The Mechanical Messiah and Other Marvels of the Modern Age

by Robert Rankin

  Alice Lovell took Darwin by the hairy hand and led him to the patent water closet.

  Onstage, the Travelling Formbys were singing a song that extolled the virtues of a washed bottom and a clean handkerchief The crowd, most of whom owned to neither of these, sang along with vigour. Whilst making a mental note that next week they must bring more fruit and veg.

  Cameron Bell put his finger to the servant-call button and when the liveried menial arrived at the box, ordered a bottle of champagne. ‘With three glasses, if you please.’

  And then he settled back once more in his comfortable seat and longed for Alice Lovell.

  Cameron Bell had scarcely known a woman’s touch since the death of his mother. For he was a man driven, a man consumed by his occupation. Not for him the pleasures of the flesh, or indeed the deeper joys of female companionship. His was a solitary and cerebral existence. To match his wits against master criminals and to succeed. To unravel the seemingly inextricable conundrums that foxed the fellows of Scotland Yard. To prove that he was the best, nay, better than the best.

  Mr Carl Gustav Jung had already coined a term to describe the mental condition of subjects he examined who displayed the obsessive nature of Mr Cameron Bell. Mr Bell had no time for such nonsense. And no time for Carl Gustav Jung.

  In truth there was really only one being in the whole wide world that Mr Bell had any personal time for, and that was the adorable Alice. Cameron Bell was in love with Alice Lovell.

  But could this angel made flesh ever share such feelings for a young man who bore an uncanny resemblance to Mr Pickwick? Cameron Bell supposed it unlikely, but he could always dream.

  The liveried menial brought the champagne; Cameron Bell uncorked it. What could a man such as himself offer a woman such as Alice? he wondered. He had money, if money she wanted. He was well paid at times for the exclusive and discreet services he offered to clients of the wealthy upper classes. Though somewhat portly, he dressed well and both his bottom and his hankie were clean. And beauty was in the eye of the beholder. The lovely Alice might take to him immediately. He might be just what she was looking for.

  ‘Tall and spare,’ said Alice Lovell, lathering Darwin in the water closet, ‘with a head of curly black hair. An Italian songster, perhaps. There is Señor Voice, the singing horse-tram driver of the number twenty-three to Hammersmith. He has a certain swarthy charm.’

  Exactly why she was describing the man of her dreams to a monkey, Alice wasn’t certain. He just looked like a good listener.

  Darwin, somewhat cross-eyed and gaga from the delicate and at times intimate bath he was receiving, picked up on the words ‘spare’, ‘curly hair’ and ‘swarthy’. A fair description of himself he supposed.

  ‘Five minutes, Miss Lovell,’ called a voice, as knuckles knocked at the water-closet door.

  ‘You’ll have to dry yourself’ said Alice to Darwin. ‘And please stop doing that, my dear, it really isn’t decent.’

  Alice Lovell’s act could justly call itself unique.

  Certainly there were many other bird and animal acts to be seen. Upon the stage and also on the streets.

  But acrobatic kiwis? Not another.

  There were many dancing ducks, of course, displayed along the thoroughfares. These inevitably danced upon the tops of biscuit tins. It was said, and not without good cause, that these biscuit tins generally contained a lighted candle.

  Chicken baiting was, as ever, a popular sport. And women were thrilled to an excess of excitement watching a healthy young man, stripped bare to the waist and armed with nothing more than a butcher’s cleaver, matched against as many as five ferocious fowl in a backstreet chicken pit.

  Ranked also high in popularity were the predictive parrots and prophesying penguins, birds so trained as to convincingly cast tarot and foretell the future. And here it has been justly stated (by those who hath the wisdom to discern trickery in the shape of the candle that heateth the biscuit tin) that a client seeking knowledge from such birds might find a far better future for five guineas than five shillings.

  Acrobatic kiwis, though? Well, that was another matter.

  They had come from New Zealand, of course, conveyed to these shores by Alice’s father, Captain Horatio Lovell. The good captain brought back with him a number of natural curiosities, many of which he exhibited before paying clientele. Amongst these was a mermaid. A shrivelled leathery item, quite unlike the glamorous creature pictured upon the printed handbills the captain distributed in the East End street markets.

  Those discerners of candles in biscuit tins and the dubious credibility of feathered prophets concluded that Captain Lovell’s mermaid was a skilfully constructed chimera. Its top half being that of an ape, its lower, that of a codfish.

  Captain Lovell argued with conviction that this was not the case. Conceding that perhaps his exhibit was not actually a mermaid as the creature was popularly imagined, but was, nonetheless, the genuine article.

  It was a hitherto undiscovered species of aquatic ocean-going monkey.

  Aquasimius Lovelli was the name he suggested to the curator of the Natural History Museum.

  His kiwi birds met with a more sympathetic audience.

  Especially when presented by his delightful daughter.

  The theatre-going public, always on the lookout for unusual amusements, had warmed to the acrobatic kiwis.

  Alice had patiently trained her wingless charges to ride specially constructed tricycles, tread tightropes, form avian pyramids, unfurl a Union Jack and bow their knobbly knees before a framed lithograph of Queen Victoria. They were really quite this season’s thing.

  The audience that night at the Electric Alhambra adored Alice and cooed and ahhhed at her kiwis as one might at a bonny baby in its crinoline bonnet. They had naught to throw, but would not have thrown it if they had. As the kiwis were put through their entertaining paces, ladies crooned and gentlemen cheered and Cameron Bell’s heart fluttered.

  The private detective toasted the trainer of kiwis. The Venusians sharing his box having declined to share his champagne, Mr Bell, somewhat flushed now of face, raised high his glass and to each acrobatic perambulation of the kiwi birds cried, ‘Bravo,’ and, ‘Well done,’ and, ‘God bless you, sweet lady.’

  The performance concluded with a bijou re-enactment of the Battle of Waterloo. A kiwi dressed as Wellington, the Iron Duke, engaged in beak swordplay against another clad in the uniform of Napoleon. This was a great crowd-pleaser, as was indeed anything that involved the trouncing of the unsavoury Johnny Frenchman. It was patriotism, really.

  Alice Lovell left the stage to rapturous applause, her kiwis on her fine high-booted heels.

  And so the evening progressed. Act followed act. Turn after turn. Each receiving a warm reception.

  Then came the top of the bill.

  Harry ‘Hurty-Finger’ Hamilton. Darling of the Music Hall. Harry presented himself this evening in the military trappings of that now-legendary regiment the Queen’s Own Third Foot and Mouth. The terrors of Johnny Afghan in the Khyber Pass. Pith helmet rakishly angled, regimental waistcoat firmly buttoned, kilt a-sway as he gambolled to and fro, flourishing a sporran, a dirk and puttees.

  From the start to the end the audience loved him. Harry held each of them in the palm of his hand. He sang the song that had made him famous. The song that the audience loved so well, for they had part in it, too.

  HARRY: I’ve got a hurty-finger and it has me feeling sad.

  CROWD: He’s got a hurty-finger.

  HARRY: I’ve got a hurty-finger and I think it’s rather bad.

  CROWD: He’s got a very hurty-finger.

  HARRY: I’ve got a hurty-finger and I think it’s getting worse. I’ve got a hurty-finger, please will someone call a nurse? It doesn’t help when folk like you sing—

  CROWD: Stick him in a hearse.

  ALL: I’ve got a really hurty-finger.

  HARRY: I’ve got a hurty-finger and it makes me want to cry.

  CROW
D: He’s got a hurty-finger.

  HARRY: I’ve got a hurty-finger and I think I’m going to die.

  CROWD: He’s got a really hurty-finger.

  HARRY: I’ve got a hurty-finger and it has me feeling glum. I’ve got a hurty-finger and I really want my mum. It doesn’t help when folk like you say—

  CROWD: Stick it up your b*m.

  ALL: I’ve got a really hurty-finger.

  Harry bowed, the crowd cheered wildly.

  Harry waggled his kilt suggestively.

  Washerwomen swooned and a frog-fondler clutched at his heart.

  Harry bowed once more and then, without warning of any kind whatsoever, that certain event that was not listed upon the playbill, that certain event that would rightly be described as a tragic and terrible event occurred.

  All of a sudden.

  And just like that.

  Fire seemed to fall from the Heavens.

  Or did it rise from Hell?

  There was a whoosh and a ball of flame.

  And Harry Hamilton exploded.

  He was gone in the twinkling of an eye. In a million flaming fragments.

  And naught was there left to be seen of him at all, but for a single bandaged finger.

  The crowd looked on in slack-jawed amazement. Was that part of the act? they asked themselves. Some spectacular finale? Those in the front rows, spattered with blood, agreed not. In terror and panic the crowd took to a collective decision. Chaos reigned as those in the stalls made a mad rush for the exits.

  In his box and with only the minimum of blood-splatter soiling the silk lapels of his evening jacket, Cameron Bell looked on. He viewed the crowd and he viewed the stage and he nodded. Thoughtfully.

  ‘Well now, indeed,’ said he.

  5

  n unnatural silence descended.

  It all but popped the ears of Mr Cameron Bell, now all alone in the great auditorium. The private detective gazed about and cocked his ear to this silence.

  Distant sounds were to be heard. A soft purring of revolving cogs, meshing gears, spinning ball-governors. Cameron Bell identified these sounds to be those of the Music Hall’s mighty central nexus — the advanced Difference Engine, designed by Sir Charles Babbage, which managed many aspects of the Electric Alhambra’s day-to-day running.

  Clearly the air—cooling system was compensating for the sudden rise in temperature caused by the incendiary destruction of the star turn. The phrase ‘went out in a blaze of glory’ momentarily entered the hairless head of Mr Cameron Bell.

  But what had happened to hapless Harry Hamilton? Some natural disaster? Which was to say something not caused by the hand of Man? Mr Bell recalled that in Bleak House, his friend Charles Dickens had written of a character by the name of Krook, a rag-and-bottle merchant and hoarder of papers. Krook met his demise in a ball of fire, in what was described as a case of spontaneous human combustion. The scientific community debated over the reality of this phenomenon. But was this what had happened here, witnessed by an audience of thousands?

  And if not?

  Cameron Bell did strokings of his chin. If not, then this was a rare one indeed. In that it represented a most singular occurrence. A murder committed in plain sight of the detective who would set about its immediate investigation.

  ‘Please, sir,’ came an urgent voice, stirring Mr Bell from his reverie. ‘You must vacate the premises. You may be in danger, please, sir.

  Cameron Bell glanced over his shoulder towards an anxious-looking liveried menial who danced nervously from one foot to the other.

  ‘We should all flee now,’ implored this person.

  ‘I think not.’ The private detective picked up his hat and perched it upon his head. He handed his champagne glass to the liveried menial, then upon second thoughts retrieved it from his trembling fingers and snatched up the champagne bottle. ‘Waste not, want not,’ he said with a smile. ‘Now take me to your master.’

  Lord Andrew Ditchfield, owner of the Electric Alhambra, was a man who liked to be on his premises. Though he owned to a town house in Kensington and a country manor in Ruislip, he all but lived at the Electric Alhambra. High in the building’s uppermost towering turrets, he lodged in apartments that he had nicknamed the Eagle’s Nest. With swank office and living accommodation, including a modern bathroom with shower arrangement and a marble bathtub into which jets of water might be introduced at the touch of a single button. This particular marvel of the modern age was the invention of a professor of hydraulics from Brentford in Middlesex by the name of Doctor Jacuzzi.

  Lord Andrew’s bedroom in the Eagle’s Nest had electrically driven doors that opened onto a roof garden of surpassing beauty. Topiaried hedges surrounded this most private garden. Hedges shorn into the shapes of steamships and railway engines, dirigibles and spaceships. Fountains played and rare flowers bloomed upon this London rooftop.

  Lord Andrew Ditchfield was not pleased to see Mr Cameron Bell. Lord Andrew was in something of a lather.

  ‘I will not be blamed for this,’ he cried, upon introduction to the Pickwickian personage who had somehow slipped past his personal guard and used his private lift. ‘It is not my fault. I will not take the blame.’

  ‘Well now, indeed,’ said Mr Cameron Bell, viewing the Alhambra’s owner. An exceedingly handsome young man. Straight of back, broad of chest and narrow of waist. He wore a quilted red silk dressing gown that reached to his monogrammed slippers and a matching smoking cap with a dangling golden tassel. He was in a state of some distress and his voice had a certain quiver.

  ‘They will blame it upon the theatre. I know it,’ he said. ‘Upon the electrical system. They will, I know it, I know it.’

  Cameron Bell placed champagne glass and bottle upon an inlaid ivory side table, crafted in the manner of Dalbatto. Removed his hat from his head and slid it onto the hat rack next to the entrance door. Then took up the champagne bottle once again.

  ‘Would you care for a glass?’ he asked.

  Lord Andrew perused the label. ‘Not that muck,’ he said.

  ‘Quite so.’

  ‘You—’ Lord Andrew now perused the calling card that Cameron had presented to him. ‘Bell.’ He nodded. ‘I know of you — you have a slight reputation.’

  ‘Slight?’ said Mr Bell.

  ‘You dealt with a delicate matter concerning Lady Karen Pender. A personal friend of mine. She said you did an adequate job.’

  ‘Adequate?’ Cameron Bell took in the opulent apartment and the titled owner, who bobbed about in the nervous fashion affected by at least one of his liveried menials. ‘How sad,’ he added.

  ‘Sad?’ asked his lordship. ‘What mean you by this?’

  ‘To lose so much,’ said Cameron Bell. ‘Should the responsibility for Mr Hamilton’s most tragic and public demise fall upon your shoulders. Do they still employ the silken rope for the hanging of aristocrats?’

  Lord Andrew Ditchfield came all over pale. ‘Silken rope?’ he said.

  ‘Progress,’ said Cameron Bell, as if musing aloud. ‘Such a vexed question. Is it good, is it bad? All around us miracles of new technology. But are we losing ourselves, our own identities? Is this progress a blessing or a curse?’

  Lord Andrew Ditchfield flapped his hands about.

  ‘This wireless transmission of electricity, for instance. The latest piece of genius from Lord Nikola Tesla—’ Cameron Bell paused to observe the grinding of Lord Andrew’s teeth. The old aristocracy had not taken kindly to Mr Tesla’s elevation to the peerage. Although he had been rightly rewarded for his services in the Second Worlds War, he was still to the minds of Lord Andrew and company just one more Johnny Foreigner.

  But very good with electrical systems. Hence his employment here.

  ‘We might blame Tesla,’ said Lord Andrew hopefully.

  Cameron Bell just shook his naked head. ‘I regret to say, he said, ‘that if Mr Hamilton died through some malfunctioning of the electrical system, it is you who will do the dance for Jack Ketch, silke
n cord or not.’

  Lord Andrew buried his face in his hands and began to sob.

  ‘If only,’ continued Cameron Bell, as if once more musing aloud, ‘there was someone possessed of investigative skills to a degree that could justly be described as above adequate who could look into this matter on your behalf Who could possibly present plausible evidence to support an argument that the electrical system of this elegant and successful establishment was in no way to blame, then—’

  ‘How much?’ cried Lord Andrew. ‘How much do you want? You are hired, just tell me how much.’

  Mr Cameron Bell made a thoughtful face and offered a thoughtful nod. In business, as in life, he tended to adhere to something known as the Vance Principle, a universal overview which posited that nothing in the universe was stable. All was constantly changing, evolving, all was mutability.

  Mr Cameron Bell’s fees were in harmony with this cosmological axiom and so varied according to the anxiety and financial standing of his clients.

  This was in no way dishonest, for Cameron Bell was a most honest man. This was merely business. And it also had to be said that Cameron Bell was not one who could be ‘bought’. He would never knowingly attempt to prove the innocence of any he knew to be guilty. No matter how much they paid him.

  And he had already made up his mind that Lord Andrew Ditchfield was not guilty of this crime, if crime it really proved to be. Neither through negligence nor intent, no guilty man was he.

  This Mr Bell instinctively knew, with an instinct based upon reason.

  Cameron Bell named a figure as a daily retainer and another as a final remuneration upon satisfactory closure of the case. Lord Andrew, aghast at the enormity of the figures concerned, took to a wilder flapping of his hands.

  ‘What luck,’ said Cameron Bell.