by Paul Stewart
I was about to answer him, when the chemist continued, the words spilling out of his mouth in a spontaneous confession.
‘Yes, I supplied Mr Oliphant with the chemicals he needed for his trade – and a strange mixture of powders and tinctures they turned out to be. Nitrates, iodides, naphtha and the like. Dangerous substances. Deadly substances if casually handled or mistakenly mixed. And I warned him, oh, how I warned him, but he took no notice. No, not him. He knew better, you see. He had a vision, a grand experiment; one day he and those precious “oliphantypes” of his would be famous … And he paid, in cash of course, up front for everything, until the explosion …’
The chemist paused, then rose from the sack, and came back to face me across the counter.
‘Horribly burned, he was, when he came round after it happened. He accused me of adulterating my stock, mixing sawdust in my powders, vinegar in my tinctures … As if I’d do such a thing! Told me I’d be sorry, before he stormed off.
‘Then I started noticing things going missing, stock running short, and just the same chemicals that I’d supplied Mr Oliphant with, though he was nowhere to be seen. So I took precautions, armed myself in case I caught him at it … Now he’s gone and died of his burns!’ he added mournfully. ‘And I’ll be blamed. Oh, yes, I’ll be blamed!’
‘Laurence Oliphant didn’t die of his wounds,’ I said, noticing the pair of pistols and an old cavalry rapier propped up against the chemist’s side of the counter. ‘He was murdered. Stabbed to death by a fencing sword.’
Miles Morgenstern was the next name on my list and, unlike Sir Crispin Blears in his flamboyant mansion and Albert Hoskins in his commercial premises, much harder to track down. Clarissa Oliphant had described him as Laurence’s assistant, though when, with the aid of a local poultry merchant, I finally traced him to a small garret in a thin, rundown, six-storey house a few streets away from Blood Alley, Miles Morgenstern seemed to have set up in business for himself.
His name and title – M. Morgenstern, Photo-Gravurist and Albumen Printer – were etched onto one of a dozen small copper plaques screwed to the side of the front entrance. His business was on the top floor. I knocked on the chipped garret door, which was opened by a young man with curly red hair and round steel-rimmed spectacles which made his pale blue eyes appear to bulge.
‘Miles Morgenstern?’ I said. He nodded. ‘Former assistant to Laurence Oliphant?’
The bulging pale blue eyes blinked twice. ‘This is about Laurence’s murder, isn’t it?’
It was my turn to nod.
‘The streets around here are awash with it,’ he said. ‘Every back-yard gossip is talking about it over the washing lines. I believe they’ve arrested his sister.’ He paused and peered closely. ‘But who are you?’
I told him that I was looking into the circumstances of her brother’s murder on Clarissa Oliphant’s behalf, which seemed to satisfy him, because he nodded.
‘You’d better come in,’ he said.
I followed him into a small, dark room with bare boards and sloping ceilings. It made my own modest rooms on Caged Lark Lane seem like a palace. Everything was crammed together, and seemed to have more than one use.
A single tin bowl doubled up as kitchen sink and wash basin. A mattress bolted to a plank of wood was a table during the day and a bed at night. His washing was draped from the wooden struts of a clothes dryer which hung from the ceiling, while a flat-topped stove beneath provided a means of cooking and dried his clothes at the same time.
‘I always knew those chemicals would be the death of him,’ Miles Morgenstern was saying as he removed a book and a glass of water, and pushed the bedside table across to me as a stool. ‘I warned him often enough …’
‘But aren’t you in the same line of business?’ I asked. ‘The fixing of images from life using chemicals?’
‘Oh, I am, Mr Grimes,’ he said. He was perching on the corner of the table opposite me, his fingers picking at the mattress ticking beneath. ‘But I use natural substances wherever possible. Gelatine and gum arabic. Egg white. Potato starch.’
I smiled to myself. Eggs and potatoes. It seemed that even his food had more than one use.
‘Of course, there are some chemicals I can’t do without,’ he said, ‘but I use ones that I can rely on, rather than Laurence’s risky experiments.’ He climbed to his feet. ‘Perhaps I could show you, Mr Grimes.’
Unhooking a hanging lantern, he squeezed between the table and the stool, and opened a narrow door at the back of the room. I followed him, and found myself in a long thin attic, its sloping ceilings making me feel as though I was inside the hull of an upturned boat.
Worktops lined both walls, with shelves beneath and storage hooks above. There was a curious musty smell to the air, almost like a farmyard, and as I made my way sideways down the narrow galley, I thought I heard clucking – an idea confirmed when I came to a chicken coop with three feather-footed bantams pecking at the wire. This must have been how the poultry merchant two streets away came to have Morgenstern’s address.
‘You’ve discovered my girls,’ said Miles Morgenstern with a throaty chuckle. ‘Ruby, Alice and Maud.’ He took a handful of millet and corn from a sack which hung from a hook above, and threw it inside the coop. ‘It’s the white from their eggs I use for my albumen prints.’
‘Albumen prints?’ I said. ‘Not oliphantypes then?’
‘Certainly not,’ Miles Morgenstern said emphatically. ‘I gave those up when I left Laurence to set up on my own. He didn’t like it, but I felt I had to.’ He pointed to the eggs. ‘You must first beat the egg whites to a froth, then add a saturated solution of iodide of potassium. Thirty drops for each egg …’
As he spoke, Miles Morgenstern became more and more animated, his voice increasingly shrill. He was clearly enthralled by the process he was describing.
‘What’re those?’ I asked, pointing to a rack of square plates of glass beside a large, empty vat.
‘Those? Those, I coat with a gelatine mix,’ he said. ‘I make up large batches of the stuff in the vat there. A ratio of fifteen grains of Newton’s patent opaque gelatine to a two-ounce bottle of water, plus eighteen grains of bromide of potassium …’
I inspected the worktops as he continued what was rapidly becoming a lecture, making my way slowly past flat-bottomed trays, stoppered flasks, pairs of scales and racks of pipettes. I came to a pile of paper prints and held one up to the flickering yellow light.
It was the image of a serious-faced boy seated on an oversized armchair, his bony arms clamping a plump black and white Jack Russell to his chest. The next was a picture of a street singer, her mouth open and eyes gleaming with passion. Next, a juggling clown, his blurred hands and the smear of thrown skittles making the picture look as though it was in motion, and after that a pretty girl wearing a mobcap and apron, a milk ladle in her hand …
I realized that Miles Morgenstern was standing at my shoulder. ‘They’re very good,’ I told him.
‘Thank you, Mr Grimes,’ he said, his face glowing with pride. ‘Every bit as clear and resonant as Laurence’s oliphantypes, although he flew into one of his rages when I tried to get him to admit it. That was when I left his employ …’
‘Did he often have these rages?’ I asked.
‘The chemicals he used to produce his oliphantypes were dangerous,’ he said. ‘Very dangerous. I witnessed the damage they were causing.’ He shook his head. ‘Clouds of mercury vapour, cyanide, ether … Noxious toxins, Mr Grimes, all of them, and they did great damage to Laurence’s personality.’
He shook his head regretfully, and frowned.
‘When I first met him,’ he went on thoughtfully, ‘Laurence Oliphant was a quiet, mild-mannered man, generous and sympathetic to others. But as time passed, he became increasingly ill-tempered. Moody. Volatile. He would sulk morosely for hours, then explode into violent rage. He was always tired, but unable to sleep. He lost his appetite. And his hands, once so steady as they worked wi
th the dangerous chemicals, developed a fine tremor that left him clumsy and accident-prone.’ He turned and walked back along the attic. ‘And every mishap he had would leave him more mistrustful and suspicious of those around him. Eventually, I found his rages and accusations intolerable, so I left and set up my own business – which is what you see before you.’
‘How did Laurence view this competition?’ I asked.
Miles Morgenstern smiled wryly. ‘Much as I’d expected. He went berserk.’ His brow furrowed. ‘He shook his fist at me and shouted that I’d be sorry. It was the last time I saw him, although his premises are only a few streets away.’
We had reached the front door, which he pulled open. I stepped outside.
‘Such a waste of a brilliant mind,’ he mused. ‘Such a terrible loss …’
I shook his hand and was about to set off down the stairs, when a thought occurred to me. I turned back.
‘How did you become Laurence’s assistant in the first place?’ I asked.
‘Oh, I thought you’d have known that,’ Miles Morgenstern smiled good-naturedly, his blue eyes bulging from behind his spectacles. ‘His sister, Clarissa, introduced me. You see, she was my governess in my younger days. She taught me to fence.’
Three names, three different stories, yet from my enquiries I’d learned that they were connected by Laurence Oliphant’s sense of grievance against each of them. But there was a fourth name on the list that Clarissa Oliphant had given me; that of Dean Henry Dodson, Laurence’s influential tutor at university.
The following day, I travelled up the river by flat-bottomed barge to the leafy banks and lawns of the ancient university Laurence had attended, and visited his old college. But all I could discover of Laurence’s tutor was that he had gone on indefinite leave, a simple notice to this effect, written in his own hand, having been found nailed to the door of his study. The college authorities seemed remarkably untroubled by this turn of events. From what I could gather, they disapproved of the dean’s interest in photography – among other things – and seemed happy to see the back of him.
A firebrand orator and scourge of the university authorities, the dean attracted a loyal band of devoted followers from among the students he taught. These self-styled ‘Dodson’s Diehards’ took their lead from the dean, experimenting in the ancient arts of alchemy and the occult, as well as the very latest fields of interest, such as photography. Most loyal and vocal of Dodson’s Diehards, I discovered from a sleepy college bursar, was Laurence Oliphant himself, before he left the university to practise law.
Later on, as the bursar snored in his gatehouse, I slipped away and headed back to the city, placing a frayed card in the third left-hand pocket of my new poacher’s waistcoat. It was the very card that had been nailed to Dean Henry Dodson’s door, and that the bursar kept in a drawer of his desk:
Have left on important business of a personal nature. Will be gone some considerable time.
Dean Henry Dodson
It had been a busy few days; yet, as I turned the corner of Caged Lark Lane and headed for my rooms, I realized I was no nearer to finding Laurence Oliphant’s murderer than I had been when I left Clarissa Oliphant in Whitegate Prison. I was just about to climb a drainpipe when a newspaper vendor’s guttural cry made me stop dead in my tracks.
‘Read all about it! Tragic death of high society painter! Sir Crispin Blears killed!’
Having bought a copy of the Midtown Scrivener from the paperlad on the corner, I entered number 3 Caged Lark Lane and headed up the stairs to my rooms in the attic. I slipped my key into the lock and heard the sound of Kaiser’s warning bark, and opened the door to see the loyal creature standing in the middle of the room, staring at me. As he clapped eyes on me, his tail started wagging and he trotted towards me.
‘Good lad,’ I told him, ruffling his tousled head.
I was pleased he was there. After the day I’d had, I didn’t feel like being alone. Once he was settled on the rug in front of a roaring coal fire, I pulled up an armchair, kicked off my highstacking boots and scrutinized the front page of the newspaper:
Sir Crispin Blears, renowned portrait painter and senior member of the Academy of Arts, was the victim of an accident outside his mansion in Batavia Park yesterday. According to eye-witness reports, the artist stepped out into the path of an oncoming coach and four, was severely trampled and then pinned beneath the rear wheels. Despite the ministrations of by-standers, including at least one physician and several fellow artists, the accident proved fatal.
Sir Crispin Blears was the son of Roland Blears, a noted tea importer, and first rose to prominence as a devoted student of Dean Henry Dodson of New College. After leaving university, he scored a notable triumph at the Academy Summer Exhibition with his canvas, ‘The Battle of the Silesian Plains’ …
Kaiser gave a contented sigh and rolled over on the rug.
‘Sleep well,’ I whispered, placing the fireguard in front of the fireplace. ‘Tomorrow, you and I are going for a walk in Batavia Park.’
The next morning, after sharing a frying pan of breakfast sausages with my Moravian boarhound, the two of us set off for Batavia Park. Half an hour later, we arrived outside Sir Crispin Blears’ Moorish mansion.
A dark stain in the dusty street outside marked the spot where the portrait painter had met with his fatal accident – though a restless night of tossing and turning had convinced me that there was more to this than met the eye, and I was anxious to inspect the scene. As if to confirm my suspicions, I felt a hand on my shoulder and turned to see the frowning face of Sir Crispin Blears’ butler, Carruthers.
‘You’re that tick-tock lad,’ he croaked, ‘that visited the master a few days ago.’
I confirmed to him that I was.
‘The master was most unsettled following your visit, Mr Grimes, and no mistake,’ the old butler told me, his brow furrowed with concern. ‘Then the day before yesterday, I came into his studio and found him staring out of the window. All at once, he gave a cry of recognition and rushed out of the house. I went to the window, just in time to see a curious, hunched figure beckoning to him from the street. The master ran towards him and then …’
‘And then, what?’ I said.
Carruthers stared down at the stain in the dust.
‘The master grasped the cloak the figure wore,’ he said, ‘which seemed to come away in his hands, and I lost sight of the wearer. As I watched, the master, clutching the cloak, rose up in the air and then toppled into the street, just as the three o’clock post coach galloped past …’
The old butler trembled. He was still clearly traumatized by what he had witnessed. I took him by the arm and guided him back towards his former employer’s mansion.
‘I don’t suppose,’ I said gently, ‘that you have the cloak in question?’
Carruthers shuddered violently, then nodded. ‘I prised the garment from my master’s cold, dead hands, Mr Grimes, before the undertakers took his poor, broken body away.’
He entered the mansion and shuffled across the tiled hallway and through a door. Moments later, he returned holding a dusty, blood-stained cloak of worsted tweed. He handed it to me. Kaiser’s disquiet increased, and he whined and snarled, his fur bristling as he sniffed the hem of the cloak.
‘The police weren’t interested, Mr Grimes,’ Carruthers said ruefully. ‘Dismissed my story as the ravings of an old retainer, no doubt. Simple accident, they maintained, and that’s the story the papers all carried …’
Carruthers continued speaking in a low, mournful voice, but I was no longer listening. For as Kaiser tugged agitatedly on the end of his leash, I was staring at the label stitched into the collar of the cloak in my hands.
H. Dodson, it read.
So the cloak belonged to Dean Henry Dodson, the mysterious academic who had taught both Laurence Oliphant and Crispin Blears. Now, the pair he had tutored were dead, and the cloak clearly implicated the dean in the so-called accident that had killed Sir Crispin. I t
hought of the hideous face I’d glimpsed in the back window of Laurence Oliphant’s lock-up. What if that had been Dodson also? And what if both deaths had been by his hand?
All three men, in their different ways, had been involved with the new discipline of ‘painting with light’, and as PB had pointed out, squabbles were always breaking out between rival academics working in the same field. Perhaps Dodson had become envious and jealous of his former students, envying Crispin Blears’ success and jealous of Laurence Oliphant’s breakthroughs in photography.
I remembered the note the eccentric don had left on his study door. Have left on important business … Will be gone some considerable time … I was beginning to suspect he’d planned the whole thing, disappearing from the university and setting off for the city with murder in mind.
First Laurence, and now Sir Crispin Blears. Who would be next? I wondered, as I gazed at the blood-stained cloak in my hands.
Since the dean knew Laurence Oliphant and his pioneering work, he would also have met Laurence’s assistant, Miles Morgenstern – or at the very least heard of his own work in photogravure. What was more, since Albert Hoskins was the primary supplier of the photographic chemicals that all of them required, there was every likelihood that Dodson also knew the owner of A.G. Hoskins Industrial Chemists …
I shivered as I remembered the burglary at Clarissa Oliphant’s house the night after her brother’s murder, and the strange presence I had sensed in his bedchamber. I’d felt it again in Centennial Park on that bright, cold Sunday morning when I fell from Will’s wheelboard, and Kaiser had sensed it too.
‘You lost sight of the wearer, you said,’ I muttered, turning to the old butler.
‘That’s right, sir. The master grabbed the cloak and there was no one there,’ Carruthers said. ‘Whoever had been wearing it disappeared like … like …’
‘A phantom,’ I breathed.