by John Gardner
She came over to him, placing a hand on his sleeve.
‘James, you will hardly believe this, but you are to be a father.’
For a second, she thought he would fly at her with rage.
‘Foolish little minx,’ Moriarty roared. ‘She was to take care. It’s her Latin blood, Sal, damn me if it ain’t. It’s the breeding in the hot climate, even if she’s never been near Italy. They germinate more rapid. Blast the woman, now all my plans for Sanzionare in Rome are gone up on a balloon.’
She let the small storm run out, controlling her own patience and temper as only a woman of strong character is able.
‘No, James, you mistake my meaning. It is not the Tigress that you have ridden to a pudding. It is me.’
His stunned expression lasted all of three seconds.
‘Now, there’s a relief, Sal,’ he laughed. ‘If it had been Carlotta the pitch would have been queered, for she’s making well that one. She will be ready by the spring, yes?’
‘Yes, James, she will be ready and trained as you wish. But I am to suckle your child.’
‘Yes, yes, Sal. You said. Do you expect marriage then? You’ll not get that from me.’
‘No, James, just a little understanding and the promise that you’ll own to the child.’
‘If it’s a boy he’ll be my pride, Sal. No boy will be better looked after, I can promise you that. It will be Harrow School and Cambridge University for him and that’s a fact. Then, when he’s had a good education, my family people can give him a grounding in our trades.’ His face became wreathed in a huge smile, the like of which Sal Hodges had never yet seen on him. ‘He will be my heir, Sal. Think of it, heir to the criminal Empire of Europe.’ He lifted her off the floor and spun her around like some young sentimental gadabout. ‘This, Sal, is the founding of a dynasty and it makes me happy. My, the place will be crawling with infants what with Bridget and yourself. Let us hope that Harry Allen is being more careful with young Polly.’
‘What if it’s a girl, James?’
‘Nonsense. I forbid it. See to it that it’s a boy, Sal, or I’ll disown the pair of you. When did I perform this prodigious feat?’
‘By my calendar it would seem it happened on our first night here in London.’
‘No better time. Nurture him well, Sal,’ he placed his hand gently on her stomach. ‘You hold within you my hope for a future.’
Sal knew better than to argue, or bring the Professor to a more realistic frame of mind. If it was a girl, then that hurdle would have to be jumped when the time came. James Moriarty was too deep within his plots and plans for revenge to listen to other arguments; and if the possibility of a son gave him more power of concentration, then she would be satisfied. Accepting the situation, Sally Hodges took herself down to the kitchen, breaking the news to Bridget Spear who was of great comfort.
Bert Spear, himself, was proving to be an exceptional Chief of Staff, and Moriarty had very little need to concern himself with family affairs. Tribute came in regularly and at a growing pace. The jewellery from the Cornhill robbery was now – all but one piece – in the hands of fences in Holland and Germany, the rewards trickling back to swell the coffers. Spear also, with the assistance of the Jacobs brothers, was well able to handle matters of discipline and decisions concerning robberies and raids which individual villains wished them to put up.
Each week, Moriarty would be driven over to Bermondsey by Harkness to see Schleifstein. The German was being sensible and accepting his defeat, not only in a philosophical vein, but also in a manner which made room for future planning. Moriarty, he accepted, had proved himself the natural leader and he now pledged himself, and those who followed him, to the furtherance of the Professor’s grand design.
Moriarty, however, refused to show any sign of weakness, insisting that Schleifstein and his lieutenants should stay close at the Bermondsey place. He did – as a concession – allow certain telegraphs to be sent to Berlin so that the German could keep his people controlled. Each week they would talk, and Moriarty promised him the company of Jean Grisombre ere long, explaining exactly what he was doing in order to bring the French leader back into the fold.
‘It is clever, Professor,’ Schleifstein guffawed when the whole plot was revealed to him. ‘His face. I would like to see that when you break the news. But what have you up your sleeve for our Italian friend?’
‘For Luigi – or Gee-Gee as they call him? I have a plot to catch him on each of his Achilles heels at the same moment. All men have their weaknesses, Willy. All men. It just so happens that Sanzionare has more than most.’
‘So?’
‘His avarice is more finely honed than that of many of us. Like Grisombre he loves beautiful jewels. He also loves women upon which to hang them. Most of all his woman, Adela Asconta. A jealous lady. Sanzionare is, like many of his race, a man of superstition. The Latin church has exploited the natural characteristics of the Italians and Spanish. Would you believe that Gee-Gee Sanzionare, a criminal of ruthless mould, still performs his duties to Mother Church with the assumed piety of an innocent? The escape clauses in his religion are written with that subtlety usually reserved only for the clever sharks at law. By using all these elements, I will bring him back into the grand European family of crime. A lure is what I have for Sanzionare.’
‘You say we all have weaknesses, Professor?’ Schleifstein adopted a bland look of innocence – a favourite expression which had so often trapped his own victims.
Moriarty’s head oscillated slightly. ‘You do not catch me with questions, Willy. To conquer in our precarious trade is to be aware of one’s weaknesses; one’s besetting sins. I know mine and so guard against them.’
On his way back to Albert Square, Moriarty reflected on his current weakness – this all-embracing, surging desire to dominate the European criminal leaders, and see Crow and Holmes brought low and in disgrace. The desires swamped him, sometimes so completely that he reached for excesses as a drowning man reached for driftwood. To know that was not always enough.
As well as the tribute, and the lion’s share of robberies, small and large, the other trading commodity came regularly into Albert Square: intelligence, culled almost from the very cobbles of the streets, the woodwork of the four ale bars, the rancid dribbling of the gutter. That great network of lurkers, which had been at its zenith before Moriarty’s last enforced exile, was once more arranged and recruited so that news came on quiet whispers, first to Bert Spear and then to the Professor himself. Late in January, for instance, there was word that Grisombre had spent two days in London, returning to France with a particular companion – the short, bushy-bearded, eccentric painter of portraits, Reginald Leftly. With that news, Moriarty’s heart sang, for it meant the plot was hatching as sure as eggs under a good hen. It was ever thus. One had but to make suggestions, set people in juxtaposition, and human nature with its frailty, desires, lusts and quirks, would do the rest.
In early February, Sal Hodges came with more news which set the Professor into a mood of evil glee.
‘Our fair lady at the Crow household has reported,’ she told him, almost nonchalantly as they were divesting for the bed.
‘Indeed,’ he paused, one hand to his waistcoat buttons.
‘The news could not be better.’ Sal began to chuckle. ‘The man is incensed with love for her. She says that he can hardly keep his hands from her bodice even when his wife is near.’
‘A prisoner of lust,’ the Professor joined in the laughter. ‘A man in that condition has no conscience. So many have come toppling because of a pair of bright eyes, a smooth bust and the sweet breath of carnal desire.’
Sal, coyly unbuttoning her gown, looked at him from under half-closed lids. ‘Have you no conscience, James? I would like to think so. Come, before I am too swollen with your pup, show me that sweet breath.’
Amidst all the comings and goings, the Professor found time for quiet, snatched hours spent with his cards. He also disciplined himself �
� probably more than at any other time in his life – to work upon his disguises. Some were easy – particularly the transformation, which he could now effect in a matter of minutes, which turned him into the living image of his gaunt, bald and hollow-eyed, ascetic academic brother. Yet, each evening he worked steadily at what was to be his greatest impersonation. In front of the mirror, behind the locked doors of his bedchamber, Moriarty plied his arts, altering his body and physiognomy to that of a man well known in all walks of life, recognizable by rich and poor alike, and famed throughout the world. By the end of February he had achieved an amazing likeness.
On 7 March, a day earlier than he had led Jean Grisombre to understand, the American, Jarvis Morningdale, together with his secretary, arrived with much baggage at the Grosvenor Hotel. No messages awaited him, though on that first night as a guest, he received at least three callers.
On the following day, 8 March, a telegraph arrived from Paris. It was handed in to Mr Morningdale’s suite of rooms at ten o’clock in the morning, just as the American was taking his breakfast. The message read – The lady is willing to see you. It was signed, Georges. Half an hour after the telegraph arrived, Morningdale’s secretary left the hotel. If anyone had been following they would have seen him hail a cab on the corner of Victoria Street and Buckingham Palace Road, then set off in the direction of Notting Hill. Eventually the secretary arrived at Albert Square where he let himself into number five. He stayed in the house some two hours, leaving to rejoin his employer at the Grosvenor. This time he carried a long flat case.
In the meantime, Jarvis Morningdale had been down to the main foyer of the hotel. He was, he told the clerk on the desk, expecting an art dealer from Paris. He was possibly going to buy some paintings and would like the hotel to arrange for a pair of easels to be sent up to his suite.
The easels were taken to the rooms during the afternoon, Morningdale himself supervising their erection at opposite ends of the drawing-room.
During the late afternoon, the manager of the Grosvenor Hotel, up in his inner sanctum, glanced through his current guest list. The name Jarvis Morningdale caught his eye. It was a name which he had seen recently: not simply when Mr Morn-ingdale’s secretary had booked the accommodation. He had seen the name on some piece of official correspondence. The manager worried about that name for the rest of afternoon.
At a little after five o’clock, three men enquired for Mr Morningdale at the reception desk. The clerk asked if Mr Morningdale was expecting them and they assured him that he was.
‘Oh, you must be the gentlemen from Paris,’ said the clerk with a greasy smile.
The largest of the men – a somewhat menacing figure with a jagged scar running down one cheek and dissecting the corner of his mouth – returned the smile.
‘No,’ he said. ‘We are from the Donrum Detective Agency. Mr Morningdale is expecting to look at some rather valuable paintings in this hotel sometime this week. We have been hired to make certain the works of art come to no harm. It is in your interest as well as his.’
The clerk agreed that it certainly was, and had a page show Albert Spear and the Jacobs brothers up to the suite which Jarvis Morningdale occupied.
As he was preparing to go down for dinner, the manager of the Grosvenor Hotel suddenly recalled where he had seen the name Jarvis Morningdale. He hurried to his office, unlocked his desk and began to flip through the correspondence files. A few minutes later he had the letter in his hand. It was an official piece of paper with the crest of the Metropolitan Police at the top, and the printed letterhead of the Police Offices at New Scotland Yard.
This letter, he read, is going to all good hotels in the metropolis. It is not concerned with a specific crime, nor even a specific criminal. We are, however, most anxious to speak with an American gentleman, a Mr Jarvis Morningdale. If, therefore, Mr Morningdale reserves accommodation at your hotel, or presents himself with the object of being a guest, we ask that you quickly contact Inspector Angus McCready Crow of the Criminal Investigation Department at New Scotland Yard personally. In doing this you may well save Mr Morningdale and yourselves a great deal of trouble. The letter was signed by Inspector Crow himself, was dated early in February, and how the manager had come to let it slip his mind he would never know. He immediately telephoned the Police Offices, only to be told that Inspector Crow had already left and would not be back until the morning. The manager presumed that it would be all right if he left it until then, though he half suspected that he should have asked for the Inspector’s private address. It would have been to no avail, however, if he had done so. Sylvia Crow was on her own at King Street on that particular evening. Her husband, she was certain, was on duty until quite late and it was Harriet’s evening off.
The Grosvenor Hotel abutted directly onto the side of Victoria Station with its main entrance in busy Victoria Street which abounded with traffic, from cabs and drays to the many green or yellow omnibuses which plied constantly to and from the station from morn till midnight.
As an hotel, the Grosvenor was probably the most extensive of those managed in association with the railway companies, and, as such, took pride in its standard of service and cuisine.
On the night of 8 March 1897, the Grosvenor was watched almost from every angle. Well-dressed lurkers of both sexes took turns in patrolling the Buckingham Palace Road, over which the largest part of the hotel looked, while a small group of men in disguises, running from beggar to railway porter and traveller, guarded the hotel entrance and the various approaches to it from the railway station. Moriarty had chosen the venue on the assumption that Grisombre would wish to hand over the painting as soon as possible after landing in England, and Victoria Station was the main terminus for the London, Chatham and Dover Railway. Grisombre had but to step off the train and proceed straight to the hotel in order to unload the treasure, in return for the vast fortune offered by Jarvis Morningdale.
Moriarty was also shrewd in suggesting that he would be available at the hotel from eight o’clock on each of the prescribed evenings, for one of the coast trains connecting with the Cross-Channel packet arrived each night at Victoria a little before eight.
The Professor also considered that Grisombre, hungry for the reward, would leave little time before his arrival. In fact he expected him on the first night. He was correct in that assumption, and when the Dover train drew in, it was one of the lurkers, wearing the uniform of a porter, who first approached Grisombre and his pair of bodyguards, placing their four portmanteaux onto his trolley and responding, with a pulling of his forelock, to the instructions to take them to the Grosvenor Hotel. None of the Frenchmen even noticed their porter nod briefly to a pair of boys idly watching the train come in, nor did they see one of the boys speed off up the platform and wave a signal to a group of three men and another boy – this time in the uniform of the Post Office – lounging at the end of the platform. A few seconds later, this same uniformed boy was handing in a yellow telegraph envelope at the reception desk of the Grosvenor. The telegraph was passed on to a page who took it speedily to the third floor, where Jarvis Morningdale’s suite was located.
The envelope was in Moriarty’s hands before the trio from France had even arrived at the desk of the foyer.
‘He’s here already, then.’ The Professor held the envelope aloft so that it could be seen by all – Harry Allen, Spear and the Jacobs brothers. They were gathered together in the drawing-room, one door of which led directly to the corridor, two others to the bedrooms occupied, respectively, by Allen and Moriarty. ‘They will be a while yet, but it is best to be prepared. Harry, bring the lady out.’
Harry Allen went straight to the Professor’s room where the true Mona Lisa lay on the bed, covered by a black cloth. Also on the bed, laid out as if ready for some party, were the clothes which Moriarty used when donning the disguise of his late academic brother – the striped trousers, white shirt and collar, the long black coat, and the harness. On the floor stood the boots with built-up so
les, while the remainder of the disguise – the cosmetics and that extraordinary bald pate wig – were on the dressing-table.
There were other things on the dressing-table. The Professor’s favourite weapon, the Borchardt automatic pistol which Schleifstein had given him three years before, when they had all met in London to make the alliance. Beside the pistol stood a bottle of Winsor & Newton’s turpentine, a flat-bladed palette-knife, and a dry rag.
Harry Allen took the painting, cradling it in his hands, hardly allowing his fingers to touch the work, and carried it through to the drawing-room where Moriarty himself assisted in setting it up on the easel nearest his bedroom door. Allen then went to fetch the black cloth which they draped over the Leonardo, assuring that it hung down well at the back in order that no chance touch would dislodge it.
‘They will, doubtless, be washing and settling themselves in their rooms,’ Moriarty addressed the assembled quartet. ‘I’ll not be caught napping, though. To your places. We’ll wait it out ready for them.’
The four men gave their assent, Bertram Jacobs and Albert Spear going off into Harry Allen’s bedroom while William Jacobs, with a sly smirk, left the room through the main door.
Outside, he paused, listening for the sound of any rustle or tread on the thick carpeting. Some fifteen yards up the long corridor there was a broom cupboard. William Jacobs headed straight for this hiding hole, slipped inside and pulled the door almost close upon him.
They had some forty minutes to wait before Grisombre and his pair of rampsmen came up to the third floor, one of the thugs carrying a flat brief bag. They had enquired in the foyer for Mr Morningdale and, on hearing the French accents, the clerk had informed them that they were expected. After going through the necessary formalities of booking in, Grisombre had ordained that they should get rid of the painting as quickly as possible. He had no wish to stay in London longer than could be helped and, though they had rooms in the Grosvenor, it was his avowed intention to catch the night train to Dover, and so be in Paris again, a richer man, by the morning.
