"Mr Lanyard's Last Case" appeared in the 2017 anthology Eight Ghosts: The English Heritage Book of New Ghost Stories, edited by Rowan Routh. "Mr Lanyard's Last Case" is definitely the jewel of the collection, and will please connoisseurs of the M. R. James-style historical tale.
"Mr Lanyard's Last Case" takes place in the aftermath of the Battle of Culloden (1746). The narrator, a clerk for prosecutor Lanyard, begins:
....there was no mention in James Lanyard's obituary this morning of the true circumstances that had led to his withdrawal from public and professional life these past ten years, simply a brief sentence regretting the nervous illness that had overcome him at the Jacobite trials and brought to an end what had been a long and formidable career at the Bar. Some might recall the rumours about what had happened at Carlisle Castle, but only those of us who had been there would know how to separate those rumours from the truth. There was talk of ghosts and spirits (and that Mr Lanyard had in fact been haunted until the day he died in his house on the edge of the Heath) but those are words for a fireside story and inadequate for the real world.
While at Carlisle they board with Doctor McEwan, who attends to prisoners in the castle dungeon.
'Is it so bad as that?' I said.
'Three hundred men in a room you could pace out in less than two dozen steps, Mr Gregory,' he said, 'I would call it worse than bad.'
When the court cases begin at the castle:
The first two days of hearings were successful and [Lanyard] managed to suppress his pains well enough to secure a good number of convictions. He was eloquent and shrewd in his questioning, and the judges commended him on his preparations. But during adjournments he was on edge and developed the habit of brushing the back of his hand, as though a spider had crawled across it. He was nauseous too and frequently called the servants to bring more water. It was the smell of the courtroom, perhaps, that affected him.
The prisoners were given a cursory sousing in the yard outside before they were presented to the judges, but this only served to make them seem more wretched in a way. Their beards dripped like the matted tails of hill-sheep, they bled from sores that would not heal, and despite the bucket of water that the soldiers had thrown at each of them, they were still soiled to the knees as if they had emerged from a sewer. The odour became so strong in the afternoons that one of the judges, Mr Clark, ordered that after every third hearing the floor be swept. With fresh straw laid down and the benches strewn with rosemary, the air was improved considerably, and yet it seemed to make no difference to Mr Lanyard. He sweated and swallowed and could hardly get through his questions without his voice deteriorating into a coughing fit.
Lanyard's physical sufferings multiply:
The sixth day of the trials proved to be Mr Lanyard's last. After that he could do no more and did not set foot in a courtroom again.
His final case was that of a man called Fraser, captured when the castle fell. Like many of the Scottish prisoners, he spoke little English, and so the procedure was doubled in length while questions and answers were passed back and forth through the translator.
His case was like so many others that we'd heard day after day. Being a clansman, his chief had ordered him to fight and because he had been ordered to fight he could not refuse. If he had, then his cattle would have been taken from him and his house torn down. It was a claim corroborated by the witness for the Defence, who had seen Mr Fraser pressed into service in the most brutal manner, but refuted by two other men captured after the siege and turned King's evidence.
The first, from the Cameron clan, said that he knew Fraser well and that he had seen the man leading troops at the Battle of Falkirk. The second, of the clan Gordon, matched the statement and added that he had been garrisoned with Fraser at Carlisle to hold up Cumberland as he pursued the Young Pretender's army north. He swore on the life of King George that what he said was true and when Mr Lanyard, dabbing his brow with a handkerchief, put this to him, the prisoner answered, 'Tha e coma mu Rìgh Deòrsa.'
'He says that the witness cares nothing for King George,' the translator said.
'No?' said Mr Lanyard, coughing into his fist. 'Then why does he give evidence against you?'
The translator asked Fraser the question, who replied, 'B' fhearr leis gu robh mi marbh.'
'He says that Mr Gordon wants him dead, sir,' the translator explained.
'Then Mr Gordon must be assured of your guilt,' said Mr Lanyard.
'Pardon me, sir,' the translator said, 'the defendant says that Mr Gordon wants him dead, but not for treason.'
'You have committed some other crime?' said Mr Lanyard.
Fraser said that he had not, but that Mr Gordon thought so.
Mr Lanyard frowned and said, 'He thinks so? What crime does he accuse you of?' and as the question was being put to Fraser by the translator, Mr Lanyard jerked his hand as though he had been touched. He looked behind him, looked down, in fact.
'Is there something troubling you, Mr Lanyard?' asked Mr Clark.
Mr Lanyard touched his fingers and stared at the bare floorboards.
'No, my lord,' he said.
'Do you have anything else to ask the defendant?' said Mr Clark.
Mr Lanyard wiped his brow with the sleeve of his robe. 'Might I request that the floor is cleared, my lord?' he said. 'The smell is stifling.'
'The floor will be swept at the end of the session, Mr Lanyard,' said Mr Clark. 'If you are unwell, then I shall adjourn.'
'A moment, my lord,' said Mr Lanyard and sat down heavily in his chair and drank the cup of water I poured for him. But he had taken no more than a mouthful before he jerked his arm as if he had been squeezed on the elbow and soaked the papers in front of him.
'What is it, Mr Lanyard?' I asked, but he was looking behind his chair.
Voices began to murmur around the room and Mr Clark struck his gavel on the block.
'Mr Lanyard,' he said. 'I ask again. Are you unwell, sir?'
'Who is it?' said Mr Lanyard. 'There is someone here. My hand.'
He held it at arm's length, as though it did not belong to him. His palm and his fingers dripped with the same slurry that coated Fraser's shins.
The defendant and the witnesses looked at one another and the noise in the courtroom increased enough for Mr Clark to sound his gavel a second time.
Mr Lanyard twitched again and now his other hand was soiled.
'What is this trickery?' he said and started from his chair as quickly as his body would allow, his eyes moving as though he was watching the progress of a wasp around the courtroom. He let out a cry and crouched by one of the windows with his hands over his ears as if some loud, piercing noise had suddenly erupted.
Every man in the courtroom was on his feet now, Mr Clark's demands for silence having no effect. Fraser, Cameron and Gordon argued as the bailiffs kept them separated. And through it all Mr Lanyard sobbed like a child, and was still curled up, mired in his robes, when the courtroom had been cleared and Doctor McEwan arrived.
Hurley employs a sober tone, giving the reader a cold collation of crises and shocks within the grim context of accumulating menace as Lanyard's torments lead to a final revelation. "Mr Lanyard's Last Case" is a finely balanced and unforgettable ghost story.
* * *
"Hunger" appeared in the 2020 anthology Strange Tales: Tartarus Press at 30, edited by Rosalie Parker. (It is a curiously flaccid collection of stories; most writers, seeking a "strange" topos, just end up with flat, abstract, and perfunctory fragments. "The Wardian Case" by D.P. Watt achieves a devastating horror in its beautifully orchestrated denouement, and "These Pale and Fragile Shells" by John Linwood Grant offers a unique vision of a menacing chalk landscape.) "Hunger" is clearly the finest story in the book: a real and satisfying beginning-middle-and-end story.
In his 1978 monograph Elegant Nightmares: The English Ghost Story from Le Fanu, author Jack Williamson wrote about "thickening inevitability" as a keystone in the finest supernatural stories of the 1880-1940 period. "Hunger" epitomizes this storytelling strategy; it is a masterpiece of thickening inevitability.
Julian is on vacation alone in an isolated French village.
....In Épine le Bois, he hadn't heard any voices at all, not even the bark of a dog, and he assumed that if anyone did live here, they endured solitary lives. Perhaps there was some ancient monsieur who pottered about in the back rooms of his house, or a large gouty widow who hobbled up to Saint Nicholas de Pitié for confession. Yet, if such people did exist, he'd surely have seen them by now.
Julian discovers that other village houses have been shuttered and deserted: even the food in pantries has been removed.
Contravening a prohibition against fishing on 1 August, Julian finds the rural silence shifting: from novel to menacing.
....attracted by the coolness of so much stone, he found the church empty.
It was unkempt but not unloved; the onslaught of dry rot and scepticism had been kept at bay for now by the ministrations of a loyal few who still cared that the candles were lit and the window-sconces were dressed with flowers.
They hadn't managed to keep the place secure, though. All down the main aisle, names had been scratched out of the brass plaques dedicated to the local noblesse and the marble slabs on the walls had gone the same way. It was the work of vandals rather than thieves, he thought. Plenty remained that could have been stolen. The lead crystal vases. The honesty box by the rack of tealights.
Perhaps the intruders had been made to think again by the statue of Saint Nicholas.
It was a life-sized image of a goodly man, balding and bearded; a fatherly figure accosted by almost skeletal children who clung expectantly to his robes. With his fingers tented in prayer, Saint Nicholas looked up to heaven with the anguished face of an El Greco martyr, his lips open as if he were voicing the words engraved into the plinth: pardonnez-nous.
At his feet, which had been recently washed, lay a dead child, the eyes staring, the mouth gaping like the fish Julian had landed that afternoon.
The realism of it all was unsettling and he went back outside and sat in the shade to wait for the sound of Stewart's car, for the sound of anything.
The hands of the church clock made the angle of nine and still no bells rang. He should like to have listened to them from here, he thought, spilling into so much space.
With Mizzac being on a hill, the pastureland of the département spread out all the way to the Monts Est, the line of wooded peaks on the horizon. The setting sun was catching the trees there now, turning them amber. The fields in between were a green gold, stitched together in places by the shadows of poplars. Windows of farmhouses miles off blazed too brightly to look at for long. There were other villages there somewhere, ones that Stewart had suggested they visit while they were here —La Coutier or Angêline or Beaucroix. They couldn't all be empty. There must have been people out there. But he couldn't be sure. Nothing moved. Not a tractor in any of the meadows or a car on any of the roads.
....why was there such a desperate petition for forgiveness—pardonnez-nous.
With the words on his mind, he noticed them everywhere now as he made his way back through Mizzac. They were carved into tree trunks. Painted on gates. Chalked by children onto the road.
As dusk approaches:
There was such a strong sense of expectancy outside that it put him on edge. It was what had made him hurry the last hundred yards on the lane.
Once in the house, denouement:
The windowpanes of the front door were suddenly filled with palms and faces distorted by the bullseye glass. The bell was pulled, the wood was kicked, and there came a snuffling sound like that of dogs.
Behind him, in the kitchen someone gave the handle of the casement a few investigative twists. On the roof, several others seemed to be crawling about, dislodging the tiles. He thought of the apple on the bedside table that he'd taken up with him the night before to have while he read. He hadn't wanted it then, but he wanted it now. It belonged to him. He needed it more.
He made for the stairs, hearing the window in the kitchen break and the frame of the front door splinter under the pounding of hands.
At the landing, his strength left him and he felt faint enough to lose his balance. He'd never been so aware of his own weight before. Nor fallen so hard. He lay on the rug, smelling damp and dust, his stomach tight and burning for want of an apple.
There were feet on the stairs and then children, like the ones who tugged at Saint Nicholas's skirts, appeared out of the gloom, their eyes as bulbous as the eyes of fish. The doors downstairs gave way, and the rest of the windows fell in. More and more children came, the bigger ones crawling over the runts.
Julian felt himself touched and sniffed, the flesh of his face squeezed and appreciated. And then the first bite was taken.
* * *
Andrew Michael Hurley has published several well-received novels. I have not read them; I lack the patience and concentration demanded by novels. But the two short stories discussed above, both of which I read twice today, are first-rate. I hope Hurley continues to pursue work in the short story form.
Jay
7 July 2021
