by JM Bannon
“Yes, you are in the Belgravia residence of Sir Francis Chilton,” he replied.
“The banker?” said Rose as they walked through the marble-tiled foyer past the grand stairwell to enter the study.
“And this is Sir Francis,” Dolly answered. As they arrived at the doorway of the study, he gestured to the withered corpse on the expensive oriental rug.
Rose took in the office. It was an affluent man’s study. Rich exotic wood paneled the walls. A large writing desk dominated the room with two overstuffed leather armchairs facing the desk. Behind the desk was a credenza with a stock tape clacker and a type-wire keyset. Most people Rose knew couldn’t even write, let alone operate or own one of Mr. House’s type-wire sets. The machine looked like a small piano with twenty-eight keys to type a message that would go over Electric Telegraph Company wires to another wire-type set. Upon arrival, the message would print out above the keyboard via an array of brass mechanical components driving a daisy wheel to transfer a message to paper.
She removed her sun spectacles, then took a leather instrument roll off her belt. Walking past the body, she set the roll on the exquisite tortoise shell desk and unlocked the two clasps that kept it closed. Rose guided the unwinding of the case with her index finger, then surveyed the instruments attached to the case, selecting a silver chain for all the bits and bobs in her collection. Rose put the silver necklace around her shirt collar. From the necklace dangled a dozen monocle lenses of varied colors and dimensions.
Rose took a small incense censer from her purse and lit a match to ignite the incense. There was smoke until she dropped a few drops of tincture from a vial. As the smoke stopped, she screwed down the cap of the censor with a chain attached and began to wave the incense burner in slow arcs to disperse the smoke. As the vapors spread, she used her other hand to choose various lenses to peer into the telltale fog. Her keen eye could detect fragments of the past, intermingled with the present, and future images echoing through the mysterious mist.
Dolly stood and stared. “You know Rose, you look downright silly with that pantomime of yours.”
“Dolly, I don’t question how you go about your business.” She never thought much about how she looked when she was doing this work. “Nothing otherworldly was in here. Whoever killed the man was from this plane of existence or he would have left a snag in the warp and weave of the Aether,” Rose said.
The ex-nun inspected the body and the totem with various lens of different color and thickness, looking at the object through an amber lens then magenta. She pulled out the totem, examining the wound site. When done with her process, she closed the censer to extinguish the invisible vapors she was using to illuminate the supernatural.
“Anything?” asked Dolly.
Rose returned her tools to the appropriate places of storage and rolled up the leather and closed the clasps.
“His soul was stolen. I have never seen the totem before, so I can’t help with the arcana used, but I’d say primal for sure.” Rose stated.
She walked to the door. “Oh, two other things…”
“Whoever did this took their time doing it, maybe all night. That is why he looks like a raisin,” stated Rose.
“And the second?” asked Dolly his brow furrowed at the bad news.
“They want you to know how they did it. Otherwise, they would not have left you this souvenir,” Rose said as she handed him the totem and left the study.
Monday, the 7th of June
7:00 AM, Scotland Yard
The work week was in full swing. Dolly woke earlier than usual when he heard the workers beginning construction on the street side of his three-room cottage. The lane he lived on was being broadened to better serve the growing adoption of steam lorries and electric carriages. A gang of workers ran jackhammers at first light to break up the curb on the east side of the street, widening the thoroughfare. Dolly had a light breakfast and got dressed before stepping out of his house and latching the door.
Dolly purchased a paper from the boy as he made his way up Cottage Place to Westminster Road. On the corner, the paperboy squawked in a high pitch over and over, “Headline: English workers locked out of Prussian alchemical works!”
It was the latest drama in London. The detective's curiosity pressed him to learn the opinions of the columnists and editors on the state of affairs with the trades protest at the gas works.
He gave the headlines a cursory glance then tucked the paper under his arm, planning to have a careful read at morning tea.
On his daily route from Number 12 Cottage Place to Scotland Yard, Dolly strolled along the raucous Westminster Road and crossed the river, turning right on Parliament Street, then on to Whitehall through to Charring Cross with another into Great Scotland Yard, a short walk for a man who walked a beat as a Peeler in 1850 and spent eight to ten hours walking the streets.
The desk sergeant yelled out to Dolly as he strolled into the station-house. “Ay ya there, Williamson, the commissioner said you're to go directly to his office.”
“Ta O'Brien” He was sure that the murder of a high-profile aristocrat would draw the scrutiny of the government and the police commissioner wanted answers. Any morning opening with being ordered into the office of Commissioner Mayne was not a good start to the day.
When he got to his office, the commissioner was not there. Maybe there was something more pressing. Dolly needed to get prepared for the Monday morning briefing. Mayne would be there, as usual, to get updates from all the detectives on their cases.
Dolly sauntered off to his desk to put his notes together. He squinted and scrunched up his face when he saw that Mayne was waiting in the detectives' pen going through files on Dolly’s desk. The commissioner looked up to see Williamson enter the pen.
“Williamson, I’ve been looking for you!” exclaimed Mayne.
“Sir?” Dolly answered as he stepped up to his own desk.
Mayne sat in Dolly’s chair. “Sit down, Williamson. What’s this matter over in Belgravia?”
Dolly set the paper on his desk and pulled out his notebook. “On the morning of June 6th, a body was discovered at 217 King’s Road by the butler, a Mr. Cooper. Mr. Cooper identified the individual as Sir Francis Chilton.”
“Yes, yes, Chilton’s homicide, I know, but this!” Mayne pounded his finger on the newspaper, showing frustration as he struggled to open the paper to page two. “You brought that witch to the murder scene in front of journalists." There it was: a picture of Sister Rose being ushered into the home of Sir Francis.
He had forgotten, and now there was hell to pay.
The commissioner went on. "I couldn't care less about her issues with the Papists and her ex-communication. She is not the first in this country to receive the Pope’s wrath, but to bring to the public's attention to the fact that you consort with her ilk... Well, you know, Williamson. It makes us look silly,” said Mayne.
“My sincerest apologies, Commissioner. I understand that you may have to bring the hammer down, and be assured this lands on my shoulders as the detective in charge. Those boys picked her up on my request, and they weren’t given clear instruction to the level of discretion required,” explained Dolly.
“Fortunately for you, the Home Secretary is more worried about this gaswerks business. His government is being questioned by the Crown on this matter. Her Majesty's cousin, King Wilhelm, has voiced concerns to her Majesty that the guild alchemists at the works were in danger of immigrants storming the facility. While the rabble is shouting Marxist and unionist slogans, the Home Secretary holds the belief that this is the work of French agitators out to wreck the alliance and cripple the strength of Her Majesty’s air fleet. Walpole called me to his home on a Sunday evening—a Sunday evening! I told him you would work this case like you worked the Fenian affair and rooted out those Irish traitors.” Mayne didn’t handle pressure well.
As far as being inconvenienced on a Sunday, try getting pulled out of bed to look at a withered corpse. “I can d
o that sir, I plan to go to the Chilton offices to interview the staff, but I can look into the matter at the works afterwards,” answered Dolly.
Mayne leaned back and let out a sigh, his shoulders slumping in relief. “Thanks, Williamson.”
“I will get Burton and Keane to wander the crowd at the protest and determine if they can spot anything unusual,” replied Williamson.
“That’s it, action. Eyes and ears on that rabble,” Commissioner Mayne confirmed as he pressed up from the desk.
“Sir?”
“Yes, Detective?”
“Could you wire-type the home office and let Walpole know I plan to interview at Chilton House today?”
“Yes, and let London police know you’re in their jurisdiction, in case they want to send an escort.” Mayne was one for protocol, and the City had its own police.
“I will, sir.”
After the detective’s briefing, Dolly composed a wire-type and sent it off to the City of London Police. He proposed having a sergeant accompany him on his interviews. The offer was declined. Finally, he grabbed a cup of tea and read the paper. The front-page story was on the growing protests at the new gas plant, Walpole’s paramount concern. It was likely the usual rabble looking to use the issue to gain local influence with common folk to raise money for the union or get votes in upcoming elections. He read the story that followed the lithoprint of the gaswerks gates with a crowd of sign-wielding protesters.
The recently commissioned gaswerks on the banks of the Thames is the sole commercial LQ gaswerks outside of Prussia and the site of growing social unrest. As part of the Wessex Alliance, mechanists constructed a mechworks in Prussia to improve Prussian airship design in exchange for construction of a gas plant on British soil. Both guilds would profit from the compact, but Prussia’s compulsion to preserve their secrets has left the English worker out in the cold. The guilds agreed only to the terms of a lucrative deal that improves their profits and influence on the condition that the plants were operated without the local workforce. As London fills with hardworking country folk seeking a better wage promised by these industrialists, what they find instead the new jobs at the Badenworks are filled by Prussians hand-picked by the Alchemist Guild. Currently, the Workers United Party and the Commonwealth Communist Union have begun active protests at the plant with a list of grievances. Hieronymus Brood, a borough councilman and one officer of the Workers United Party, did remark when questioned, “Boatloads of immigrants come to London daily from Ireland and the continent with their pockets empty and their heads full of dreams about earning a wage in factory work. Instead, when they get here, what greets them is a locked gate.” Are the citizens of the empire more secure now with this plant on our soil, when no Englishman can enter nor learn the Baden Gaswork’s alchemical secrets?
He opened the paper, and there it was next to another article about the plant: a picture of Rose Caldwell walking through Sir Lester Chilton’s front garden with two constables. Even Dolly was caught in the lithoprint standing at the open door, fortunately too grainy to make out his personage. Above the picture was the headline:
Witch of London Consorts with Metro to Find Phantom Killer,
Gerald Welsh
Dolly read on.
In the early hours of the Sabbath, one of London’s elite was gruesomely slaughtered in his home through an unexplainable mummification. Sir Lester Chilton was found dead on Sunday morning in Belgravia. Metropolitan Police was unwilling to come on the record as to who they think is behind the act. This reporter witnessed Rose Caldwell, AKA Sister Rose, being brought to the scene to assist the police in their investigation. She was a witness in the 1854 Saint Anthony Rectory Fire and defrocked after accusing the Papal See of covering up a demonic possession. This can only mean that a Phantom Killer is perplexing the police, and they require the help of the devout occultist.
I’ll be Welsh’s phantom killer. His eyes moved to the next article.
Will Derby’s Conservatives let the Wessex Agreement Stand?
Wesley Post
The Baden gaswerks is of vital national interest. Without Luminiferous Quintessence, or LQ gas, the British ironclad fleet, simply put, cannot fly. While our illustrious mechanist guild, headed by top military engineers, is designing a British ironclad air fleet that can keep Emperor Napoleon contained on the continent, there is one chink in that armor: dependence on LQ. The empire is subjected to another tyranny that of the Alchemist Guild with close ties to the Duchy of Prussia. The Alchemist Guild are so possessive of their processes it required direct intervention by her Majesty Queen Victoria to appeal to King Fredrick of Prussia to coerce them to provide a reliable supply on British soil, the concession being a pact to transfer technology as part of the Wessex alliance of mutual defense. How was such a lopsided agreement made? Prussia will learn our mechanical technology, and we get put on the LQ teat of the Alchemists, leaving our national security in the hands of a few privileged Prussians.
He sensed a shadow behind the paper and lowered it to see a young constable standing at his desk. He was fresh to the uniform, maybe eighteen or twenty, more a clerk than a cop at this point in his career.
He smiled at Dolly when acknowledged. “Wire-type for you, sir.”
He took the slip of paper and looked at it, noticing it was from a Mr. Simms at Chilton, Chilton, Owens, and Strathmore, letting him know they could see him at ten AM. The detective had less than an hour to get to the financial district.
“Constable, run down to the motor pool and tell whoever the duty sergeant is—”
“It’s Sergeant Smith, sir,” the blue-eyed lad interrupted.
“Then, tell Smitty that Dolly needs one of his boys, quick around the front to run him over to the city.”
The young copper turned and trotted away to the motor pool.
* * *
10:00 AM, Chilton House, City of London
Dolly’s steam carriage took him across town from the Yard to the offices of Chilton, Chilton, Owens, and Strathmore, known as Chilton House, a three-story office building that was an icon in the city of London and testified to the wealth and power of the investment bank.
As Dolly sat in the passenger seat of the paddy wagon, he read through his notes and research he could dig up on Chilton and speculated about the influential merchant bank and the family that ran it.
Sir Francis’s grandfather, John, had established a business syndicating insurance and finances for merchant shipping. He had the soul of a sailor, and through his readiness to move to where commerce took English ships, he became a trusted source of finance for overseas traders. John Chilton personally started the Hong Kong office and toured the East and West Indies, learning about the risks and rewards of maritime trade. He had two boys, Cecil and the younger Erasmus. Erasmus followed into the family trade, and Cecil trained as an engineer. Erasmus, like his father, concentrated on maritime commerce and later expanded into sovereign finance. Erasmus knew how to deliver higher yields through his intimate familiarity with the industry of a nation, growing the firm to rival the great European financial houses.
It was Cecil that persuaded his brother Erasmus that the Boulton-Watt condenser design would gain acceptance through efficiency and that his brother should be the source of capital for the growing mechanization of the empire. Cecil understood that engine power would replace human power and that machines like the Boulton-Watts steam engine could do the work of twenty men without pause. There had been others who had developed steam-powered engines, but this one was different, with a separate condenser, making it more powerful and efficient than the Newcomen engine.
Cecil became a founding member of Her Majesty’s Celestial Order of Mechanical Science, commonly known commonly as the mechanist guild. He was conferred the Crystal Gear for lifetime achievement, not because of his mechanical aptitude but for helping the mechanists access the finances for their projects and priming the industrial revolution. The guild helped to organize funding and advance technology by a
cting as a forum to share theory. By brokering know-how, those in the mechanist guild quickly grasped what worked and what didn’t. They also augmented the mechanical sciences with advancements in metallurgy and precision control.
Mechanists were masters of creating powered constructs that could operate with precision and increasing autonomy. But behind the mechanical wizardry was the power of the Chilton financial engine. Without their money, the mechanists would still be tinkering in their garages.
The carriage let out the hiss of bypassing steam as it came to a halt. “Thanks, laddie,” said Dolly to the policeman that drove him over.
The attending footman opened the carriage door. Dolly stepped out of the car in front of a plain building reminiscent of Palazzo Medici. A uniformed doorman opened the door for the detective to the magnificent interior of the bank. The spacious lobby was all white, black and pink marble. Inside the door were two private security guards.
Oscar Owens met Detective Williamson in the vestibule. Second generation in the company, Oscar was a partner, just as his father was back when it changed from Chilton Company to Chilton, Chilton, and Owens. He was a corpulent fellow in his later years, jowly with generous side whiskers yet bald. He wore his banker formals with the enhancement of a black armband for the mourning of a named partner. Along with Owens was his personal secretary, again in a black suit and armband.
“Welcome to Chilton House, Detective Williamson. Let me present Mr. Sims, my personal business manager,” said Mr. Owens.
“Good afternoon, gentlemen. I wish it were under better circumstances. I hate to be so abrupt but can we start with an inspection of Sir Chilton’s personal office?”
