Kim Newman - Professor Moriarty The Hound of the D'Urbervilles

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Though he may never have realised the fact, Moran encountered this ‘ghost’ again in later life. In chapter six, he mentions he was in the Paris Opera House on the night in 1881 that a chandelier fell on the audience. This was the most famous crime committed by Erik de Boscherville, popularly known as the Phantom of the Opera. At the time Sir Augustus Moran was British Minister to Persia, Erik was employed by the family of the shah as an architect. For the khanum, the mother of Nasser al-Din Shah Qajar, Erik designed a torture labyrinth at Mazendaran which to some extent prefigured the famous maze he created under the cellars of the Paris Opera. Accounts differ, but contemporary historians believe Erik congenitally disfigured rather than a victim of abuse or accident. See: Gaston Leroux, Le Fantôme de l’Opéra, Le Gaulois, 1909–10; Susan Kay, Phantom, Doubleday, 1990.

Snide: forged currency.

Darbies: handcuffs.

Scholars have long noted that Watson and Doyle set out contradictory versions of Watson’s introduction to Moriarty in ‘The Final Problem’ and The Valley of Fear. Since these accounts can’t both be true, the veracity of one or the other must be challenged. A similar, ‘no, what really happened’ discrepancy exists between ‘The Final Problem’ and ‘The Empty House’. It should be noted that, though made aware of Moriarty, Watson never met him.

History says Prince Rudolf of Elphberg was crowned King of Ruritania in 1891. Shortly after the coronation, it was rumoured that Rudolf’s cousin, the Englishman Rassendyll, occupied the throne in his place. Any argument was ended when Prince Michael was murdered by the Count of Hentzau at Zenda Castle, reputedly in an argument over a woman.