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

In The Valley of Fear (written after the preceding two stories, but set earlier), Holmes says of Professor Moriarty: ‘He is unmarried. His younger brother is a stationmaster in the west of England.’

So I had a quandary. He has a brother called James; he is himself called James.

His brother is a colonel; his brother is a stationmaster. I had to make my choice. I have stuck with the name James and the occupation of his brother as stationmaster.

My Dear Dr Watson,

I write to you in a state of perplexity – my days remaining on this earth will be few if this confounded confusion cannot be mastered. You see, dear fellow, I am accused of a hateful, abominable crime, one that suspends belief in the very virtue of mankind.

I have been boxed into this dark predicament. Although I have pleaded my innocence, my cries have not been heard amongst the clamour of the words “evidence” and “fact”. Justice, usually of fair complexion and even countenance, has resolutely turned her back on me.

I can barely dare to write these words, but I must steel myself to face the truth of them: I now reside in a prison cell and face the gallows, having been found guilty of murder.

I have met you only once, sir, during the aftermath of the Royal Society’s Special Lecture this June past. Although I am but a young man, you showed interest in my plans to set up a practice specializing in the treatment of nervous and brain disorders. I now know you by reputation to be a man willing to pursue truth even in the darkest corner. I can think of nothing else but to lean upon the kindness and good sense of yourself, and on the intelligence and curiosity of your dear friend, Mr Sherlock Holmes.

All I can offer you in terms of evidence are the pages of my sporadic diary, which reveal the episode as it unfolded. Along with this letter, the diary has been entrusted to Mr Richard Kennington for conveyance directly to your hands. I can trust no other man to perform this duty.

Read the pages carefully, sir, for I feel that the truth of my misadventure can be found amongst the scribbled lines, but I implore you to read them quickly. The apparatus of my death is already prepared.

Yours in trepidation,

What an evening this has been – though I am of scientific mind, it is an evening that proves beyond all doubt that the earth revolves with divine purpose.

It began as so many others have done since I returned from France: in an impoverishment not just of the pocket, but of the soul. I was sitting in this damnable, airless boarding room in Woolwich, counting coins enough for the train to town so that I could attend the Royal Society lecture, but not enough additionally to treat myself to a meal.

I decided against the lecture. What could Ernst Hechter say on the subject of neurology that I had not already learned from the lips of Jean-Martin Charcot, the most enlightened neurologist in Europe? What could Hechter divest on the topic of the ailing mind that I had not dissected, reconstituted and dissected again with my good friend Sigmund as we spent those months under Charcot’s tutelage? And yet, even as my stomach made its displeasure known through a rumble, I carried those coins with me not to the Swan Inn for one of Mrs Webster’s infamous pies, but to the railway station.

The lecture proved to be as dull as I had feared. Hechter may understand something of the malady of the mind, and he may realise that mental trauma can have a physical incarnation, but it was clear from his opening remarks that he has no understanding that such trauma may be eased by a cure of the mind, and not of the body.

As Hechter bored on in his heavily accented English, I divined that the only malady that this man was ever likely to cure was insomnia. I apologized to my stomach for my error of judgement, regretted the absence of the dubious pie, and let my mind wander. How I remember parting with Sigmund in Paris and our last words: a mutual vow to study and practise psychopathology. Although neither of us was yet to reach thirty, we agreed to stride forth separately and change all perception of the illnesses of the mind and their cure.

Even as I stood upon the railway concourse, shaking Sigmund’s hand, I had to push away the fear that I would never be in a financial position to set up a private practice. Those months with Charcot in Paris had all but exhausted the last of my longdeceased father’s bequest.

On returning to London, I threw myself upon the mercy of my guardian, Lord Kennington. I had promised never to return to his house or see his daughter again so I waited outside his club, White’s, and, as he was a man of regular habits, his carriage turned up at the expected hour. It had been more than a year since my aberration, but my guardian’s hatred for me remained as intense as ever. He had not forgiven me. He was clearly ill and weak, but his eyes were full of fierce hatred and he refused to speak one word to me. It was the last time I would ever see him. He would be dead within the week.

As Hechter droned on to his stupefied audience, I admit that I was overwhelmed by despair. A miserable room in Woolwich. A rumbling stomach. No prospect of setting up my practice. No possibility of redemption with the departed Lord Kennington. And no Eleanor. No, no chance of Eleanor.

I admit that it was underhand of me, but after the lecture, I followed some of the crowd into the reception held in Dr Hechter’s honour, even though the price of my ticket only covered admission to the lecture. I desperately hoped there would be some form of victuals, but there was only a rather aggressive red wine that turned my stomach to acid and soon made me light-headed.

A kind gentleman named Dr John Watson fell into conversation with me. Although a retired army man, he seemed to be a keen student of the mind and, to my surprise, was a little familiar with Brentano’s work and even von Hartmann’s The Psychology of the Unconscious . He claimed, though, that he had come across no greater practitioner of a form of psychological deduction than the esteemed detective, Sherlock Holmes.

I was so relieved to find a fellow traveller, and somewhat heady from the wine, that I unleashed some of my tale of woe upon the good doctor. He knew of Lord Kennington’s great wealth and had heard of his art collection, so he commiserated with me on being cut adrift by such a gentleman. I did not elucidate on the reasons for my fall from grace. He applauded my wish to begin my own private practice specializing in resolving illnesses, not least insomnia, that are a physical incarnation of a mental perturbation.

I think the wine may have helped me become surprisingly fluent on the subject. I noticed that nearby, in a poorly lit corner of the room, a gentleman with a large, drooping moustache and a tall, older fellow appeared to be listening intently. This made me giddier still as I perceived from the interest of this sample of the esteemed company that we were on the cusp of a new era of medicine and that I could become a torch bearer for the new age of reason. Foolish and arrogant, I know, but I felt so buoyant in that moment.

An hour later, I made to leave the Royal Society’s premises – having suddenly become aware that I had been battering poor Dr Watson’s ears for too long and that I was teetering on the precipice of being shamefully inebriated. Immediately as I stepped outside, I was approached by the attentive man with the drooping moustache. For the life of me I could not make out his name even after I asked him to repeat it. He was somewhat unusual in his bearing, and somewhat startling in his proposition.