The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack - Mark Hodder [39]
"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