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

Molly Duff, ‘the Ranee of Ranchipur’, formed a Thuggee strangling sisterhood in Aylesbury Women’s Prison and queened over the place for twenty years. Lady Deborah Hope-Collins, ‘Mistress Strict’, went up before a judge she recognised as one of her overgrown schoolboy regulars; she was given a good character by the court after all charges were dismissed. Marie-Françoise Lely, ma belle Fifi, slipped through the net by marrying Inspector Patterson, the plod in charge of the Conduit Street round-up, then disappearing with the wedding presents two days into the honeymoon… at that, Pie-Eye Patterson was lucky to have had forty-eight hours service from the finest truncheon-polishing lips in Europe.

Neverthehowsoever, the cat was at least halfway out of the bag.

During his long career as an evildoer, Moriarty shrugged off rumours about his true enterprise and maintained a respectable false front to the outside world. All through our association, even as he cut himself into crimes and netted one of the highest private incomes in the Empire, he kept at a dull teaching job which brought in just £700 per annum. The Devil knows where he found the time to give lectures, mark papers and expel slackers, but he did.

None of his former students or present colleagues spoke up in his favour when the press had a field day maligning him. I gather the inkies were as terrified of the dear old soul as anyone who met him in his criminal capacity — once, I know for certain, he slowly put a youth to death for misplacing a decimal point — even before it came out that he was, as the sensation papers have it, ‘a diabolical mastermind’.

So, the world now knows — or thinks it knows — the truth about the terrible Professor James Moriarty.

Well, that’s fair, so far as it goes.

Still, in Fleet Street terms, I’ve an ‘exclusive’. Only two people really know how Moriarty died. One took that long plunge into the foaming torrent, and is in no position to reveal anything. The other is me. I’ve kept schtumm so far, but now it’s time to tell the end of the story of the worst and wildest man I have ever known. Have I your attention? Good, let us continue…

II

On our return from Cornwall — early in January, 1891, for those who like to mark off the dates — Professor Moriarty bunged himself into his work. Oh, he was still in one of his moods… brooding on family matters, I’ll be bound, redoubling his efforts to achieve abstruse goals in a triply vain effort to earn back his name. All he wanted was the recognition of a sire who was a) plainly an out-and-out maniac incapable of human feeling, b) unlikely to appreciate the Prof’s high standing in any of his chosen fields and c) long since drowned.

After one glimpse behind the curtain, I knew better than to ask for more. I was on hand with the Firm for my sure eye, cold nerve and lack of scruple, not as sob shoulder or scratching post for an unknowable conundrum of a man. In those days, Moriarty spent more time with his wasps — remember them? — than his lieutenants, but popped out of his study periodically to issue orders and pass comment. I made sure his instructions were carried out, though even after long experience I was puzzled by some of his moves…

Dynamiting a pillar box on the corner of Wigmore and Welbeck Streets just after the post had been collected and it was empty…

Bestowing one hundred pounds upon a respectable solicitor in Taunton on the condition that he dash acid at the portrait of a former alderman which hung in the local assizes (respectable or no, the shyster went through with it)…

Contriving a delay of twenty minutes on the City & South London Railway to ensure a minor government clerk did not keep an appointment with an optician in King William Street…

Injecting minute quantities of a bacillus into every bottle but one of a case of port wine — tricky thing, using a hypodermic needle on the cork without leaving an obvious hole — presented to the Chief Coroner of Cardiff, ostensibly by a grateful widow lately exonerated of husbandicide.

Whatever that little lot was all about went over the waterfall, so your guess is as good as mine. The Professor was always doing things like that. Usually, there would come a moment when I could see the point of these preliminary moves, and a grand scheme would be apparent. In these cases, that moment never eventuated. I think of this as Moriarty’s Unfinished Symphony of Crime.

In years to come, a mastermind as yet unborn might read this passage, see at once the design thick old Basher couldn’t make head nor tail of, and set out to complete Moriarty’s final coup. Good luck to you, mate. Post me my cut — care of Box Brothers Bank — if I’m still living.

The only profit to come from the Fal Vale excursion was a welcome addition to the Firm. Three weeks after the loss of the Kallinikos, who should present herself at Conduit Street but Miss Sophy Kratides, bearing the card Moriarty had given her. She sought employment suitable for her skills.

To reach our reception room, she had to climb the stairs past Mrs Halifax’s establishment, uncommonly busy at that time of the morning. Swedish Suzette and Mistress Strict, en deshabille, were riding a publisher and a merchant banker across the landing. Not a few of their gentlemen callers liked the bit between their teeth and the lash on their flanks. At the last formal event, I’d won seven guineas wagering on the Librarian of Jesus College to best a muscular Christian poet by a full length. Coming across this sporting event gave Sophy the wrong idea about the line of work on offer.

She charged into our rooms het up, red in the face and knife out, intent on avenging any slur against her virtue. Since the Prof did not emerge from his study to investigate the commotion — which was mostly in Greek — I was responsible for calming the tigress with assurances that we only wanted her to stick her knives into people. Eventually, I persuaded her to put away the blade and share a divan with me for a proper job interview. I had Mrs Halifax send in tea, without her deadly biscuits. Mercifully, Polly remembered to wear the full uniform — not just mob-cap and apron — when she brought in the tray.

‘Do you have references?’ I enquired.

Sophy opened her pocketbook and handed me a newspaper clipping from an English language periodical published in Hungary. The news item involved Harold Latimer and Wilson Kemp, two dissolute Englishmen, who were reckoned to have quarrelled and stabbed each other to death [49] See: John Watson and Arthur Conan Doyle, ‘The Greek Interpreter’, The Strand Magazine, 1893. . Kemp, also known as Davenport, was a familiar if unwelcome face. Crooked as a corkscrew but not half so handy, he’d done a share of minor minionage about town, obtaining compromising letters for the blackmailer Charles Milverton or suborning young idiots onto the books of the shylock Dan Levy [50] Both Kemp’s employers subsequently came to bad ends. See: John Watson and Arthur Conan Doyle, ‘The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton’, Colliers Magazine, 1904; and Harold Manders and E.W. Hornung, Mr Justice Raffles, Smith, Elder & Co, 1909. From the records of Box Brothers, where Charles Milverton and Daniel Levy both banked, it is evident that the master blackmailer and the rapacious moneylender tithed significant portions of their incomes to the Professor. He allowed them to conduct their businesses, and his influence granted them a measure of protection. While Moriarty was alive, no one murdered Milverton or Levy; when he was off the scene, ruined former victims queued up to take their shots. Neither case was solved and the murderers went free. Milverton, Levy and other criminal or semi-criminal figures ran their particular rackets only because Professor Moriarty didn’t find such enterprises stimulating or useful, unless for a specific purpose connected to larger schemes. Indeed, it is quite likely Moriarty used his pet blackmailer and usurer to ensnare or pressure officials or members of society he wished to make use of. . Moriarty had several times turned down Kemp’s petitions to join the Firm, rating him unreliable, vile and inept. Getting stabbed in Budapest proved the Prof right again. Latimer was a new to me, but if he knocked about with Kemp it was a fair bet that he was a c-t of the first water.