Reader Fitzmaurice Trenery has been studying very carefully number one in our series of Notable Authors Sitting On Swans, and has reached a startling conclusion:

“Mr Key : Contrary to the description of the photograph, it seems to me that it depicts the wondrous accidental meeting of two benighted creatures, the swan-headed child and the child-headed swan. See how they embrace, each chimera recognising in the other his own misery. The chin of the newly-confident child-headed swan seems to jut in new-found defiance of the world! I’m not sure if a beak can jut, so I shall reserve judgement on the swan-headed child – in any case it seems to me an altogether more ambiguous character. Such a firm grip on the child-headed swan’s neck; I infer here the crafty sense in the swan-headed child’s tiny bonce that it is the benefactor of this symbiotic relationship. After all, the swan-headed child may be dextrous and bipedal, but it is led around by a pea-sized brain. The child-headed swan, for its part, has a fey, ethereal beauty… but when the head matures into adulthood the neck will be powerless to support it, and what then? What then?”

Though I would swear by the crumpled cloth of Anaxagrotax’s winding-sheet that the snap does indeed show Raymond Roussel as a tiny, so forceful and convincing is Mr Trenery’s argument that I am putting the series on hold pending further investigations. I have it in mind to employ for the purpose Agence Goron, the detective agency commissioned by Roussel to find and negotiate with an illustrator to provide the drawings for New Impressions Of Africa (1932).

To Vange! We set out, the champ, the widow, and me, at break of dawn, hoping to make Vange before nightfall. I knew little about my travelling companions. I had no idea, for example, of what the champ was a champion, nor did I know whose relict the widow was, nor for how long she had been wearing her widow’s weeds. They, in their turn, must have known almost nothing about me, save perhaps that I was a fanatical devotee of Trebizondo Culpeper, whose glorious image shot forth rays of golden light from the badge I wore upon my tunic.

Our donkeys we had abducted, with great daring, in broad daylight, from the beach where they were employed to give rides to holidaying urchins. They were sturdy beasts, with a surprising elegance in their carriage. I was well aware, as were the champ and the widow, that laws exist to regulate the number of hours a donkey may be worked, but I spat in the face of the laws, and my companions did too. We were determined to get to Vange in a single day, and if in so doing we were to exhaust our donkeys, then so be it. Trebizondo Culpeper’s recorded pronouncements on donkeys are gnomic, to say the least, and though I could not claim to have a full understanding of them, I felt sure we were following the right path.

By “path”, I mean of course the Way of Trebizondo Culpeper, not the path to Vange. Accustomed as they were to the golden strands of their seaside resort, our abducted donkeys would have been utterly discombobulated had we led them along the main arterial trunk road to Vange, with its thundering traffic of container lorries and speed-phrenzied vanborne riffraff. We chose instead to make our way across fields and greensward, taking the occasional quiet country lane or abandoned railway line where the opportunity arose. We had no map. Instead, we relied on the widow’s profound, and in many ways unnerving knowledge of the lie of the land. In less enlightened times they would have burned her for a witch.

Of  the three of us, only the champ had previously been to Vange. One of the early heats in his progress to the championship had been due to take place at Vange Marshes, and the champ was billeted in the village beforehand. In the event, the contest was cancelled because of an unprecedented starling storm, teeming millions of birds swooping over the marshes, and the champ and his rivals were driven away in charabancs to a new location. When he spoke, which was rarely, the champ’s speech was punctuated with chuckles which I found mightily disconcerting.

My own knowledge of Vange was based on a rotogravure by the noted rotogravurist Rex Rotograv, which had been presented to me as a prize for pursuivance by Trebizondo Culpeper’s Inner Circle. I pored over this picture for hours and hours, drinking in every detail, until I felt as if I knew Vange itself. In truth, of course, I knew nothing, nothing whatsoever, of Vange, of Vange Marshes, of anything at all, in essence. In The Ungrateful Beggar (1898) Léon Bloy reports his mother telling him: “My dear child, it is true you’re an ox, but an ox whose bellowings will one day astonish Christendom”. Through diligent study of the Way of Trebizondo Culpeper, I had eventually had drummed into me my own ox-like stupidity. I had high hopes that my visit to Vange might inspire my bellowings, which to date had been few, and those few incoherent.

When I published an account of an earlier journey by abducted donkey, to a village that I mistook for Vange, it was suggested to me that I ought to have included, through a kind of ventriloquism, the donkey’s “thoughts and observations”. There are narratives that go in for that sort of thing, and no doubt readers who lap it up. But Trebizondo Culpeper expressly forbids such misuse of our talents, if talents we have, and he is surely right to do so. On the present occasion, we had not even learned our donkeys’ names, and that would have been a necessary precursor to any attempt to burrow into their interior beings. For logistical purposes, before we had even got clear of the beach, the widow had assigned to each donkey a nonce name, but her choices were long-winded and multisyllabic and did not serve their purpose. I have forgotten what they were.

I have forgotten more than that. But what I remember with absolute clarity, as if it were yesterday, is how, as day became dusk and dusk darkened to night, the champ, the widow, and I, upon our donkeys, guided at the last by a star burning bright against the black, reached the end of our journey. There was Vange! And there, closer still, so close we could stop and dismount and make the last few yards on foot, was Vange Well No. 5! The domed building, like a Grecian temple, was falling to ruin after years of neglect, its structure cracked in places, a cross beam detached, the render upon the exterior walls in need of replacement, and little remaining of the original lettering. There was still evidence of the other wells close by, and hidden in the undergrowth was the concrete hard standing, where once stood a large wooden hut that was used for storage. This was the last of five wells sunk following the discovery, over a century ago, of magic water by self-styled farmer Edwin Cash. It was highly sulphated, and he bottled it and sold it, labelled as Farmer Cash’s Famous Medicinal Vange Water, extolling its great medicinal value in curing such ailments as lumbago, stomach troubles, rheumatoid complaints, and nervous disorders. But then the sanatorium was built nearby, on higher ground, and its drainage system contaminated the magic water, and the business collapsed, just as the structure of Vange Well No. 5 was in a state of collapse, just as, after a day riding our abducted donkeys, the widow, the champ, and I were close to collapse. We had strength enough, though, working together, to sink our siphons into the ground and suck up the magic water. We cared not that it was contaminated. In the night, on the outskirts of Vange, we drank our fill, each for our own reasons.

The champ, plagued by lumbago, fearing that next season he would fail to retain his championship, drank the magic water. The widow, martyred by stomach troubles and rheumatoid complaints, drank the magic water. And me, with my nervous disorders and my fanatical devotion to Trebizondo Culpeper? I drank the magic Vange water too. I drank deep.

Above us, the bright burning star was extinguished, and we were engulfed in darkness. We could no longer see each other, nor our abducted donkeys. We could no longer see even the crumbling ruin of Vange Well No. 5. We waited for the dawn, for a new day, for the transfiguration wrought upon each of us by the magic water of Vange.

It is not, I think, generally known that the notorious killer Babinsky was also a man of letters. So the imminent publication of The Complete And Staggeringly Voluminous Correspondence Of The Notorious Killer Babinsky, in no fewer than forty volumes, is to be welcomed. Babinsky, it seems, when he could tear himself away from the committal of blood-drenched enormities, wrote dozens upon dozens of letters, every day, to a bewildering number of correspondents, some of whom actually replied.

An unexpectedly high proportion of his letters are on the subject of moles, and are of scant interest to the general reader, although no doubt those as mole-dazed as Babinsky will find much to interest them. But the great fascination of these huge fat volumes lies in the very occasional letters written by Babinsky which address wider topics. Those of us who have long wanted to know more about the lumbering, murderous, walrus-moustached psychopath are well-served by this excellent collection.

Consider this, for example:

Dearest Tod [or possibly ‘Tad’ or ‘Ted’ – Babinsky’s handwriting was atrocious], I am currently hiding in a cave by the mighty, pitiless sea. Can you do me a favour and bring me a goat, so I can slaughter it with my bare hands and eat it raw?

The very next day, before he has received a reply, Babinsky writes to Tod again:

Beloved Tod, Is there such a thing as a goat suitable for vegans? One made out of marzipan or No-Egg™ and suet substitute? It clear slipped my mind, when I wrote to you yesterday, that I have decided to eschew all animal products. While I take a distinct pleasure in acts of sickening violence such as the Blister Lane Post Office Horror of a few months ago, I would not wish to hurt a hair on a fly’s head. I am not entomologist enough to know whether flies actually have any hair on their heads, but my point, I hope, is clear. When I am brought before the tribunal of beasts, in a dingly dell, like something out of a Hicks painting, I want to be able to hold my head high, and preen my walrus moustache, and cry: “I vowed, when hiding in a cave by the sea, never again to harm a single animal nor eat one, and I have kept my promise, O beasts, and survived on lettuce and radishes and many types of fruit and marzipan goats!” I will be very grateful if you can sort something out, because the night is drawing in and the waves are crashing on the rocks and I am getting quite peckish.

Elsewhere, Babinsky can strike a surprisingly plaintive tone:

Dear Spleen-Boy, You will probably be surprised at my plaintive tone, but I have been sobbing quite bitterly. I have had to take refuge in a lair in the blue forgotten hills, because I learned that the coppers wanted to have a word with me about the gruesome slayings at Sawdust Bridge. I am woebegone and emotional and have pins and needles in various limbs as I huddle here in the darkness, listening to the gruntings and howlings of creatures of the night, some of which might discover my lair and attack your poor tearful Babinsky! What is to become of me?

Fortunately, we know from other sources what became of Babinsky after that. Even if we did not, a letter he wrote some three weeks later sheds some light:

Hey there, Dot! By now you might have heard about the coppers who were found dead in a pit in the blue forgotten hills, their heads turned inside out by some inexplicable act of violence. Well, when they do the forensics, it will be my great grubby thumb-prints they’ll find. But what do I care? I fled the scene as they gasped their last and am now quite safe, holed up in a seaside boarding-house, plotting an enormity at the docks. If you could see your way to stuffing some flies into an envelope and sending them to me, that would be grand.

Babinsky does not state why he wants an envelope stuffed with flies. It may form part of his plot, or perhaps he is just being enigmatic, as he is in this later letter, also addressed to Dot:

Dear Dot, I have been thinking for some time now that you have signally failed to realise just how enigmatic I am. This grieves me. You really need to appreciate that when I am not committing gore-splattered killings or keeping up with my mole correspondence, I am just about the most enigmatic person you are ever likely to receive a letter from. Note, for instance, the exquisite notepaper, its edges trimmed with pinking shears, its lavender-and-cauliflower scent, and the way I have folded it so that if you cut along the creases you will have sixteen pieces which can be formed into a lifelike paper model of David Blunkett’s guide dog, complete with harness. PS: Many thanks for sending the envelope stuffed with flies so promptly. I made very, very enigmatic use of it, so enigmatic I am not going to tell you, in order to preserve my considerable mystique.

At other times, Babinsky was more forthcoming about his activities. In a letter to David Blunkett, he wrote:

Dear Mr Blunkett, I would have you know that recently I have been creating lifelike paper models of your guide dog, complete with harness. If you would like one, please let me know, and I will send the template by return of post, unless of course I am forced to flee from my current hidey-hole deep in the woods, sheltered by stark pines and majestic laburnums. Everything is fine at the moment, but there is always the possibility that I might betray my presence to the wizened old woodcutter who dwells in a hovel a few yards away, and he looks like the sort who would summon the coppers. They think I had something to do with the Unspeakable Stranglings in Pointy Town last October, which I did, of course, but who’s to know, eh? Keep it under your hat, Mr Blunkett, if you have a hat, which I’m sure you do, being a man of style and substance.

Babinsky’s own style and substance were occasionally to be found in foreign parts. Now and then he sailed across the mighty and pitiless sea, when, say, the police were hot on his trail, or he had it in mind to carry out some foreign killings, or he wished to familiarise himself with the ways of foreign moles. At these times, he kept up his correspondence with gusto, although he had to make use of airmail, and therefore of thin airmail notepaper, of which he did not approve.

My darling Blodwyn, I am sure you will agree that this airmail paper is far too thin. I have a good mind to scrunch it up in my big hairy fist, and then to calm myself down by going out and setting upon a foreign person and visiting upon them an unimaginably horrible and violent death, possibly involving pincers and bleach. Why can’t they make the aeroplanes bigger, so they can carry thicker paper? If I wasn’t lying low from the polizei, I would march into a large important building and demand something was done. But I need to keep out of sight, and the snowdrifts outside this remote chalet are so deep that I would leave telltale tracks, even if I just popped down to the jolly goatherd’s hut to abduct one of his goats. Thank Christ I put all that vegan nonsense behind me. I will have some explaining to do when I am hauled before the tribunal of beasts, but I will hope to distract them by allowing the gentle breeze in the dingly dell to waft my walrus moustache to startling effect. That worked for me before, when I was about to be arrested for the Cuxhaven Poisonings. Those Cuxhaven coppers were so bowled over by the elegant quivering of my moustache that I was able to make my getaway across the sandbanks.

Babinsky did not always escape arrest, of course, and an entire volume of the collected correspondence is entitled “Letters From Prison”. Here is one of them:

Dear Yoko, I was born free, but now I am in chains. Please take out full-page advertisements in all the major newspapers demanding my immediate release, alongside whatever else you might wish for, such as world peace or no possessions. We both know that you have global influence, and it will be a terrific boost to your moral fibre to use that influence on behalf of a wretched prisoner like me. So get with the programme, Missus!

This was not the only letter in which Babinsky babbled about the boosting of fibre. It is a topic he returned to again and again.

Dearest Ludovico, I’ve got some fibre here and I am going to give it a boost. If you want to watch, meet me behind the gasworks at dead of night. You will be able to recognise me by dint of my walrus moustache, lumbering gait, the blood of a freshly-slaughtered goat dribbling down my chin, and my general air of seething psychopathic violence. Don’t tell anybody you’re coming, and don’t make any plans for tomorrow, or, indeed, for the rest of your life, which I can assure you is going to be particularly nasty, brutish, and short. PS: Give my regards to your delightful wife and seven lovely children.

It is not often Babinsky allows himself, as here, to show his tender, sentimental side. One of the pleasures of this extraordinary collection is that we get to see the notorious killer in the round, warts, more warts, and even more warts. The warts, of course, were usually hidden under that majestic moustache. As he wrote to the Tod, or Ted, or Tad we met earlier:

Dear Tod, I feel I must let you know that my warts are mostly hidden under my majestic walrus moustache. Forever yours, Babinsky.

Somehow, those words serve as an epitaph of sorts.

Blodwyn was une merveilleuse. She had an orange head. She played spinet with great élan the day before she wed. She married a man called Fulgenceac, one of les incroyables. His nose was as the beak of a crow, and he soon lost his marbles.

Blodwyn hired a rowing boat and plied it ‘cross the lake. She gathered herbs and flowers an infusion for to make. “This will set your brain to rights, do drink it, Fulgenceac,” she said when she re-rowed the lake, as soon as she got back.

But there was rotten ergot in her bubbling hot tisane, so when her husband drank it he went permanently insane. Blodwyn had to chain him up in the attic of their chateau, and ever after all her days were filled with grief and woe.

If this story has a moral, it is one I have forgot. Just be very wary of contaminated ergot.

This is an excerpt from something – a list of instructions? – but I have been unable to discover the complete document.

… and place the head of the squirrel between the electric plates.

14. Move the goat into the adjoining room, and close the shutters.

15. Empty the packet of bile beans into a large glass jar, seal the lid tight, and shake furiously until you are weeping with sheer exhaustion. Dry your tears with a rag.

16. Peek through the flap to ensure the goat has not escaped.

17. Coax from the core of your being a sense of dazzling, effulgent priggery. Pat the squirrel on the head.

18. Now intone the litany of pseudo-voodoo ululations you memorised earlier.

19. Wrap the cravat around your neck. Strike a dashing pose. Cut some capers.

20. The bricks in the hod should now be cool to the touch. Chuck them one by one out of the window into the empty carpark. Make a sketch of their disposition upon the concrete, using a very sharp pencil and a fresh page of your notepad.

21. The brain of the squirrel ought now be fully modified. Remove the electric plates with care, and put them in the dustbin.

22. Winch the dustbin to the ceiling.

23. Pass your hands, those tiny, wrinkled, blotchy, shivering cold hands, over the eel at rest upon the countertop.

24. Go and get the glue-gun, and…