Legion of the Dead (2 page)

I
n my line of work, I’ve encountered my fair share of restless spirits from beyond the grave. There was Madame Lavinia’s poltergeist, who terrorized the thrill-seeking guests at her tea parties. And Pastor Shakemaple’s Iroquois spirit guide, with a taste for cheap whiskey and expensive jewellery. And of course the late Mercy Hornby, queen of the phantasmal plane, who was on intimate terms with three Roman emperors and Alexander the Great – extraordinary apparitions, each and every one of them …

Unfortunately, Madame Lavinia’s apparition was more piano wire than poltergeist,
and Shakemaple’s clerical robes concealed a magic lantern and a pair of sticky fingers. As for the ghost of Mercy Hornby; she was no more than a shop dummy in a shroud, operated by a music-hall ventriloquist in search of a new career.

I should know, because I played a part in unmasking them. Ha’penny fraudsters, the lot of them, out to fleece the gullible. But what I encountered in that graveyard on that moonlit night was no cheap illusion. No wires, no lanterns or cheap theatrical tricks had conjured up the legion of the dead.

The truth was far worse …

It all began on a crisp autumn morning, the sky the colour of an Indian Runner duck egg. I’m a tick-tock lad by trade. My job is to deliver things all over the city – anything, from a dusty writ or a document in need of a signature to the boxed consignment of giant African snails that I’d dropped off only the
day before at the exclusive Culloden Club for their annual members-only mollusc race. I’m quick and efficient, highstacking over the rooftops of the city as fast as I can because – tick-tock! – time is money. Some jobs – like the snails – are one-offs, while others are more regular and, since it was the second Wednesday in the month, I had an appointment with one Cornelius Frimley of
Frimley’s Funereal Supplies and Grave Chandlery
.

I was running late that morning and had to be quick, but I also had to be careful. Although the sun was shining, treacherous traces of frost still lingered in the shadows, threatening to turn my ankle or make me skid. At the Mansion House, a tricky Striding Edge manoeuvre and a moment of carelessness almost pitched me over the side of a crumbling parapet.

On such a glorious morning though, with the sun shining, a light breeze blowing and the city air as clear as it ever gets, nothing
could dent my spirits. And, though you need a head for heights and a steady nerve, there is nothing as exhilarating as highstacking. Leaping, rolling and running across the rooftops – plinth to pediment, gargoyle to gable – the experienced highstacker can race across the city, while the streets below are snarled with slow-moving traffic.

I made quick progress, and at five to nine the imposing brown-brick building, with its white stone window arches and fluted pilasters, that housed
Frimley’s Funereal Supplies and Grave Chandlery
, loomed up before me. At nine o’clock on the dot, I was standing outside Cornelius Frimley’s office. I rapped on the door.

‘Come in,’ came a thin, wheezing voice, and I entered the room.

Cornelius Frimley was seated at the desk before me, his fingers buried in a drift of paperwork. He raised his head wearily, a frown on his pallid brow. ‘Ah, Barnaby,’ he said.

The steel-rimmed spectacles he wore were so strong, it looked as though his huge, magnified eyes had been lifted from his face and glued to the inside of the lenses. Bright red veins lined the glowing yellowed eyeballs. In contrast, his face in the flickering light was as pale as the wax candle that cast it, and made all the more ghostly by the deep dark circles under each eye.

From the look of him, the poor chap never saw sunlight from one end of the day to the other. Despite its outer appearance of grandeur, inside, the brown-brick building had been transformed into a warren of winding corridors and tiny offices. Cornelius Frimley’s office was little more than a broom-cupboard. There wasn’t even a window.

‘Prompt as ever,’ he wheezed, peering round the flickering candle that stood before him. He chuckled. ‘I’d ask you to sit, but …’

It was his little joke. The tiny room was furnished with a large varnished cabinet and
a rolltop desk, behind which, Cornelius Frimley had managed to insert an ancient high-backed leather chair. In the remaining space, it was standing-room only, and we both knew it. I smiled.

‘Something has just come in, Barnaby,’ he said, those huge eyes of his staring at me unblinkingly. ‘A matter of some urgency.’

He pushed back his chair and turned towards the cabinet behind him. As tall as it was broad, the yellowed oak cabinet took up half the office. It was comprised of dozens of small bone-handled drawers. Pausing for a moment, Cornelius Frimley stared at them, his narrow shoulders hunched forward. Then he crouched down, his knees clicking like snapped twigs as he did so, and unlocked one of the drawers.

‘Here we are,’ he said, turning and placing a box, about the size of a house-brick, on the table in front of me. It jangled slightly as he did so. ‘Links,’ he said.

‘Links?’

‘Links for a finger-chain.’ He flapped his hands about airily. ‘My best chainsmith is waiting for them – Ada Gussage, 17 Adelaide Mansions …’

Finger-chains were the very latest in funeral fashion. No well-to-do deceased would be seen dead without one! They were attached to the forefinger of the corpse at one end and a bell at the other, so that anyone unfortunate enough to awaken in the coffin could summon help and be dug up.

‘Adelaide Mansions,’ I repeated and frowned. To my knowledge, there were two Adelaide Mansions in the city. One was situated on salubrious Gallup Row in the best part of town; the other …

‘Gatling Quays,’ said Cornelius Frimley, and my heart sank.

Gatling Quays. As a rule, it was a place I liked to avoid. Situated between riverside East Bank, with its scratting mudlarks and
tattooed toughs, and the port of Riverhythe, where incoming ships would dock, Gatling Quays was worse than either. Its cobbled streets were lined with vast warehouses, where the cargo from foreign shores was stored before being distributed to the factories, mills and workshops of the city. The wealth of goods and materials piled up there attracted harbour-toughs and skim-merchants to the quays like lice to a workhouse blanket.

‘As quickly as you can, Barnaby,’ Cornelius Frimley urged me. ‘Ada needs those links for an important client down there in the quays.’

He shook my hand – a cold, damp experience, like squeezing a raw fish – and slumped back onto his leather chair. I stepped to the door, slipping the heavy box into the inside pocket of my coat.

‘And tell Ada the finger-chain has to be ready by tomorrow. The client’s people will
be around to collect it first thing.’

Promising I would, I left the room, the sound of rustling paper filling the air as Cornelius Frimley dived back into his mound of invoices, orders and dockets. The door clicked shut behind me.

I left the building through the first window I came to on the maze-like sixth-floor corridor, edged along the glistening window-ledge and shinned up an ornate cast-iron drainpipe to the roof above.

As I made my way to Gatling Quays, the rooftops of the city districts lay spread out before me. Hightown, the Theatre District, the Wasps’ Nest … I highstacked fast and, as I did so, I thanked my lucky stars that I wasn’t locked up inside a windowless broom-cupboard of an office, hour after endless hour.

Mind you, even an airless office had its attractions compared to Gatling Quays. Down among the warehouses, you had to watch
your step. Every alley, quayside and corner was controlled by a petty skim-merchant and his crew of toughs, looking to cream off a percentage of the goods from the passing wagons. The Bevan Street Crew, the Flour Bag Mob, the Harness Riggers, the Tallow Gang … There were a dozen of them in all, each one running their own protection rackets – and prepared to defend their small patch of cobbles, or ‘homestones’, to the death.

As I neared my destination, the air grew thicker, with a thick fish-stew fog from the docklands drifting upriver to the quays. I found myself in the middle of a dense swirling blanket that stank of brackish seaweed and coal smoke, and hung in the air, blotting out the sun. I took a moment to orientate myself.

Seething Lane, I was looking for. Adelaide Mansions; number 17.

With the swirling fog, it wasn’t easy. But I didn’t want to get lost. In and out, as fast as
a ferret down a fat farmer’s breeches, that was the best way to visit Gatling Quays. A clock at the top of a distant church tower tolled the hour.

Eleven o’clock, I noted, relieved.

As a rule, the mornings were comparatively quiet in the quays, with the crews sleeping in after their night-time activities. All the same, I had no intention of making my visit to the quays any longer than necessary …

I recognized a square chimney to my right, lancing the dense air. That was my landmark. Perched on the top of the long corrugated roof of Barnard’s flour warehouse, the tall chimney had graced the skyline of Gatling Quays for as long as I could remember. Below it, a constantly burning furnace kept the stacks of flour in the warehouse dry. My grand-sounding destination – Adelaide Mansions; a five-storey tenement building that housed many of the local warehouse
workers – stood on the corner close by.

Keeping the fuzzy chimney in my sights, I made my way gingerly across the pitched roof of a timber merchant’s, the cracked tiles slipping beneath my feet, threatening to pitch me down into the log piles in the yard below. At the end, I ran the length of a parapet wall as fast as I dared, before throwing myself into a Running Grapple.

Not for the novice, this particular manoeuvre. The Running Grapple is used when the building being jumped
to
is higher than the one being jumped
from
. The high-stacker must leap up, pedal his legs as he flies through the air, then hook his fingers over the parapet and – legs still pedalling – ‘run’ up the wall.

As I reached the top of the tall, windowless warehouse, I paused for a moment to catch my breath, before pigeon-stepping along a narrower ridge and out onto a curved buttress. There I stopped again, and looked down. The
back of the tenement block was the next building on my right. It looked neglected, with half the windows boarded up, rusting fire escapes peeling from the walls and wilting sprays of buddleia sprouting from the crumbling brickwork. I found myself wondering whether Cornelius Frimley had got the address right.

There was only one way to find out.

Stepping back, I readied myself for a tricky Flying Fox manoeuvre. A twelve-step run up was the optimum. I had three. Springing forward as best I could, I launched myself into the air – arms outstretched and the corners of my jacket gripped between my fingertips – and soared across the yawning void below me. Seconds later, I landed squarely on a jutting ledge, barely three inches wide, and regained my balance.

I dusted myself down. I needed to be quick. The sooner I dropped off my parcel and left the quays, the better.

There was a door at the centre of the flat roof. It was locked, but when I shook it, the whole lot came away in my hands. I went inside and gagged at the foul odour – a mixture of musty vermin and sour onions. As I headed down the rubbish-strewn stairs, it suddenly occurred to me that something was wrong.

Normally, a block such as this would be stuffed to the gills with tenants. Adelaide Mansions, though, was deserted and, but for the sound of my own footfalls echoing round the stairwell, silent as the grave. Doors to the apartments on every floor were open or off their hinges, revealing the detritus of abandoned family lives inside. It wasn’t until I arrived on the second floor that I came to my first closed door.

Number 17.

I went to put my ear to the cracked wooden panel, to hear a faint
tap-tap-tap
sound coming from deep inside the apartment. I
knocked at the door. The tapping stopped and heavy footsteps approached. The next moment, the door flew open and I found myself confronted by a vast barrel of a woman in a shapeless floral dress. Old and red-faced, legs like tree trunks and forearms like giant hams, she looked at me through currant-bun eyes, her fingernails raking back her wiry grey hair.

‘Ada Gussage?’ I said, reaching inside my pocket.

The woman folded her arms. ‘The same,’ she said revealing a row of stubby yellow teeth. ‘And you are?’

‘Barnaby Grimes,’ I said, holding out the small parcel. ‘This is for you.’

‘Oh, thank heavens for that,’ she said at the sight of it. Her face creased into a happy smile and those currant-bun eyes of hers twinkled as she reached out and took the parcel. She shook it, making the contents inside jangle softly. Then, unknotting the
piece of string tied round it, she eased off the lid and looked inside.

‘Seems about right,’ she mused, shaking the box. ‘Enough for a ten-footer, with a few links to spare …’

I peered down into the box. It was full of small brass ovals waiting to be joined together to form a chain, with a tap of a hammer and a squeeze of pliers. Also in the box, nestling amongst the links, were two larger metal rings.

‘Mr Frimley said that the finger-chain has to be ready by tomorrow,’ I said, remembering his words. ‘The client’s people will be around to collect it first thing.’

‘I’m sure they will, dearie,’ Ada Gussage said, pushing the lid of the box back into place. ‘I’m sure they will. These days, nobody wants to be buried without a finger-chain, now do they?’

I shook my head.

‘And they knows where to find me. After
all, I’m the only one left in the mansions since the hauntings began …’

‘Hauntings?’ I said, intrigued.

‘Ghosts, they say, just over yonder in the graveyard by Gatling Sump,’ she said, and her eyes sparkled. ‘Wandering about in the river fog at dusk, scaring folk witless.’ She shook her head, the wiry hair trembling. ‘But I’m used to death in my trade, and it’ll take more than a few phantoms in red coats to make Ada Gussage leave the mansion, make no mistake.’ She shot me a yellow smile. ‘But never mind all that,’ she said, ‘would you care for a cup of tea – a lovely smoked Assam, fresh from a clipper just docked last week?’