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

Edwin’s curiosity could not be suppressed any longer. He swiftly broke the seal, opened the envelope and removed a sheet of paper from within. Once again his nose was assaulted by a pungent aroma. He felt sure he could detect the scents of sandalwood, attar of roses, cinnamon, frankincense, patchouli, musk, and beneath these, some acrid cloying after-scent that he could not put a name to.

He began to read.

The paper bore a single word as its heading –“Martyrio”.

Edwin had no difficulty in recognising this as a Latin term for “testimony”, in particular that of a martyr about to be put to death. He considered absent-mindedly that the term was perhaps grammatically incorrect when used in this way, but he gave it no further thought and began reading.

“To Whomsoever is reading these words,

“Logic, that sweet sibling of mathematics, has long been an interest of mine. My fascination for the subject is due not only to its stimulation of the cerebral processes, but also to logic’s purity of form and its – oh so useful – practical application to the problems of the manifest world. As with mathematics, logic is pure in that it is entirely free from petty human illusions such as fashion, compassion, sentiment or morality. Rather it rests upon the application of laws greater than those found in either church or courtroom, laws that are rooted in intellect and science rather than in foolish faith or the judgement of twelve good mental weaklings on a jury.

“Moreover, logic can – as I shall demonstrate – be bent to serve the will and purpose of its master, regardless of whether such a purpose be deemed ‘moral’ or ‘immoral’ by the lesser intelligences of the general populace. To this end let me present to you a conundrum that has vexed me for some years: ‘How might one commit a perfect crime?’

“I suggest you make yourself comfortable and read on, as through the medium of this letter, I intend to show you.

“Before applying logic to solve this problem, let us first define and agree some terms and parameters.

i) For a crime to be perfect, it must be a crime recognised in law, or by some other self-inflating and objectively irrelevant authority such as religion – preferably it will be deemed a crime both by Church and state. For our purposes here, a crime is not a crime unless it be near universally accepted as such.

ii) The crime must have a manifest reality and the crime must actually occur – I therefore preclude from this discussion petty ‘crimes’ which have no tangible basis in the physical world (such as verbal blasphemy, treason or slander) and also any ‘crime’ which may be deemed to take place only in the heart and mind of the individual or in any other way to lack a concrete nature.

iii) For a crime to be ‘perfect’, it must be unsolved and must remain effectively unsolvable.

“It has been argued that ‘a perfect crime’ would be one that is undetected and undetectable. This I refute. Such a crime would certainly be agreeable, and fit with the concept of a ‘perfect crime’, were it not that it would be scientifically unverifiable. If a man claps his hands in an effort to frighten away lions, this we may consider to be logical. If no lions appear, logically the method may be a sound one. But should the man claim that his clapping drives away lions from his home in London, we should scoff at him and his method, rightly pointing out that an absence of lions does not prove that his clapping has driven them away. So too a man claiming to have developed a methodology for committing a perfect crime cannot simply state that he has done so and offer the lack of the detection of his crimes as proof of their perfection, otherwise he would run the risk of being considered either a simpleton or a lying fool.

“I therefore add further conditions to my definition of ‘a perfect crime’:

iv) At least one person besides the Master Criminal must be aware that the crime has been committed.

“This stipulation will help to ensure the scientific validity of the method. After all, one should hardly simply take the word of a self-proclaimed Mastermind of Crime as I, or rather they, may, of course, be lying. In a puzzle of logic, one must always be on one’s guard against statements which may later prove to be false.

v) It would further be desirable that in addition to at least one person knowing of the commission of the crime (whether by directly witnessing it or by deduction), ideally there should be undeniable physical evidence of the crime – yet naturally, this evidence must be such that it cannot be used to prove the identity of the perpetrator of the perfect crime, or as I might immodestly refer to him, the Perfect Criminal.

“Whilst in theory many crimes might be suitable for the purpose of our little experiment, let us not trifle with inconsequentialities. Let us set the stakes of this game high. Let us assume that the perfect crime must be at the apex of all criminality. Let us choose for our crime nothing less than murder.

“How then may our Perfect Criminal commit a murder and yet remain unfettered by any undue fear of detection?

“Let us first make a few assumptions about our Mastermind.

“Let us assume that he is no ham-fisted bungler apt to leave behind a mass of readily understood clues to his crimes. Let us assume he is a man of high intelligence and diligence, possessed of no small measure of guile. Let us assume he is educated to the highest degree, well placed in society and canny enough to work for the most part through intermediaries and that thus he is able to still further reduce the already limited risk of detection.

“Should then our Master Criminal be afraid of being caught in the perpetration of a crime? Should he fear that he might leave some unfortuitous item behind at the scene of his activities, such as a misplaced monogrammed glove or a carelessly dropped calling card bearing his address? No, for he has a veritable army of lesser criminals to carry out his orders while he, like any prudent general, remains far from the field of conflict and concerns himself primarily with strategy.

“Should he fear the risk of betrayal by one of his deputies? Not if he is canny enough to ensure very few men know his true identity, and also to arrange that those slender few who could identify either his name or his face are themselves in far greater fear of him than ever they would fear a hangman’s noose.

“If then our Master Criminal may justly feel himself safe from the risk of discovery by the victims of his crimes and if likewise he may understandably feel unendangered by the humdrum investigations of the denizens of Scotland Yard, who then should our Master Criminal guard himself against?

“In certain Chinese schools of thought, and likewise among the ancient Manichean philosophers, there exists a concept of a natural law of opposites. For there to be night, so then there must be day. For there to be darkness, so too there must be light. If there is such a person as a Master Criminal, so, inevitably, one day there must come a Master Detective.

“While our Master Criminal may justifiably fear no ordinary policeman, being himself of an extraordinary nature far beyond the reach of normal men, it would only be prudent for our Master Criminal to guard against the possibility of his discovery by an equally extraordinary detective, one who’s wit and knowledge, training and temperament, skills and powers of reasoning are close to being a match for my own. Such a Master Detective might yet see through any obfuscating fog I employed to baffle lesser minds. If he were to apply his superior abilities unceasingly, forgo food and sleep until he’d solved a problem, then he might eliminate six impossible things before breakfast and thus be left with the truth – no matter how improbable it might seem that anyone could truly be a threat to one such as myself.