Who Thinks Evil: A Professor Moriarty Novel (Professor Moriarty Novels)

by Kurland, Michael

  “Wherever I’m needed, Mr. Holmes,” Sir Anthony said from the corner.

  The duke settled back into his chair and took a deep breath, and then another. “Tell us about the Sacristy, Mr. Holmes,” he said.

  “As far as we have been able to determine,” said Mycroft, “although the Sacristy has the trappings and accouterments of an ancient order, it dates back no more than forty or fifty years. It began as a religious order of flagellants who spent their time mortifying the flesh and planting turnips and kale. About twenty years ago it would appear to have been taken over by a small group of army officers who resigned their commissions after the Franco-Prussian War. How they managed the takeover is unknown. It would seem, however, that the parting from the army was less than it appeared. The Sacristy’s continuing deep connections with the upper echelon of the army, and especially the general staff, have been noted by our people. Some high-ranking staff officers have been known to take leaves of absence to spend time in contemplative cogitation with the Sacristy and then return to active duty. The Sacristy’s stated aim, according to our informant, is to ‘regain the honor of France.’”

  “Along, I suppose, with those parts of Alsace and Lorraine that were ceded to the Prussians in the peace treaty,” observed the duke. “Honor is flexible, land is eternal.”

  “I, also, would suppose that,” agreed Mycroft. “It would seem that, under the guise of being a religious order, the Sacristy has become a cabal dedicated to starting another war with Prussia, and presumably winning it this time. Although whether they can succeed with this mission is doubtful. French military doctrine still stresses that ‘elan’ will carry any battle.”

  “If their object is to start a new war with Germany, then what on earth are they doing here?” demanded the duke.

  “Yes,” agreed the earl. “Why are they doing this, and how can we stop them?”

  “As to motive, I am baffled,” admitted Mycroft. “It makes no sense to me that anyone could consider these killings as working toward his benefit, or the fulfillment of any end that isn’t totally insane. Although killing in the name of God is an ancient sport, evil purely for the sake of evil is usually the province of the more sensational of the penny dreadfuls.” He turned toward Moriarty. “What say you, Professor?”

  Moriarty removed his pince-nez, polished the lenses thoughtfully with a square of flannel from his waistcoat pocket, and replaced it on his nose. “I’m afraid, Mr. Holmes, that you may be too far into the trees to see the shape of the woods,” he said. “You have the most perceptive and consistently logical mind of anyone I know—”

  “There is my brother,” suggested Mycroft.

  Moriarty sighed. “Yes, there is Sherlock,” he agreed. “To continue; as you’ve suggested, the revelation of these monstrous acts, with the presumption on the part of the public that HRH is the perpetrator, might well have the effect of destabilizing the government and perhaps even bringing down the monarchy, or at least its present, ah, occupiers.”

  “We’ve been discussing that,” said the duke, “at the highest levels. We believe that we could weather the resulting storm, but it would be a damnable nuisance. Damnable.”

  “Perhaps,” Moriarty suggested, “that is the object.”

  The Earl of Scully, who had been slumped over in his chair, sat straight up in his chair. “What?” asked the earl. “What?”

  “It might be prudent,” Moriarty suggested, “to consider the probable result as the intended result. Perhaps the Sacristy wishes—intends—to destabilize the British government, threaten the monarchy, and throw the country into chaos. Perhaps it’s not an incidental consequence, but the only purpose of this ghastly charade.”

  “Again,” said the earl, “I ask you; whatever for?”

  “I have one possibility to suggest,” said Moriarty. “It is a hypothesis, nothing more, but—”

  “Let’s hear it, man!” urged the duke.

  “Hypothesize away,” agreed the earl.

  “Let me present the facts—the broader facts, if you will—as we know them,” Moriarty began. “The Sacristy, as Mr. Holmes has said, is basically a cabal of army officers intent on restoring the honor of France, as they would have it.”

  “Just so,” said Mycroft.

  “Which we can interpret to mean avenging the Franco-Prussian War, or as the French call it, the War of 1870. Rectifying the results; reclaiming what was lost.”

  “The Prussians gave them a smacking that time,” said the duke. “No question of that.”

  “Let us assume that Mr. Holmes is right, and that the Sacristy is preparing to return the favor—and sometime soon.”

  “How would they manage that?” asked the duke. “The French people are not in the mood for another war. They’re not quite over the horrors of the last one—and its aftermath—yet. The siege of Paris, the communes. Horrors quite as bad as anything in the French Revolution itself.”

  Mycroft harrumphed. “People have short memories for the horror of war and long memories for the insult of defeat,” he said, puffing out his cheeks and then letting the air out through pursed lips. “A pretext can be arranged. It wouldn’t be the first time that a cross-border ‘outrage’ of some sort provoked a war. As a matter of fact…” His voice trailed off. “The general staff of the French army is looking for something to take the people’s minds off last year’s Boulanger affair,” he went on after a few meditative breaths, “and there’s nothing like a good war to rally the rabble.”

  “It would be incredibly stupid,” the Duke of Shorham said thoughtfully, “but it wouldn’t be the first time for that either. Or the last, I’m sure. Most wars are incredibly stupid. But”—he turned to Moriarty—“what has that to do with us?”

  “I think the Sacristy wants to make sure that you—that Britain—will stay out of the war once it begins.”

  “Why on earth,” asked the duke, “would we get into such a mess?”

  “I doubt that we would,” Moriarty agreed, “but the French don’t know that.”

  The duke turned to Mycroft. “What do you think, Mr. Holmes? It seems a bit thin to me.”

  Mycroft stared thoughtfully into space for a long moment before replying. “I think I’ll have a kipper,” he said, pushing himself to his feet and turning to the sideboard. After some consideration he filled his plate with a kipper, several rashers of bacon, two sausages, some buttered parsnips, and a muffin. Then he returned to his chair and raised his fork. “The professor may well be right,” he said, stabbing the air in Moriarty’s general direction with the utensil before returning it to its intended use. “Less than a hundred years ago we were at war with France, and since then there have been a number of misunderstandings.”

  “Crimea,” muttered the earl darkly. “What was the saying that went around then? ‘If you have the French for an ally, you don’t need any enemies’?”

  “Just so,” said Mycroft. “Then there is the fact that Kaiser Wilhelm is Victoria’s grandson.”

  “The government certainly wouldn’t allow that to influence British foreign policy,” said the duke.

  “Yes, but can the French general staff be sure of that?” asked Moriarty. “Wouldn’t it be more prudent, from their point of view, to get the British government, and the crown, so embroiled in some domestic matter that they are unable to take the time to stare across the Channel?”

  The duke stared at Moriarty for a long minute and then screwed his monocle into his right eye and stared for another minute. “By gad!” he said finally. “So this madman is running amuck in London, slaughtering innocent women and children while impersonating His Royal Highness—and someone presumably is shielding him and guiding him, and I suppose providing him with shelter in between his deadly forays. And all this is to make it easier for France to attack Prussia? Is that your notion?”

  “Yes, Your Grace,” said Moriarty. “That’s about it.”

  “By gad!” said the duke.

  “Do you suppose, honestly suppose,�
� said the earl, “that Prince Albert is still alive?”

  “Oh, yes,” said Moriarty. “I’m sure of it. The necessary culmination of this murderous scheme is to have His Royal Highness caught in the act, or at least shortly after the actual act.”

  “I think that is a reasonable assumption,” Mycroft agreed. “Although our knowing the true story won’t help unless we manage to capture the real culprit—this d’Eny fellow. Without him, or at least his body, to back up what we say, who would believe such a tale? I doubt whether I would.”

  “When do you suppose the final act of this melodrama will commence?” asked the earl.

  “Any day—any moment now,” Moriarty told him. “This last … outrage, had it gone as planned, would have been impossible to contain. A whole theater full of people. So whatever was scheduled to come next was probably the chef d’oeuvre. As my friends in the confidence rackets might call it, the ‘convincer.’ After the bit of scrum at the theatre they’ll need a little time to refine their plan, but not very long, I should think. Notice that news of this latest outrage has reached the daily papers. It may be that one of the people involved talked to a reporter, but I think it likely that those behind this plan are preparing the public for what is to come.”

  “So we just wait?” asked the duke.

  “Oh, no,” said Moriarty. “We seek, we probe, we prepare.”

  “Prepare how?”

  “Ah!”

  Moriarty strode over to the door to the room and pulled it open, almost upsetting Horrock, the butler, who had been not-quite-leaning against it on the other side. “Hampf, erp, mumph,” mumbled Horrock by way of explanation, pulling himself up into a more butlerlike posture. The Duke of Shorham glared at his offending servant but said nothing. One does not reprimand the staff in front of guests.

  “Horrock,” Moriarty said, “where did you put the lady who arrived with me?”

  “The front sitting room, sir,” said Horrock, “and her servant.”

  “Escort them here, would you?”

  “Very good, sir.” Horrock turned and headed with a rapid but stately stride toward the front of the house.

  Moriarty turned to the others. “The coming outrage has certain … shall I call them goals?—that our antagonists will try to achieve, and that, therefore, we can look for. They will need some location that is public, but contained. A place that has a fair number of people to witness the attack, but where our pseudo-prince can flee before he can be caught. Then, in the search for the attacker, the real prince must be discovered, probably with a suitable amount of blood and gore on his clothing.”

  “And the pseudo-prince must be able to escape or disappear safely,” added Mycroft. “If he were to be found, the whole scheme would be exposed.”

  “Once his usefulness to the cabal has ended,” Moriarty said, “d’Eny will probably be killed and his body disposed of or rendered unrecognizable.”

  Horrock appeared at the door, murmuring, “This way, madam, if you please,” and bowing deeply enough to satisfy a duchess, then he scurried away before the Duke could catch his eye.

  Cecily Barnett, in what the fashion writers would call a fetching light blue bonnet and royal-blue high-waisted tailored dress with puff sleeves, paused momentarily in the doorway and then entered the room, extending her hand to Moriarty. Her maid came in behind her, holding her parasol and a slightly larger purse than was quite the fashion.

  “Good day, Professor,” Cecily said.

  “Good day, madam,” Moriarty said, taking her hand and bowing ever so slightly over it. He turned to the others. “May I present Mrs. Cecily Barnett, Your Grace. Mrs. Barnett, this is His Grace the Duke of Shorham, His Lordship the Earl of Scully, Sir Anthony Darryl, and Mr. Mycroft Holmes.”

  “Mr. Holmes and I have already met,” Cecily said, dropping a deep, formal curtsey in the general direction of the others, “and it is my pleasure to meet Your Grace, Your Lordship, Sir Anthony.”

  The men murmured appropriate responses and looked inquiringly at Moriarty.

  “Those preparations I mentioned,” Moriarty said, “Mrs. Barnett has enabled, perhaps I should say refined, one of the more important of them for us.”

  “Really?” The duke peered at Cecily with interest. “How so?”

  Cecily turned and gestured. “Pamela, my day book, please.”

  Her maid came forward and handed her the book. “Here, mum,” she said before retreating back to her spot a respectful distance behind.

  Cecily stood, book in hand, while two peers of the realm stared at her thoughtfully. Slowly their visages clouded into puzzled frowns.

  Mycroft chuckled. “Very clever,” he said.

  “I’m afraid I don’t follow…” said His Grace.

  Mycroft chuckled again. “Regard!” he said. “She’s the invisible woman. You see her, but you don’t see her.”

  “How is that?” asked the duke. “I see her quite clearly, and what has the book to do with … with whatever?”

  “Not Mrs. Barnett,” Mycroft explained, “her maid!”

  “Her maid?”

  “Quite right,” Moriarty said. “Let me introduce Miss Pamela Dilwaddy, the only person who we know has stared at the face of our killer’s keeper and can recognize him again.”

  “A maid?” The Duke of Shoreham looked puzzled. “But I thought the gel who, ah—”

  “Mrs. Barnett kindly offered to instruct Miss Dilwaddy in the ways of an upper-class lady’s maid.”

  “Not a lady, eh?” asked the earl.

  “A lady’s maid can go anywhere,” Moriarty said. “To any gathering or social occasion. All she needs is a lady to attend, but a lady needs an invitation.”

  “Come forward, my girl,” Mycroft said, beckoning to Pamela. “Let’s see what you look like under the light.”

  Pamela curtseyed and walked carefully forward to a spot next to Cecily, where she stood and stared demurely at the carpet somewhere in front of her.

  The duke eyed both women suspiciously, as though someone were trying to accomplish something that he couldn’t quite follow. It had never occurred to him to wonder how ladies’ maids got to be ladies’ maids. Or, for that matter, just how ladies got to be ladies beyond the matter of birth to the right parents. “Tell me, Mrs. Barnett,” he said, “what sort of expertise does it take to train a person in the domestic arts?”

  Cecily considered the question. “Aside from the carrying and fetching, an upper-class lady’s maid must speak properly. My father teaches English to American heiresses and others who have the misfortune of believing that they already know how to speak it properly. I learned the pedagogy from him. Teaching proper speech to someone who realizes that it must be learned, like Miss Dilwaddy, is comparatively simple, although equally time-consuming. Many hours of practice are necessary, and the manners—the way of walking, of holding one’s hands, of giving deference to those who believe they are entitled to it—that also is a matter of practice and constant drilling.”

  “Um,” said the duke.

  “What about that other gel?” the earl asked Moriarty. “The coat-check gel at the Château de Watchamacallit. Didn’t she see the two men, ah, in question?”

  “She only saw them masked,” Moriarty told him. “She’s useless for this purpose.”

  “Just what is this purpose?” asked the duke.

  “I propose that Miss Dilwaddy be seconded as maid to various ladies who are invited to dinners, fetes, or charity events that might attract our evil friend.”

  The duke pursed his lips as though he were trying to pull a thought into focus. “What do you suppose this ‘friend’ might be doing at such events?” he asked after a moment.

  Moriarty shrugged. “Advance preparation. Checking out the lie of the land. Noting the security arrangements, ascertaining which rooms are likely to be unused during such a gathering, plotting ingress and egress and places of concealment. It isn’t merely a question of committing a murder, remember; it involves arranging for one person
to commit the crime and then be spirited away so that another, who must then be produced, may be blamed for it.”

  Mycroft, who had been staring at his now empty plate, raised his head. “Large house,” he said. “Not a hall or theatre or establishment of any sort, I fancy. Not for the final act. They’ll want a residence where people of quality are mingling. Enough rooms so that the switch can be handled. Enough people so the thing can’t be hushed up.”

  “A ball?” the earl suggested.

  “A ball, a reception for someone high up in the social or political world, a society wedding perhaps.”

  “So this young lady is to wander about looking for one face among the dozens—perhaps hundreds—of men at such an event. What is she going to say if she is stopped—questioned?” The duke turned to her. “Well, what about it young lady, what would you say?”

  Pamela dropped a slight curtsey. “Please, sir,” she said, “her ladyship misplaced her reticule. She sent me to find it. It’s dark blue with”—she described small circles with her hand—“a sort of rose pattern on it. You haven’t seen such a thing, have you?”

  “Really, girl?” the duke said, fixing his eyes on her, his voice rising with feigned doubt and displeasure. “Just which ladyship would that be, now?”

  Pamela shot a brief glance at Cecily and then met the duke’s stare. “Which ones have you got?” she asked.

  “Which … which—” the duke sputtered. Then he broke out laughing. “I think you’ll do, gel,” he said, slapping his knee. “By God, I think you’ll do!”

  The earl harumphed and turned to Moriarty. “What should we—what can we—do if this young lady happens to recognize our antagonist?”