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.
Nakszynski wore a shaggy coat made from grizzly hide, tailored with pockets for concealed hold-out pistols and lengths of cheesewire. The lining sheathed sufficient knives to serve boneless duck and fish at a Lord Mayor’s dinner and have enough left over to perform emergency amputations on a cartload of railway-crash wounded. He performed a familiar ritual — loading and checking guns, spitting on blades. His murder tools were in order, ready for use. Stoke stood by his man like a prize-fight trainer, happy to dispense advice on the theory of fisticuffs yet happier still not to be the fellow stepping into the ring to put the advice into practice while another bludgeon-fisted ape pounded on his head.
Most of the household were here to see off our expedition. Mod planted a crafty kiss on my cheek, and slipped a hand into my trousers to administer a secret squeeze. Stoke scowled at the intimacy he could see, but losing a poke-partner came a long way down his list of frets. I reckoned he’d retreat inside and have the Hall barricaded until we came home with Red Shuck hanging upside down from Venn’s stave.
We set off across the lawn, and paused in the shadow of The Chase.
‘This is a truly venerable tract of forest,’ Saul announced, as if lecturing sightseers, ‘one of the few remaining woodlands in England of undoubted primeval date, wherein Druidical mistletoe is still found on aged oaks. Enormous yew trees, not planted by the hand of man, grow as they did grow when they were pollarded for bows.’
He made a few more remarks about ‘sylvan antiquity’. I disregarded them like the steam of his breath. The tall stark trees were more black than green. Within the woods, groundmist was waist high. The Chase showed its true self.
It was not a forest. It was an English jungle.
XI
Saul — smallest, least encumbered of the party — bent low and scurried through his famous badger runs. Venn, the Albino and I had to take less thorny paths through the dripping woods.
We could scarcely have got wetter if it were raining.
The morning mist didn’t burn off, which made looking out for beast’s spoor an iffy prospect. Exposed roots and the mouths of rabbit-warrens became mantraps. A sane hunter was exceedingly careful where he put his boots.
Sunlight was intermittent. Every step took us back in time. All Saul’s rot about Druidical mistletoe and pollarding for bows brought to mind high old merrie England. Flagons of foaming mead and clots in armour gallantly clouting each other. This was more savage, cold and bloody uncomfortable. As Stoke had warned, it stank like a tannery.
‘What is that smell?’ I asked Venn.
‘What smell?’ he responded. His nostrils must have been burned senseless by living with the stench. In fact, now I came to think of it, the reddleman had the pong on him like the stain on his face.
I like jungle, but The Chase was a Pit of Hell on a wet Wednesday.
After an hour of slow going, we felt we had travelled ten hard leagues but might well have only penetrated a few hundred yards into the wood. Venn tapped his stave against an oak, signalling a halt. We had found an open space about fifty paces across. The trees were so tangled above, the clearing was like a leaky cathedral. Shafts of light poured down through a ceiling of woven wood.