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

I thought more deeply. I thought of the broad issues of life; the crucial signifiers. I thought of death dispassionately, with a strange kind of curiosity. I thought of love with a greater sense of mystification. Mother, every day, before she turned in, would ruffle my hair, kiss my cheek and say, “I love you.” I never reciprocated. I didn’t know what it meant. I didn’t know then how important for her it would have been had I signed the words I love you too .

In my room, I watched, incessantly, the bend of the larch trees under stiff north-westerly breezes. I could stare for hours at the trees, and the sun and shade flickering across the mountains behind them, and the clouds. I was jealous, and fascinated by, any kind of movement; my eye was fast upon it, wherever it might originate. These momentary distractions apart, I felt doomed. To die in my father’s footsteps, relatively young from heart disease, meant that I was yet to spend over two more decades upon this Earth. Little was I to know how much my world would be changed over the course of a few days …

Who could have known that the events of those coming days would create ripples to be felt across the world? I can’t help feelings that the reason for the ripples – the stone cast at the centre of it all – was me. If it weren’t for me, then the dreadful business at Reichenbach would not have happened … could not have happened. I saved one man and sent another to his death – or at least that’s what it looked like to me at the time. Everyone believed they both died that day, the light and the shade. The virtuous and the diabolical.

And so the strangers came to our village. This is no great shock, of course. I live in an agreeable part of the world, a beautiful place with fresh air and attractive scenery (we have mountains and meadows, alpine flowers and goats, a spectacular waterfall and, in the shape of Rosenlaui, a glacier of awe-inspiring note); we receive many visitors eager to partake of its rejuvenating qualities. I spend a great deal of my time in the small lobby of the hotel, people-watching. I suppose you could say I was attuned to the small fluctuations that occur in the general current of humanity which drifted through our hotel. Such as that created by the two fellows who arrived on the 3 May. I was drawn to them instantly. One was tall and rangy, the kind of fellow you know is aware of everything and everyone in a room without ostentatious scrutiny; his companion was somewhat shorter, more rotund, and reminded me of the pictures of walruses I had seen on the walls of the library in Zurich. He wore a perplexed expression that struck me as likely to be a permanent fixture. I watched them talk to my mother for a while, and she made little flip-flop gestures with her hands, a gesture I had seen many times before; it meant there were no rooms vacant. The shorter man’s face lost its perplexity to a thunderstruck mien but the taller man – immaculate in his Inverness cape – smiled congenially and bent to ask my mother a question. She pointed through the window in the direction of Innertkirchen and the men bowed slightly and readied themselves to leave. Just then, the taller man espied me and tapped his companion on the shoulder. The perplexed look returned, but he remained where he was standing. The taller man approached me, that convivial smile countered somewhat by the greedy curiosity in his eyes.

“Sherlock Holmes,” he said, in a rich, sonorous voice, “at your service. Forgive me, but I couldn’t help noticing your predicament. You are a C4 quadriplegic, are you not?”

I was taken aback, not only by his direct and pinpoint diagnosis – my mother would have never volunteered such intimate information – but that he had approached me at all. Though I spent a lot of time in the lobby only my family engaged me in conversation. This was, I persuaded myself, because I was unable to enjoy any interaction – brief or otherwise – with people who were unaware of the method of “speech” I employed. But more likely it was because people didn’t understand what they saw, and they feared me.

I decided to have some fun with Herr Holmes.

YOU WILL EXCUSE ME IF I DO NOT GET UP.

“Of course, young fellow,” he replied, instantly. “It’s heartening to see a man with a complete spinal injury who has retained a sense of humour.”

He told me he admired my “silent, sombre observation” of the lobby and that he sensed in me a kindred spirit, a man enthused and intrigued by the human condition. He only regretted the fact that he would be unable to stay at our hotel.

“I wonder if you might do me the enormous courtesy of a favour, for which I would pay you the princely sum of thirty francs.”

I was stunned by his apparently instant deciphering of my code; doubly so now that such a promise of money had entered our conversation.

HOW CAN I HELP?

“I’ve noticed you are a keen observer, and you have probably picked up on a number of physical traits and behavioural peccadilloes displayed by your hotel guests. My colleague, for example, Dr Watson. No doubt you’ve been struck by his seemingly perpetual aspect of befuddlement?”

I couldn’t smile, but Mr Holmes detected humour in me; reflected it perhaps, in the twinkling of his eye.

“I’d like you to keep watch for a man who is … shall we say … looking for me. This man is very much like me, though it pains me to say so – he is tall, quite thin and has a bookish air; he is after all a quite brilliant professor of mathematics. His name is Moriarty, but he might well be travelling under a different moniker. Boole, perhaps, or Wild, or Newcomb. Perhaps even Zucco or Atwill. But no matter which pseudonym he hides behind, you will know this if you see him: there is something of the devil in his make-up. He moves as if hell is at his heels.”

HOW WILL I GET WORD TO YOU?

I had known him but five minutes and already I felt compelled to help him. There was something urgent about him, something infectious. His curiosity, I aver: I wanted to know more about him. Where he was from, where he was going, why he was so far away from his native country.

“We will be taking rooms at the Englischer Hof,” he said. “I shall endeavour to send someone to receive reports from you every evening.”

And, with that, he stood up, thanked me, and placed thirty francs in my jacket pocket. He rejoined his companion – whose air of consternation deepened – and then they left, Mr Holmes turning to touch his hat and smile my way.

I never saw him again.

I ate my supper – a thin broth pumped down my throat (I have never tasted food) – on the veranda overlooking the peaks of the Wetterhorn and the Eiger and the Rosenlaui Glacier. I loved to watch the sun sink over the white crags, darkening and deepening the green alpine meadows. Away to the south, I could see thunderclouds forming, clenching into fists that would batter our village within the next twenty-four hours or so. It was a regular occurrence in these parts, and one I looked forward to immensely. My mother hated these attacks of low pressure, but they afforded me the closest proximity to understanding what it meant to be alive. I could almost believe that I felt the sensation of skin tingling under that bracing net of wet electricity. Part of me imagined – invited, even – the catastrophic visitation of one of those blue forks upon my body. I imagined the fire and heat coursing through my veins, effulgent, reinforcing. The lightning would either reduce me to a cinder or serve the miracle cure. Either possibility was eminently preferable to this endless, silent stasis.

Mother removed the feeding apparatus from my throat and withdrew. She knew I sometimes liked to take a nap upon receiving nourishment. Sometimes she asked if I would like her to read aloud, but she tended to shy away from the suggestion these days: my tastes are dark, and hers are not. She did not like to read Frankenstein to me, or The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde , which she recited only recently, and that with evident distaste colouring her narrative. She accused me of wanting her to read stories that would serve only to remind her of my plight, and I must admit that I received a certain amount of grim pleasure from watching her squirm.