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

‘No, he said “church”, not “chapel”,’ Chidlow corrected me.

‘I am fairly sure he said “chapel”,’ I countered.

‘In fact,’ Holmes interrupted, ‘he said both.’

Chidlow and I stared at one another. ‘How is that possible?’ the Home Office man asked.

‘I memorised the entire recitation the first time it was played,’ Holmes replied. ‘Moriarty clearly said “chapel” then. On the subsequent fifteen repeats, he said “chapel” eight times and “church” seven times.’

‘But …’ My brain was turning over and over in confusion. ‘But there was only one recording!’

‘Not so,’ Holmes explained triumphantly. ‘The phonograph contains not one spiral groove into which the professor’s words have been encoded by means of vibration, but two, each running alongside the other. Whether the stylus falls into the first groove or the second one when Moriarty’s man places it on the shellac is up to chance. Each groove contains the same message with one crucial difference – in one he uses the word “chapel” and in the other he uses the word “church”.’

‘He told us,’ I whispered. ‘He actually told us. He said: “ Solving this mystery will require more than a single-track approach ”. He was right! We needed both tracks!’

Chidlow nodded thoughtfully. ‘That has to be significant,’ he mused. ‘Chapel and church – but what could it mean? Is his manuscript here, in the building – close by for us to find?’

‘Certainly not,’ Holmes said. ‘Take those two words and ignore the rest of the message. “Chapel” and “church”. Ignore the common letters – this gives us the apparently meaningless “apel” and “urch”. Now remember Moriarty’s fondness for anagrams, as demonstrated in yesterday’s newspaper. Swap around the initial vowels and we get “uple” and “arch”. Rearrange “uple” and we get “Lupe”, which is an administrative region in the centre of France.’ He smiled. ‘Being of French descent on my mother’s side, I recognised it instantly. I would suggest that if you travel to the small region of Lupe you will find a decorative arch, commemorating the Great War perhaps, or as the entrance to some public building. Professor Moriarty’s legacy will be there, buried at the base of the arch like the treasure at the end of a rainbow!’

‘Incredible!’ Chidlow breathed. ‘Mister Holmes, you are a marvel – a true marvel. I must arrange travel immediately. Are you gentlemen happy to make your own way home if I leave you here? Be assured, you have provided your government with a great service.’

‘You must go, of course,’ Holmes said, patting the Home Office man on the shoulder. ‘Send us a telegram when you have found the professor’s manuscript, and the list of potential blackmail subjects.’

‘I will!’ he called back over his shoulder as he sprinted down the aisle.

I shook my head. ‘Holmes, you continue to amaze me, even now.’

He smiled. ‘There will be no telegram,’ he said, as we heard the door at the front of the chapel slam.

‘You don’t think he will find the manuscript?’

‘Oh, I am quite sure he will find it. The problem is that his name isn’t Arthur Chidlow, and he does not work for the Home Office.’ He cocked his head to one side and raised his voice. ‘Does he, Professor?’

The Professor’s agent stepped out of the shadows. The smoked glass of his round spectacles made his eyes look like two dark holes in his face. He reached up and removed them. Underneath, his eyes were a watery and faded blue, and they seemed to have dark rings all the way around them. Abruptly, he pulled the hair from his head, revealing it to be a wig covering a bald, liver-spotted pate. He reached behind his head with both hands and pulled forwards. His entire face seemed to sag as he peeled it off. Underneath were the lined features and querulous expression of a man I had seen several times before in my life. Professor James Moriarty.

I could feel my heart beating rapidly in my chest, and the stone floor of the chapel seemed to lurch under my feet. I took several deep breaths to calm myself down. At my age, shock is something that should be avoided whenever possible.

‘His true name is Jon Paulson,’ Moriarty said in the same dryas-dust voice that I had recently heard on the phonograph. He placed the wig and the mask – made from some kind of guttapercha, I suspected – on the table where the gramophone had been. ‘He is, perhaps, the closest I have to a rival in the criminal fraternity. Unlike his rivals, he is a clear thinker, able to plan and execute the most complex of operations. There are numerous fake paintings hanging in galleries around the world in place of those he has stolen, and I would also recommend that the Bank of England checks all of the gold bars in its vaults for purity. Some of them are merely lead covered with a thin gold film. I presume it was his shoelaces that gave him away?’

‘That,’ Holmes said calmly, as if discussing the weather, ‘and the knot in his tie.’

Moriarty gazed at Holmes in curiosity. ‘What gave me away, Mister Holmes?’

‘Your neck seemed older than your face,’ Holmes replied. ‘That, and the slight but noticeable extra muscular development of your neck muscles due to that habitual nervous tic you have exhibited for so long.’

Moriarty nodded. ‘It is now under control, thanks to recent developments in pharmaceutical products. I should have worn a neck prosthesis, as well as the mask.’ He smiled thinly. ‘Ironic, is it not, that you have spent so many years made up to resemble various older people, whereas it is left to me to disguise myself as someone younger?’

My brain was slow to catch up with the apparently casual conversation that the two of them were having. ‘So Arthur Chidlow wasn’t Arthur Chidlow at all, but a career criminal named Jon Paulson?’ I shook my head. ‘And he retained Holmes’s services to help solve the final mystery of your legacy, which turned out not to be your legacy at all? But why go through this elaborate charade?’

‘Mister Holmes?’ Moriarty murmured, raising an eyebrow.

‘The professor was simply eliminating his closest competition.’ He raised his own bushy eyebrow at the professor. ‘What will he find, Professor?’

‘A bomb, I presume?’ I muttered.

Moriarty shook his head. ‘I abhor the kind of casual violence that the criminals such as the ones gathered here today exhibit. No, the manuscript is there, as promised. The problem that Mr Paulson will find is that the crimes so meticulously described have several major flaws in them. If he tries to replicate them then he will fail, catastrophically and embarrassingly.’

‘If he is as intelligent as you say, he may spot the flaws,’ I pointed out.

‘That would be a distinct possibility if the pages of the manuscript had not been coated with a chemical that I have distilled from ergot fungus. It will render him … highly suggestible and subject to strange hallucinations. He will believe what he reads without question.’ He smiled – a stricture of the mouth that had no humour in it, and made him look momentarily like a venomous snake. ‘If he does try to “adjust” my instructions whilst under the influence of the ergot derivative then I will be intrigued to see how close to surrealism crime can get.’

‘And the blackmail information,’ Holmes asked. ‘Completely false, I presume?’

‘Indeed. It should prove most entertaining if he tries to make use of it.’

I glanced from Holmes to Moriarty and then back again. ‘Surely,’ I started, ‘we should …’

‘We should what ?’ Holmes asked. ‘Stop one criminal from rushing off to find a fake manuscript left as a trick by another criminal? Why is that something we should concern ourselves with? Arrest either of these criminals for breaking a law? Which laws have either of them broken to our knowledge? Somehow raise concerns that the professor here has faked his own death? The newspaper announcement was not a legal notification and, besides, it mentioned a name belonging to no real human being, as far as we know.’ He laughed abruptly. ‘Well played, Professor. Well played indeed.’