Makepeace and Grimes: Death at the Bow Chapel Bone-Yard (Makepeace and Grimes, #0.1) (ePub)

Notes on this journal

There were many times in the years since I first met him that I wished with all my heart he'd remained no more than a nodding acquaintance I occasionally passed on the stairs; a ghost haunting the upper landings of the lodging house we shared with other working men.

We first met over thirty years ago, and yet my memory is as fresh as if it had happened yesterday. I also have my diaries to refresh my recollection of the finer details. Grimes never understood my obsession with recording everything that happened during our time in partnership but now, as I sit here and compile my notes, I am grateful for the clarity these journals provide. After all, it would be easy enough to dismiss so much of what we experienced together as the fantasies of a deluded old man with an overactive imagination, but when I see these accounts, written in my own hand and in straightforward, sober, language, I feel the same reassurance as if I were able to witness the events again.

I write this in February 1918, as the Great War continues to squeeze the lifeblood from the young men of Europe and around the world. It is ironic that, as the self-styled forces of freedom struggle with an imperialist tyrant, those same forces seek to suppress the hidden war that has raged for centuries, invisible to those who live out their lives above ground. Except when they become victims.

I am old and my time is limited. I hope that I am spared for long enough to complete my work of arranging these accounts. They will be placed under the care of a trusted friend who has instructions to release them to the public in one hundred years if the government continues to prevent the truth emerging.

Those that are ignorant of history, it is said, are doomed to repeat it. It is my hope that, if living blood flows through your veins, you will be inspired to resist. And yet it is with a heavy heart that I write these words, and a heavy burden I place upon you. Like me, you will find that what you learn here cannot be unlearned. The future you believed lay ahead of you is as much a lie as the security you feel in the solid earth beneath your feet. I am sorry. Perhaps ignorance is bliss for some, but it is also, I fear, likely to be the end of the human race.

These things happened.

John Makepeace
4th February 1918