by Kim Newman
‘I am Jasper Stoke,’ purred a smaller gent who made his way into the room in the giant’s wake.
Neither Moriarty or I had thought to deduce that stick and card belonged to different people. I wasn’t ashamed of the oversight, but it would rankle the Professor.
Stoke carried a curly brimmed topper and no stick. He could walk without support and had the giant on hand for cudgelling folk who got in his way. He was sharply dressed, with a deal of fancy braid on his waistcoat. Darkly handsome, if you care to know that sort of thing. He sported a double-dash of moustache, thin and oiled – with eyebrows to match. One cheek was faintly marred by parallel scars. Something clawed – a kitten or at least kittenish – had once had a go at him. His neat, white hands said ‘card sharp’ rather than ‘cowboy’.
There I go, making deductions with the best of them. We may have theorised from the wrong stick, but I’d been spot on at ‘right bastard’. Takes one to know one, as they say – before they get punched in the head for smugly spouting platitudes.
‘This is my top boy, Dan’l,’ Stoke said, indicating the stick cuddler. ‘Known in three territories as Desperado Dan’l. There’s a price on his head for killing a man...’
‘T’ain’t right, Mr Jass,’ Dan’l said. ‘Only white men I killed were shot fair and square in the front. That price ain’t legal. Ain’t no law against killing a Chinese in the back. Not accordin’ to Judge Bean, and if’n it’s his ruling in Texas, it’s good enough for Arizona. Aye, and Engerland, too.’ [2]
Moriarty was impatient with this legal footnote. ‘What can we do for you, Mr Stoke-d’Urberville?’
One of Stoke’s brows flicked up.
‘Professor Moriarty, I want a dog killed.’
II
‘No crime too small’ was never exactly Moriarty’s slogan, but the criminal genius would apply himself to minor offences if an unusual challenge was presented. To whit, if a sweetshop had a reputation for being impossible to pilfer from, he’d devote as much brainpower to a scheme for lifting a packet of gobstoppers as he would a plan for abstracting the Crown jewels from the Tower of London.
Before you ask – yes, Moriarty did ponder that particular lay. Rather than pull off the coup bungled by Thomas Blood [3], he negotiated quietly with a terrifying Fat Man in Whitehall. The plan was sold to HM government for a tidy sum, enabling the Yeoman Warders to institute countermeasures. Well-known objects are nigh impossible to fence at anything like list value, anyway. In 1671, the baubles were valued at £100,000, but Blood said he’d be lucky to get £6,000 for the mess of jewel-encrusted tat. The Professor was tempted to return annually to the well with improved schemes, but the prospect of getting further on the wrong side of the Fat Man gave even him pause.
Any rate, assassinating dogs was not generally in our line. On occasion, we had adversely affected the health of certain horses. If there were more lucre in fixing dog fights, we’d have applied similar methods to the odd pit bull. But there isn’t and we hadn’t. In Russia, I’d hunted wolves with a Tartar war-bow – but that was sport, not business.
I doubted Jasper Stoke-d’Urberville was bothered by a neighbour’s yapping pooch in darkest Trantridge. If that were the case, Dan’l could settle its hash. I’d already noted Gertie’s suitability for puppy braining. With Dan’l’s weight behind her, I dare say the stick could fell a prehistoric mastodon.
But our prospective client had brought his doggie problem to us.
‘I am prepared to pay five thousand pounds,’ Stoke said, ‘for a pelt.’
Even at today’s shocking prices, not a sum to be sniffed at, sneezed on or otherwise nasally rejected.
‘Mr Stoke-d’Urberville,’ said the Professor, rolling the name around like a sheik savouring a sheep’s eyeball before popping it between his back teeth, ‘whose recommendation brought you to our door?’
‘I’ve had doings with Doctor Quartz of New York...’
The Professor flicked his fingers. Stoke knew enough to shut up.
Some said Jack Quartz, vivisectionist and educator, was to the Americas what Moriarty was to Britain. [4] You were well advised not to suggest the equivalence in either’s earshot. I knew Quartz was still smarting over Moriarty’s Surprise Valley Gold Mine coup, a foot set in his sphere of influence – though its fabulous output had run dry after a few months, leaving the Firm on the scout for prospects like Stoke-d’Urberville. Moriarty expressed concern that Yankee tentacles were feeling about the globe. Quartz had supposedly secret treaties with the Unione Corse and the Camorra in Southern Europe and Dr Nikola and the Si-Fan in Asia. Outwardly, Moriarty and Quartz maintained courteous, professional relations: each would refer petitioners departing for foreign shores to the other.
The Lord of Strange Deaths could sit at their table, should that mandarin deign to dine with beaky barbarians. The Grand Vampire, chief of Paris’ Les Vampires, might have been admitted to the sewing circle, but no holder of that title had lived long enough in the office to take a hand in this Great Game.
Bet you didn’t know the world was cut up like that.
‘I am aware of Quartz,’ conceded the Professor. ‘Outline your situation, omitting no relevant detail.’
Stoke sat in the client’s chair. He lit a cheroot and took his ease.
‘I’ll give you the straight of it, Professor,’ he began. ‘A year back, I reached an unwelcome conclusion. I was about to be run out of Tombstone, Arizona. That’s a silver town. Previously, I made money in silver. Not digging it out of dirt, digging it out of miners. I operated saloons, gambling hells, rooming houses, some French girls. The real earner is baths. For the privilege of staying in business, everyone in Tombstone tithes to a brood of badged-up robbers. The Earps. Every damn brother holds some office. Federal marshal, town sheriff, tax collector. All want paying. Town has a shrinking economy. Mines are flooded. Silver’s petering out. So the Earps saw no reason to let me retain the remainder of my income. They were set on discussing matters at a particular corral where financial disputes are oft-times settled with long rifles. I saw no profit in war, but the alternative was unprepossessing at best. Then, as providence has it, word came via telegraph. An estate is mine for the taking in a country where constables’ hands might be out for pay-off but don’t have Buntline Specials in them. I gathered my top boys and set out to stake my claim.’
‘I got powerful sick on the boat,’ put in Dan’l. ‘Puked like to fill the wide ocean deep.’
Stoke shrugged.
‘My spread is the Trantridge Estate, in Wessex. Uncle Si, who used to be called “Simon Screw-the-marks”, bought it after a lifetime of squeezing pennies from widows. He didn’t live long enough to enjoy his spread, but Auntie hung in there. On her deathbed for thirty years, by my reckoning. When she finally kicked the bucket, it turned out I’m the only living relative. I inherit the entirety of her holdings. The land, the village, a forest, a church, flocks of sheep, herds of cattle, fields of whatever muck they grow. Even a saloon. A pub they call it. The Old Red Dog. As Master of Trantridge, I own people... peasants, serfs, yokels. Slaves.’
In school, they say Wilberforce abolished slavery in the Empire and Lincoln freed the blacks in the Civil War. Abolition sounds impressive, doesn’t it? It bears repeating that all the acts and decrees and petitions – plus the maintenance of an anti-slaving fleet off West Africa – didn’t make slavery go away. Busybodies just made slavery illegal and, therefore, much, much more profitable. Pass a law against any endeavour and the honest merchants drop it. So who do you think takes over? Yes, criminals. There are laws against murder, theft or blackmail, but no windy politician or curate gets up and takes a bow for abolishing ’em. I’ve knocked about and seen plenty of human flesh bought, sold and put to work. The child purchased outright for six shillings in Piccadilly is as much a slave as any native on a block for ten dirham in Marrakech.
‘Auntie kept a light rein on Trantridge,’ continued Stoke. ‘She never got over losing her sight, much less the cluster-hump
with cousin Alec’s murdering whore. A manager, Braham Derby, oversees rents, tributes and whatnot. This goof-off let the tenants misremember their situation, settle into a life of unearned ease and comfort. They’re on d’Urberville property. All they keep from their labours is the gift of the master. Id est, me. With the old lady planted, the situation is in flux.
‘On the trip over, while Dan’l was a-heaving, I read up German books on “economic models”. Having just lost one business, I’m not about to be beggared again. Trantridge isn’t like a silver town: big money for a few years, tailing out to nothing when the seam is exhausted, with the added drawback of thieving Earps. It’s more akin to the big Texas cattle outfits or the old Southern cotton plantations: potentially big money forever, if the peons are ridden hard. The “economic model” can work, so long as malcontents are dealt with smartly.
‘English landlords have sweated the paddies for generations. If the fighting Irish can be ground under by milksops, Wessexers ought to be a pushover, right? Hang a few, burn out a couple of hovels, cut some fences and they’ll get an understanding. Then, I sit back and enjoy the life of a country gent. Buy a seat in parliament and a box at Toneborough Race Track.’
Stoke sat back and took a puff. I wondered when the dog would come into it. ‘Economic models’ are all very well, but if you put a dog at the beginning, there had damn well better be barking before act two.
‘First priority is to explain to my tenants – as much my property as the sheep, chickens and crops – that I intend to exercise full rights. I had Derby, kept on in strictly advisory capacity, call a meeting at the Village Hall and make sure every man-jack turns up. So, this hubbub of smock-frock, fringe-beard straw-suckers sat on hard benches, wishing they were in the Red Dog. I kept ’em waiting a few hours.
‘At last, I strode in. Place went hush. You could hear the tinkling of my silver spurs. My boys were stationed at strategic points, coat-tails folded back to show iron on their hips. In German economics, you learn to impose your will on a workforce through theatrical devices. Trantridgers have never seen the like of these hombres. Lazy-Eye Jack has been in a range war or two, Nakszynski the Albino once ate a Canadian mounted policeman’s liver and Dan’l here fills a room without hardly trying.
‘I delivered a speech, nothing too hard to follow. Two or three points, with pauses so the outraged babble could die down. What they considered theirs is mine. When the complaining went on too long, Lazy-Eye fired a slug into a beam. Shut everyone up. A roomful of clods stuck fingers in their ears. I awaited the inevitable. The point of giving the whole herd the bad news all at once is to stir the toughest, most resolute c---sucker into making a move. Then, you knock him down and the rest fall in line.’
Professor Moriarty, a follower of economic theory, nodded approval.
‘So, who got up but Diggory Venn, a f---ing startling individual. Apache red in the face and hands. Owing to his former profession of peddling sheep-dye, if you can believe it. Nowadays, he wanders the lanes preaching dignity of labour and the rights of man. A veritable c--t. Venn isn’t even a tenant. Just passing through. I counted on there being someone like him at the meeting. Venn aspired to go head-to-head about what I categorise as a “workable economic model” and he calls “bounden servitude”. Of course, this wasn’t a debate. This was an announcement.
‘I gave the sign and Lazy-Eye and the Albino served the reddleman the way they treat sod-busters in Texas. Dragged onto the village green, tied to the village pump and given a village barbed-wire whipping. His back wound up matching his face and hands. The complaints stopped. Trantridge began to turn a profit... for me. Tenants might go a trifle hungry or have to patch up old coats rather than buy new, but that’s how things are ordered in accordance with the property laws in Jolly Old England. Now, it’s my turn to get comfortable... which I managed for about a fortnight.’
The Professor paid close attention.
‘Venn is whipped. If he makes more trouble, I’ll have him up at the assizes for sedition. Braham Derby has to listen to whining yokels and isn’t exactly joyful, but keeps book smartly. Besides, I also shelter his sister Mod, the only poke-worthy baggage in the county.’
‘Miss Mod’s so purty,’ Dan’l said, in tones which suggested Gertie had a rival. Stoke’s expressive eyebrow twitched at his top hand’s gush. Mod Derby was a tender point with him, which suggested she’d be worth meeting. Even a double-dyed Jasper can have a blind spot.
‘Mod’s a step up from her brothers, that’s sure.’
‘Brothers?’ jabbed Moriarty.
‘Besides Braham, who’s useful enough when it comes to following milk yields and pig prices, there’s Saul, a dreamy mooncalf.’
‘I like Saul,’ Dan’l said. ‘He talks to me.’
‘That’s all you can say for Saul Derby,’ conceded Stoke. ‘He rubs along with Dan’l. He even cosies up reasonably with the Albino, who frightens most as much as... well, as much as you do, Professor.’
Moriarty smiled, not unpleased.
‘The Derbys are like Injun scouts, you know. Injuns don’t ever really go tame, but once they’re beaten they see reason. Wessex, it transpires, is as fraught as the West. Adders in the fields. Mires on the moors. Dyed-red rabble-rousers. Escaped convicts from Prince Town Gaol. It’s a marvel they don’t have f---ing Earps, while they’re at it. Though I’d rather be up against a Buntline Special than Parson Tringham’s campfire bogey. You can backshoot even the fastest pistolero. With Tringham’s dog, bullets don’t take.’
‘Who is Parson Tringham?’ asked the Professor.
‘Another unwelcome visitor. Breezed up one afternoon, eighty years old and babbling foolishness. I’d not underestimate the damage this mule head has done in a lifetime of sticking his prick into other people’s compost. Makes a hobby of the d’Urberville family. Can you credit it? Preacher digs about in someone else’s history for jollies. Even my daffy aunt knew better than let him cross her threshold. With her gone, Tringham wanted another stab at getting into “the archives”. I should’ve had the Albino cut his throat and dump him in The Chase. Instead, Braham turned him away. He slunk to the saloon and told his tale of a dog.’
Now, we were getting to it.
‘I had this later from Lazy-Eye. He’s courting Car Darch, a local strumpet. They do their carousing in the Red Dog. Tringham came in, settled by the fire, ordered a pint of ole goat piss, and yarned to the starving serfs – they’ve tin enough in their pockets for drink, notice. He told ’em how their pub got its name...’
As he talked, Stoke leaned forward, voice low, cheroot-end burning bright, eyebrows like horns.
‘My uncle bought the d’Urberville name outright. I couldn’t tell you who his father... my grandfather... was, but I’ve a parchment listing d’Urbervilles all the way back to Sir Pagan, who came over in 1066. Simon Stoke was from no one out of nothing and laid out gelt for centuries of tradition. He bought ancestors. Also, the family seat, a pew in the church and a mess of ghost stories. A phantom coach heard when a d’Urberville is about to die. Just to confirm that Uncle Si got the family curse with the name, it was reported running to schedule when Cousin Alec was pig-stuck. Tess the Knife is supposed to haunt us too. Her spook can be recognised because her head lolls the wrong way, on account of vertebrae separating when she was hanged.’
‘I seen the Brokeneck Lady,’ Dan’l said. ‘By The Chase, at night, net over her face, wailing...’
The giant shook in his fleece. Stoke was irritated by the interruption.
‘You can set aside the phantom coach and the moaning murderess. It’s the dog that’s a bother. A great red hound. A big bastard beast. This is what I want killed. I want its hide above the fireplace in Trantridge Hall. I want its paws made into tobacco pouches. I want its teeth on a necklace for my fancy woman. I want its tail wound round the brim of my tall hat.’
Moriarty tapped his teeth with a yellow knuckle.
‘This dog of yours...’
‘He goes b
y “Red Shuck”.’
‘This “Red Shuck”? Am I to understand this is not a living animal but a ghost?’
Stoke stubbed out his cheroot and nodded grudgingly.
‘Yes, it’s supposed to be a ghost, but, answer me this... Can a ghost rip out a strong man’s throat?’
III
I’m going to interrupt. I know, just as we’d got to the dog. So far, like Tristram Shandy, Red Shuck has barely figured in a story which purports to be all about him. Now, I’ll tell you about the dog.
Stoke gave us the gist he had from Lazy-Eye Jack of what Tringham told the Trantridge soaks – which the parson, in turn, had gleaned from old Wessex wives. At the end of this chain of Chinese whispers, we got great red hound... big bastard beast... said to be a ghost... ripped-out throat. Very ominous and in line with Stoke’s stated policy of theatrical effect, but scarcely useful intelligence. Moriarty had me pop round to the British Museum and look up our prospective quarry. The prime source on Sir Pagan d’Urberville is the Historia Ecclesiastica of Orderic Vitalis [5] and there’s a chapter on Red Shuck in the Reverend Sabine Baring-Gould’s Book of Were-Wolves [6].
So, herewith, the terrible tale of the ‘Curse of the d’Urbervilles’. Read it by candlelight at midnight and be prepared to whiten your hair and soil your drawers.
As Stoke mentioned, Sir Pagan ‘came over in 1066’. This signifies that, like many of the best families, the d’Urbervilles were founded by a bandit whose crown-snatching patron could bestow estates as he saw fit. During the Norman Conquest, Pagan was a sly, ginger-headed youth. How anybody could advance in a priest-ridden era with his name is beyond me! I imagine he spent his life trying to convince folk it was pronounced ‘Pah-ganne’.
He was one of seventy-six Frenchmen who claimed to have put that fatal arrow into Harold at the Battle of Hastings. Several began the day fighting on the English side and three didn’t even have right arms. An ancestor of the spotty prig who flogged me for misappropriation of buns at Eton shot the King from Calais. He claimed God’s winds fetched his shaft straight into Harry’s eye. This leads me to deem the typical eleventh-century frog no more trustworthy than today’s nation of moustache musketeers, bedroom bandits and painted midgets. Sir Pagan, at least, was at the battle.
