by Paul Finch
“Good God!” Judge Prendergast exclaimed. “Good God in Heaven!”
They were, all of them, still paralysed with shock when it sprang on the offensive. This time, though, it was outnumbered. Before it had even crossed the room, either to attack or simply to bolt back through the aperture in the adjoining bath-chamber, they’d discharged their firearms. A succession of explosive roars boomed through the house; the room was suddenly swimming in gunpowder smoke.
And the rat-thing lay dead.
Killed instantly. Torn apart by a great storm of shot.
Slowly, still astounded, Judge Prendergast stumbled forward. “What in the name of Heaven … is this some demon from the pit?”
“Not at all,” O’Calligan said. “It is – or was – as real as you or I. One of those many famous exotic pets brought back from the Indies. Or a descendent of one. Either way, it was beaten, mistreated, brutalised to the point where it would kill on command.”
“And still you blame my sister?” came Rupert Foxworth’s voice, suddenly thick with grief. He turned to face them from the divan, his eyes swollen with tears. “You have the nerve to blame Hannah, though she also lies dead by this monstrosity’s teeth?”
O’Calligan was confounded. In the shock of the moment, the factor of Lady Foxworth’s death had eluded him. But if she wasn’t the one, who … ?
With a loud click, a firing-pin was drawn back.
The men turned – to find Cedric in the doorway, a massive blunderbuss in his hands, which he trained on them unwaveringly. “No foolish moves, my lords,” he said gloomily.
There was brief stupefaction, and then O’Calligan gave a long, low sigh of understanding. “Of course. The loyal servant. Who loved Lady Foxworth from when she was knee-high, and raised her almost as his own.”
“Him?” Rupert said incredulously.
“Who else?” O’Calligan replied. “Who else would be party to the inner secrets of this house? To your sister’s private affairs?”
“I advised her against it,” Cedric said mournfully. “All her life, I advised her. To walk the thorny paths of political intrigue is foolish, I said. Enjoy the comforts of home, be content as lady of the manor. But no … the older she grew, the more her ambition to glorify the Foxworth name. Especially when King James came to the throne and all doors seemed to close on her. She became more determined than ever. She was still comely, she said. She knew she could gain from it …”
“You killed my sister, you wretch!” Rupert shrieked.
Cedric remained calm, if deeply sad. “Once news came that James would flee, the careful work of seducing him was for nothing. In fact, as has been astutely recognised, it backfired badly. My lady thought she’d head to France. Maybe re-join with His Catholic Majesty there. But with Master Rupert back home again, she’d have had to leave everything … Silvercombe Hall, the family plate. In short, she’d have gone there a pauper. And would King James want her then, when he himself was shriven of wealth?” The retainer shook his aged head. “It’s bad enough even for women who succeed in wielding their charms as political weapons. Look at the vilification heaped on Countess Castlemaine after the death of Charles. But if they don’t succeed … they become guttersnipes, drab-tails. Well, I loved her too much to let that happen.”
“You loved her, yet you planned a fate for her like this?” Judge Prendergast said, indicating the ravaged body.
Cedric shook his head: “It wouldn’t have been like this, but you gentlemen forced my hand. I thought to weave a web of deceit, to eliminate a number of prominent folk … in a baffling, bewildering way which no man could fathom. All along of course, the real target would be Master Rupert, the agent of our misfortunes.”
Rupert looked aghast. “What’s that?”
“You heard me, my lord,” Cedric said, his tone turning sour. “You and your cronies, not seeing the way the wind was blowing when King James came to the throne. Making war on him like it was a game in the nursery. And when it’s all over, rushing off to exile, leaving your sister to pick up the pieces. Little wonder she did the things she did. She needed to, just to survive.”
“But, but …” Rupert seemed lost for words.
Cedric continued: “But you were to die here because you had to, not because you deserved it. As I say, I sought to hide your murder amongst a number of others. And once you were dead, Silvercombe Hall and all its trimmings would belong exclusively to my lady. She could then sell it off, and live abroad in safety and comfort. Unfortunately, because of this fellow here, O’Calligan, the plan failed.”
Cedric now turned to face the Irishman. “You’ve always performed your office well, captain. You treated my lady with respect and courtesy, but the further you progressed in your investigations, the more apparent it became that she, herself, might take the blame for my scheming. As you said, she had reasons – unlikely reasons, but reasons nevertheless – to kill all of her guests. Your discoveries tonight were the final straw.” He shook his head sorrowfully. “It was an easer decision to end it for her than it should have been. Her life as she knew it was finished anyway. Better to make her a victim rather than a perpetrator, I thought. Better to spare her the shame of the block and eternal infamy.”
“Are you a madman?” Rupert breathed. “You condemned my sister to death rather than face a trial that might very well have acquitted her! And a torturous death at that!”
“She was unconscious,” the servant replied. “She’d have felt nothing.”
“We heard her scream …”
“A fleeting thing, while she was deep in sleep.” Cedric seemed utterly convinced of this, or perhaps he wasn’t allowing himself to consider otherwise. “When I attended to her earlier, I didn’t actually come up here to check that she hadn’t taken a sleeping-draught, but to make sure that she had. And then I doused her bed curtains in the carrion-effluent that I used to train the Sumatran rat. Compared to the others, it would be painless for her.”
“They’ll put you on the gibbet alive for this,” Judge Prendergast said.
“Maybe, but you won’t decide that, my lord. Now gentlemen, if you’ll all stand together.”
Of the three men, O’Calligan and the judge were beside each other, but Rupert was a good three feet away, close to his sister’s bedside divan. O’Calligan saw at once what the plan was. “Don’t!” he shouted. “Nobody move. He only has a single blast in that blunderbuss. If we stay apart, he can’t kill us all.”
“One step ahead of me again, Captain O’Calligan,” Cedric said. “As you wish.”
With a sudden move, he grabbed the nearest candelabra and flung it at the bed-curtain, which went up in a roaring sheet of flame. More by instinct than decision, Rupert leaped away from it – and found himself next to the judge and the Irishman.
O’Calligan shouted, but it was too late. Cedric already had the blunderbuss at his shoulder. His finger was on the trigger, and then, suddenly, he was grabbed from behind.
It was Van Brooner.
But the Dutchman was still dazed, his face battered and bloody, and Cedric, though old, was wiry and strong; he slammed an elbow back, catching Van Brooner in the broken rib, severely winding him, dropping him to the floor. He raised the blunderbuss again, but in that split-second of distraction there was a blur of twirling steel, and, with an ugly thunk, something embedded itself in the servant’s throat.
The eyes bulged in his dour face, and the firearm slipped from his fingers.
He tottered there, looking down in disbelief at the ornate hilt of the Moorish dagger quivering under his chin. Then his knees buckled and he toppled forward.
Immediately, O’Calligan and Rupert turned and tore down the burning hangings, hurriedly stamping them out. Judge Prendergast continued to stare at Cedric’s body and at the weapon that had slain him. “A life of clandestine warfare,” he remarked. “Indeed it has served you well, my Irish friend.”
*
The following morning, the cloud cover had cleared and a winter’s s
un shone coldly from a blue but glacial sky. The wastes of Exmoor lay silent under a glistening mantel of pristine snow. O’Calligan and Judge Prendergast stood out on the porch, awaiting the help that Rupert, having ridden for Minehead at first light, would hopefully soon bring.
“I should have realised straight away once we found the bell-pulls in the under-stair wardrobe,” O’Calligan said with self-reproach. “We’d dismissed Cedric as a suspect because we saw him outside the drawing room shortly after hearing Lady Lightbourne’s bell. Once I knew the bell-pulls were much closer to hand, I should have reconsidered him.”
“One thing that puzzles me about him,” the judge replied, “is that it’s only been known for three months or so that the Prince of Orange intended to invade. How could someone like Cedric have planned everything so meticulously in so short a time? How did he train the animal, or build its bolt-holes?”
O’Calligan pondered; the same thing had been troubling him.
“Canny men like Cedric see events coming from way off,” he eventually concluded. “One wouldn’t have had to be a genius to realise that King James wasn’t going to last on the English throne. Likewise, one wouldn’t have needed a calculating mind to understand what that would mean. Even so,” and his brow furrowed, “it makes me wonder if Lady Foxworth was more involved than Cedric has admitted.”
“Oh come now, O’Calligan,” the judge snorted, but the Irishman shook his head.
“Cedric said it himself. She walked the thorny paths, indulged in Machiavellian games. Maybe this plan to kill her brother was hers after all, a failsafe just in case James was overthrown … and the loyal servant only opted to include her in the roll-call of death once I’d escaped the creature and it became apparent the game was up?”
“Unfortunately, we’ll never know for sure,” the judge said.
“No,” O’Calligan agreed. “In that respect, villainous old Cedric was quite successful.”
A PLAGUE ON BOTH YOUR HOUSES
Hammersmith horror causes concern
The Metropolitan Police have denied that the horrible attack on a young governess in Hammersmith Gardens last Wednesday evening has anything to do with the mysterious person known as ‘Spring-Heeled Jack’.
Mary Perkins, (18), of Lower Stretham Road, was in the company of two infants when she was set upon by a man who is said to have leapt clean over a 12ft hedge and landed directly in front of her. She was then assaulted, and one of the children knocked over with such force that it lost a tooth.
The Metropolitan Police have always professed the official belief that Spring-Heeled Jack is a myth. The bizarre street-robber, who is said to don a black cloak and sometimes either a green mask or ghastly stage make-up, is allegedly capable of jumping clean across streets and even over houses with a single bound. When stories first emerged about him some 40 years ago, it was a sensation. However, in the intervening years between then and now, reports about him have only appeared sporadically.
He has supposedly been sighted in cities as far afield as Coventry, Birmingham and Liverpool, but the centre of his activities always appears to be London.
On previous occasions, Spring-Heeled Jack’s mischievous antics were regarded as pranks carried out by a theatrical group, possibly at the behest of an eccentric aristocrat. But recently, his offences have been significantly more serious. Scotland Yard’s famous detective division is believed to be looking into the matter.
London Gazette, August 17th 1879
Who ‘the devil’ is Spring-Heeled Jack?
A question everyone is asking at the present time must be: Who is Spring-Heeled Jack?
Part of popular culture in former decades, and the subject of many a music hall joke, the jumping felon, who, if he exists at all, has been accused of being everything from a deranged athlete to a disguised kangaroo, is no longer making Londoners laugh.
Ever since guardsmen claimed to have fired shots at him, to no discernible effect, when he attacked them at the gates to Aldershot North army camp three years ago, reports of his activities have taken a turn for the more frightening.
Even during his alleged early appearances, as long ago as the 1830s, the curious character, who is described as having blazing eyes and a demonic expression, and is said to laugh maniacally as he bounds away from the scenes of his crimes, was given to disgraceful behaviour. He was reported as indecently touching several persons whose goods he tried to steal, while his more recent actions have seen him molest women and tear off their clothes, and beat any man who dares to intervene. He has also been accused of committing burglaries, arson and increasingly violent street-robberies. At least one death has now been attributed to him: a carter in Camden Town was run over by his own vehicle after ‘a flying phantom’ allegedly frightened the horses.
But the most alarming aspect of Spring-Heeled Jack remains his astonishing physical abilities. Some of his jumps have allegedly been prodigious. Heights of 35ft have supposedly been achieved, and talk that he has a supernatural, if not Satanic, power is finally circulating.
So the question remains: Who can this weird criminal be?
It is the opinion of this newspaper that the Metropolitan Police must commence a serious line of enquiry very soon. With so many eyewitness accounts, this bewildering matter can no longer be put down to the idle chatter of drunkards and opium addicts.
Times Community Supplement, February 12th 1881
*
“Colonel Thorpe, isn’t it?” the young man asked.
Colonel Thorpe glanced up from his copy of The Enquirer. The young man was tall and lean but with a straight, sturdy posture and strong, even shoulders. His clothes, though too fashionable for the colonel’s taste, were expensively cut. His face, which was clean shaved, was burned nut-brown and bore just below its left eye a curious triangular scar, though this only slightly marred the young man’s generally wholesome appearance.
He spoke again. “I was wondering if I might sit?”
Colonel Thorpe took out his pipe. Over the last two decades, he’d come to regard this particular corner of The Union Jack Club as his own. For the young fellow to have been admitted in the first place however, required that he’d served the Colours, which ruled out most of the normal riff-raff the colonel had no time to be dealing with, and anyway, the newcomer’s intensity of gaze – he never once blinked as he stood there awaiting a response – implied that he had some serious purpose.
Colonel Thorpe nodded. “Do I know you, sir?”
The young man sat and offered his hand. “Charles Brabinger, sir. Of the Uxbridge Brabingers.”
“Bless my soul, young Brabinger!” Thorpe folded his paper and shook hands. “The last time I spoke to your father, you were in Natal.”
“My regiment shipped home less than a month ago.”
The colonel nodded. Everything now was explained. The triangular scar on the young fellow’s cheek had probably been caused by the tip of an assegai spear. “I trust you played your part in thrashing those black devils?”
“I did.” The young man hadn’t yet smiled, and he didn’t smile now. “I can’t say it gave me a great deal of pride.”
“Pah, nonsense!” The colonel turned in his armchair and signalled a waiter to bring more brandy. “An enemy is an enemy. He doesn’t have to possess guns to pose a threat to the lives of the Queen’s subjects.”
“I suppose not.”
“At any rate, you return to London in the midst of high excitement.”
“So I see.” The young man glanced down at the front page of the newspaper. “In actual fact, that’s something I was meaning to speak to you about, sir. I wondered if a gentleman like yourself, who’s shot more than a few tigers in his time, might have some idea what this peculiar creature is?”
He indicated the newspaper headline: Leaping madman seen on cathedral roof.
Beneath it, a lurid artist’s impression portrayed a fellow with truly malevolent features, which included huge, glowing eyes, pointed ears and an evil, V-s
haped grin, and wearing a black cape that was folded across his chest like a pair of giant bat wings.
“What’s that?” the colonel said. “Great heavens, man! I’m not talking about this. I’m talking about Parnell and his wretched Irish militants causing all this trouble in the Commons.”
“Ah, I see.” The young man seemed less enamoured by the more mundane issue of Anglo-Irish politics.
“No, this other business is nonsense of the first order,” Colonel Thorpe concluded. “Scarcely worth worrying one’s head about.”
“One theory is that it’s some scientist chap who’s maybe gone and built himself a jumping apparatus,” the young man offered.
“That’s as maybe. It can hardly be of concern to men like us.”
“I’m not sure I entirely agree, sir.”
Colonel Thorpe raised an eyebrow.
“You see,” the young man added, with apparent complete sincerity, “I know who, or perhaps I should say ‘what’ Spring-Heeled Jack actually is. And I believe it poses a genuine danger to the population of this city.”
The colonel regarded him dubiously, then unfolded his paper and looked again at the item in question. He ran quickly through the absurd-sounding events of the last few days: the outlandish claims made by yet more hysterical witnesses that this ‘Spring-Heeled Jack’ character had leapt over houses in order to escape; that shots had been fired at him, not even wounding him let alone killing him.
As the colonel read on, his young visitor added: “This thing is able to cover vast distances in a single bound. But not through the aid of a mechanical device, through the astonishing power of its own highly-developed hindquarters.”