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

‘Hurry,’ Elsie had said.

‘Think,’ said Mr Holmes.

Other snatches came back to me … ‘Well served …’ ‘No, but his servants may …’

What about the Queen’s servants who guarded her and not her Army guards? The Queen’s Indian servants. They were newly arrived and …

I must find Mr Holmes immediately. But where? How? I forced myself through to the front of the crowds, to the gates of the Palace courtyard. I could not enter them; they were too well guarded, not by police, who would recognise the name of Holmes, but the army. I was turned back.

Think, man, think . The servants’ entrance! Perhaps there, or the mews. These were in Buckingham Palace Road, so yet again I found myself running, so fast now that my heart hurt with the strain. But what could I do? Leave it to burst with grief if I failed Elsie, if I failed my Queen?

This time it was uniformed police at the gates, but they turned a blank face to me when I asked for Mr Holmes. They told me to be gone.

I stood back and I howled to the skies: ‘ Fred Porlock !’

Instantly, it seemed he was there, with half a dozen men in plain clothes who seized me, dragged me inside those gates as though I had wanted to escape them. And there was Mr Sherlock Holmes, looking strained and grim.

‘Indian servants,’ was all I could gasp out.

He groaned in disappointment. ‘I was there before you. Two new ones arrived yesterday; we hold them already, but I fear we are too late. The mischief is done. Tell me their plan. The Queen’s life may depend on it.’

‘I do not know,’ I sobbed. This had all been for nothing.

Mr Holmes did not reproach me, but looked at me kindly. ‘Mr Porlock, you are a person of importance. Think. Where came your earlier information? From that murdered flower girl?’

So he knew about Elsie. I nodded. ‘I was with her when she died.’

His eyes brightened. ‘She spoke?’

‘But one word, hurry , and I have been too late.’

He brushed this aside impatiently. ‘ Think. Relive that moment, if you please. Speak as you do so.’

I closed my eyes, conscious of all these people around me waiting for me, hoping, demanding … Elsie was with me again, I took one breath and was back with her in the flower market: ‘She is dying,’ I whispered. ‘I am putting my head close to her, trying to help, to hear if she would speak. She tries her very best, gasping, breathing out sounds from her throat …’

I sensed quickening interest around me, but I was with Elsie and must not lose her. I subdued the temptation to force the word from her. ‘Tell me again, just as it was,’ I whispered to her.

I listened and spoke: ‘She is trying and it comes so softly like a breath itself, hurry – but she has no strength left, only the breath that comes as “hurry” because she can no longer form the proper sounds in her mouth …’ And then I had it:

‘ Curry! ’ I cried.

One of the duties of Her Majesty’s Indian servants was to prepare curry for Her Majesty, to which she had taken a liking. By the time they were apprehended in the Palace that day, so Mr Holmes told me later, the curry had already been prepared only for Her Majesty at the formal dinner that evening. It was found to be poisoned. The two Indian men who had come to join her household the day before the Jubilee were not those intended for the Palace staff, but assassins. Jesse Bracken had been ordered to meet the two genuine new Indian servants at Tilbury, but he had met his death. They were abducted by others of Professor Moriarty’s web, taken to Sussex and held in captivity. The plan had been to hold them there until their replacements had finished their perfidious work at the Palace, and these two genuine Indian servants had been fortunate not to be killed. On 23 June, two days after the Jubilee celebrations, Abdul Karim and Mahomet had been presented to Her Majesty and taken up their lawful appointment on her staff.

‘But who would plan such an outrage?’ I cried. ‘Why would the Professor wish to kill his monarch?’

Mr Holmes frowned. ‘That man’s malignant intent would have daunted even Machiavelli. There are no lengths to which he will not go in pursuit of his own corrupt power. To those who do not know the truth, he is a brilliant and respected mathematician, a scientist of the first order. To those who do, he is the epitome of everything that is vile, but he brings to that the same brilliance with which he writes his learned tomes. His evil services are sought at the highest levels in kingdoms and empires far beyond this one.’

‘By the Indian maharajahs?’ I asked.

‘I believe the plan we have foiled began much nearer our homeland than India. You have heard that the ruler of a certain European state is far from well?’

‘The German emperor?’

‘Please, no names. It is not generally known that the heir to the throne is also in bad health, and it is probable that his son will within the next few years bear the title of Kaiser.’

‘The prince with a withered arm? But he would not wish to poison his grandmother.’

‘You speak plainly, Mr Porlock, but you are correct. I fear the people he employs to perpetrate the practical jokes of which he is so fond are not all loyal to him. Instead of the mild emetic he had plotted to be added to her curry at the dinner that evening, a strong poison was substituted. There is a powerful circle in his country whom it would suit both to rid themselves of the Queen of England and to cast doubt over this Prince’s suitability to rule over their nation and empire. And who, indeed, is to say that they are not right in that latter respect?’

‘And the Professor’s purpose?’ I ventured to ask.

‘Think of the power he would wield had this foul plan succeeded, of the great European monarchs he would have at his mercy. Why, he would have been an emperor himself, but of a sinister underworld that never seeks the light and wreaks only evil.’

‘What will happen to the Professor now, Mr Holmes?’

‘He and I will clash on more occasions I fear before my evidence is complete and he and that chief of staff of his, Colonel Sebastian Moran, are unmasked so that justice may take its course. If Moriarty is the core of all evil, then Moran is its physical presence. But it is for me, not you, Mr Porlock, to break Moriarty’s power. As for you, forget the name Porlock, forget the Professor and his web, and take up some toil far from London.’

How greatly I wanted to follow his advice, but I could not. There would be other Elsies, innocent flies caught in a web whom I might manage to free. Roses, red roses …

‘I cannot do so,’ I told Mr Holmes in anguish.

Sherlock Holmes smiled. ‘I see you wear a flower in your buttonhole, Mr Porlock, and I understand. Very well, forget we have ever met, as I shall forget both you and my involvement in this case. As long as you feel it is safe to do so, however, you will be of extreme importance in my quest.’

I was greatly moved. ‘I will try to be so.’

He smiled. ‘I shall not seek you out, so avail yourself of an appropriate means of communication between ourselves – you might consider Camberwell Post Office as a neutral channel. Use the name of Fred Porlock only to me. Pray continue, if you please, your invaluable role as a person of no importance.’

“A most peculiar problem, Mr Nuth, I do agree,” the Professor said, in his sibilant way, as I sipped at his bitter tea. It was of his own devising, or so he assured me, brewed from the leaves of a certain flower that grew only on the most remote crags of the Scottish Highlands and mixed, improbably, with a jelly culled from the nests of wasps. “And they snatched him right through the knotholes, you say?”