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

W stirred in his chair. “I cannot claim that it is obvious to me.”

“The man is a drug fiend, depend upon it. The pastiness of his cheeks is due, I suspect, to an overfondness for arsenic. Some medical men recommend it for the treatment of malaria. Quinine is more effective, but less appealing to those with unconventional instincts. The peasants of Styria take arsenic as a means of freshening the complexion, but our friend is more likely, in my opinion, to favour arsenic because of its aphrodisiac qualities.”

“I say!”

I raised a hand to still W’s protests. “Deplorable, perhaps, but we must take the world as we find it, rather than as we would wish it to be. Believe me, even a man with the finest mind and purest heart may resort to desperate remedies in moments of acute stress, and, although this fellow is no fool, I doubt there is much in his life that is pure.”

“You think this arsenic habit has weakened his moral fibre?”

“He may have been blessed with little enough moral fibre to start with,” I replied. “I caught sight of a betting slip protruding from one of his pockets. It had been crumpled, perhaps in disgust. A man with a fondness for the racetrack will often display other weaknesses of character and, although his attire was at first glance immaculate, my eyesight was keen enough to detect a faint shadow of crimson on his collar, no doubt the legacy of an amorous liaison earlier in the day.”

“My dear fellow!”

“Even an affluent businessman may find such pastimes expensive. A desire to supplement his finances may cause him to consort with rogues. And scoundrels come in no more sophisticated guise than Colonel Moran and Professor Moriarty.”

“Very well, I am persuaded. You said that in the conversation between those gentlemen, mention was made of a nursemaid and Flatman’s. Have you formed a view as to their significance – if any?”

“Flatman’s Hotel is to be found in Henrietta Street. It happens to be frequented by members of the cotton-broking fraternity, but may no doubt prove a suitable venue for intrigue, as well as discussions about trade over tea and crumpets. The vague outlines of a plot are taking shape in my mind, but they are nothing more at present than shadows in mist. The data available to me is inadequate, and precisely what fate Moriarty intends for his Liverpudlian aide, I cannot be sure.”

“You believe the man’s life is at risk?”

“Unquestionably.”

“We must do something to save him!” W cried. “This wretched villain may prove a source of vital information about the activities of Moran and Moriarty. If only …”

I shook my head. “You will be disappointed, I fear. The fact that the Professor has taken the extraordinary step of breaking cover illustrates the strength of his determination to resolve whatever difficulty he faces. I have never known a human being who was his equal in both callousness and ingenuity. When Moriarty described the man as a loose cannon, he sounded uncannily like a judge passing sentence after donning his black cap.”

In the days that followed my foray to the Tankerville Club, fresh information dribbled out, like drips from a leaky tap. Within three weeks, it had formed a murky puddle. The man from Liverpool was indeed a cotton broker, James Maybrick by name, and his business interests took him regularly both to London and to Norfolk, Virginia. While crossing the ocean some eight years earlier, he had been introduced to a comely fellow passenger twenty-three years his junior. The girl was called Florence Chandler, and her late father had once been the mayor of Mobile, Alabama. The relationship prospered, possibly due to an attraction of opposites, and the couple married in Piccadilly in July 1881 before settling in Aigburth, on the outskirts of Liverpool. Their home, Battlecrease House, stood across the road from Liverpool Cricket Club, of which Maybrick was a member, and his wife a lady subscriber. He was known to have more than one mistress, and rumour had it that one woman had borne him no fewer than five children. Florence was now the mother to a young boy and girl, but she too was not lacking in admirers. James Maybrick’s younger brother Edwin was among them, and so was a man called Brierley, another cotton broker who was a member of the cricket club. While the parents were otherwise engaged, the children were cared for at Battlecrease House by a woman named Alice Yapp. Her previous situation had been at Birkdale, near Southport, and, unusually, she had been engaged by James Maybrick rather than by his wife. I did not doubt that Alice Yapp was the nursemaid of whose reliability Colonel Moran had spoken.

Each new titbit that came my way deepened my anxiety. The fog in my mind was clearing, and the criminal design that was emerging was nightmarish in its cunning. Moriarty and the Colonel were, if I was right, contriving to commit a murder that could never be laid at their door.

Soon my worst fears were realised, as news came that James Maybrick was dead. The police worked swiftly, and arrested his wife three days later. She was subsequently charged and, at the inquest, a coroner’s jury returned a verdict – by a majority of thirteen to one – that Florence Maybrick had administered poison to her husband. It was tantamount to a verdict that she was a murderess.

The trial was held in the magnificent neo-classical surroundings of St George’s Hall in Liverpool, but although I arranged for my subordinate P to hold a watching brief on behalf of the Office, I did not attend personally. This was not entirely as a result of my distaste for travel. Any contribution of mine must be made far from the glare of scrutiny by the press and, in any event, someone in this dreadful business needed to have the luxury of being allowed to think, rather than feeling compelled to run hither and thither to no particular purpose. The police had been extremely active, and so had the family, led by the deceased’s brother Michael, well known as a composer of popular music, and a man determined to establish that his sister-in-law was a cold-blooded killer.

I found myself, to my surprise and regret, unable to rule out the possibility that she was guilty. It was impossible for her to deny that the marriage was unhappy, and not merely because of her husband’s many peccadilloes. Beyond question, she was an adulteress. Rumours were swirling around Liverpool like Mersey waters during a thunderstorm, and some said that Edwin Maybrick, youngest of the brothers, and the junior partner in James’s business, shared more with the dead man than a blood tie and a business interest. He admitted his closeness to Florence Maybrick, but insisted that theirs was a platonic relationship, and whatever suspicion attached to him, no evidence came to light to gainsay his word.

Alfred Brierley, by contrast, could not plausibly deny his misconduct with the wife of his friend. It appeared that, as recently as March, he and Florence Maybrick had shared a two-room suite in Flatman’s Hotel, reserved by her in the names of “Mr and Mrs Thomas Maybrick of Manchester”. The feebleness of that particular subterfuge was not her only error. An improperly affectionate letter she had written to Brierley had been discovered shortly before James’s demise. She had unwisely given it to Alice Yapp to post, and the nursemaid – claiming that it had become damp after being dropped “in the wet” by the Maybrick’s young daughter – had opened it. Shocked by its contents, she had reported them to Edwin, who in turn informed Michael. The noose was being placed around the young woman’s slender neck even before her husband drew his last breath.

While P supplied regular instalments of news about witness testimony, I wrestled with the problem. One could readily conceive half a dozen credible solutions to “the Maybrick Mystery”, as the newspapers called it, and many more that were fanciful but not wholly beyond the bounds of possibility. James Maybrick may have died accidentally, after taking an overdose of arsenic, and suicide was not out of the question; he was a longsuffering hypochondriac, he may have tired of the ceaseless battle against ill health. If murder it was, he might have been the victim of someone other than his wife who happened to bear him a grudge. Among members of the household, Nurse Yapp herself was rumoured to have attracted her employer’s attention, and this might explain her fiancé’s recent decision to end their relationship. Edwin was not lacking in motive. And then … but no, speculation is the enemy of rational deduction. I reminded myself to concentrate my energies on analysis of the facts, and nothing else.