The Return of Moriarty

by John Gardner

  All four of the crime bosses of Europe had similar labyrinthine secret passwords and traps to pass through before you even got to within an ace of seeing the man for whom you searched.

  Moriarty went through this whole rigmarole with his chosen shadows, testing them, going backward and forward through each stage of the maze, until he was assured that all four boys could do the job to which each was assigned. At last the boys left at various times of day on Friday, May eighteenth.

  Almost a week later, Moriarty received a telegram from Wilhelm Schleifstein under his assumed name, Gunther. The telegram read:

  WE HAVE ADVISED OUR MUTUAL FRIEND THAT HE SHOULD MEET US AT THE APPROPRIATE PLACE ON THE TIME AND DATE SUGGESTED STOP HE HAS RESPONDED FAVOURABLY STOP SUGGEST YOU VISIT US SOMEWHERE ON THE CONTINENT WHEN ALL IS DONE STOP GOOD LUCK STOP GUNTHER ENDS

  MORIARTY KNEW as he stood in the darkness at the back of Paget’s cottage at half past five in the morning of Tuesday, May twenty-ninth, that luck did not enter into it. If you leave nothing to chance, you do not require luck. He had left nothing to chance.

  Moriarty and the men of his Praetorian Guard, plus Daniel Carbonardo acting as his personal bodyguard, had arrived late on Monday night. They carried food and drink with them, which they ate following a careful reconnaissance of every possible hiding place within an eight-mile radius of the cottages on Sir John Grant’s estate, the reconnaissance carried out by almost the entire army of lurkers and punishers, brought down from London for that express purpose.

  “If there is any kind of emergency in London while we are here,” Moriarty said to the estimable Daniel Carbonardo, “then we are most likely scuppered.”

  “Half of the lads will be back in London by now, Professor,” Carbonardo told him. “And we should be done here before seven, so everyone will be back before nine this morning. I don’t think we need worry.”

  In the darkness, Moriarty nodded.

  The old huntsman to the Grant-Willow Hunt, Lazarus Grosewalk, had been awaiting their arrival—a small man, leathery of face and hands, with a deft and commanding manner that suited his position in life.

  He immediately took Moriarty off to see the hounds, kept in their long wire run and big enclosed kennel area. They were noisy, giving tongue immediately Grosewalk appeared. “They’re a bit nervous,” the huntsman said. “They know something is afoot; they’re restless, and they can smell the other dogs.”

  The four rogues, as he had referred to them, were a quartet of ugly-looking hounds, alpha males that had gone bad, each in a separate cage almost a mile away, but they, too, were nervous and showing signs of aggression, jumping up against the cage walls and snarling the moment the old huntsman approached with the Professor, who pulled a thick leather wallet from inside his clothing.

  “No, sir. No. Not yet.” Grosewalk pushed at the empty air as if pushing the money away. “I want nothing ’til it’s all done. Taking it now would be bad luck. There’s many a slip.”

  “Well, it’s all here, Lazarus. The money for restocking the pack, and the fee we agreed upon.”

  “I’ve no doubt on it, sir. But I’ll take it afterwards when you’re gone and satisfied.”

  “They’ll do the job, though?” Moriarty asked. “They’ll kill him?”

  “When we have the scent on him, yes. That’s what I feel worst about. That’s a country rule, sir, and I broke it. You don’t shoot a fox like I did a few hours ago.”

  Moriarty nodded again, and eventually they returned to the cottage, where Grosewalk showed them the blanket and everything else that was made ready. Then the remaining time ticked quickly past, in that silent brooding time as the world woke up.

  They all stood in the darkened cottage as the first trembling rays of the new day’s light filtered through the curtains. Then, on the dot of six o’clock, they heard the sound of Idle Jack’s horse, its hooves rattling out like a pair of great shells hitting each other in a steady rhythm.

  “Right lads,” Moriarty said softly as the huntsman went out to greet Idle Jack, chatting respectfully and telling the boy he had with him to take the gentleman’s horse away, look after it. “Give him a drink,” he said, which was the signal for the four Praetorians to close in on Idle Jack and bind his arms, pulling him into the cottage, where Moriarty let himself be seen.

  “Damn you!” was all Idle Jack said, and later even Moriarty commented that the man had shown considerable courage.

  “Ah, but he didn’t know what was coming at that point,” Spear said. And that was true enough, for they dragged Jack Idell around to the back of the cottage where Grosewalk had left the thick blanket—the blanket that he had wrapped the dead fox in, rubbing the animal’s scent and blood into the rough wool until it was entirely impregnated with the creature’s smell.

  “This is disgusting,” Jack Idell said. “What’s to be gained …” He started to speak again, to say something further, then realized what was happening, for the pack of hounds were loudly giving tongue and the huntsman had released them, sounding his horn for them to give chase and releasing the four rogue dogs into the pack. They all got the scent immediately, the hounds holding off and yapping, uncertain until the four rogues came hurtling through the dawn light toward the back of the cottage.

  Moriarty led his men back inside the cottage, and as they went, they pushed Idle Jack onto the ground.

  Jack let out one great high, terrified scream as the pack came onto him, the rogues breaking through, chasing him as he rolled, then staggered to his feet, running, trying to cross the lane. But they had him down, and Pip Paget for one knew that he would never get the sound out of his head, would never be able to come back and live in this place for Idle Jack’s screams seemed to cut and cleave the air, screams of terror mixed with screams for help, for someone to aid him, as the hounds found his throat and shook and bit down with no conscience, so that all was still and silent but for the baying of the hounds after less than two minutes.

  “Too quick,” said Moriarty as old Grosewalk whipped the hounds off and tried to deal with the rogue dogs. “I wanted him to suffer,” even though he could clearly hear the jaws of the chomping hounds.

  “A clean kill,” Grosewalk said after the hounds were back in kennels and he had, with difficulty, subdued the rogue dogs, who now had the taste and were slavering for more, their fangs still bloody and wet with blood and slime.

  “It’s going to be a lovely day,” Spear said as he stood in front of Paget’s cottage. Daniel Carbonardo was just whipping up the horses, pulling the cart away toward the road. In the cart lay the bitten, crushed, and gouged remains of Idle Jack Idell, covered with old sacking.

  The sky was blood red as the postdawn light sifted across the fields and hedgerows, and the hounds kept up their terrible, ceaseless clamour.

  “A clean kill, and that’s for sure,” Grosewalk repeated, then sounded “gone away” on his brass hunting horn.

  20

  Sal Hodges’s Secret

  LONDON: JUNE–SEPTEMBER 1900

  SOMETIMES IN THE NIGHT Sal Hodges would ask herself why she had done it; but it was useless even asking, because she knew damn well why. She had done it because he was set on it, and he just did not give up as she inched her way toward the birth those years ago.

  Now, she realized she was faced with choices: Either she came clean to him, risking a terrible wrath, or she tucked her secret away and lived with it for the rest of her life.

  Sal Hodges returned to the Professor’s bed five days after he came back from Steventon to London, following what must, she reasoned, have been an important and fruitful night. She knew a body had been found, but no more.

  The fact was that Daniel Carbonardo, on Moriarty’s instructions, took the cart, under the cloak of night, and tipped the body at the foot of Nelson’s column, where it lay like a pile of old rags until the morning. Idle Jack was, by this time, unrecognizable: a terrible sight, for the hounds and the rogue dogs had destroyed most of his face, and torn at other parts
of his body.

  The first senior police officer at the scene made the bare weighty statement, “We’re going to need help with this,” and sent for Angus McCready Crow, now a Superintendent in the Detective Division, who in turn paid a visit to Mr. Sherlock Holmes in Baker Street—but that is another story, which will be told.

  The clearing up of the fringes of Idle Jack’s organization took place over the next handful of days. The barque Sea Dancer unexpectedly exploded in Portsmouth, tied up to a quay with only her captain, William Evans, aboard.

  And there was the case of Broad Darryl Wood, the man who had been Idle Jack’s second-in-command and was set to be heir to his family. It was sad, for he took to drink, and one night, during late July of this same year, 1900, he came staggering out of a pub in Oxford Street and bumped straight into Lee Chow, who said, “Ah. So Mis’er ’ood. Nice to see …” and promptly did the cheek trick with his little razor-sharp filleting knife: flick-flick, and Wood’s cheeks were no more. Lying at his feet. They sewed him up as best they could, and it has to be said that he was not a man you could keep down. There was more of him in the future, though his nickname altered from “Broad” to “Cheeky.” “Cheeky” Darryl Wood, later a force to be reckoned with in Moriarty’s family. There’s a turn-up for the book, as they say.

  But what of Sal Hodges and the dreadful weight of her secret? The night she returned to Moriarty’s chamber the bed springs sang their sweet harmonies, and when they were done, Sal was still weeping, distraught with the loss of Arthur. Or so one would have thought.

  “Come, my princess, my dolly darling,” Moriarty soothed. “Don’t take on so. Arthur has gone and we must continue our journey in peace.” He lit a lamp and looked upon Sal and saw that she was shivering with emotion, her eyes scarlet and dreadfully blotchy, while her cheeks were raw with the salt tears, making the skin sore and rough. “Come, dearest Sal. Arthur was a good boy and I miss him. But…”

  And she said it before she could stop herself.

  “But he was not your son!”

  She looked at him hard, expecting this to maybe be the last moment of her life; expecting to see his face changed into a violent thundercloud.

  Instead, Moriarty smiled at her and nodded, slowly and with infinite understanding.

  She knew all about him, knew that he had killed, or ordered murder on a whim almost, knew that he had done horrific things; but she could not believe what she saw now.

  “One gets a sense of what’s what,” he said, quietly, in control of himself. “I knew there was something, not quite …” The hands spread in a gesture more eloquent than words.

  “You …?” she began, and he said softly, “Tell me what happened.”

  “You were so insistent. All the time you spoke of your son. You told me I was so good, being the conduit through which your son was coming into the world. You spoke all the time of our unborn baby as our son. And I could not gainsay you. ‘Our son… our boy … My son.’ Not a day went by without you talking of him. I began to dread the birth because I thought it might not be a male child. Then, with one thing and another, I became so fearful. I knew I could not fail you, so I went to your friend, the nurse. Gwendolyn Smith. Gwen Smith. I begged her and she saw to it the boy was smuggled in. He was there when I bore you a daughter.”

  She looked at him hard, her eyes searching his face as though looking for some fissure, some fault, a crack in his physical makeup, but could find none. He looked down at her with affection, that smile playing over his lips and clawing up to his eyes.

  “You are not angry?” she asked.

  “The Lord takes away, and the Lord gives. Where is she? My daughter?”

  “You have seen her, James, though you have never met her. She’s the girl who assists me at the Haymarket house. Polly.”

  “Polly,” he said, and nodded. Then he said they should sleep and he would meet Polly tomorrow.

  Of course, Sal thought. Of course. I should have known he would take it in his stride. Moriarty was always flexible, tempering things to the changing winds. Always trimming his sails.

  So, on the following morning Sal brought Polly to the house and introduced her to James Moriarty. “This is Professor Moriarty, Polly. This is your father.” He took her in his arms and looked into her eyes and saw himself there, deep and devious, cunning as a cat, lovely as the first rose of summer, deadly as a lethal weapon.

  It was during that summer that father got to know daughter, and daughter plumbed the depths of her father. She accepted him for what he was, admired his ingenuity and genius of organization, and he taught her all things: took her around his lairs, introduced her to those who worked in the world for her. In that one summer, Polly learned all the dodges from fawney dropping to the three card; she learned how to crack a crib, how to blow a safe, how to shoot, and how to handle a knife with dexterity, how to smash and how to grab.

  As the summer progressed, Polly saw the way the warehouse in Poplar was taking shape, and even made some suggestions of her own.

  In early autumn, one still, balmy evening when father and daughter had arranged to dine together at The Press off Fleet Street, they found that part of the road had been blocked, which meant they would have to walk some sixty yards or so over cobbles. Harkness helped Polly down from the cab and said he would make his way round and be outside when they had eaten.

  She took Moriarty’s arm, and the pair started to walk toward the famous restaurant where Sal would meet them, for she had been having a fitting for the dress she would wear for the wedding on Christmas Day in the warehouse, which would be ready by then.

  As they paced along the road, some music reached their ears from an open window: the sound of a piano and a well-known voice. It came from a rehearsal room hidden away in this quiet side street, and the voice was that of the great male impersonator Vesta Tilley. That evening she was trying out a new song, which in a few months would have the errand boys whistling and people’s feet tapping.

  As Polly matched her stride to that of her father, and as they both took up the rhythm of the song, Vesta Tilley’s voice floated out into the street, singing:

  “I’m following in Father’s footsteps, I’m following dear old dad.

  He’s just in front with a big fine gal, so I thought I’d have one as well.

  I don’t know where he’s going, but when he gets there I’ll be glad!

  I’m following in Father’s footsteps, yes, I’m following the dear old dad.”

  The piano took up the refrain, and James Moriarty and Polly, arm in arm, almost danced together over the cobbles.

  Glossary

  In any book set among the criminal classes at the turn of the century you would expect to come across the criminal slang of the day. I have tried throughout to make the meaning of the slang obvious and clear. I include this small glossary of more arcane terms reluctantly. When I first published a work set in the nineteenth century and included such a glossary, some young reviewer wrote, “Gardner has also been dipping into a slang dictionary.” What price erudition and scholasticism?

  broadsmen: Swindlers, card sharps, etc.

  demander: A beggar; or more likely one demanding money with menaces; i.e., someone on the protection.

  dips/dippers: Pickpockets.

  dodger: Anyone working one of the criminal dodges of the day.

  dollymop: An amateur, but enthusiastic, prostitute. Brothel keepers would often allow dollymops to operate within the house.

  fawney dropping: A ruse in which the villain pretends to find a jewel or ring (which is worthless) and sell it to a passer-by as a valuable article.

  gonif: A thief or rogue.

  lurkers: Beggars/watchers with criminal intent.

  magsman: Swindler. Usually one who posed as a gent.

  patterers: Fast-talking con men.

  punishers: Obviously, those who meted out punishment.

  whizzer: Another name for a pickpocket. Also someone outstanding, extraordinary.

 
; *With the new information given to us in the coded Moriarty Journals, we now have three versions of what occurred at that last meeting of James Moriarty and Sherlock Holmes at the Reichenbach Falls: There is also Watson’s own account, and Holmes’s account, as related by Watson in The Final Problem and The Empty House (on Holmes’s “return from the grave”). Needless to say, the Holmes/ Watson accounts differ considerably from Moriarty’s own narrative. In his telling of the tale we have what appears to be the definitive description (which I have set down in detail in The Return of Moriarty): It is Moriarty—in the midst of planning a huge robbery—who finally follows Holmes across Europe to Switzerland and so to the Reichenbach Falls. Professor Moriarty did not confront the Great Detective on his own on that ledge high in the mountains—as in the Holmes/Watson versions—but was backed up by one of his cohorts from the Swiss branch of his crime family. Also present was Albert Spear, armed and dangerous. In the Moriarty version, Holmes is held at a distance in a kind of Mexican standoff while Moriarty dictates his terms. He points out that if there is any act of aggression, Spear will shoot Holmes “like a dog.” He then demands that they go their separate ways and pursue their own destinies. He proposes a truce, after which, “I will endeavour not to cross your path again, on the understanding that you will not cross mine.” Personally, I am not completely convinced by the Moriarty account. The problem is nothing I can put my finger on, except that it seems self-serving in the extreme and there appears to be something missing.

  *For details of Pip Paget’s terrible treachery, see The Return of Moriarty.