‘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 withdra
w for the night. As he went, he turned to me.
‘You may rest easily, Watson. I have deduced everything about this robbery—where it will happen and when, as well as the name of the man who will carry it out. It is only his method that still eludes me.’
‘I call that a pretty large exception!’
‘Not at all. If Colonel Moriarty proposes to steal the Queen of the Night, it is of the first importance that we should dictate the method to him.’
Naturally, he did not explain to me how that could be done.
4
It was most unfortunate that at this juncture Mycroft Holmes should have muddied the waters by certain conversations with Inspector Lestrade, whom he was apt to regard as his luggage porter or bootblack, and whom he was also apt to chivvy or bully as though it were a sport. From his lofty perch as the government’s chief accountant and interdepartmental adviser, Brother Mycroft now raised the matter with Lestrade of security at the coronation festivities, as it affected the crown jewels and those of visiting royalty. He then suggested to the Scotland Yard man that Sherlock Holmes might be retained to super vise or implement whatever security seemed advisable.
Inspector Lestrade, who hoped one day to be Superintendent Lestrade or even Commander Lestrade, was aware of the considerable influence exercised in such promotions by Mycroft Holmes. So the inspector spoke to his superintendent, who spoke to his commander, who spoke to the Commissioner of Metropolitan Police, who spoke to the Home Secretary, who, in his turn, spoke to his interdepartmental adviser, Mycroft Holmes, who commended it as a capital idea—and so the message was relayed all the way back down again.
As a result, Mycroft Holmes and Lestrade paid us a visit soon afterward, on an otherwise sunlit afternoon, to inform us of the decision that had been taken. The inspector was already briefed and prepared to discuss the particular arrangements for Coronation Day, 2 August. In what manner did my friend think he might best protect the jewels of the state at Westminster?
‘By sitting here in my chair with my pipe and reading the death-chamber memoirs of some criminal of rare distinction, I daresay,’ Holmes replied without a glimmer of humour. ‘A French Bluebeard would promise something more in the way of style than our own marital assassins.’
Lestrade went red in the face, but Brother Mycroft was not to be denied.
‘This will not do!’ he boomed at his fractious sibling. ‘On the subject of your protection of the regalia, I have given my word!’
‘But not mine,’ said Sherlock Holmes humbly.
‘Why, for heaven’s sake? Why will you not do it?’
‘Because I should dance attendance to no purpose and that is something I decline to do. There is a great and most interesting robbery in prospect. The papers will be full of nothing else if it happens. Yet it has nothing to do with Coronation Day. I have seen that for myself.’
‘What have you seen?’
‘Only what you or anyone else might have noted, with a little care and a modicum of common sense. I know that there will be an attempt. I know the item to be stolen and I know the name of the man who will steal it. That is nothing. Any fool might guess at it. Unlike any fool, however, I now know how it is to be done and where. I know the time of the theft to within five minutes.’
‘Five minutes!’
‘Oh, very well, let us be generous and say within ten minutes. There remains merely the question of whether the thief can screw his courage to the sticking point when it comes to the moment. I cannot be answerable for his nerve. However, I think you and Lestrade had far better leave the whole thing to me.’
‘Then at least tell me where, when, how, and by whom!’
‘No.’
I knew he was talking about the Queen of the Night but did not dare to say a word. Mycroft Homes seemed to swell beyond his normal size.
‘Then, I am to take it, you do not trust your own brother!’
How I wished I had been somewhere else just then. I had a vivid impression of their nursery tantrums in days long gone by.
‘I trust my own brother implicitly,’ said Sherlock Holmes evenly.
‘But you do not trust him sufficiently to prevent this criminal outrage, whatever it may be.’
Sherlock Holmes stared at him and then spoke very quietly.
‘You have understood nothing, Mycroft, if you believe that. I do not wish to prevent what you call an outrage. In fact, I would encourage it, if I could. There is a personal affair that must be settled and this theft is the occasion of it but no more. It cannot be resolved in any other way.’
Mycroft had evidently heard something from Lestrade about his brother’s subversive political outbursts, for now he asked, ‘This is not some trumpery, I hope, which involves stealing the crown jewels and giving them back to the princes of India?’
Sherlock Holmes shook his head.
‘No. If it were merely that, I should tell you everything and invite you to join me in the venture. I have already pledged my word to Lord Holder in the matter of securing the Lord Mayor of London and the Mansion House during the festivities. What you propose would create the most flagrant conflict of interests.’
This was news to me. I did not know that he had seen Lord Holder again.
‘I cannot see it, Sherlock,’ said Mycroft Holmes ominously.
‘I daresay not.’
It was, as they say, the last straw that broke the camel’s back. Mycroft Holmes swept from the room without another word, Lestrade at his heels, and was driven away into the summer dusk. That was as far as anyone could get with my friend.
After they had gone, I tried to soothe Holmes by reverting to the Queen of the Night, in whose safety he had a real interest. I thought this might please him. In the course of conversation, I said:
‘It seems extraordinary, does it not, that all this magnificence was created just to button the neck of a man’s cloak?’
He had just picked up the evening paper and glanced at it. Now he threw it down again and got to his feet, striding restlessly across to the window and turning back.
‘Just so, Watson. Magnificence and flummery. Whether flummery is the price one must pay for magnificence or whether magnificence is the cost of flummery, I should not care to say. Let it suffice for the moment that I swear Colonel Moriarty means to have the Queen of the Night and I care for nothing else. To be sure, he has money enough, the reward of human bondage. To him, I daresay, theft is a way of vengeance against those who have wronged him and his martyred brother ever since birth. I am one of the guilty. You might call it a matter of justice by his own perverted lights, against the Longstaffe family and society as a whole.’
‘He will be caught.’
Holmes sat down again and shook his head.
‘Not by Lestrade and his kind. Colonel Moriarty is that most dangerous type, a criminal who is not known to be one and who works alone. Curiously, it is a species encountered often in what Professor von Krafft-Ebing calls lust murders. Because he works alone, there is no one to betray him, which is far the commonest method of detection. He works in utter secrecy, deep in the bomb-proof shelter of his skull.’
One of my most uncomfortable evenings drew to an end at this point. For the next few weeks, however, during his visits to us Lestrade became slyly witty in a manner that was most provoking. He would refer, with a wink at me over the rim of his glass, to the value of the jewels on display at the ceremony in Westminster Abbey and the dangers they must be exposed to. Then he would add that the humble efforts of Scotland Yard might prove sufficient to keep them safe without the assistance of a higher intelligence. It was galling in the extreme, and I feared there must be an explosion.
Holmes kept himself in check for longer than I had expected. However, when these pleasantries were repeated for the fourth or fifth time, he remarked casually, ‘I do not imagine that the disappearance of the royal jewels would be regarded as theft by those Indian princes from whom they were looted by British power in the first place. Indeed, if I could be quit
e sure that they were stolen only to be returned to their rightful owners, I daresay I should be ready to put my meagre talents at the disposal of those who perpetrated such a robbery.’
Lestrade’s bluff laughter in response to this had a false note about it. I believe that he had been truly shocked by the utterance of these subversive comments, whatever their intent. The anarchic and radical element in Holmes’s character was one with which our visitor could never get to grips. We heard no more from him on the subject of the royal regalia. However, when the inspector left us that night, Holmes burst out in anger.
‘It is quite obvious now, if it never was before, that Lestrade and his crew are utterly unsuited to dealing with a threat of this kind. I lose all patience with such people! Thank God I have never mentioned Colonel Moriarty to Lestrade. One might as well hand over the Queen of the Night to the robber and be done with it!’
A day or two later, he was absent from morning until evening. On his return, he revealed that he had spent the day with Lord Holder. Despite his outburst to Mycroft Holmes and Lestrade, my friend so far relented as to permit his lordship to conduct him upon a tour of the coronation routes and to introduce him to those buildings where the great jewels of state and their wearers might be gathered. Apart from the royal apartments of Buckingham Palace, which neither Colonel Moriarty not any other thief would get near, these consisted of the ceremonial area in Westminster Abbey, as well as its antechambers, and the robing-rooms of the House of Lords. As a chamber-groom to the Earl of Dorset, our adversary would have brief and limited access to these. In company with Lord Holder, Holmes had examined these rooms and their adjacent reception areas. Here, if anywhere, a surreptitious theft might be possible or a sudden attack might take place on Lord Adolphus Longstaffe as the Prince of Wales’s herald. But Holmes came home disgruntled and sat in his chair biting a thumbnail with vexation.
The Execution of Sherlock Holmes Page 30