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

Sophy claimed both for her bag. She’d been settling a personal score — avenging a murdered brother. One had to appreciate not only the dainty knife-work but the care taken to arrange matters so the Hungarian peelers had a cut-and-dried solution to the mystery and no need to trouble the lady said to be travelling with the deceased clots.

In finishing Kemp and Latimer, she’d discovered an aptitude for wet red work and had taken to it professionally. She had stabbed a French juge d’instruction through the lungs for Les Vampires on a freelance basis, but turned down the Grand Vampire’s offer of a permanent position. She shrewdly reckoned the rising Irma Vep would not take kindly to competition for the title of deadliest woman in Paris. A bureau of the Greek government gave her employment, on the condition that she stay out of Greece, then contracted her to look after the late George Lampros — mention of whom prompted me to hem and haw somewhat — as a liaison with the British Department of Supplies.

‘The death of Lampros counts as a black mark on your record,’ I said, making sympathetic moon-eyes from the other end of the divan. ‘I imagine you’re motivated to do better in your next position.’

She spat out a mouthful of tea.

‘You misunderstand my former commission, Colonel…’

‘Call me Sebastian, or Basher even, Sophy, if I may…’

I own I might have twirled my moustache. I know it’s a tiresome old look-at-me-I’m-a-roué stage gesture, but — dash it — I’ve got a moustache (a big one too), and it’s there for the twirling. I’d lick my thumb and twirl my eyebrows if I thought it’d produce the desired results. I mean, I was on a divan, with a trembling young miss (and her knives) prettily arranged on the cushions, in need of tea and sympathy and a job… and the warm possibility she might accommodate to an obliging gent who saw his way to help her in this wicked world. If you don’t twirl the old ’tache then, you might as well not have whiskers at all.

As it happens, the minx was all business.

‘My orders were to keep Lampros alive, unless it seemed probable that he, and the secret of Greek Fire, were at risk of becoming the property of another power… in which case…’

She made an expressive pass across her throat with a barbed thumb and pulled an unmistakable grimace.

‘I would have killed him myself, Colonel.’

That was a facer. Did she suspect what even Moriarty hadn’t tumbled to, that mine was the bullet that had done for the oily inventor? There was no time to further discuss the matter. For, at this point, Moriarty emerged from his bolt-hole. He did not seem surprised to find Sophy Kratides in our parlour.

‘Has Moran discussed terms?’ he asked. ‘£4,000 per annum, payable in advance every quarter. An account will be opened for you at Box Brothers. This is acceptable, yes?’

She nodded. This was acceptable, yes.

Moriarty continued to talk at her, head bobbing as usual. ‘Do you own a black dress and veil? You are to be a widow this afternoon. If you do not have such items in your wardrobe, Mrs Halifax will provide. You will be furnished with a wedding ring, photographs of your late husband, and keepsakes of your two children — who were lost in a boating accident on the Serpentine. Since I don’t need to remember them but you do, you may choose their names. Your husband, Benjamin Thoroughgood, was English, so I suggest you do not choose Greek names.’

‘Will and Harry,’ she said.

Moriarty paused in his oscillation, elevating an eyebrow. He picked up the reference. Told you he memorised crimes from all over the world.

‘Very apt. My condolences on your loss, Mrs Thoroughgood. Colonel Moran and I will accompany you to Kingstead Cemetery this afternoon for the funerals. I suggest you put something in your eyes. You will have been crying for days.’

Sophy set down her teacup, sat up straight and arranged herself neatly on the divan. She put her hands in her lap, took a deep breath, paused… and let out a banshee wail. She tore her hair, screwed up her eyes, and slapped her cheeks. Tears poured out in floods. Mrs Halifax and Polly looked in, startled… but backed off when they saw Moriarty impassively watching the show. Sophy clawed the air and howled. Her screech set the teeth on edge more than la Castafiore’s high notes. I applauded and would have tossed roses if any had been to hand. Moriarty nodded approval and told our new employee to give Mrs H. her measurements.

III

Lot of rum doings in Kingstead Cemetery. The real Thomas Carnacki has a whole evening’s worth of spook anecdotes about the place. The management have had to double the night guard since the Van Helsing scandal broke in the Westminster Gazette. An old Dutch crank was arrested for repeatedly breaking in, vandalising the tombs and desecrating the corpses. Especially young, relatively fresh lady corpses. No accounting for taste, but — really? — is there nothing foreigners won’t sink to?

As it happens, we should have seen that coming. The degenerate quack was a regular of Fifi’s in Amsterdam and London. His particular jolly involved his lady companion of the evening sitting in a bath of ice water for half an hour to get her temperature down, then lying still, cold, silent and unresponsive on a garlanded bier while he did something unmentionable with a length of wood. I suppose this performance was all very well to take the edge off, but in the long run it didn’t quite slake the appetite. If I ever run into the johnny, I’ll give him a length of wood all right… and fill his mouth with garlic.

The Thoroughgood funeral was at three o’clock.

From their crowded tomb in the cemetery’s Egyptian Avenue, you’d reckon the Thoroughgoods must be the most unfortunate family in the land. Never were such people for dying. It seemed to be all they ever did. That was, indeed, the case. There was no Thoroughgood family. It was an account established with Bulstrode & Sons, undertakers. Said account was settled, generously and promptly, in cash.

Moriarty also supplied illicit and expensive materials to the senior Mr Bulstrode, an enthusiast of obscenity reckoned to have the finest collection of pornography in private hands in Europe. The Bulstrode Archive of Smut perhaps rivals the legendary section of the Vatican library at the personal disposal of the college of cardinals. I am proud that a presentation copy of My Nine Nights in a Harem reposes in a coffin-shaped bookcase in Bulstrode’s private mausoleum between The Secret Life of Wackford Squeers and The Intimate Encounter of Fanny Hill and Moll Flanders.

The Firm was tied in with Bulstrode because, on occasion, we found ourselves inconvenienced by a corpse who would not do for the river. Those fortunates were entombed with all due solemnity, as members of the Thoroughgood family. After many an enjoyable funeral, Moriarty, Moran and party had popped into Jack Straw’s Castle for pies, pints and ironic toasts to the dear departed. Not a few folk down on the lists as ‘disappeared without trace’ have ‘Thoroughgood’ in marble over their final resting places. If you ever wondered where to find Baron Maupertuis, the Belgian who tried to corner quap, you could have done worse than enquire after poor old Uncle Septimus Thoroughgood [51] Quap is a form of pitchblende (uranium-rich sludge) found in some quarters of Africa. Around the turn of the century it was reportedly used in patent medicines. Since there are no recorded cases of patients succumbing to radiation poisoning, it’s unlikely that tonics which claimed to derive from quap contained any. What Baron Maupertuis — who was reputed to have ‘colossal schemes’ — intended is unknown, but he met Henri Becquerel, the discoverer of radioactivity, in Paris in 1885 and is mentioned obliquely in Madame Curie’s journals. Little is known about Maupertuis beyond his involvement in the Netherland-Sumatra Company, which failed in 1887. .