by John Gardner
‘There are several groups, but nobody big, not like in your day, Professor. Not now there is nobody to show the way.’
‘You mean nobody’s really putting up?’*
It was William Jacobs’ turn. ‘Separate items have a put up. Fences do it from time to time. But it is not …’
‘And who else?’
‘There was talk of the Frenchie putting up for a screwing in Mesopotamia† a few months back.’
‘And the German …’ Bertram began.
‘Schleifstein?’ Sharp, angry, the voice raised for the first time.
‘Yes. It is said that he is looking for something to tickle his fancy.’
‘Vultures. Scavengers. What of our lurkers?’
The lurkers were a large army of beggars and snoozers whom Moriarty formerly employed to provide him with intelligence.
‘Most are lurking for what they can make, for themselves.’
‘How long to get them steady again?’
Bertram shrugged. ‘If they was paid regular, I reckon we could get half of them back within a month.’
‘Half of them?’
‘It’s not like it was, Professor. Some have died, others just disappeared. The slops …’
‘Crow and his crew.’
‘Not just Inspector Crow. The coppers have been most active. There’s been a lot arrested. Even some of our best cracksmen have taken to living respectable.’
‘And the punishers?’
‘They’ve only ever been good for one thing – for ramping.’
‘Oh, they are good for putting God’s fear into people, and for drinking and whoring besides.’ Moriarty sounded humourless.
‘Goes with the calling, Professor.’ It was the first time Spear had spoken during the exchange between the brothers and their leader. ‘What about the big fella? What about Terremant?’
‘Terremant’s working in a Turkish Baths,’ Bertram answered, his face lighting up. It had been the massive, steel-hard Terremant who had been the lynchpin in the brothers’ escape from jail. ‘The rest of them, well, they do odd jobs for any that’ll pay for their services. I should imagine a bit of mug-hunting on their own also. I do know of a cash carrier down the Dilly who used two of them against three of his girls. Wanted to set up on their own. The girls, I mean. They were dissuaded.’
Moriarty sat silent for the best part of a minute. When he spoke it was as though to himself.
‘There must be order among our own people – among family people – if we are to prosper. Just as there must be disarray – chaos – in society.’ The threadbare picture painted by the Jacobs brothers was bad.
He rose, stretched and walked over to the window. The sun had gone in again, now covered with cloud, dark and building into high masses. The drizzle was back, and the air hot, tangible, heavy with imminent thunder.
As though suddenly making up his mind, Moriarty wheeled around and looked straight at Spear.
‘When we get back to London your first charge will be to round up Terremant and four or five more. We’ll see what they can do for a regular wage. Then I’ll put Ember on to the lurkers. London was my city and will be again, and I’ll not have people like Grisombre and Schleifstein cracking my cribs or dipping into my people’s pockets. Nor will I have the likes of Crow calling the tune.’ His head flicked towards Bertram Jacobs. ‘What of Holmes?’
‘He carries on his work.’
Moriarty stood, like some dangerous reptile poised to strike. Then, softly –
‘If we settle with individuals, the rest will come to heel. I am back for one purpose, and before long it will be revealed.’
• • • • •
Sally Hodges assisted Bridget Spear from her bath, wrapping a large towel around the girl’s shoulders. There was nothing abnormal about Sal’s sexual appetite, but she could appreciate a woman’s physical attractions for she had much experience of that in her line of business. Now she watched Bridget towel herself dry and start dressing.
A good face, thought Sal Hodges, good hair and teeth, a shade short in the body but strong hips and pretty legs. Bert Spear had got himself a stayer who would keep him happy for a long time to come. The girl had a natural voluptuousness, now most apparent as she drew on the short silk drawers, stockings and petticoats.
Sal Hodges had no illusions about Bridget. She was not an empty-headed chit, meat for a man’s bed or as company on a cold evening. This one was as tough as old boots and, if it was required, she would not think twice about killing for her man. Sal had known that, soon after first meeting the girl – when she had helped save Spear from Moriarty’s rivals.
That seemed a hundred years ago, and Bridget appeared more mature now, more confident as she talked of the fripperies which were a mutual attraction for the two women. The rust-coloured gown, into which she now stepped, had, she said, been bought in New York City.
‘You liked America then, Bridget?’
‘Well enough. The last few weeks have been hard. But with a man like Bert you come to expect that.’
Sally laughed. ‘You did not like the sea journey, I gather.’
‘Oh, it wasn’t just the journey,’ she turned, presenting her back to Sal Hodges. ‘Will you lace me into this? Not too tight. No, I would have suffered wherever we were. But don’t breathe a word yet. I have still to tell Bert.’
Sally had thought her breasts were more full than she had remembered.
‘How long?’ she asked as though it was no surprise.
‘I reckon I’m about two months gone. It’ll be showing soon. Will the Professor be angry?’
‘Why should he be? Bearing children is the natural enough function of a wife.’
‘There’s much happening, though. Oh, it’s all right so long as we’re with the Professor, but if I know Bert, it’s but the start of a mighty brood. I don’t want them to end up like my own brothers and sisters, and those of others – living off old bones and skilly, huddling in corners to keep warm, dressed in rags and dying young because they had no shoes to their feet, and their fathers strangers from the Bridewell. No, Sal, I want my children brought up right. Bert’s a good man, but how long can it go on?’
‘I’ve known the Professor for many years, Bridget, and he’s always been fair to them that are straight and loyal to him.’
‘I’ve no doubt of that. But you did not have to run, Sal. We ran from the Limehouse place; then from the Berkshire house. I thought we’d be settled in France, but no. We ran from New York and I thought, again, we’d be safe in San Francisco. I liked it there, but we had to run again. Now we’re going back to London and, with luck, I’ll have the child there,’ she patted her stomach. ‘But how will that end?’
‘If I know the Professor it will end with him reaping havoc on the foreigners. And on Crow and Holmes also.’
* The detailed description of how and why James Moriarty the younger took up his academic brother’s mantle and perfected the incredible disguise, is written in my earlier chronicle. However, on publication of that first volume of these memoirs, there were a number (happily but a small handful) of unlettered and ill-read persons who scorned the idea that there were three Moriarty brothers, each named James. For those who have neither taken the trouble to read, mark nor learn from Dr John H. Watson’s masterly chronicles concerning his mentor, Mr Sherlock Holmes, I have briefly assembled facts and conclusions which can be found in the Appendix.
*The French cryptologist who published his Traicté des Chiffres in 1586 and is famous for what has been described as ‘the archetypal system of poly-alphabetic substitution and probably the most famous cipher system of all time’. In spite of the clarity with which he expounded his system, Vigenere’s cipher fell into disuse and was forgotten until it was reinvented and once more entered the mainstream of cryptology in the 19th century. Moriarty made use of Vigenere’s original autokey system and not the standard alphabet system which is generally known as the Vigenere cipher today.
* Pentonville Prison.<
br />
* ‘A put up job’ is a phrase still in currency. To put up, here, would be to arrange a robbery or some other criminal act – in other words to mastermind a crime, to provide intelligence and financial backing, also, probably, to arrange the fencing of the articles to be stolen. It was a term, and method, well-known to 19th-century criminals and is mentioned in Oliver Twist – ‘It can’t be a put-up job as we expected.’
† That is, Belgravia, the fashionable residential area of London, south of Knightsbridge. Also known as Asia Minor, the New Jerusalem.
LONDON:
Wednesday, 30 September – Thursday 29 October 1896
(A desirable residence)
North Kensington was pitted with small redoubts of poverty. Dirty, stinking, and overcrowded pockets of misery tucked away behind the affluent building developments which had been growing and spreading in ordered rows during the last half-century. In the past four decades many grand squares and crescents had blossomed along the High Road leading from Notting Hill to Shepherds Bush, changing the character of whole areas.
The most impressive of these was the Ladbroke Estate – ‘leafy Ladbroke’ as they called it – secure and self-satisfied with its focal point of St John’s Church, its paired villas with wide frontages, rich façades and large gardens. The natural influence of this building style was logically carried eastwards to make up that network of desirable residences around Holland Park and Notting Hill – places with addresses like Chepstow Villas or Pembridge Square. It was to a cul-de-sac in the midst of this rash of respectability – Albert Square* – that a pair of growlers brought Moriarty and his party on the hot early evening of Wednesday, 30 September 1896.
They had come down from Liverpool by rail, and Moriarty’s mind buzzed with associations and memories as the cab took him across London. It had been a hot day and familiar smells pervaded the interior of the vehicle with a sharp pungency heightening the Professor’s nostalgic appetite. The streets were just as crowded as he remembered them, even more so now with the addition of the occasional self-acting vehicle. In the main thoroughfares the poor openly nudged shoulders with their betters, the shops still taunted the less fortunate, bulging with goods, and one could really believe that here the pulse of the Empire throbbed audibly. Moriarty also believed he could still detect the beating of his empire’s pulse: not yet dead.
Hot and tired, but with a sense of great well-being, Moriarty looked out, for the first time, on his new home: 5 Albert Square, one of ten paired villas set geometrically around a small railed-in plot of grass and trees, dusty with summer, the pavement studded at regular intervals with ash saplings. A desirable neighbourhood. A small world, self-contained and smug in its calm dignity, run on the aching backs of parlourmaids and the cool subservience of cooks, butlers and nannies; as far removed from Moriarty’s real world as Windsor Castle was from the sweatshops, thieves’ kitchens and gin palaces.
In many ways the houses of Albert Square were pretentious. Not as large as those of the Ladbroke Estate, they still boasted wider frontages than most London homes, though the porticoed entrances and rising five storeys had an overdressed look.
‘The town house of the Duke of Seven Dials, eh?’* Moriarty clucked.
Barely a mile away there were courts with one pump to a dozen hovels and not a tree in sight. But the nice folk of Albert Square would not like being reminded of that other world.
A hidden watcher on that evening would have seen the growlers draw up and notice that there were two women in the party: one tall with copper-gold hair neatly piled under a large summer hat, the other shorter, but dressed just as fashionably. Both women left the cabs without hesitation, going quickly up the steps and in under the portico. Outside, two men stood on the pavement looking up, casting experienced eyes over the façade, exchanging a word or two, smiling and nodding. One dressed in black, hat in hand. A good head of hair swept back. The American professor coming to Number Five (‘I hear he is a brilliant man, but something of a recluse. Travelling in Europe and doing some important new studies in London. Is he medical perhaps?’). The other was taller, rugged, sunburned face with a livid scar. A bit of a rough diamond. Travelling companion? Or maybe a clinical assistant?
All this time two other figures, burly lads, were helping the cabbies to unload the luggage and carry it down the area steps where a smaller man waited in shirtsleeves. Among the baggage a large Saratoga trunk, a Japanned box and a big leather trunk which was treated with great care, as though it contained the crown jewels – as, in some ways, it did.
The hall was cool with the scrag end of the day’s sunlight reflecting off the stained-glass door panels, red and blue quivering specks against the wall. Lee Chow stood smiling to welcome the party, bowing and grinning his constant smile at the Professor. The women, who knew their place, had disappeared into the bowels of the house.
‘Your study all arrange over here,’ the Chinaman’s hand outstretched towards the door on the right of the staircase. Against the other wall, a small table upon which stood a bowl of flowers, the fresh remnants of summer interspersed with the first brown leaves of autumn. Lee Chow, the Professor thought to himself, never ceased to amaze. The Chinese boy would kill without conscience or scruple; would sleep sound as a babe after putting a human soul through unbearable torture, yet he cooked meals as well as any woman and was particularly good at things like arranging flowers.
So Professor James Moriarty passed through the door into his new study, the room from which he would plan and direct the matters in hand – the downfall of four continental villains and two guardians of the law.
It was an oblong room, high ceilinged with two large windows looking out onto the square. Above the fireplace, which was set in the wall facing the door, an ornate overmantle towered upwards, throwing back reflections from its seven or eight mirrors inlaid among the shelves and twists and flutes of wood. On either side of this, tall bookcases reached to the picture rail: rows of books, grave, leather-spined, silent erudition. Under foot an Axminster of dark brown and beige. Other furnishings included four easy chairs with arms, covered in buttoned brown leather, while the centre-piece was a massive mahogany writing desk and matching chair, also with arms. On the wall behind the desk hung a solitary painting – a young woman, coy, head on hands: the work of Jean Baptiste Greuze. It was Moriarty’s favourite possession.
He stood looking at the painting for a full three minutes, eyes bright, mouth firm – a hint of ecstasy, for he had not seen the work since Ember spirited it away to safe hiding before the flight from the Limehouse headquarters in ’94.
Sally Hodges came in with the Professor’s stationery box, and together, with Spear in attendance, they spent an hour looking around the house – dining-room, the kitchens down in the basement (Bridget Spear already making lists and sending William Jacobs off on errands, for she would be ruler of this roost as the Professor’s housekeeper); the drawing-room on the first floor; the nine bedrooms; the two bathrooms; the dressing-rooms and usual offices. Downstairs again to the conservatory and morning room. Then back to the study.
‘It will do very well,’ Moriarty told Spear. ‘We’ll be snug as bugs.’ He hesitated as the laughter of children floated in from the square. ‘Snug as bugs, as long as there’s not too much disturbance from the neighbours and their brats.’
He asked that Bridget should be brought to him and arranged for everyone to meet in his study at eight o’clock.
‘We can dine late for a change.’
Half an hour was spent with Bridget, hearing her report on the kitchen facilities and what help she would need in order to run the household. Then an hour with Sal Hodges, unpacking personal clothing and other necessary items. The big leather trunk had by this time been brought up to the master bedroom and remained untouched in the middle of the floor.
‘You want me to be here tonight?’ asked Sally.
‘Unless your business cannot do without you.’
He was preoccupied with finding t
he right shelves and cupboards for the disguise materials.
‘As long as I can see to things tomorrow.’
‘Tomorrow we’ll all be out and at it early. Some of us will be in the streets tonight,’ turning and smiling at her, the head quivering slightly in that strange reptilian motion. ‘But not us, Sal, Not us.’
At eight o’clock the curtains were drawn, the gas mantles lit, the lamps trimmed, and good sherry poured for the council that was now called to order in the study.
Using few words, Moriarty praised the Jacobs brothers for the choice of the house, then immediately started in on the business.
‘You know what I wish concerning the punishers,’ he reminded Spear. ‘Get on with it as soon as it is convenient. For the time being they are not to come here during the hours of daylight. I will speak with them tomorrow night at ten. In all matters, remember that too much haste and flurry causes people to turn their heads and look closely. Too much commotion, sudden change, always gathers onlookers. So we move gently but not at a snail’s pace. We have not all the time in the world. Nobody has.’
‘They’ll be here.’ Spear did not need to elaborate.
Ember was the next to be addressed.
‘I want no direct mention of me, you understand?’ Moriarty cautioned after giving his orders regarding the re-enlistment of the lurkers. ‘Yours is possibly the most important commission, for we cannot work without eyes or ears. There will be work for them directly and I want quality rather than quantity. They will be answerable to you, Ember, and you alone. As always you will be answerable to me.’
‘They’ll be on the streets within four and twenty hours.’ Ember sniffed, an unpleasant little man – a rodent, but one whom Moriarty trusted.
‘Lee Chow?’
The silent Chinese raised his head, the large eyes responding, like those of a trained dog to his master’s call.
‘Before we left, there was a chemist who was helpful. A chemist in Orchard Street.’
A slow grin opened Lee Chow’s mouth. Gold teeth showing in the small cavern.
