The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack - Mark Hodder [40]
"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."
"Which presents a difficulty because?"
"Because Henry de La Poet Beresford, 3rd Marquess of Waterford, died two years ago. He fell from his horse and broke his neck."
Burton's eyes lost focus as he reviewed all that Trounce had told him. The connections between Oxford, Beresford, and Spring Heeled Jack were circumstantial at best, coincidental at worst, yet possessed an undeniable allure; he sensed that an undiscovered truth lay concealed somewhere in the tangled web.
"There's something else," said Trounce,