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

Professor Moriarty pressed a signet ring to the paper, impressing a stylised M below Drebber’s dripping scrawl.

The document was whisked away.

‘Good day, Elder Drebber.’

Moriarty dismissed the client, who backed out of the room.

‘What are you waiting for?’ I said to Stangerson, who stuck on the hat he had been fiddling with and scarpered.

One of the girls giggled at his departure, then remembered herself and pretended it was a hiccough. She paled under her rouge at the Professor’s sidelong glance.

‘Colonel Moran, have you given any thought to hunting a Lassiter ?’

IV

A jungle is a jungle, even if it’s in Streatham and is made up of villas named after shrubs.

In my coat pocket I had my Webley.

If I were one of those cowboys, I’d have notched the barrel after killing Kali’s Kitten. Then again, even if I only counted white men and tigers, I didn’t own any guns with a barrels long enough to keep score. A gentleman doesn’t need to list his accomplishments or his debts, since there are always clerks to keep tally. I might not have turned out to be a pukka gent, but I was flogged and fagged at Eton beside future cabinet ministers and archbishops, and some skins you never shed.

It was bloody cold, as usual in London. Not raining, no fog — which is to say, no handy cover of darkness — but the ground chill rose through my boots and a nasty wind whipped my face like wet pampas grass.

The only people outside this afternoon were hurrying about their business with scarves around their ears, obviously part of the landscape. I had decided to toddle down and poke around, as a preliminary to the business in hand. Call it a recce.

Before setting out, I’d had the benefit of a lecture from the Professor. He had devoted a great deal of thought to murder. He could have written the Baedeker’s or Bradshaw’s of the subject. It would probably have to be published anonymously — A Complete Guide to Murder, by ‘A Distinguished Theorist’ — and then be liable to seizure or suppression by the philistines of Scotland Yard.

‘Of course, Moran, murder is the easiest of all crimes, if murder is all one has in mind. One simply presents one’s card at the door of the intended victim, is ushered into his sitting room and blows his or, in these enlightened times her, brains out with a revolver. If one has omitted to bring along a firearm, a poker or candlestick will serve. Physiologically, it is not difficult to kill another person, to perform outrages upon a human corpus which will render it a human corpse. Strictly speaking, this is a successful murder. Of course, then comes the second, far more challenging part of the equation: getting away with it.’

I’d been stationed across the road from The Laurels for a quarter of an hour, concealed behind bushes, before I noticed I was in Streatham Hill Rise not Streatham Hill Road. This was another Laurels, with another set of residents. This was a boarding house for genteel folk of a certain age. I was annoyed enough, with myself and the locality, to consider potting the landlady just for the practice.

If I held the deeds to this district and the Black Hole of Calcutta, I’d live in the Black Hole and rent out Streatham. Not only was it beastly cold, but stultifyingly dull. Row upon monotonous row of The Lupins, The Laburnums, The Leilandii and The Laurels. No wonder I was in the wrong spot.

‘It is a little-known fact that most murderers don’t get away with it. They are possessed by an emotion — at first, perhaps, a mild irritation about the trivial habit of a wife, mother, master or mistress. This develops over time, sprouting like a seed, to the point when only the death of another will bring peace. These murderers go happy to the gallows, free at last of their victim’s clacking false teeth or unconscious chuckle or penny-pinching. We shun such as amateurs. They undertake the most profound action one human being can perform upon another, and fail to profit from the enterprise.’

No, I had not thought to purchase one of those penny-maps. Besides, anyone on the street with a map is obviously a stranger. Thus the sort who, after the fact, lodges in the mind of witnesses. ‘Did you see anyone suspicious in the vicinity, Madam Busybody?’ ‘Why yes, Sergeant Flat-Foot, a lost-looking fellow, very red in the face, peering at street signs. Come to think of it, he looked like a murderer. And he was the very spit and image of that handsome devil whose picture was in the Illustrated Press after single-handedly seeing off the Afghan hordes that time.’

‘Our business is murder for profit, killing for cash,’ Moriarty had put it. ‘We do not care about our clients’ motives, providing they meet the price. They may wish murder to gain an inheritance, inflict revenge, make a political point or from sheer spite. In this case, all four conditions are in play. The Danite Band, represented by Elder Drebber, seek to secure the gold mine, avenge the deaths of their fellow conspirators, indicate to others who might defy them that they are dangerous to cross, and see dead a foeman they are not skilled enough to best by themselves.’

What was the use of a fanatical secret society if it couldn’t send a horde of expendable minions to overwhelm the family? These Danite Desperadoes weren’t up there with the Thuggee or the Dacoits when it came to playing that game. If the cabal really sought to usurp the governance of their church, which the Professor confided they had in mind, a greater quantity of sand would be required.

‘For centuries, the art of murder has stagnated. Edged weapons, blunt instruments and bare hands that would have served our ancient ancestors are still in use. Even poisons were perfected in classical times. Only in the last hundred and fifty years have fire arms come to dominate the murder market place. For the cruder assassin, the explosive device — whether planted or flung — has made a deal of noise, though at the expense of accuracy. Presently, guns and bombs are more suited to the indiscriminate slaughter of warfare or massacre than the precision of wilful murder. That, Moran, we must change. If guns can be silenced, if skills you have developed against big game can be employed in the science of man-slaying, then the field will be revolutionised.’

I beetled glumly up and down Streatham Hill.

‘Imagine, if you will, a Minister of State or a Colossus of Finance or a Royal Courtesan, protected at all hours by professionals, beyond the reach of any would-be murderer, vulnerable only to the indiscriminate anarchist with his oh-so-inaccurate bomb and willingness to be a martyr to his cause. Then think of a man with a rifle, stationed at a window or on a balcony some distance from the target, with a telescopic device attached to his weapon, calmly drawing a bead and taking accurate, deadly shots. A sniper, Moran, as used in war, brought to bear in a civilian circumstance, a private enterprise. While guards panic around their fallen employer, in a tizzy because they don’t even know where the shot has come from, our assassin packs up and strolls away untroubled, unseen and untraced. That will be the murder of the future, Moran. The scientific murder.’

Then the Professor rattled on about airguns, which lost me. Only little boys and poofs would deign to touch a contraption which needs to be pumped before use and goes off with a sad phut rather than a healthy bang. Kali’s Kitten would have swallowed an airgun whole and taken an arm along with it. The whiff of cordite, that’s the stuff — better than cocaine any day of the month. And the big bass drum thunder of a gun going off.