“Not at all,” replied Burton. “You think the ‘hopping demon’ was Spring Heeled Jack?”
“It sounds like it, doesn’t it? Shame I can’t interview Jennifer Shoemaker. I don’t think it’s necessary, though, and you’ll probably agree when you hear the rest of it. Let’s move on to Brigade member number two: Mr. Bartholomew Stevens.”
“Mary Stevens’s father.”
“Yes.” Trounce started pushing tobacco into the bowl of a stained meerschaum.
“Bartholomew married Elisabeth Pringle in 1821 and the following year Mary was born. As you know, she was attacked by Jack in ‘37, when she was fifteen years old. Five years later she married a man named Albert Fairweather and the whole family moved to Essex where they now live. The Fairweathers have four children, three boys and a girl. The daughter, Connie, is now seventeen.
“Our third chap is Carl Goodkind, who passed away five years ago. He left a widow, Emily, who still lives. They had one child, a daughter, Deborah, who, in 1838, was committed to Bedlam, having suddenly gone insane for no clear reason—at least, none that I could get Mrs. Goodkind to talk about. Deborah died in the asylum twelve years ago.”
“Spring Heeled Jack again?” pondered Burton.
“You’ve seen the files, Captain. You know there are recorded cases of his victims losing their minds, so yes, I rather suspect that Deborah Goodkind was another such. And we shouldn’t be surprised that the assault was never spoken of—even to other members of the Brigade—for you know the shame and embarrassment that attach to mental aberrations.”
The king’s agent nodded thoughtfully.
“The fourth man is Edwin Fraser, born 1780, died earlier this year at the grand old age of eighty-one. He married May Wells and they had a daughter, Lizzie Fraser, in 1823. Apparently she was a happy and intelligent child until the age of fourteen when, after a mental breakdown, she became morose and reclusive. Nevertheless, she found a husband in Desmond Steephill and gave birth to a daughter, Marian, in 1847. She would have turned fourteen in a couple of months.”
“Would have?”
Trounce took a long draw on his pipe and blew a column of blue smoke into the air.
“Last month,” he said, quietly, “Lizzie poisoned herself, her husband, and her daughter.”
“By Gad!”
“According to the coroner’s report, there were bruises on the young girl’s arms, as if she’d been gripped tightly, and scratches on her chest. They were not made the same day as the poisoning.”
Trounce looked directly at Burton, and through the tobacco smoke his blue eyes seemed to shine as if lit from within.
“I think,” he said, “that Lizzie Fraser was the Lizzie that Spring Heeled Jack asked after when he caused the brougham to crash back in ‘37. Furthermore, I think he found and assaulted her, causing her subsequent mental breakdown. I also believe that, last month, he attacked her daughter, Marian, and that Lizzie, in an insane attempt to escape his attentions, poisoned herself and her family.”
“Great heavens, man!” exclaimed Burton. “Are you suggesting that the fiend is specifically targeting the womenfolk of Battersea Brigade members?”
“Yes, Captain, I am. Listen to the rest, then tell me if I’m wrong! The fifth of our seven is fifty-nine-year-old Mr. Frederick Adams, who married Virginia Jones in 1821. You’ve met their daughter.”
“I have?”
“Tilly Adams, born 1822, married Edward Tew in 1845, gave birth to Angela Tew in 1846.”
“I’ll be damned!”
“Exactly,” agreed Trounce. “I did some poking about in Mrs. Tew’s past. She was bedridden for reasons unknown for the greater part of 1839.”
“So I was right about that strange look she gave me when we were leaving her cottage,” mused Burton. “Sort of secretive and resentful.”
“Yes. As you suggested, she was hiding something. I have no doubt that she knew her daughter’s attacker,” said Trounce, “because she herself had been one of his victims more than two decades ago. Can I trouble you for a refill?”
“Certainly,” responded Burton, reaching for the bottle. He topped up the Yard man’s glass.
“And number six?”
“Mr. David Alsop, now deceased. Married Jemma Bucklestone. Daughter: Jane Alsop. Attacked aged eighteen in 1838. Married Benton Pipkiss in 1843. Their daughter, Alicia Pipkiss, was born three years later. Like Connie Fairweather, she’s in the age group that Spring Heeled Jack attacks but has not been assaulted.”
“Yet,” observed Burton.
“Yet,” agreed Trounce. “Those are our two next possible targets. The seventh member of the Brigade we can count out. Mr. Arnold Lovitt married June Dibble and they had a daughter, Sarah. It wasn’t reported at the time but Sarah admitted to me that she was sexually molested in 1839 and in describing her assailant, she gave a pretty good portrayal of our stilt-walker. A couple of years later, she married Donald Harkness and they had three children, including a girl, Lucy Harkness. Three weeks ago, Lucy fell into a coma from which she hasn’t emerged. The family’s doctor has labelled it an ‘hysterical fit caused by severe mental trauma.’ A trauma which, I’ll wager, was caused by you-know-who.”
Burton grunted and said, “So in every case where a member of the Battersea Brigade had a daughter, that daughter was attacked by Spring Heeled Jack. And of the granddaughters, all have been attacked recently, it seems, accept Connie Fairweather and Alicia Pipkiss.”
“Yes. Which begs the question: what the hell is he playing at?”
Burton stood and paced up and down. “You’ve posted constables at the girls’ homes?”
“They are being watched every minute of the day,” confirmed Trounce. “The Fairweather family won’t be around for much longer, though—they’re preparing to emigrate to Australia. That, at least, might put the girl out of harm’s way.”
“There seem to be two main elements to this mystery,” Burton declared. “The man who assassinated Queen Victoria, and the female descendants of one particular group of regulars who drank at the pub where he worked. Perhaps we should count the late Marquess of Waterford as a third.”
“There’s another,” said Trounce.
“There is? What?”
“You.”
That night, he dreamed again of Isabel.
She was bent low over a blazing fire, and its orange light made her face diabolical.
In her hand, she held a bound notebook; one of his journals; a detailed chapter of his extraordinary life.
With her features contorted by a hellish fury, she threw the volume into the flames, and Burton felt a chunk of his existence melting away.
She picked up another volume, fed it to the fire, and hissed in satisfaction as another part of him was turned to ashes.
One by one, she burned his journals.
Sir Richard Francis Burton was consumed, reduced to an empty shell of deeds done, the man himself removed.
He cried out desperately: “Stop!”
Isabel raised her eyes, glared at him, and lifted a thick, heavy tome.
“No!” he shouted. “Please!” For this, he knew, was his magnum opus.
“Everything you are,” she said, with an air of finality, “must be rewritten.”
She dropped the book into the flames.
Burton jerked awake, a sheen of sweat upon his brow.
“The deuce take it!” he cursed, pushing back the blankets and wrapping himself in his jubbah. He stood, parted the curtains—it was still dark outside—then leaned over his water basin and splashed his face.
He left his bedroom and walked down the stairs to the study, opened the door, and entered.
The coal in the hearth was glowing softly. Above, on the mantelpiece, a candle glimmered.
It was six o’clock in the morning, too early for Mrs. Angell to have lit candles, besides which, she wouldn’t have done it. She’d have stoked the fire, opened the curtains, and returned to the basement to await his awakening and request for
coffee.
He closed the door behind him and stood listening. Then he calmly crossed to the fireplace and took a rapier down from a bracket on the chimney breast.
He shrugged off the jubbah, threw it on a chair, and faced the room, standing in his pyjamas, holding the sword point downward.
“Show yourself,” he said, softly.
A figure stepped out from the shadows to the left, from between a bookcase and the curtained windows.
The man was an albino, his skin and shoulder-length hair startlingly white, his eyes pink, with vertical pupils—the eyes of a cat. Of average height and build, he was dressed entirely in black, and held a top hat in his left hand and a silver-topped cane in his right. His pointed fingernails were also black.
By far the most remarkable thing about him, though, was his face, the jaws of which seemed to protrude unnaturally, giving the impression of a carnivorous muzzle.
Undoubtedly, this was the man who’d abducted John Speke and mesmerised Sister Raghavendra.
“I’ve been waiting, Sir Richard.” The voice was a seductive purr, oily and repellent.
“For how long?”
“An hour or so. Don’t worry; I kept myself occupied. I’ve been reading your notes.”
“Is privacy a notion you find difficult to comprehend?”
“What possible advantage would I gain from respecting your privacy?”
“Perhaps the reputation of a gentleman?” said Burton, cuttingly.
The albino made a noise that might have been a laugh, though it sounded like a growl.
Burton raised the point of his rapier. “Is Lieutenant Speke alive?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Why did you take him?”
“Things might go a lot better for you if you abandon such questions. You’ve been asking too many of late, though your investigation has amounted to little more than an extended crawl from one public house to another.”
“People gather in public houses. They’re a natural source of information. You’ve been watching me?”
“Of course. From the moment you broke my mesmeric hold over the nurse.”
“I saw your eyes in hers.”
“And I saw you through them.”
“I’ve heard such things are possible, though I’ve never seen it done before, not even in India. And, incidentally, you can stop staring at me like that. I’m a mean mesmerist myself and I won’t succumb to your magnetic influence.”
The intruder shrugged and stepped into the middle of the room. His eyes burned redly in the candlelight. He placed his top hat onto a desk.
“You don’t recognise me,” he said. “I’m not surprised. I am somewhat altered.”
“So tell me who you are and what you want before you get the hell out of my house,” answered the king’s agent.
In one lightning-swift movement, the albino drew a sword from his cane, touched its tip to Burton’s rapier, laid the sheath on a desk, and said: “Laurence Oliphant, most definitely not at your service.”
Burton stepped back in surprise and his shoulder blades bumped the mantelpiece.
“Good Lord! What have you done to yourself?” he exclaimed.
Oliphant, who’d stepped forward to keep his blade against Burton’s, applied a slight pressure to it.
“The True Libertines may rail against Technology,” he said, “but the Rakes view the work of the Eugenicists as an opportunity. What better way to transcend human limitations than by quite literally becoming something a little more than human?”
“You’ve been hanging around with the wrong people,” observed Burton.
Oliphant ignored the gibe and tapped his sword against the rapier, once, twice, before purring: “And to answer your earlier question, what I want is for you to stop poking your nose into matters that don’t concern you. I am quite serious, Sir Richard. I will force the issue if I must. Do you care to test me?”
Burton held his blade firmly and responded: “I’m counted one of the finest swordsmen in Europe, Oliphant.”
There was a blur of motion, an instant which passed so quickly that it might never have happened.
Burton felt a sudden warmth on his cheek. He reached up and touched it. His fingers came away wet with blood.
“And I,” breathed Oliphant, “am the fastest. Don’t worry; for your vanity’s sake, I have merely reopened that old scar of yours rather than adding a new.”
“Most thoughtful,” muttered Burton, icily. He stepped forward and thrust at the albino’s shoulder. His rapier was nonchalantly parried and ripped from his hand by his opponent’s whirling blade. It hit a desk, bounced, and landed point-first in one of the bookcases.
Oliphant, whose sword tip was now touching Burton just below the left eye, gave a momentary glance backward.
“My dear fellow!” he oozed. “How unfortunate. You seem to have impaled James Tuckey’s Narrative of an Expedition to Explore the River Zaire.” He lowered his weapon and stepped back. “Take down another blade.”
Burton, who’d never before been disarmed in combat, reached up and slid his hand along the chimney breast until his fingers found a weapon. Without taking his eyes from the intruder, he lowered it, gripped the hilt, and raised the blade until it touched Oliphant’s.
The albino smiled, revealing even, pointed teeth. “Are you sure you want to continue? There’s no need. Agree to abandon your investigation, and I’ll take my leave of you.”
“I don’t think so,” countered Burton.
“Come now! Throw it over, Sir Richard! Why not settle down instead? Marry that girl of yours. Maybe apply for a governmental post and write your books.”
Bismillah! thought Burton. He’s practically quoting Spring Heeled. Jack!
“Yes, that’s one option,” he replied. “The other is that you tell me exactly what’s going on. Shall we start with why you abducted John Speke, or should we go back a little further and talk about why you turned him against me after the Nile expedition? Or maybe we can discuss the werewolf creatures you had with you at the hospital?”
He took a chance: “Or would you prefer a little chat about Spring Heeled Jack?”
A muscle twitched at the corner of a pink eye and Burton knew he’d hit home. He wasn’t working on two cases—he was working on one!
Oliphant’s sword scraped down the rapier and made a lazy thrust at Burton’s heart. The king’s agent turned it aside and stepped to the left, flicking his point toward Oliphant’s throat—a feint—he brought it down and stabbed at an area just below the albino’s collarbone. His blade was met, turned, twisted, and almost torn from his hand again. This time, though, his riposte was fast and effective and Oliphant, not meeting resistance from the expected direction, found his point rising higher than intended. The end of Burton’s rapier danced forward beneath it, pierced the sleeve of the albino’s velvet frock coat, and penetrated his wrist. It was a move—the manchette— that the adventurer had developed himself in Boulogne while under the tutelage of the famed Monsieur Constantine.
Laurence Oliphant sprang back and stood clutching his wrist, his lips curled.
With feline eyes following his every move, Burton circled his opponent, walked past the bureau and windows, behind his primary desk, crossed in front of a bookcase, then stopped, blocking the door.
He used the back of his hand to wipe the blood from his cheek.
“En garde!” he snapped, and adopted the position.
Oliphant hissed poisonously and followed suit. Their weapons met.
In a flurry of motion, the duel commenced. The two blades clashed, scraped, lunged, parried, and whirled in attack and riposte, filling the room with the tink tink tink of metal against metal. Even with his wounded wrist, Burton’s opponent possessed greater speed than any he’d faced before; but Oliphant had a fault: his eyes signalled every move, and the king’s agent was thus able to defend against the blindingly fast onslaught. However, finding an opening in the albino’s defence proved far more difficult, and, a
s the two men battled back and forth across the candlelit study, the competition quickly became, at least for Burton, one of endurance.
“Give it up!” gasped Oliphant.
“Where is Speke?” ground out Burton. “I demand an answer!”
“The only one you’ll get,” growled his foe, “is this!”
The albino’s blade accelerated to such a speed that it became almost invisible. Burton’s instincts took over; his many years of study and practice in the art of swordsmanship saved him over and over as he desperately blocked and turned aside the darting point. Again and again he was forced to step back, until he was brought up against a bookcase and found himself unable to manoeuvre. Worse, he was tiring, and he saw in the pink eyes that Oliphant recognised the fact.
He feinted, avoided the counterattack, and plunged his blade forward.
A red line appeared on Oliphant’s cheek and blood sprayed out behind Burton’s flashing blade.
“One for one!” he barked, and, seeing his opponent momentarily disconcerted, attempted another of his own moves, the une-deux, which against any normal opponent would have sent their weapon flying out of their grip while almost breaking their wrist.
Laurence Oliphant was not a normal opponent.
With a howl of fury he slipped his blade through Burton’s attack and renewed his assault.
The deadly tip of his sword flew in from every direction and Burton, with the bookcase at his back and his arm muscles burning, found his defences breached. Scratches began to materialise on his forearms; slashes appeared as if by magic in the material of his pyjamas; a puncture wound marked his neck.
He was breathing heavily and starting to feel light-headed. His left hand, held outward and downward for balance, kept knocking against something, a distraction that grew increasingly irritating as his defence continued to falter and Oliphant’s weapon found its target again and again.