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

“Chancellor White.” Moriarty’s smile remained polite. “Of all the people I need to remind, surely you know I’m not a professor yet.” He said the words with easy cheer. “I’m only a humble reader. I haven’t been offered the chair yet.”

Chancellor White shook his head. “I’ve just come from a meeting with the board of governors. We’ve been reading through your treatise on the binomial theory. The governors would like to offer you a chair in mathematics, Professor Moriarty.” He stressed the title, took Moriarty’s hand and squeezed it in his own. “Congratulations,” White muttered. “And, please remember, I’m still in your debt.”

Moriarty seemed briefly puzzled.

“Without your intervention my daughter would have been locked away in a sanatorium. If you ever need any favour from me, any favour at all, please rest assured I’ll do whatever is in my power to—”

“I might just take you up on that offer one day,” Moriarty broke in genially.

He continued shaking the elderly man’s hand.

He held the leather-bound journal in his other hand. His thumb continually stroked the gold letters: quid pro quo .

“I should also tell you,” the chancellor went on, “that your appointment to the chair is timely.”

“Timely?”

“The chair was previously held by Professor Phillips. Not ten minutes ago he collapsed in his study.”

“Good grief,” Moriarty gasped. “Collapsed?”

Chancellor White nodded. “His office window is broken and it’s almost as though someone shot him.”

“Who on earth would want to shoot an incumbent professor in the chair of mathematics?” Moriarty asked.

White shrugged. “Maybe one day there’ll be a great detective who can solve such mysteries,” he admitted. “But, until such a person comes along, the likes of you and I shall have to muddle along in ignorance, oblivious to the causes of such matters.”

He shook Moriarty’s hand for a second time, acknowledged Gordon with a curt nod, and then left them to make their way up the stairs to Professor Bell’s quarters.

They paused outside the room.

“I’ll give this to you now,” Moriarty told Gordon, handing him the letter. “And I’ll leave you to talk with Professor Bell. If I’m going to make that meeting with Moran I’ll need to get back to my quarters and change.”

Gordon shook Moriarty’s hand and held it a moment longer than necessary.

“How fortunate you’re a good man, Professor Moriarty,” he mused.

“How so?”

“It just occurred to me, because so many people are in your debt, you could one day wield a lot of power. If you were not an honest man – if you were a dishonest man – the empire of your control would be a formidable one.”

Moriarty considered this for a moment. “What an interesting thought.”

“At the moment,” Gordon went on, “people are in your debt because of your kindness. But, if you chose to blackmail any of those individuals with your knowledge of their circumstances or indiscretions, you could control the same web of corruption as the criminal mastermind you speculated about earlier.”

Moriarty nodded. “Indeed,” he said. “I can see how that would work.” His easy smile flashed briefly and he added, “It’s fortunate that I’m honest.”

Gordon shook his hand. “Thank you for saving me from the accusations of plagiarism,” he said earnestly. “I’m now another who is in your debt. I have desires to work in the constabulary and an accusation of dishonesty would have posed a serious threat to such a career ambition.”

“The constabulary?” Moriarty sounded surprised. “I had no idea.”

He paused and considered Gordon expectantly. “And, in future years, should I ever need the intervention of a police officer would I be able to call on you?”

“Of course,” Gordon promised.

“Very well then.” Moriarty smiled. “I shall bid you farewell now and look forward to meeting you in the future, Officer Gordon.”

Gordon shook his head. “You have me wrong, Professor Moriarty,” he apologised. “Gordon is my first name. My surname is Lestrade.”

After the disastrous events at the Reichenbach Falls, I had returned to London a wretched man. My grief at the loss of my dear friend Sherlock Holmes was immeasurable and, at that time, in my mind, intolerable. That his sacrifice also saw the end of Professor Moriarty was small recompense. It was only the love and support of my darling wife, Mary, that enabled me to carry on with the everyday duties of my medical practice; and, at times, with the very act of breathing.

Indeed it was Mary who suggested I write an account of that fateful day, to refute the version of events reported by the professor’s brother, one Colonel James Moriarty. It was a splendid show of generosity on her part given the manner in which Holmes had treated both her, and my leaving Baker Street. His had been a mercurial mind of immense range and ability, ever questing after new facts and investigating anomalies. Yet his inability to accept change in real terms was one of his greater quirks among many.

My recounting emerged in the press as ‘The Final Problem’, and, as Mary had intimated, the writing of it had indeed been a cathartic process. The reception of it by the public at large was also quite gratifying.

Imagine my chagrin then, to receive a note some days later, from Holmes’s brother, Mycroft, asking that I visit him at my earliest convenience to discuss my ‘ill-advised publication of the facts’.

‘It’s all perfectly correct, Mycroft,’ I told him. ‘Nothing is written there that cannot be verified.’

Mycroft shifted his bulk, the better to gaze at me from the depths of a vast wing-back chair in the Strangers’ room of the Diogenes. He examined me minutely, as a toad might a fly that it considered consuming, and so complete was that image that when he finally opened his mouth to speak I very nearly started back to avoid the curled, sticky tongue I felt sure was about to envelope me.

‘Facts, my dear boy, are exactly the problem,’ he said. ‘It is patently obvious that you gave a true account. The whole of London is talking about it.’ He puffed ruminatively on his cigar, softening his jowly features in a haze of blue-grey fumes. ‘By and large that would not be a problem, except that Professor James Moriarty was not the only person to use that name.’

‘Colonel Moriarty?’ I said. ‘My recounting was in answer to his abominable attack on Sherlock’s memory. Also a James I believe?’

‘Some parents lack imagination, or else the elder was not expected to live.’ Mycroft laughed, a bubbling chuckle from deep in that cavernous chest. ‘No. I doubt that man is any keener to confront you directly than he would Sherlock. He is not a fighting man despite his rank. But you know the form. Eldest gets the title, the rest have politics, soldiery or the Church. There is … a younger brother.’ Mycroft took a sip from the brandy balloon at his side, savouring the gold-brown liquor for a moment before continuing. ‘In point of fact there are – were four brothers, but one seemed to have passed on some years ago. I am referring to the youngest, also James, though he calls himself Jacob.’

‘He took the cloth?’

‘No … The youngest of the clan is a humble stationmaster, would you believe, near the family home in the West Country.’

‘And what is he to do with all this?’

‘He is a wild card. Sent down from Oxford. Cashiered from the Dragoons. Bad lot all round. Disinherited in theory, though as his sainted father died before he arrived home from India who’s to say? The will is a matter of court record. The estate specifically excluded him from benefitting in any way but his siblings appear to have supported him nevertheless. Hence the railway appointment.’