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

Under its skin, the rocket-ship possessed a metal skeleton. It fell on the shattered remains of the lighthouse. More shrapnel followed.

Numbly, I said: “Moriarty said flame would destroy the compound. Was he telling the truth?”

Mycroft shrugged. He reached into his coat and took out a handkerchief.

“Trust, Watson, is the luxury of the mad and the desperate. For the time being, you and I are neither. Let’s get out of here.” Nodding at the ball of smoke overhead, Mycroft added: “Rest in peace, Moriarty.”

“Rest in peace,” I repeated grimly. “To both our dead.”

Jannike reversed her engines and rounded the spit.

We made for open water.

This story pains me to tell. I beg the forgiveness of your compassionate understanding, reader, as I suffer the recently refreshed regret of long-buried weakness.

Some might say that the need to unburden myself is a purely selfish act. But as I heard the reports from Europe of the final fall of that man whose name has haunted me, the memories floated up unbidden. There is always the hope that this may stand as a cautionary tale to those callow enough to be at risk of repeating the many mistakes that I made. And so, let me begin:

As a newly appointed tutor, freshly wax-whiskered and thrilled with the task charged to me – that of educating the privileged boys of the High School Of ****** [1] Editor: Name redacted to protect the reputation of this august institution , I had not an inkling of the potential of the human mind. I’d a head stuffed brimful of theories that I found very pleasing, yet I could not have conceived of either the depths of the mind’s depravity or the heights of its genius. Needless to say, Moriarty was to teach me plenty on both accounts.

My first glimpse of the child may have been the true beginning of my own education. He stood at the head of the steps, on the first day of term, as his father’s carriage drove away. Around us were scenes of the most heart-rending misery – boys fighting tears, mothers with pink spots high on their cheeks, nurses badtempered and blustery, cases and bags all in disarray while everyone got on with the grim task of separating charges from guardians with the minimum amount of emotional drama.

I was there at the conclusion that my earnest, if naive, philosophy had brought me to: that I should use my own gifts to further the well-being of others. I believed, with all my righteous scholar’s heart, that I could and should be the helpmeet and adviser of these unformed charges, as troubled or as slow or undeveloped as they may be. To shape young minds! To pass on the knowledge of the ages!

As you can tell, I was inexperienced. In any case, I was struck immediately by the singular appearance of this one. Moriarty, his high forehead smooth and domed, stood with eyes fixed on the gate. It seemed he’d been deposited by a faceless driver, who left without ceremony or farewell. The boy’s appearance was, from the first, unsettling. His soft hair was a shade of mud that has settled at the bottom of a pond. His bone structure was as fine as a bird’s, his cheekbones sharp and proud, his eyes deep set and also startlingly pale. He had the face of an old man, as yet unlined. That high forehead suggested, to one with an interest in the art of phrenology, a mind that was practically outgrowing the skull’s cavity – I itched at once to consult the china head in my study, to measure and compare it with that of the child in front of me. Which areas were so enlarged, and what effect would it have on the character?

And it seemed to me, though I could not have known, that what was rushing through his head was not the usual piteous ache of longing for his family or the trepidation of the rest of the boys, little snarling and hollow-eyed wretches as they were. I felt, as he turned to survey his new situation, more a rapid and shrewd calculation, as if he were counting many things at once. His eyes seemed to take in everything with the same flickering dark stare, as small and slippery as the beads of an abacus. The fine, carved whinstone of the building, its gargoyles, the slight deterioration of the window fixtures, the good cloth of the drapes, the quality of the carriages leaving through the gate. Looking around, as he was, I saw as if through a camera lens, the boys and women broiling on the steps, each a tiny storm of hungers and sorrows and fears. And, at the top of the steps, the head, like a walrus in his grey coat with his impressive whiskers, as immovable as a rock amidst the storming sea.

Moriarty seemed to catalogue all of this, somehow, with his quick and narrow gaze. A pencil, the end sharpened to an arrow’s point, twitched in his fingers, and I noted the book protruding from his pocket. Was he truly taking notes? My eyes widened in surprise, and it was then his met mine.

I am ashamed to admit that I could not hold that gaze. I was, it was to be supposed, his superior, in age, social station and position. Yet I felt as if I were myself counted, and found lacking. As though he were noting and ticking through my secret weaknesses: my own unease at this, my first job, my uncertainty of how to inspire fear and respect, as it seemed the housemaster wished that we should. Deep down, could he divine the uncomfortable struggles between my desperate Romantic’s heart and my brain’s suspicion that the clockwork universe did not perhaps share my beloved morals? And then, he showed me his teeth. It was not a smile. The points of his incisors shewed, as if a warning.

Would that I had heeded it, reader!

Instead, alas, I felt the lurch of righteous pity. I divined that I was in the presence of a child perhaps disturbed, but surely in want of sustenance – emotional and literary, moral and intellectual salvation! What hunger he must have for a loving guide! What enormous need of help! Inevitably, this sparked the fire of my foolhardy ambition. The resolve to nourish this woeful-looking brat was born in me in that moment, and I believe he saw it happen. Certainly, he took full advantage of the weakness he seemed to have registered within me. In any case, our fates were joined that day – me, the redeemer, he the enfant terrible in need of generous and charitable guidance.

The first term was enough to prove my initial suspicions of his disturbed nature accurate. In order to achieve the position he apparently desired – that of ruler of the school, albeit in a manner both invisible and free of responsibility – Moriarty had presumably calculated that his first task was to sow fear, disruption and discord among children, staff and tutors alike. At the time, no one would have credited a child his age with such a depth and detail of vision. But now, looking back at the dark catalogue of his adult life, I can only concur with that learned Austrian who has asserted that the damaged child will unfailingly become the malevolent man, and exorcise his demons in ever worsening manner.

In the first few weeks of September, the school was beset with problems that had not – I was assured, by various white-faced and weeping serving maids – ever darkened the building before in its long and glorious history. The cook, an able and godly woman, left in a cloud of hysteria after the entire sixth form were poisoned by rice pudding. The head’s secretary, a loyal servant of excellent standing, lost his wits entirely after mysteriously failing in duties he’d carried out for twenty years. After an unpleasant scene in the common room, he was sent swiftly and discreetly to a retirement home and never returned. The boys, meanwhile, fought relentlessly. Money was stolen, personal treasures disappeared, accusations blizzarded through dormitories, only for the various items to reappear, insolently, on the nightstand of some rival boy. Gossip proliferated. Gangs formed and battled, on the stairs, in the gymnasium at midnight, on the sports field.