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

But he hadn’t factored in one important thing: that Eveline loved Edmund so much that she would kill Seamus before Seamus could kill Edmund.

He hadn’t prepared for the workings of the human heart.

One thing I knew, from my father’s work: that arsenic would kill someone in half a day, not three. Whatever was making Edmund look so green on Wednesday, was probably nothing more than the cockles in the Old Red Lion.

And now, a year later, I am sitting in our little house in Greenwich. That autumn, Angela did me the honour of becoming my wife. We’re expecting our first child at the end of this year. Her father found me a rather good position as a clerk in a law firm, and it seemed only right that I should provide for my family. I catch myself thinking about Moriarty from time to time. The Greuze boy is on the wall of my study here. I look at his angelic blond curls and wonder if he, too, finds the glory of the heavens in the pure abstract truths of mathematics.

As for my work on the orbits of celestial bodies – one of these days I shall write it up. I shall give Professor Moriarty an acknowledgement. And, who knows, perhaps one day he’ll read it. Wherever he is.

The author would like to acknowledge Carl Murray, Professor of Mathematics and Astronomy at Queen Mary, for his scientific advice.

It was a rare man who had the courage to ask Moriarty about his past. It was an even rarer man whom Moriarty would bother to answer. In his opinion, courageous men were most often fools. Not that it made them special. Almost everyone was a fool.

But then there was the occasional moment when the wind blew southerly and the moon was exactly half full, in short when it struck his fancy, that the great Professor could be bothered to answer some questions.

Molly was a charming girl. She was a child on the cusp of becoming a lady. She delivered occasional messages within his criminal network. She was good for work that required a face that would be underestimated. Moriarty liked to tutor her in advanced mathematics sometimes.

“Professor,” she asked one day, as they haggled their way through cosigns and imaginary numbers, “why did you decide to become a criminal?”

It was a bold question, but she asked it without accusation. It was a simple quest for information. Molly didn’t judge morals. She judged facts. Moriarty had hopes that he wouldn’t have to kill her one day. It might actually be a waste.

That night the wind and moon and so forth must have been right. For once, Moriarty was pleased to tell the story. “Molly, have you ever read Crime and Punishment ?” She shook her head. “Well, you should. Add it to your reading list. I expect you to finish it by next week.”

“Yes, Professor ,” she said with a hint of humor. He glared and she balked. “I mean, yes, sir. By next week.”

“Good.” He watched to make certain she showed no further signs of insubordination, then continued. “It’s an involved story that goes on longer than it should and ends with a compulsory preachy moral. All the same, it quite captivated me as a lad. It’s about a man who commits murder simply to prove that he can, to prove that he is more important than all the morals in the world.”

In his mind, that sentence was filled with qualifiers and footnotes, but he’d said what was necessary to get Molly’s attention. She waited, now seated notably closer to the edge of her chair. Good.

“I believe I was about your age at the time. I was young. I hadn’t given much thought to the future, my career, or the nature of crime. That book opened my mind to many things.

“It taught me that there are ranks of men in this world. And I don’t mean the ones you’re taught about: the rich and the poor, the brave and the cowardly, the saintly and the wicked. No. Those are the simple categories a world of children plays with. The only real distinctions worth noting are those very few who can master the rules of the invisible games of the world, and then rise above those rules themselves. Those, dear Molly, are the only men worthy of respect.”

“And what about women, Professor?” Molly asked, with something dreadfully akin to hope in her eyes.

“Women,” Moriarty said with a severe look, “are governed by the most insipid fluff of all, the scraps that the idiot men of the world leave them. Keep up with your maths, Molly, and perhaps you’ll be able to keep a brain under all that cotton the world will stuff in your skull. Now, no more interruptions.”

Molly looked confused, but nodded solemnly.

“It gave me such ideas, Crime and Punishment . It made me question every rule I’d ever heard. I already knew I was a genius, of course. It’s impossible to have an intellect like mine and not know it. And yet there I was, letting my magnificent brain be constrained by the laws and policies written to herd the masses into line. It was absurd! It was …”

He shook his head. “My work truly began when I was fifteen. There was a book I wanted. An excellent edition of Euler’s De fractionibus continuis dissertatio . I wanted it, but didn’t have enough money for it on hand. All I had was my schoolmate Timothy and the knowledge that he liked to play games of poker with the other boys. Gambling was forbidden at our school. He might have been expelled. It didn’t take much to convince him to steal the book for me.”

Moriarty grinned in that very way that chilled brave men to their bones. Memories could be so sweet. “But I think that is enough for tonight, dear Molly. Now, show me what you’ve learned.”

A week later, they met again, a surprise but not an unpleasant one. The Professor had expected to be in Rome. Pressing matters in Dublin had come up instead. There was an art-smuggling operation that had suddenly spiraled out of control. Moriarty sorted it out within hours, but he was still irked it required his presence at all. Another maths lesson was a good way to soothe his ruffled mind.

Molly’s progress was good. He could see she had a grasp of mathematics in a broader scope than most did. She understood the formulas and theories as more than arbitrary rules to be followed. Anything less would have been a waste of his time.

“Do you speak Russian, sir?”

He paused over a note he was about to make. “I speak twenty-three different languages, child. But yes, Russian is among them. Why?”

“How long have you spoken it?” she asked with an odd insistence. “When did you learn it?”

Moriarty frowned with impatience. “Nearly fifteen years ago. Now stop trying to be mysterious. You aren’t clever enough for that.”

For once Molly didn’t seem stung by the strike against her intelligence. “I read Crime and Punishment like you asked me to, sir. As far as I can calculate, it wasn’t published when you were a boy. Unless you’re much younger than you look.” She glanced at him nervously, but he allowed her to continue. “And it was only translated into English a few years ago.” A pause. “Why did you lie to me?”

Again, he appreciated the lack of hurt in her voice. It acknowledged where they both were in the pecking order. He had the right to lie to her at any time about anything and they both knew it. Whether he answered her now was merely a matter of courtesy.

“There was a time when I saw crime as a sort of charity, you know,” he said. He leaned back in his chair with a small smile on his lips. “I was more religious then. I had a sense of my actions bearing importance in a larger cosmic game. To my mind, both nobles and stable boys deserved the chance to climb up in the world. But the laws of men are imperfect and so often hold that poor stable boy back. The only option was to break those laws.”