Maxim Jakubowski - The Mammoth Book of the Adventures of Professor Moriarty

With the return to lucidity, she expressed revulsion at what she had become … and fear of her condition’s return.

And return it did, always.

My heart broke each time.

After my wife’s first few fluctuations between madness and sanity, some of her spells began to retain aspects of the latter while she was clearly possessed of the former. She screamed obscenities. Progression was unpredictable. She retained enough mental capacity to hurl vicious personal insults and abuse at me. She screamed secrets shared between husband and wife, in the unkindest terms. She abused my colleagues and her keepers.

Infectious diseases were never my specialty, but with such motivation, I sought out the best experts and learned very quickly. I could not deduce a possible agent. No form of encephalitis evinced variations of this style or magnitude. The pro dromal phase of rabies had been known, in very rare cases, to last more than one year before death, but had it been rabies, such acute variations between madness and lucidity were inexplicable. In any event, there had been no bite, no reasonable indication of rabies transmission.

Priests were called in. All fled in horror.

Her attacks persisted month after month. Her periods of lucidity grew rarer, but clearer. In some ways, this was far worse. During her returns to sanity, she began to accept what she could anticipate. She rejected it.

“James,” she had choked through the variegated mess of foam, spit and blood that her mouth had become. “Don’t hold out hope where none exists. Leave me to heaven, James. Do this for me. End it before I return again?”

Those were her last words. She lapsed into madness again.

Years of discretion in matters of medical tragedy, I found melting away, as if they’d never happened. I was a boy again, weeping over a woman I knew and yet did not know. With her heart, Mary had loved me, yet her mind was no longer her own. I knew she was right.

I honoured her request. I broke my most sacred vow.

My many years adjunct to the practice of professional detection had given me practical skills in the matter of poisons that proved undetectable to all but the most aggressively deductive mind. That made it easy.

I knew the compound to use. Reader, do not expect me to relate it here; should it fall to you to perform such a crime, you will find it a great mercy that you do not know the way. My footsteps will not lead you.

How would Sherlock Holmes solve such a murder? Would he detect the compound, deduce my crime, unmask the villain? And would he indict me? Would he, then, also indict Hippocrates – for the madness that was medicine in such cases?

If Mary persists in the Beyond, cured and at last, again, well – if she has been left to Heaven – perhaps she and my friend Sherlock Holmes now share deductions incomprehensible to the living.

For that, I envy her.

In the Spartan hold of the Jannike , I had returned to my own form of lucidity. I retained a bestial disposition simmering under the surface.

“What’s our destination, Holmes?” I demanded, feeling a pang of regret upon calling him that.

“A tiny island,” said Mycroft. “It’s known as Æbelø.” His pronunciation was markedly exotic. “It is uninhabited except for a medical facility.”

“And why is our friend still alive?”

“Watson, do not be sarcastic. It does not suit you. I assure you, Professor Moriarty is not my friend. He is alive because he knows MacQuaid’s liquid rocket-ship design. He can disable it.”

“Possibly,” said Moriarty. “As I keep telling you, Holmes, mathematics is not engineering.”

“For the time being,” said Mycroft, “I shall take what is within my grasp. The professor also knows the compound in question. If my reports from Æbelø are accurate … we shall find ourselves in need of him.”

“How can we trust him with either, Mycroft? How do we know he won’t—”

“ We trust him, Watson. Not you . We . The Crown trusts him, and only so far as we must. I ask you to trust me that Professor Moriarty is a changed man.”

“Why would I ever do that?” I asked.

“Because, my dear man, I am Mycroft Holmes ,” he said with great pomp. “What I need you to do, Watson, is to examine Æbelø’s patients and tell me if their condition appears … familiar .” Mycroft’s face took on a dark aspect. “By the way, Watson, I am very sorry for your loss.”

Ignoring Mycroft’s belated condolences, I turned my attention to Moriarty.

“How did you do it?” I demanded. “Did she ingest it? What was the compound? Where did you get it?”

Moriarty was distracted, furiously scrawling equations in his notebook.

“These are very good questions, Watson, but you must forgive me if I am not wholly forthcoming. At this time, details are all that keeps me alive. I will say these things, Watson. The compound is at present unnamed. I obtained the formula from an Austrian chemist named Hoelscher. The substance is inhaled or ingested, but more effective if inhaled. Atomized in an envelope, it likely passes unnoticed. I sent it to you in a letter; your wife, as it seems, opens your mail – or did . It persists in water, but flame will destroy it. The syndrome it causes is incurable.”

I felt a dizzying sense of relief. Moriarty read my face too quickly.

His manner changed quickly. He said to me with surprising warmth: “I speak the truth, Watson. There is no cure. I am sorry for killing your wife, but it was an accident. What is very important is that you need not blame yourself for ending her suffering.”

“What are you suggesting?” I snapped. Then, I remembered to whom I was speaking: the Devil. I sighed. “How did you know?”

“Watson … you, of all people?” Moriarty shook his head. “It was quite elementary, my dear man. I deduced it.”

Inside, I boiled. Moriarty’s warmth was gone; he showed no sympathy. That brief flicker of human compassion was gone from his face. Mine was hot with anger.

I demanded: “What is the compound?”

“As I said, it has not, at present, been given a name. What you must know is that it affects the emotional cortex of the human brain. In the dose your wife received – unfortunately, and again, my apologies – it reduces emotional inhibition to the point where the victim’s cognitive faculties become quite irrelevant. In short, it increases emotion, decreases rational thought. At the weaponized dose, socially learned inhibitions are obliterated, until the—”

The professor’s throat seemed to close. He clutched his chest. He started trembling. He convulsed. He doubled over.

“Mycroft!” I cried. “What is going on?”

Mycroft said, “Let the man speak, Watson.”

Moriarty remained doubled over, shaking and weeping. Medical instinct told me to intervene, or at least to examine the patient. Instead, I held tight to the crate on which I sat. I watched.

When Professor Moriarty finally straightened, he stared at me with glassy eyes and wet cheeks.

His voice trembled as he said: “Sorry, I’m sorry, Watson. I’m so sorry. It seems I was … in the … compound’s manufacture, I … mine was a low dose, but … I can’t control myself …” He started shaking his head violently, tears scattering. “I won’t do violence, Watson. You needn’t worry about me any more. I’ve tried; believe me, I’ve tried. Sometimes I can’t even think. I try, but I grow overwhelmed. I received only the smallest exposure, but … Watson, I’m sorry!”

“Go to hell,” I told him.

Moriarty doubled over again and began to weep.

Mycroft clapped me on the back. “As I said, Watson, let the man speak. Tell me, is that not a pleasure to see?”