Three Men in the Dark Read online

  Copyright

  HarperCollinsPublishers

  1 London Bridge Street

  London SE1 9GF

  www.harpercollins.co.uk

  First published in Great Britain by Equation 1989

  Introduction © Hugh Lamb 2017

  Cover design by Mike Topping © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2017

  Cover images © Shutterstock.com

  A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

  Source ISBN: 9780008249052

  Ebook Edition © November 2017 ISBN: 9780008249069

  Version: 2017-10-04

  Dedication

  For two friends of mine, Mike Ashley and the late Richard Dalby.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Introduction - Hugh Lamb

  The Skeleton – Jerome K. Jerome

  The Moon-slave – Barry Pain

  The Undying Thing – Barry Pain

  Purification – Robert Barr

  The End of a Show – Barry Pain

  The Haunted Mill – Jerome K. Jerome

  Introduction

  The Haunted Mill

  The Unfinished Game – Barry Pain

  The Glass of Supreme Moments – Barry Pain

  The Vengeance of the Dead – Robert Barr

  Smeath – Barry Pain

  The Woman of the Saeter – Jerome K. Jerome

  The Green Light – Barry Pain

  The Snake – Jerome K. Jerome

  The Hour and the Man – Robert Barr

  The Case of Vincent Pyrwhit – Barry Pain

  Not According to the Code – Robert Barr

  Linda – Barry Pain

  Silhouettes – Jerome K. Jerome

  The Tower – Barry Pain

  The Four-fingered Hand – Barry Pain

  Transformation – Robert Barr

  The Gray Cat – Barry Pain

  The Dancing Partner – Jerome K. Jerome

  An Alpine Divorce – Robert Barr

  The Mystery of Black Rock Creek

  Chapter I – Jerome K. Jerome

  Chapter II – Eden Phillpotts

  Chapter III – E.F. Benson

  Chapter IV – Frank Frankfort Moore

  Chapter V – Barry Pain

  Bibliography

  Acknowledgements

  About the Publisher

  INTRODUCTION

  Say ‘Jerome K. Jerome’ to anyone reasonably well read and back comes Three Men in a Boat, every time. Press further and one in a hundred might say ‘plays’. One in a thousand, if that, would say ghost stories. This is the price Jerome K. Jerome has paid for having one big literary hit – his other works have faded into undeserved obscurity.

  Three Men in a Boat first appeared 128 years ago and it is still in print. There is even a Jerome Society, based in his home town of Walsall. Yet few people have read or know of his tales of terror. This is ironic, for he rubbed literary shoulders with such personal friends as H. Rider Haggard, Conan Doyle, Arthur Machen and H.G. Wells, whose works in this vein have all survived in print with no trouble.

  My original idea was to compile a book of Jerome’s tales of terror alone. However, I soon found that, good as they are, there just aren’t enough of them to make up a decent sized book. So, and I hope even better, I have edited a book of stories by Jerome and two of his friends and contemporaries, Robert Barr and Barry Pain, both of whom wrote stories in this vein as good as Jerome’s but whose work has suffered the same neglect as Jerome’s stories. All three are connected by magazine work – Jerome and Barr founded one, and Jerome and Pain both edited another. Pain and Jerome were old friends; Barr and Jerome worked closely together. There was only 14 years’ age difference between them and they all died in their sixties. Together they make fascinating reading.

  Jerome Klapka Jerome was born in Walsall on 2 May 1859, the son of Jerome Clapp Jerome, a coal-mine owner on Cannock Chase. The two middle names of father and son, peculiar as they are, are not connected. Clapp comes from Clapa, a tenth-century Dane reputed to have founded the house of Jerome; Klapka was the name of an exiled Hungarian general, a friend of the family.

  Jerome senior ran into bad luck when his mine flooded and he moved his family to London, where (for reasons unknown) he set up an ironmongery business in Limehouse. Jerome junior grew up in Poplar and was educated at Marylebone grammar school. After leaving school at 14, he wandered from job to job, trying his hand at work in a solicitor’s office, a railway clerk and teaching. He also tried acting and, while he was no roaring success, it did give him the background for his first book On the Stage and Off (1888). This was a success and led to his next two books, The Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow and Three Men in a Boat (1889).

  Three Men in a Boat was largely autobiographical, being based on Jerome’s much-loved pleasure boating on the Thames and the three men were based on Jerome and his friends. As he put it: ‘I did not intend to write a funny book at first. I did not know I was a humorist. [It] was really a history, I did not have to imagine or invent. Boating up and down the Thames has been my favourite sport ever since I could afford it. I just put down the things that happened.’ Idle Thoughts was published by Andrew Tuer’s Leadenhall Press (then known as Field and Tuer). Tuer himself had as good a sense of humour as Jerome: he called each 1,000 copies of the book an ‘edition’ and was able to advertise the book’s 23rd edition in a matter of months.

  As well as his books, Jerome turned to journalism. He rapidly established a reputation as a writer, so much so that it led to an important meeting with Robert Barr.

  Robert Barr was born in Glasgow on 16 September 1850 and his family emigrated to Canada when he was four years old. He was educated in Toronto and he started work as a teacher. It is reported that he was the headmaster of a public school at Windsor, Canada until 1876 (which meant he was a young headmaster indeed). In 1876 he married, and around this time, moved over the border into America, taking up a job as a reporter on the Detroit Free Press. He made such a success of it that the proprietors sent him to Britain in 1881 to set up a British edition. It is hard to believe that, even in the 1880s when papers were avidly read in all kinds of forms, a newspaper called the Detroit Free Press would be a major success in the Home Counties but it does seem that Barr made a go of it.

  Barr used the pseudonym Luke Sharp for much of his journalism, as well as a splendid send-up of a famous detective, in The Adventures of Sherlaw Kombs (1892), and it was under this nom de plume that he published his first book Strange Happenings (1883). He mainly used his own name thereafter and quickly built up a reputation for his writing, generally in magazines but also in an interestingly long list of books.

  It was nine years before he published another book under his own name, the skilled collection of stories From a Steamer Chair (1892). He is now mainly remembered, by crime fiction enthusiasts, for his crime novels and detective stories. He invented the renowned sleuth Eugene Valmont, claimed to have been the model for Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot. He kept up his output of books right up to his somewhat early death on 21 October 1912.

  Barr’s meeting with Jerome in 1892 resulted in The Idler, one of the most notable magazines of the era, first appearing in February 1892. Jerome recounts the circumstances: ‘The Idler was Barr’s idea. But the title was mine. Barr had made the English edition of the Detroit Free Press quite a good property, and was keen to start something of his own. He wanted a popular name and, at first, was undecided between Kipling and myself. He chose me – as, speaking somewhat bitterly, he later on confessed to me – thinking I should be the easier to “manage”. He had not liked the look of Kipling’s jaw.’

  Kipling was obviously not offended for he contributed to The Idler in company with the major literary names of the day. This illustrated monthly magazine attracted names like Marie Corelli, George Bernard Shaw, Hall Caine, Eden Phillpotts, G.R. Sims and Conan Doyle. The division of editorial responsibility between Jerome and Barr is not clear but Jerome seems to have spent a lot of time on his other love, drama (and here he made an even bigger reputation).

  Jerome’s autobiography My Life and Times (1926) reveals him to be the most dreadful name dropper, but it is full of little snippets for the ghost story enthusiast. He knew Arthur Machen: ‘he has developed into a benevolent looking white haired gentleman. He might be one of the brothers Cheeryble stepped out of Nicholas Nickleby … for ability to create an atmosphere of nameless terror, I can think of no author living or dead who comes near him.’

  H. Rider Haggard, meanwhile, was ‘a somewhat solemn gentleman, taking himself always very seriously. Mrs Barry Pain was the only one of us who would venture to chaff him.’

  The Idler started a ritual which still goes on today among contributors to Private Eye: all those involved used to gather for a monthly lunch with whoever cared to attend, to swop ideas and gossip and plan future issues.

  Mrs Barry Pain, the chaffer of Rider Haggard, shared her husband’s renown as a playwright. Barry Pain himself, the youngest of the trio and the most prolific, was born in Cambridge either on 28 September or 22 October 1864 (he is reliably listed as being born on both dates), the son of a draper. He was educated at Sedbergh school, where he edited the school magazine, and went on to Cambridge. A fellow student of Pain, E.F. Benson recalls in his Our Family Affairs (1920) that when Benson started up a college magazine, Pain ‘sent us one of the best parodies in the language, called “The Poets at Tea”, in which Wordsworth, Tennyson, Christina Rossetti, Swinburne and others were ludicrously characteristic of themselves. He also tried to galvanize the Cambridge Fortnightly into life by one or more admirable short stories.’ We shall hear more of Pain’s stories later.

  When he graduated in 1886, Pain spent four years rather surprisingly as an army coach at Guildford. He moved to London in 1890 and started writing seriously for a living, making regular contributions to magazines. His first book, In a Canadian Canoe, appeared in 1891; this was a selection of revised stories he had first published in, among others, Benson’s Cambridge Fortnightly.

  Short stories were Pain’s forte; he was to publish over a dozen books of them, including the noted Stories in the Dark (1901).

  Pain and Jerome met and became friends. This friendship was to aid Jerome considerably in the troubled circumstances in which he was to find himself.

  In 1892, Jerome, ever active, founded a weekly paper called Today, which was to be different from The Idler but carried fine illustrations from the likes of Sidney Sime and Aubrey Beardsley. It was by all accounts a fine work but one of the most troubled of the day.

  The very first issue, February 1892, caused Jerome to sue his printer for bad workmanship. Jerome won his case but was awarded damages of one farthing. This sum was to prove grotesquely ironic for Jerome.

  Four years later Jerome himself was sued over an article in Today concerning a process claiming to make domestic gas out of water. The inventor of the process, Samson Fox, took Jerome to court for libel. Fox won his case and was awarded damages – of one farthing. Far more serious, however, was the matter of costs which fell on both parties. Fox had to find £11,000 and Jerome was obliged to pay £9,000. In those days such a sum could mean financial ruin (today’s equivalent is probably over half a million pounds).

  The expense meant that Jerome had to sell his interests in both The Idler and Today, and his old friend Barry Pain took over as editor of Today.

  Jerome’s literary career continued apace, however, proving his financial saviour. He found fame as a dramatist with his 1908 play The Passing of the Third Floor Back, and wrote other successes including The Master of Mrs Chilvers (1911) and The Great Gamble (1914). He encountered Bram Stoker, then manager of the Lyceum theatre, who Jerome recalls sending out complimentary invitations to opening nights by going through Burke’s Peerage, thus ensuring the stalls would be filled with enough important people to warrant a good report in the next day’s papers.

  He was a great traveller, all over Europe and Russia, and lived abroad for many years. He was particularly fond of Germany. The First World War put both he and Pain on the spot.

  Jerome liked the Germans but detested German militarism. For that reason he volunteered to fight but was turned down. He got round this by driving an ambulance for the French army (the French not being too bothered about employing a 55-year-old for war service), returning home in early 1917. Jerome was also one of the few voices brave enough to speak out in disbelief over the atrocities reportedly committed by the Germans, earning himself much vilification: ‘It was these stories of German atrocities that first caused me to doubt whether this really was a Holy War.’ Brave words in the hysterical, patriotic fever of 1914 Britain.

  Pain, meanwhile, was just as keen as Jerome to do his bit, but no less disqualified through his age. He managed to join the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve’s anti-aircraft section in April 1915 and found himself operating a searchlight on Parliament Hill. His eyes failed him and he had to abandon this, becoming in 1917 a member of the London Appeal Tribunal, adjudicating on claims for exemption from military service.

  Robert Barr had died in 1912. Pain and Jerome both got through the war unscathed, and returned to writing. Pain produced some less humorous works, like his rather offbeat novel, The Later Years (1927). Jerome worked on his autobiography and some more plays.

  Jerome went on a motoring tour in May 1927. He suffered a brain haemorrhage and was rushed to Northampton hospital where he died on 14 June. He is buried at Ewelm churchyard, near Oxford, with his sister and stepdaughter, near the place in which he lived for many years. Funeral services were held at Golders Green and Walsall.

  Jerome would have probably borrowed, for one of his comic characters, the name of the officiating clergyman at Golders Green: the Reverend Herbert Trundle.

  Barry Pain, the last survivor of the trio, died within the year, at Watford on 5 May 1928.

  Jerome, Pain and Barr all turned their hand to writing tales of terror. I use the expression ‘tales of terror’ in preference to ‘ghost story’, for unlike the bulk of their Victorian contemporaries, not one of them seemed to be interested in ghost stories per se.

  Jerome’s only book of ghost stories Told After Supper (1891) was an alarmingly accurate send-up of the Dickens school of supernatural fiction.

  Robert Barr wrote few ghost stories, being more interested in what could loosely be termed crime fiction; Barry Pain’s stories were just plain odd.

  Rather than group each author’s stories together in a stodgy lump, I have arranged them in the best order I can find. It gives them extra reading value to compare them with each other.

  Jerome proves to be surprisingly versatile in his choice of material. ‘The Dancing Partner’, from Novel Notes (1893), is probably his most widely known work in this vein, yet has not lost its appeal through over-exposure. Oddly neglected but from the same source as ‘The Dancing Partn er’ are ‘The Skeleton’ and ‘The Snake’, two short but sharp pieces. ‘Silhouettes’ (from the very first issue of The Idler) and ‘The Woman of the Saeter’ are strange stories indeed. Jerome wrote of these two: ‘[They] are not intended to be amusing. I should be glad if they were judged from some other standpoint than humour.’ You’ll see what he meant. ‘The Woman of the Saeter’ is straightforward enough, but what on earth he was trying to achieve in ‘Silhouettes’ is another matter altogether. What sort of humorist could write the paragraph starting ‘From these sea-scented scenes, my memory travels …’? The story could hardly be an incident from his father’s coal mining days – if so, it is not recorded anywhere else – and is probably the most unfunny thing he ever wrote.

  Jerome himself may have given us a clue. He said in his autobiography: ‘I can see the humorous side of things and enjoy the fun when it comes; but look where I will, there always seems to me more sadness than joy in life … having won success as a humorist, I immediately became serious. I have a kink in my brain, I suppose. I can’t help it.’ Quite frankly, ‘Silhouettes’ reads like the writing of a manic-depressive on a downward spell. If Jerome could lose his sense of humour, or even doubt if he had one to start with, then his humorous writing takes on a whole new slant.

  Barry Pain, on the other hand, seemed to have no such worries. His main claim to fame was the Eliza series of books, the musings and adventures of a London housewife. Other works for which he may be remembered are De Omnibus (1901), the ramblings of a bus driver; and the creation of the likeable criminal Constantine Dix.

  His weird stories range widely in their themes. ‘The Undying Thing’ deals with what seems to be a werewolf survival; ‘The Green Light’ with the conscience of a murderer; ‘Smeath’ is a harsh tale of a hunchback and a conman; ‘The Glass of Supreme Moments’ tells of a mirror that lures men to their deaths.

  Pain seems most at home in the genre and is probably the writer out of the three with the most modern appeal.

  Robert Barr, on the other hand, was somewhat ahead of his time in the stories included here. He produced a book called Revenge! (1896) which both employed the plot devices of the conte cruel and pre-dated the neat, twist endings of so many of the crime pulp stories of the 1930s and 1940s. Perhaps the best example is ‘An Alpine Divorce’ which would not be out of place in TV’s Tales of the Unexpected.