The strange affair of Spring-heeled Jack bas-1

by Mark Hodder

A bolt of lightning shot from its side into the ground and the lean figure staggered, groaning and clutching at itself.

  Below, the two struggling men turned and looked up.

  A puff of smoke from the pistol.

  Blood spraying from Queen Victoria's head.

  "Merciful heaven!" gasped Trounce.

  A detonation echoing away over the park; rippling into the distance, taking with it the consequences of the heinous act; history, quite literally, in the making; expanding outward to envelop the Empire.

  "No," groaned the stilt-walker. "No!"

  It turned and Trounce saw the face: crazy eyes, a thin blade of a nose, a mouth stretched into a rictus grin, drawn and lined features, pale beneath a sheen of sweat, twisted in agony.

  The thing was wearing a big round black helmet and a black cloak beneath which there was a white, tight-fitting bodysuit. Some sort of flat lantern hung on the chest, spitting fire. There were scorch marks on the material around it.

  The odd figure bobbed on the short stilts then bounded forward and leaped right over the police constable's head.

  Trounce toppled onto the grass, rolled over, and looked behind him. The costumed figure was nowhere to be seen. It had vanished.

  Christ Almighty. Christ Almighty.

  Screams.

  Trounce looked down the slope.

  Victoria had flopped backward out of the carriage onto the ground. Her husband was scrambling after her.

  The assassin was still struggling with the other man but, as Trounce watched, the gunman was suddenly thrown off his feet by his assailant. His head hit the low wrought-iron fence that bordered the path. He went limp and lay still.

  The crowd surged around the royal carriage. The outriders plunged through the throng and attempted to hold the panicked people back, away from the stricken monarch. A police whistle blew frantically.

  That's me, thought Trounce. That's me blowing the whistle.

  A figure detached itself from the mob and started running across the park, northwestward, heading for Piccadilly.

  It was the man who'd grappled with the assassin.

  Trounce took off in pursuit. It seemed the right thing to do.

  The thought occurred to him that police-issue boots were ill designed for running.

  "For goodness' sake!" he gasped to himself. "Concentrate!"

  He raced past the outriders.

  A dazed young man, squinting through a monocle, wandered into his path and Trounce barrelled into him, shoving him aside with a curse.

  His quarry angled up a slope and disappeared into the heavily wooded upper corner of the park. Trounce grunted with satisfaction; he knew there was a high wall behind those trees.

  He was breathing heavily and had a stitch in his side by the time he got to the edge of the woods. He stopped there, gulping air, eyeing the gloomy spaces beneath the boughs, listening for movement.

  Distant screams and shouts were sounding from behind him. Police whistles were blasting from different points around the park as constables converged on the scene.

  A rustle came from the trees. A movement.

  Trounce took hold of his truncheon.

  "Step out into the open, sir!" he commanded. "I saw what happened; there's nothing to worry about. Come on, let's be having you!"

  No reply.

  "Sir! I saw you trying to protect the queen. I just need you to-"

  There was a flurry of leaves, and suddenly Trounce found himself confronted by the stilt-walking man again, leaping out of the thicket.

  Taken by surprise, Trounce stepped back, lost his footing, and fell onto his bottom.

  "How-how-?" he stuttered.

  The thing phantom, devil, illusion, whatever it was-crouched as if to spring.

  Reflexively, Trounce whipped his arm back and hurled his truncheon at it. The club struck the creature in the chest, hitting the lamplike object affixed there. Fiery sparks erupted and rained onto the grass. The apparition stumbled.

  "Damn!" it cursed in a clear human voice, then turned and sprang to the constable's right, leaping away in huge bounds.

  Trounce got to his feet and watched the thing heading eastward. It took a massive leap into the air and, twenty feet above the ground, winked out of existence. The air seemed to fold around it.

  Trounce stood, his arms dangling at his sides, his mouth open and his eyes wide.

  A minute passed before, as if waking from a dream, he roused himself and looked down the sloping grass to the royal carriage. Then he looked back at the thicket. His quarry-the man who had tackled the assassin-must still be in there somewhere.

  He entered the trees and began to search, calling, "There's no point hiding, sir. Please show yourselfl"

  Ten minutes later he admitted defeat. He'd found a top hat lying on the ground, but that was all. The man had escaped.

  He trudged down the slope toward the chaotic scene below, his mind blank.

  Other constables had arrived and were pushing the growing crowd back, helped by the queen's outriders.

  Trounce pushed past the onlookers-some silent, some sobbing, some talking in hushed tones, some shouting or screaming-and crossed to where the assassin lay. The man's head was pinned to the top of the low railings, held at an awkward angle, the spike of an upright projecting from his left eye, blood pooling beneath. It was a grisly sight.

  Two flintlocks lay on the ground nearby.

  Odd, thought Trounce, the way the assassin and the man who tried to stop him looked so alike.

  He found himself standing helpless, unable to do anything, his mind numbed.

  Off to his left, a moustachioed man was calmly watching the scene with a smile on his face. A smile!

  A memory stirred. A case he'd read about from two or three years ago; something concerning a girl being attacked by-by a ghost which escaped by taking prodigious leaps-by a thing that breathed fire-by a creature known as-Spring Heeled Jack!

  We will not define ourselves by the ideals you enforce.

  We scorn the social attitudes that you perpetuate.

  We neither respect nor conform with the views of our elders.

  We think and act against the tides of popular opinion.

  We sneer at your dogma. We laugh at your rules.

  We are anarchy. We are chaos. We are individuals.

  We are the Rakes.

  - PROM THE RAKE MANIFESTO

  The candle guttered and died, sending a coil of smoke toward the high ceiling.

  The two men allowed a silence to stretch between them.

  Detective Inspector Trounce broke it: "They said I panicked and ran away from the scene," he murmured. "Said that my claim to have seen Spring Heeled Jack was merely an attempt to justify my `moment of cowardice.' Had it not been for the fact that I was wet behind the ears-I'd only been on active duty for a fortnight-they would've drummed me out of the force. As it was, I was laughed at, taunted, and passed over for promotion for more than a decade. I had to prove myself again and again; earn respect the hard way. They have long memories here in the Yard, Captain Burton. They still call me `Pouncer Trounce,' and there are whisperings from certain quarters even all these years later."

  "You mentioned someone named Honesty?" asked Burton.

  "Detective Inspector Honesty. Not a bad man by any stretch, but unimaginative-a bit of a stick-in-the-mud. He has the ear of the chief commissioner and neither of them has time for what they regard as my hysterical fantasy."

  "No one understands your situation better than I," said Burton, sympa thetically. "I am `Blackguard Burton' or `Ruffian Dick'-or far worse-to many, all because of a report I wrote in Karachi, just five years after the death of Victoria. A report written, I should add, in response to a direct order."

  Trounce grunted. "When a man gets a stain on his character-justified or not-it doesn't wash off." He drained his coffee cup and took a couple of cigars from a box on his desk, offering one to his visitor, which the explorer accepted, cut, and lit. Trounce put a match to
his own and threw the lucifer into the fireplace without bothering to relight the candle. The Yard man sat back, and his eyes glittered through the smoke.

  Burton knew he was being weighed up, and he was well aware that, generally, men-but definitely not women-tended to react negatively to his heavy jaw and hard chin, smouldering eyes and permanent glower. Maybe the detective was comparing his battered features to those of a desperado, or a prizefighter, or maybe even an arch-criminal.

  Yet as their gazes locked, the king's agent saw an appreciative twinkle appear in the eyes of the man opposite, and he realised that Trounce had penetrated his gruff exterior, that he was seeing something of Burton's "inner man."

  He seemed to approve.

  "Anyway," the detective continued, "after the events of that day, I was suspended from duty for a month and played no part in the subsequent investigation. As you know, of course, the man-"

  "Just a moment, Detective Inspector," interrupted Burton, holding up his hand. "The assassination was some twenty years ago and, like you, I was eighteen years old at the time; just enrolling into Oxford University, as a matter of fact. Unlike you, I wasn't at the scene or even in the country and received the news of Victoria's death `over the grapevine,' as it were. The facts of the investigation, as they emerged and were reported in the newspapers, were spread out over a period of weeks. I cannot claim to have read them all and, besides, my memory needs refreshing. So please make no assumptions about my knowledge, unless it is to assume that I know nothing at all."

  Trounce gave a curt and appreciative nod of his head.

  "Understood, Captain. The man who wrestled with the assassin after he fired the first shot, which missed the queen, was never found. The newspapers christened him the `Mystery Hero.' I have always been convinced that he was somehow related to the shootist-their physical resemblance was remarkable-but, unfortunately, my superiors didn't place much stock in my impressions from that day; few other witnesses noted the likeness; and, besides, all the gunman's relatives were traced and questioned and the man was not among them.

  "As for the assassin himself: Edward Oxford was born in Birmingham in 1822, one of seven children. His father was a brutal alcoholic who beat his wife and children on an almost daily basis. He was eventually certified insane and committed to an asylum where he died after choking on his own tongue during a fit of some sort. The grandfather, incidentally, had also been a lunatic.

  "His mother, Hannah, separated from her husband when Edward was seven years old. She moved with the boy and one of his sisters to Lambeth where, after the lad completed his schooling, he began working as a barman in various public houses, including the Hat and Feathers, which is on the corner of Green Dragon Alley."

  "Ah-ha! So you have a connection between Oxford and Spring Heeled Jack, aside from the assassination, I mean!" exclaimed Burton, his eyes gleaming.

  "Yes. At the time of the Lucy Scales incident, Oxford was working in the pub; he was actually behind the bar when the encounter was taking place around the corner. Apparently, when he heard about the attack he began to laugh hysterically and had to be restrained and sedated by a doctor."

  "Interesting. Pray continue, Inspector."

  "Oxford was still living with his mother and sister in lodgings at West Place, West Square, Lambeth. By 1840, he was the potboy at the Hog in the Pound on Oxford Street but in May of that year he quit the job. On the fourth, he bought a pair of pistols from an old school friend for the sum of two pounds, and for the next four weeks he practised with them at various shooting galleries around London. These were the weapons with which, the following month, he killed Queen Victoria."

  "His motive?" asked Burton.

  "In his room there were found papers he'd written in order to suggest that he was a member of a secret society entitled `Young England' but these were proven to be nothing but the rantings of a sick mind. No such group existed. Edward Oxford was insane, there's no doubt of it. He was known to occasionally cry for no apparent reason and to talk incoherent nonsense. The Lucy Scales incident definitely triggered a deterioration in his mental state.

  "He often stated, according to his associates, that he wanted to be remembered throughout history. It was his pet obsession. The Yard detectives concluded that his motive was simply to achieve that fame-or, rather, infamy.

  "The police investigation ended there. My colleagues were satisfied that a madman shot the queen and was then himself killed by an unknown person. With the subsequent onset of the constitutional crisis and widespread social unrest, the police had more to worry about than tracing the Mystery Hero, who, as far as most were concerned, had done the country a favour by saving it the cost of a hanging."

  "But you weren't satisfied," suggested Burton, shrewdly.

  "Not a bit. I kept digging. The coincidence of Edward Oxford being around the corner when Lucy Scales was attacked was too much for me to swallow. So I started searching for more connections between him and Spring Heeled Jack."

  "And found them?"

  "Yes. After the death of Victoria, the Hog in the Pound gained a measure of notoriety thanks to Oxford having worked there. It immediately became the regular drinking hole for a group of young aristocrats who reckoned themselves philosophers; their philosophy being that mankind is shackled in chains of its own making."

  "The Libertine philosophy."

  "Exactly. The Hog in the Pound is where the Libertine movement began."

  "So the Mad Marquess was among the young aristocrats?"

  "Yes. What do you know about him?"

  "Just the reputation. And that he was the man who founded the Libertine movement."

  "The bad reputation!"

  "Even worse than mine, apparently." Burton smiled.

  Trounce chuckled. "Henry de La Poer Beresford, 3rd Marquess of Waterford. His history is colourful, to say the least. He succeeded to the marquessate after his father died-in the midtwenties-and inherited the Curraghmore Estate in County Waterford, in the Republic of Ireland. He immediately set about disposing of the family fortune as quickly as possible, mainly by betting on horses and gambling in clubs.

  "He first achieved notoriety in 1837 when, after a successful foxhunt near Melton Mowbray, he and his party got stupendously drunk, entered the town, found half a dozen cans of red paint, and proceeded to daub it all over the buildings on the high street. Thus the saying `painting the town red'!"

  "The folly of youth," commented Burton.

  "That same year," continued Trounce, "he escaped the famine and moved to an estate just north of Hertford, near the village of Waterford, though the name is a coincidence-there's no connection with County Waterford."

  "It seems a big coincidence!"

  "I suppose so, though I don't read anything significant into it. My suspicion is that the man's vanity-which, incidentally, knew no limits-made him choose that location. Perhaps he fancied himself as the marquess of an English estate, in addition to the Irish one. He lived in a rambling old halfderelict mansion, appropriately named `Darkening Towers,' on considerable acreage to the west of the village."

  "Wait a minute. If Waterford is just outside Hertford, it must be fairly close to Old Ford."

  "Well spotted. Darkening Towers is about three miles from the Alsop cottage."

  "Does Jane Alsop still live there?"

  "Yes. She's Jane Pipkiss now. She lives in the cottage with her husband, Benton-they married in 1843-and their children, a daughter and a son.

  "Anyway, between '37 and '40, Beresford continually clashed with the local constabulary for drunken brawling, vandalism, and a number of brutal pranks which he played on local women. The man seemed to have no respect for the law, did absolutely anything for a bet, and displayed a strong streak of sadism."

  "The Marquis de Sade holds an allure for certain types," said Burton. "You should meet my friend Swinburne."

  "Really?" replied Trounce flatly, with an eyebrow raised.

  "Well, maybe not."

  "Anyway, after
the death of Victoria, Beresford and his cronies started drinking in the Hog in the Pound, obviously attracted by its notoriety as `the assassin's pub.' As their numbers grew and their anarchistic philosophy took form, they became the Libertines."

  Burton frowned. "But what's their connection with Jack?"

  Trounce gazed at the burning log in the fireplace, as if the past could be glimpsed in the flames. "By '43, the creature had become like the bogeyman of folklore. Whenever a sexual molestation occurred, the public was quick to cry `Spring Heeled Jack!' whether there was any evidence of his involvement or not, and there were a great number of pranks committed in his name by young bloods dressed in costume. As time passed, it became more difficult to separate the genuine incidents from those performed by copycats. Then, during '43, there was a new outbreak of sightings in the Battersea, Lambeth, and Camberwell triangle. They appear to have been genuine. I shan't go through them now, Captain, but you can borrow this report and read the details yourself.

  "Henry Beresford seemed to be galvanised by the reappearance of the creature. He held Spring Heeled Jack up as some sort of Libertine god-called it a `trans-natural entity'-a being entirely free of restraint, with no conscience or self-doubt; a thing that did whatever it wanted, whenever it wanted.

  "As the Mad Marquess's ranting increased, the Libertine group split into two; into what are now known as the `True Libertines,' who offer the more reasonable proposition that art, culture, and beauty are essential to the human spirit and who, nowadays, concern themselves mostly with railing against the detrimental influence of the Technologists' machinery; and into the far more extremist `Rakes,' led by Beresford, who seek to overthrow society's legal, moral, ethical, and behavioural boundaries. Confounded scoundrels, the lot of them!"

  "It would seem," pondered Burton, "that if Spring Heeled Jack is a man, then the Mad Marquess is your obvious suspect."

  "He most certainly was," agreed Trounce, "but for certain difficulties. For one, physically and facially he in no way resembled the creature I saw. For another, he possessed rock-solid alibis for the times when Mary Stevens and Lucy Scales were attacked. And for a third, though the folklore of Spring Heeled Jack has grown these twenty years past, the creature itself has been absent until the attack on you last night, which, from your description, I have no doubt was committed by the apparition I saw back in June 1840."