The House Of Smoke

by Sam Christer

  ‘I believe I had an accident. A very unfortunate one.’

  ‘And are you in great pain?’

  ‘I am, and the discomfort is worsened by every second you delay telling me why you and your man are here.’

  The clerk slid off his hood and I suddenly recognised him. Knew him as well as anyone in the world. A thousand thoughts flooded my mind, before I could speak.

  ‘Professor.’

  I was startled by the one word I uttered. Surely something more erudite or emotional should have come from my lips, but no, this was the best I could muster. ‘Sweet Lord, I thought I would never see you again.’

  ‘I came as quickly as my health and the railways and ships would allow.’ His voice was strained.

  I rose awkwardly.

  ‘Sit. Please sit, my dear boy.’ His right hand waved me back down. ‘You look quite terrible.’

  ‘Superficial injuries,’ I lied nonchalantly. ‘Michael regularly gave me more painful thrashings than the amateurs in here have managed.’ As I sat, I noticed his left cheek bore a terrible burn that ran from temple to chin. ‘What happened to your face?’

  ‘This?’ He touched the mark. ‘This was the work of Sirius. He shot both Alexander and myself and then set the room we were in on fire.’

  ‘Sirius did that?’

  ‘I am afraid he did.’

  ‘I had heard of his treachery from your brother but still cannot believe it.’

  ‘Enough of him. He is not worth us wasting our breath on. I am so terribly sorry that we are reunited under such dire and desperate circumstances. Please accept my deepest sympathies in respect of Elizabeth’s passing. You know that my affections for her were akin to your own.’

  ‘I do. And I know she had only kind thoughts of you, which is why she did as your brother James required that night.’

  His eyes avoided mine. No doubt he felt some family culpability for her fate.

  I remembered my manners, and added, ‘Please accept my own condolences in respect of Alex. He was a fine man and I had grown to greatly respect and admire him.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Levine sensed our courtesies had been concluded. He cleared his throat and cut to more pressing matters. ‘I understand that you wished for good news, Simeon, but I am afraid we are unable to deliver it to you. We have experienced profound difficulties in presenting your case. The home secretary has turned down the request for an appeal.’

  I felt like I had been punched. ‘You seemed so certain of success.’

  Levine fidgeted with the hem of his jacket. ‘He said there were insufficient grounds to support a review.’

  Moriarty interrupted. ‘Cross, the police officer we thought we had an arrangement with, has gone missing.’

  ‘Missing?’

  ‘I am afraid so. And without him,’ added Levine, ‘we have only his statement, which sadly is not enough.’

  ‘Why not? Surely a signed statement is admissible?’

  ‘Admissible, yes; but convincing, no. Without the physical presence of the witness to verify the testimony, and if necessary be cross-examined, it lacks the necessary gravity for acquittal.’

  ‘Then where is this damn man, Cross? He can’t simply have vanished.’

  ‘We don’t know,’ Levine replied. ‘We accommodated him in a safe house in Marylebone. Unfortunately, our men were either lackadaisical or he outwitted them. Either way, when they checked on him last night, he had gone.’

  ‘Dear Jesus!’ I felt deflated. ‘Might he just be somewhere nearby? Drunk in the filth of a tavern, or lost in the arms of a dolly?’

  ‘I think not,’ said Moriarty. ‘Either Chan’s men got to him, or he learned they were threatening his life. Much to my brother’s chagrin, Lee Chan is still alive, Simeon and he wants all of us dead, including you.’

  ‘And I want him dead. I desire it more than saving my own neck. The thought of getting out of here and killing that bastard is all that has kept me going. Now, all seems lost.’ I sat back and could not hide my despair.

  ‘Far from it!’ Levine did his best to sound spirited. ‘A great deal can happen in twenty-four hours and I remain confident we can find our witness and persuade him to speak on your behalf.’

  ‘Are you?’ I asked sarcastically. ‘Would you wager your own life on it?’

  ‘No,’ answered Moriarty. ‘He isn’t and he wouldn’t.’ The professor glanced at the lawyer. ‘We need to be straight and honest with him, Levine. Simeon, we have no idea where Cross is, but we will not give up, not until … the very last moment.’

  ‘You mean, until my execution.’

  No one contradicted me. I looked to Levine. ‘I should have accepted that offer of clemency from Sherlock Holmes.’

  ‘Holmes’s offer was in return for testifying against me?’ asked the professor.

  ‘Indirectly,’ confirmed Levine. ‘As you know, that terrible man is obsessed with ruining your brother.’

  ‘Always has been.’ The professor leaned across the table and put his hand on my arm. ‘Simeon, you must accept his inducement. You have my blessing to do so.’

  ‘The offer has expired,’ I replied. ‘The deadline was yesterday.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ he snapped. ‘Deadlines never expire. They are but part of a negotiation. Holmes is bluffing. Offer now to speak against me and he will have a pen in your hand quicker than a gaoler can unbolt your door.’

  I did not know whether to take Moriarty seriously. ‘I am surprised to hear you suggest such a thing. If I did, then the consequences for you and your family would be dire. Both you and James would be candidates for the noose.’

  ‘You are right. That is true. But we would be able to prepare ourselves for such eventualities.’ He glanced at the lawyer. ‘Mr Levine is usually more reliable in coming up with loopholes and escape routes than he is proving in your case. Dear Alex, I do so miss him; he too would have had some bright thoughts in these moments of darkness.’

  I was confused. Had the professor’s near-death experience in America softened him beyond all recognition? Or had the loss of Alex simply broken his spirit in the same way Elizabeth’s murder had fractured mine?

  ‘If you wish me to contact Mr Holmes for you, I can oblige.’ Levine looked to Moriarty, who gave him a sad nod. Then he added, ‘But first there is some information you should know. A confidence the professor wishes to convey personally.’

  Moriarty scratched intensely at his beard and intertwined his fingers. His eyes caught mine and I saw something I had never seen in him before: uncertainty.

  ‘Levine is correct, there is something I want to say.’ He looked angry with himself. ‘No, that is not true. There is something I need to say. Indeed, it is a matter I should have spoken to you about when we first met many years ago.’ Hesitancy overwhelmed him. His words led nowhere. He looked down at his hands and took an inordinately long pause. Finally, he raised his head again and his eyes showed a glimpse of their old resolve.

  ‘I am your father, Simeon. And you are my only child. My son and heir.’

  ‘What did you say?’ I had heard him clearly but needed to ensure I had not misunderstood his words.

  ‘You are my son.’

  A cold shiver ran through my veins.

  Levine rose from his seat. ‘I will leave you together.’ He put a reassuring hand on Moriarty’s shoulder before heading to the door and knocking to be let out.

  The professor looked to me for a response but I could not give one. I sat in silence and stared at him, searched for words that did not come.

  ‘It is true. I swear it.’ Moriarty reached across the table but I pulled my hands away from him.

  ‘How can this be?’ I chose my words carefully. ‘I mean, given your friendship with Alexander. The nature of how you are?’

  His face grew weary. ‘It was in my younger days. In that period of my life when I had not such a clear view of my true self.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Then I must beg
in at the beginning. I came of age, reached manhood in what was an entirely different time. A different world. My own father took my lack of desire for female company as shyness. And he thought a lady of the night might bring me out of myself and teach me how to become “a proper man” as he put it.’

  ‘And what?’ I felt my anger rise. ‘Are you saying that my mother was that lady of the night?’

  ‘Yes, that is precisely what I am saying. Her name was Alice. Alice Armer.’

  ‘Alice?’ I repeated it, for I had never heard her name before.

  ‘She was picked out for me.’ He spoke bitterly. ‘Father told me he visited the best brothels of Mayfair, to find “a new girl that hadn’t yet been ruined”. No expense was spared.’

  ‘I don’t believe you.’ I shook my head in disbelief. ‘This doesn’t make sense. How would a pure girl end up in a brothel?’

  ‘Her father had run off with another woman and her mother had died of the fever. That is how she ended up in the ruinous company of one of London’s leading madams. Alice was elegant, lost, beguiling and taken advantage of.’

  I cannot deny that his description of her intrigued me. I had killed off all fledgling curiosity about my mother and naturally such a kindly portrait touched me.

  ‘I am not lying to you, Simeon. You are my flesh and blood.’

  ‘And you would know that, how? Prostitutes have many clients.’

  ‘Simeon, I—’

  ‘Surely to God, there’s a clamour of better men than you out there claiming to have sired me?’

  He let my fury subside before he replied, ‘You make a plausible point and I have a reasonable response but it is unpleasant. My father was concerned that I should not contract venereal disease. He was most terribly frightened of syphilis. A close relative had gone mad with it. Not only was Alice picked out for me, she was retained for my use.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘Father paid an exclusivity fee to her brothel. It was a place in London that he subsequently frequented himself and sent many important clients to. The woman running it would not have dared lie to him.’ He paused to put a comforting hand to his facial injury then added, ‘I did not know she was pregnant, Simeon. You must believe that. I had no idea, until after you had been born and she had died.’

  ‘Why not? Mine was, after all, a very public birth.’

  ‘It was. It was indeed.’ He needed a moment to compose himself, then continued, ‘After five, maybe six months, Father stopped taking me to see Alice. I thought nothing of it. In fact, I was relieved our mutual ordeal was over. I hoped he had concluded that I had now learned enough and didn’t warrant any more expenditure.’ He looked down at his hands. ‘Only later, many years later, did I discover that my visits had been curtailed because she had been found to be pregnant and, as a consequence, thrown out onto the street.’

  Although I had seldom thought about my birth mother, strong feelings now rose within me. ‘They threw her out because she was pregnant? Pregnant, with no roof over her head, and they discarded her?’

  ‘Yes.’ He held his head up. ‘That is so. But I did not know it. Not at the time. Believe me, Simeon, I had no idea.’

  ‘I really do not know whether I believe a single word you have said to me.’

  ‘It is the truth. Many, many years passed before I became aware of it.’

  ‘How were you told?’

  ‘I was at a party in Westminster. Alice’s old madam was there. She had provided some young girls for a politician’s birthday celebration. I recognised her and approached her when she was alone. We talked over canapés …’

  ‘Canapés! How nice.’

  ‘It was then that she told me the truth. Alice had died in childbirth and you had gone to the baker and his wife.’

  ‘Thank God. Thank God I hadn’t gone to you, or your devil of a father.’

  ‘I tracked the Lynches down; or rather I tracked down where they had been. Their shop had become a haberdashery, Cyril was dead, you had gone to the workhouse with Philomena and she had subsequently passed.’

  I felt my past unravelling. I had tightly wound all this history together like a ball of old string that I no longer needed. Tucked in its ends and stored it away in a forgotten part of my mind. Now Moriarty was painfully pulling it all apart.

  ‘When I—’

  ‘Stop! Please stop.’ I let out a sigh. ‘I don’t think I can take any more. This is the wrong time and wrong place for me to learn of things like this.’

  ‘Then you believe me?’

  I said nothing. Painful questions entered my mind, aching to be asked. I looked at him, searching for visual clues that would confirm beyond doubt that I had sprung from him, that I was this monster’s child. Our eyes were both dark. We were of similar sizes and build. Beardless, his face would not be unlike my own.

  No! I told myself I would not allow it to be true. ‘Why now?’ I asked him. ‘Why choose to tell me all this, right at this awful moment?’

  ‘Because you are to be hanged.’ His voice shook. ‘Because it is wrong for a man to go to his death without knowing the truth about his birth.’

  His words stung me. I was to be hanged and I had lived a life of lies. Right from my birth, up to the precipice of my death. Lies and murder. That was all it had been. ‘This is horse shit! You have scraped together these untruths for some reason that I cannot even begin to imagine.’

  An awkward silence grew.

  Finally, he spoke. ‘In your heart you know it is true, Simeon. Why else would I have plucked you out of that den of thieves in Manchester? How else could I have traced you there?’

  ‘Boxing. You said you saw me box—’

  ‘Really, Simeon?’ There was a sneer in his voice. ‘Do you honestly believe that I would have opened my house and my life to a young thief who happened to be a promising boxer?’

  My mind became crowded with thoughts from the past. I recalled my first days in Derbyshire. Sirius had asked me, ‘Do you not have any idea why you are here, who the professor is, or why you were chosen?’

  Chosen.

  The word had stuck at the time. I had come to believe he had merely wished to profit from my propensity for violence. But I had always wondered about how and why I had been picked out.

  Another echo from the past sounded in my mind – Sebastian, at Michael’s funeral. He had told me he and other area lieutenants had been given my description and had been instructed to be on the lookout for ‘a boy from London whom the professor considered special.’

  Special.

  One more word that now conveyed deeper implications.

  Moriarty leaned across the prison table. ‘Remember when we first met, when you lied to me about who you were? I said, “I know exactly who you are, young man. Know it better than you do.” Do you recollect that, Simeon?’

  I did but I shook my head in denial. ‘I do not recall such a thing.’

  ‘You will. You will remember many occasions that made no sense in the past but do now. They will confirm that I speak the truth.’

  ‘And the truth is that none of this matters. As you so eloquently said, I am about to be hanged. My life, whatever is known or unknown to me, is over.’

  ‘You may yet save yourself, Simeon.’ He reached across the table again and once more I pulled my hands clear of his reach.

  ‘I am an old man now. My time is almost done and my concern is only for you. I believed Levine would extricate you from this predicament but it seems there is some new force in this damned government that I cannot overcome.’ A palpable sadness grew in his eyes. ‘Should you have been freed, I would have told you the truth. Shown you your inheritance and readied you to take over when the day of my death came. Those riches can still be yours, but to claim them you need to testify against me.’ He smiled resignedly. ‘If I go to Holmes then there will be no deal. He will merely see to it that both of us hang, along with your uncle, of course. That would be his greatest prize.’

  ‘Holmes is a
fool.’

  ‘No, my son, that is the one thing that he is not. Sherlock Holmes is no fool. But you are, if you don’t accept his offer. Tell him your story and you will have your clemency, your life and if you are lucky, you may still secure your fortune.’

  Moriarty and I talked for several more hours, not just about my mother and what little he knew of her, but also about Alex, whom he described as ‘an uncrowned prince of a man,’ and how the traitor Sirius had come into his life and his affections.

  Like Surrey, Gunn had been the child of a former member of the Trinity. A paid killer; sworn in blood and oath to protect the Moriarty family and its secrets. ‘His father had been a most honourable and trustworthy fellow, killed in service to the family. Sirius came to us in his late teens, when his mother took her own life.’ Moriarty put his hand to his heart. ‘His betrayal pains me here more than anywhere. Far more than the scars you see.’ He paused reflectively then added, ‘I should have anticipated it. From Judas to Brutus, betrayers have brought down emperors and empires. They are an abomination.’

  ‘Why did he do it?’

  ‘Sirius, it seems, had long envisaged himself as my heir apparent. He would have continued to do so had he not overheard Alexander and myself discussing my will. Until then, he had always imagined you merely as a replacement for Michael. This discovery of his came about a fortnight before we went to America. I recall it because he challenged me on the matter and admitted he had been about to knock on my study door when he had heard the discussion. In hindsight, I believe this was the genesis of his treachery.’

  I looked across the table and could see the professor was close to collapsing. ‘How are you feeling?’

  ‘Not so well. The fire cooked my lungs and much of my body has also been burned. I tire easily.’

  ‘Then you must go. Sleep and heal a little. Perhaps return tomorrow?’

  He didn’t fight the suggestion, just gave a sorrowful nod of his head then rose slowly, shuffled to the door and knocked for the gaoler.

  We parted with emotional awkwardness. Our time together had been all too inadequate for a bastard son to even think of all the questions he wished to ask his newly declared father.