by Kim Newman
Warily – yes, more than usually so – I did a recce. No assassins hidden in the snow piled up against the back of the Englischer Hof.
I entered the lobby, which adjoined the breakfast room, and assumed a downcast, solemn air. I was under orders to examine the body, then disclaim Sophy, leaving funeral costs to whoever might be stuck with them. More penny-pinching. Still, when you’re dead, you don’t care whether you’re under marble or in a sack...
However, when you’re alive, you eat breakfast.
Just as I was about to ring the desk bell, I happened to glance into the dining room. Among the tourists – several with limbs in plaster from skiing – sat Sophy Kratides, tucking into a kipper. The dead don’t, on the whole, have appetites.
Sophy saw me and was surprised. She coughed up a bone, delicately, into a napkin.
I couldn’t put the pieces together.
Then, I could. Meiringen was a killing box. A tiger pit.
For us.
I saw faces. English tourists, local guides, busy waiters, a smiling Swiss who had popped up behind the desk like a jack-in-the-box. Any could be Mabuse.
Anyone could be anyone.
I reached into my coat for my Gibbs.
‘I am Peter Steiler,’ said the Swiss, who hadn’t sent a telegram to Geneva. ‘How may I serve you, sir?’
I was calm. ‘I am joining that lady for breakfast,’ I said. ‘Bring me anything on the menu that isn’t English. And coffee.’
‘Certainly, sir.’
Smiling broadly, I sat down at Sophy’s table. Loudly, I said, ‘Hullo, old thing –’ not risking a name, since I didn’t know what she’d given at the hof – ‘sorry I’m late and all that. Bit of bother with trains. Too used to travelling in France and Italy, don’t you know? Swiss trains actually leave according to the timetable, would you believe it? Funny kind of foreigners, eh, what? Have you heard the cricket scores?’
‘Crick-et?’ she said, equally loud, eyes wide.
‘Yes, old thing. Raffles out for a duck against the Australians!’
Coffee arrived.
Under her breath, Sophy asked, ‘What are you doing here?’
‘Waltzing into a trap, I think. You’ll note who isn’t here with me and probably saw this coming.’
Sophy took a grip on her toast knife.
All around, people were convivial. Conversation, clattering, someone trying to learn to yodel, noisome gustation. A bit too normal and busy. Then, I really saw the faces.
One of the young English lady tourists was Chinese, the Daughter of the Dragon. The dirndl-and-clogs maid who brought the coffee was Alraune, Mabuse’s odd companion. Irma Vep peeped out from behind a Times held upside down. She was sharing a plate of croissants with Princess Zanoni. Leaning on a broom and trying in vain to look inconspicuous was none other than the Hoxton Creeper, dressed in lederhosen and a sou’wester. A waiter trundled a trolley bearing a covered plate to our table. He lifted the cover and took up a revolver. It was Rupert of Hentzau.
‘Come down in the world, Rupert?’ I asked. ‘I hear the succession went badly for the Michaelists. A proper conspirator knows not to kill his favoured claimant in a fit of pique before the crown is on his head. Still, I didn’t think you’d have to go into service.’
Hentzau laughed, showing teeth. Sophy stuck her knife through his hand and he dropped the gun. He was still laughing when he got a look down the barrel of my Gibbs, but there were tears in his eyes.
All noise in the room had stopped.
‘Sebastian,’ said a familiar, feminine American voice. ‘Put the pistol away. One of these days, it’ll go off and you’ll do yourself an injury.’
‘Good morning, Irene,’ I said, not lowering the Gibbs.
Irene Adler was not dressed for the mountains, but for an opera set in the mountains: trim Norfolk jacket, tight britches, polished boots, dear little hat with a feather in the band. She sat herself down opposite Sophy and me. My companion reached for the pot, to fling scalding coffee at the New Jersey nightingale’s face. It was empty.
‘I thought of that, Miss Kratides,’ said that bitch, sweetly. ‘Rupert didn’t see the cutlery coming, though.’
The rascal was levering the knife out of his hand. I hoped marmalade would make the wound go septic. He came at Sophy, intent on cutting her nose off with her own knife.
‘Stand down, boy,’ Irene said. ‘Heel.’
Reluctantly, he stopped.
‘It’s just hired guns, then,’ I said. ‘No Jack Quartz or Nikola or Mabuse. This is below stairs.’
‘No Moriarty, either,’ she said.
I knew I could shoot Hentzau. His swordsmanship would avail him little with that injured paw, though he was a left-hand-dagger-in-the-clinch sort of fellow. With mixed feelings, I could pot Irene from where I sat. Sophy had more knives. And forks and spoons – people forget you can do damage with them too. She could take Alraune, probably Zanoni. But we’d go under. Force of numbers. Irma Vep. The Daughter of the Dragon. The Creeper. Younger, stronger, less vulnerable – plain better.
If this was Basher Moran’s last stand, come on and let it be...
‘We want to talk about Professor Moriarty and Dr Mabuse,’ Irene said. ‘We want to talk about diabolical masterminds, in general. Are you prepared, Sebastian, to talk with us?’
There was a fuss at the door, which was locked.
‘I am sorry, sir,’ Peter Steiler said, out in the lobby. ‘A private party.’
‘This note says an Englishwoman needs a doctor,’ said a fatuous British voice.
Dr Watson had arrived.
Irene cocked her head. It seemed Watson had been halfway to Reichenbach with his chum, when he was recalled to Meiringen by a bogus summons to the bedside of a lady in distress. Watson was as partial to the bedsides of ladies in distress as I am to the beds of ladies who’ll probably end up in distress but won’t care about it for the next hour or two. He exchanged gasps of astonishment with Steiler as he tumbled that he’d been rooked. He used language in person that he’d never put in the Strand.
Throughout this performance, the ‘private party’ was silent. Rupert wrapped a towel around his hand to stanch the bleeding. Irma stood up and – showing nursing skill surprising in someone who kept failing to keep her chiefs alive – made a good field dressing out of the towel. She licked her lips at the sight of blood and her eyes shone. Les Vampires was just a name, though – right?
Eventually, Watson cleared off.
‘We should have let him join us,’ Irene said. ‘He’s properly of our party, too. In thrall to... well, we could hardly say an angelic mastermind, could we? Not of someone who ditches his own sidekick as he goes to confront his destiny.’
XVI
What of Moriarty and Mabuse?
I wasn’t there, so I can’t tell you of their last encounter. And neither left a record.
Mabuse had a face in Meiringen, of course. The police captain – captain of two constables and a carthorse, at least – Moriarty had called on. Alraune, Mabuse’s date at the Thoroughgood funeral, told Irene that much, though she was as in the dark about his stratagems as we all were about those whose standards we flew. Ties of blood, bed, tradition and terror did not entitle us to be in the know.
Not all of those present at breakfast in the Englischer Hof were declaring independence. The Daughter of the Dragon, though she later set herself against her father for the love of some white fool, thought a thinning out of the lesser mastermind population would benefit the Si-Fan. It was a Moriarty trick: the Battle of the Six Maledictions all over again. This time, only two – three, if we counted the Thin Man – players were to take each other off the board.
Moriarty knew who he was facing.
Mabuse knew what to expect.
Theirs was a brief meeting, over by the time Irene sat down at our table. It left Mabuse naked in the face – layer upon layer of make-up flayed away – and broken in mind. I don’t know how Moriarty did it, or at what cost to himsel
f. I fancy he just uttered a formula, forcing into his pupil’s mind an addictive, insoluble equation Mabuse was compelled to devote all his intellect to working out, but which opened up vast chasms of uncertainty. The man who was no one was condemned to a world where nothing was anything. Babbling in several languages, the nameless man was found by the bewildered constables, and taken away to an asylum... Later, he was let out, and returned to Berlin and his old tricks. However, he was never the same again, and was eventually defeated by his own madness.
If no one stopped them, bested them or killed them, the clever ones all drive themselves mad in the end. They look for nemeses, and – if none are available – make them up. I’ve heard it said that Moriarty was the Thin Man. I understand why people jump to that conclusion, for the one needed the other. In the way neither needed anyone else, not Dr Watson... and not Colonel Moran.
That was what Irene wanted to talk about.
I don’t know if any of the big brains put her up to it – the ones who are so clever they can put an idea into another person’s head without them knowing it – or if it was something she’d come up with on her own one-tier-down level of cunning and self-interest. A lot of it came, I think, from trying to get close to men – or a man – who would not let her in. That’s above my level, though.
She knew how to put it to me.
‘Hunter and hunted,’ she said. ‘You say in your book – which could afford to lose the chapters about guns, by the way – that the world is divided between the two types. To avoid becoming one, you must become the other. Do you still believe that, Sebastian?’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘The hunter and the hunted. Predator and prey. Alive and dead. The guns and the bag.’
‘At present, I have a gun. Aimed at you, Irene.’
‘It hasn’t escaped my notice. But, Sebastian, you miss a category. Native bearers. Guides. Orderlies. Hounds. Where do they fit in? Neither hunter nor hunted. Of the party of the hunter, but not the hunter. Small lives. To quote you, “a currency to be spent freely for a chance of a clean shot”. In this coming world Moriarty outlined, of very great villains and equally magnificent heroes, are you – are we – not such a currency? Are we not native bearers?’
I might have shot her. My finger tightened, involuntarily, on the trigger. It would have been only fair, for she had shot me. With the worst, most deadly ammunition. Purer than a silver bullet.
The truth.
Steiler came into the breakfast room, with another of his notes. This time, for me. From Moriarty.
Mabuse broken. Come to the Falls. The hide we scouted. Bring the Von Herder. On my signal, take the shot.
M.
On the journey, we had discussed this. The hide he mentioned was a perfect lay, marked on a tourist map Moriarty had given me.
‘Sebastian,’ Irene said. ‘Your master whistles.’
XVII
So, we come to it. Above the Reichenbach Falls.
I had my lay. I set out well after Watson, who was rushing back up the mountain, but was at the Falls comfortably before him. Forward planning, you know. Always a good idea. Moriarty was a master at it. From my snug nest in the snow, I had a good view. The roar of the torrent was muted. I saw the narrow path, and judged where the antagonists might meet. A ledge, cropping out, with a grassy patch. No easy way to avoid a determined enemy there.
The Thin Man thought a few Japanese wrestling tricks would serve him in a fight with an old maths tutor. He’d not seen the Professor kill two Swiss wardrobe-carriers – the only souls I ever saw him personally murder, by the way – with a letter opener. If it came to a grapple, it would be a more even contest than the detective knew. With dead-eye Moran in hiding to ensure the outcome, it was no contest at all.
The Von Herder was assembled, loaded and primed. It took twenty minutes’ vigorous pumping for a single shot. Once the gun was discharged, I’d be reduced to chucking rocks. As I said, I usually only need a single shot. I had a small pile of rocks ready, though. More planning.
I was flat out, on a blanket of fresh snow. Not the foul stuff back at the village, but a white, crisp, cold virgin fall. The air was thin and I was quite merry. Your brain gets like that in the mountains. You can hear bells and birdsong and voices in the waterfall if you let yourself.
I had the stock to my cheek, the telescope sight to my eye.
There was no more Firm. It was smashed and scattered. In his talk of starting anew, Moriarty had spoken in the singular person. There was no ‘we’ in his world.
I had prospects. Even without funds, I had my wits. And Sophy was handy. I had not been netted by Scotland Yard and even had the last of my reputation as a hero of the Empire and a cool hand in a crisis. In time, London would welcome Basher Moran. I could always get up a hand of high-stakes whist at the Bagatelle Club.
Tiny figures were struggling down the mountain path.
Through the telescope sight, I saw the antagonists come face to face. They had words. They broke off. One scribbled a note he left on a rock – a notice of the cancellation of milk delivery in Baker Street?
I saw two masterminds, two hunters, two tigers. From my perch, above them, they were small boys playing fight. A red and a white ant. Bacteria.
Then, it was on.
Professor Moriarty and Sherlock Holmes rushed at each other.
Moriarty raised his arm – the signal!
I took my shot.
ENDNOTES
PREFACE
1. ...and reputedly, as Montacute Blore Box (1896–1953) was wont to boast, ‘in Hell!’
2. ‘Regardless of other crimes, anyone who founds a UK-based white rap label and signs up Danny Dyer should have his head kicked into an Essex marsh.’ – Charles Shaar Murray, Facebook update, November 16, 2008.
3. London: Virago and Emeryville, CA: Shoemaker and Hoard, 2004.
4. An expansion of my article ‘Mrs Warren and Mrs Halifax: Controlling Male Desire and Female Economic Emancipation’, Victorian Studies, 41 (2), 1998. Considering the mentions, passim, of Mrs Halifax in the Moran manuscript, further research into this remarkable woman is a priority.
5. Victoria Gorse, Gender in Asylums, 1890–1914. Ms Gorse’s thesis remains incomplete, and the student’s whereabouts unknown... though odd text messages purporting to be from her are received to this day. The last I had was ‘cha0s ra1nz!’.
6. In his introduction to an otherwise valuable edition of this long-suppressed work (University of Brichester Press, 2004), Dr Paul Forrestier dismisses Moran’s candidacy and settles on Lord John Roxton as the author. As I pointed out in a review (History Today, February 2005), the editor’s ‘conclusive evidence’ boils down to a scattering of big-game hunting terms throughout the text – which equally supports the case for Moran. We await a retraction from Dr Forrestier.
7. Box Brothers offered their clients discreet secretarial services in the interwar years. Looking over their employee lists from the early 1920s, it is probable that the typist of the Moran manuscript was either Miss Kathleen Greatorex, later popularly known as the ‘Penton Street Poisoner’, or Mrs Elsa Shank-Goulding, who was shot as a spy in 1943.
CHAPTER ONE
1. Henry James Prince (1811–99), excommunicated from the Church of England for ‘radical teachings’, founded a pseudo-religious order, the Agapemone (Abode of Love), in Spaxton, Somerset, in 1845. His most fervent disciples were women with money. The Agapemone was one of several nineteenth-century communions run along the lines of the groups later established by Sun Myung Moon or L. Ron Hubbard. The circumstances of Moran’s encounter or encounters with Prince are not known at this time. See: The Reverend Prince and His Abode of Love (Charles Mander, EP Publishing, 1976).
2. A more balanced account of these incidents can be found in Riders of the Purple Sage (Zane Grey, Harper & Brothers, 1912).
3. See A Study in Scarlet (John Watson and Arthur Conan Doyle, Beeton’s Christmas Annual, 1887).
CHAPTER TWO
1. ‘bread and honey’. Yes, the slang expression ‘bread’, usually associated with American crooks or hippies, is Victorian cockney rhyming slang: ‘bread and honey – money’.
2. Past and future exponents of this long con include the explorer Allan Quartermain (H. Rider Haggard, King Solomon’s Mines, Cassell & Co., 1885) and the journalist Tintin (Hergé, Le Temple du Soleil/Prisoners of the Sun, Casterman, 1949).
3. According to ‘A Scandal in Bohemia’ (John Watson and Arthur Conan Doyle, The Strand Magazine, 1888), Irene Adler was a coloratura soprano. None of these are coloratura roles.
4. For more on the Ruritanian succession, see The Prisoner of Zenda: Being the History of Three Months in the Life of an English Gentleman (Rudolf Rassendyll and Anthony Hope, J.W. Arrowsmith, 1894) and Rupert of Hentzau (Friedrich von Tarlenheim and Anthony Hope, The Pall Mall Magazine, 1895). For a revisionary view of Ruritania in the 1890s, see ‘The Ruritanian Resistance: How and Why’ (‘Doc M’, http://www.silverwhistle.co.uk/ruritania/).
5. In the original manuscript, the allusion is followed by a parenthesis which has been heavily scored through. From the few discernible words, the redacted section seems to be a homophobic rant. Other passages in the memoirs, especially those concerning his time at Eton, indicate Moran shared his era’s prejudice against homosexuality, but didn’t despise gays more than he hated anyone else. Equally, his bile against ‘natives’ and foreigners is tempered by general misanthropy. Sebastian Moran especially loathed straight white male British Christians.
6. Ruritania is a German-speaking country, though Rudolf II tried to make French the court language.