Friday 6th June 1879: The Coffee House

When last I wrote, only hours ago, we were to gather here in the Coffee House. But I have just received an urgent summons via pageboy to make haste to Mr Blackwood’s residence. Curiously it appears the boy was not sent by Blackwood himself?! I asked if Blackwood had sent for me and the boy said “not as such”. When pressed as to who had sent him he was evasive until a copper loosened his lips ever so slightly:

“Blackwood asked me to send for Dr Silas, but the master thought it best I inform you all.”

“Would that master have anything to do with rats?” I asked, suspecting my recent visitor was behind this.

“Don’t ask me to be specific, ma’am,” the boy begged off. It was as good as a yes so I sent him scurrying.

Goodness. I knew the Rat King was interested in our affairs, but hadn’t quite realised the extent of his meddling.

Blackwood’s Residence

If anyone is reading this diary after my passing, I must warn you this next fragment contains some graphic horror.

I arrived at Blackwood’s to find Silas and Blackwood in deep conversation. The rooms were just as one might imagine them to be: all manner of contraptions covering every surface, workbenches with tools and mechanical devices scattered about, and a smashed Colopinto mirror in the corner of the room surrounded by very large, tripped rat-traps. A dark stain lay on the floor below the detritus. Blackwood looked exhausted, and uncharacteristically nervous.

“I think it best we keep the detail from Ms Harrow,” Silas said quickly as I walked inside.

“What detail? I demand to know everything, Silas. I am no stranger to foul play,” I said, though had I known what was to be revealed I might well have agreed.

Blackwood nodded and explained why we were here. In the early hours of this morning he had awoken with a start to a cry and the sound of his rat-traps snapping closed. He leapt out of his bed, completely undressed for that is how he slept he explained with no hint of embarrassment (note to myself: perhaps Mr Blackwood has some well hidden—or supressed—desires after all?), and ran into the living room where he found an intruder! A sinister figure stood in the darkness amidst the traps, startled, face covered. Behind him the Colopinto mirror lay exposed, the straps that had held a sheet covering it now cut free. The burglar who walks through walls!

Blackwood grabbed a hammer and shouted for the figure to stand down. He could see a room through the mirror that was not his own, confirming in his mind that it was indeed a gateway to another place—incredible! Neither Blackwood nor the intruder were reflected in the glass, and the far room was bigger but had no identifying features, alas. The figure, still in darkness, started to retreat, so Blackwood hurled his hammer to try and shatter the glass, but instead the hammer flew through unhindered to land on the wooden floor of the room beyond the mirror!

In his naked glory Blackwood called again for the man to stop, but as the man turned to run he tripped on another trap. Blackwood grabbed a chair and hurled it at the sinister figure just as the man stumbled through the portal. This time the mirror shattered, and the result was gruesome. The falling man was severed like a French baguette; from the right leg to the small of his back, right arm to shoulder. The body was sliced clean through, leaving half in Blackwood’s rooms and half in the now vanished room on the other side.

“Unfortunately his head got through, so we don’t know who he was,” Silas explained.

“The hand that remained was that of a workman like me,” Blackwood said. “Worn, calloused. He word soft souled leather shoes—”

“All the better for robbery,” I interrupted.

“Yes. And his clothing was black, no rings, nothing to identify him.”

“Was it Foedemere?”

“No. I don’t think so.”

Blackwood said he did his best to clean up, draining the stumps in his sink and using sawdust to absorb the blood on the floorboards. Silas was keen to study them, at which point I excused myself and had a cup of weak tea that Blackwood prepared. Despite my earlier bravado the idea of the severed limbs sitting in Blackwood’s kitchen did make me rather faint.

Some time later Silas reported his findings. “I’ve never seen such a clean wound—he would have been dead with seconds. Nor such a precise one. Razor sharp, better than even I could ever manage. The mirror must have instantly cut through him.”

“Which explains why Foedemere looked so nervously at his arm when we interrupted his show,” I mused.

“Yes, quite. More interestingly I found something that may help us identify him. On his upper arm there was a tattoo of a ship with the name scrolled over it: ‘Grace’. The name was in reverse, and it was on the wrong arm. It seems the mirror really is reversing reality.”

I pondered this for a moment. I struggled to convince myself that this could be possible, but we now had concrete evidence. It was all true.

“We must tell Clement. We have proof now, he can guard the crown jewels, and we can put an end to this.”

“No, Gideon, we must not,” Silas countered.

“We must! This is horrific and must be stopped!”

“No!” Silas snapped, angrier than I have ever seen him. “We tell no-one, not even the Baron, yet. What do you think the constabulary will make of this? We are already under suspicion for Jennifer, now we turn up with half a body and a bloodstained apartment? They are not smart enough to make sense of this, or to believe it, not even your Clement.”

I blushed, but Silas was right. Not about Clement! About the secrecy. “You’re right, Silas. I’m sorry, it’s just this is all a bit much. But I don’t fancy a one-way trip to Australia any more than you do.”

“Good. First things first then: we need to dispose of the body parts, and we need to find Daphne.”

“That reminds me—we must presume our every move is watched, gentlemen,” I advised, explaining the pageboy’s mission. “I’m surprised Daphne isn’t here already, but I suppose it is early.”

“It’s eleven in the morning?” Blackwood protested.

“Exactly,” I laughed.

The Colopinto Warehouse

After some debate we decided to store the remains of the intruder at Blackwood’s, wrapped carefully and placed in the coldest storage we could manage.

As we departed and hailed a caboose, an urchin tugged my sleeve. “Do y’think they’ll try again?”

“Who? Try what?”

He glanced up at Blackwood’s darkened windows. “Tell your master we want to know if they do,” I suggested, to which the scamp merely shrugged.

We waited briefly for Daphne, who emerged looking characteristically grumpy given the hour. He was quite a sight, a vision in brown corduroy, with black shoes, a matching brown shirt, and hair flattened by a rakish hat. So daring! I envied him his skill at being one step ahead of the fashionable set, fully expecting to see the cognoscenti arriving at the coffee house bedecked in corduroy within the month.

“I am very tired, so can someone please explain why I am here?”

After being filled in Daphne settled into the cab and asked us to wake him once we arrived ‘somewhere interesting’. It seemed prudent to follow our original course of action, which was to monitor the Colopinto warehouse, so we set off to do so.

We found it shuttered despite the hour, so we settled into a small café on the opposite corner. The waiter was rather rude, but Silas managed to keep him in his place with some choice words. We waited long enough to begin feeling like perhaps the Colopinto brothers had withdrawn entirely—perhaps because of the events of this morning? But eventually a wagon drew up to the barred doors and a capped man climbed down to open his cart.

I raced outside to intercept him, noting he had a ledger than he was scanning. Despite my charms (though I will admit to being rather pushy in this instance) the man would not divulge anything other than that he was here to collect goods under the instruction of the Colopinto’s. He would not let me inside and was starting to get quite worked up about my probing.

Silas arrived in the nick of time, and like the waiter, went to work settling the man’s nerves. And, as it turned out, settling the man’s wallet. He offered a very large sum of money (‘it’s the Baron’s money’, he later shrugged) for the intelligence we sought. The man pocked the notes—four pounds!—before quickly scribbling an address into his ledger and tore the page free for Silas, before quickly departing.

“Money talks,” Silas explained with a grin as we regathered in the café. “And this money says ‘Overton Farm, Lea Bridge’.”

“Lea Bridge?” Daphne groaned. “Like travelling to the Amazon! At least six miles distant, somewhere near Hackney. Father had an estate there, then they put in a new train station at Lea Bridge which brought in the riff-raff so he sold it, some fellow from the House of Commons. Father cut the ribbon and that was it—disgusting! The size of the houses is shamefully small, vomit everywhere, even dog kennels! It was a mess but it’s all sorted how.” Daphne really did live in a different world!

Lea Bridge

We dutifully caught the new train to Lea Bridge, emerging to find it fogbound and dank. The station lay shrouded and near abandoned. I questioned the station master about transport, who advised we could try our luck at the Split Pig “though I don’t like your chances,” he grumbled. I asked about the Overton Farm, which caused him to frown deeply, turn on his heel and hobble away into the fog without another word.

The Split Pig was as one might imagine it: cosy, smoke filled, and full of suspicious locals. At least the hearth kept the cold at bay. The barkeep was friendly enough, and we soon established that Overton Farm was looked upon with deep suspicion. “Full of I-talians, that place,” he said with disdain. “Foreigners coming and going at all hours. We don’t much like it. Nor them.”

He directed us to a ‘Vincent’ when I asked about transport. Vincent turned out to be a lecherous young bumpkin—is there any other kind?—with an unexplained bandage on his ear. “I’ll show you the way alright, miss,” he leered to the snorts of his equally unpleasant companions. I grinned and bore it for the good of us all.

As we prepared to leave in the hands of this unseemly fellow Daphne suddenly decided he had had quite enough. A coughing fit (feigned I am sure) allowed him to excuse himself from venturing into the fog and ‘that disgusting cart’, instead ensconcing himself in the only private room in the house.

‘Fond’ farewells done, our remaining trio were soon outside in the heavy dankness, rattling west, east, north over a crick, east, then on Overton Road bend. By the time we arrived I was ready to murder Vincent in Blackwood style, but Silas (again!) kept the peace.

Two heavy stone gates stood before a weedy path through a stand of tall beech. With some trepidation we started along the path, even Daphne quiet in the gloom. At the far end of the woodland a well-to-do stone house stood in the gloom, partnered by a stableyard. As we stood in the dark of the trees we could see several figures loading a wagon.

The fog hung heavy and dense and it all felt rather foreboding. Silas felt it too, reaching into his medical bag and pulled free a rather ominous looking squat shotgun. What were we doing out here in the middle of nowhere, likely walking into a death trap populated by men who walked through mirrors and plotted against the Queen herself?

Whatever it was, we were about to find out.