“The latter point, at least, is well made. In comparison to her husband, Mrs Maybrick is as pure as driven snow.”
“But she is a woman, and he was a man. Therein lies the critical distinction. The verdict is tantamount to execution for adultery. We may never be able to determine the precise truth of her husband’s fate, but I am certain that Moriarty had a hand in it. Thanks to the bigoted summation of a decrepit old man teetering on the brink of insanity, however, a woman faces the long walk to the gallows. I hear that the prison governor has already had the scaffold built. It is utterly monstrous.”
“My dear fellow,” W said, “I have seldom seen you so roused.”
I realised that I had raised my voice. An elderly club member seated at the far end of the room had raised bushy eyebrows, and an expression of concern crinkled his leathery features. Such expenditure of energy and emotion was quite alien to me. Slumping back in my chair, I felt overcome momentarily by the weight of frustration and dismay.
“I ask you one question, my friend. In England, the country each of us loves and serves, how can such injustice be tolerated?”
“Most unfortunate, I concur.” W gave a helpless shrug. “But we do not have a court of appeal.”
Three Sundays must, by law, elapse between sentencing in a capital case and execution. Whilst I ruminated, the conviction of Mrs Maybrick was denounced on both sides of the Atlantic. Fourteen days after the verdict, I was ready to take the short stroll to Whitehall, where the Home Secretary had consented to see me.
Sir Henry’s tenure in office had coincided with a sequence of regrettable scandals, most notably his refusal to prevent the hanging of the Jewish umbrella stick salesman Lipski, and the failure of Scotland Yard to apprehend the maniac responsible for the Whitechapel murders. Now he was besieged by protests and petitions concerning the fate of a young belle from Alabama. A barrister by profession, he had previously struck me as shrewd but aloof. This evening, I glimpsed the real man behind the face he presented to the public: weary, bewildered, and tormented by conscience.
After a brief exchange of pleasantries over a glass of the most splendid Amontillado, we turned to the matter in hand. “I understand that Her Majesty is not unsympathetic to the plight of the convicted woman.”
Matthews bowed. “It has been conveyed to me by the Palace that she will accept my recommendation. But to overturn the unanimous verdict of a jury without further evidence of the most compelling nature … I tell you candidly, it would amount to much more than a confession of weakness on my part. It would launch a Whitehead at the ship of state. Yes, sir, the admission that our courts are unjustly is more damaging than any torpedo’s blast.”
“You regard capital punishment as morally repugnant, do you not?” I said quietly.
The Home Secretary sat up with a start. His cheeks were a becoming shade of pink. “What in great Heaven prompts you to say such a thing?”
“I am aware of your deeply held Catholic faith, and – forgive me – my observations of your pallor and nervous mannerisms at the time you allowed Lipski to die, following a trial tainted by prejudice, make me certain that the case caused you unusual distress. You held fast to the belief that a man in your position must do the right thing, but secretly you feared it was not right, but morally wrong.”
The heat from the coal fire was intense. Sir Henry mopped his brow. He was not the first decent man to have been brought low by the cares of high political office, and he would not be the last.
“My duty is to administer the law without fear or favour. I could no longer with honour remain in office if …”
I drained my glass with a wistful pang. It was as fine a sherry as I had tasted in a twelvemonth. “We can agree – can we not? – that the glory of the English law lies in its inherent pragmatism. Moreover, the secret of our island race’s survival and prosperity is due to our gift for compromise. Very well. A solution is within our grasp.”
“What do you propose?”
“You may advise Her Majesty to respite the sentence of death, and commute it to penal servitude for life.”
“No legal ground exists upon which …”
“Pshaw! Let us invent one that preserves the dignity of the court, as well as the wretched woman’s life. The evidence, one might say, leads to the conclusion that she administered arsenic to her husband, but there remains a reasonable doubt that it caused his death.”
“But that amounts to convicting her of a crime of which she was not charged. It is ridiculous! I never heard of anything quite so abhorrent to a logical mind.”
“I heartily concur, but for many years I have made the point to my brother – you have met him yourself, have you not? – that for all its virtues, logic is apt to be overvalued. We must confront the world as it is, and a little untidiness is a small price to pay for a life. I surmise that, in due course, the sanction will be further ameliorated, and it would not surprise me in the least if she were to be freed within the next fifteen years.”
“Nevertheless, that is a very long time.”
“True, my dear sir, but we must keep in mind that she may be guilty.”
One week later, Mrs Maybrick remained incarcerated in Walton Prison for the foreseeable future, but the scaffold erected for her had been dismantled, and, although her supporters continued to press for a pardon, the storm around the Home Secretary had abated. The Times had gone so far as to commend his decision, saying “It makes things comfortable all round …”
I meant to render Sir Henry one further service, and I was aided in my task when a messenger arrived at the Diogenes Club, bringing me an unsigned card inviting me to participate in a game of chess at the Tankerville.
Moriarty had read my mind, as I had endeavoured to read his.
“An elegant solution,” the Professor said, as he contemplated options for safeguarding his king.
“The British do not lack imagination,” I replied. “To characterise us as stolid and lacking in the power of creative thought does us a great disservice.”
“It is a mongrel race,” the Professor remarked. “Your grandmother’s brother was Vernet, the French artist, was he not?”
“You are well informed.” I inhaled deeply. The aroma of cigar smoke in the Reading Room was far from unpleasant. “Would you be so good as to satisfy my curiosity on one or two little points?”
“That was our shared purpose in meeting, was it not?”
Each of us had taken sensible precautions as regards our attendance at the Tankerville. Agents from the Office were stationed at every exit of the building, while Moriarty’s associates had gathered in the bar. I was, however, confident that this encounter would not end in bloodshed. Our respective organisations had too much to lose.
“I take it that J sought to play a double game?”
Moriarty nodded. “He approached the Colonel shortly after your previous appearance within these unhallowed precincts. His claim that he wanted to be on the winning side was plausible, and he gave an account of your visit here as an earnest of his bona fides. Such a fellow might have proved useful, but alas! A cursory check on his rooms by one of our ruffians who has a way with a jemmy revealed that the man kept a private journal, and had been so incautious as to make a detailed note of his conversation with the Colonel. No creature on earth is so vile as the blackmailer, as no doubt you will agree. It was sensible to give the fellow his quietus before he made some threat in response to our failing to meet his financial aspirations.”
I nodded. “And Mrs Maybrick?”
“The woman Yapp insists that she administered the fatal dose, as Moran had instructed her to do. She occupied Maybrick’s bed more often than his wife over the course of his final months, and had every opportunity to do our bidding. And yet, for all her dogged protestations of guilt, I cannot help wondering …”
With a sigh, I moved my remaining bishop one square back. “Such is the difficulty when a man provides so many disparate persons with cause to put him to death.”
“You understand our own embarrassment?”
“Most certainly. For a criminal gang to discover in its midst the most notorious murderer of modern times might seem in some quarters almost a cause for pride. In practical terms, I suspect you found it deeply worrying.”
“Quite so. I am reluctant to withhold admiration from Maybrick, to the extent that the crimes in Whitechapel have escaped detection, but it was abundantly clear that his good fortune would not persist for much longer. Drugs enslaved him – I am tempted to say that the arsenic-eating was the least of my concerns – and his libidinous appetite seemed incapable of satiation.”
“Five women dead, butchered in such a manner as to signify an increasing depravity and lust for blood.”
“The emotive terms are yours, not mine. The harlots themselves were of no consequence.” He caught my frown of disapproval, and dismissed it with a gesture of his claw-like hand. “My people maintain premises in five cities of this kingdom which offer a menu rich and varied enough to satisfy the most extravagant tastes. That was not enough for Maybrick. He failed to acknowledge that our success depends upon management and control. The risk that he might be unmasked at any moment was intolerable. Barring him from London was no more than a stopgap measure. Soon he would have embarked upon a fresh murder spree on Merseyside. Consider our dilemma. You run an organisation yourself, and will readily understand the need to pinpoint any weak link, and then eliminate it.”
I advanced my queen’s knight, and saw from the sparkle in my opponent’s eyes that he regarded the heroic sacrifice as an act of desperation. “You may be assured that is precisely why I arranged to grant J the opportunity to encounter Colonel Moran in person.”
Moriarty clapped his hands. “Bravo! You may lack the skill of a Staunton or a Paul Morphy, but in your chosen field, you are nonpareil.”
His rook seized my knight. Pursing my lips, I said, “You flatter me, Professor. For me, it is an honour to place my services at the disposal of Her Majesty.”
His grunt was laden with contempt. I moved my bishop again. “Check.”
I studied with interest the emotions washing over that devilish face. Shock, anger, despair. His intellect enabled him to calculate his options within a matter of moments. With a stifled curse, he knocked over his king.
“Another game?” he muttered. “You must allow me the opportunity to … take my revenge.”
I rose, but did not extend my hand. “Some other time, perhaps.”
A cold hatred flared in those cruel eyes. For just an instant, it made me tremble, but then I exulted, for I had won more than a game of chess.
“Until the next time, Mr …”
I raised my hand. “No names, please. In my organisation, we trade solely in initials. Please call me simply … M.”
The Last of his Kind
Barbara Nadel
‘Who is there?’
The grainy darkness behind the piano shivered. A face, pale, thin, no longer young, looked at the old man in the tattered dressing gown and said, ‘It is only me.’
Ancient lungs sighed in relief and the old man put his pistol back in his pocket. ‘How did you get in?’ he said. ‘I am told that my brave young soldiers from Macedonia are preventing anyone from entering my palace. They fear there may be elements who wish to do me harm.’
A tall, spare man walked out of the darkness and stood with the old man in the vast pool of light cast by the ceiling chandelier.
‘Isn’t electricity marvellous?’ he said.
The old man, his face drawn down by a nose that resembled both a beak and a knife, sniffed.
‘You still think it’s dangerous?’ the younger man said. There was a mocking tone in his voice.
It wasn’t lost on the old man. ‘Keep a civil tongue when you speak to me,’ he said.
The man tilted his head, signalling his understanding. ‘I apologise unreservedly, Your Majesty.’
‘My Kizlar Agasi is just outside …’
‘No. No he isn’t. You know I do think your chief eunuch may have gone, sire.’ He drew a thin finger across his own neck. ‘Bit concerned for his head. Can’t get the staff these days, can you?’
The spare man located a heavily gilded chair and sat down.
The old man, Abdulhamid II, Sultan of Sultans and Caliph of the Ottoman Empire, Shadow of God on Earth, widened his night-black eyes. In thirty-three years, no one had ever sat down before he did. But his guest wasn’t just anyone and he knew it.
‘What are you doing here, Professor?’ he said. ‘Do you have information I can use?’
The Professor examined his fingernails. ‘You know, sire, they have electricity at my hotel, the Pera Palas. Electric lights, even an electric elevator to take guests and their luggage to their rooms. It’s very modern, very innovative. Built by a Frenchman. Surprised you allowed it at the time, given your fears …’
‘Get to the point, Moriarty.’ The old sultan sat. The room, though vast, was stuffed with heavy, dark furniture. The largest item, a desk covered with notebooks both open and closed, filled at least a quarter of the chamber. Every so often it would draw the sultan’s gaze. ‘If you are here, then you either want something from me or you come with an offer. What is it?’
‘What is what?’
Outside in the darkness in the grounds of the sultan’s palace of Yildiz, the sounds of animals, their hunger sharpened by the desertion of their keepers, made noises halfway between howls of pain and the last gasps of the dying. Amongst the monkeys, parakeets, giraffes and gazelles, roamed lions and leopards and other creatures Moriarty had only half spotted as he’d ascended the hill leading up to the sultan’s quarters.
‘Your purpose,’ the old man said. ‘Now that things are … as they are … What can you want with me?’
Moriarty smiled. ‘Ah, so you do know the truth, sire,’ he said. ‘I wondered whether your fears, and there are so many of those, would let that in.’
‘There have always been people who have sought my death. You, Moriarty, will know that better than most.’
Professor James Moriarty said nothing. The sultan lit a cigarette.
‘I know the precise date and time you first came to me,’ the sultan said. ‘It was the twenty-third of May 1878. Three days after my people attempted to take my throne and give it to my insane brother. At five p.m., exactly, my doctor ushered you into my presence and said, “Here, Your Majesty, is a man who can cure all your nightmares.”’
‘Ah, dear Dr Mavroyeni.’ Moriarty smiled. ‘What a good man he was.’
The sultan’s eyes expressed pain. ‘Yes.’
‘I met him in Paris in 1876,’ Moriarty said. ‘Place called Montmartre. Holidaying, it turned out, amongst the bohemian artists’ colony that continues to thrive there. His French was so good, I thought he was a native.’
‘And you befriended him.’
‘I rather liked him. A fellow man of science. But when I found out he was personal physician to Your Imperial Majesty he became, I must confess, irresistible to me.’
‘You saw a business opportunity.’
‘I identified a method whereby I might serve your empire, sire.’
Abdulhamid rose with difficulty and walked over to his desk. He picked up a leather-bound notebook and turned to the first page. He read. ‘“City of Kayseri. There is a carpet seller in the bazaar, a man with an Armenian mother and a father who is lame. He organises secretive meetings late at night at the back of his shop. Other men of poor appearance attend. What is discussed can only, sadly, be treasonous. I beg the pardon and the pity of Your Majesty for bringing this to your attention. Your humble slave”, etc.’
‘Plots are like fungus, sire, they thrive in the dark.’
‘Moriarty, your organisation has been bringing me
information about my enemies for over thirty years,’ the sultan said. ‘You have served me well.’
‘A network of agents was needed that far exceeded even my calculations,’ Moriarty said. ‘It is the same, I fear, sire, in all the great empires of Europe. The French opened the door to revolution and …’
‘And we all speak the language of revolution now, don’t we?’
‘Many people speak French …’
‘Including you and I and those who like to see themselves as the elite. It enables them to understand these Gallic ideas that resulted in an emperor losing his head.’
‘Sire, it is a long way from reading a book to …’
‘Is it?’ The sultan put the notebook down. ‘You know, Moriarty, these journals from your agents across my empire have consumed my waking hours. Descriptions of illiterate Druze tribesmen in Palestine, hungry for my death, sellers of yogurt passing messages to Armenian agents in the streets of my capital city. Poor people.’
‘In some cases, yes, sire.’
‘In all.’
The sultan sat behind his desk. ‘I ask again, Moriarty, what do you want here? I know you cannot have gained entry to my palace without the collusion of my “loyal troops” from Macedonia. The ones who can speak and read French and on whom your agents have always been silent. Fortunately for me, other contacts I have cultivated over the years have not been so reticent in that regard.’
‘My agents have only ever reported what they have heard, sire.’
‘And I have paid you, and them, well for it.’
‘Indeed.’
‘Indeed. And yet …’ A small, manicured fist came down quickly and suddenly on the top of the desk. ‘Here we are, Moriarty, in the eye of a revolution against my rule. And you didn’t see it coming. Or did you? I have done everything for my people! I have given them the Constitution they apparently craved, I have made a powerful ally of the German emperor, built a railway to the Holy Cities of Mecca and Medina. I even allowed my poor mad brother to live out his insane life at my expense in spite of the fact that these Macedonian revolutionaries wanted to replace me with that drooling fool. My people are children. I am their loving father. It is not a carpet seller from Kayseri that will come to hang me tomorrow and end the House of Osman forever, but an educated, French-speaking army officer. You, Moriarty, I would venture, have deceived me. The game is not “afoot” as your nemesis Sherlock Holmes once said, but it is up.’
The Mammoth Book of the Adventures of Professor Moriarty Page 29