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

‘Come, Cicely,’ he said, perhaps understanding my apprehension. ‘Do not be afraid. It is merely a matter of confidence and trust.’ He paused, looking at me intently. ‘ Do you trust me, Cicely?’

For answer, I stepped into the water and moved steadily forward until it was waist deep. He then held my chin while I kicked my legs and that afternoon I believe I did manage to stay afloat for a few seconds before sinking to the bottom and spluttering beneath the water’s surface. Uncle James laughed and showed much amusement but some tolerance too. We resumed our activity. After about an hour of splashing, he put his face near to mine. ‘Have you had enough, child?’

Slowly, I shook my head. ‘I have not, Uncle.’

He seemed pleased at my response. ‘Plucky,’ he muttered. ‘Brave too.’ Then, ‘Shall we try again?’

Truth was I was frightened. That terror of falling beneath the water, of it closing all around, over my head, filling my nose and mouth, of my lungs being deprived of air, slowly filling with water. It is a horrid feeling. But I knew he would admire me more if I persevered. And so I did. My teeth were chattering both from fear and from the cold so I bit my lips to prevent them from exposing my cowardice.

However, after a further half-hour, he smiled. ‘Come, Cicely,’ he said. ‘Enough for today. You have shown courage and have done well. Soon you shall be able to swim.’ And, as we returned to the carriage to change, he added, almost to himself, ‘One day it might truly save your life.’

It did not save his. I learned by the foulest and cruellest of means that swimming could not have saved him, that he was mortally wounded by hitting his head on a rock before he touched the water. I was almost sixteen when this happened.

How did I find out this grisly detail? you wonder. Effrontery. That is how. Sheer brazen flagrant parading of my uncle’s death. Publication of the very tiniest detail. That man had the audacity to publish a record of my poor uncle’s death combined with a torrent – yes – I use that word deliberately – a torrent of spurious tales and opinions as to my uncle’s character. Words like evil and king-devil , endowing him with a criminal strain. A matter of opinion, I say, for cannot black appear white and white black in distorted vision? Cannot left look right from a reverse angle? I say my uncle was brilliant. Good and evil is irrelevant. He taught society that cold planning combined with a genius of a brain could achieve much. The snake-doctor writes his stories with a mixture of admiration and disgust but no understanding whatsoever. He did not know the man as I did. And I have had to keep silent and smile while I have heard my dearest uncle both insulted and complimented. Called the greatest schemer, filled with devilry and possessing a controlling brain while he, the arch-enemy, grudgingly but truthfully, tells us that my uncle James could have made or marred the destiny of nations. Tributes indeed, but the reader’s opinions might well be distorted by the tone of these backhanded compliments. It is not Uncle James’s intelligence that is under question, or his wealth, which I have good reason to believe remains unsurpassed, and which will, eventually, all come to me. No, it is certainly not his intelligence, but his morals that are under the microscope. I ask you then to adjudicate. Was this the act of an evil man, to teach a child to swim in the belief that one day she might need this skill? Truth is it was he, the king-enemy, who spoke the truest tribute to my uncle when he described his stooge as foul-mouthed doctor and sympathized with my Uncle James as slandered professor .

How true.

I have been denied the right to defend him publicly as I would like so it is the scribblings of this ‘foul-mouthed doctor’ that reach the public consciousness. Nor have I yet the opportunity to put the record straight to those who are deliberately misled as to my uncle’s motives. Do they not realize it was all an intellectual exercise? To him, nothing but entertainment, a way of avoiding boredom and removing unwanted obstacles? But to defend him would be to expose myself and Uncle James taught me, not only to swim, but also the virtue of caution. ‘Your greatest asset, Cicely,’ he said one day shortly before his terrible death, ‘is your anonymity. Nobody knows of your existence.’

My father too, though much less forcefully, has warned me of the same. ‘You are safer, Cicely,’ he said, following events with concern, ‘to remain as you are.’

I nodded my acquiescence, understanding the advice.

But, in quiet and private moments, I still savour great pride in my uncle. Even the king-enemy described him as a Napoleon of crime, a genius, a philosopher, an abstract thinker possessing a brain of the first order. He acknowledged that Uncle James was the spider in the centre of a web that had a thousand radiations. A thousand, mark you. True. I subscribe to that. Even that king of smug devils has paid tribute to his intellect. ‘My intellectual equal,’ he called him, even as he cast his net around him. This mesh of which, I have to tell you, with some mirth, that my uncle had no trouble swimming through.

Initially.

Intellectual equal? An insult. How could he not realize my uncle’s brain surpassed his one thousand times?

But there is one phrase he used which rankles. Heredity of a most diabolical kind. Was my uncle simply a result of genetics? Where does this leave his family? I wonder. My father? Myself?

And the word ‘diabolical’? I think not. For, as I have pointed out, it depends on your point of view who is devil and who deity.

My second and third swimming lessons were more successful, though I still had not the confidence to swim right across the lake, which I knew was Uncle James’s ambition. I lacked the skill or the strength and initially the confidence. But I persevered.

By the fifth lesson, I was swimming like a little fish. The crawl, the frog-like breaststroke, a backstroke, afloat, until my uncle slapped me on the back and I saw the pride glow from his deeply sunken eyes. Then I knew how I had pleased him.

On the eighth lesson, I finally succeeded in swimming right across the lake, my uncle by my side, urging me on, encouraging me and clapping when I reached the water’s edge on the far side and then applauding me as I swam back. And myself? I thought I would burst with pride. I knew how I had pleased him. And I needed no more lessons in swimming. Something in my uncle seemed to relax then; lines of worry were erased from his face. ‘One less thing to fret about,’ he said, making a rare effort at jolliness.

When I was twelve years old, the relationship between us began to change. He no longer treated me as a child but more as an equal. He shared his secrets with me, began to school me in the complexities of business. He would ask my opinion and test me on mathematical equations. Discuss the solution to various problems.

His pride in my abilities made us closer than before and, for a time, his visits became more frequent as I grew older. When I was thirteen years old, he began to train me as though I was his apprentice. ‘Can you remember calculus?’ he would bark and I recited it.

‘Pythagoras’s theorem?’

‘That too, Uncle,’ I replied, confident in my memory.

His smile was rare and reward enough. Then, beetling eyebrows meeting over deep eagle’s eyes, ‘Ah, but Cicely,’ he said. ‘Do you understand them? Are you simply a parrot or do you have a brain?’

And so I explained as though I was the teacher and he the pupil. He watched me keenly for a moment then bent forward. It was then, at that exact moment, that he took me further into his confidence. ‘One day, my child,’ he said, ‘you will understand more than Pythagoras or Archimedes and you will have to make your choice.’ He then talked to me about the defeat of obstacles whether mechanical or physical. He talked to me about ambition and the cost to any who stood in the way of that. And I began to have some insight into his life. I listened without judgment, knowing that his talents brought him profit and a certain satisfaction, pitting his wits against many, but there was only one person he considered worthy of his attentions. ‘The man has his talents,’ he would say grudgingly. ‘But he also has flaws, weaknesses to which I am not prone. His brain,’ he mused, ‘is analytical but he has a distorted allegiance to what he considers right and good.’