The Black Book of Secrets

by F. E. Higgins

  ‘I pushed him into the Foedus. No one gets out of that poisonous river alive.’

  ‘Maybe your Ma and Barton pulled him out. Unless you go back, you’ll never know. As for coming with me – I knew what you did. I’ve always known.’

  ‘You knew?’ sniffed Ludlow. ‘How?’

  ‘I don’t think you’ve had a full night’s sleep since you came to Pagus Parvus. I have heard you wandering around, I have seen you standing at the window and I have listened to your nightmares. It wasn’t difficult to work out what had happened. Believe me, your story is not the worst to go in a Black Book. But for now it doesn’t matter. Let’s concentrate on what’s ahead, not what has gone before.’

  Ludlow sat quietly for a moment then he asked, ‘Do you have a secret, Joe?’

  He smiled. ‘I do and it is in the very first Black Book I owned.’

  ‘And where is that book.’

  ‘Hmm,’ he mused. ‘You’d have to ask Mr Jellico about that. Though it is so long ago I doubt even he would know which shelf it is on!’

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Fragment from

  The Memoirs of Ludlow Fitch

  Saluki was croaking loudly in her tank when we emerged, quite breathless, into the upper cave. Joe took her out and stroked her.

  ‘Would you like to hold her?’

  ‘Of course, but will she allow it?’

  ‘Let’s find out.’

  So I held out my quivering hand and Joe placed her gently on my palm. She was as light as a feather. I had never noticed before how delicate she was. Her back was mottled bright red and yellow and her long slender legs were the green of young shoots in the spring while her underbelly was white with pale blue patches.

  ‘She trusts you,’ he said simply.

  I laughed. I had never thought to hold such a beautiful creature in my life. He took her back and carefully placed her in the drawstring bag and as he did so a piece of paper, the one Perigoe had given him in the shop, fluttered from under his cloak and landed on the floor.

  ‘What’s this?’ I asked.

  ‘Read it,’ he said, and there was a strange look in his eye. I held it up to the dim light and if I had thought I could be surprised no more, then I was to be proved wrong. What I saw and read finally gave me the answer to the ultimate question.

  ‘You clever devil,’ I said. ‘So that’s how you did it. It wasn’t Horatio’s pie at all.’

  ‘I did it?’ he queried and he looked at me with mild irritation. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘No, you’re right,’ I exclaimed as I realized what he meant. ‘You didn’t. It’s like you said – Jeremiah brought it on himself.’ And then I realized something else, something far more terrible. ‘Oh, my Lord,’ I whispered. ‘Oh, my Lord.’

  ‘What is it, Ludlow?’

  ‘How did you know Saluki trusted me?’ I asked slowly.

  Joe shrugged. ‘Fortuna favet fortibus.’

  Fortune favours the brave.

  My hands were shaking as I gave him back the paper. ‘Please don’t take any more chances,’ I said. ‘At least not with me.’

  ‘Ah, Ludlow,’ he said grinning, ‘I’m disappointed in you. What is life if not a gamble?’

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Page torn from

  ‘Amphibians of the Southern Hemisphere’

  (Returned to Joe by Perigoe and then given to Ludlow in the cave.)

  Phyllobates tricolor

  This colourful tree frog is a member of the Poison Dart Frog family (Dendrobatidae) and a native of the rainforests of South America. When the creature is under stress, from a predator for example, it secretes a powerful poison through special pores on its back. This poison causes the skin to burn and blister and seeps into the bloodstream, bringing about rapid muscle and respiratory paralysis and leading inevitably to death. The native Indians of the area tip their arrows with the poison, hence the name Poison Dart. There is no known cure.

  If you see one of these frogs, unless you two are well acquainted, it is advisable not to touch it.

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Fragment from

  The Memoirs of Ludlow Fitch

  Outside it was impossible to see where we had emerged, even though we stood no more than a few feet away from the entrance. I shielded my eyes from the glare of the snow and looked at Joe. ‘Where to now?’

  ‘I think we shall go to the City,’ he said. ‘There are many there who might benefit from our services.’

  ‘Do we have to?’ I had no desire as yet to return to that despicable place.

  ‘We are masters of our own destiny, Ludlow,’ said Joe. ‘We can go wherever we choose.’

  ‘Then let us leave the City for another day.’

  ‘Well, as you wish. Though you cannot avoid it forever.’ Joe turned in the other direction and began to walk.

  ‘Wait,’ I said. ‘Just answer me one more question.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘What is so important about the wooden leg?’

  ‘It’ll come in useful one day, Ludlow.’

  ‘Is it something to do with your limp?’

  ‘That’s two questions.’

  ‘Please,’ I begged, but to no avail. Joe looked at me with the hint of a smile and a twinkle in his eye.

  ‘A man must be allowed at least one secret, Ludlow, don’t you think?’

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Loose Ends

  Horatio Cleaver never did tell anyone about the poisoned pie. In fact, when he went back to collect it he was both surprised and relieved to see that it had not been touched apart from a piece of crust that had been broken off and, by the looks of it, spat out on to the plate. He concluded then with a clear conscience that Dr Mouldered’s diagnosis had been right.

  As for Jeremiah, he was buried in Pagus Parvus cemetery in a grave that was a full nine feet deep. Obadiah had dug with an enthusiasm that was hard to contain. You might have thought that the funeral would have been sparsely attended, but the opposite was true. It seemed that everyone for miles around came to see Ratchet’s interment. And, of course, there was little weeping. Indeed, there was a general air of hilarity and jollity, and at the gathering afterwards drink flowed freely and laughter rocked the walls of the Pickled Trout.

  Jeremiah’s grave was robbed only a matter of days after he was buried. The culprits were a little disconcerted by those extra three feet but dug them nonetheless. Upon payment to each of twenty shillings and sixpence Jeremiah ended up on a cold slab in an anatomy school in the City. When the inquisitive surgeon cut into his chest he found a most odd thing: Jeremiah’s heart was so small it could fit into a jam pot.

  After hearing of its size many eminent physicians and surgeons were curious as to how such a small organ could support the life of such a huge man. Some even wondered whether the ancients had been right all along to attribute the source of life to the liver. It is thought that Jeremiah’s heart set back medical progress by at least a decade.

  Jeremiah had no family and no will, so it was decided that his tenants could claim ownership of their properties. Whether this was lawful or not was hardly a consideration. Sometimes there are advantages to being isolated from the outside world.

  As for Polly, with Jeremiah dead and Joe and Ludlow gone, there was little left for her in Pagus Parvus. So a few days later she hitched a ride on Perigoe’s trap and took off to the City, still believing it couldn’t possibly be as bad as Ludlow made out.

  A Note from F. E. Higgins

  So there you have it, the tale of Joe Zabbidou and Ludlow Fitch. And let us not forget Saluki, of course, without which frog Destiny could not be fulfilled.

  Of course, this is not the end of the story. Where did Ludlow and Joe go? What small village or town or city was next to play host to the Secret Pawnbroker and his apprentice? These questions turned over and over in my head and I knew I had to find the answers. To this end I travelled to a country deep in the heart of the northern mountains until I reached the
ancient village of Pachspass. I wonder, does that name excite you as much as it did me when I first came across it? If you say it carefully, it sounds very much like a place we have come to know well.

  I rented a tiny attic room in a tall house with small leaded windows that overlook a steep high street. Each night I stand at the window and imagine that I can hear footsteps outside and that I can see a light at the top of the hill. A month has passed and I am still here, snowbound. Its bright beauty is dazzling but also frustrating, for it prevents the remainder of my journey. As soon as I am able I will be on my way again, unravelling the mystery, and I will take only one thing: the wooden leg. It has not yet yielded its secret to me but I know that I am closer to finding it now than ever before.

  So wish me luck on my journey. I promise whatever I find I will bring it to you as quickly as I can. Until then, as Joe would have said, Vincit qui patitur.

  F. E. Higgins

  Pachspass

  Addenda

  On the Business of Bodysnatching

  Obadiah Strang was not alone in the grisly business of bodysnatching. In his day it was a common problem, to the extent that sometimes guards were paid to watch over the newly buried to ensure they remained underground. The human body was a source of great mystery to people. Although ordinary folk were too busy trying to survive to worry about its secretive workings, there were others, scientists and doctors, who were intrigued by the riddle of bone and flesh and they knew the only way to find out more was to probe deeper.

  There was only so much probing you could do with a live body. For a more thorough investigation you needed a dead one. There were laws: only the bodies of executed criminals could be used in this sort of research, but it would seem that these were not in sufficient supply to meet demand. Thus emerged the business of bodysnatching. At one time it was possible to make a good living selling wickedly procured corpses to doctors and surgeons who would dissect them alone or under the curious gaze of anatomy students.

  Jeremiah was shocked when his bodysnatching henchmen suggested that Ludlow would provide a fresh corpse, but they would not have been the only ones to think in such a way. Some years later two fellows, William Burke and William Hare, became infamous for just such a thing. They saw in bodysnatching a marvellous business opportunity, but not for them the hard labour of digging up a corpse. The wily pair decided to bypass the grave altogether and to murder people instead. Their first victim was a lodger in Hare’s guest-house. A case of bed but no breakfast, I suppose.

  On the Business of Pie Making

  When the Sourdough brothers suggested that Horatio Cleaver put ‘man meat’ in his pies they were joking, but it puts me in mind of another man who was deadly serious about his pies: Sweeney Todd, the infamous cutthroat of Fleet Street.

  Sweeney lived in London some years after Horatio was butchering in Pagus Parvus. Abandoned by his parents at an early age, Sweeney was apprenticed to a Mr John Crook, a cutler by trade who fashioned, among other things, razors. It is highly probable that Crook forced Sweeney to steal for him, not an uncommon arrangement between master and apprentice, so it is not surprising that Sweeney eventually ended up in Newgate prison. Sweeney had developed a keen instinct for survival by then and managed to persuade the prison barber, who shaved the prisoners in preparation for execution, to take him on as a soap boy, a perk of which job was the opportunity to pick pockets. When Sweeney emerged from prison he was well equipped with the skills to indulge in the evil inclinations that were to earn him a place in history.

  He set up a barber shop in Fleet Street, an insalubrious place in those days, and yielded wholly to his thieving and murderous desires. When you sat in Sweeney’s barber chair, by all accounts you sealed your own fate. Its design was such that at the touch of a lever the chair would drop into the basement below to be replaced by an empty chair that came up. Whether Sweeney slit the throat of his customer and robbed him while he was in the chair, or carried out his crimes after the victim had dropped into the basement, is unclear. What is certain is that if you went into his shop there was no guarantee you would come out.

  The problem with murder is that inevitably there is a body that requires disposal. As luck would have it, Sweeney’s shop was built on the site of an old church complete with underground tunnels and catacombs. One of these tunnels led further down the street to the basement of his accomplice, a certain Mrs Lovett. Mrs Lovett also had a shop on Fleet Street.

  A pie shop.

  It would appear that she and Sweeney came to a gruesome arrangement that suited them both rather well. Sweeney solved that problem of the bodies; and as for Mrs Lovett, well, suffice it to say it was reported at the time that her pies were much sought after on account of their quality and taste.

  Perhaps if Sweeney had lived in Pagus Parvus he too would have been knocking at Joe’s door. Certainly his confession would have put Horatio Cleaver’s into the shade.

  On the Business of Live Burial

  You may remember in the coffin maker’s confession, Septimus Stern recalled a case where a young man had been buried alive and discovered too late by his family. One wonders how often this did happen in Ludlow’s day – after all, the doctors at the time lacked the medical knowledge or expertise that we have today to determine whether a person really was dead. A certain Count Kar-nice-Karnicki, alive and kicking in the 1800s, had such little faith in the medical profession that he designed a device to prevent his ever being buried alive. In a similar fashion to the coffin maker, he attached a tube to a coffin and ran it to the surface. If there was any movement after burial, breathing perhaps, the rising and falling of the chest, a flag would be activated above ground and a warning bell would ring. By no means was the Count alone in his fear. Around the same time a Mr Martin Sheets designed his own tomb to include a telephone so he could summon help were he to wake up buried but not yet dead.

  On the Business of Tooth Pulling

  Finally, we cannot finish without mention of Barton Gumbroot, the notorious tooth surgeon of Old Goat’s Alley. Tooth rot was a serious problem in Ludlow’s day and dentistry was a less sophisticated and more brutal affair than it is now. False teeth were available in a wide range of materials, including hippopotamus and walrus teeth, elephant ivory and of course human teeth. There was also the option of a tooth transplant (as Ludlow found out). It had been discovered that when transplanting a tooth, the fresher the donor tooth the better chance it had of taking root in the receiving gum. Widespread poverty meant there were those willing to surrender teeth for money but, unfortunately for Ludlow, Barton Gumbroot didn’t always wait for willing volunteers. Jeremiah had thought to sell corpses’ teeth at one stage but, unsurprisingly, such teeth failed to take.