by Kim Newman
From his coat pocket, Stoke produced an object wrapped in a red scarf. He passed it to Moriarty, who unwound the scarf.
‘Your department, I think, Moran,’ he said, and tossed it over.
I’d seen similar things. It was a plaster of Paris impression of a pawprint, or at least a dent in the ground made by something shaped like a big animal’s foot. From the shape, the print was dog or a wolf, but the span suggested something the size of tiger or rhino.
‘The detail which springs out of the foolishness of the legend,’ continued Stoke, ‘is that Red Shuck persecutes d’Urbervilles whenever one of the family is “a tyrant or villain”. I’m not given to the vice of self-deception. My tenants view me as tyrant and villain. If that’s their comfort, fine. So long as they work and pay and bow and scrape. My plan for Trantridge depends on me being tyrant and villain. My conviction, from study of German economics, is that what was once categorised as tyrannical and villainous is, in modern times, respectable and even necessary. That aside, it’s my personal whim to play tyrant and villain. As Master of Trantridge, it is my lawful right. This is why I have brought my business to you...’
Moriarty nodded.
‘Red Shuck may be a phantom and a fraud, but it’s killed my top boy. I can’t let that go. Word about Lazy-Eye Jack spread over the county afore noon. And suddenly everyone’s talking up that damned Red Shuck. Already, Trantridgers grumble about paying rents and following orders. A few beatings, and even a barn-burning, and they’re still not trodden down enough. They whisper that Venic of Melchester has come back in demon dog form to serve me as he served wicked Sir Pagan. This interferes with my affairs, do you understand? My position depends on the exercise of terror. By me, not against me. When I walk about, peasants must crap their britches. They must be in mind of Diggory Venn’s bloody back, or Git Priddle’s black eye, or the Kail lad’s clipped ear, or the poorhouse hells they’ll fetch up in if I turn them off the land. I cannot be seen to be afraid. I cannot be struck at without returning the blow tenfold. I had it from an old-time Georgia overseer: if one slave runs, hang ten. Most don’t have the salt for it, not least because the ones you hang are your own property and their worth comes off your book. But once you do it, they tend their own pens, keep their own troublemakers in shackle.
‘In Wessex, I might be able to hang a shepherd or two, but ten would be more trouble than they’re worth. So, I pick a family at random, the Balls, and evict ’em, set to wander and beg on the roads and wind up destitute, derelict and, I fervently hope, dead. That’s for Lazy-Eye Jack. But it’s not enough. While the parson’s ghost tale is going round, I can’t press on with my economic plan. So there must be no more bedtime stories, no whispers that New Master will get his comeuppance, not even a hope of deliverance. You understand? The dog must be killed, even if it doesn’t exist. I’ve come to you, Professor, because I need the story killed. Now, can you do that?’
The Professor pondered. Stoke glared intently, playing with his still-glowing cheroot stub.
‘Your problem – though inherently absurd – has features of interest,’ Moriarty said.
I was interested enough by the mention of £5,000 for a pelt.
Stoke let out breath. People aren’t usually relieved when Moriarty involves himself in their affairs, but I suppose it has to happen from time to time.
‘Legends of spectral avengers abound,’ said the Prof, ‘and encourage a persistent fiction that “evil-doers” who, by ingenuity and endeavour, evade human justice must answer to supernatural authority. Such fables are a hindrance to the Calling of Crime. By eliminating your Red Shuck, we chip away at the monument of this myth. I shall accept your commission...’
And the five thousand plums!
‘... and replace the fairy tale of Virtue Triumphant with the brute fact of Wickedness Rewarded. A philosophical – nay, a mathematical – point must be proved. Your problem provides an opportunity to serve the cause of Higher Thought.’
Moriarty read his German economics too. It’s all very well to theorise that wickedness, cruelty, self-interest and the whims of the few overriding the bleats of the many are essential to the furtherance of an efficient, modern society. But, to me, deep-thinkers like Moriarty, Nietzsche and Machiavelli miss an essential truth – it’s a lot of jolly good fun being an ‘evil-doer’. None of these coves seem to relish being a total rotter – though Moriarty, at least, did not confine his evil to theory like some of the windier philosophers. I believe that – in his tiny, shrivelled, eight-months-gone apple of a heart – the Professor got spasms of enjoyment from his crimes, for it’s a sad rogue who strives his life long to increase the miseries of his fellow man without getting at least a warm feeling when he sees others beggared or dumped in unmarked graves on his account. Everyone knows I’m a sentimental soul.
Moriarty’s head oscillated. Dan’l, alarmed, gripped Gertie as if he were worried the Prof was about to turn into a snake as old Venic turned into Red Shuck. I knew the Prof’s habits – he was calculating...
‘I am currently much involved,’ he announced. ‘Several crimes require my presence in London...’
This was news to me.
‘...you will soon read of the Barrie-McTrostle disinheritance... the Clapham Gas House atrocities... and the Winklesworth & Company stock malfeasance...’
He was making this rot up, but Stoke’s eyes goggled – imagining vast feats of inconceivable criminality. Moriarty was not above puffing up his feats by reference to imaginary crimes. Usually, he was deceiving someone about something and had a long game in mind, so I played along.
‘There’s the abduction of the Ranee of Ranchipur, too,’ I put in.
The ‘Ranee of Ranchipur’ was the professional name of Molly Duff, one of Mrs Halifax’s girls. She stained herself brown to pass as a Hindu princess.
Moriarty nodded sagely. ‘Yes, an exacting proposition. The Ranee is to be taken from under the Rajah’s nose and sold to a Scottish peer during her birthday party. That will require my personal attention.’
Stoke’s wonderment was tinctured with dismay as he saw his own knotty problem sliding down the agenda and out of the door.
‘However,’ said the Professor, ‘in this instance, I can with full confidence entrust your dog to my associate, Colonel Moran. He is known far and wide as the greatest hunter of the age. If an animal draws breath, he’s killed it.’
The old chest fairly swelled with pride, though I knew the Prof was stroking the client while palming the job off on me.
‘I know all about keeping natives under the lash,’ I said. ‘I doubt those of Wessex differ much from the heathens I ran into out East.’
‘Moran will run down to Trantridge with you...’
‘...bringing along my guns, what?’
‘...suitably armed to bring down any Wessex Wolf. He will take stock of your situation, then act expeditiously to effect a satisfactory outcome.’
Stoke had the temerity to baulk at this.
‘I’ve set a pile of money on the table, Professor... I was hoping for the boss of this outfit, not the top hand.’
‘Mr Stoke-d’Urberville, when it comes to tramping through mud and muck after ferocious beasts, the Colonel has far more experience than I. Moran will set down observations and send me regular communiqués about his progress...’
This again was news to me, and not entirely welcome.
‘A portion of my brain will be fully occupied with Red Shuck. Even if I am removed from the scene of your travails. If you are beset by a mysterious “do-gooder”, he or she will be thwarted. On that, you have the word of Professor James Moriarty.’
Which, as far as it went, was impressive. If Moriarty promised to cut your throat or assault your sister and get away with it, you could be assured he’d follow through. Otherwise, his word was worth about as much as my promissory notes to tailors or cabbage-men... but Jasper Stoke, tyrant and villain though he might be, set much by hollow wordage from so distinguished a gent.
I packed guns for a trip west.
Impertinent reviewers of my Heavy Game of the Western Himalayas made waggish remarks about the Moran propensity for ‘droning at length’ about guns. I still hold those seventy-eight pages, with practical footnotes, on the rifle ‘Prometheus’ a worthwhile addition to the literature and essential to the understanding of later, more immediately exciting chapters. Discerning readers have given testimonials as to the fascinating, educational and profoundly important nature of these outpourings from my pen – which not a few rank higher than anything from Dickens or Shelley.
‘Prometheus’, custom-made by George Gibbs of Bristol, is sadly lost. Having served me better than any woman I’ve ever paid for, the rifle suffered tragically when pressed into service as a crutch as I hobbled out of an East African jungle on a broken leg. I laid the gun to rest in a grave with the three bearers who deserted me. I don’t officially record those sammies, because close-up executions spat from an abused and spoiled weapon can’t be set beside the true shots of the gun’s great days. But they constituted the final bag. Had ‘Prometheus’ survived beyond publication of Heavy Game, I might have added a literary lion or two to its tally. Luckily, the Eton coachwhip was to hand when opportunity came to answer my critics.
If you’ve a fancy to hang the antlers of a Grand Duke in your lodge, you might need a recoilless pistol which looks like a pair of opera glasses and doesn’t make a noise louder than a round of applause. Then, Blind Herder’s your man. Still, if Red Shuck was actual game, I needed a game rifle. Gibbs & Co. remained my preferred supplier. I’d not named a gun since ‘Prometheus’, but I’d a rack to choose from. Elephant, lion, tiger, bear, native and witness widows across the Empire could attest to their reliability. I took three rifles, including one calibrated for shots of up to three-quarters of a mile with an optical contraption for sighting purposes. My Webley had finally succumbed when I was forced to use its barrel as a jemmy and its handle as a hammer to extricate myself from the oubliette of Arnsworth Castle. So, I needed a side arm. Officially, Gibbs does not make a revolver – but, as a service to a valued customer, they furnished me a superbly crafted, teak-handled specimen superior to the job lots of shooting iron turned out by Yankee bodgers like Samuel Colt.
It was arranged that, three days after our first consultation, I would meet Jasper Stoke at Paddington Station and we would chuff-chuff west. Before leaving, I conferred with Moriarty in the windowless study where he experimented. He was not busy with other crimes, imaginary or genuine. He was dissecting a violin. An Amati of Cremona, if that means anything. He had secured it at auction for a fabulous sum – solely, I believe, to keep it from a rival bidder for whom he had a particular dislike. With dressmakers’ scissors and a surgeon’s scalpel, he anatomised his fiddle, snipping strings, sundering joins. Perhaps the Prof hoped to find out where the tunes came from.
Looking up from his labours, Moriarty saw me dressed for the country and raised a bony finger to signal I shouldn’t leave just yet.
He pushed away from his workbench, rolling his chair on castors across uncarpeted floor towards a cabinet of many drawers. The Professor boasted that this contained a thousand unique methods of murder – though, when someone was to be got rid of, he usually left the mamba venom envelope gum and asphyxiating orchids to his oriental peer, relying instead on tried-and-true British bludgeoning or my own marksmanship. He pulled a drawer marked ‘58’ and took out a small cardboard box.
‘It’s not a spider, is it, Moriarty? You know my opinion on arachnids!’
The Professor opened the box, which was full of apparently ordinary bullets. Moriarty plucked a rimmed .455 pistol cartridge. They make them by the thousand. But instead of dull lead, its nose gleamed sterling silver.
I whistled and commented, ‘Pricey.’
‘Indeed,’ Moriarty said. ‘Material is costly and manufacture complicated. But you lecture often on the importance of using the proper loads. The literature would have it that supernatural game such as Red Shuck requires a silver bullet. I shall want a precise account of every shot fired. Any rounds not discharged are to be returned when this matter is settled.’
I slipped the box into my pocket.
‘Moriarty, do you give any weight to the notion that there’s a ghost or goblin behind this business? Our client plainly doesn’t...’
‘Our client, though not unperceptive in some matters, is a limited man.’
‘I’ve seen mysteries beyond explanation in the East, but run into many more which turn out to be some clever fakir trying to put one over on the white man.’
‘Dullards would have you believe that once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth... but to a mathematical mind, the impossible is simply a theorem yet to be solved. We must not eliminate the impossible, we must conquer it, suborn it to our purpose. Whatever remains, however dully probable, will satisfy earthbound thinkers, while we have the profit of the hitherto inconceivable. Besides, I daresay anyone with a silver bullet in his brains couldn’t tell it from lead.’
From this, I knew Moriarty was playing his own game. When he rattled on, he was mesmeric. He could convince you Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland – also the product of ‘a mathematical mind’, remember – made sound sense. Most criminals were so rapt by his phrases and his eyes and his snake-neck wobble they blithely did whatever he wanted without knowing why. I was not immune, but had been with the Firm long enough to know the Prof’s tricks.
I left Moriarty to his musical experiments, and Chop drove me to the station.
VI
In our first-class compartment on the Great Western Railways train to Stourcastle, I quizzed Jasper Stoke about the layout at Trantridge. It’s advantageous to know the territory before setting a foot there. I had conned maps, almanacs and gazetteers; now I drew Stoke out on things nobody thought to set down. You can deduce – to use the word of the week – a great deal from smells. Not a pleasant topic, especially when the odours of Wessex are under discussion, but revealing.
‘The Chase stinks like Pennsylvania,’ Stoke said. ‘Open-cast mine country.’
‘Is there any mining?’ I asked.
‘In the New Forest, towards Bramshurst, there are pits, but nothing in The Chase. I can’t even say what the luciferous stench is. Chemicals in the ground? And something rotten. Like eggs gone off.’
Stoke filled up the compartment with fug, puffing on his cheroots. He gave a lot away when smoking. He tried to exhale confident clouds, Indian signals announcing himself as Big Chief, but chewed the stub, got leaf-bits stuck to his teeth and punctured the will-o’-the-wisp. A man for putting up a front, he couldn’t keep it together. No wonder he’d been chased out of Tombstone by the improbably named Earps. He was buckling in Wessex, and – if he didn’t get his dog-pelt soon – would probably be chased out of Trantridge too.
I can’t say I took to Stoke. British-born, he might be – but American in his ways. Big-talking, craven, insensitive and miserly. In his terms, a compleat c---sucker. If he ever ran across Jim Lassiter, he’d be dead in the dust before he could clear his holsters. Still, at least he wasn’t a bloody Mormon.
He didn’t want to look yellow-livered, though – despite his tale of terror – and compensated with high-handed, down-the-nose lecturing. In advance of the promised five thou, a small sum had passed from his coffers to ours. He felt this entitled him to treat Moriarty & Moran as jobbing carpenters hired to put up shelves. He gave out German cant about ‘payment by results’ and it still rankled that the Professor wasn’t personally in Wessex dancing to his tune.
Dan’l, the savage giant, was more forthcoming. From him, I picked up the fact that The Chase put folk in a funk even before the story of Red Shuck was revived. This stretch of ancient woodland had been the site of many crimes, it seems – now even the most daring poacher hesitated to trespass there. Dan’l wasn’t that troubled by the beast which had done for Ambush Jack, w
hich he said did less damage than a mountain lion. He’d killed mountain lions with Gertie, and showed me deep old scars to illustrate the yarn. I have a few of those too and we played a jolly game of pulling up sleeves and opening shirts to display manly badges. However, Dan’l was scared of the Brokeneck Lady. Something was done to Theresa Clare in The Chase which she didn’t complain about at the time. It excited her spirit post-mortem, though. Dan’l said that, while taking his turn on guard, he’d seen her, veiled, head lolled to one side, creeping out of the woods.
‘Put the fear in me, she did,’ he said. ‘Mountain lion’s nothin’, but there’s no tellin’ with a haint. All sorts of ways a haint can hex you.’
Stoke snorted, but I took note. There might be a bagful of spooks to deal with, though our client only laid bounty on the dog. Still, I had a box of silver bullets.
At Stourcastle, a covered trap waited.
It was, of course, raining.
VII
Moriarty asked me to set down my observations. Very well...
I have visited all the shitholes of the world and Wessex ranks with the worst of ’em. Whores smell better in Afghanistan. Weather is nicer in Tibet. Cuisine is more appetising in the Australian outback, where snakes count as a Sunday delicacy you look forward to all week. And the natives are more welcoming in the Andaman Island Penal Colony.
The dull, driving rain made me miss London’s pea-souper.
Two bedraggled souls stood outside the station, sheltering under a lean-to which was near collapse.
‘Where’s the coachman?’ barked Stoke.
This was addressed to a burly man with the puff gone out of him. A well-chewed moustache and creeping baldness betokened a tendency to fret and fuss.
‘Come on, Derby,’ continued Stoke. ‘Out with it.’
Derby didn’t elucidate, but his smaller companion – a reedy, floppy-haired, permanently smiling cove in a peculiar tweed singlet and dun-coloured hooded cape – piped up cheerily.