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

Over the last month, your work has proved invaluable. Selfknowledge, I believe, is the route to perfection. I have gained an understanding of myself and my priorities. I have quieted my ego. And yet still I cannot rid myself of this need to destroy the Great Detective, to see him utterly quashed. Not only that, but I am consumed by the desire to have him admit his inferiority; to force him to bow down to a superior intellect.

You have provided a steadying hand. And now, as our confrontation approaches, I would have your counsel one last time before our encounter.

On our approach to the station, I read the letter one more time. As I fold it to put away in my breast pocket, the door to the carriage opens and my new-found friend’s companion bursts in. “We are nearly there!” he says. “Come, Watson, there is much to prepare!”

The doctor, who has been sleeping for maybe an hour, wakes quickly, and looks at me as he shrugs his coat about his shoulders. “He was never one for subtlety,” he remarks of his companion. “A pleasure to meet you.” He extends his hand. Silently, I take it and we shake before parting. “Maybe we shall meet again in Meirengen.”

“Perhaps,” I say. But it is all I am capable of. As they leave the cabin, my throat seizes up. For I realise now that my travelling companion was the estimable Doctor Watson and that his friend was none other than the great detective himself: Sherlock Holmes.

The Professor waits for me in private rooms, under an assumed name.

With little preamble after being granted access, I set myself up in a corner of the room. I sit down and say to him, “Tell me of your intentions.”

“I want to kill him,” he says. “Throttle him with my bare hands. Choke the life from him.” As he speaks, his body tenses. His hands grip like talons. His skin becomes pale and his eyes manic.

I say, “You hate him.”

“He is an annoyance.”

“Don’t downplay your feelings,” I say. “You hate the man. You hate anyone you see as a challenge, as an obstacle, as an equal.”

“I have no—”

“Don’t lie to me!” Suddenly bold, I realise that I have nothing left to lose. He can kill me if he wants, but I will not be restrained by fear. “Don’t lie to yourself! You are afraid of this man and you hate what you are afraid of!”

There is silence. He stands and looks at me. The silence becomes a physical presence in the room, crushing and choking. Have I made a mistake?

“Afraid?” he says. “Yes, yes. Maybe you’re right. The idea that there is someone in this world who is my equal? Oh, when you believe yourself unique, the prospect is terrifying.”

I allow myself finally to breathe.

“When you return to England,” he says, “there will be money waiting for you. A sum to more than compensate you for your assistance. You will not hear from me again.”

“You think yourself cured?”

“Oh, I don’t know about that. But it is better to cut one’s ties than become dependent, don’t you think?”

But there is something else, too. Something unsaid.

I stand and offer my hand.

He smiles and accepts the gesture. “Do not mistake this for friendship,” he says.

I leave without another word.

The following morning, I am preparing for my departure when I come across a commotion in the lobby of my hotel. I stop one of the stewards and say, “What is happening?”

“You are English?”

“British. Yes.”

“Then …” He hesitates for a moment. “You have not heard?”

“Heard what?”

“The detective. The great detective. Sherlock Holmes. He is dead.”

I gather the story through rumour and report. Make sense of what I can. But what I know is this: the great detective confronted his nemesis, and together they plunged into the waters at the Reichenbach Falls.

I send a telegram to my wife: “I am delayed by a few days, but I will be home.” I say no more than this. In the space of a telegram, it is impossible to convey my feelings about the death of the Professor whose name, I have learned at long last, was Moriarty.

That afternoon, I return to my room. It is my last night before I board the first of several trains that will take me home.

There is a knock at the door as I open my case and prepare to fold my clothes. When I answer, I see my friend from the train. He says, “When I heard there was an Alienist here, I hoped it would be you.” He extends his hand. “My name is Doctor John Watson. I believe that you may be able to offer some assistance to those overcome by traumatic events.” He talks with the restrained air of one desperate to keep a lid on some strong emotion.

I merely nod at his greeting. And feel strangely responsible for his current state of mind.

He says, “My friend, the one who was with me on the train—”

“Mr Sherlock Holmes?”

“Yes.”

“By all accounts, one of the finest minds the world has ever known.”

“And a dear friend.”

I invite him to take a seat beneath the windowsill. He does so. I find some water and pass it to him. He sips. The room is silent. From somewhere outside comes the sound of birds, chirruping almost joyously as though unaware of the clouds that myself and Watson can see.

“You, too, seem touched by sorrow.”

I smile, but it feels unconvincing. “My patient,” I say. “He also died yesterday.”

“I am sorry. I suppose in the excitement over a figure such as Holmes, the deaths of others whose names are not known to the public may appear to be lessened.”

I say nothing. I lean against the writing desk.

“How did he die? Your patient?”

“Obsession,” I say. “There is no other thing to say. I feel as though there was something I missed. But he was so guarded. In the end, I fear that the obsession he could not admit to was what led to his demise.”

“Holmes was much the same. Obsessive. The exclusion of all else. In that way, your patient and my friend, I suppose they were alike.”

I allow Watson to talk. The more he talks about Holmes, the more the great detective becomes the Professor in my mind, both men mirror images. As the Professor had remarked, himself.

The immovable object and the unstoppable force.

There are tears on my cheeks. My eyes burn gently.

I wipe the tears away with a subtle gesture. Wonder at their cause, briefly.

Watson, in his own grief, does not notice.

This document, a personal memoir of Sir H. F. Dickens K.C., is heretofore sealed before me, and deposited in the archives of the Inner Temple, London, this Fourteenth Day of April 1916. I shall not break the seal, or suffer others to break it, until at least one hundred years have passed from the date hereof.

Sworn on this date, by Thomas Clay, Keeper of Manuscripts, The Inner Temple Library, in the City and environs of Westminster.

If you are reading this poor account, which is drafted in the full knowledge of its total inferiority in every material respect, in comparison to the work of my father, the late Charles Dickens, you should bear in mind that in all likelihood I am quite assuredly dead and literary criticism is the very least of my concerns. As I sit in my study of late, my career and middle age firmly behind me, I have been increasingly possessed of the notion to record my part in the most ordinary, and yet extraordinary, legal case of my career. By now you may have deduced that my name is Henry Fielding Dickens, King’s Counsel and Common Serjeant, retired, and that whilst a practising counsel I was well known for my involvement in a brace of sensational murder trials conducted in that most august theatre, the Old Bailey.