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

I was about to give up and return the pocket watch to my waistcoat when I noticed there was some delicate shift in his stare. I now seemed to be looking into the eyes not of a wise and cynical old man, but of an innocent boy.

I trod carefully at first, asking him to describe the world of his childhood in minute detail. In a sober, even voice, with his gaze still fixed upon the watch, he described his mother’s bedroom and his father’s study with a devotion to detail that I believe is beyond fully conscious memory. Then I asked him to describe some event that took place in his father’s study, and that is when the darkness began.

The young Moriarty had allowed Indian ink to stain some linen and his father summoned him to the study, but, under questioning, Moriarty blamed his brother. Thereupon, while Moriarty watched, his protesting brother’s bare legs were beaten with a cane, stroke after stroke after stroke, his father laughing manically all the while. It was only when blood ran freely down the back of the boy’s welted thighs and calves that the punishment ceased.

There then, I thought, we have arrived at the likely root of the insomnia so quickly. Guilt, that emotion of which the professor is so dismissive, has disturbed his mind to the point that his body is in revolt and will not allow sleep, for the terrible occurrence no doubt haunts his dreams.

I was ready to coax the professor back into the present, but first I thought I would try to invoke a more recent memory to see if I could understand the depth of the professor’s predicament. I asked him to describe his own study, which again he did in detail, and to picture himself seated at the desk. Was there anything that had taken place in that room that filled him with unease?

The professor uttered a short, dry, staccato laugh that seemed out of keeping with his induced state, but he continued in his solemn voice. The toneless delivery of the words soon proved an ill match for the horrors they described. With no more bidding, the esteemed professor conjured images of such vileness that my stomach turns to think of them. A specialist in astronomy, he described a universe of dark intrigue in which he was the sun and his criminal subordinates and “soldiers” were the stars, some linked into constellations, others orbiting alone upon his governance. He portrayed himself issuing command after command from the desk, arranging for burglary, deception, forgery and worse – murder and assassination! Politicians, lordly gentlemen and gentlewomen, shopkeepers and beggars: no one was immune from the evil effect of his communications, not even children. The river of stories was shoaled with the corpses of the innocent.

I was dumbfounded and a-trembling. At first I thought about running to the nearest constable. But it was then, in a moment of clarity, that I deduced that his tales were not true. As if this professor could possibly be running a network of the most damnable of criminals! No, the problems lay in the theories of Mesmer and Baird, and now I believed not one word of their supposed scientific reasoning. The hypnotized state was not a gateway to memory and truth – no! It was a mere portal to the vilest of imaginings that in the conscious world we can suppress and control, thank goodness. My ridiculous games had merely forced the venerable professor unwittingly to unleash a terrible fiction that had nothing to do with reality.

The professor had finally fallen silent and I saw that the keen intelligence had returned to his eyes once more.

“Remember, Dr Blake, that you promised complete confidentiality.”

And, with that, he swept from the room, humming “Three Little Maids from School”, which was somewhat incongruous to my state of confusion. Everyone in this city seems to be humming those insufferable Gilbert and Sullivan ditties.

It has been a sobering day. My understanding of hypnosis and recovered memory is in tatters, and I have no semblance of an idea how to proceed with the professor’s treatment.

At least tomorrow I can look forward to the rather simpler case of Mr Smithington Smythe.

It was nearly midnight, just half of an hour ago, when my door was nearly taken from its hinges with the banging. I had only just retired to bed, but had immediately fallen into a deep sleep and awoke in a state of high confusion. I stumbled my way out of the bedroom, into the consultation room and towards the noise. The door was shuddering with each determined blow.

“Who is it?” I shouted, trying to control my hands as I lit a candle.

“It is the Metropolitan Police. Open the door.”

My thoughts immediately turned to Professor Moriarty. Was it possible that his words were not a fiction and the police were now investigating his manifold crimes?

If only that were so.

When I opened the door, I was looking up at a tall, portly man in a peaked cap who was accompanied by a uniformed officer.

“Are you Dr Trevelyan Blake?”

“Indeed.”

“I am Inspector Bradstreet of Scotland Yard. There has been a vicious knife attack, doctor, not fifty yards from here.”

“I will get dressed and come immediately.”

“That won’t be necessary, Doctor. The victim is beyond all help and the police doctor is at the scene.”

“Then why have you awoken me?”

“I believe you know the victim, Doctor. Lady Eleanor Kennington.”

I felt the candle drop from my fingers and the world went black.

A few minutes later, which was as soon as I could gather my senses, I said that I must go to Eleanor and made to leave immediately, even though I was in a nightshirt and my feet were still bare.

The inspector barred my way with a strong arm.

“It is not a sight you would like to see, sir. The dear lady has been cut …”

“Disembowelled,” added the constable.

“… in the manner of a medical man. You are a medical man, are you not, Doctor?”

“Of course I am. What are you saying?”

“Nothing at all.”

Over the next ten minutes there ensued the most awful conversation I have ever been forced to endure. No doubt armed with gossip from one of the Kennington servants, the inspector intimated that he knew all about my fall from favour with the deceased Lord Kennington and Eleanor’s rejection of me.

“You are well acquainted with Lady Eleanor Kennington’s house in Berkeley Square, and you are familiar with the precious artworks in the Upper Gallery, five of which have been cut from their frames. And you are also well acquainted with Lady Kennington’s habits, are you not?”

“Well, yes. All that is true,” I said, while still trembling at the thought of my poor, pure Eleanor’s mutilated body.

“So you would have known that, as usual, the lady would be alone, reading in the library at about thirty minutes past ten this evening, exactly the time the dear lady was murdered.”

“What on earth are you saying, man?”

“Nothing. Nothing at all.” The inspector paused. “But where were you, Doctor, between ten and eleven this evening?”

I stared at the inspector in disbelief. “I was here.”

“Alone, I dare say?” The man had a gleam in his eye.

“No, Inspector. I was in the company of Mr Smithington Smythe, a very respectable man of some importance, for the entire hour.” By now I was in a state of anger. I ripped open a desk drawer and handed Mr Smythe’s card to the inspector. Even in my torment at the news of Eleanor’s death, I felt some satisfaction at seeing the gleam leave his eye. He looked thoroughly disappointed and turned to leave.

“Rest assured we will speak to Mr Smythe.” The inspector stuck out his huge chest and stood in an imposing manner in the doorway. “You will not leave the city in a hurry now, will you, Doctor?”