The Execution of Sherlock Holmes (38 page)

The photographs showed a man in outdoor clothes striding towards, or from, an ill-painted door in a dark courtyard of some kind. It was plain that these were images obtained secretly, perhaps from a passing vehicle, of a man who had no idea that he was the object of interest. The quality of the prints suffered a little from the conditions under which they were taken.

Several of them gave a clear view of a man who was dark-haired and a little stooped, though with something of a military bearing. He had a withered look to him, beyond his years. In my own medical practice I often connect this last symptom with foreign or colonial service. There had been a good deal of that as France acquired her colonies along the Mediterranean coast of North Africa. From what I could see of him, he looked little enough like a count or, indeed, an Italian assassin.

‘It is incredible!’ I said as I stared at the monochrome portraits.

‘Not in the least. Even after all my captors were accounted for, I thought we might hear from one or two of their friends. For me, this is not a matter of jewels and baubles, Watson. Let us call it a contest to see whether Colonel Moriarty shall live in peace and safety. It is plain that neither he nor I can do so while the other remains alive. That is what will bring him to London. Once in London, of course, he will not resist the Queen of the Night, even without a counterfeit to switch for the real clasp.’

‘Can you be so sure?’

He looked at me thoughtfully.

‘You will recall, Watson, the matter of the tie-pin.’

‘I cannot say that I do. Which tie-pin is that?’

‘It is a green emerald tie-pin, in the form of a serpent of Aesculapius. Professor Moriarty was wearing it on that late afternoon in the mist at the falls of Reichenbach. When at last he fell to his death, for one of us must fall to end that long struggle, the weight of his body as he went backwards ripped it from his shirt and it came off in my grasp. Even before he hit the rocks in the torrent, so many hundreds of feet below, I had slipped it in my pocket.’

‘Where is it now?’

‘That is the point, my dear fellow.’

He pushed towards me another item from the envelope, a cutting from a newspaper,
Paris Soir
, dated some weeks ago. The column carried a small announcement in English that if Colonel James Moriarty of the Rue des Charbonniers would call at the Banque de l’Orient in the Avenue de l’Opera, he would find something to his advantage.

‘He has it now?’ I asked.

‘For some weeks past. I asked to be informed when it was collected. You may depend upon it, he will recognize what it is. I admit the device is less picturesque than throwing down one’s gauntlet in the days of chivalry. Yet he has determined to exact vengeance from me and I can do no more than offer myself. You may depend upon it, he will be in London when the new king is crowned. I would go so far as to say that he will put up at the Dashwood Club in Curzon Street.’

‘Named after Sir Francis Dashwood of the Hellfire Club in the 1760s!’

‘That tells one of its reputation, does it not?’

*
‘The Case of the Unseen Hand’ in Donald Thomas,
The Secret Cases of Sherlock Holmes,
New York: Carroll
&
Graf, 1998.

By the evening, I was in a solemn mood. The thought of Colonel James Moriarty evoked all the old fears and perils from which we had so lately escaped. After supper, however, my friend pushed back his chair, got up from the table, and crossed to the fireplace, where he stood with his back to it, hands clasped behind him.

‘My dear fellow, there really is no cause for such gloom. The game will be won by he who has knowledge on his side. I have devoted a little time to repairing the gaps in our acquaintance with a man who must now be our prime adversary. Colonel Moriarty, as his name suggests, was once a military man and a member of the gentry. To this day he is curiously but legitimately the lord of the manor of Copyhold Barton in the county of Dorset. Unfortunately, behind this grand hereditary title he owns not a square inch of land in Copyhold Barton or elsewhere. He has fallen so low that he haunts the worst districts of Paris. His habitation is among the apache street robbers of Montmartre and the ladies of the twilight in the Avenue de Clichy or the Parc de Monceau. That is his true manor and in it he is lord, under the law of the fist and the razor.’

He scraped at the bowl of his pipe for a moment, then he looked up.

‘The world knows little of him. Therefore, he is a man of presumed good character in the county of Dorset. His grandfather was obliged to sell the estate—but not the title—and nothing is known to the grandson’s discredit. His grandfather had acquired that title for a mere fifty pounds to add respectability to a dubious business of promoting foreign railway shares.’

‘But surely the present Moriarty is a proven criminal and something can be done about him?’

He shook his head.

‘There is not a single criminal conviction against him. He is not, as they say, known to the police. Were I to associate him with my captors and make accusations of attempted murder a few months ago, he could take me to court and recover punitive damages. I have nothing but my unsupported word against his.’

‘Then who were his family, other than the late professor?’

Holmes sighed, sat down, and stared at the fireplace, unused just then and covered by a silk Chinese screen in the summer warmth.

‘The lordship of the manor is not worth a penny piece, but it confers certain ancient ceremonial privileges. For five hundred years its owners have enjoyed burgage tenure. That is to say, they had the right of a mediaeval burgess to represent that part of Dorset at coronations, the opening of parliament, the trooping of the color, and other royal ceremonies. Two of them are grooms of the chamber to the Earl of Dorset. To be sure, they are mere servants of a greater servant of kings, but they have bought a place in a greater man’s retinue on these occasions.’

‘And that is all we know? Why, the scoundrel may be present at the coronation!’

Holmes smiled and leaned back in his chair.

‘While enjoying the hospitality of Mr. Jabez Wilson, I made use of Somerset House, the census returns, registers of births, marriages, and deaths for the past forty or fifty years. I consulted the annual Army Lists. The name of Moriarty is not common and the entries were few. It surprises me that my enemies had not gone to greater lengths to conceal their secrets.’

‘They imagined you would be dead by now.’

‘True. The titular father of the professor and the colonel was Major Robert Moriarty. According to the Army Lists, he served in India and died there of a fever. His wife, Henrietta Jane, was a creature of too delicate health for the Indian climate. She is listed in the 1851 census as living throughout his absence in rooms near Hyde Park Gate. The land registers show a lease purchased by Lord Alfred Longstaffe just before her arrival.’

‘A kept woman!’

‘You have such an ear for the bourgeois cliche, Watson. A kept woman, if we must call her that. The reason for her sudden removal to Hyde Park Gate, where she was previously unknown, became evident when I put the census of births and the Army List together. When Professor Moriarty was born, Major Robert Moriarty had been serving in the China Wars for at least eight months. When a still younger child, a blameless station master now deceased, first saw the light of day, the major had left for India a year earlier and had now been dead two months. You may recall from the Roman history lessons of your schooldays a sardonic comment by the historian Suetonius on such misalliances.’

‘“How fortunate those parents are for whom their child is only three months in the womb.”’

‘Precisely.’ Holmes lit his pipe and shook out the flame. ‘Only the elder boy, the colonel, was his father’s son. Imagine the scene when the unmarried Lord Alfred Longstaffe refused Henrietta Jane’s demand that he should accept the two natural sons as his own. If the census of 1861 is to be believed, she was obliged to settle for a small allowance and genteel poverty in the charming cathedral city of Wells.’

‘The future Colonel Moriarty, as the eldest son, would inherit the title of lord of the manor.’

Holmes nodded.

‘In the Army Lists, that eldest son was also a junior captain in South Africa and the Transvaal during the 1870s. If he has a genuine title to his colonelcy, it is by purchase of some kind in a frontier force. Diamond-mining in Kimberley was in its first buccaneering phase. Fortunes were made in the mines and lost at the card tables. So the military Moriarty came back richer than he went out.’

‘What of his criminal conspiracy with Milverton and Calhoun?’

‘Captain Calhoun and Henry Caius Milverton had a common interest in the sea. Calhoun was a mere pirate. Milverton was a partner in the London-to-Antwerp line that bears his name, among others. Their signboard still faces the Thames, above the dock gates at Shadwell. Yet this Milverton was quite as vicious as his brother. He escaped notice in the 1885 exposure of what the penny-a-liners call ‘the white slave trade.’ Yet the public denunciations by the Salvation Army and the
Pall Mall Gazette
put an end to those activities for a time. His part was to transport young women from this country to France and Belgium, while bringing those from France and Belgium to the streets of our own cities. By such means, in whatever country they found themselves, they were far from home, having only so-called protectors to depend upon.’

‘Had you encountered Colonel Moriarty before you and I met?’

‘Only by reputation. I was able to assist the father of a young girl and in so doing to secure the conviction of Mrs. Mary Jeffries, a keeper of houses of ill repute in Chelsea and the West End. After the 1885 newspaper outcry over the protection of young girls, London became too warm for Colonel Moriarty, and he made his way to Paris. We may assume that his income still derived from the trade in female misery practised in partnership with Henry Milverton.’

He smoked in silence for a moment and then resumed.

‘To tell you the truth, Watson, I never believed that Milverton and Calhoun had gone to such trouble over the ruins of Newgate Gaol merely to murder me. They would have murdered me with great relish, of course, but a barrowload of bricks tipped from a rooftop onto my head in Welbeck Street would have done the job. Yet there was more to it. My death was to be a bonus, a mere entertainment. There was a greater coup with a well-organized criminal conspiracy behind it. You know how at the time of a coronation there is loose talk about the crown jewels?’

‘You cannot believe that!’

‘I do not disbelieve it. Newgate Gaol is at the heart of the City of London and secure as the Bank of England. Yet there could be no better bolthole in the aftermath of robbery, which is when even the most ingenious villains are liable to be caught. Who would dream of searching a prison—not the likes of Lestrade or Gregson, you may be sure! I believe that with a network of foreign accomplices and a team of bullies, the thing could have been done. With such resources, I know I could certainly do it.’

‘I still say the whole thing is a fantasy! In any case, with Calhoun and Milverton dead, there is an end. Colonel Moriarty alone would not attempt it.’

He looked at me patiently.

‘That is why he will confine his interest to the one treasure that was his goal from the beginning. Of course he cannot walk off with the crown or with the royal orb and scepter. I doubt if he ever wanted them. He could not sell such treasures for profit, least of all among the apache gangs and the throat-slitters of Batignolles or Belleville. He is a dedicated maniac, prepared to take a man off the streets of London and strangle him privately in the execution shed of Newgate Gaol purely for pleasure.’

‘And what is his mania now?’

Holmes leant towards the fireplace and concluded his history.

‘By the time they grew to manhood, the two elder Moriarty brothers were plainly fired by resentment. Yet they lacked the opportunity to revenge themselves on the Longstaffe family, most of all upon the Longstaffe father who had disowned two natural sons and consigned them to beggary, and upon the half brother, Lord Adolphus, who had usurped them. When the mind of a Moriarty is warped into criminality, a single gem will suffice.’

‘And that is the reason behind today’s playing at fox-and-geese with Lord Holder?’

My friend was unmoved by skepticism.

‘The loss of the Queen of the Night would disgrace the Longstaffe family utterly. It would bring criminal suspicion and rumours of complicity upon such a spendthrift and prodigal as Lord Adolphus himself. To lose the appointment as royal herald after several hundred years would be ruin to family honour. Such is the vengeance that I believe Colonel Moriarty seeks, in addition to a handsome souvenir.’

Among the coronation postcards and placards for sale in the shop windows of Baker Street, I had noticed one which showed the Prince of Wales with his retinue. Royal blue was their colour, their robes lined with white satin. I had noticed one of them whose blue velvet cloak was fastened at the throat by a clasp of night-blue jewels set round a blazing white star. Such postcards are mere caricature exaggerations, but the design was plain enough. The memory of this determined me.

‘We must see what Lestrade has to say tomorrow.’

Holmes got up and began to interest himself in his chemical table.

‘We will leave Lestrade out of this, if you please, and Brother Mycroft too. I have a more important matter to settle with Colonel Moriarty, and no man shall come between us. If either he or I would live in safety, a duel to the death must decide which of us it shall be. The same thought has surely crossed his mind, for he will know by now that I survived the Newgate blast. Besides, if you truly wish to see the last of the Queen of the Night and the rest of the crown jewels, to bring in Scotland Yard is quite the best way to accomplish it.’

Then he slipped into silence and stood over his chemical table in deep thought until he straightened up to withdraw for the night. As he went, he turned to me.