Mr Dry: The Workman and His Hire

For Valentine’s Day, a taste of Bad Love and its consequences. Not quite horror, and not quite whimsy, we offer you an original story – some period fiction concerning the Deptford Assassin, Mr Dry, from our Tales of the Last Edwardian series.

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The Workman and His Hire

When the door-handle turned, she was ready enough. She had expected it to end this way, and had wondered many nights how it would come about. Some hackster from the streets, half-cut on Holland gin and staggering as he raised the knife…

The man who entered the squalid room was not from her imaginings. His brown patent boots caught her attention above all else. They were perfectly polished, something that you never saw in this part of Spitalfields. It was common enough on Dorset Street to see men with no boots at all. Leather for drink, when all else was gone.

Neither tall nor short, he had a rounded face and pale blue eyes which watered slightly. Under other circumstances, she would have thought him a lawyer’s or a chandler’s clerk – a quiet, respectable sort of man.

“You are Miss Clara Smith,” he said. A statement, delivered in a soft voice.

He took off his bowler hat, but there was no convenient stand for it. Bending, he placed the bowler on the floor by his side. After some apparent thought, he moved it half an inch to the right.

She lifted herself up on her elbows, but that brought a fit of coughing, and more blood.

“I am Clara Smith,” she managed to say after the fit had died down. “And you… you are come from Charles Kebworth.” She spat into a bloody piece of cloth. She had no weapon, and no strength to use one. No strength to cling to this life.

“Yes.” He closed the door at his back.

Ragged ghosts of wallpaper clung to the walls, the laths showing through the plaster in many places. An enamel wash-basin, a crooked wardrobe and the bed were the only furnishings. It was a room much like many in the tenement lodging houses hereabouts, if not better than some. An actual, solid bed, rather than heaped blankets or a stale mattress on the floor, was considered a prize in some parts.

He glanced at the orange-box by the bed, a box in which a tired green blanket seemed to rise and fall. The faintest sound of breathing stirred the thick air.

“That will be his, I assume?”

“The boy is almost ten months old. He is called–”

A dismissive wave of the hand. “I know who you are, which is the point.”

The room stank of urine, sweat and sickness. The smells which came in through the broken window were little better. The screaming of drunks and whores rose from the streets, along with the fish-wife battles and the cry of the cat’s meat man. She had stayed at White’s Row Chamber for a while, but the porter had taken exception to the child’s crying, and her funds had run too low. This place, this stinking place, would be her last lodging.

“You are here to murder me,” she said, and coughed again. “I thought his thugs would come soon. That last note… I should not have threatened him. I wasn’t thinking. As it happens, I fear you need only wait. Another few days…”

“Consumption.” He looked closer. “And the fever well set in, I think.”

“Yes.”

She was almost unable to ask the question that had haunted her for weeks.

“Will you kill my boy as well? I know that Kebworth cares nothing for the child.”

A look that might have been mild surprise crossed the man’s face. “My client gave no instructions as to children, pets or sundries.”

Clara Smith fell back onto one arm, her chest banded with pain. “He merely wishes me dead and forgotten. An end to my demands, to my entreaties. An end to any risk to his position.”

“That would seem to be the case.”

“Who are you?” she asked. “Am I to be murdered by an unnamed stranger?”

He moved the bowler hat with one polished boot, and frowned at it. “This floor is none too clean.” He looked up. “My name is Edwin Dry.”

A gasp; a long, choking cough which spattered the cloth once more. She recovered herself.

“The Deptford Assassin. Are you sunk so low then, Mr Dry, that you pursue dying women.”

He seemed unaffected by her barb. “Mr Kebworth was having trouble finding you through the usual routes. I am not ‘usual’. I know the smell of these streets – and how to find a single bird within a rookery.”

Her smile was bitter. “But do you know your employer? Do you know what he does, to men and to women?”

Mr Dry pursed his lips, the slightest gesture. He came nearer. “I have a commission, and a fee to collect. Other people’s lives, whether joyous or tragic, are hardly my concern.

“So you do not know.” She sighed. “I loved him, once, and thought that love returned…”

Outside a woman shrieked her price, and a man laughed. Clara Smith wrung the rag between her fingers; the child slept on.

“I’m not the first he’s ruined, you understand. I’ll tell you the truth of Charlie Kebworth, of how his wife dines on roasts whilst I have sold the last buttons on my blouse for stale bread. Of how I loved him, and how he used me–”

Her breath gave out, and she coughed again into the rag.

“I would rather you did not. Time presses.” He slipped a long, slender knife from under his plain brown jacket. “It will be quick, if that concerns you.”

“Please.” She wiped bloody spittle from the corner of her mouth. She had been an actress, once, and tried to draw on what remained of her craft, her beauty. “Please listen, before you… put an end to me.”

This time the sigh came from the man. He lifted his half-hunter on its chain.

“Five minutes, then. No more.”

Clearing her lungs as best she could, Clara Smith began the last story she would tell.

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Charles Kebworth shuffled the folders on his grand, expensive desk, seeing opportunity in each and every one. Plans for another factory, a scheme of transport, even an arch perhaps – the Kebworth Arch. There would be tenements to tear down, and monies to a certain Member of Parliament. Perhaps two Members, if he wished to expand down to the river itself. It could be done, it could be done…

This was to be his year. He must be clear-headed. The coffee by his left hand was cold, and he reached behind him to ring for a fresh pot. His fingers encountered soft cloth. He drew his hand away sharply, turning in the chair.

“What the…”

“I am here for my remuneration,” said Mr Dry.

Beyond him the heavy main door, which had been open a moment ago, was closed. Kebworth had no idea how the killer had passed his manservant or the clerk in the outer office. He chose to cover shock with bluster.

“You have no right coming in here unbidden – and unannounced. I demand –”

“She is dead. My remuneration, as agreed?”

The businessman stared as a small revolver slid into Mr Dry’s hand, seemingly from nowhere.

“Yes, yes.” Kebworth unlocked the top drawer of his desk, and brought out a plain white envelope, unsealed. Enough could be seen of its contents to suggest a considerable number of bank notes lay within.

He passed it to the other man. “You didn’t need to bring a gun to ensure payment, you know.”

Mr Dry glanced down at the weapon, and blinked. “That? I have that with me for a later commission.”

Kebworth breathed out noisily. “I see. What misbegotten soul is next?” He forced a smile. “No, I’m sure you won’t tell me. You are, I suppose, a businessman in your own right. We are not so very different.”

There was no smile from Mr Dry.

“A line I have heard many times,” he said. “But it will not wash, dear me, no. It will not wash.” He looked around the well-appointed office, noting the crystal tantalus filled with whisky, the leather-bound books, hardly opened, which lined the walls. “I merely kill people.”

“You profit from your love of murder.”

Mr Dry’s pale eyes seemed cold, distant. “Love? And twice I hear that word in one day. I am indifferent to it, myself.” He placed the envelope into an inner pocket. “But you, Mr Kebworth, have had opportunities to know love and embrace it. You received, but did not give fair measure back. I deem that poor business practice indeed.”

Kebworth cried out as Mr Dry’s boot slammed into the oak-fronted drawer, trapping the seated man’s fingers.

Mr Dry tutted. “You were reaching for your own revolver, perhaps? The one you keep under the papers in that drawer?”

“Damn you, I paid up, didn’t I? Why are you still here?”

Mr Dry reached into his jacket with his free hand. Between thumb and forefinger he held a small silver coin.

Kebworth eased his fingers free, flexing them in pain. “What’s that for, then? I hardly need loose change in my line of —”

The single shot came before Kebworth could move from his chair. He might have felt the impact in the very centre of his forehead, but it was doubtful.

“I am modern in my outlook,” murmured the Deptford Assassin. “A woman’s money is as good as any man’s.”

The grand businessman was no longer listening. The Kebworth Arch, shattered by a few grains of lead, would never rise over Spitalfields. Mr Dry considered the corpse for a moment, then slipped the threepenny bit into his pocket.

That had been all she had left in the world, that and the boy.

“I give you this,” she said as he raised the knife to her neck. She pressed the coin into his hand. “You must know why, having heard me out, and you must know how it shall be earned.”

In the circumstances, he considered it adequate. He liked to think that his rates were nothing if not flexible.

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“It was most extraordinary,” said the Superintendent of the Christ Church Orphanage. “Never seen the man before, yet he walked in bold as day, into this very office.”

The clerk smiled at the turn of phrase, being fond of Wordsworth himself. “As bold as day, eh? Not another Sir Hubert, I hope. And he brought this child?”

The two men stared at the bundle on the Superintendent’s desk. One small hand was visible, clutching at the worn green blanket.

“Indeed. He passed this to me, with the boy.”

He held up a tarnished silver threepenny bit.

“ ‘The price of a life’, he said, ‘I shall know if you do not take good care’. And then he was gone, more swiftly than I would have thought a man could move.”

“Most extraordinary, as you say, sir.” The clerk reached for his pen. “I shall enter the babe as… Smith. A name that can serve for boatman or baron. Shall I give him a first name, for the books?”

The Superintendent tapped his lower lip.

“Hmm. We are up to the letter E, are we not? Edward? Edgar? No… I have a notion that I heard a name recently.”

He moved the blanket aside, and gazed into the infant’s almost colourless eyes.

“Write him in as… Edwin.”

END


An interview with the man himself is available here:

the deptford assassin

And should you wish for stranger or darker tales which relate to Mr Dry, two are available for download at no charge.

covdry5the intrusion

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a loss of angels


We return in a couple of days with our usual medley of the weird and wonderful…

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One Last Sacrifice: James A Moore on the Altar

Had enough period and classic scares for a day or so? No, neither have we, but it’s time to be modern again. Join us now, dear listener, as we embrace 2017 and bring you grimdark, role-playing games and horror. It took some time to find the right chains, but at last we got that prolific fantasy author James A Moore at our mercy. We say fantasy author, but there’s much more to his work. As you will find out below…

An Interview with James A Moore

James A Moore

greydog: Welcome to greydogtales, James. We’re partly here for your latest book, The Last Sacrifice, but we like to drift and potter about as well. So we’ll start with the broader nonsense. For those who don’t know you, tell us a bit about yourself, either as a writer, or as a mostly human being.

james: As a writer I focus on horror and grimdark, on supernatural crime fiction and weird westerns. In other words I write what ever strikes my fancy. I promised myself a long time ago that I would always aim to write the book I would like to read and I’ve stuck to that.

As a person, I am a comic book geek (I’ve written a few of those in my time, too) and I am a movie buff. I work at a local Starbucks so I don’t become a hermit and because I absolutely love medical benefits, having a 401K and stock options, you know, all of the stuff being a writer does not cover. I am a widower who lost his wife seven years ago.

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greydog: Although you’ve written all sorts, including horror, a lot of people probably know you as a fantasy author. Fantasy is an enormous genre which covers everything from icky tales of nice fairy-folk to large scale disembowellings and chaotic perversions. Is there such a thing as grimdark, and if so, do you write it?

james: I tend to think that there is such a thing and yes, I write it. I love high fantasy stories, I just don’t really write them. I want swords and anger and bloodshed and fear and humor and the occasional romance (even if it doesn’t work out) and I want to study the human condition in my writings. And I think that, really, the best way to know people is to see how they handle adversity.

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greydog: You caught attention with your epic fantasy series Seven Forges, which we think is now up to four books and several short stories. Is this a core work for you, or one that you were just passing through?

james: I love fantasy. I always have. I love horror, too. When it comes to Seven Forges I had an idea that simply would not leave me alone, which is what normally starts me on a book or a series. I loved the idea of seeing a massive, stagnating empire go up against a group that was smaller, but far more dedicated to winning. This is definitely a core for me. I have at least three more novels planned in the series, and likely several more short stories and novellas as well. It’s a big world and it’s going through some seriously violent changes. I love watching that happen.

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greydog: You also did an awful lot for White Wolf, on their World of Darkness role playing games and supplements. We remember buying Vampire: Masquerade when it first came out. Does that mean that you are, or once were, an RPGer yourself?

james: Oh my, yes. I used to play D&D and all of the WOD games, as well as Champions (remember, comic book geek). And I was the Storyteller on a lot of the adventures I wrote for White Wolf. My players were my sounding board (or, you know, victims. It’s all a matter of perspective). I ate those games like candy. I don’t have the time to play the games any more, much as I might like to.

greydog: No, those vast chunks of time needed for serious RPGing do seem to get fewer and fewer. So, you’ve worked with writers Christopher Golden and Charles R Rutledge, amongst others. Do you find co-authoring a pleasure, or harder work than being left along to do your own thing?

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james: Honestly, I wouldn’t do it if I didn’t love it. I have projects going with Charles and with Chris both, but it might take a while to get to them, priorities being what they are. BLOODSTAINED WONDERLAND is coming out later this year with Chris, and A HELL WITHIN (A Griffin & Price novel) is coming out later this year with Charles.

For me those collaborations are like getting all of my favorite toys and having them get all of their favorite toys and then playing in the sandbox together. Only no sand in the underwear. Later this year I am also part of a mosaic novel with Christopher Golden, Cherie priest, Charlaine Harris, Jonathan Maberry, Kat Richardson, Tim Lebbon, Mark Morris, Kelley Armstrong and Seanan McGuire…THAT is a damned big sandbox.

greydog: As an aside, are we likely to see any more stories in the unpleasant land of Bloodstained Oz, the Stoker-nominated limited edition you released some time ago?

james: Oh yes. BLOODSTAINED WONDERLAND is finished. In the coming months Chris and I will be plotting out and then writing BLOODSTAINED NEVERLAND. They are light and cheerful stories, assuming your mind is a cesspool of violence and urban decay.

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greydog: Which piece of work has given you the most personal satisfaction?

james: All of them. But if I have to pick one, it’s the SEVEN FORGES series, because there’s a lot of world building going on there and I wasn’t sure if I could pull it off. Or maybe DEEPER which was my first ever attempt at a first person novel. Possibly BLOOD RED, which was the fastest I’ve ever written a novel…the list goes on, seriously.

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greydog: And which of your works do you wish more people had read, or knew about?

james: That is definitely an ALL of them answer. I’m delighted with the attention SEVEN FORGES has gotten, but I’d love more people to know about it, and while I’m dreaming if HBO or Netflix wants to make a series… The one I think deserved more attention than it got was SUBJECT SEVEN, which is a Young Adult series I did there were plans for more books but the sales simply weren’t there. Lots of great reviews and even some fan mail, but at the end of the day it got lost in a sea of YA novels.

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James A Moore on The Last Sacrifice

greydog: On to your most recent novel, The Last Sacrifice, before we forget. It’s a dark and lively piece, with a lot of serious action and a number of key strands. What made you choose to pursue multiple characters, rather than, say, only following Brogan’s misfortunes?

james: I always prefer multiple characters and points of view, because I think it’s fun letting readers see and understand the things that a lot of the characters do not get to see. I’m writing the sequel right now and for a decent portion of the book Brogan is out of the conflict and on a quest. Meanwhile his companions are waist deep in trouble and blood.

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greydog: It’s possible to sympathise with the main protagonists of Last Sacrifice, but most of them aren’t exactly innocents. Moderately ‘good’ people do moderately ‘bad’ things, for starters. Is this a moral shadowland that you like your characters to tread?

james: I love shades of gray (not fifty of them mind you). I have seldom met anyone over the age of five who could be called all good or all bad. I think it’s important to show that. Brogan isn’t a bad man. He’s done bad things and he’s been paid for it, but he’s generally a good man who loves his family, he also has to deal with his anger and grief when things go wrong and he does not deal with it well.

We’re introduced to SOME of the 20 men with him in book one, but more of them are met in the second book and the same is true of the slavers who are after him. A lot of them are pretty much like the personnel on the Death Star. They’re just doing their jobs, you know? Is it morally wrong to be a slaver? Not to them. It’s a different world.

greydog: We don’t get time to read a lot of fantasy these days, but the Undying or He-Kisshi are a new one on us (having dubious tastes, we liked them more than some of the people). Their role and their physical nature are nicely brought out through the book. How did they come about?

james: I said before that I love high fantasy, but the thing is, I need to do something different. I love me some elves and dragons and dwarves but for now I want to stay away from the tropes and come up with new threats. The He-Kisshi are some tough characters, they have limitations but they really are undying. They are the messengers of the gods and in this case that means that have the ability to act on behalf of the gods.

One of the things I wanted to do with them is show that they are, in fact, connected deeply with the gods and when the gods start going off the rails, so do some of the He-Kisshi. They get a lot more play in the second book and we get to see some of the reasons that they are so deeply feared.

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greydog: We know that Last Sacrifice has only been released recently, but we assume you have many plans. Anything you’d share with us, or tease us with, on this series or other projects?

james: There will be two more books in the TIDES OF WAR series. The Last Sacrifice is only book one. Things in the works? I plan on finishing two horror novels this year, BOOM TOWN and FRESH KILLS, and I want to do a sci-fi horror story that will, hopefully, scare the crap out of people. So many books to write, so little time.

greydog: We look forward to those. Finally, dogs or cats? There is a wrong answer, but no actual penalty, though we do take notes on this sort of thing.

james: The actual answer is simple: Dogs or cats? May as well ask me if I prefer barbarian hordes or stealthy assassins. Both, of course. If given a choice of one and only one, I suppose dogs first.

greydog: What an excellent answer. Many thanks for joining us.

james: My absolute pleasure! Thanks for having me.

You can get hold of a copy of James A Moore’s The Last Sacrifice at the link below, and most of his work is easily available via one or other Amazon site. You’ll like the Undying.

TheLastSacrifice_testfront (1)last sacrifice, amazon uk


Coming during the next  couple of weeks: Christine Morgan’s collection of Viking tales, Lurchers for Beginners, more Women in Horror, and lots more goodies. Do join us…

The Silent Army

 

 

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E Nesbit – Mother of the Dead

Do you remember those heady days of 1893, dear listener? We laughed, we shared brandy by the Seine, and you were sick in a gendarme’s hat. We snuggled close and read E Nesbit’s scary tales, and then we thought, ‘Wait a minute, this is a woman. Damned cheek, coming over here and writing supernatural fiction, putting struggling male writers out of a job.’

Later that year, the First Matabele War started in South Africa, so we went back to knitting socks for the missionaries. But today, in honour of Women in Horror month, we open E Nesbit once again…

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There are some cracking female horror writers around at the moment. However, we’ve been meaning to write about E Nesbit since last September, so what better time to get our act together? Our main interest is her horror stories, but a little background would not go amiss.

Edith Nesbit (1858-1924) was a typical British housewife of her time. Oh, apart from:

  • Her friendship with Kropotkin, the Russian anarchist dissident
  • The fact that she adopted two children fathered by her first husband, and let the mother live with them as secretary
  • Her Marxist-socialist beliefs and involvement in founding the Fabian Society
  • The seventy or eighty books she wrote or co-wrote
  • Her political lecture tours, which included the London School of Economics

Strange, then, that nowadays she is best known as a children’s author, the woman who wrote The Railway Children, The Five Children and It, the Bastable series and The Enchanted Castle.

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Not that these have been without influence. Her children’s stories are referenced in C S Lewis’s Narnia series; Noel Coward and J B Priestley both admired her work.

Gore Vidal wrote in the New York Review of Books, in 1964:

“There are those who consider The Enchanted Castle Nesbit’s best book. J. B. Priestley has made a good case for it, and there is something strange about the book which sets it off from the bright world of the early stories. Four children encounter magic in the gardens of a great deserted house. The mood is midnight. Statues of dinosaurs come alive in the moonlight, the gods of Olympus hold a revel, Pan’s song is heard. Then things go inexplicably wrong. The children decide to give a play. Wanting an audience, they create a number of creatures out of old clothes, pillows, brooms, umbrellas. To their horror, as the curtain falls, there is a ghastly applause. The creatures have come alive, and they prove to be most disagreeable.”

(Yalding Towers, incidentally, from the Enchanted Castle, is a setting in Alan Moore’s League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.)

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Her approach to writing children was less sentimental than many, making her legacy more important. Some call her the first of the modern children’s fantasists, escaping the twee or moral tales of earlier Victorian writers.

As a result, adaptations and derivations continued long after her death. The Psammead stories are well known. Jenny Agutter’s career (see also further down) was boosted by her performances in two adaptations of The Railway Children (1968 and 1970), which allowed her to have less clothes on in Walkabout (1971) and Logan’s Run (1976). These latter two films certainly influenced many teenagers. Ahem.

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1905 illo of the children and the psammead

And Michael Moorcock wrote a series of books with an adult Oswald Bastable (The Warlord of the Air, The Land Leviathan, The Steel Tsar), drawing partially on Nesbit’s Fabian views of where the British Empire should be going.

The Scary Side

But to our point. E Nesbit wrote four collections of ghost or supernatural tales. Something Wrong (1893), Grim Tales (1893), Tales Told in the Twilight (1897) and Fear (1910). Naomi Alderman wrote, of Nesbit’s ghost stories

“There is darkness in the corners of these stories, like that gathering shadow – ordinary callousness turning into something more disturbing.”

Guardian Arts (2016)

We admit that her ghost stories are variable. Some contain musings which could have been left out, others evoke a worrying mood but don’t exactly scare. However, when she gets it right, she is excellent, with a less ‘period’ style than some of her contemporaries.  She can be truly chilling.

She evokes images of the dead who are determined (or cursed) to keep going long after the grave has beckoned. And when we say images, we mean not only intangible revenants but corporeal forms. In fact, she has a penchant for all-too corporeal returns, which places her most definitely in the horror genre.

Many tales involve love and failed relationships, which is worth a note, given the author’s own experiences. Despite her political credentials, one of the curious aspects about E Nesbit is that she had mixed views about suffrage and women’s movements in real life. Her stories reflect this in part, and yet there are certainly issues of gender conflict within. Women occupy roles as both victims and active participants, which makes you wonder what effect her first marriage, to Hubert Bland, had on her.

“Bland was an atypical Fabian, since he combined socialism with strongly conservative opinions that reflected his social background and his military sympathies…. He was also strongly opposed to women’s suffrage. At the same time he advocated collectivist socialism, wrote Fabian tracts, and lectured extensively on socialism.”

Julia Briggs, E Nesbit’s biographer

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Bland reputedly got at least two other women pregnant. The first was Maggie Doran, his mother’s companion. The second was Alice Hoatson, Nesbit’s friend, who ended up bearing two children by him and living with the Blands for some years.

Some time ago, the actress Jenny Agutter had plans for a film exploring this relationship and its consequences, but we can’t find any reference to the project having been completed.

Back to the fiction. As we can’t go into every E Nesbit story here (that’s your job, listener) we’re popping back to 1893 to recommend her volume Grim Tales, if you want a quick taste. This collection includes two of her most anthologised stories, John Charrington’s Wedding and Man-Size in Marble.

Grim Tales: Contents

  1. The Ebony Frame
  2. John Charrington’s Wedding
  3. Uncle Abraham’s Romance
  4. The Mystery Of The Semi-Detached
  5. From The Dead
  6. Man-Size In Marble
  7. The Mass For The Dead

‘Uncle Abraham’s Romance’ is the most poignant, but not chilling; ‘From The Dead’ perhaps the most tragic, in that its events were entirely avoidable.

Within you will find questions of the nature of love and the determination of the dead to wreak corporeal damage. You will discover many unhappy endings, yet also sad visions of what might have been – and what might have been avoided.

And there are things which walk when they should not.


There are a number of relevant collections. Grim Tales is available free from Project Gutenberg, as is The Enchanted Castle (for children) mentioned above:

grim tales on gutenberg

For an audio fix, you might try Morgan Scorpion’s recording of Man-Size in Marble.

More tangible books include:

E Nesbit Horror Stories, edited by Naomi Alderman

does anyone else find the cover a bit odd?
does anyone else find the cover a bit odd?

http://amzn.eu/5DA13gC

The Power of Darkness: Tales of Terror (Tales of Mystery & The Supernatural)

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the power of darkness, amazon uk

And Matt Cowan (on his site Horror Delve) has a quick look at ten of her supernatural stories here, including a few of her later tales:

https://horrordelve.com/2016/06/05/10-eerie-tales-of-e-nesbit/


We have lots of books and projects to mention, so next time will probably be one of those “What’s New” posts, with some lurcher madness and Valentine’s Day scares to follow next week…

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The Man in Black – Your Appointment with Fear

Have you met the Man in Black? Has he whispered to you on the airwaves? Your radio is dead, and yet his voice is still there inside you, entreating you to join him… Yes, our Voice of Horror series is back, with a hero of the genre!

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Long before Johnny Cash, the Tommy Lee Jones films or even Westworld, there was a single man who embodied the concept of the forbidding stranger, the archivist of the dark – the Man in Black. Can you recall his name, or remember his sepulchral tones? No? Then we shall help. Treats are in store, including some links to where you can listen to, or watch, him in action.

Along the way we bump into Shirley Jackson, Hammer Horror, GK Chesterton, Edgar Allan Poe, Dr Who, Sid James of Carry On fame and S T Joshi, amongst others. Is that enough names yet? For today’s article we must take you back to the days when you made radio shows by rubbing two sticks together, so a few reminders may be in order.

Dyall M for Murder

the real man in black
the real man in black

Valentine Dyall (1908-1985) was the true Man in Black, and it came about because of the BBC. In the 1940s and 50s, they aired a wonderful radio series called Appointment with Fear. This was a series of dramatised horror stories which both drew on the classics and also invited new stories from contemporary writers. Each started with an introduction from the narrator, the Man in Black, either teasing the listener about the nature of the tale to come, or warning them of the terror that awaited them.

Each show was about half an hour long. When Dyall started speaking, you knew you were in the right place. His voice was dark and distinctive (some called him the British Vincent Price), and he had a resonance which just oozed menace. Occasionally the actual story was less interesting than his narration. Between 1943 and 1955 he introduced nine series of terrifying tales, with one more series being narrated by his father, Franklin Dyall. He also narrated a single series of the Man in Black in 1949.

Before we say more about Appointment with Fear, we should mention Dyall’s wider horror credentials. He had a number of parts in film and TV over the years, in addition to his radio work, and his career was packed with the sort of media trivia that we so love.

black guardian (dr who magazine)
black guardian (dr who magazine)

For our younger listeners, Dyall played the Black Guardian in Dr Who between 1979 and 1983.

“The Black Guardian is an anthropomorphic personification of the forces of entropy and chaos, the counterpart of the White Guardian, a personification of order. The two Guardians balance out the forces in the universe, although the Black Guardian seems to desire to upset the balance in favour of chaos and evil while the White Guardian prefers to maintain the status quo.” (Wiki)

He took the lead role in individual episodes and in three linked serials, which some call the Black Guardian trilogy, playing opposite Peter Davison as the Doctor.

Well Hammered

We mentioned Dyall’s memorable voice, and in Hammer Horror’s film Lust for a Vampire (1971), the character Count Karnstein, played by Mike Raven, was dubbed by Valentine Dyall. He also appeared as the caretaker Mr Dudley in the outstanding 1963 film version of Shirley Jackson’s novel The Haunting of Hill House. Sometimes just known as The Haunting, this is by far the best adaptation, and still sends shivers up the spine.

HILL-HOUSE-IMAGE-03262015

Going further back, he played a key part, Jethro Keane, in the wonderful City of the Dead (1960). The film was known as Horror Hotel in the States, and is the tale of a young student who seeks information on witchcraft for her college studies. What could possibly go wrong when she travels alone to a mist-shrouded New England village to ask if there are any witches about? Especially when your professor is an intense Christopher Lee, and the man who gets into your car is Valentine Dyall? The usual hilarity ensues…

Horror-Hotel-poster

Two film oddities in Dyall’s career remain worth noting. The first is the attempt to transfer the Man in Black idea to film, again by Hammer. The Man in Black (1949) was a British thriller film which starred Sid James. Adapted from Appointment with Fear, Dyall provided the introduction to the film, as “The Story-Teller”. Sid James, who rose to fame in the British Carry On films, plays a straight role for once, with none of his yuck-yuck dirty laughter. It received mixed reviews, but is worth a look.

His other role, which links to our interest in detectives and will lead us back to the radio*, was as Dr Morelle in Dr Morelle: The case of the Missing Heiress. This was another Hammer Film, and was based on the popular long running BBC radio series written by Ernest Dudley.

Ernest Dudley (1908-2006) wrote many tales of Morelle, a psychiatrist with an interest in criminology. In the radio series, the part of Dr Morelle was taken by the silky-voiced Cecil Parker, a stalwart of British period films. It’s well worth seeking out the old-time radio recordings of A Case for Dr Morelle, as the sleuthing doctor is incredibly annoying and condescending to his secretary, Miss Frayne. They’re greatly enjoyable in a sort of ‘God, I want to slap this man’ sort of way (and for some unlikely, if not implausible, deductions).

The radio episodes can still be heard in full at various OTR sites, such as here: dr morelle at radio echoes

Appointment with Fear

So we’re glued to our radios again, and Appointment with Fear. See, we know where we are – sort of. John Dickson Carr, the prolific mystery writer, was responsible for a number of the original stories and for many of the adaptations of classic tales. Given the number of series, we won’t list them all, but here are some of the adaptations which Dyall introduced:

  • The Pit and the Pendulum – Edgar Allan Poe
  • The Cask of Amontillado – Edgar Allan Poe
  • A Watcher by the Dead – Ambrose Bierce
  • The Middle Toe Of The Right Foot – Ambrose Bierce
  • The Monkey’s Paw – W W Jacobs
  • Oh Whistle And I’ll Come To You, My Lad – M R James
  • The Beast with Five Fingers – W F Harvey
  • Markheim – Robert Louis Stevenson
  • The Hands of Nekamen – Kathleen Hyatt
  • The Yellow Wallpaper – Charlotte Parkins Gilman
  • Mrs Amworth – E F Benson

John Dickson Carr (1906-1977) was an American, and yet his detective and mystery stories were predominantly English tales, perhaps due to his English wife and the time he spent there in the thirties and forties.

john dickson carr, c. 1954
john dickson carr, c. 1954

He was the creator of Dr Gideon Fell, a larger-than life investigator modelled on the author G K Chesterton. Fell is a great figure, an eccentric, corpulent cape-flapping fellow – an amateur sleuth who sees through the mistakes of the authorities. He too was made into a radio series, this time played by another classic British actor, Donald Sinden.

Carr and Dr Fell probably deserve their own article on greydogtales, so we’ll keep this short. There were 23 Dr Fell novels, and Carr wrote many other detective mysteries besides. He also wrote an authorised biography of Arthur Conan Doyle (1949), and with Doyle’s youngest son, Adrian, wrote Sherlock Holmes stories for the collection The Exploits of Sherlock Holmes (1954). Whilst musing on this, we were surprised to find that S T Joshi, a major figure in weird fiction criticism and a Lovecraftian scholar, produced a book-length critical study of Carr, John Dickson Carr: A Critical Study (1990).

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Most of the recordings of Appointment with Fear have been lost, but one of the few surviving episodes is an original Carr tale, The Clock Strikes Eight, originally aired 05/18/1944.

Another example is And the Deep Shuddered, written by Monckton Hoffe, an Irish screenwriter, and aired 20/11/45, which can also be found on Youtube.

The Rest of the Man in Black

After Dyall, others took on the voice of the Man in Black. Revived as Fear on Four, the concept ran for five series on BBC Radio 4 (1988-1992), with Edward DeSouza in the key role. A fifth series was broadcast in 1997, but with no Man in Black.

mark gatiss
mark gatiss

The most recent revival was with Mark Gatiss reprising the role. There were four radio series featuring Gatiss between 2009 and 2011. Whilst not as sepulchral as Dyall, it’s fair to say that Gatiss does have the ability to make ordinary things sound quite unnerving, so he wasn’t a bad choice. We covered Gatiss’ recent audio version of Dracula here last year:

Come Freely, Go Safely: Dracula Returns, Scott Handcock Rules!

Although we must have missed it, apparently The Return of the Man In Black was broadcast by Radio 4 as two Archive Hour specials in October 1998. The documentaries were presented by the acclaimed horror writer Ramsey Campbell, and covered the history of fear and suspense on BBC radio. During the programmes, two complete episodes were presented: The Pit and the Pendulum (from Appointment With Fear) and The Beast With Five Fingers (from Fear On 4).

Buried under names and trivia, we leave you with Valentine Dyall, and his reading of The Pit and the Pendulum.


Sleep well…

 

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