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

He addressed me, but fortunately my companion seized the opportunity of another tanner and took over the task of polishing the Professor’s laced leather footwear. I felt he watched me, however. I thought he would speak to me, but he did not. I reckoned my ordeal would never end, and it was with great relief that I watched him hail a hansom and disappear from our sight.

Then a terrible suspicion came to me and, try as I might, it turned into certainty. Colonel Moran was not the Spider I had sought. The Spider was Professor Moriarty and I was now within the reach of his carnivorous tentacles.

I felt near to tears, but this was no time for weakness. What did this insidious Spider have in mind for the morrow? ‘Every crowned head of Europe will be with the Queen … Indian guards.’ I shivered. I had read that the Queen’s carriage would be preceded by her Indian Army as well as the Household Cavalry. One of them was a traitor.

What could I do to wreck the Spider’s plans? Nothing.

Then I realised that I was wrong. There was a step I could take, even now. Scotland Yard would take no notice of me, but they would pay heed to Mr Sherlock Holmes, the greatest detective in London. Should I telegraph? Deliver a letter to his Baker Street lodgings? My head spun with indecision. I might be followed, watched, killed, the message destroyed. I must take that risk. There must be no way that Mr Holmes could trace me. I must invent another false name, use a code … It must be a letter, delivered by myself to Baker Street. I hurried to the nearest open post office in St James’s Street to acquire paper and ink, and scribbled the best I could think of on the spur of the moment:

Golden rosebay clive bilberries: Fred Porlock

I had partly used the language of flowers. I had not forgotten poor Elsie.

The whole of London, the whole world rejoiced as kings, em perors and potentates gathered under a cloudless blue sky to celebrate fifty years of Victoria’s golden reign. Like Atlas, however, I felt the whole weight of that world on my shoulders. I had delivered my letter and then slept overnight in St James’s Park, as if by my physical presence near to Buckingham Palace I could protect Her Majesty from harm.

The processional route to Westminster Abbey was a long one from Buckingham Palace through the streets of London, Hyde Park Corner, Regent Street and Whitehall, and thence to the Abbey. At some point, a mounted guard would turn assassin. There would be no attack in the Abbey itself, I reasoned. It was too enclosed a space for such an outrage. Along the processional route, troops lined each street, an impressive sight with their red uniforms and black bearskins, but they would provide little defence against a sudden move by a mounted assassin.

What to do? I was ignorant, I was helpless, I was of no importance. My letter to Sherlock would be of no use. Even he could not watch the whole route.

I chose to stand at the foot of Regent Street on its corner with Pall Mall to wait for the procession to pass me. Perhaps I thought being near to where I met the Spider last evening might help me read his evil mind and even now prevent his planned crime.

At last, I heard the sound of cheering above the noise of the waiting crowds. It grew louder, then the sound of the horses became audible.

‘Here she is, God bless her,’ someone roared, words taken up by the entire crowd. ‘Here she is … here she is …’

I could see the troops’ horses now, seeming to make straight for me as the noise began to deafen me. I forgot the Spider; I forgot the danger. I was caught up with the spectacle. Behind the mounted guard, six cream horses pulled an open landau in which was seated one small figure: Victoria. Did she wear a crown? No. Did she hold swords of state? No. There was no need of either. This was majesty. This was Victoria. She wore a simple bonnet that sparkled in the sunlight. The empress of a quarter of the world did not need a crown to boast her majesty. My eyes filled with tears of emotion, as the sound of the hooves and the cheering merged in one excited roar.

‘Keep on going, duck,’ shouted one daring man.

Hats flew in the air, cheers rang in my ears, and then she had passed us, followed by her sons and other family riding on horseback, including the Prince of Wales, the Crown Prince of Germany and his son Prince Wilhelm, withered arm or not. Her Majesty’s grandson was said to have a great love of all things English – but a great envy of his grandmother’s power and graciousness had led him to a wilful insistence on his own preroga tives and rights. He was twenty-eight now, but not, it was said, beyond playing practical jokes, the kind that are not jokes.

‘Every crowned head of Europe will be with the Queen …’ I had heard the Colonel say.

The procession was passing and I craned my neck to see it to the very last.

‘It will not be here,’ murmured a voice in my ear.

‘The Abbey?’ I instinctively blurted out, before terror at this unexpected companion silenced me. Then I relaxed. It was a tall, lean clergyman at my side, who seemed to offer me no threat. I must have been mistaken over what he had said. There was no doubt about his next statement, however.

‘The Palace, Mr Porlock. I am sure of it. But how? That is the question. Do you have no other information?’

I shook with fear now. I was followed last night, I must have been. ‘None,’ I stumbled out. ‘The guards, the Indian Army.’

‘I think not. Come, man. What does that embodiment of evil have in mind?’

I could not speak for terror, but, as I looked at him, with his shrewd eyes and air of coiled tension, I calmed myself. He had called me Porlock. ‘Mr Holmes,’ I breathed, hardly daring to hope.

‘The same. Think, man, think. ’

‘I know not,’ I cried in despair. When I next looked, Mr Holmes had gone.

Hurry, I thought despairingly. The service at the Abbey would last an hour and then the procession would return this way to the Palace. Surely Mr Holmes must be wrong. How could the attack come there, where there could no longer be a threat from the guards?

I could not rest. I must see the procession on its return journey, watch it at a point where I could see it safely reach the Palace itself. And so I ran along Pall Mall, down past St James’s Palace to the Mall which led up to the Palace. But my plan was to cross Green Park and wait at Hyde Park Corner. Here were the stands specially built for the Jubilee and full of quality folk. Beneath them, crowds blocked the entire road to the west as well as lining the road to Piccadilly and the point where the roadway sweeps round to join Constitution Hill. The island of green in the middle of the roadways was equally full of excited onlookers waiting for the return of the procession after the service in the Abbey.

Here, surely, was where the attack would happen. It was another hour and a half before the procession could be heard once again, and my head was dizzy. This vigil began to seem a mere dream and I was lulled into a conviction that all would be well as the procession passed and the Queen remained safe. I followed it with the cheering crowds down Constitution Hill to the Palace gates and saw the Queen’s procession pass safely inside.

The Palace, Mr Holmes had said. Perhaps I had been wrong and he right. The attack would come now. I was pressed far back in the crowds as the Queen came out on the balcony of the Palace and the cheering began again. How could they cheer when the Queen would be assassinated? Someone in the crowd shouted that the Queen was watching a parade of Blue-Jackets in the courtyard, but so thick were the crowds I could see no sailors. Every moment I expected the sound of a rifle.

None came.

Where now, as the Queen went back inside the Palace?