Mark Hodder - The strange affair of Spring-heeled Jack

Burton took a couple of steps toward the door, thought better of it, and stood swaying in the centre of the room. He looked around at the bookcases, filled with volumes about geography, religion, languages, erotica, esoterica, and ethnology; looked at the swords resting on brackets above the fireplace; the worn boxing gloves hanging from a corner of the mantelpiece; the pistols and spears displayed in the alcoves to either side of the chimney breast; looked at the pictures on the walls, including the one of Edward, his braindamaged younger brother, who'd been an inmate at the Surrey County Lunatic Asylum for the past three years, a result of an incident five years ago when he was beaten half to death in Ceylon after Buddhist villagers took offence at his hunting of elephants; looked at the three big desks, stacked with papers, his half-written books, maps, and charts; looked at the many souvenirs of his travels, the idols and carvings, hookahs and prayer mats, knickknacks and trinkets; looked at the door in the wall opposite the windows, which led to the small dressing room where he kept his various disguises; and looked at the dark windows and his reflection in their glass.

The question came again, and he spoke it aloud: "What the hell am I to do?"

The door opened and Mrs. Angell, her expression severe and voice cold, stepped in and said, "Master Oscar says to tell you that Mr. Speke is at the Penfold Private Sanatorium."

Burton nodded, curtly.

The old woman made to leave.

"Mrs. Angell," he called.

She stopped and looked back at him.

"My language was entirely unwarranted," he mumbled, self-consciously. "My temper, too. Please accept my apologies."

She gazed at him a moment. "Very well. But you'll take your devils out of this house, is that understood? Either that, or you remove yourself from it-permanently! "

"Agreed. Did you treat Quips to more pie?"

The old dame smiled indulgently. "Yes, and an apple and some butterscotch."

"Thank you. Now, as you recommend, I think I shall take my devils out of the house."

"But you'll not allow them to guide you into trouble, if you please, Sir Richard."

"I'll do my best, Mother Angell."

She bobbed her head and departed.

Burton considered for a moment. It was too late in the evening to visit the hospital; that would have to wait until the morning, and if Speke didn't survive the night, then so be it. It was, however, never too late to visit the Cannibal Club. A few drinks with his Libertine friends would help to lift his spirits, and maybe Algernon Swinburne would be among them. Burton hadn't known the promising young poet for long but enjoyed his company immensely.

He made up his mind, changed his clothes, took another swig of brandy, and was just leaving the room when a tapping came at one of the windows. He crossed to it, a little clumsily, and saw a colourful parakeet sitting on the sill.

He pulled up the sash. A cloud of mist rolled in. The parakeet looked at him.

"Message from the stinking prime minister's office," it cackled. "You are requested to attend that prattle-brain Lord Palmerston at 10 Downing Street at nine o'clock in the morning. Please confirm, arse-face. Message ends."

Burton's brows, which usually arched low over his eyes in what appeared to be a permanent frown, shot upward. The prime minister wanted to meet with him personally? Why?

"Reply. Message begins. Appointment confirmed. I will be there. Message ends. Go."

"Bugger off!" squawked the parakeet, and launched itself from the sill.

Burton closed the window.

He was going to meet Lord Palmerston.

Bloody hell.

The Cannibal Club was located in rooms above Bartoloni's Italian Restaurant in Leicester Square.

Burton found the enigmatic and rather saturnine Richard Monckton Milnes there, in company with the diminutive Algernon Swinburne and Captain Henry Murray, Doctor James Hunt, Sir Edward Brabrooke, Thomas Bendyshe, and Charles Bradlaugh-hellraisers all.

"Burton!" cried Milnes as the explorer entered. "Congratulations!"

"On what?"

"On shooting that bounder Speke! Surely it was you who pulled the trigger? Please say it was so!"

Burton threw himself into a chair and lit a cigar.

"It was not."

"Ah, what a shame!" exclaimed Milnes. "I was so hoping you could tell us what it feels like to murder a man. A white man, I mean!"

"Why, yes, of course!" put in Bradlaugh. "You killed that little Arab boy on the road to Mecca, didn't you?"

Burton accepted a drink from Henry Murray.

"You know damned well I didn't!" he growled. "That bastard Stanley writes nothing but scurrilous nonsense!"

"Come now, Richard!" trilled Swinburne, in his excitable, high-pitched voice. "Don't object so! Do you not agree that murder is one of the great boundaries we must cross in order to know that we, ourselves, are truly alive?"

The famous explorer sighed and shook his head. Swinburne was youngjust twenty-four-and possessed an intuitive intelligence that appealed to the older man; but he was gullible.

"Nonsense, Algy! Don't let these Libertines mesmerise you with their misguided ideas and appallingly bad logic. They are incorrigibly perverse, especially Milnes here."

"Hah!" yelled Bendyshe from across the room. "Swinburne's as perverse as they come! He has a taste for pain, don't you know! Likes the kiss of a whip, what!"

Swinburne giggled, twitched, and snapped his fingers. As always, his movements were fast, jerky, and eccentric, as if he suffered from Saint Vitus's dance.

"It's true. I'm a follower of de Sade."

"It's a common affliction," noted Burton. "Why, I once visited a brothel in Karachi-on a research mission for Napier, you understand-"

Snorts and howls of derision came from the gathering.

– and there witnessed a man flagellated to the point of unconsciousness. He enjoyed it!"

"Delicious!" Swinburne shuddered.

"Maybe so, if your tastes run to it," agreed Burton. "However, flagellation is one thing, murder is quite another!"

Milnes sat beside Burton, leaning close.

"But, I say, Richard," he murmured, "don't you ever wonder at the sense of freedom one must feel when performing the act of murder? It is, after all, the greatest taboo, is it not? Break that and you are free of the shackles imposed by civilisation!"

"I'm no great enthusiast for the false pleasures and insidious suppressions of civilisation," said Burton. "And, in my opinion, Mrs. Grundy-our fictitious personification of all things oh so pure, polite, restrained, and conventional requires a thorough shagging; however, as much as I might rail against the constraints of English society and culture, murder is a more fundamental matter than either."

Swinburne squealed with delight. "A thorough shagging! Oh, bravo, Richard!"

Milnes nodded. "False pleasures and insidious suppressions indeed. Pleasures which enslave, suppressions which pass judgement. Where, I ask, is freedom?"

"I don't know," answered Burton. "How can one quantify so indefinite a notion as freedom?"

"By looking to nature, dear boy! Nature red in tooth and claw! One animal kills another animal. Is it found guilty? No! It remains free to do what it will, even-and, in fact, certainly-to kill again! As de Sade himself said: `Nature has not got two voices, you know, one of them condemning all day what the other commands."'

Burton emptied his glass in a single swallow.

"For sure, Darwin has demonstrated that Nature is a brutal and entirely pitiless process, but you seem to forget, Milnes, that the animal which kills is most often, in turn, itself killed by another animal, just as the murderer, in a supposedly civilised country, is hanged for his crime!"

"Then you propose an innate natural law of justice from which we can never break free, a law that transcends culture, whatever its stage of development?"