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

Raggedly, the company sang ‘For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow’. To me.

I was less surprised the time I spotted the Bishop of Bath and Wells using the kink-wrist Mississippi shuffle and dealing from the bottom of the deck.

‘Happy birthday, Colonel Basher,’ Mrs H. said. ‘And many more of ’em.’

I was less surprised the time the Pirate King of the Lepers turned out to be my old Eton whipping boy Porky Sourbright, duffer of the second eleven.

The Madame passed the cake off to Two-Ton Tessie — not someone I’d have trusted it with — and lurched up to me. Harriet Halifax administered a ginny kiss which left powder on my cheeks and lip-rouge in my moustache. She still had the eight-inch tongue that made her name in her Stepney youth.

I was less surprised the time the Burmese Python Lady turned out to be a bloke.

In the ten years — god, ten years! — I’d been with the Firm, Professor Moriarty had given no indication he was even aware I had a birthday, let alone knew when it was (it’s in Who’s Who, of course). Since being fleeced of my birthday money by Rosie at fifteen, I’d not made much of the day myself. I bagged a white tiger on my thirty-fifth birthday after all the bearers had fled. Captain Jellinek served nicely as tethered kid, having hobbled himself by twisting his ankle. I personally skinned my cat, thinking a white winter coverlet would be my fine present to myself. That fur went missing, stolen by dirty natives, and Jammy Jelly died without settling his gambling debts, so the day was a curate’s egg. The look in the tiger’s eyes, though, as she raised her head with Jellinek’s heart in her jaws and saw me sighting on her… that was an exquisite moment. Not a day goes by that I don’t think at least once of those magnificent tiger eyes, the ropes of blood dangling from her maw, that contemptuous snarl of kill-me-if-you-must-but-you’ll-never-come-close-to-knowing-what-I-am [52] The incident of the white tiger is not recounted in either of Moran’s published books about his big-game hunting experiences. Curiously, of all the animals (and men) he shot, he seems to have held this kill sacred… and touches on it only in these unguarded pages. Uncertain about the passage, he experimented with a false name (Jammyfoot) to conceal the identity of his hunting companion before setting down the real one. Matthew Jellinek (1842–1975) is not mentioned at any other point in the papers, though Three Weeks in the Jungle is perhaps significantly dedicated to ‘the tethered kid’. Jellinek was in Farrer House with Moran at Eton, then served with him in the Bangalore Pioneers. The archives of the Pioneers contain a report by Colonel Henry Patience, commanding officer during the regiment’s secondment to Abyssinia for the 1868 punitive expedition. Addressing a sentiment that then-Major Sebastian Moran should be ‘mentioned in despatches’, Patience explains that Moran effected a single-handed rescue of then-Lieutenant Jellinek from an irregular force loyal to Emperor Tewodros II (they would now be called a ‘Death Squad’) known for torturing Englishmen to death. Patience notes this ‘jape’ proved popular in the officers’ mess and made the young Major ‘cut a dash as a hero to the men’, but was executed against direct orders and constituted ‘a serious breach of discipline for which a court martial would not be an inappropriate response, though no plans for a prosecution are held at this time’. This affair is not elucidated in any of Moran’s memoirs — a mystery in itself since he is happy to go on at length about matters which do him far less credit. Upon Moran’s arrest for attempted murder in 1894, John Watson said of him, ‘This is astonishing, the man’s career is that of an honourable soldier.’ . If I were back in school again, perish the thought, that would be my ‘Most Memorable Birthday’ essay topic. Otherwise, while I was out of the country, Augusta and Christabelle — the blessed unmarriageable — annually dispatched knitted socks or scarves to my postings. I’d neglected to inform them of my London address. Really, I had meant to dash off a postcard, but just hadn’t got round to it… for ten years. It had been a busy decade, I supposed, and it was now a trifle late to tell my sisters I’d returned to Merrie Olde England. I imagined I’d worn out my heroes’ welcome at their rented hearth, if I’d ever have had one.

Somehow, even I had forgotten my birthday.

‘Blow them out, blow them out,’ chanted the girls and Purbright. If he kissed me, I’d knock his bobby’s helmet off.

I puffed and extinguished all but three of the candles. Mrs Halifax pretended I’d managed the clean sweep and earned my wish. She pinched them out while the Ranee of Ranchipur distracted me with a peck on the cheek.

Purbright turned up the gaslight again. I winced at the details which sprang up when the room was properly lit. There were mirrors.

‘Fifty years old,’ Mrs Halifax said, as if commiserating with a sufferer from a deadly disease. ‘It comes to us all, or at least all of us as is fortunate not to get killed off otherwise…’

Fifty! At that age, old Sir Augustus — for whom I was now a veritable twin — died of apoplexy. His once-iron constitution was weakened by the lingering effects of the brain fever which cut short his appointment as Minister to Persia in the forties — my first spoken language was Fārsi, have I ever mentioned that? But in the end a towering rage did for pater. He was set off by something snide Lord Palmerston’s undersecretary said when Prime Minister Pam was too busy dealing with Gladstone’s latest resignation to bother with a petition from a diplomatic corps warhorse who felt he should have been made ambassador to somewhere more important and less flyblown than Paraguay. Sir Augustus had been in a bate for years, probably his whole life — certainly, I can only remember him in states of dudgeon ranging from high to stratospheric — and his lid was forever on the point of boiling over. He was red in the face and steaming from the ears when he booted me out of the family home after I was sent down from Oxford for boxing a bursar’s ears and throwing the oik through a leaded Elizabethan window. He threw a threepenny bit in my eye and said it was the last coin I’d ever get from him. On the day of his funeral, the 19th of October 1864, I lost seventeen quid at Ascot, got drunk on Scotch whisky I couldn’t pay for and was jugged for the night on a drunk and disorderly. In Windsor clink, I roomed with Prince Stanley, a gypsy who later taught me how to thieve like a champion but took a knife to my face when he found I’d tupped his sister from behind. I first let my moustache grow to cover the scar Prince gave me; that, I realised now, was what had begun my slow transformation into a double for my father.

The convention is that drowning makes your life flash past your eyes… now, at this surprise party, my life flashing past my eyes made me feel as if I were drowning. Blowing out candles had taken more out of me than it should. I lit a Joy’s cigarette. No Sullivans in my case — they’re for ponces, poofs and parvenus. I filled my lungs with smoke, which ought to have made me feel better, but didn’t [53] According to an 1894 advertisement for ‘Cigares de Joy’ issued by the manufacturers Wilcox & Co., ‘JOY’S CIGARETTES afford immediate relief in case of ASTHMA, WHEEZING, WINTER COUGH and HAY FEVER, and, with a little perseverance, effect a permanent cure. Universally recommended by the most eminent Physicians and Medical Authors. Agreeable to use, certain in their effects, and harmless in their action, they may be safely smoked by ladies and children. Box of 35, 2s 6d.’ .

So, fifty years and still alive. Half a century, not out — though I did feel knocked for a six. Three-quarters of the lads I was at school with were bones on battlefields, rotten in fever pits or stuffed under marble in Kingstead. Most of those who were alive had white hair, if they’d kept it… false teeth… and grandchildren. I suppose I have grandchildren. If you run into a scamp in Kathmandu or Amritsar or Zula who looks a quarter like me, a quarter like some dusky tart and a half like an unknown personage, then kick his or her arse before he or she robs you or rooks you. The Basher blood will run true.