Kim Newman - Professor Moriarty The Hound of the D'Urbervilles

‘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 by “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 [30] Written between 1115 and 1142. and there’s a chapter on Red Shuck in the Reverend Sabine Baring-Gould’s Book of Were-Wolves [31] Smith, Elder & Co., 1865. .

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’.