“Thank you for coming so promptly, Sir Charles,” Inspector Davis said, leading the elderly gentleman down the gaslit street towards a dark alley that diverged off the main thoroughfare, like a fracture worn into old glass.

“Would it were that I could have come sooner,” Sir Charles Gainsworth replied, his breathing accelerated by their hurried pace through the chilled night’s fog and his own nervous anticipation.

“I wouldn’t have sent word to you at such an hour, only you said that it was more likely to work if the victim was recently deceased,” Inspector Davis continued.

Sir Charles Gainsworth wondered at the pretence of such an apology from the inspector who cared little for deference to those of superior rank. The two men had met when Inspector Davis had supervised the investigation of the murder of Sir Charles’ own nephew some five years earlier. Sir Charles had pursued technological advances in criminal detection ever since and the two men were now well acquainted with each other’s ways.

“Indeed, I have had little success with the cadavers in my laboratory,” Sir Charles admitted. “However, with a fresh corpse, I think it highly probable that I shall obtain a promising result.”

“I would have you prepare yourself, Sir. A sight like this is not an easy thing to behold.” Despite the inspector’s warning, he did not allow for a slackening of their pace as they approached the crumpled outline on the ground.

“Though not a medical man I have seen many a dissection. I should not be too alarmed, I think.”

The two men said nothing further as they neared the body. The distant gas lamp near the mouth of the alley provided only a trickle of light through the shifting veil of mist. Inspector Davis gestured for a constable to hold a lantern above them as they peered down at the body.

A pool of ominous crimson glistened under the light. It had flowed out from the woman’s bloodied throat in an oddly symmetrical pattern, surrounding her head and torso like a cruel mockery of a red velvet cloak underneath her. The smell of liquor was strong; Sir Charles was hit by it before he bent down to within arm’s reach of the body. His eyes scanned the dimly lit scene, searching for a bottle of whisky or rum smashed on the ground nearby but there was none. Only the body lay broken in the alley.

“Good lord, it’s still warm,” Sir Charles remarked in delight as he touched the face that had been drained chalk-white.

The grim-faced inspector nodded. Sir Charles did not notice the spark of revulsion that his obvious glee had stirred in the inspector’s eyes.

“I see someone has shut the eyes,” Sir Charles noted, kneeling down beside the body and opening the black leather bag he had brought with him.

“That was me. Begging you pardon, Sir. I know the inspector said that you didn’t want no interference of any kind with the body before you came but I couldn’t stand her eyes staring up at me like that,” the young constable’s voice wavered as he spoke. “It was horrible, like she was looking up at me, pleading for help or…”

“No, do not apologise,” Sir Charles assured him as he rummaged though his bag, pulling out a scalpel. “You have indeed done us all a favour. Closing the eyelids will have blocked out any light, preventing too much deterioration of rhodopsin in the retina. The thick cover of fog, such a dark alley and such a hasty discovery of the body are indeed all most fortuitous circumstances. I could not have asked for better conditions for a test subject.”

“You think it will work then, this contraption of yours?” Inspector Davis asked.

Sir Charles Gainsworth pulled out a large clockwork device from his bag. It was comprised of thick goggles with smoky glass attached to a bulky band of brass with leather straps affixed to allow it to sit around the wearer’s head. Attached to the brass framework was an intricate array of cogs, levers and dials. Sir Charles clicked a complex brass funnel into place atop one of the eyepieces. It was only a couple of inches tall and, Inspector Davis noted with faint queasiness, as wide as an eyeball at the top.

“Oh yes. I am convinced of it,” Sir Charles said, placing a black piece of cloth over one of the victim’s eyes, shielding it from the light. He produced a scalpel from his satchel and leaned over the corpse.

“I hope you are right, Sir,” the inspector muttered, turning his head away as Sir Charles made his first incision below the eye socket. “It’d be a powerful tool for the police to be able to see the last dying image of any that had their lives so wrongfully put to an end.”

“Indeed,” Sir Charles agreed, although he resented the inspector referring to his invention as a mere tool for the police. Surely, his invention had application far beyond such a limited capacity. “I hope that you are not worried, Inspector, that it might put an end to the need for men of your profession.”

He could not resist an attempt at riling the inspector, even as he directed most of his attention on the careful extraction of the eyeball with the nerves intact.

“I doubt it’d ever come to that,” Inspector Davis replied, the gravity in his eyes indicating that the possibility of a time when London did not need its top detectives was not an unwelcome prospect, merely an improbable one. “The criminal mind adapts all too quickly and as soon as word of such a device got out, they’d start blindfolding their victims or obscuring their faces by some means, mark my word.”

The inspector was even more cynical than Sir Charles had surmised. While Sir Charles could predict any number of applications for good with his invention, the inspector could only foresee the manner it which it could be circumvented for evil.

With a final cut and a squelch that made the young constable’s hand holding the lantern shake, Sir Charles dug out the eyeball and with practised alacrity placed the bloody eye into the brass holder. He slipped the device over his head, fastened the goggles over his eyes and wound a small key at the side of the band. He paid no heed to the stifled gasp of the constable as the black cloth fell away from the red-stained hole where the woman’s eye had been dug out with surgical precision.

The ticking and whirring of the device starting up echoed in the dark alley, the fog rising up around the three men as though it was being drawn in by the movement of the small cogs and wheels in the machine. The goggles emitted a steady, metronomic beat as Sir Charles waited for his machine to process the final glimpse of dark and light imprinted on the eye. A scratching metal stylus oscillated up and down along the front of the glass, each rhythmic stroke slotting in a fragment of the death image before Sir Charles’ eyes.

It filled in from the left side first, showing Sir Charles what the dying woman had seen as though it was happening to him. A shadowy arm reaching down towards him, then the glint of a blade in the hand, the dark outline of the killer’s evening frock coat. The pounding stylus increased its tempo, the sections of the hazy image filling in front of his eyes with growing speed.

There was a light behind the killer, a lantern held by a second man. The woman had clearly lain prostrate when the final indignity came. The killer was impeccably groomed, the aristocratic outline of his face softened by age. Finally the face of the murderer appeared before Sir Charles with a terrible clarity, his identity incontrovertibly sharp and vivid.

Sir Charles saw his own face staring down with a menacing intensity as he thrust the scalpel into the tender flesh just below the eye.