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

And, with that, the policemen left me to myself, and to the fullness of my deep and terrible grief.

I write this in the shadow of the noose. My dear cousin Richard has brought me a pen, ink and paper, and the warder has allowed me to write what may be the last entry to be appended to my diary, as well as a letter to Dr Watson. Richard has been a friend to the last. He has been the only person to visit me in gaol. When I told him of my final, desperate plan to attract the attention of Sherlock Holmes, he at first said it was futile and told me to resign myself to my fate, but once he knew of my determination he took it upon himself to pursue the matter. He has managed to extract the diary from my few possessions still held at Barrel Yard, and he will take those pages, along with this final entry and the letter, to Dr Watson.

And so I must return to the events of three months past.

The end, when it came, came swiftly. In the early hours of the morning after the murder of dear Eleanor, I went to Berkeley Square. I wanted to grasp some final part of her, to say goodbye to her, to make her awful, sudden absence more comprehensible. An officer of the law guarded the doorway to the house and so I turned away and wandered the streets for some hours, twisting and turning, not knowing to where I was going until my feet took it upon themselves to bring me back to my rooms. I fell upon my bed and wept once more.

There was another knock on the door. I was tear-stained and somewhat dishevelled but I was beyond such care. There, standing before me once more, was Inspector Bradstreet of Scotland Yard, this time accompanied by two constables.

The inspector pushed me back into the room.

“Doctor Blake, I put it to you that you have been seen staring up at Lady Eleanor Kennington’s house on an almost nightly basis.”

“I …”

“I put it to you that Lord Kennington cut you out of his will, and that Lady Kennington refused your advances.”

All this was true, but I protested. His assemblage of the facts was skewed and inappropriate.

“I put it to you that you murdered Lady Eleanor and stole from her five paintings.”

I was seared and discombobulated by his accusation but I stood my ground and retorted, using his own ridiculous language. “And I put it to you, sir, that I can prove it was not me. Mr Smithington Smythe …”

“Mr Smithington Smythe! The address on the card you handed to me was for Wilson’s funeral parlour in Clapham.”

My knees weakened.

“No one has ever heard of this Smythe. There has been no sight or sound of him in either Mayfair or Clapham, and his name is not recorded in any ledger. He simply does not exist. Between quarter past and half past ten of the clock yesterday evening, you were not in these rooms, sir, sitting with Mr Smithington Smythe. You were stealing through the gardens of Kennington House to prise open a window that you knew would give access to the library. You then strangled and stabbed …”

“Disembowelled!”

“… Lady Eleanor Kennington and stole the pictures from the Upper Gallery.”

By then I had collapsed to my knees.

“Search the premises, Constables.”

Within a minute, one of the constables had returned from the bedroom. “This was under the bed, sir.”

Held outward, taut between his hands, was the small Dutch painting of the windmill that Eleanor and I had stood before so many times, back in the days when the world was wonderful and so full of promise. I looked on, dumbfounded and defenceless, caught in a web beyond my comprehension.

I have pleaded my innocence every day since. I have even broken my vow of confidentiality and talked of Professor Moriarty’s mysterious universe of crime, but I am looked upon as one would a madman.

Not one soul believes a single word I say.

“You may call me ‘Professor’.”

He sits perfectly at ease, loose limbs remaining in control at all times. His high-domed forehead seems designed to keep his dark, and admittedly thinning, hair from creeping forward. There is a faint odour of hair pomade. He is clearly a man of intellect. Listen to the way he speaks. His skin is pale and his eyes are sunk into his forehead, giving him the gaunt appearance of an undertaker. But that is not his profession. Not unless he extracts a generous price from the families of those interred by his deceptively delicate-looking hands. He is wealthy. It is clear from his clothes and his demeanour. And the fact that he has paid for my time and expertise.

“Professor,” I say, letting the name roll around my tongue.

He sits forward. “I would prefer,” he says, with a hint of threat, “that we not deal in real names.”

I sit back in my chair. Notebook open and pencil at the ready. The new leather squeaks as I adjust my weight. I look at the clock above the mantelpiece. My wife is waiting for me at home. This impromptu session will take no more than an hour.

The Professor says, “I do not require you to take notes.”

“Professor,” I say, “It is important that—”

“—there must be no record,” he says. “You are already being rewarded handsomely for your services.”

I try not to bristle at his tone. There is something patronising there. A disregard that I find personally insulting.

“You look uncomfortable,” he says.

“No.”

“Many people are uncomfortable in my presence. I have always had that effect on others. Even as a child.”

I nod, and put away my notes. This “Professor” will be here for one, maybe two sessions at most. He is, like so many of the richer clients who seek my audience, merely seeking an outlet for his boredom. As the new medicine of psychiatry extends beyond the asylum, many of my colleagues fear it is destined to become merely another way for the privileged to relieve their boredom.

“Tell me,” I say, “about your childhood.”

The Professor is, in a purely mental sense, elusive as a butterfly that has not been sufficiently exposed to cyanide. He mentions his parents only briefly and dismissively, before implying that he has a brother who is a colonel in Her Majesty’s armed forces. Beyond that he does not go into great detail. His blood relatives are merely facilitators of his existence. He does not speak to them and has not done so since he graduated from university education.

“My family became merely a means to an end,” he tells me. “I was educated. I was never at a loss for money. I could buy and sell friends easily. But such friends … I found they tired easily. I do, however, find their lives and their habits fascinating in the way an entomologist finds the rituals of ants to be of great interest.”

“You see other people as ants?”

He keeps quiet. Expecting me to answer the question for him. But that is not how the game is played. He has to understand the rules.

I say, “You have a superior intellect to most men?”

“I have published volumes on binomial theories in mathematics that shook the established order. And more still on the movements of the asteroids and the nature of the heavens.”

“To acclaim?”

Again, he says nothing.

“But this is not enough for you? You were not recognised for your—”

“Recognition has nothing to do with it!” A sudden, unexpected flash of anger. He sits forward. Voice close to cracking. There is a madness in his eyes that he had hidden before. His body stiffens as though bitten by a venomous snake. “Recognition is for those obsessed with the opinions of other people. A man of my intellect … There is no one whose approval I seek!”

“No one?”

He hesitates. Considers his response. Our most honest reactions, so I and others have come to believe, arise when we do not consider them. Instinct teaches us about ourselves. But men like the Professor – in need of control – suppress these automatic reactions, viewing them as weakness.