Moriarty: The Hound of the D'Urbervilles Read online

  Professor Christina Temple, BA, MA, PhD, FRHistS.

  School of Social Sciences, History and Philosophy,

  Department of History, Classics and Archaeology

  Birkbeck College, London.

  February 2011.

  CONTENTS

  Chapter One: A Volume in Vermilion

  I

  II

  III

  IV

  V

  VI

  VII

  VIII

  IX

  Chapter Two: A Shambles in Belgravia

  I

  II

  III

  Chapter Three: The Red Planet League

  I

  II

  III

  IV

  V

  VI

  Chapter Four: The Hound of the D’Urbervilles

  I

  II

  III

  IV

  V

  VI

  VII

  VIII

  IX

  X

  XI

  XII

  XIII

  XIV

  XV

  XVI

  Chapter Five: The Adventure of the Six Maledictions

  I

  II

  III

  IV

  V

  VI

  VII

  VIII

  IX

  X

  XI

  XII

  XIII

  XIV

  XV

  XVI

  XVII

  XVIII

  Chapter Six: The Greek Invertebrate

  I

  II

  III

  IV

  V

  VI

  VII

  VIII

  IX

  X

  Chapter Seven: The Problem of the Final Adventure

  I

  II

  III

  IV

  V

  VI

  VII

  VIII

  IX

  X

  XI

  XII

  XIII

  XIV

  XV

  XVI

  XVII

  CHAPTER ONE: A VOLUME IN VERMILION

  I

  I blame that rat-weasel Stamford, who was no better at judging character than at kiting paper. He later had his collar felt in Farnham, of all blasted places. If you want to pass French government bonds, you can’t afford to mix up your accents grave and your accents acute. Archie Stamford earns no sympathy from me. Thanks to him, I was first drawn into the orbit, the gravitational pull as he would have said, of Professor James Moriarty.

  In 1880, your humble narrator was a vigorous, if scarred, forty. I should make a proper introduction of myself: Colonel Sebastian ‘Basher’ Moran, late of a school which wouldn’t let in an oik like you and a regiment which would as soon sack Newcastle as take Ali Masjid. I had an unrivalled bag of big cats and a fund of stories about blasting the roaring pests. I’d stood in the Khyber Pass and faced a surge of sword-waving Pathans howling for British blood, potting them like grouse in season. Nothing gladdens a proper Englishman’s heart – this one, at least – like the sight of a foreigner’s head flying into a dozen bloody bits. I’d dangled by a single-handed grip from an icy ledge in the upper Himalayas, with something huge and indistinct and furry stamping on my freezing fingers. I’d bent like an oak in a hurricane as Sir Augustus, the hated pater, spouted paragraphs of bile in my face, which boiled down to the proverbial ‘cut off without a penny’ business. Stuck to it too, the mean old swine. The family loot went to a society for providing Christian undergarments to the Ashanti, a bequest which had the delightful side effect of reducing my unmarriageable sisters to boarding-house penury.

  I’d taken a dagger in the lower back from a harlot in Hyderabad and a pistol-ball in the knee from the Okhrana in Nijni-Novgorod. More to the point, I had recently been raked across the chest by the mad, wily old shetiger the hill-heathens called ‘Kali’s Kitten’.

  None of that was preparation for Moriarty!

  I had crawled into a drain after the tiger, whose wounds turned out to be less severe than I’d thought. Tough old hellcat! KK got playful with jaws and paws, crunching down my pith helmet like one of Carter’s Little Liver Pills, delicately shredding my shirt with razor claws, digging into the skin and drawing casually across my chest. Three bloody stripes. Sure I would die in that stinking tunnel, I was determined not to die alone. I got my Webley side arm unholstered and shot the hell-bitch through the heart. To make sure, I emptied all six chambers. After that chit in Hyderabad dirked me, I broke her nose for her. KK looked almost as aghast and infuriated at being killed. I wondered if girl and tigress were related. I had the cat’s rank dying breath in my face and her weight on me in that stifling hole. One more for the trophy wall, I thought. Cat dead, Moran not: hurrah and victory!

  But KK nearly murdered me after all. The stripes went septic. Good thing there’s no earthly use for the male nipple, because I found myself down to just the one. Lots of grey stuff came out of me. So I was packed off back to England for proper doctoring.

  It occurred to me that a concerted effort had been made to boot me out of the subcontinent. I could think of a dozen reasons for that, and a dozen clods in stiff collars who’d be happier with me out of the picture. Maiden ladies who thought tigers ought to be patted on the head and given treats. And the husbands, fathers and sweethearts of non-maiden ladies. Not to mention the 1st Bangalore Pioneers, who didn’t care to be reminded of their habit of cowering in ditches while Bloody Basher did three-fourths of their fighting for them.

  Still, mustn’t hold a grudge, what? Sods, the lot of them. And that’s just the whites. As for the natives... well, let’s not get started on them, shall we? We’d be here ’til next Tuesday.

  For me, a long sea cruise is normally an opportunity. There are always bored fellow passengers and underworked officers knocking around with fat notecases in their luggage. It’s most satisfying to sit on deck playing solitaire until some booby suggests a few rounds of cards and, why just to make it spicier, perhaps some trifling, sixpence-a-trick element of wager. Give me two months on any ocean in the world, and I can fleece everyone aboard from the captain’s lady to the bosun’s second-best bumboy, and leave each mark convinced that the ship is a nest of utter cheats with only Basher as the other honest hand in the game.

  Usually, I embark sans sou and stroll down the gangplank at the destination, pockets a-jingle with the accumulated fortune of my fellow voyagers. I get a warm feeling from ambling through the docks, listening to clots explaining to the eager sorts who’ve turned up to greet them that, sadly, the moolah which would have saved the guano-grubbing business or bought the Bibles for the mission or paid for the wedding has gone astray on the high seas. This time, tragic to report, I was off sick, practically in quarantine. My nimble fingers were away from the pasteboards, employed mostly in scratching around the bandages while trying hard not to scratch the bandages themselves.

  So, the upshot: Basher in London, out of funds. And the word was abroad. I was politely informed by a chinless receptionist at Claridge’s that my usual suite of rooms was engaged and that, unfortunately, no alternative was available, this being a busy wet February and all. If I hadn’t pawned my horsewhip, it would have got some use. If there’s any breed I despise more than natives, it’s people who work in bloody hotels. Thieves, the lot of them, or, what’s worse, sneaks and snitches. They talk among themselves, so it was no use trotting down the street and trying somewhere else.

  I was on the point of wondering if I shouldn’t risk the Bagatelle Club, where, frankly, you’re not playing with amateurs. There’s the peril of wasting a whole evening shuffling and betting with other sharps who a) can’t be rooked so easily and b) are liable to be as cash-poor as oneself. Otherwise, it was a matter of beetling up and down Piccadilly all afternoon in the hope
of spotting a ten-bob note in the gutter, or – if it came to it – dragging Farmer Giles into a sidestreet, splitting his head and lifting his poke. A comedown after Kali’s Kitten, but needs must...

  ‘It’s “Basher” Moran, isn’t it?’ drawled someone, prompting me to raise my sights from the gutter. ‘Still shooting anything that draws breath?’

  ‘Archibald Stamford, Esquire. Still practising auntie’s signature?’

  I remembered Archie from some police cells in Islington. All charges dropped and apologies made, in my case. Being ‘mentioned in despatches’ carries weight with beaks, certainly more than the word of a tradesman in a celluloid collar you clean with India rubber. Six months jug for the fumbling forger, though. He’d been pinched trying to make a withdrawal from a relative’s bank account.

  If clothes were anything to go by, Stamford had risen in his profession. Tiepin and cane, dove-grey morning coat, curly brimmed topper, and good boots. His whole manner, with that patronising hale-fellow-snooks-to-you tone, suggested he was in funds – which made him my long-lost friend.

  The Criterion was handy, so I suggested we repair to the bar for drinks. The question of who paid for them would be settled when Archie was fuddleheaded from several whiskies. I fed him that shut-out-of-my-usual-suite line and considered a hard-luck story trading on my status as hero of the Jowaki Campaign – though I doubted an inky-fingered felon would put much stock in far-flung tales of imperial daring.

  Stamford’s eyes shone, in a manner which reminded me unpleasantly of my late feline dancing partner. He sucked on his teeth, torn between saying something and keeping mum. It was a manner I would soon come to recognise as common to those in the employ of my soon-to-be benefactor.

  ‘As it happens, Bash old chap, I know a billet that might suit you. Comfortable rooms in Conduit Street, above Mrs Halifax’s establishment. You know Mrs H.?’

  ‘Used to keep a knocking-shop in Stepney? Arm-wrestler’s biceps and an eight-inch tongue?’

  ‘That’s the one. She’s West End now. Part of a combine, you might say. A thriving firm.’

  ‘What she sells is always in demand.’

  ‘True, but it’s not just the whoring. There’s other business. A man of vision, you might say, has done some thinking. About my line of trade, and Mrs Halifax’s, and, as it were, yours.’

  I was about at the end of my rope with Archie. He was talking in a familiar, insinuating, creeping-round-behind-you-with-a-cosh manner I didn’t like. Implying that I was a tradesman did little for my ruddy temper. I was strongly tempted to give him one of my speciality thumps, which involves a neat little screw of my big fat regimental ring into the old eyeball, and see how his dove-grey coat looked with dirty great blobs of snotty blood down the front. After that, a quick fist into his waistcoat would leave him gasping, and give me the chance to fetch away his watch and chain, plus any cash he had on him. Of course, I’d check the spelling of ‘Bank of England’ on the notes before spending them. I could make it look like a difference of opinion between gentlemen. And no worries about it coming back to me. Stamford wouldn’t squeal to the peelers. If he wanted to pursue the matter I could always give him a second helping.

  ‘I wouldn’t,’ he said, as if he could read my mind.

  That was a dash of Himalayan melt water to the face.

  Catching sight of myself in the long mirror behind the bar, I saw my cheeks had gone a nasty shade of red. More vermilion than crimson. My fists were knotted, white-knuckled, around the rail. This, I understand, is what I look like before I ‘go off’. You can’t live through all I have without ‘going off’ from time to time. Usually, I ‘come to’ in handcuffs between policemen with black eyes. The other fellow or fellows or lady is too busy being carried away to hospital to press charges.

  Still, a ‘tell’ is a handicap for a card player. And my red face gave warning.

  Stamford smiled like someone who knows there’s a confederate behind the curtain with a bead drawn on the back of your neck and a finger on the trigger.

  Libertè, hah!

  ‘Have you popped your guns, Colonel?’

  I would pawn, and indeed have pawned, the family silver. I’d raise money on my medals, ponce my sisters (not that anyone would pay for the hymn-singing old trouts) and sell Royal Navy torpedo plans to the Russians... but a man’s guns are sacred. Mine were at the Anglo-Indian Club, oiled and wrapped and packed away in cherrywood cases, along with a kitbag full of assorted cartridges. If any cats got out of Regent’s Park Zoo, I’d be well set up to use a hansom for a howdah and track them along Oxford Street.

  Stamford knew from my look what an outrage he had suggested. This wasn’t the red-hot pillar-box-faced Basher bearing down on him, this was the deadly icy calm of – and other folks have said this, so it’s not just me boasting – ‘the best heavy game shot that our Eastern Empire has produced’.

  ‘There’s a fellow,’ he continued, nervously, ‘this man of vision I mentioned. In a roundabout way, he is my employer. Probably the employer of half the folk in this room, whether they know it or not...’

  He looked about. It was the usual shower: idlers and painted dames, jostling each other with stuck-on smiles, reaching sticky fingers into jacket pockets and up loose skirts, finely dressed fellows talking of ‘business’ which was no more than powdered thievery, a scattering of moon-faced cretins who didn’t know their size-thirteens gave them away as undercover detectives.

  Stamford produced a card and handed it to me.

  ‘He’s looking for a shooter...’

  The fellow could never say the right thing. I am a sportsman, not a keeper. A gun, not a gunslinger. A shot, not a shooter.

  Still, game is game...

  ‘...and you might find him interesting.’

  I looked down at the card. It bore the legend ‘Professor James Moriarty’, and an address in Conduit Street.

  ‘A professor, is it?’ I sneered. I pictured a dusty coot like the stick-men who’d bedevilled me through Eton (interminably) and Oxford (briefly). Or else a music-hall slickster, inflating himself with made-up titles. ‘What might he profess, Archie?’

  Stamford was a touch offended, and took back the card. It was as if Archie were a new convert to papism and I’d farted during a sermon from Cardinal Newman.

  ‘You’ve been out of England a long time, Basher.’

  He summoned the barman, who had been eyeing us with that fakir’s trick of knowing who was most likely, fine clothes or not, to do a runner.

  ‘Will you be paying now, sirs?’

  Stamford held up the card and shoved it in the man’s face.

  The barman went pale, dug into his own pocket to settle the tab, apologised, and backed off in terror.

  Stamford just looked smug as he handed the card back to me.

  II

  ‘You have been in Afghanistan, I perceive,’ said the Professor.

  ‘How the devil did you know that?’ I asked in astonishment.

  His eyes caught mine. Cobra eyes, they say. Large, clear, cold, grey and fascinating. I’ve met cobras, and they aren’t half as deadly – trust me. I imagine Moriarty left off tutoring because his pupils were too terrified to con their two times table. I seemed to suffer his gaze for a full minute, though only a few seconds passed. It had been like that in the hug of Kali’s Kitten. I’d have sworn on a stack of well-thumbed copies of The Pearl that the mauling went on for an hour of pain, but the procedure was over inside thirty seconds. If I’d had a Webley on my hip, I might have shot the Professor in the heart on instinct – though it’s my guess bullets wouldn’t dare enter him. He had a queer unhealthy light about him. Not unhealthy in himself, but for everybody else.

  Suddenly, pacing distractedly about the room, head wavering from side to side as if he had two dozen extra flexible bones in his neck, he began to rattle off facts.

  Facts about me.

  ‘...you are retired from your regiment, resigning at the request of a superior to avoid the mutual d
isgrace of dishonourable discharge; you have suffered a serious injury at the claws of a beast, are fully recovered physically, but worry your nerve might have gone; you are the son of a late Minister to Persia and have two sisters, your only living relatives beside a number of unacknowledged half-native illegitimates; you are addicted, most of all to gambling, but also to sexual encounters, spirits, the murder of animals and the fawning of a duped public; most of the time, you blunder through life like a bull, snatching and punching to get your own way, but in moments of extreme danger you are possessed by a strange serenity which has enabled you to survive situations that would have killed another man; in fact, your true addiction is to danger, to fear – only near death do you feel alive; you are unscrupulous, amoral, habitually violent and, at present, have no means of income, though your tastes and habits require a constant inflow of money...’

  Throughout this performance, I took in Professor James Moriarty. Tall, stooped, hair thin at the temples, cheeks sunken, wearing a dusty (no, chalky) frock coat, sallow as only an indoorsman can be; yellow cigarette stain between his first and second fingers, teeth to match. And, obviously, very pleased with himself.

  He reminded me of Gladstone gone wrong. With just a touch of a hill-chief who had tortured me with fire ants.

  But I had no patience with his lecture. I’d eaten enough of that from the pater for a lifetime.

  ‘Tell me something I don’t know,’ I interrupted...

  The Professor was unpleasantly surprised. It was as if no one had ever dared break into one of his speeches before. He halted in his tracks, swivelled his skull and levelled those shotgun-barrel-hole eyes at me.

  ‘I’ve had this done at a bazaar,’ I continued. ‘It’s no great trick. The fortuneteller notices tiny little things and makes dead-eye guesses – you can tell I gamble from the marks on my cuffs, and was in Afghanistan by the colour of my tan. If you spout with enough confidence, you score so many hits the bits you get wrong – like that tommyrot about being addicted to danger – are swallowed and forgotten. I’d expected a better show from your advance notices, “Professor”.’