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

‘Agreed.’

‘Then you will withdraw?’

‘I agree there can only be one outcome,’ the ringer said. ‘I imagine we disagree about what it might be.’

‘Moran,’ the Professor said. ‘Kill him.’

I brought up my gun.

The Colonel began a protest.

I pulled back the hammer.

The shadow man remained calm. I’ve seen that before.

Again, I felt a knife at my throat. Again, my gun was taken. Again, Sophy.

Ah, Sophy, Sophy, Sophy.

‘This man is a prisoner, James,’ the Colonel said, with icy relish. ‘The property of the Department of Supplies.’

The Professor’s head oscillated. He was grinding his teeth.

Now, Colonel Moriarty — a punctured gasbag, filling out again — thought he was higher up the pole, and relaxed, confident in Sophy’s blade. Stationmaster Moriarty — still sulking at the rejection, swinging back to cling to his other brother — backed him up, and made show of checking the prisoner’s bonds.

‘You will not keep such a property,’ the Professor said.

I remembered the gun bound to Major Upshall’s hand. Someone as good with knots as that wouldn’t stay tied up long.

The shadow man’s face — if it was his own — flickered with amusement.

‘Catch your train, Professor Moriarty. We shall continue this match in due course. You will know where to find me.’

The Lizard to Newquay was puffing down the line. A whistle shrilled.

The Professor looked at the ringer, then at his brothers. No trace of expression all round.

Sophy gave me back my gun. I’d no doubt she’d kill me if I tried to use it. I still hoped she’d call on us in Conduit Street.

Berkins came up with tickets and a refund on our original fare.

No one said goodbye, so I did, cheerfully. It was a split decision as to whose expression was the most angry, miserable or murderous.

Moriarty and I boarded the train.

X

At Truro, we secured a first-class compartment on the Penzance to Paddington. Moriarty gave off such deadly emanations that — though the train was busy — no one dared to join us.

The Professor hadn’t spoken since Fal Vale.

I beetled off to the dining carriage and had a large breakfast. I winked and twirled my moustache at three ripe, giggling country girls going up to the city for a day trip. The way I felt after the night’s work, I could have ruined the lot of them before they had to catch their return train. Then, some hale fellows joined them and they giggled much more, pointing at me from behind tiny hands. I realised I was still soot-blackened, and repaired to the lavatory to scrub my face. The dirt came off, but the bruises were still there, and the cut to my throat. I also had a scratch in my side where I’d been stabbed. I felt ridiculously old.

I ordered a pot of coffee from the steward and went back to the compartment.

The Professor consented to drink. He was chewing over the night’s events.

There was the question of the ringer’s true identity, but that would keep. Instead, I asked the thing that had nagged at me ever since the meeting with Colonel Moriarty at Xeniades Club.

‘Moriarty,’ I said. ‘Why did your parents give their three sons the same name? Why are you all James?’

‘It was our father’s name. He wished to pass it on.’

‘To all of you?’

‘To a son who pleased him. It is my understanding that, upon my birth, he was pleased. In the nursery, as I began to show aptitude… with sums… he continued to be pleased. My mother also, I believe, though she never said as much. She never said much of anything, I recall. Father would review each week with me and declare himself pleased. Then, when I reached the age of six, he found himself less pleased. Then, not pleased at all. I went over my sums again and could find no error in my workings. So I reasoned that the failing was not in me, but in Father. I did not tell him as much, for I knew he would not see it that way.

‘Then, when I was seven, my brother was born. My brother James. Father was pleased with James. From the day of my brother’s birth, I believe my father spoke not one word to me. I was fed and clothed and schooled, but in the house, I was a ghost. My brother did not know who I was, but eventually gathered he would not be punished if he visited trifling nuisances and afflictions on me. Father was still pleased with James. In the nursery, and for some while after, he continued to be. My brother was James. He would not believe that was my name too. He only truly realised who I was, what my name was, when our brother was born. Our brother James. I was fourteen and James was seven. He lost the name too.

‘Young James was the only James. We were ghosts separately, James and I. Not together. That was not possible after what had passed between us when I was the only ghost. Young James was the James and Father was pleased with him. In the nursery, and afterward… He never became a ghost, and — as you can tell — lacks firmness of character, if not craft and cunning. Had Father and Mother not been lost at sea, they might have had another child, another James. That might have been the making of Young James.’

‘How did your parents come to be “lost at sea”, Moriarty?’

The Professor paused, and said, ‘Mysteriously, Moran.’

I drank my coffee. Remember I said the Professor wasn’t the worst of his family. Wasn’t the worst James in his family. Neither were his brothers. The worst, so far as I could see, was James the first.

‘James, James and I have taken different paths,’ Moriarty said. ‘We have never been fond, but we are family. I am not given to calculations with no outcome. But I have considered the question of how things might have differed if I’d been the only James born to my parents’ union, or if my brothers were named, say, Robert and Stuart. Then, might I — the sole James Moriarty — have been different? Much of what I might have been was taken away, taken back with my name, and failed to survive successive attempts to transplant it to my brothers. James and James, also, are not whole, have had to share with me something that should be one man’s alone. But there is a strength in that. Some qualities, some possessions, are distractions.

‘Young James had a comfortable settlement from our parents, but it did him little good and is all gone now. He will never be more than a functionary. A poor one at that. James went into the army, to find an order, system and path. He is respectable. My first inclination was to join the clergy. That I see no mathematical proof whatsoever for the existence of God is no drawback. Rather, atheism is likely to help advance in the Church of England. No distracting beliefs. Then, I saw what could be done with numbers and have made my life’s work the business which employs you and so many others. Had I been the only James Moriarty, I would not be what you see before you.’

I looked into his clear, cold eyes. His head was steady.

I had no doubt of what he had told me. No doubt at all.

In that compartment, it was cold. Around Moriarty, there would never be warmth.

We were well past Reading.

‘We’re nearing our final destination, Moriarty.’

‘Yes, Moran. I believe we are.’

I

You know how this ends. Someone goes over a waterfall.

A lot of rot has been spouted about what happened to Moriarty in Switzerland. One of his brothers and that medical writer in The Strand muddied the waters with a public row [46] See: John Watson and Arthur Conan Doyle, ‘The Final Problem’, The Strand Magazine, 1893; and ‘The Adventure of the Empty House’, Collier’s Weekly, 1903. It is evident that Moran wrote his memoir after both these reminiscences — which offer differing accounts of the incident at Reichenbach Falls — were published. In ‘The Final Problem’, the narrator writes that ‘the best and wisest man I have ever known’ died at the Falls; in ‘The Empty House’, it is alleged that Watson’s friend survived but, for reasons no else has ever found convincing, decided to let the world think him dead for a few years. Moran barely touches on the many other theories which have been advanced as to what actually happened… that Moriarty was merely an alternate personality of a mentally ill man who threw himself alone off the mountain… that Moriarty survived to take his dead opponent’s place in the world, and thereafter fought against crime as he had previously fought for it… that Moriarty evaded death by mentally projecting himself into a succession of other bodies and has lived on as a series of masterminds; the names of Carl Peterson, Gregory Arkadin, Alexander Luthor, Arnold Zeck, Professor Marcus, Peter Cornelius, Ernst Blofeld, Justin Sepheran, Derek Leech, Hannibal Lecter and ‘Count Jim Moriarty’ have been mentioned — and some of those aren’t even real people… that Moriarty was never in Switzerland and faked his death so he could rebuild his just-shattered criminal empire. He also reveals nothing which will comfort the many theorists who have advanced the notions that Moriarty was a total innocent persecuted by a paranoid cocaine fiend, an alien invader (this might arise from dim rumours associated with The Red Planet League), a vampire, one of his brothers in disguise, a multiple personality (in this scenario, the Professor, the Colonel and the Stationmaster are aspects of the same person), a self-aware hologram, a giant rat (either from Sumatra or somewhere else), a woman, a clone from the future, gay, or (like every eminent Victorian from Alfred Tennyson to Vesta Tilley) Jack the Ripper. It’s unlikely that Moran was blithely unaware of this feverish speculation, which was well underway during his later life. . It was a surprise to me when Colonel Moriarty of ‘f-k off back to your blackboard’ fame put the Professor up for posthumous sainthood.