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

‘None taken.’ I leaned towards her a little. ‘So this chap is a bit of a villain is he?’

She flushed around her neck and her gaze flickered towards the door. I noted the muscles in her jaw tightened as what I was certain was her natural tendency to gossip fought with … fear? ‘Doesn’t do to gainsay,’ she murmured. ‘Not with Jake being the squire’s kin.’

‘I never divulge my sources, especially a good woman such as yourself,’ I added. ‘But smuggling? It all sounds very exciting.’ I smiled. ‘You should not tempt me with such snippets, ma’am.’

She blushed once more, her plump cheeks cherry red and I felt a little guilty at my deception. ‘Well, sir, I can’t say as I know much. ’Tis common talk all those Moriarty boys are a bad lot. Their poor mother would be mortified. Alice, my own mother’s cousin, nursed her ladyship at the end.’

‘Ladyship? I was led to believe the gentry here were not titled.’

‘Her ladyship was the last one. James Moriarty the elder was an engineer. He turned a dying estate around, but it didn’t make life easier for all of us.’ She leaned close, so that stray hairs escaping her cap brushed my forehead. ‘Folk’ve gone missing, sir. Local lads. Half a dozen at least.’ She scowled. ‘My cousin Mave’s boy, George, just last year. Vanished. Told his mother he was going across to Redruth for a few days’ work, carting, and never came home. Good lad, always looked after Mave after her Percy was lost at sea.’

‘Singular,’ I said. ‘For a family man to vanish.’ I smiled at her. ‘You said “them”. Do I take it this Jake has an accomplice?’

‘Off and on. Mostly off. He’s not so liable to taunt the Excise when the squire’s up in the house. He’s back home from foreign parts. My aunt, Alice, got called back there to nurse him like she did his mother before him. Mortal ill I heard, though I’ve not seen Alice for a month at least.’

‘Is that so?’ I looked, my heart pounded, a miasma descended across my senses as I digested the import of her words. I moistened my lips and looked down, searching my watch pocket for a coin or two as a ruse to hide my shock. Had I heard correctly? That Moriarty lived? When my dearest friend had perished? I had come to avenge my wife; convinced that Moriarty the younger was responsible. But this changed all things. I could not doubt that if Professor Moriarty lived then it would be he who had ordered my assassination, and that of my wife. The fuzz of anger subsided and I forced myself to smile lightly and listen to what else the woman had to say.

‘Yes, indeed,’ the postmistress was saying. ‘Nothing much goes on in these parts that doesn’t get talked of by someone. And I tell you that …’

A cart rumbled past the shopfront, heading up hill, and slowed as it drew level. From the dark of the shop interior, it was easy to see the outside quite clearly and I watched as the man seated next to the driver stared at my horse tied to the post outside and then towards the post office. His massive head, held low between his shoulders as though his thin neck struggled to support it, swung towards me. He was a thin man, though in no way puny, more rangy like a wolfhound, and with something of the wolf in his gaunt features. I was reminded with a jolt of the time I had seen a face very like that. He clutched a shotgun across his knees, which he caressed thoughtfully as he peered towards the shopfront.

I doubted they could see much of the dimly lit interior but nevertheless the postmistress stopped short at the sight of him. Her face had turned such an ashen white that as a medical man I was concerned for her.

‘Miss? Are you feeling well?’

‘What? Oh. Yes … My goodness look at the time. There’s last post to sort. I can’t stand chatting all day. That is a shilling for your stamps. If there’s nothin’ else you’ll be wanting, sir?’

‘That fellow seemed very interested in my livery horse. Who was he?’

‘Mr Moriarty, sir. That was Jacob Moriarty.’ Her face was devoid now of all its animation of the previous moments, guarded and wary. Yet she was a good woman at heart because, with a glance to the window to be sure the cart had moved on, added, ‘He does not welcome incomers or visitors. If you are a wise man, and I think you are, then leave here. Now.’ She leaned across the counter to touch my arm. ‘Please, sir. Go back to where you came from and hope that evil young pup does not choose to hunt today.’ She turned away and hurried into the next room. The conversation was plainly at an end.

Yet I had heard enough. Jacob Moriarty was every bit as much a villain as his brother, if on a lesser scale. That the lawful squire of this backwater estate was none other than the professor himself, and that the arch-enemy of my closest friend; perhaps even the nemesis in its truest sense as the cause of his demise. That the greatest villain of all time was living still. I felt inordinately proud of gaining that information with relatively little effort. Though I could not help feeling these were facts that the elder of the Holmeses could have furnished me with in far shorter order. I did not imagine Mycroft was not very aware of the professor’s survival, and it explained his insistence that I go into hiding until the threat had been overcome.

Mycroft was quite certain that Moriarty – one or both, or perhaps all three, because I could not ignore the existence of the military Moriarty – were planning to do me harm. To kill me, in fact. I could not deny that I had helped Holmes in his various skirmishes with Moriarty so perhaps some kind of revenge was to be expected. Be it a trained brigade or a pack of brigands, in times of conflict one took sides and one fought and hoped that you had might and right on your side. But I knew a deal of good men who had perished in various conflicts and any assertion that right was might could not be relied upon.

There was a great deal to consider. My first instinct was to fly to Mary’s tender embrace; except that Mary’s arms were no longer embracing, or tender. She was gone, and it seemed to me that running was not the answer in any event. If Moriarty wanted to find me then he would, and the postmistress had been quite sure about his imminent mortality. My answer lay in dealing with him whilst he was still vulnerable. How that could be done I had yet to ascertain, but I was suddenly resolved to do what I must. I am a medical man first and foremost, but also a military one. Running went against everything I had been brought up to.

I stepped out into the quiet village high street and collected the horse, taking the time it took to adjust the girth and mount up to look in either direction. The cart that had silenced the in estimable Mrs Saxby so effectively was jolting out of sight amongst the trees lining the road leading up to the cliff top and Lellantrock House. My first step would seem to be to test the lay of the land; spy out the enemy’s lair. I turned the gelding towards the hill and tailed the cart at a discreet distance.

Lellantrock had possession of an idyllic spot, perched on a high, wooded hilltop, overlooking the glittering blue sea, yet its builders seemed not to have taken account of that beauty. Even from a distance it was a grim square building constructed from local grey stone. There were no vines to soften its starkness. Tall dark windows of the kind popular at the start of the century marched around its three floors in a symmetrical pattern. Behind it lay a series of low single-storey buildings in similar style, giving the overall effect of building blocks abandoned there by some giant child. This was a fortress, and was by no means quiet in the absence of its ‘squire’.

I pushed my mount at an easy pace along a well-worn path that led around the estate. The main house was surrounded by a stone wall, which I estimated to be some six to eight feet high, and the gate through which the cart had gone was manned by no fewer than three men. They seemed at ease, but I was aware of how carefully they watched me as I walked the bay gelding up the steep incline towards the cliff top. I tipped my hat to them and called out a polite greeting. Two of them replied with curt nods and tugged caps.