The Detective Club: Dark Days & Much Darker Days

by Hugh Conway

  Copyright

  Published by COLLINS CRIME CLUB

  An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

  1 London Bridge Street

  London SE1 9GF

  www.harpercollins.co.uk

  Dark Days first published in J.W. Arrowsmith’s Christmas Annual 1884

  Published by The Detective Story Club for Wm Collins Sons & Co. Ltd 1930

  Much Darker Days first published by Longmans, Green & Co. 1884

  Introduction © David Brawn 2016

  Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 1930, 2016

  A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

  Source ISBN: 9780008137748

  Ebook Edition © October 2016 ISBN: 9780008137755

  Version: 2016-08-25

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Introduction

  Dark Days

  Dedication

  Editor’s Preface

  Chapter I: A Prayer and a Vow

  Chapter II: A Villain’s Blow

  Chapter III: ‘the Wages of Sin’

  Chapter IV: At All Cost, Sleep!

  Chapter V: A White Tomb

  Chapter VI: The Secret Kept

  Chapter VII: The Melting of the Snow

  Chapter VIII: Flight

  Chapter IX: Safe—and Loved!

  Chapter X: The Sword Falls

  Chapter XI: Special Pleading

  Chapter XII: Tempted to Dishonour

  Chapter XIII: The Last Hope

  Chapter XIV: The Criminal Court

  Chapter XV: The Black Cap

  Chapter XVI: ‘Where Are the Snows That Fell Last Year?’

  Chapter XVII: Clear Skies

  Much Darker Days

  Preface

  Preface (Revised Edition)

  Chapter I: The Curse (Registered)

  Chapter II: A Villain’s by-Blow

  Chapter III: Mes Gages! Mes Gages!

  Chapter IV: As a Hatter!

  Chapter V: The White Groom

  Chapter VI: Hard as Nails

  Chapter VII: Rescue and Retire!

  Chapter VIII: Local Colour

  Chapter IX: Saved! Saved!

  Chapter X: Not Too Mad, but Just Mad Enough

  Chapter XI: A Terrible Temptation

  Chapter XII: Judge Juggins

  Chapter XIII: Cleared Up (From the ‘Green Park Gazette’)

  Dark Days & Much Darker Days

  About the Publisher

  INTRODUCTION

  ‘HUGH CONWAY has that first essential of the popular novelist—strong narrative power. His story is the first consideration always. Not that he does not possess other attributes to success: graphic description, which carries with it—not necessarily, but certainly in the case of Hugh Conway—atmosphere. He can, too, draw a most convincing character, as the present book will show. We look to Dark Days for a story that will hold our mature minds just as the fireside tales of our grandfathers held us as children—and we get it!’

  So began the Editor’s introduction to Collins’ Detective Story Club edition of Dark Days, republished in May 1930 almost 50 years after the story had been devoured by a reading public in love with the work of Hugh Conway. With respect to the Editor, however, ‘narrative power’, ‘graphic description’ and ‘atmosphere’ might have been key for the popular novelist, but they were not by 1930 the most essential ingredients of a successful detective novel. This was the era in which readers craved cerebral ingenuity over dramatic characterisation and saw the emergence of what has since been described (perhaps unfairly) as the ‘humdrum’ school of crime writers. Dark Days was a late Victorian detective story, a novelette with its roots in early Gothic tales and the sensation novels of the 1860s, and was published in a format that owed its existence to the early work of Charles Dickens: the Christmas Annual.

  Cheap reading matter had been around for decades in the form of ‘chap books’, unbound leaflets sold by street vendors, usually only eight pages in length, which were so short they led to stories being serialised over multiple issues. By the 1840s, with more widespread literacy and the invention of rotary printing presses which allowed for fast production, the mass distribution of these stories among the working classes took off with the ‘penny bloods’, weekly publications churned out by versatile writers catering for every taste. Illustrated with a black-and-white engraving on the first page, these serialised adventures rapidly turned from swashbuckling tales of pirates and highwaymen to more outlandish and thrilling themes—and increasingly towards stories of crime and murder. One of the most notorious and most popular run of ‘bloods’ narrated the exploits of the murderous Sweeney Todd, the demon barber of Fleet Street, whose victims ended up in meat-pies: The String of Pearls began publication in 1846 and ran for 18 weeks, inspiring many similar sensationalised crime stories that unashamedly blurred the boundaries of true crime and heady fiction, some of which ran for months on end.

  One of the finer Victorian traditions that grew out of this appetite for serial fiction was the Annual, in which publishers of serials and periodicals would release special Christmas editions outside their normal run, enticing new readers with one-off short stories, cartoons and festive humour. Seasonal ghost stories were especially popular, as were mysteries, and standalone short stories began to flourish as a result. Major book publishers such as Routledge’s also issued special Christmas Annuals, with more sophisticated novella-length content, although price was critical. The real foundation of the Annual as a British publishing phenomenon can be traced back to Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, surely the most enduring Christmas story of modern times.

  Dickens began writing his ‘little carol’ in October 1843, finishing it by the end of November, in time to be published for Christmas with hand-coloured illustrations by John Leech. Financing the printing of 10,000 copies himself after a disagreement with his publishers, the book was nevertheless far from the success its author had hoped for. ‘The first 6,000 copies show a profit of £230 and the last four will yield as much more. I had set my heart and soul on a thousand clear,’ Dickens wrote. The price of five shillings, even for a lavishly bound book as this was, was too expensive for most pockets, but the story grew in popularity and did not deter him from writing more Christmas novellas: The Chimes, The Cricket on the Hearth, The Battle of Life and The Haunted Man and the Ghost’s Bargain followed over the next five years, and as the prices were dropped from shillings to just pence, sales grew from ten thousand to hundreds of thousands.

  With the Christmas Annual having established itself as a regular fixture of the publishing calendar, an unlikely benefactor was 33-year-old Bristol auctioneer Frederick John Fargus. Under the pseudonym ‘Hugh Conway’, his first published story, ‘The Daughter of the Stars’, appeared in Thirtee
n at Dinner and What Came of It, the first Christmas Annual from local publisher J.W. Arrowsmith in 1881. A rapid succession of songs, poems and stories by Conway followed in various publications over the next two years, culminating in the short novel Called Back, which formed the basis of Arrowsmith’s third Christmas Annual in 1883. Having sold an unremarkable 3,000 copies by Christmas—barely half its initial print run—no one can have predicted that by 1887 it would have gone on to sell a staggering 350,000 copies and been translated into all the major European languages. As Graham Law observes in his excellent article ‘Poor Fargus’ for The Wilkie Collins Journal in 2000, this sudden turn of events seems to have been precipitated by an enthusiastic review on 3 January 1884 in Henry Labouchère’s widely-read society weekly, Truth:

  ‘Who Arrowsmith is and who Hugh Conway is I do not know, nor had I ever heard of the Christmas Annual of the former, or of the latter as a writer of fiction; but, a week or two ago, a friend of mine said to me, “Buy Arrowsmith’s Christmas Annual, if you want to read one of the best stories that have appeared for many a year.” A few days ago, I happened to be at the Waterloo Station waiting for a train. I remembered the advice, and asked the clerk at the bookstall for the Annual. He handed it to me, and remarked, “They say the story is very good, but this is only the third copy I have sold.” It was so foggy that I could not read it in the train as I had intended, so I put the book into my pocket. About 2 that night, it occurred to me that it was nearing the hour when decent, quiet people go to bed. I saw the Annual staring me in the face, and took it up. Well, not until 4.30 did I get to bed. By that time I had finished the story. Had I not, I should have gone on reading. I agree with my friend—nay, I go farther than him, and say that Wilkie Collins never penned a more enthralling story.’

  Spurred on by his new-found fame, Hugh Conway wrote a vast amount of new fiction in 1884, including a highly regarded full-length novel, A Family Affair. But it was his two subsequent Annuals for Arrowsmith that cemented his reputation as a bestseller: Dark Days in 1884 and Slings and Arrows, published posthumously in 1885. For, as detailed in Martin Edwards’ informative introduction to Called Back, also in this series, the author died in Monte Carlo on 15 May 1885, aged only 37. He had been writing for only four years.

  Dark Days was particularly successful: it was widely translated and like Called Back there was a stage play to help increase its longevity. It also attracted an unlikely champion. Within weeks of its appearance, a parody entitled Much Darker Days by the noted Scottish author, literary critic and folklorist Andrew Lang was published by Longmans, Green & Co. under the pseudonym ‘A. Huge Longway’. Lang was active as a journalist and was the literary editor of Longman’s Magazine, and clearly saw an opportunity to capitalise on Conway’s success by publishing his biting satire. Interestingly, a second edition published the following April contained what was tantamount to an apology, seemingly for causing offence:

  ‘Parody is a parasitical, but should not be a poisonous, plant. The Author of this unassuming jape has learned, with surprise and regret, that some sentences which it contains are thought even more vexatious than frivolous. To frivol, not to vex, was his aim, and he has corrected this edition accordingly.’

  The revision contained numerous minor changes: names were altered to create greater distance from the original (Basil became Babil, Sphynx was changed to Labbywrinth, and Roding became Noding), and a few sentences were removed and in one instance changed altogether (from ‘a public which devoured Scrawled Black will stand almost anything’ to the more facetious ‘And this Christmas, I fancy, no narrative is likely to be found more beguiling’).

  The version in this new volume is based on the unexpurgated first printing, although occasional extra lines added in the revised edition have been inserted to give the fullest version of the story and of Lang’s wit. So as not to spoil the drama of Dark Days, and to fully appreciate the satire of Much Darker Days, it is recommended that the reader resists the temptation to read the parody first!

  With Hugh Conway having been compared favourably to the author of The Woman in White (1860) and The Moonstone (1868), books that had defined the emerging British detective novel, it was not without irony that Wilkie Collins himself was approached by J.W. Arrowsmith to fill Conway’s shoes and write their 1886 Christmas Annual. This he did with The Guilty River, although when it failed to sell as well as any of Conway’s Annuals, Collins turned down the offer to write any more and passed the baton to Walter Besant.

  The following year, however, it was Beeton’s Christmas Annual that was to be the game-changer of the season, introducing a character who would become as famous as Ebenezer Scrooge from that Dickens tale 44 years earlier. With two shorter stories by R. André and C.J. Hamilton, Beeton’s 1887 Annual contained A Study in Scarlet by Arthur Conan Doyle—the debut of Sherlock Holmes. The sensational and dramatic ‘shilling shockers’ epitomised by Hugh Conway were about to be superseded by a new kind of detective fiction.

  DAVID BRAWN

  May 2016

  DARK DAYS

  BY

  HUGH CONWAY

  [FREDERICK JOHN FARGUS]

  Dedication

  TO MY FRIEND

  J. COMYNS CARR

  EDITOR’S PREFACE

  HUGH CONWAY has that first essential of the popular novelist—strong narrative power. His story is the first consideration always. Not that he does not possess other attributes to success: graphic description, which carries with it—not necessarily, but certainly in the case of Hugh Conway—atmosphere. He can, too, draw a most convincing character, as the present book will show. We look to Dark Days for a story that will hold our mature minds just as the fireside tales of our grandfathers held us as children—and we get it!

  Dark Days is a novel of a love that won through the intricacies and horrors of a most uncanny crime. It is told in the first person by Doctor North, the central figure in the plot, a fact which largely explains the poignancy of the book. The autobiographical form always gives the reader a direct contact with the situations in which the main character finds himself. He therefore goes through his experiences and finds himself swayed by the very emotions that move his ‘hero’.

  Philippa is surely the most beautiful murderess that ever crossed the pages of fiction. Her crime is horrifying, but is it not justified? Was the world not better rid of a man of Sir Mervyn Ferrand’s type—an idler, an ‘adventurer’, in the degraded sense of the word? Perhaps … but murder is murder in the eyes of the law. Doctor North was convinced of the moral innocence of his beloved as will the reader be, no doubt, but he has to go through dark days indeed before the whole of the mystery is cleared up.

  The novel is arresting on not a few points, but most intriguing of all is the fact that the criminal of the novel is the victim of the crime!

  THE EDITOR

  FROM THE ORIGINAL DETECTIVE STORY CLUB EDITION

  May 1930

  CHAPTER I

  A PRAYER AND A VOW

  WHEN this story of my life, or of such portions of my life as present any out-of-the-common features, is read, it will be found that I have committed errors of judgment—that I have sinned not only socially, but also against the law of the land. In excuse I can plead but two things—the strength of love; the weakness of human nature.

  If these carry no weight with you, throw the book aside. You are too good for me; I am too human for you. We cannot be friends. Read no further.

  I need say nothing about my childhood; nothing about my boyhood. Let me hurry on to early manhood; to that time when the wonderful dreams of youth begin to leave one; when the impulse which can drive sober reason aside must be, indeed, a strong one; when one has learnt to count the cost of every rash step; when the transient and fitful flames of the boy have settled down to a steady, glowing fire which will burn until only ashes are left; when the strength, the nerve, the intellect, is or should be at its height; when, in short, one’s years number thirty.

  Yet, what was I th
en? A soured, morose, disappointed man; without ambition, without care for the morrow; without a goal or object in life. Breathing, eating, drinking, as by instinct. Rising in the morning, and wishing the day was over; lying down at night, and caring little whether the listless eyes I closed might open again or not.

  And why? Ah! To know why you must sit with me as I sit lonely over my glowing fire one winter night. You must read my thoughts; the pictures of my past must rise before you as they rise before me. My sorrow, my hate, my love must be yours. You must, indeed, be my very self.

  You may begin this retrospect with triumph. You may go back to the day when, after having passed my examination with high honours, I, Basil North, was duly entitled to write M.D. after my name, and to set to work to win fame and fortune by doing my best towards relieving the sufferings of my fellow-creatures. You may say as I said then, as I say now, ‘A noble career; a life full of interest and usefulness.’

  You may see me full of hope and courage, and ready for any amount of hard work; settling down in a large provincial town, resolved to beat out a practice for myself. You may see how, after the usual initiatory struggles, my footing gradually grew firmer; how my name became familiar; how, at last, I seemed to be in a fair way of winning success.

  You may see how for a while a dream brightened my life; how that dream faded, and left gloom in its place. You may see the woman I loved.