Professor Moriarty: The Hound Of The D’urbervilles (54 page)

Geneva is not Paris. There’s nothing to do at night.

Sophy was packed off on her travels again, following the Thin Man’s traipse through verdant snowiness or whatever. She sent back mostly incident-less reports. The only thing that suggested we might have a trail left was that some lederhosen yodeller tried to shove her out of a boat on the Interlaken. She got a knife into his neck several times, and pitched him overboard. He sank through wonderfully clear waters, ribbons of red unrolling from the gills she’d put in him. Tedium had got to her and she was waxing poetic. Not a healthy thing for a woman or a murderer. An early sign of the vapours or a perverse impulse to confess.

To remind our bloodhound of his duty, we had Sophy roll a rock off a ridge at him as he ambled along the shore of the Daubensee. His deerstalker soaked by the splash, his nerves showed. She said he jumped like a grasshopper. Moriarty was not in a much better condition. In those days, he oscillated so badly I thought he’d do himself an injury. He ground his teeth and his vertebrae creaked. He covered sheets of hotel notepaper with numbers and symbols.

The staff at the Beau-Rivage were afraid of him. He was showing his skull too much. I was just red-faced and irritable. Day-old numbers of
The Times
and the
Gazette,
with further revelations from Inspector Patterson, did nothing for my humour. The Yard was clearing its books, pinning decades of unsolved crimes on ‘the Conduit Street Ring’. I admit most of the ones from the last ten years were ours, but the 1809 disappearance of Benjamin Bathurst was almost certainly not Moriarty’s doing since he’d not yet been born. Constance Kent killed her brother without our help, though the Professor owned a mosaic – Perseus, brandishing the head of Medusa – the young murderess executed while doing her stretch in Millbank.

On the 2nd of May, Sophy’s regular cipher telegram came from the Englischer Hof in Meiringen, a small Alpine village. The Thin Man was expected to arrive on the morrow and travel on to Rosenlaui, an even smaller Alpine village, going a little out of the way to visit a tourist attraction, the Reichenbach Falls. Not one of her more interesting
communiqués.
On the same tray was a telegram from Peter Steiler, who represented himself as landlord of the Englischer Hof. He broke sad news. Miss Kratides had been found dead in her locked room, a knife in her breast. She was believed to have taken her own life. In her papers was found our address in Geneva. He trusted we would accept his condolences and wondered in a polite Swiss way whether we would make (i.e. pay for) funeral arrangements. He assured us there was no urgency: even at this stage of the year, there was plentiful ice for the staving off of decay.

Ah, Sophy. I considered the loss. Dead, and never the recipient of a Basher Special.

‘The Thin Man must have tumbled her,’ I said. ‘He knew she blamed him for her brother and got his blade in first. I’d have done the same. I’d not have tricked up that locked-room mystery, though. Damn ostentatious. Detectives can’t resist going melodramatic when they turn murderer.’

‘No, Moran,’ Moriarty said, eyes shining. ‘The Thin Man won’t be in Meiringen until tomorrow. Another hand did this.’

‘Not that cretin Watson!’

Moriarty breathed the name, by now an incantation: ‘Mabuse’.

He was already paging through
Baedeker’s Guide to Switzerland and the Alps,
calculating the fastest route by scheduled train and hired trap. He was obsessed, again. Moriarty didn’t take kindly to nemeses.

‘What about the detective?’

Moriarty was impatient with details. ‘A minor matter. His usefulness is at an end. It would be untidy to leave him alive, though. Once business with Mabuse is concluded, we shall pitch him off the waterfall. A frothing torrent at its base will make a suitable last resting place for the Thin Man of Baker Street. What say you to that, Moran?’

I laid a hand on the Von Herder case. It was long past time the air rifle saw use.

Two days later, just after dawn, we entered Meiringen, a stopover for alpinists on their way to Trollenberg, waterfall aficionados on their way to Reichenbach and consumptives on their way to the grave.

The Professor called a halt just inside the village limits, and got down from the trap. He would rouse the local constabulary to enquire about the Grecian lady’s death – Moriarty going to the police! – while I was to look up this Steiler at the Englischer Hof. The Thin Man and the Thick Head were likely in residence, and Moriarty had to avoid the detective. It was less likely I would be recognised, though I’d not forgotten than impertinent index card.

‘What about Mabuse?’

‘He is either here, or he has gone,’ said the Professor, not being much help. ‘Be wary, Moran. He has proved himself incalculable.’

You can’t be as fond of dangerous pursuits as me and keep your skin
without
being habitually wary. Bravery is not the same as stupidity. Indeed, if you’ve the nerve to dance with the big cats you must always be
alert.
I resented Moriarty giving written instructions, with fifteen separate diagrams, on how to suck eggs. He should know Basher Moran better by now.

Leaving Moriarty to trudge towards the
polizei,
the trap rattled up the steep main road of Meiringen. Even this late in the season, snow piled on the pavements. It had been there since last autumn. The dirty, grey banks were studded with lumps of dog shit.
Baedeker’s
misses that detail.

Every building in sight was a
hof of
some sort. They competed for custom with themes and gimmicks. The Englischer Hof hoped to attract visitors from our shores with a Union Jack hung upside down, conveniences labelled ‘Victorias’ and ‘Alberts’ and a menu offering such British fare as ‘fish and chits’, ‘squeak and bubble’ and ‘plump duff’.

After the night’s travel, I was hungry. But not enough to risk Swiss chits for breakfast.

Leaving the trap, I realised another reason why Moriarty had got off first: he had stuck me with paying the coachman. Funds were becoming an issue. We’d left England with bandoliers full of sovereigns under our combinations. Unavoidable expenses had mounted. We’d skipped out of the Beau-Rivage, where we were registered as ‘Gilbert Smyth’ and ‘Sullivan Jones’, without settling the bill. Our London accounts (and cash stashes) were beyond reach. Our line of credit with any continental Box Brothers associate was cut off when someone shot Ueli Munster in the head. We were in danger of running out of money. If this holiday went on much longer, I might have to resort to picking pockets, getting up card games with strangers in hotels or lifting the wallets from any corpses we might leave in our wake.

Warily – yes, more than usually so – I did a recce. No assassins hidden in the snow piled up against the back of the Englischer Hof.

I entered the lobby, which adjoined the breakfast room, and assumed a downcast, solemn air. I was under orders to examine the body, then disclaim Sophy, leaving funeral costs to whoever might be stuck with them. More penny-pinching. Still, when you’re dead, you don’t care whether you’re under marble or in a sack...

However, when you’re alive, you eat breakfast.

Just as I was about to ring the desk bell, I happened to glance into the dining room. Among the tourists – several with limbs in plaster from skiing – sat Sophy Kratides, tucking into a kipper. The dead don’t, on the whole, have appetites.

Sophy saw me and was surprised. She coughed up a bone, delicately, into a napkin.

I couldn’t put the pieces together.

Then, I could. Meiringen was a killing box. A tiger pit.

For us.

I saw faces. English tourists, local guides, busy waiters, a smiling Swiss who had popped up behind the desk like a jack-in-the-box. Any could be Mabuse.

Anyone could be anyone.

I reached into my coat for my Gibbs.

‘I am Peter Steiler,’ said the Swiss, who hadn’t sent a telegram to Geneva. ‘How may I serve you, sir?’

I was calm. ‘I am joining that lady for breakfast,’ I said. ‘Bring me anything on the menu that isn’t English. And coffee.’

‘Certainly, sir.’

Smiling broadly, I sat down at Sophy’s table. Loudly, I said, ‘Hullo, old thing –’ not risking a name, since I didn’t know what she’d given at the
hof –
‘sorry I’m late and all that. Bit of bother with trains. Too used to travelling in France and Italy, don’t you know? Swiss trains actually leave according to the timetable, would you believe it? Funny kind of foreigners, eh, what? Have you heard the cricket scores?’

‘Crick-et?’ she said, equally loud, eyes wide.

‘Yes, old thing. Raffles out for a duck against the Australians!’

Coffee arrived.

Under her breath, Sophy asked, ‘What are you doing here?’

‘Waltzing into a trap, I think. You’ll note who isn’t here with me and probably saw this coming.’

Sophy took a grip on her toast knife.

All around, people were convivial. Conversation, clattering, someone trying to learn to yodel, noisome gustation. A bit too normal and busy. Then, I really saw the faces.

One of the young English lady tourists was Chinese, the Daughter of the Dragon. The dirndl-and-clogs maid who brought the coffee was Alraune, Mabuse’s odd companion. Irma Vep peeped out from behind a
Times
held upside down. She was sharing a plate of croissants with Princess Zanoni. Leaning on a broom and trying in vain to look inconspicuous was none other than the Hoxton Creeper, dressed in lederhosen and a sou’wester. A waiter trundled a trolley bearing a covered plate to our table. He lifted the cover and took up a revolver. It was Rupert of Hentzau.

‘Come down in the world, Rupert?’ I asked. ‘I hear the succession went badly for the Michaelists. A proper conspirator knows not to kill his favoured claimant in a fit of pique before the crown is on his head. Still, I didn’t think you’d have to go into service.’

Hentzau laughed, showing teeth. Sophy stuck her knife through his hand and he dropped the gun. He was still laughing when he got a look down the barrel of my Gibbs, but there were tears in his eyes.

All noise in the room had stopped.

‘Sebastian,’ said a familiar, feminine American voice. ‘Put the pistol away. One of these days, it’ll go off and you’ll do yourself an injury.’

‘Good morning, Irene,’ I said, not lowering the Gibbs.

Irene Adler was not dressed for the mountains, but for an opera set in the mountains: trim Norfolk jacket, tight britches, polished boots, dear little hat with a feather in the band. She sat herself down opposite Sophy and me. My companion reached for the pot, to fling scalding coffee at the New Jersey nightingale’s face. It was empty.

‘I thought of that, Miss Kratides,’ said
that bitch,
sweetly. ‘Rupert didn’t see the cutlery coming, though.’

The rascal was levering the knife out of his hand. I hoped marmalade would make the wound go septic. He came at Sophy, intent on cutting her nose off with her own knife.

‘Stand down, boy,’ Irene said. ‘Heel.’

Reluctantly, he stopped.

‘It’s just hired guns, then,’ I said. ‘No Jack Quartz or Nikola or Mabuse. This is below stairs.’

‘No Moriarty, either,’ she said.

I knew I could shoot Hentzau. His swordsmanship would avail him little with that injured paw, though he was a left-hand-dagger-in-the-clinch sort of fellow. With mixed feelings, I could pot Irene from where I sat. Sophy had more knives. And forks and spoons – people forget you can do damage with them too. She could take Alraune, probably Zanoni. But we’d go under. Force of numbers. Irma Vep. The Daughter of the Dragon. The Creeper. Younger, stronger, less vulnerable – plain
better.

If this was Basher Moran’s last stand, come on and let it be...

‘We want to talk about Professor Moriarty and Dr Mabuse,’ Irene said. ‘We want to talk about
diabolical masterminds,
in general. Are you prepared, Sebastian, to talk with us?’

There was a fuss at the door, which was locked.

‘I am sorry, sir,’ Peter Steiler said, out in the lobby. ‘A private party.’

‘This note says an Englishwoman needs a doctor,’ said a fatuous British voice.

Dr Watson had arrived.

Irene cocked her head. It seemed Watson had been halfway to Reichenbach with his chum, when he was recalled to Meiringen by a bogus summons to the bedside of a lady in distress. Watson was as partial to the bedsides of ladies in distress as I am to the beds of ladies who’ll probably end up in distress but won’t care about it for the next hour or two. He exchanged gasps of astonishment with Steiler as he tumbled that he’d been rooked. He used language in person that he’d never put in the
Strand.

Throughout this performance, the ‘private party’ was silent. Rupert wrapped a towel around his hand to stanch the bleeding. Irma stood up and – showing nursing skill surprising in someone who kept failing to keep her chiefs alive – made a good field dressing out of the towel. She licked her lips at the sight of blood and her eyes shone.
Les Vampires
was just a name, though – right?

Eventually, Watson cleared off.

‘We should have let him join us,’ Irene said. ‘He’s properly of our party, too. In thrall to... well, we could hardly say an
angelic mastermind,
could we? Not of someone who ditches his own sidekick as he goes to confront his destiny.’

What of Moriarty and Mabuse?

I wasn’t there, so I can’t tell you of their last encounter. And neither left a record.

Mabuse had a face in Meiringen, of course. The police captain – captain of two constables and a carthorse, at least – Moriarty had called on. Alraune, Mabuse’s date at the Thoroughgood funeral, told Irene that much, though she was as in the dark about his stratagems as we all were about those whose standards we flew. Ties of blood, bed, tradition and terror did not entitle us to be in the know.

Not all of those present at breakfast in the Englischer Hof were declaring independence. The Daughter of the Dragon, though she later set herself against her father for the love of some white fool, thought a thinning out of the lesser mastermind population would benefit the Si-Fan. It was a Moriarty trick: the Battle of the Six Maledictions all over again. This time, only two – three, if we counted the Thin Man – players were to take each other off the board.