Wild Boy

by Rob Lloyd Jones

  “Who are them people outside it?” Clarissa said.

  “Coppers,” Wild Boy said, and cursed. They had to get inside that house.

  But before he could think what to do, Clarissa turned and ran off — a blur of red and gold charging down the alley. “I got a plan. Follow me.”

  Wild Boy chased after her, whispering for her to slow down, but she was in her element now. She swept along the back of the houses, back-flipped over a fence, and vaulted over a wall.

  “Hurry up!” she called.

  He caught up with her in a small yard surrounded by high walls. Brightly colored handkerchiefs hung on a washing line, fluttering in the fog, and the voices of the policemen echoed down an alley that trailed along the side of the building. A shiver of excitement ran up Wild Boy’s spine. This was Doctor Griffin’s house.

  Clarissa was already at the back door, fiddling her picks in the lock. “It’s bolted from the inside,” she said. “This window’s barred an’ all.”

  Wild Boy moved closer, intrigued by the iron bars that protected the window. He ran a finger around the mortar where the metal met the window ledge. “These bars are new,” he said.

  “So?”

  “So the Doctor was scared of something.”

  “But how did his killer get in?”

  Wild Boy stepped back and surveyed the building in the light of a spluttering gas lamp. A cloud of fog parted just enough for him to see the first-floor window. It wasn’t barred.

  “Can you get up there?” he asked.

  “Course,” Clarissa said. “I’m a circus star, remember?”

  She kicked of her boots, tied the laces together, and slug them over her shoulder. Then she unhooked the washing line at both ends and threw that over her shoulder too. “I’ll pull you up after,” she said.

  In one lightning move she sprang onto the top of an outhouse that stood against the wall. Then she shinned up an iron drainpipe and stepped casually onto the first-floor window ledge. “This window’s locked from inside an’ all. I’ll try higher.”

  Reaching up, she began to climb the wall like a spider, her fingers and toes curled into the gaps between the bricks.

  Wild Boy watched in amazement. Sir Oswald had been right — it was useful to have an acrobat on his side. He saw that all of the fear had vanished from Clarissa’s face, and her eyes seemed to sparkle even in the fog. She looked happy.

  She glanced down and saw him watching. “What?” she said.

  “Nothing,” Wild Boy replied, trying to sound unimpressed. “Hurry it up, will you?”

  A few moments later she reached the second-floor window. And then she disappeared into the swirling fog above.

  Behind Wild Boy, something moved. His heart lurched in his chest, and he flinched back, staring around the yard. “Hello?” he said.

  He felt a touch on his shoulder and jumped in fright. But it was just Clarissa’s rope. The end was tied in a loop that brushed the ground, waiting for him to climb on. Quickly he stepped into the loop and clung on to the line, as Clarissa began to yank him up the side of the house. As he rose, he looked down, searching the yard for any other movement. But there was none.

  The rope scraped over the gutter. “Climb over!” Clarissa called.

  Fighting the pain in his shoulder, Wild Boy pulled himself onto a wide ledge that framed a sloping attic roof. Clarissa sat close by, her feet flat against a chimney around which she’d pulled the rope. She was out of breath, but looked pleased with herself.

  “This is how we do it in the circus,” she said, tugging her boots back on.

  The fog was thinning, offering glimpses along the river — the sleek stone arches of London Bridge in one direction; in the other, the grim gray bulk of the Tower of London. The fog was confusing, disorientating. It played tricks with your mind. Wild Boy hoped that was what had just happened in the yard. . . .

  Clarissa already had her lock picks out as she tried to open a door in the attic roof. She swore, banged a fist against the wood. “This is bolted inside too — this house is like a prison. How could the killer have gotten in and out?”

  Wild Boy wasn’t sure, but he was more and more eager to find out. He sensed that the answer could be the clue they needed to catch the killer. But he couldn’t solve it unless they could get inside. “Maybe we could —”

  CRASH!

  With one powerful kick, Clarissa broke open the door. The crash echoed like thunder around the rooftop. “Got it,” she said, grinning.

  Wild Boy could barely believe what she’d done. “Are you crazy? The coppers are down there!”

  He rushed to the edge of the roof, but was relieved to hear the police still chatting in the street below.

  Clarissa pushed the door. “I done my bit,” she said. “Now you better do yours.”

  The attic door swung open and the darkness breathed in, sucking thick streams of fog into its gaping mouth.

  Wild Boy stepped cautiously into Doctor Griffin’s house. It was as dark as a pit. He was supposed to be searching for clues to hunt the killer, but he could barely see five yards in front of his face. He groped his way forward and felt something hard and round perched on a shelf.

  “Wait,” Clarissa said. “I found a light.” She struck the flint and steel of a tinderbox and lit a candle.

  Wild Boy blinked, dazzled. When he looked again he was staring at a human skull. He staggered back and bumped into Clarissa.

  “Get off me,” she snapped. “Don’t —”

  Her mouth stayed open but no more words came out. She turned and stared around the low-roofed attic. “Bones,” she said finally.

  The attic was full of bones — hundreds of human bones. There were bones all over the floor, bones in boxes, and bones in stacks against the slatted walls. Human skulls lined a shelf, and two whole skeletons guarded the top of a spiral staircase that wound deeper into the house.

  “What is this place?” Clarissa said.

  Wild Boy crouched to examine several books in a pile. Titles on the spines read Encyclopaedia of Anatomy and The Morbid Dissection of the Human Body. Inside were drawings of human bodies — diagrams of twisting muscles and maps of internal organs, like those he’d seen in Professor Wollstonecraft’s caravan.

  “I bet the hooded man did this!” Clarissa said. “He must’ve murdered hundreds of people. He’s obsessed with bones!”

  “Clarissa,” Wild Boy said, before she got carried away, “these bones ain’t got nothing to do with the hooded man. This is an anatomy school.”

  He’d heard of these places — medical schools where doctors carved up corpses to study their insides. Clarissa looked horrified, but Wild Boy felt a shiver of excitement run through his hairs.

  Clarissa handed him the candle. “You go first.”

  The floorboards groaned under his bare feet as he led the way down the rickety spiral of wooden steps. The wallpaper was faded and peeling away, revealing walls that were streaked with damp. There was an acrid smell in the air, like rotting meat, that grew stronger with each step.

  At the bottom of the stairs was a room that stretched from window to window along the length of the house. Several wooden tables ran down its center. On each was a sack filled with something large and lumpy, like a bag of potatoes.

  Clarissa pulled her hair around her nose. “Where are we now?”

  “A classroom,” Wild Boy said.

  He spotted signs of the tables’ grim purpose everywhere: rags on the floor to soak up sticky spillages, iron buckets to catch fatty drippings. This was where the Doctor’s students dissected corpses. No wonder the place stank.

  His heart beat harder as he guided his candle over the tables and the sacks. Most of the bags were tied with rope, but one had fallen open. Wild Boy raised the top . . . and stepped sharply back, gagging with revulsion.

  “What is it?” Clarissa said. “What’s in there?”

  Wild Boy knew he should warn her, but he couldn’t resist the opportunity this presented. So he just
stepped back and shrugged. “Nothing much,” he said.

  She had to look. When she did her face turned almost green. Inside the sack was the body of a young woman. With wide-open eyes and slate-gray skin, the corpse looked like one of the waxworks that showmen displayed at the fair.

  Clarissa leaned against the table, fighting back sick. “You should have said,” she seethed.

  “I did say.”

  “You said nothing much. There’s a dead body in there!”

  “A dead body is nothing much.”

  Wild Boy didn’t really believe that. Until last week he’d never even seen a corpse. Now he was in a room full of the things. He was scared, but fascinated too.

  “Why are they still here?” Clarissa said.

  “Must be the fog,” Wild Boy said. “The coppers can’t take them away till it clears.”

  His eyes widened as he reached the table at the far end of the room. “Over here,” he said. “The murder was done here.”

  Clarissa rushed closer. “How do you know?”

  And then she saw. This table was different from the others. The body laid on it wasn’t in a sack but covered by a sheet of black tarpaulin. And painted in white on the sheet were three words:

  “The Doctor’s body,” Clarissa said. “It’s still here an’ all.”

  Wild Boy raised his candle so it lit the wall behind the table. There, in crimson letters that had dripped down the wallpaper, was written:

  Wild Boy hocked up a ball of spit, fired it hard at the wall, and watched it trickle down over the bloody writing. Seeing his name written like that — written in blood — made him more determined than ever to catch whoever had done this, to make the person pay for setting him up.

  He could tell from the look on Clarissa’s face that she felt the same. She snorted, and blasted another oyster of phlegm at the wall. “The hooded man’s gonna regret messing with us,” she said.

  Wild Boy turned and took hold of the tarpaulin. “You ready?”

  Clarissa nodded. “Ready.”

  He yanked the sheet from the table, revealing the corpse of Doctor Charles Ignatius Griffin. They both recoiled, revolted by what they saw — the bloated body of a young man with bushy black side-whiskers. The man might have been handsome once, but his eyes were now gray and glazed with death, his cheeks were sunken, and the tip of a dark tongue rested between cracked black lips. His sleeves were rolled up, and his shirt and waistcoat were torn and stiff with dry blood.

  “It’s him,” Clarissa said.

  Wild Boy recognized him too. Doctor Griffin was the man from whom they stole the letter at Greenwich Fair.

  Sick rose from Wild Boy’s belly and stung his throat. But he forced it back and edged closer. “Look,” he said.

  On the Doctor’s finger was a gold ring, decorated with a single raised letter — a G. “Professor Wollstonecraft had the same ring. But it was gone when I saw him in the stable. The killer took it.”

  Setting his candle down, he pulled the ring from the corpse’s rigid finger and slipped it into his pocket.

  “You’re stealing it?” Clarissa said.

  “I ain’t stealing it. It’s a clue.”

  “Oh. Anyway, how did the killer get in here if all the windows and doors were locked from inside? It doesn’t make sense.”

  “I know. . . .”

  “So why are you grinning like that?”

  Wild Boy turned, hiding the smile that had spread across his face. Clarissa was right. This crime didn’t make sense — and that thrilled him. This was the puzzle he’d come here to solve.

  Almost immediately his eyes were drawn to clues around the table. Clarissa kept talking, but he didn’t hear. His senses were now totally focused on the crime scene. He stepped back and studied the bloodstains on the floor. Then he crouched and picked up an empty sack beside the table. Turned it over, his grin spreading even wider.

  “Ha!” he said.

  “What? What do you see?”

  He rushed to the other end of the table and inspected a cabinet of surgical instruments — long, curving knives and miniature hacksaws. He prodded one of the knives, and then did the same to those in other cabinets along the classroom. His excitement mounted as more clues emerged in the candlelight. He already had a good idea of what had happened here, but a few pieces of the puzzle still didn’t fit together.

  He rushed back to the Doctor’s corpse and examined a large bloodstain that ran over the edge of the table’s surface. He drew a fingertip slowly around the mark, tracing its pattern.

  “Splash marks,” he muttered.

  Leaning closer, he peeled a single strand of hair from the blood. He held it so close to the candle that its end sizzled in the flame.

  “Is that a silver hair, or white?” Clarissa said. Eager to look busy, she grabbed a pencil from a cabinet and added the clue to her list. “Tell me what you’ve seen! How did the killer break into the house?”

  “He didn’t.”

  “What?”

  Wild Boy nodded toward the array of surgical tools. “See them knives? They’ve been sharpened, but the others in the room ain’t.”

  “So?”

  “So the Doctor was about to use them. He was working when he got killed, or he was about to. His sleeves are rolled up, see?”

  “He was about to cut up one of these bodies?”

  “No. Not one of these.”

  Wild Boy stood over the empty sack on the floor. In a way, he wished he was wrong about this. In a bigger way, he was exhilarated that he was right. “This bag had a body inside. The Doctor lifted it onto the table. There are threads from the sack on his hand and on the table, see?”

  “So what happened to the body?”

  “Exactly!” Wild Boy said. “Now look, the Doctor’s blood is here on the table. These sides have splash marks. The blood didn’t spill out. It landed here.”

  “You mean . . . What do you mean?”

  “I mean he was stabbed while he leaned over the table. Stabbed by someone lying on the table.”

  “But the person lying on the table . . . It was the dead body.”

  “Or so the Doctor thought.”

  The color drained from Clarissa’s cheeks. “No . . .” she whispered.

  “The killer never broke in; he was brought in. He must have watched this house, known how secure it was. The only people allowed inside that the Doctor didn’t know were these corpses. So the killer disguised himself as a dead body — naked, in the sack. He waited until the Doctor lifted the sack onto the table. And just as Doctor Griffin opened it, the killer grabbed his knife and struck.”

  “But . . . What sort of person would do that?”

  What sort of person could do that, Wild Boy wondered. The resolve, the determination. How long had the killer waited in that sack, how patient and still?

  He looked up from the table. Clarissa was staring at him. “What?” he said.

  “You’re grinning again!”

  “I . . . No, I ain’t.”

  “All right,” Clarissa said, “so now we know how it was done. But the students who found the Doctor forced their way in as soon as they heard him scream. So the killer was still in this house. Where did he go?”

  Wild Boy paced around the table, searching for another clue he’d spotted among the bloodstains. The Doctor’s blood was everywhere — dried in splatters about the floor and glistening in the grooves between the boards. Crouching low, he circled one of the stains with his finger. The dark drip tapered away from the murder scene, toward the stairs at the end of the classroom.

  “Answer me!” Clarissa demanded. “Where did he go? The doors were all locked, remember?”

  “That way,” Wild Boy said. “The killer went downstairs.”

  “But why?”

  Wild Boy felt that tingle again in his hair. He looked up and his emerald eyes twinkled in the candlelight. “I dunno,” he said. “But we’re about to find out.”

  Wild Boy had no idea what he’d expected
to find on the first floor of Doctor Griffin’s house, but he hadn’t expected this.

  He raised his candle, scattering glittery light around thousands of glass jars crammed onto shelves and into cabinets up and down the long room. Each jar was filled with golden fluid, and suspended in the fluid was part of a human corpse. Grisly objects loomed from the dark — a severed hand, an amputated foot, the honeycomb lining of a human stomach.

  “Looks like a museum,” he said, gazing along the rows of pickled organs and limbs.

  Clarissa peered anxiously over his shoulder. “It’s horrid,” she said.

  Wild Boy nodded, pretending to agree. In fact, he was fascinated. He wished he had time to look around the Doctor’s museum properly, and examine each object in every jar. But he could hear the police officers’ voices through a window at one end of the long room, and he knew they could come into this house at any time. He had to focus, find more clues. He was certain the killer had come down here. He’d followed the blood trail from upstairs, and there were more marks on these floorboards.

  He moved slowly through the room, crouching with his candle to study the drops of dry blood. What he saw didn’t make a lot of sense — the trail led one way and then the other, as if the killer had walked back and forth between the cabinets and shelves. Then it returned to the door and vanished.

  Clarissa snatched up one of the jars and gave it a shake. Eyeballs bobbed inside, like tadpoles with sinewy tails. She considered them for a moment, torn between fascination and revulsion. “My father took me to a museum once,” she said.

  Wild Boy was surprised. It was the first time Clarissa had mentioned her father. He was curious to know more. “What was he like?” he said.

  Clarissa considered the question for a moment, staring at the floating eyeballs, but didn’t answer. Instead she dumped the jar back onto the shelf, causing the others to knock loudly against each other. “So why did the killer come down here?” she said.