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

He smiled, but said nothing.

We reached Paris and took a cab straight to the saleroom on the Faubourg Saint Honoré.

The auction had not yet begun and a small crowd, mostly male, was engaged in viewing paintings set up on easels and portfolios of drawings.

Holmes nudged me and pointed. ‘What did I tell you? There he is!’

Moriarty was very much as Holmes had once described him to me: a thin face, grey hair swept back from a high, domed forehead. There was a strange contrast between his ascetic appearance, every inch the unworldly academic, and the voluptuous picture at which he was gazing. It was not one I should have cared to view in the company of a lady.

Moriarty was too engrossed to notice us approaching, until Holmes remarked, ‘That is a very fine Fragonard, is it not? Do you intend to bid?’

It must have been a shock to see us there, but to give him this due, Moriarty showed no sign of surprise. He merely remarked, ‘Good afternoon, Mr Holmes. And this, I assume, is your confederate, Dr Watson. As for the painting, alas, it is far beyond my modest purse – and not entirely to my taste either.’

‘Modest purse! Are you not the owner of a painting by Greuze worth well over a million francs?’

‘A gift from a friend, Mr Holmes. A gift from a wealthy friend in gratitude for services rendered.’

There was a pedantic precision about his speech that made my flesh creep.

‘You have a number of wealthy friends, have you not?’ Holmes enquired. ‘Among them Rufus Armstrong, who would be even wealthier were it not for the trifling obstacle of a younger brother?’

Moriarty moved on to the next picture. This one, I saw from the signature, was by Greuze. It showed a little girl playing with a kitten and was not much more to my taste than the last.

‘I will pay you the compliment of frankness, Mr Holmes. I do not have the child, nor do I know where he is. If I did, I would be only too happy to hand him over in exchange for an appropriate reward.’

Only a warning look from Holmes prevented me from seizing him and thrashing him there and then.

‘Rufus Armstrong is also missing,’ Holmes remarked.

‘Ah, Rufus. A hot-headed young man, and arrogant into the bargain.’

‘Do you know what has happened to him?’

‘Perhaps some accident has befallen him, Mr Holmes.’ Moriarty leaned forward to examine the picture more closely. ‘The streets of London have become so dangerous, have they not? Now look at the whiskers of that kitten: the handling of the paint just there: superlative, is it not?’ Perhaps the sentimental picture had touched his stony heart, for I saw that his eyes were moist. ‘If the streets of London can be dangerous for a young man, they are desperately so for a lost child. I hope the police are doing their utmost to find little Arthur. And now the auction is about to begin, so our interesting little chat must end. Good day to you both.’

The cabbie was waiting for us and Holmes instructed him to go to the nearest telegraph office.

‘Now that we know what happened,’ he said, ‘I had better send a telegram to Lestrade.’

I was taken aback. ‘What did happen?’ I enquired.

‘Why, did you not hear what Moriarty said?’ Holmes spoke with a touch of asperity. ‘Is it not evident that Moriarty, blackguard that he is, corrupted this young man while acting as his tutor and they hatched a plot to snatch the child? The nurse put up more of a fight than Moriarty’s thugs anticipated and the child managed to get away. Moriarty and Armstrong fell out over the failure of the plot and Armstrong, as one would expect, came off the worst.’

‘So you really think Moriarty doesn’t have Arthur?’

‘You must understand how his mind works. It is merely a matter of business with him. If he had the child, he would have demanded a ransom long before now. As it is, he has wasted no time in cutting his losses.’

‘But if Arthur managed to run away, where is he?’

‘Where indeed, Watson? Lestrade must step up the search. And it is time to get the Baker Street Irregulars on the case.’

Holmes spoke briskly, but I could tell that he was troubled. Arthur had been missing for three days now. He had disappeared into the maw of London. If he had fallen into the hands of the underworld – well, it did not bear thinking of.

‘Can Moriarty not be brought to book for his part in this?’ I asked.

‘If, as I strongly suspect, Rufus Armstrong is out of the way, Moriarty will escape justice – on this occasion. It was the poet Longfellow who wrote, “Though the mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small”. Moriarty will get his just deserts. I shall see to that.’

We arrived at the telegraph office and Holmes disappeared inside.

He soon returned.

‘What now?’ I asked.

Holmes took out his pocket watch. ‘We have a few hours before our train departs. I wonder, Watson …’ His voice trailed off and I looked at him in surprise. It was not like Holmes to sound uncertain. ‘There is someone I should like you to meet … of course, she might not be at home, but … yes,’ he decided. He leaned out and gave the driver an address in the Place des Vosges. He flung himself back in his corner and closed his eyes, leaving me to wonder whom this mysterious ‘she’ might be.

Holmes and a woman, a Frenchwoman at that! I remembered his impeccable French and wondered even more. Surely this could not be a romantic attachment, an old flame, perhaps even an ex-mistress? Unthinkable! And yet I was thinking it. What else could account for Holmes’s diffidence?

After a while, we left behind the broad boulevards with their brilliant lights and plunged into a dark maze of little streets lined by workshops. We emerged in the Place des Vosges. In the gathering twilight, mist drifted between the linden trees and the fine old sixteenth-century facades.

We got out of the cab and Holmes rang the bell.

The door was answered by an elderly maid, whose face lit up at the sight of Holmes. The next moment, an elegant woman rushed past her and with an exclamation of ‘ mon cher Sherlock!’ threw herself into Holmes’s arms. He returned her embrace, while I stood gaping.

After a few moments, he pulled away and turned to me, laughing. ‘Let me introduce you. Tante Yvette, this is my great friend, Dr Watson. Watson, this is Madame Pujol, my aunt.’

I saw now that her trim figure and modish dress had deceived me as to her age. Even so, she scarcely looked old enough to be his aunt. Later, I discovered that she was his mother’s younger sister. They were the nieces of the French artist, Horace Vernet, whom Holmes had once mentioned as an ancestor.

‘Ah, le grand Watson! Quel plaisir ! One has heard so much.’ She held out a slender hand laden with rings.

There was only one thing to be done. I took her hand, bent over it and kissed it. ‘ Enchanté , Madame.’

She laughed and spoke in a torrent of French, of which I made out only the world ‘ galant ’.

‘I thought you two would hit it off,’ Holmes remarked dryly. ‘But stick to English, tante Yvette, if you want Watson to be flattered by your compliments.’

In no time at all, we were seated round a dining table, drinking the kind of soup that is made only by a French cook.

Over the meal, Holmes told his aunt about the case. He spoke to her as an equal, omitting nothing, and explaining his chain of reasoning. She listened intently, her eyes never leaving his face, nodding approval now and then at some step he had taken. You would not at first have thought they were related, but the resemblance was there, not only in the keen intelligence that shone from her clear grey eyes, but also in the curl of her lip at the mention of Greuze.