November 5, 2025

THE FACES IN MORGAN ALLEY
by Rick Kennett

Click here to listen to this story on the Kaidankai Podcast.


They work quickly, quietly and efficiently in this room built for one function, because that one function is to be performed early tomorrow.
Standing on the stepladder and holding a length of chain in his left hand he reaches up with his right to slide back the pin in its steel bracket. This bracket is bolted to the underside of the oak beam running athwart the room. He slips a link marked with chalk onto the pin then slots the pin back into the bracket. The chain depending from the bracket is six feet three inches long, the length calculated by dividing one thousand by the weight of the subject in pounds.
His assistant hands him up a coil of rope with the regulation length of twelve feet. It has a pear-shaped brass eye at one end though which he shackles the rope to the end of the chain. He jumps down, his shoes thumping hollowly on the metal of the trapdoor. The rope, its other end looped through a similar brass opening, is left coiled on the floor while they leave to fetch the sandbag.
                                                                         #


There was something off, something self-conscious about her movements. He couldn’t pinpoint it, but she seemed like she was walking down the street for the purpose of walking down the street, and it bugged him. There were tassels on her skirt, peacock patterns on her blouse and a feather in her hat. She was supposed to be a flapper. Couldn’t she flap a bit?
Passing a darkened alleyway she was pounced on by a figure, indistinct and blurred in the viewfinder. She fell back with a cry, arms flailing.
Yes, that’s better. Struggle. Yes, yes. Struggle. Yell.
Although the yelling was unnecessary – the mic was muted to eliminate ambient noise – it helped. Sound would be dubbed later. Struggling and unnecessarily yelling, she was dragged into the alley, her kicking black stockings on her thin legs disappearing into the dark.
He glanced up and down the city lane off which the alley ran. Morning sunlight slanted in, shining into this slot of tall buildings one side, boutique shops and a little café just opening for business on the other. Nothing stirred among the long shadows. The Sunday streets of the city were empty for the moment, which was just as well. Moss hated rubber-neckers.
He zoomed his phone’s camera in on the woman’s black leather bag lying on the pavement, then did a slow tilt up to the sign on the wall: Morgan Alley.
He turned off his camera. “OK. Thank you.” He opened the phone’s address book, selected ‘Weird Beard’ and emailed the video file.
From within the alley a man’s voice said, “Ups-a-daisy,” followed by a grunt of exertion. A young man of somewhat stocky build, thin face, dark hair, emerged. Dressed in high-waisted trousers with old-time braces over the shoulders of his white woollen shirt. A round faced diminutive woman of twenty or so followed immediately behind, brushing at her loose skirt, blue-grey and tasselled.
Moss put his phone away in the pocket of his suit which was clearly tailor-made -- though clearly not for him and not recently – and brought out a pencilled list headed Scenes to be Shot. Half the lines were crossed out. He crossed out another that read: nat passes alley entrance owen attacks nat. “That’s that done,” he said with satisfaction.
“Don’t you want to do another take?” said Owen. “You know, just to make sure?”
Nat, straightening her hat, gave him an evil look as if not welcoming the thought of another drag into a dirty alley.
 “It was all right in the viewfinder,” said Moss. “It’ll do.”
“That sounds the sort of thing Ed Wood might’ve said.”
“Ed who?” Moss dragged out his phone again, dabbed at its screen, opening Facebook.
“You’re the wannabe Spielberg and I’m just your lay-about house-mate press-ganged into playing a bit part,” said Owen, “but even I know Ed D Wood Jnr -- world’s worst director of the world’s worse movie, Plan Nine from Outer Space.”
“Sounds sci-fi,” Moss sniffed. “No one’s interested in that sort of thing.”
“Aren’t they? Have you noticed what some of the most commercially successful films are these days?”
But the wannabe Spielberg was on a roll. “What’s we’re doing here is the real thing, what people are really interested in. What we’re doing here is history, raw emotion and ultimately the mystery that is death.”
“What we’re doing here,” said Nat, “is a student film, and from what I’ve been seeing while editing it not a particularly good one.”
Moss gestured to his phone. “Weird Beard’s just posted on Facebook. He likes the vid we just shot. ‘Your delve into surrealism is eccentric brilliance, reminiscent of the early work of David Lynch.’” He made with a self-satisfied smirk which quickly morphed into a thoughtful frown. “Surrealism?”
“Your film professor would find eccentric brilliance in a Cornflakes commercial,” said Owen.
Moss made to say something, stopped and stared at Nat. “That’s it. That’s why I thought you looked wrong. You don’t have a bag. No flapper out and about in the 1920s would walk down the street without her purse or some –“ He stopped again, stared again, this time at the empty pavement behind his actress. “Where’d the bag go?”
Nat didn’t even bother to turn around. “If by bag you mean the one I suggested I carry while we were coming here? My own crocheted woollen bag? The one you said looked too modern? That bag?”
“No, I’m talking about the black leather bag you dropped at the corner.”
“How can I drop a bag I don’t have?”
But Moss wasn’t listening, didn’t even seem to be aware he’d just contradicted himself. He scanned the alley paving stones, then glancing up thought he glimpsed someone at its far end, a flash of colour in its drab depths, an impression of a shortish figure, there and gone. He turned back, searching again for a bag that wasn’t there. “I thought it a nice detail you added because dropping her bag was exactly what Jinny Lee did when Josh Brannic attacked her.”
“I had no bag,” said Nat pointedly.
“Time for breakfast, don’t you think?” said Owen.
#


Using a block and tackle attached to the oak beam they haul up the sandbag through the open trap from the pit below. It has been secured to the loop of rope and left overnight. Carefully measured, the rope is found to have stretched almost an inch.
The twin leaves of the trap are closed by pulling the release lever back which is then secured by slotting a cotter pin into place. The stepladder is returned to the centre of the room and ascended. Adjustments are made to the chain to accommodate the stretch in the rope.
Two sturdy planks are brought in and placed either side of the trap. Two lengths of rope with their ends balled into fist-sized knots are attached to hooks in the ceiling so that their ends hang at shoulder height above the planks. The rope attached to the chain is gathered up, its loose coils tied together with light twine so that the loop is now positioned at head height.
Their work for the moment is done and there’s the pleasant smell of brewing coffee and frying bacon. As they exit they pass those tasked with laying the seagrass matting on the steel decking of the gallery.
#


Nat stirred her coffee with a plastic spoon and from her seat outside the café looked down the city lane. “Bet this place has changed a lot the past hundred years.”
“Over there,” said Moss, pointing across to where a driveway swept down into the basement of a modern office block, “was where Brannic was standing in the door of his pokey little draper shop early on the morning of November 12, 1922 when he saw Jinny approaching on the other side of the lane. He darted across and hid in Morgan Alley to wait for her to pass.”
“Creepy,” said Nat.
Owen glugged his coffee in one go then got out his own phone to Google Josh Brannic. This produced what was likely a police mug shot of a man with shallow cheeks and unshaven face, untidy black hair, an unmistakable look of terror behind his dark eyes.
“Something like me,” Owen observed.
“Which is why I asked you to play the part and because you work cheap,” said Moss.
Owen gave his empty coffee cup a significant look. “Yes, I must remember to declare this next time I’m paid my unemployment benefits.” He studied the photo of Brannic again. “That’s a troubled face if ever I’ve seen one.”
“By the time they took that he had reason to be troubled.”
“Why was Jinny walking alone in this lane so early in the morning?” asked Nat.
By now Moss was fiddling with his phone again, trying to locate the video file he’d sent to Weird Beard. “She’d been to some gala affair in town and had had an argument with her boyfriend and stormed off,” he said off-handedly, then glanced up, frowning. “Haven’t you two done any research on the people you’re playing?”
“We’re not …” Nat paused, searching for a phrase that eluded her. “What do you call those obsessives who psych themselves into their roles?”
“Method actors?” Owen suggested.
“Yeah. We’re not method actors, Moss. I mean, I’d never even heard of the Morgan Alley Murder till the day before yesterday when you asked me to do some editing for you.”
“Which I greatly appreciate, but I sometimes wish you two would make more of an effort.” He began again searching through his video files.
“We got dressed up,” said Nat. “Owen and I spent all yesterday morning going through op-shops and vintage bazaars. That’s effort enough. Anyway, why didn’t Jinny just cross the street if she saw him enter the alley she was about to pass?”
“Maybe still pissed off with the boyfriend and didn’t notice,” said Owen.
Moss swiped at his screen again. “Actually no. Jinny worked at Josh Brannic’s draper shop so they knew each other. If she saw him cross into the alley ahead of her it wouldn’t have seemed creepy at all. She lived with her widowed mother in the next suburb east –“ Moss pointed along the lane towards the morning sun, “--so this was her usual way home. Anyway, the story goes that there’d been some sort of romance between Jinny and Josh Brannic, but when he saw her coming up the lane so early that morning he guessed by the way she was dolled up that she’d been out with someone else, so he killed her in a jealous rage.”
Owen conjured up an image of Jinny Lee on his own phone and showed the screen to Nat. “Looks something like you.”
Nat studied the black and white round-face of the long-dead young woman, lace collar, hair in curls. “Poor girl.”
“The police had their motive and their moment of opportunity too,” said Moss. “It didn’t help Brannic’s case that he had her blood on his hands. He said he’d found her body, but of course he would say that. The newspapers of the day stirred up public opinion against him. I mean, illicit love, passions raging, a grubby shopkeeper with a vaguely foreign sounding name, the rape and murder of a young and pretty innocent. There was also a confession to a cellmate while he was awaiting trial.”
“An unverified ‘He told me he done it’ I bet,” said Owen. “Hearsay confessions are not evidence.”
“The judge in Brannic’s trial thought otherwise,” said Moss.
He went back to searching his files, muttering and swiping. After a couple of moments of this Nat said, a little touchily, “Moss, don’t tell me you’ve deleted this morning’s video. I really don’t fancy being dragged into Morgan Alley again to be ravished and –“ She broke off with the realization the waitress was there beside her with their raisin toast.
The woman stared at them. Owen and Nat – Moss was too preoccupied with his phone – stared back.
“We’re making a film,” said Nat in the awkward silence.
“OK,” said the waitress. She clattered the plates of raisin toast on the table and fled back into the café.
“Great,” said Owen. “Now she thinks we’re a bunch of weirdoes shooting a hard core porno in a back alley.”
Moss, oblivious to what had just happened, had finally found that morning’s video and was now watching it with a growing look of confusion. At last he looked up, a curious expression on his face. “I want you to take a look at this,” he said in a curiously strained tone, He slid his phone across the table to them. “I want you to tell me exactly what you see. Describe it, if you don't mind, rather minutely.”
Nat and Owen put down their raisin toast in mid-bite and peered down at the swirls of pixels and light on the phone screen.
“It’s Morgan Alley,” said Owen, carefully, not sure what was expected of him. “Your initial establishing shot before Nat comes into view. There’s a sort of smudged form at the corner of the alley, sort of like oily smoke. Is that me? No, can’t be. Too small. Odd that it’s out of focus yet everything else is sharp enough. OK, here’s Nat walking into shot … no, no, it’s another smoky shadow … it’s just reached the shadow at the corner … and it’s stopped. Now you’re panning across and … yes, here’s Nat walking into shot and now you’re tracking with her to where the two shadow blurs seems to be … there’s a lot of bending and twisting about them … Now they’re coming into focus a little … I can see them clearer now. Looks like a man and a woman struggling or gesticulating. The man seems to be wearing some sort of striped blazer and the woman is wearing … green?” 
“Yes. Green,” said Nat.”
“OK, now it looks like they’ve changed positions and the man has the woman against the wall … thought he had a hat a moment ago but it looks like it’s fallen off.”
“Think she just pushed him. Not sure. I’ve just stepped in front of them and obscured them. All right, here’s Owen jumping out of the alley and dragging me back in.”
“Yes, I drag Nat in and the shadows are revealed again … oh shit!” Owen flinched back from the phone screen. “The guy in the stripes just stuck the woman in the face … at least I think he did.”
“Go on,” said Moss.
 “Now they sort of tumble back into the alley and disappear … and now here’s your tilt down to the bag … Moss, where did that bag come from?” When his only answer was a testy gesture Owen took the hint. “OK … OK … now you’re tilting up to the street sign ... and the video ends.”
“What the hell was that?” said Nat. “It’s like a double exposure on a film, but you can’t get double exposures on digital imaging.”
“No, you can’t,” said Moss and his voice trembled.
They watched it again, then again, trying to make visual sense of the blurred images, the chaotic motion.
“I see now it’s definitely a shorter guy in what looks like a striped blazer,” said Owen at last, getting a clearer cognize with repeated viewings. “Think he’s wearing a snappy bowtie and a flat-brimmed hat, but he loses it during the struggle with the woman in the green dress.”
Rewatching it and rewatching they were soon convinced the man in the blazer had stuck the woman a fearful blow.
Nat silently put her hand to her mouth as the two men, wide-eyed and white-faced watched the woman in green once more dragged into the alley by the man in the striped blazer. The scene tilted down and zoomed onto the bag on the footpath, lingering a moment before slowly tilting up to the street sign: Morgan Alley.
#


“Two raisin toasts, two flat whites and a Pepsi ‘n’ goat milk.” The woman behind the counter tapped up the price. Moss flourished his card with a hand visibly shaking. While they waited for payment to be electronically confirmed she added, “Are you filming something about the murder in Morgan Alley?” She glanced out the café window to Nat and Owen in their period clothes staring down at the phone on the table.
“The murder … yes,” he said like a man whose thoughts were elsewhere.
“You know you’ve got her dress wrong.”
It took Moss a moment to pick up on what she’d said. The video was playing over and over in his mind. “Sorry. The dress is … what?
“The wrong colour. She wears green, not the grey-blue number that lady’s wearing. Her hat’s wrong too.”
He fixed her with a hard look. “How do you know this?”
“Her ghost still walks that alley.”
When Moss emerged from the café a minute later Owen remarked his fixed gaze, his twitching mouth. All three were disconcerted and nervy by what they’d seen, but now Moss looked bewildered as well.
He stopped by the table and gripped the back of his chair as if needing support. He turned his head and stared down the laneway in the direction of Morgan Alley a few shop fronts distant. Owen made to stand but Moss laid a hand on his shoulder and pressed him gently back into his seat.
“I need to check something.” he said, more to himself than to the others. Scooping up his phone he headed down the lane with a hesitant step as if not really wanting to arrive where he was going.
From their table Nat and Owen watched him stand at the entrance to Morgan Alley, peering into its depths. They heard him say in a loud but quavering voice, “Jinny Lee … Jinny Lee … Jinny Lee …” He drew his phone to his eye.
“This has gone too far,” said Owen with decision. He stood. “It’s getting weird and dangerous.”
“Yes, it has,” said Nat, understanding what he meant on a purely emotional level.
She stood and joined him and together they carefully approached Moss still muttering the dead woman’s name with his phone focused on the alley’s shadowed interior. They craned their heads around its corner, inwardly terrified at what they might see. It was very empty, very still, very innocent of its dark past.
“What are you doing, Moss?” asked Owen, trying to keep his voice calm.
“The camera sees more than we do. I want to see what it sees.”
“Do you think that’s wise?”
“No. But I want to see it anyway.”
 Moss continued to work his camera, stills and video, all the while intoning, “Jinny Lee … Jinny Lee,” panning, zooming, snapping, “Jinny Lee … Jinny Lee …”
Nat watched the alley in anticipation, desperately wanting Moss to stop. He was provoking and provoking and something would surely respond. Owen had to fight down an urge to snatch the phone and throw it into the gutter, half-convinced Moss was being irrational and sure he was meddling with things better left alone.
Moss dabbed at his phone, stopping the video. Nat and Owen began to breathe again. The shadows had brought forth nothing.
Their breakfast plates and cups had not been cleared from the table when they returned and they didn’t notice the waitress watching them from the café window. Moss, holding his phone up for all to see, activated the still photos on a fast slide-show.
The green spectre appeared almost at once.
The rapid flickering series of shots animated her. She looked left, looked right in a stutter of movement, twitching to stare at the camera, raising her arms, head blurring to left, to right, shaking “No” and “No” then stepping forward, mouth agape sobbing “No” coming close, coming closer, filling the screen with her dead round face, her crying eyes …
 The video began at the corner where there might’ve been something standing, shaking its head, lost as the view panned across to the right bringing in sharp and clear the back of a man’s head, hair slicked and topped with a straw boater. He stepped forward to bring himself fully into shot as if in awareness of his viewers. And deliberately he turned and grinned from a scratched face, the man with the striped blazer and snappy bowtie. His eyes were wide in lustful leer. Out of nowhere he thrust out his hand, fingers splayed jabbing through the screen. Moss and Nat and Owen jumped back in their seats, grabbing at their eyes, palming at the sudden gouging pain.
The phone clattered to the ground and went dark.
The first few moments were exclamatory as each sat in their own personal darkness, hands over tightly closed eyes. Cautiously they drew their hands away and opened their eyes to a squint, fearing the worst. They were not blind, though vision was unfocused and clouded. They barely registered the presence of the waitress, gripping their shoulders, touching their faces.
“What have you done? What is it? Oh for god’s sake what is it?”
 At once the pain eased from their eyes and vision cleared.
Moss looked up through involuntary tears, grateful to see the woman, the street, sunlight. “It’s all right, Miss,” he said though he sounded far from all right. “We had a moment with your ghost. Please let us be. We’ll be fine in a moment.”
Dubiously the waitress left them. Reluctantly Moss searched for his phone under the table, what it might show, what might reach for him as he reached for it. He found it with its screen a cobweb of cracks and smelling of burning. He threw it in a nearby bin.
Nat was the one who said it, though they’d all been thinking it.
“In the 1920s a Sunday morning shop keeper wouldn’t wear a striped blazer, a straw hat and a bowtie. But someone attending a Saturday night gala event with his lady friend would.”
“Bet their argument was about sex,” said Owen. “It’d explain a lot.”
“Let’s go,” said Moss.
From the café door the waitress watched them disappear down the lane, then took a quick, nervous glance up at the entrance to Morgan Alley before withdrawing into the shop.
#


The seagrass matting deadens their footsteps as they assemble, a group of three outside the cell door, a group of several more at the other door further along. Those inside must not hear their approach, though they know they are coming. They know it like they know the sun has just risen.
Somewhere far above in the clock tower a bell begins to strike the hour.
The cell door is opened with a jingle of keys. The warder in his prison blue uniform enters, followed by the hangman and his assistant in business attire. The man at the table is talking with the clergyman when they come in. He stands and faces them, a young man of stocky build, a little above average height. His shallow cheeks are clean shaven now and his black hair is neatly combed, though terror is still in his dark eyes.
The assistant turns him around and pulls his arms behind his back, binding the wrists with a leather strap, fastening it with a wooden peg. The warder has already slid aside the cupboard hiding the door into that other room. It has been hidden there unknown all these weeks of waiting. The hangman, the linen hood folded like a handkerchief in the top pocket of his suit coat, says, “It’ll be all right,” to the prisoner in his calm, professional voice. He passes through the erstwhile hidden doorway and into that other room where the prison governor, the under-sheriff, the doctor and other officials are waiting. Directly ahead is the noose positioned at head height, tied by light twine to two or three loose loops of rope. A warder stands either side on planks across the trap door, guarding against last minute surges of desperation. For safety’s sake both have one hand gripping a length of knotted rope depending from the ceiling.
Touching the prisoner on the shoulder the assistant says, “Follow him,” and they move off in procession: the hangman, Josh Brannic, the assistant and the spectre in green, shaking her head, arms raised in despair and sobbing, “No …No …”
​
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​A life-long resident of Melbourne, Australia, I am retired now after 42 years in the transport industry. My stories have appeared in many magazines, anthologies and podcasts and I have several books up on Amazon. I've not been owned by a cat for decades and these days have to make do talking to next door's white tom who sometimes condescends to talk to me.