by Paul Stewart
It was the dresser on the far wall that had me smiling, though. Tall and imposing, its shelves lined with glass pots, bottles and stoppered vials of various shapes, sizes and colours, differing amounts of liquid in each one, it was the essential prop for every sham apothecary and fake doctor in the city.
Dr Cadwallader, meanwhile, had sat down on the high-backed leather chair behind the desk and turned up the desk lamp, enveloping the pair of us in a dim yellow glow.
‘That’s better,’ he said with a smile. He leaned forward, elbows on the desk. ‘Now, what can I do for you?’
‘I don’t have an ailment,’ I said coolly, feeling those piercing grey eyes boring into mine from behind the tinted pince-nez. ‘But I do have this.’
I retrieved the letter from my waistcoat pocket, unfolded it and passed it across the desk. Dr Cadwallader adjusted his pince-nez and began reading. I saw his brow furrow.
‘Just how did you come by this?’ he asked at length, his voice high-pitched and querulous as he peered at me over the top of his glasses.
‘A great oaf of a tick-tock lad gave it to me outside Mr Benjamin Barlow’s building last night—’
‘Last night?’ said Dr Cadwallader, his left eyebrow raised. ‘And Mr Barlow?’
‘Old Benjamin has vanished. I believe he was the victim of a vicious attack,’ I said. ‘As you are his doctor, I wondered whether he might have sought medical help from you?’
‘Alas, no, Mr Grimes,’ said Dr Cadwallader, shaking his head. ‘What’s more, when he failed to turn up for his final treatment, I struck him from my lists.’ He stroked his chin thoughtfully. ‘A vicious attack, you say?’
‘There were signs of a struggle,’ I said. ‘Blood. Claw and tooth marks. An overturned chair … And I happen to know that a wild animal was roaming the area that night, because I ran into it up on the rooftops of Greville’s glue factory and killed it.’
‘How fortunate!’ exclaimed Dr Cadwallader, falling back in his chair.
‘Fortunate?’ I said.
‘That such a vicious creature is dead,’ said the doctor. He smiled smoothly, his thin lips pulled back tautly over his long, yellowed teeth. ‘And tell me, how exactly did you manage to kill it?’
‘It was chasing me over the rooftops,’ I explained. ‘I ducked and it crashed through a skylight into a glue vat.’ I shrugged. ‘Boiled down to the bone by now, I shouldn’t wonder.’
‘Excellent, excellent,’ smiled Dr Cadwallader – then checked himself and, frowning, sat back. ‘Of course, I’m devastated to hear of Mr Barlow’s disappearance. As you can see from my letter, I do stress to my clients the importance of completing the treatment. Without the final injection to fix the invigorating effects of my cordial permanently, they quickly fade, leaving the patient in a state of advanced collapse …’ He shook his head. ‘If only that wretched clerk errant had delivered my summons to Mr Barlow in time, perhaps the poor man wouldn’t have fallen prey to this rooftop creature of yours.’
‘It wasn’t my creature,’ I said quietly. ‘I only killed it.’
‘Quite so,’ said the doctor, with a thin grin. His brow furrowed thoughtfully. ‘Up on the rooftops, you said. Do you make a habit of clambering over chimneypots, Mr Grimes?’
It was my turn to smile. ‘Indeed I do,’ I said. ‘I’m a tick-tock lad – a clerk errant – and I like to take the shortest route from A to B.’
I could see by the doctor’s expression that he was intrigued. The tick-tock lad he’d employed clearly wasn’t up to the job, and now yours truly had come waltzing into his consulting rooms. I waited for him to take the bait. It didn’t take long.
‘Wait there, Mr Grimes!’ said the doctor, climbing to his feet and disappearing through the door behind his desk, leaving it slightly ajar.
I peered after him into a darkened room. From what I could make out, it looked like some kind of laboratory. A couple of moments later he was back, one of the silver-labelled blue bottles in his hand.
‘This,’ he said proudly,‘is my cordial.’
‘This,’ he said proudly, ‘is my cordial. The result of many long years of research and experimentation.’ He held the bottle up. ‘An efficacious elixir for the enhancement of mental and physical powers,’ he said, reading the words off the label. ‘It does exactly what it says on the bottle.’
I nodded. ‘Old Benjamin certainly thought so,’ I told him. ‘I spoke to him only yesterday and he said he’d never felt better. And his cough had cleared up completely.’
‘I’m pleased to hear it,’ the doctor began. ‘I’m only sorry he was unable to complete his treatment. Poor Mr Barlow. Remarkable head of hair for someone of his age …’
The doctor’s cool grey eyes took on a faraway look for a moment before he continued.
‘You see, Mr Grimes, unlike the high-priced quacks downstairs who peddle expensive potions to the rich, I reserve my cordial for those who need it most. The poorest and neediest in this great city; the ones who, if they disappeared off the face of the earth, would be least missed.’
He sat back in the chair and breathed deeply, his eyes closed.
‘The ridiculous fake array of potions you see on the shelves behind me are for my rich clients – though, heaven knows, they’re few and far between, what with the competition I face from downstairs. Times are hard and money is scarce, Mr Grimes.’
I put on an expression of polite interest and nodded.
Dr Cadwallader pushed the pince-nez up the bridge of his nose and fixed me with those steely grey eyes of his.
‘If my work is to be successful, it is absolutely imperative that these con sultation reminders reach my patients at the right time,’ he told me. ‘It strikes me that you might be just the lad for the job, Mr Grimes.’
‘That struck me, too, Doctor.’ I grinned. ‘I’d be delighted to serve as your tick-tock lad.’
‘Excellent, excellent,’ said Dr Cadwallader, smiling broadly as he settled back in his chair. He pulled a small black notebook from his jacket pocket and a calendar from his drawer. ‘Now let me see,’ he said thoughtfully, checking one against the other, and scribbling down notes with a small pencil. ‘New course of treatment to start this Monday … twenty-six days … plus … which would make it …’ He looked up. ‘I would need you here three weeks on Tuesday, at seven o’clock in the morning.’
‘I’ll be here, sir,’ I said. ‘You can rely on me.’
The doctor nodded. ‘I believe I can, Mr Grimes,’ he said. He reached into an inside pocket and pulled out a wallet, from which he removed a blue and white banknote, unfolding it in front of my eyes. ‘I trust this will be enough to retain your services, Mr Barnaby Grimes,’ he said, a twinkle in his eye as he handed me the money across the desk.
‘Yes, sir. Indeed, sir,’ I said. ‘Thank you, sir.’
‘Oh, and, Mr Grimes,’ he said, his voice hushed, yet insistent. ‘I’m sure I don’t have to tell you of the importance of discretion in this matter. The confidentiality of patients is, to every doctor, paramount, and mine more than most. So no loose talk, my lad, you understand me?’
‘Of course, sir,’ I said, sounding a little wounded.
Just then the bell above the entrance door began to tinkle. Moments later, in swept a small, elegant woman in a flowing satin dress and a short, expensive-looking jacket with Westphalian trim, her golden hair piled high and held in place with several large tortoiseshell combs. Two young female attendants were in tow – the fairer of them, I noticed, particularly pretty …
‘Madame Scutari!’ Dr Cadwallader exclaimed, jumping up from behind the desk and marching towards her, coat-tails flapping and hand extended.
Rather reluctantly Madame Scutari held out her own hand, which the doctor took, raised to his lips and kissed chastely.
‘Always an honour and a pleasure, my dear lady,’ he announced, and I wondered whether this was one of the rich patients he fobbed off with sugar-water.
‘Let’s forget the formalities, Theo. I wa
s passing in my carriage,’ she said. ‘Have you got anything for me?’
Her voice was imperious and shrill. Yet behind the cut-glass vowels I thought I detected a humbler background.
‘Patience, my dear lady,’ Dr Cadwallader said. ‘The process cannot be hurried if one wants results.’ He shot me a furtive look. ‘Need I remind you how important discretion is in this matter?’
‘Never mind that, Theo,’ snapped the woman with a toss of her golden head. ‘I’ve paid you handsomely on account, and I’ve got clients of my own who are getting impatient—’
‘My dear Madame Scutari,’ protested Dr Cadwallader, ‘I’m working as fast as I can, I assure you.’
There was a low hiss as Madame Scutari breathed in sharply through her large white teeth. Dr Cadwallader shrugged apologetically.
Madame Scutari pulled herself up as tall as she could, tilting her head backwards as she did so, and flounced towards the door. ‘I don’t care how you do it,’ she said, ‘but I want what you promised me by the end of the week. Otherwise you’ll have my cousin, the mayor, to deal with. Understand?’
With another toss of her head, Madame Scutari disappeared through the door, followed by her young ladies-in-waiting – but not before I caught the eye of the pretty one with the fair hair.
She smiled. I smiled back.
I turned to find Dr Cadwallader looming over me, his upper lip twitching and his steel-grey eyes lit up behind his pince-nez.
‘You’d better go, Mr Grimes,’ he rasped. ‘I have work to do.’
As I left Dr Cadwallader’s dusty consulting rooms, I had plenty to think about. I had seen enough to tell me that something fishy was going on – something wet, scaly and stinking worse than workhouse fish-head stew. What was more, I intended to sniff it out. I had three weeks before the job for Dr Cadwallader, and a full roster book …
But first, there was Old Benjamin. I wasn’t about to forget about him.
So I did as I’d promised, checking out both the City Paupers’ Hospital and the Benevolent Hospice for Retired Coachmen – as well as the Wellesley Infirmary for the Indigent for good measure.
All to no avail.
Wherever I went, the story was the same. No one had heard of anyone by the name of Benjamin Barlow. Like many others before him, the old-timer had, it seemed, simply disappeared without a trace.
And yet the strange events of that night kept gnawing away at me. What was left of that hellhound had probably glued a thousand labels onto a thousand ale bottles by now, but I couldn’t get the image of its evil yellow eyes out of my mind.
Two weeks later I was still shivering at the thought as I sat at the feet of Sir Rigby Robeson – or rather, the statue of the pompous old rogue, which a grateful city had placed at the top of a tall column in Centennial Park. It was the perfect spot from which to count bullfinches for the eminent zoologist Professor Pinkerton-Barnes.
The professor – PB to his friends – was one of my more eccentric clients, though if truth be told, most of them were pretty odd. My first job for him had involved investigating the nests of magpies, and cataloguing the results. PB had some theory about the birds’ predilection for silver teaspoons over other sparkly objects which, by my highstacking skills and extensive notes, I was able to disprove. I had expected the professor to be disappointed, but far from it …
‘Theories are there to be disproved, my dear Barnaby,’ he’d said, smiling, combing his beard with thin, elegant fingers. ‘How else are we to make scientific progress?’
Or recover Lady Phipp’s stolen tiara? I thought. And pocket the reward? Another fascinating story I must get round to telling …
Anyway, this time the professor had a theory that the city bullfinches were growing unusually large and aggressive due to the recent introduction of the oriental tilberry tree – with its sweet and abundant fruit – into our parks and gardens. He believed that the cat population would soon be under threat. Well, several months spent observing and counting them from the top of Robeson’s column had yielded plenty of information; unfortunately for PB, none of it relevant to the little stubby-beaked bullfinches with their elegant red breasts, grey shoulders and black and white wings.
I had observed that their favourite food was not the fruit of the towering oriental berry trees that surrounded the column, but rather the scraps they found when pecking about in fresh horse manure. As for drinking, it was the rainwater that collected in the brim of the hat at the top of the statue of Sir Rigby Robeson which they savoured above all other. And I carefully noted the size, habits and behaviour of four hundred and seventy-seven individual bullfinches …
Somewhat disappointingly, not one of these ever indulged in the aggressive behaviour the professor’s theory alleged. Instead, it was the human inhabitants of Centennial Park who proved the more eye-catching. The shy meetings between chambermaids and footmen; the fine ladies parading the latest fashions – wide-brimmed bonnets and capes with Westphalian trim. And once, I remember, two rival governesses engaged in a ferocious duel with umbrellas …
It was when I was delivering my latest bullfinch observations – all twelve pages of them, neatly folded in the fifth pocket of my waistcoat – to the professor, that the mystery of Old Benjamin sprang into my mind. I reached into the second pocket and pulled out the small square of folded paper that contained the black hairs from the coachman’s chair.
‘Nesting material?’ muttered PB as I unfolded the paper and laid the hairs carefully on the glass slide he had given me.
‘Actually, no, Professor,’ I said. ‘This has nothing to do with your bullfinches. It’s another case I’m working on.’
PB looked disappointed.
‘I was wondering if you could identify the type of creature these hairs might have come from.’
‘Pity,’ he said. ‘I was rather hoping a bullfinch had savaged a cat.’ He shook his head. ‘Still, leave it with me, Barnaby, and I’ll see what I can do.’
I thanked him and climbed out of his laboratory window, then quickly shinned up the drainpipe. I was running late yet again. There was a week to go before my date with Dr Cadwallader and I hadn’t had a minute to myself.
For the next five days I can honestly say I’d never been so busy. With bundles of summonses, writs, chits, wills, codicils and sworn affidavits tucked into my waistcoat pockets, and a list of addresses as long as your arm, I was highstacking throughout the city with scarcely a moment to draw breath. There were jobs to be done for regulars I couldn’t afford to let down, as well as some work for a couple of new clients who might, in time, prove to be nice little earners.
‘Pity,’ he said. ‘I was rather hoping a bullfinch had savaged a cat.’
I remember there was a large collection of subscriptions I was organizing for Elijah Cope of Cope’s Practical Household Magazine – very popular amongst the cooks and housekeepers of Hightown Square. And the more pressing matter of some book plates sent out by the Albion Publishing House, which had to be withdrawn after it was discovered that the engraver had depicted the Bishop of Gravetown answering the call of nature in the bottom right-hand corner.
As you can see, I was busy. Very busy. Yet not too busy to find a little time for my own research. Next to highstacking over the rooftops on a clear night beneath a full moon, there’s nothing better than a few hours spent poring over dusty old volumes – and Underhill’s Library for Scholars of the Arcane had more than its fair share of books and dust.
Most of the library’s subscribers were as dusty as the books themselves – half-mad alchemists, amateur magicians and ancient academics with an interest in phrenology or the properties of poison. Me, I go there to relax.
So there I was, in the basement of Underhill’s Library for Scholars of the Arcane. Old Benjamin’s disappearance and the yellow-eyed hound from hell were still playing on my mind, and I found myself being drawn to the familiar black leather-bound volumes of Crockford’s Journal of the Unnatural.
Drawn from reports far a
nd wide, Crockford’s Journal was a quarterly review of strange sightings and unexplained incidents. I reached up and took down a volume. It contained bound editions of the journal from many years ago.
I flicked idly through the yellowing pages. All the usual stories were there – headless horsemen, cursed tombs and mysteriously abandoned lighthouses. Then, as I turned another page, I stopped. Something had caught my eye.
Beneath the short article was an engraving of a handsome-looking man with an intense gaze and black, flowing, shoulder-length hair.
The library was about to shut and the next day I had a seven-o’clock appointment with Dr Cadwallader. I scribbled a quick note of the volume and page number, and was just closing the book when I saw the date at the top of the dusty yellow page. This particular edition of Crockford’s Journal of the Unnatural was ninety years old. Quietly I shut the book, replaced it on the shelf and left.
That following morning I was up bright and early. It was one of those breezy mornings when the weather – overcast one minute, sunny the next – didn’t seem to know what it wanted to do. Thankfully, my shoulder was feeling much better. I changed the dressing again, just to be on the safe side, but it was clearly well on the way to healing.
I set off at six-thirty on the dot, arriving at 27 Hartley Square twenty-three minutes later.
Having highstacked over there, I toyed with the idea of entering the premises via the roof – but then thought better of it. Dr Cadwallader might consider it an intrusion. Instead, I entered in a more conventional fashion, having checked, this time, that there was no flat-footed constable to observe me descending the drainpipe.
‘Ah, Mr Grimes,’ Dr Cadwallader greeted me, his face breaking into a broad smile as he ushered me into his chambers. ‘Right on time. Excellent! I’ve got the letters written out ready and waiting for you to deliver.’