To make a change, today a little unpublished fiction from greydog – three short, instructive vignettes concerning Mr Dry, the Deptford Assassin. If you do not know of him, then these three will explain quite a lot…
“Oh, and by the by, have you met Edwin Dry? No? Then you’ve not yet encountered one of the most ghastly characters in modern strange fiction.”
—Matthew M Bartlett, author of Creeping Waves and Gateway to Abomination
1. HAMMERSMITH, IN THE DRY SEASON
The office of James Henry Grange, Superintendent of Police for T Division, is cramped by nature, and the more so for the unwelcome presence of Scotland Yard. Sharp sunlight catches far too many polished buttons, and hurts Grange’s eyes. His visitor is brusque and self-assured.
“There were three murders in your division’s territory this August, superintendent, yet I have seen not a single file which might enlighten me as to your investigations.”
“No, sir. You have not.”
“And why, pray, is that?” The commissioner paces, waiting for incompetence to expose itself.
Grange tugs at his moustache, flexes fingers which ache from hours of writing mundane reports.
“Three murders indeed, sir,” he says. “No connection between the victims, no sighting of any possible perpetrator, no common touch in how they were killed. No logic of family, trade or geography, excepting that they were, as you say, within my division; no shred of evidence or betraying mark at the scenes. A precise death for each, within seconds. Wire, knife and bullet.”
The visitor scowls at this litany of absences. “But you have informants, man!”
“I have. Not a one of them will even pause for coin. They are mute, sir, more like to throw themselves from Marlborough Wharf than speak a certain name…”
The commissioner halts, his last step an awkward shuffle of boot on polished floor.
“You are implying–”
“I am informing you, sir, as to why there are no files to peruse – and why I will not send my men into the darkness only to fail or perish.”
The commissioner swears, a most ungodly oath which would appal his wife. “Then it is…” He will not say the name.
“It appears so,” agrees Grange.
A bead of sweat forms on the senior officer’s newly-shaven upper lip, and he makes for the door, strangely eager to be down his club and discussing his modest portfolio of shares, the weather, anything but Hammersmith.
The two men never speak of this again.
In the August of 1895, Mr Dry passed through Hammersmith. He found the experience lucrative, but unchallenging…
“In his stark and sinister Victorian England, a resourceful heroine must pit her psychic gifts against the dangerous skills of a chilling assassin. Grant has achieved something altogether rare: a genuinely unique take on the Jack the Ripper murders, in which the famous killer is actually upstaged by the author’s original creations.”
—Amanda DeWees, author of A Haunting Reprise and The Last Serenade
2. PASSING TRADE
Martin Gray was seventeen and a half years old, a tall youngster who was blessed with a kind heart and clear skin, the Good Lord’s compensatory gestures- somebelieved- for making Martin the only child of a shiftless father and a drunken mother. As a result of diligence at school, and after repudiation of his family, he had been taken on as a junior assistant by Geo. Smails, Gentleman’s Outfitter (Mr Smails being awash with daughters). The boy had modest ambitions, and a good eye for the breadth of a man’s shoulders, the way in which a particular stride might require adjustment to trouser hems.
The customer before him this morning did not seek adjustments. He required a hat, a bowler hat, which was exactly the same as the one he was currently wearing.
Martin did his best, but his hands shook as he sorted through the neatly labelled hat boxes; his voice quavered as he requested that the man repeat his size (how could he have forgotten that?). And in the end, a suitable bowler in his hands, he said it. He could not help himself.
“I… I did see you. In the alley, that night by the presbytery in Hoxton – and then they said… they wrote in The Courier that Father Groves was dead, slaughtered…”
Mr Edwin Dry, who was neither tall nor young, regarded the assistant. Eyes which might have been faded blue or deepest black seemed to be considering the future of Martin Gray.
“His throat was half sliced through like soft cheese, said the papers,” the boy continued, “And after, all that gossip, and him accused of such things as a man of God could surely not have…”
Martin’s own throat tightened, as if it felt the garotting wire start to bite; his lungs were unable to force out the rest of what he wanted to say, wanted to ask.
“And will these no doubt interesting facts,” asked the most feared assassin in London, perhaps in Europe, “Make it difficult for you to supply me also with five imperial collars, lightly starched?”
“N-no, sir.”
Mr Dry examined the new bowler, and gave a satisfied nod.
“Then all is relatively well in this sorry world,” he said, and brought out his pocket-book, that he might pay for his acquisitions…
Martin Gray married the generously built Georgina Smails, and lived to be seventy eight, with four healthy grandchildren. There is no official record of the birth, life or death of Edwin Dry.
“Mr Edwin Dry, the Deptford Assassin, is one of the most evocative presences in modern dark fiction – precise, relentless, inexorable.”
—Paul St John Mackintosh, author of Blowback
3. MR DRY MAKES A JOKE
He has killed with a seamstress’s needle, and with a Catholic bible; with a rigid finger and with a studded boot. To be owned by, to be fixated on a particular weapon or method, is a sentimentality to which soldiers, murderers and children cling. But he does favour the blade, for its silence and its ready interest in the work…
The moon above Lincoln’s Inn is white and lifeless, a disc cut from an artist’s canvas; it is indifferent to two shadows in a doorway.
“You signed papers, Mr Kempton,” says Mr Dry, stepping lightly forward. “You forged; you bore false witness. Debtor’s gaol and the workhouse awaited those families you served so badly.”
The lawyer presses himself against the locked door, his fingers slick on a handle which will not turn.
“And you… you believe yourself to be justice?” Kempton manages to whine. His jowls are fat lamb and aged port, all atremble above a stiff collar.
Mr Dry reflects on this. “No, I would not say justice. Dear me, no. I am merely what you might term a learned colleague – a prosecutor who prefers to engage out of court.” He smooths a crease in the left sleeve of his jacket, and slips a gleam of steel from the sheath at the small of his back. “Shall you hear my argument now?”
Afterwards, a nightingale can be heard, the distant trill of a creature lost in its own concerns. The dead man does not raise an objection as Mr Dry cleans his blade, his exquisite blade, on robes of office which are no longer required. The Deptford Assassin lets the expensive material slide between his fingers, and finds it adequate.
“It seems that tonight I have taken silk,” he murmurs as he strides away.
Mr Dry was not entirely without humour.
“John Linwood Grant has managed to create one of the most interesting and exciting characters to come along in some time: the enigmatic assassin, Mr. Dry. Possessed of great criminal and murderous ability, Mr. Dry is a power unto himself, moving like an unstoppable force of nature against evil and, sometimes, justice.”
—Sam Gafford, author of Whitechapel and The Dreamer in Fire
Mr Dry, the Deptford Assassin, can be found in The Assassin’s Coin, by John Linwood Grant; the composite novel 13 Miller’s Court by the talented Alan M Clark and the tolerable John Linwood Grant, and in the short story collection A Persistence of Geraniums by John Linwood Grant.
greydog’s Amazon author pages