by Rod Madocks
The responders later told me that I’d fainted and the checkout girl had rung for an E.M.S. I turned out I had the flu real bad maybe combined with not looking after myself too good. I thought it was something else though. During those sweaty hours of fever I got the idea that someone or something was leading me, dragging me down a road. Maybe it’s a much more serious deal than I at first thought. Somehow Lee’s troubles were becoming mine. He’d sought me out and now he was testing me. Seeing if I had the fiber to stick it out. Seeing if I had the right stuff and checking if I’ll step up to the plate whatever the cost.
Spool Three
Somewhere to hide
St Marychurch, November 14th 1884
—I ran up to Compton as if devils were at my back. The gale was pushing me along and twisting at the lantern in my hand. I felt I was running from death and my own bad self.
Doctor Kaiser: You are talking of the night something bad happened?
—It was that next dawn. George Pearce, the custom man, had screamed out to me, “Oh Lord, look at Miss Keyse. Dead as a herring!” He’d caught sight of what was left of her after we dragged her into the boat house. Jane Neck, smoke-grimed in her bloody nightdress, had croaked that I’d better go up to Compton House to tell Mrs McLean her sister was dead. Tell her gentle-like, she’d said. I’d asked Sergeant Nott if that was all right. He’d just nodded and watched me go.
I belted on. The running seemed to ease the fearful hurt of my wounded arm. My hand on the lantern handle was all sticky with blood. At the Downs in the grey light I saw the fire brigade coming ringing their bell and flogging their horses on the upgrade of the Babbicam Road. They would never get down Beach Road in that fire wagon. I also met another of the police, hurrying along, “Where away is the fire?” he shouted.
“There away.” I pointed back.
Down St Alban’s Road I stopped, and pulled off my collar and tie and put them into my greatcoat pocket. I looked over garden walls but could see nowhere that was any good. I had something to get rid of, see.
Doctor Kaiser: You wanted to hide something? Can you tell me about it?
—Caw, doc. You surely like to rummage through everything. It was my stick. My knob-ended stick. It didn’t look like a good thing to be carrying around. As I was saying, I arrived at Compton House and threw gravel from the drive up at the servants’ window. Anne Boulder, the fat old cook, stuck her head out and asked me what was the matter. I told her Miss Keyse’s house was on fire and she was burnt to death. She and the maid, Mary Blatchford, let me in at the front door and I stood by the potted palms at the foot of the stairs. I moaned about my arm but they wanted to know what had happened. They kept asking where Miss Keyse was and I told them again that she was dead and that they had to tell Mrs McLean.
Next, I ran down Plainmoor Road, away from the Glen that is. The day was getting light. Somewhere past Rose Villa, Joshua Horn’s’s place, I chucked my knob stick into the bushes. I kept on going through the Cary lands up to Wellswood. I could see the snowy moors twenty miles away over my right shoulder. The first folk appeared, milk carts, servants going to work. I thought I should really go running down to Torre and get a train, or go north towards the moors. But something made me go on. All the faces of the parish seemed to come out that awful morning and news travelled quick. There was Charlie Sutton, the barber, he stopped me and asked about the fire, I told him that the lady was burnt to death and that I should have been burnt to death too if it had not been found out. Far too many folk came past but I kept hammering on up through Wellswood to the Warberries and to Katie’s place. The pocket of my long coat bumped and banged with something heavy at the hip. I was carrying something else, see. Mazy Jack, mazy Jack. That blasted song kept sounding in my head, can hear it still. I ran into the chimney rat, George Russell—he was worried it was a chimney fire. I told him that we should all have been burnt to death if it was not for my sister. She smelt smoke, came downstairs and saw the sofa afire in the drawing room. Then I said that most gert foolish thing that near guaranteed a rope around my neck, something about how I was very sorry for it but as she was dead we shall never know how ’twas done. Mazy Jack, mazy Jack, What was that in thy head? Ah, ess, Mazy Jack, what have you done?
The girls singing it and pointing at me at school. Mazy Jack, what have you done? Gone a-ploughing with your slippers on. I also couldn’t get out of my mind what Lizzie said to me the day before the whole horrible mess. She’d fixed me with a look and said, “That babby is yorn,” and tapped at her belly.
On past the palm trees of the big villas where the cursed rich folk lived. Daylight came on fast as my boots went slamming along those high-walled ginnels that led past the big gardens. I stopped at the junction of Lower Warberry Road. There was a trough there set into a hole in the wall. The pack horses carrying fish from Ilsham used to stop there on their way up to Ellacombe. A stone trough fed by rain, set in the red wall. I pretended to do up my boots then took it out my pocket and jammed it behind the trough. There was a narrow crack and ledge. No-one would think to look there. It was a secret place. I had used a year before with Harrington. It was our hiding hole. Lightened, I came by the back steps to Grafton Terrace, hammering on Katie’s door until her pale face came to the window. Katie, her hair down, let me enter. How everything in her little place seemed so peaceful, so unspoiled after the wild bad dream of the night.
“Katie, Katie!” I had cried out, “I was asleep, heavy asleep and woke to hell. You’ll see us all marched off to a police station.” I really needed her then just as everything was folding up.
Katie made me go back. She made me believe it would be all right although my senses told me to keep on running. My feet seemed to drag as I dropped back down Beach Road to the smoke-logged bay an hour later. It was six and thirty and quite a crowd now swarmed over the Glen. Firemen had finally made their way down and were busy dragging burnt thatch off the roof with their hooked poles. The custom men were stacking furniture on the terrace. I was met by many a sidelong suspicious look. Gasking and the fishermen gathered in murmuring groups and stared at me. That lawyer Carter, one of Miss Keyse’s legal men, was also poking about. I remained free for an hour or two longer, wandering around the ruined house, shivering. Doctor Chilcote bandaged my arms. He said nothing to me but gave me a worried look now and then. Then Nott and two constables came up to me.
“I am arresting you on suspicion of having committed the murder of the deceased Miss Keyse,” said Nott.
“Oh, on suspicion?” I answered.
They said I had to go with them to Torquay. We began walking up the cliff road, me in front. Lizzie ran out and asked me where I was going. I told I was taken on suspicion.
“I know you didn’t do it!” she shouted.
Gasking began yelling that I was a foul beast for what I had done. I knew then that a gert dark hole was opening up for me.
Nighthawks
I’ve got back on my feet. Taking extra vitamin complex with additional Selenium. I’ve also returned to my routine. Jenna seems to have disappeared from Picks though I keep looking out for her. The season is tightening up here. The lights of Scotties eatery are like an Edward Hopper scene. Everyone hunched over the cherrywood counters. There was a black dude in there yesterday, a rare sight in this town. A heavy-set guy who kept his head down and carefully read through a magazine making careful markings on page after page with a yellow hi-lighter pen. I kept trying to see what magazine he had. Even asking him to pass me the sugar and peeking over his shoulder but I couldn’t make it out. He kept the magazine carefully scrolled as I watched him go out into the lights on Main then get swallowed up in the darkness beyond. I’m tackling my research carefully. I want to know stuff. All poets hate the approximate. I’m also checking for emissaries. You never know who Lee might be sending.
Spool Three
On Suspicion
Torquay, November 15th 1884
—In Torquay police cells at the Market Street station a day afterwa
rds, I still had little understanding of all that was happening. I sat in my cell, the crazed doings of that Friday night running in my head. My arm hurt and dried bits of blood kept dropping from me. When I washed in a bowl the water was pink-stained. My braces and bootlaces had been taken from me in case I tried to make an end of it. PC Meech had brought me my Sunday suit, my other clothes had been taken for evidence. I kept on coughing. That smoke had got into my lungs. I had no appetite for the meals delivered from Gibbons Commercial Hotel. That was Tregaskis’ place, and that bully had been sniffing around trying to buy Miss Keyse’s silver. What a meshed town that was. I wondered what Katie was doing. Outside I could hear the sound of carts going to the covered market down the hill a way. I kept being disturbed by the clicking of the eye slit as officials came to stare at me. There was a constant racket in the cells from the drunks, tramps, flower sellers and beggars that had been hauled in over the weekend. Torquay was a rowdy place. I was in a lot more trouble than they were though.
Doctor Kaiser: So, had they charged you with anything?
—On suspicion, that’s all I was told, I was held on suspicion.
Forecast
I’ve got this weather finder app; I like to let it run. It’s a kind of doppler radar. Weather shows as pulsing bursts of color speeding over the landscape: I zoom in east of Lake Michigan, the shimmery bursts go green for heavy rain, blue for drizzle—the deeper the color the heavier the downfall. Today the color bursts are spreading from the north, Canada, so it’s not looking good. Outside of the window my birdfeeder swings like a metronome. I won’t go out today, too much to do any way. I’ve decided I’ve got to get a grip of what went on around John Lee’s trial. If you can examine the facts straight after an event that gives you much more of a chance. I’m going to work it out; I’ve got to understand. Then maybe John Lee will leave me alone.
I’ve had the freakiest dreams recently. I keep going back to a scene when I’m running in a storm, blood is glistening somewhere, all of a sudden a woman comes screaming out the smoke. At first I thought it was that Lion’s Mane mushroom extract I’ve been taking. I’ve got to concentrate. I have ramped up the amount of nootropics I’m taking. They say that this idea that most folks only ever use 10% of their brains is a myth started by William James, one of the first American psychologists, but I’m sure there is truth in the story. You need a goal to measure up and push your brain furtherer than it’s gone before. Even a bad brain like mine. If I really stretch it then maybe I can get to be some type of a standup hero. Maybe I can juice all those ghosts that are ganging up on me.
I’ve got a new bunch of papers. I paid good US dollars to a Brit archive cache. I’ve printed them out and the papers are spilled all over the apartment floor. The old Webster has been lugged to one side for now. There is almost too much information to take in at this point: There are the inquest and court records, the notes the Torquay cops made and of course, the detailed stuff that filled the newspapers of the time. The hound-dog reporters apparently came in packs to Babbacombe. The inquest was opened three days after the death of Miss Keyse. It was set up much like the inquests we get now in the States only they had jurors then. Twelve of them were selected and told by Coroner Hacker to go with Sergeant Nott to the Glen in order to “Super visum corporis”, the first stage of all inquests of the time. I guess most of you do not know what the words meant. I do though. Hold up, dudes. We’ll be getting onto Latin later. OK, I’ll tell you—it means “On a view of a body”. I’ve got the idea that PC Meech stayed at the front door to push back the crush of onlookers. I can see the crowd pressing up to the Glen’s doors, murmuring like bees, some were probably drunk already. Miss Keyse had been laid out in Lizzie’s bedroom. Let’s explore it in the mind’s eye. We know this room had been untouched by the fire. Lizzie herself had been sent to stay with her Aunt Millie in Tormohan. The sea outside was now calm, the storm spent, and the beach was strewn with wrack and trampled by onlookers come to view the site of the terrible crime as news spread right through the parish. The papers told me that the jurors were taken through each room. I can see them shuffling reluctantly into the bedroom. Some reporters followed them. Everything must have been permeated by a bitter smell, a tang of burning combined with the stench of dead flesh, kerosene and wet plaster. The jurymen all came from the parish and all likely knew Miss Keyse in life and most of them also had seen Lee about in St Marychurch. It’s clear they thought he was a cold-eyed son of a bitch.
They followed Nott in to look at Miss Keyse’s body. They had taken off her scorched night dress and wrapped her in a sheet. Her face was yellow against the white fabric. The only really recognizable feature was that strong nose made sharper in death. Nott showed them the injuries. I’ve seen examples of head trauma in grue sites on the Net and I’d looked at the sicko illustrations in Kerr’s Forensic Medicine, a 1947 manual I found in another yard sale. Miss Keyse’s head must have been a tangle of snowy roots and henna-stained locks glued together by stiffened clumps of black blood. The skin would have lifted from the wound as if some creature had ripped its way out from Miss Keyse’s head. Nott then probably showed them the other massive head wound, a great dent to the right side of her temple. Her features would have been drawn in on this side by the impact. They said he even lifted the body a bit to show them the throat wound, a blackened trench which gouged right across. The stem of the neck was quite gone. I guess all they could do was stand and stare. I bet none of them would ever forget that room and the smell. Nott plodded on. He’d been told to show them everything and he was a thorough man. He raised the sheet to reveal her legs quite black and oddly smooth and shiny like carbon pencils, and at the bottom of the bed her scorched feet, the white pegs of the toe bones sticking out through the charred flesh.
They stumbled on through the murder house, following Nott, who went ahead with a lantern. He showed them the torched bedroom, the Honeysuckle Room with burnt laths poking out the walls and straw shreds from the roof thatch floating in puddles. He pointed where they had cut out blood-stained portions of the stairs and hall carpeting for evidence. At the foot of the stairs he told them this was where there were the most blood stains. They looked at the large patch of black there on the floorboards. Nott pointed to the splashes like tadpole blots on the walls. Nott explained they were marks from jetting blood as well as the thrown blood from an uplifted weapon. He showed them the trails all over the floorboards from dropping blood and the streaks along from the hall to the pantry and told them that was smeared blood.
The chiffonier in the hall was open, (a chiffonier is a kind of wooden closet, guys) and heaps of half-burnt newspapers lay about everywhere. The walls were soot-stained. In the dining room where the body was found, burnt paper and shreds of household furnishings blew about in a breeze that came through the shattered windows. There were dark smears and stains on the remaining window panes. You could see right through the scorched ceiling to the walls of the Honeysuckle Room on the next floor. The Glen had been gutted and trashed. All the dresser drawers were pulled out and furniture was toppled and piled in corners or lying out on the terrace. Everything stunk of kerosene. The place must have had a poisoned, violated vibe.
Lastly, Nott wrapped it up by showing them the narrow butler’s pantry with its fold-up bed and the set of drawers with one drawer open and a blood smear on the edge of the handle. They all shook their heads when they saw the lair of that untrustworthy young servant.
They were glad to get out the front door and past the doctors who had gathered for an autopsy. Red-faced Dr Chilcote with his droopy whiskers standing next to his small neat rival, Dr Steele. Both held instrument bags. Inspector Barbor of Torquay Police stood next to them holding a bundle wrapped in oilcloth out of which stuck the shaft of a hatchet. The crowd groaned with anticipation as they emerged. Everyone in the place must have been having a hell of a day. Then as now, a murder really brought the neighborhood to life. They all came pouring up from the beach towards the Town Hall. There, Co
roner Hacker was preparing his papers. This was truly going to be a big case, a historic occasion, and. he was set on making the most of it. Sampson Hanbury, being high class gentry, was inevitably elected as foreman of the jury. The court artists sharpened their pencils. The press was hungry for this major story that was to reach around the world as quick as telegraph could signal. This leap year had been a strange one with its volcanic red dawns and sunsets and the nation needed something to distract itself from the looming fate of General Gordon surrounded by hordes of Islamics in Khartoum. The other juicy case that week—the case of the shipwrecked men from the Mignonette who had eaten their cabin boy in a gore fest of cannibalism—was now bogged down in legal arguments. Attention locked onto the Babbacombe murder. The nation needed a freak to be caught and punished. A faithless murdering butler made gave them all the chills when every big house kept a servant. The case had also stirred the parish to a bat-shit frenzy and a big noisy crowd assembled in front of St Marychurch Town Hall and overflowed back down Fore Street and Hampton Road. That’s the scene as much as I can picture it.