Victorian Villainy m-1

by Michael Kurland

  The Paradol Club was housed in a large building at the corner of Montague and Charles Streets. The brass plaque on the front door was very small and discreet, and the ground floor windows were all barred. Moriarty and I walked around the block twice, Moriarty peering at windows and poking at the pavement and the buildings with his walking stick. There appeared to be two additional entrances; a small, barred door on Charles Street, and an alleyway leading to a rear entry. After the second circuit we mounted the front steps and entered the club.

  Considering what we had been told of the Paradol Club, the entrance area was disappointingly mundane. To the right was a cloak room and porter’s room; to the left was the manager’s office, with a desk by the door. Past the desk was the door to the front reading-room, with a rack holding current newspapers and magazines visible inside. A little bird-like man sitting behind the desk leaned forward and cocked his head to the side as we entered. “Gentlemen,” he said. “Welcome to the Paradol Club. Of which of our members are you the guests?”

  “Are you the club manager?”

  “I am the assistant manager, Torkson by name.”

  Moriarty nodded. “I am Professor Moriarty,” he said. “I am here to investigate the death of one of your members. This is my associate, Mr. Barnett.”

  Torkson reared back as though he had been stung. “Which one?” he asked.

  “How many have there been?” Moriarty asked.

  “Three in the past three months,” Torkson said. “Old General Quincy, Hapsman the barrister, and Lord Tams.”

  “It is the death of Vincent Tams that occupies us at the moment,” Moriarty said. “Has his room been cleaned out yet, and if not may we see it?”

  “Who sent you?” Torkson asked.

  “Lord Tams,” Moriarty said.

  Torkson looked startled. “The Lord Tams that is,” explained Moriarty, “has asked me to enquire into the death of the Lord Tams that was.”

  “Ah!” said Torkson. “That would be Mr. Everett. Well then, I guess it will be all right.” Pulling a large ring of keys from a desk drawer, he led the way upstairs. “Lord Tams kept a room here permanently,” he said. “Our hostesses were very fond of him, as he was always a perfect gentleman and very generous,” he added, pausing on the first floor landing and glancing back at us. Moriarty and I just stared back at him, as though the idea of “hostesses” at a gentleman’s club were perfectly normal. Reassured, he took us up to the second floor, and down the hall to Vincent Tams’s room. Again I was struck by the very normality of my surroundings. One would expect a club defined by its members’ addiction to vice, as others are by their members’ military backgrounds or fondness for cricket, to have risque wall hangings or scantily clad maidens dashing from room to room. But from the dark wood furniture to the paintings of hunting scenes on the wall, it all looked respectable, mundane, and very British.

  When we reached the door to Vincent Tams’s room the assistant manager paused and turned to us. “Do you suppose the new Lord Tams will wish to keep the room?” he asked.

  “He is hoping to get married in the near future,” I said.

  “Ah!” said Torkson. “Then he will almost certainly wish to keep the room.” He unlocked the door and turned to go.

  “One moment,” Moriarty said. “Is the waiter who found his lordship’s body available?”

  “Williamson,” the assistant manager said. “I believe he is working today.”

  “Will you please send him up here?”

  Torkson nodded and scurried off back downstairs. The room was actually a three-room suite. Moriarty and I entered a sitting room, to the left was the bedroom, and to the right a small dining room. The sitting room was fixed with a writing desk, a couch and an easy chair. A large bookcase took up one wall. Moriarty whipped out a magnifying glass and tape measure and began a methodical examination of the walls and floor.

  “What can I do, Professor?” I asked.

  He thought for a second. “Examine the books,” he said.

  “For what?” I asked.

  “Anything that isn’t book,” he told me.

  I went to the bookcase and took down some of the volumes at random. Except for some popular novels and a six-volume work on the Napoleonic Wars, they were all books that could not be displayed in mixed company. Most were what are called “French” novels, and the rest were full of erotic drawings displaying couples coupling, many in positions that I had never dreamed of, and some in positions that I believe are impossible to attain. I began going through them methodically, right to left, top to bottom, for anything that might have been inserted between the pages, but found nothing.

  There was a knock at the door and I turned to see a thickset man in the uniform of a waiter standing in the doorway. “You wished to see me, sir?” he asked, addressing the air somewhere between Moriarty and myself.

  “Williamson?” Moriarty asked.

  “That’s right, sir.”

  “You found Lord Tams’s body the morning he died?”

  “I did, sir, and quite a shock it was too.” Williamson stepped into the room and closed the door.

  “Tell me,” Moriarty said.

  “Well, sir, I brought the tray up at a quarter to eight, as instructed, and entered the sitting room.”

  “You had a key?”

  “Yes, sir. I got the key from the porter on the way up. My instructions were to set breakfast up in the dining room, and then to knock on the bedroom door at eight o’clock sharp. Which same I did. Only there was no answer.”

  “One breakfast or two?” Moriarty asked.

  “Only one.”

  “Was that usual?”

  “Oh yes, sir. If a hostess spent the night with his lordship, she left when he sat down to breakfast.”

  “I see,” said Moriarty. “And when there was no answer?”

  “I waited a moment and then knocked again. Getting no response, I ventured to open the door.”

  “And?”

  “There was his lordship, lying face-up on the bed, staring at the ceiling. His hands were raised in the air over his head, as though he were afraid someone were going to hit him. His face were beet-red. He were dead.”

  “Were the bed-clothes covering him?”

  “No, sir. He were lying atop of them.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I chucked.”

  “You-?”

  “I throwed up. All over my dickey, too.”

  “Very understandable. And then?”

  “And then I went downstairs and told Mr. Caltro, the manager. And he fetched Dr. Papoli, and I went to the pantry to change my dickey.”

  Moriarty pulled a shilling out of his pocket and tossed it to the waiter. “Thank you, Williamson,” he said. “You’ve been quite helpful.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Williamson said, pocketing the coin and leaving the room.

  A short, dapper man with a spade beard that looked as if it belonged on a larger face knocked on the open door, took two steps into the room, and bowed. The tail of his black frock coat bobbed up as he bent over, giving the impression that one was observing a large, black fowl. “Professor Moriarty?” he asked.

  Moriarty swivelled to face the intruder. “That is I.”

  “Ah! Torkson told me you were here. I am Dr. Papoli. Can I be of any service to you?”

  “Perhaps. What can you tell me of Lord Tams’s death?”

  Dr. Papoli shrugged. “When I was called he had been dead for several hours. Rigor was pronounced. His face was flushed, which suggested to me the apoplexy; but I was overruled by the superior knowledge of your British doctors. If you would know more, you had best ask them.”

  “I see,” Moriarty said. “Thank you, doctor.”

  Papoli bowed and backed out of the room.

  Moriarty crossed to the bedroom and gazed at the rumpled bedclothes. “Picture it, Barnett,” he said. “The dead earl staring up at the ceiling, his face unnaturally red and bearing a horrified expression, his arms r
aised against an unseen foe. And the strange puncture marks on the body, don’t leave those out of your picture.” He turned to me. “What does that image convey to you?”

  “Something frightful must have happened in this room,” I said, “but what the nature of that happening was, I have no idea.”

  Moriarty shook his head. “Nothing frightful happened in this room,” he said. “Understanding that will give you the key to the mystery.” He took one last look around the room and then went out into the hall. For the next half hour he walked up and down the hallway on that floor and the ones above and below, peering and measuring. Finally he returned to where I awaited him on the second floor landing. “Come,” he said.

  “Where?”

  “Back to Russell Square.”

  We left the club and flagged down a hansom. Moriarty was taciturn and seemed distracted on the ride home. When we entered the house, Moriarty put a small blue lantern in the window; the sign to any passing members of the Mendicants’ Guild that they were wanted. Moriarty has a long-standing relationship with the Mendicants’ Guild and Twist, their leader. They are his eyes all over London, and he supplies them with technical advice of a sort they cannot get from more usual sources. About half an hour later a leering hunchback with a grotesquely flattened nose knocked on the door. “My monniker’s Handsome Bob,” he told Moriarty when he was brought into the office, “Twist sent me.”

  “Here’s your job,” Moriarty told the beggar. “The Paradol Club is at the intersection of Montague and Charles. It has three entrances. Most people use the main entrance on Montague Street. I want a watch kept on the club, and I want the men to give me the best description they can of anyone who enters the club through either of the other two entrances. But without drawing any attention to themselves. Send someone to report to me every half-hour, but keep the place covered at all times.”

  “Yessir, Professor Moriarty,” Handsome Bob said, touching his hand to his cap. “Four of the boys should be enough. We’ll get right on it.”

  Moriarty reached into the apothecary jar on the mantle and took out a handful of coins. “Have them return here by cab if there’s anything interesting to report,” he said, handing the coins to. “This is for current expenses. I’ll settle with you at the usual rates after.”

  “Yessir, Professor Moriarty,” Handsome Bob repeated, and he turned and sidled out the door.

  Moriarty turned to me. “Now we wait,” he said.

  “What are we waiting for?”

  “For the villain to engage in his employment,” Moriarty said. He leaned back and settled down to read the latest copy of the quarterly Journal of the British Geological Society. I left the room and took a long walk, stopping for sustenance at a local pub, which I find soothes my mind.

  I returned at about six in the evening, and stretched out on the sitting room couch to take a nap. It was just after eleven when Moriarty shook me by the shoulder. Standing behind him was an emaciated-looking man on crutches, a crippled beggar I remembered seeing at Twist’s headquarters in a Godolphin Street warehouse. “Quick, Barnett,” Moriarty cried, “our drama has taken a critical turn. Get your revolver while I hail a cab!” He grabbed his hat, stick, and overcoat and was out the door in an instant.

  I ran upstairs to my bedroom and pulled my revolver from its drawer, made sure it was loaded, and then grabbed my overcoat and ran downstairs. Moriarty had stopped two cabs, and was just finishing scribbling a note on the back of an envelope. He handed the note to the beggar. “Give this to Inspector Lestrade, and no one else,” he said. “He will be waiting for you.”

  Moriarty put the cripple in the first cab and looked up at the driver. “Take this man to Scotland Yard, and wait for him,” he said. “And hurry!”

  We climbed into the second cab together and set off at a good pace for the Paradol Club. Moriarty leaned forward impatiently in his seat. “This is devilish,” he said. “I never anticipated this.”

  “What, Moriarty, for God’s sake?”

  “Two people of interest have entered the back door of the club in the past hour,” he said. “One was a young girl of no particular status who was taken in by two burly men and looked frightened to the watcher. The other was the Duke of Claremore.”

  “Moriarty!” I said. “But he’s-“

  ”Yes,” Moriarty agreed. “And we must put an end to this quickly, quietly, and with great care. If it were ever to become known that a royal duke was involved-”

  “Put an end to what?” I asked. “Just what is going on in the Paradol Club?”

  Moriarty turned to look at me. “The Greeks called it hubris,” he said.

  We arrived at the club and jumped from the cab. “Wait around the corner!” Moriarty yelled at the driver as we raced up the front steps. The door was closed but the porter, a thickset man with the look of a retired sergeant of marine, answered our knock after a few seconds, pulling his jacket on as he opened the door. Moriarty grabbed him by the collar. “Listen, man,” he said. “Several detectives from Scotland Yard will arrive here any minute. Stay out front and wait for them. When they arrive, direct them to Dr. Papoli’s consulting room on the second floor. Tell them that I said to be very quiet and not to disturb any of the other guests.”

  “And who are you?” the porter asked.

  “Professor James Moriarty.” And Moriarty left the porter in the doorway and raced up the stairs, with me close behind.

  The second floor corridor was dark, and we moved along it by feel, running our hands along the wall as we went. “Here,” Moriarty said. “This should be the doctor’s door.” He put his ear to the door, and then tried the handle. “Damn-it’s locked.”

  A match flared, and the light steadied, and I saw that Moriarty had lighted a plumber’s candle that he took from his pocket. “Hold this for me, will you?” he asked.

  Moriarty handed me the candle and took a small, curved implement from his pocket. He inserted it into the lock and, after a few seconds fiddling, the door opened. We entered a large room which was dark and deserted. I held up the candle, and we could see a desk and couch, and a row of cabinets along one wall.

  “There should be a staircase in here somewhere,” Moriarty said running his hand along the molding on the far wall.

  “A staircase?” I asked.

  “Yes. I measured the space when we were here earlier, and an area just below this room has been closed off, with no access from that floor. Also water has recently been laid on in this corner of the building and a drain put in. You can see the pipes hugging the wall from outside. Logic says that-aha!”

  There was a soft click and a section of the wall swung open on silent hinges, revealing a narrow stairs going down. A brilliant shaft of light from below illuminated the staircase.

  Moriarty, his revolver drawn, crept down the staircase, and I was but a step behind him. The sight that greeted my eyes as the room below came into view was one that will stay with me forever. It was as though I was witness to a scene from one of Le Grand Guignol ’s dramas of horror, but the chamber below me was not a stage setting, and the people were not actors.

  The room was an unrelieved white, from the painted walls to the tile floor, and a pair of calcium lights mounted on the ceiling eliminated all shadow and cast an unnatural brightness over the scene. Two metal tables of the sort used in operating theatres stood several feet apart in the middle of the room. Surrounding them was a madman’s latticework of tubing, piping, and glassware, emanating from a machine that squatted between the two tables, the purpose of which I could not even begin to guess.

  On the table to my right, partially covered by a sheet, lay an elderly man; on the other table a young girl similarly covered had been tied down by leather straps. Both were unconscious, with ether cones covering their nose and mouth. Between them stood Dr. Papoli, his black frock coat replaced by a white surgical apron, absorbed in his task of inserting a thin cannula into the girl’s thigh. His assistant, also in white, was swabbing an area on the ma
n’s thigh with something that left a brown stain.

  “All right, doctor,” Moriarty said, starting toward the tables. “I think it would be best if you stopped right now!”

  Papoli looked up, an expression of annoyance on his face. “You mustn’t interrupt!” he said. “You will ruin the experiment.”

  “Your experiments have already ruined too many people,” Moriarty said, raising his revolver. “Get away from the girl! The police will be here any second.”

  Papoli cursed in some foreign language and, grabbing a brown bottle, threw it violently against the wall. It shattered and, in an instant, a sickly-sweet smell filled the room, a smell I recognized from some dental surgery I’d had the year before.

  “Don’t shoot, Professor!” I yelled. “It’s ether! One shot could blow us all into the billiard room!”

  “Quick!” Moriarty said, “we must get the duke and the girl out of here.”

  Papoli and his assistant were already halfway up the stair. Doing my best to hold my breath, I staggered over to the tables. Moriarty lifted the duke onto his shoulders, and I unstrapped the girl and grabbed her, I’m not sure how, and headed for the stairs.

  While we were on the staircase two shots rang out from the room above, and I heard the sound of a scuffle. We entered the room to find Lestrade glaring at the doctor and his assistant, who were being firmly held by two large policemen. “He shot at me, Moriarty, can you believe that?” Lestrade said, sounding thoroughly annoyed. “Now, what have we here?”

  We lay our burdens gently on the floor, and I stanched the wound on the girl’s thigh with my cravat.

  Moriarty indicated the unconscious man on the floor. “This is the Duke of Claremore,” he said. “It would be best to get him out of here before his presence becomes known. Dr. Papoli can safely be charged with murder, and his accomplice, I suppose, with being an accomplice. We’ll see that the girl is cared for. Come to Russell Square tomorrow at noon, and I’ll explain all over lunch.”