Professor Moriarty: The Hound Of The D’urbervilles (22 page)

Of all things, Tringham started on about the paintings.

Over the fireplace was a full-length portrait of Simon Stoke-d’Urberville. In a case of ‘never mind the picture, look at the frame’, an oblong of gilt curly flourishes and oak leaves surrounded the moneylender. The Shylock’s hand rested on a stack of ledgers. The fizzog was bland – the sort you forget while you’re looking at it – but the artist had worked on that long-fingered hand, giving the impression its usual placement was in someone else’s pocket. To Simon’s right, in an equally pretentious, equally twisted frame was a veiled young crone, posed in a bower. Birds perched on her head and arms as if she were a Christmas tree, chickens mixed in with robins and sparrows. This was the widow who’d lingered long abed upstairs before leaving the accumulated boodle to her remittance-man nephew. Being blind, she couldn’t have known how hideous her picture was; being rich, I doubt she was troubled by anyone telling her.

Tringham called our attention to the third in the trinity above the mantel. The matching frame should have been inhabited by murdered Alexander, beloved sprog of Mr and Mrs Stoke-Parvenu. Instead, a red-bearded brute in armour skulked in the woods, a big red mastiff curled about his metal boots. The painting was old, dark and curling at the edges.

‘Pagan Plantagenet d’Urberville,’ the parson said. ‘Circa 1660. Costumed as the original Sir Pagan. Born Percy d’Urberville, he took the names of his ancestors, provable and fancied. He believed secret marriages intermingled the blood of the d’Urbervilles with the line of the rightful kings of England. When the Interregnum ended, Pagan Plantagenet nominated himself as a truer heir to the throne than Charles. Few supported him. Lord Rochester ridiculed him as “Percy the Pretender”. He spent a fortune on forged documents, muddying the waters of d’Urberville scholarship for centuries to come. It’s a frightful bother when a scrap of Norman parchment might be a Restoration fake.’

‘Looks a grim old swine,’ I said. ‘What happened to him?’

‘He perished in a duel with a neighbour, Squire Frankland. He insulted the squire by shooting his terrier. In a manner of speaking, he was another victim of the legend of Red Shuck. While posing for this picture, he was bitten by the dyed mastiff used as a model for the original Red Shuck. This gave him an entrenched terror of dogs. He took to carrying a brace of pistols for protection from them. That’s how he came to kill the squire’s pet. As aggrieved party, Frankland had choice of weapons and picked rapiers. For all his Norman affectations, Pagan Plantagenet was a poor swordsman. But he shouldn’t be here.’

‘What d’you mean, Parson?’ I asked. Tringham was agitated about some
wrongness.

‘His picture shouldn’t hang in this spot. Certainly not in that horrible frame. The d’Urbervilles were long gone from Trantridge Hall in Pagan Plantagenet’s time. His seat was Kingsbere-sub-Greenhill, as are the family tombs. Incidentally, it might amuse you to know I once had cause to alert John Durbeyfield – an offshoot, degenerate modern twig of the family – to the existence of those tombs. Later, to my astonishment, the wife and children of this peasant “Sir John” took up temporary residence among their ancestors, like Indian ghouls. What do you think of that?’

‘Not much,’ responded Mod – who, in a brief flash of teeth, indicated this footnote amused her not at all. I had come in on the last act of a play which was a long evening in the running, and couldn’t hope to pick up all the plot threads.

‘If Percy were fascinated by his ancestor,’ I suggested, getting back to the portrait, ‘wouldn’t he have poked around here?’

‘Much as you have,’ added Mod, with a cutting tone which didn’t cut the thick-skinned parson.

‘Pagan Plantagenet was afraid of The Chase,’ he answered. ‘Red Shuck, you know, supposedly abides hereabouts. The painting is
Ecole de Lely.
Face and dog were executed by the commissioned artist at a sitting, the rest assigned to pupils. One would have done the armour, for instance, from an empty suit. A junior could have visited The Chase to put in the trees without the sitter having to come near the place. The mystery is how the picture comes to be at Trantridge not Kingsbere.’

‘Him,’ Mod said, pointing at Simon Stoke, ‘he’s your answer. He bought his ancestors in a job lot. He probably put the picture up. Hung so he himself seems superior. A sign of conquest, of his
swallowing of the
old d’Urbervilles.’

‘My sister has a point,’ Saul said. ‘Stoke probably didn’t know which Pagan he had, and took Percy the Pretender for the original.’

‘It’s not so much the picture that excites,’ Tringham said, ‘but the possibility Mr Stoke acquired other items along with it – documents, perhaps, or books. Pagan Plantagenet collected authentic items along with his fakes. Among his sins was the sacrilege of destroying them to provide raw materials – scraping manuscripts clean, so he had properly aged paper upon which to set out mendacious scrawls. If the cause of scholarship is just, Pagan Plantagenet d’Urberville might be judged the worst man in his family...’

‘Might he now?’ announced Jasper Stoke-d’Urberville, sweeping into the hall, scrubbed and scented, in evening clothes. A dramatic entrance, of course. The doors were held open by footmen. ‘Might he indeed? I hope to contest that title, Parson.’

He sauntered to his place at head of table.

‘I intend to go Mr Percy Pagan Plantagenet one better,’ said the Master of Trantridge. ‘When I have a dog shot, it’ll be the right one.’

From this, I
deduced
Jasper had loitered outside, eavesdropping, awaiting the theatrical moment.

Suddenly, in another stage device, maids were hurrying about under Thring’s direction, setting food on the table. They began with Jasper rather than, as tradition would dictate, the company’s sole lady. I always advocate feeding a filly first, since such trifles make the dears more warmly inclined to one’s
advances.
Scorning points of amatory order leads to nights in cold, lonely beds – even, nay
especially,
on the part of blokes who foolishly suppose they have proprietary interest in some delicate personage. Stoke had staked claim by referring to Mod Derby as his ‘fancy woman’. Finely attuned as I am to feminine character, I could tell that if he expected a midnight visit after this day’s work, he was out of luck.

Stoke dug into his grub without waiting for his guests to have plates in front of them. Tringham, served last, muttered needless grace over his mess of cabbage and boiled beef. No one else troubled the Divinity before scoffing.

With his mouth full, Jasper announced he had sent word to the constabulary, indicting Mattie Ball for attempted murder.

‘I’ll have the countryside against her,’ he crowed. ‘I’ll post bounty on her, as you suggested, Moran. She’ll not be taken alive. An example must be made. One deranged female won’t stand in the way of progress.’

Mod and Braham Derby exchanged glances.

‘It is not enough that the Ball woman failed in her murderous mission,’ Stoke continued, warming to his subject, flecks of gravy marring his starched dickey. ‘The story of her attempt, her
exploit,
must end in defeat and degradation. Matilda Ball must be despised and laughed at, not to suit my vanity, mind you, but in the spirit of
propaganda.
Her downfall will elevate my status as Master of Trantridge.’

I remembered sobbing, muddy Jasper Stoke kicking a defenceless damsel. I usually advocate kicking a man when he’s down. What better time, indeed, to kick a man than when he’s suitably arranged within boot distance? But for a passionate surge of victory, the tiger you bring down must have claws. I’d shared a moment with the musketeer maid. It rubbed the wrong way when Stoke, in his telling of the tale, got between me and her. I care not two hoots and a shit for prayer before meals. Food is brought to table by violence and drudgery or wanting because some other sod has skipped grace and eaten it first. God don’t come into it. But Stoke’s manner in talking of Mattie Ball was my idea of sacrilege.

Saul Derby took the conversation off on another tangent – a proposed study of badger runs in The Chase. He ventured they might be of more use than overgrown, broken and disused human paths.

Then, as the poet has it, there came a knocking. Not a gentle raven-tap at the window, but a hammering on the front door. This resounded through the foyer and thence to the dining room. I had noticed a great iron handle, suitable for raising such a racket, stuck to the front of Trantridge Hall.

Stoke ordered Thring to see who it was and tell them to piss off. Proving himself not a complete fool, he gave Nakszynski the nod to go with the butler. Even discounting ghosts, he had a superfluity of here-and-now enemies who would love a clear shot at him.

‘Come now,’ said Braham, as the Albino stood up. ‘It’s not like anyone who wants to kill Mr Stoke would just walk up the drive and knock on the door...’

That marked Braham Derby as an amateur. In point of fact, a murderer often knocks on the door – summoning a victim conveniently to the point of a knife or the end of a gun. I’ve paid such calls myself, tipped my hat to a cooling corpse, and walked off before hue and cry can be raised.

Stoke wavered and Nakszynski sat again.

The doors were flung wide again. The caller trumped the Master’s strut with a genuine theatrical effect. A big man, dressed entirely in crimson from his shoes to his tall hat, he was bright scarlet in the face and hands. Across broad shoulders he carried a heavy, limp bundle. Completing the infernal effect, he whiffed of something like brimstone. Frankly, I’ve met subtler volcanic eruptions.

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.

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.