Phantom of Blood Alley by Paul Stewart

sounds upstairs, and I thought she was back and had slipped in without my noticing, but when I looked, there was no one there, and …’
    I squeezed her hands. ‘You’ve been very brave, Tilly,’ I told her, ‘but I’m afraid I’ve got bad news.’
    I stepped inside, closing the door behind me, and led her through to the cosy kitchen, with its copper pots and blazing range. I sat her down in the rocking chair and told herwhat had happened. Tilly gasped and buried her face in her hands.
    ‘Mr Oliphant, dead,’ she whispered. ‘And the mistress accused of his murder! Oh, what is a poor maid-of-all-work to do, Barnaby?’ Tilly sobbed.
    Just then, there came the soft creaking of a loose floorboard from upstairs. Tilly looked up, her eyes wide with terror.
    ‘There it is again,’ she said. ‘I told you, Barnaby.’ She swallowed. ‘I didn’t imagine it.’
    ‘Leave this to me,’ I told her. ‘You stay here.’
    I drew my sword, left the kitchen and crept up the carpeted stairs as quietly as I could. Peering inside from the landing, I could see that what I took to be the door to Clarissa Oliphant’s bedroom was open. Drawers had been pulled out, cupboard doors hung open and various items lay strewn across the floor. The room had clearly been searched, and pretty thoroughly by the look of it.
    The adjacent room was at the back of the house, directly above the drawing room. It was where I’d heard Laurence Oliphant pacing about on my first visit. The door was closed, and I paused and pressed my ear to the dark-stained wood. Silence. I waited for a moment or two, then, gripping my sword firmly, I seized the door handle and marched into Laurence Oliphant’s bedchamber.
    I looked around. There was a wall lamp to the right of the door. I pulled a box of vestas from my pocket, struck one and lit the gas. As I adjusted the mantle, a golden yellow glow filled the air, banishing the shadows to the corners of the room–but failing to reveal any intruder lurking there. Nevertheless, I felt ill at ease, every fibre of my body tense and braced as I took in my surroundings.
    Unlike the rest of the house, Laurence Oliphant’s bedchamber was stark, with bare boards and empty walls. Heaps of boxes and crates stood piled up on both sides of theroom, with various pieces of what I took to be photographic equipment nestling between them. Everything was covered in a thin layer of dust, and a faint tang of chemicals hung in the air.
    Beneath the window at the far end of the room was a small metal-framed bed, with crumpled blankets strewn across a thin mattress. An easel stood at the end of the bed behind a varnished wooden screen. It had what looked like a painting propped up against its angled struts. My curiosity aroused, I went to inspect it more closely and was surprised to discover that it wasn’t an oil painting at all, but a photographic image mounted on thick card. I pulled the easel round until the lamp glow fell upon the picture.
    The big ears and small eyes. The snub nose. A strand of silvery hair that had come free from the bun and hung down across a fleshy cheek. The high-collared jacket, buttoned at the neck …
    It was the likeness of Clarissa Oliphant, captured in a beautifully modulated black and white image. But it wasn’t just her features and clothes that I recognized, it was her expression. The lofty superiority of her steady gaze. The parsimonious tightness in her lips. It was as though I wasn’t merely looking at a likeness of Clarissa Oliphant, but at the essence of the woman herself. It was more life-like than any painting I’d ever seen.
    I leaned forward, my sword lowered. Laurence Oliphant’s looped signature filled the bottom left-hand corner; below it, there was a date. The picture, I realized, was over a year old, with the image as crisp as the day it had been produced.
    ‘An oliphantype,’ I murmured.
    As if in response, I heard a faint hissing noise, like the expelling of air. My body tensed.