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

The Albino had a Colt.45 drawn. I kept my Gibbs out of sight, but equally out of my pocket. If needs be, I could fire under or through the table. Mod gave a little intrigued parp as my cold revolver brushed her thigh.

Diggory Venn, the red-dyed radical — for it could be no one else! — shrugged off Thring as the butler tried to lay hand on him. Venn heaved his bundle onto the table. It displaced the remains of the meal, and splayed before the Master of Trantridge.

As the bundle slid, wrapping came loose.

A white face showed, with a red hole beneath it. Mattie Bell was open-eyed in death, throat ripped out.

Before Stoke could blurt ‘what is the meaning of this?’ or somesuch, Tringham stood up, gulped, and fainted.

‘Satisfied?’ said the reddleman, directly addressing Stoke.

The Master was astonished and queasy. Blood dripped into his lap. Corpse-eyes looked up at him.

If you swear by Mrs Beeton, this was probably the wrong time for the maid to fetch in the port. But Jasper Stoke wasn’t the only one among us glad of access to fortified spirits.

Pistol back in my pocket, I examined the body. I shut Mattie’s eyes. My smell was still on her, but some other animal had taken what was rightly mine. That ticked me off and made this a personal matter. Hunter’s honour, you know. I don’t expect anyone to understand, but these things run deep.

I would skin that bloody Red Shuck.

X

I doubt anyone else at Trantridge Hall slept that night as soundly as I did. I know no one else breakfasted as heartily the next morning.

Even the Stoke-d’Urberville kitchens couldn’t go far wrong with breakfast. We were served buffet fashion in the foyer. Mattie Ball was still laid out on the dining table, a drop cloth for a shroud. I had second helpings of poached eggs and devilled kidneys.

When setting off on a hunt — or a punitive military expedition — it’s essential to be rested, refreshed and well fed, else you’re halfway to failure before you’ve taken your first shot. I’ve the happy knack of being able to pinch out thoughts like a candle as soon as I bed down. No nightmares trouble the rest of Basher Moran. I run into enough while I’m awake.

Stoke, however, was red-eyed from a case of the horrors. He cuffed a maid who offered him toast. Braham Derby, if anything, looked worse. From Mod, I knew her brother and Mattie had once had an ‘understanding’ which didn’t survive the New Master’s German economics.

We’d forgotten Parson Tringham, and left him where he fell. Some time in the night, he’d roused to find himself alone with Mattie and quit the Hall.

Stoke was worried he’d be browbeaten into traipsing into The Chase. On that score, he had no concern. No use for a yellow liver in a hunting party. I also recalled cases where the Firm lost a fee because a client happened to get killed before his bill was settled. So: five thousand reasons to keep Jasper Stoke among the living.

It fell to me, as ranking shikari, to pick beaters and bearers. From the Hall, I chose Nakszynski and Saul. I reckoned the Albino a stealthier accomplice than blundering Dan’l, and gathered he had experience in tracking and killing dangerous beasts and deadly men. The strange youth knew the wilds and paths of The Chase better than anyone alive. Practically raised in them. On first-name terms with the squirrels. Knew every tree to talk to. They have holy fools like that in India. Some make damn decent guides — they take you to where the tigers are, and no one is too put out if they get eaten.

Outside the Hall, Diggory Venn waited. He hadn’t slept under Stoke’s roof. The client still favoured shooting the reddleman, being three-quarters convinced he was in league with the demon dog. I saw his reasoning, but he was wrong. Stoke could have sacrificed an ally to deceive an enemy — a trick I’d essayed a time or two myself — but Venn, foolish fellow, rang true. He could no more slaughter an innocent than turn blue.

The beast had killed Mattie Ball and Lazy-Eye Jack, on opposite sides at Trantridge. Red Shuck was indiscriminate, as much a threat to the villagers as the Master. Venn, self-declared protector of downtrodden tenants, wanted it dead as much as Stoke, self-appointed oppressor of the unwashed.

Since his whipping, the reddleman had been living off the land. He had a lair in The Chase. He was careful not to say if anyone in the village or at the Hall helped him with the odd hot meal or mug of tea — though I’d swear he hadn’t been abiding on nuts, berries and edible bark alone.

I quizzed him. He’d come across signs of a large animal or animals in the woods and heard nocturnal howling, but hadn’t so much as glimpsed red hide through the trees.

‘No ghosts then?’

‘Didn’t say that,’ replied Venn. ‘I seen the Brokeneck Lady. Or someone like. After I found Mattie, she were there — at edge of Temple Clearing, close by a tree. An ululation alerted I to her presence, such as no human nor animal tongue could make. First, I were ’suaded ’twas Mattie’s spirit, gone from her mortal clay, lingering to see justice done. Then, I perceived this woman were garbed different. Long black dress, with shiny black buttons up the front. A thick veil, like twenty year of cobweb. Head kinked over to one side. From the hanging, they do say.’

‘You think it was Theresa Clare?’

‘Tess Durbeyfield as was?’ he said, shrugging. ‘Couldn’t see this one’s face through the veil. I never set eyes on Tess when she were living. Can’t say who this were. She been seen hereabouts afore. I had little concern for her. Were Mattie Ball to think on.’

From concealment in The Chase, Venn had seen what happened at the Hall yesterday. When Mattie fled into the forest, he resolved to offer her shelter and succour. When he caught up with her, she was dead on the ground, eyes glassy. In his rage, Venn assumed Stoke responsible, just as Jasper blamed the reddleman for the death of Lazy-Eye Jack. Now, there was uneasy truce. A third party, set against both factions, was in play: Red Shuck, perhaps in league with this spectral lady.

I’d risen early, with a hunting thrill in my water and a stiff prick. It takes little to make me happy — something new to kill today, and someone new to bed tonight. Prospects fair in both categories, I judged.

Holstered under my arm, my revolver was loaded with silver bullets — which I hoped to conserve, though one or two might make souvenirs. I put my trust in plain lead and carried a rifle I reckoned almost equal to the late ‘Prometheus’. The gun’s bag ran to six tigers, nine lions, a few Welshmen and one Honourable Lord brought down in testing circumstances from the visitors’ gallery to save the House from an excessively dull speech on the subject of Irish Home Rule. Never let it be said that Moriarty & Moran made no contribution to politics.

A drab, damp, cold October day. Sunrise about ten-thirty ante meridien; near full dark just after lunch. It had stopped raining. Thick strands of mist stirred at knee-height like ghost eels.

Venn and Saul, in a huddle, argued over the best path to take to the clearing where Mattie had been found. Venn looked even stranger under thin sunlight which brought out the peculiar, unrelieved redness of his entire person. He carried a stout straight stick which was a match for Dan’l’s Gertie and held it as if he had some skill at the old English sport of quarterstaff. I’ve seen men with long sticks beat men with short swords, so I didn’t care to underguesstimate the reddleman’s martial prowess.

Saul was in a Norfolk jacket and knickerbockers, armed only with a bag for scientific specimens. He’d been responsible for the plaster cast Stoke had brought to Conduit Street and was silly enough to whimper that we should take Red Shuck alive since it might be an unknown species. I promised we’d name it Canis Rufus Saulus, but it’d be easier to stick on a label post-mortem.