clubs that called this street their home. Passing by the classical columns of the United Service Club, Penelope turned left down Waterloo Place.

  “So we’re following in the footsteps of a ghost?” Alfie asked as he studied the oversized map flapping in his hands. Taking his arm, Penny steered him past the sneering glance of a well-heeled businessman, the pavement narrowing as they passed beneath the broad-leafed trees bordering the club’s private garden.

  “We’re following in the footsteps of a thief,” she corrected him. “I can’t see what use a ghost would have for the Crown Jewels of Empire.”

  “Perhaps it’s the ghost of Henry the Eighth?” Alfie suggested with a grin. “Come back from the grave to claim his crown.”

  Penelope shook her head as they crossed the road at the end of the
avenue.

  “I’ve never heard of a ghost whose touch could brand a living man,” she said. “Not even the ghost of a king.”

  In his mind, Alfie saw the burn mark scorched across Middleton’s arm, the memory of it sending a shiver down his spine.

  Penelope came to a halt beneath the Duke of York’s statue, its shadow lengthening as evening approached. Taking the map from Alfie, she studied the place where the lines converged. To her left she could see a grand terrace of white-stucco-fronted houses overlooking a private park. This was the street where the radiant boy’s nightly journeys seemed to begin. Perhaps one of these houses held the key to unlocking this mystery.

  With Alfie by her side, Penny started to walk along the terrace. The houses were set back behind wrought-iron railings. Corinthian columns buttressed sweeping balconies, each property reaching up for three storeys. Penelope gazed up in awe, her eyes searching for some kind of clue amid the grandeur. Then she spotted it, a nameplate fixed beside the front door of the second house on the left: The Society for the Advancement of Science. Her mind flicked back to the anonymous letter, her fingers twitching as she recollected the confession she had read. You must believe me when I say I do not wish to do these things that they ask of me, but when that terrible fire races through my veins I am powerless to refuse. I am a living man, but these experiments are turning me into a ghost. These experiments…

  “This is the place,” Penny murmured, staring up at the elegant façade. The high windows lay in darkness, blinds drawn to keep out the early-evening sun. “It’s time to find the thief who wasn’t there.”

  She climbed up the stone steps that led to the front door, Alfie following uneasily behind. He glanced nervously up at the grand portico.

  “Are you just going to knock on the door?” he asked.