Victorian Villainy

by Michael Kurland

  “Don’t shoot, Professor!” I yelled. “It’s ether! One shot could blow us all into the billiard room!”

  “Quick!” Moriarty said, “we must get the duke and the girl out of here.”

  Papoli and his assistant were already halfway up the stair. Doing my best to hold my breath, I staggered over to the tables. Moriarty lifted the duke onto his shoulders, and I unstrapped the girl and grabbed her, I’m not sure how, and headed for the stairs.

  While we were on the staircase two shots rang out from the room above, and I heard the sound of a scuffle. We entered the room to find Lestrade glaring at the doctor and his assistant, who were being firmly held by two large policemen. “He shot at me, Moriarty, can you believe that?” Lestrade said, sounding thoroughly annoyed. “Now, what have we here?”

  We lay our burdens gently on the floor, and I stanched the wound on the girl’s thigh with my cravat.

  Moriarty indicated the unconscious man on the floor. “This is the Duke of Claremore,” he said. “It would be best to get him out of here before his presence becomes known. Dr. Papoli can safely be charged with murder, and his accomplice, I suppose, with being an accomplice. We’ll see that the girl is cared for. Come to Russell Square tomorrow at noon, and I’ll explain all over lunch.”

  “But Moriarty,”

  “Not now, Lestrade. Tomorrow.”

  “Oh, very well,” Lestrade said. He turned to a policeman by the door. “Get a chair to seat his lordship in, and we’ll carry him downstairs,” he instructed.

  We took the waiting cab to Abelard Court, and Beatrice Atterleigh herself opened the door to our knock. She did not seem surprised to find us standing at her door supporting a barely-conscious girl at one in the morning.

  “Will you take care of this girl for a few days?” Moriarty asked. “She has been mistreated. I have no idea what language she speaks.”

  “Of course,” Mrs. Atterleigh said.

  The next morning at quarter to twelve our client arrived at Russell Square in response to a telegram. Lestrade arrived at noon sharp, thereby demonstrating the punctuality of the detective police.

  We sat down to duckling a l’orange and an ‘82 Piesporter, and Moriarty regaled us with a discourse on wines through the main course. It was not until the serving girl put the trifle on the table and Moriarty had poured us each a small glass of the Imperial Tokay—from a case presented to Moriarty by Franz Joseph himself upon the successful conclusion of a problem involving the chief of the Kundschafts Stelle and a ballerina—that he was willing to talk about the death of Lord Vincent Tams.

  “It was obvious from the start,” Moriarty began, “that Lord Tams did not die where he was found. Which raised the questions why was he moved, and from where?”

  “Obvious to you, perhaps,” Lestrade said.

  “Come now,” Moriarty said. “His hands were raised and his face was flushed. But corpses do not lie with their hands raised, nor with their faces flushed.”

  “This one did,” Lestrade said. “I saw it.”

  “You saw it full in the grip of rigor mortis,” Moriarty said, “which makes the body rigid in whatever position it has assumed. But how did it assume that position? The face gives it away. The head was lower than the body after death.”

  “Of course!” I said. “Lividity. I should have known.”

  “Lividity?” Lord Tams asked.

  “After death the blood pools at the body’s lowest point,” I told him, “which makes the skin in that area appear red. I’ve seen it many times as a reporter on the New York police beat. I’m just not used to hearing of it on faces.”

  “Your brother was at the Paradol Club to avail himself of the services of Dr. Papoli,” Moriarty said, turning in his chair to face Lord Tams. “The doctor claimed to have a method to rejuvenate a man’s lost vitality. He transfused his patients with youthful blood. Thus they regained youthful vigor. It is a not uncommon desire of men, as they get older, to recapture their youth. Papoli was preying on men who could afford to attempt it. Occasionally one of his patients died, because for some reason as yet unknown, some people’s blood will cause a fatal reaction when injected into another. Papoli claimed that he had devised a machine that would solve that problem—the strange apparatus that was between the two beds. But he was obviously mistaken.”

  “How do you know that?” Lestrade asked.

  “I went to talk to your prisoner this morning,” Moriarty said. He is extremely indignant that he is in jail. He considers himself a savior of man. He is quite mad.”

  “So other men died besides my brother?” Lord Tams asked.

  “Yes, several. But they were elderly men, and their natural vanity had kept them from telling anyone about the operation, so his secret remained safe. Occasionally one of his donors died, but they came from the poorest classes of the city and they were not missed.”

  “But my brother was not that old.”

  “True. It was his obsession with sexual vitality that made him seek the operation. It failed. Papoli and his assistant thought your brother had died on the table. They left him there, not wanting to carry a body through the hallway early in the evening. Later, when they came back to take him to his room, they found that he had briefly regained consciousness and partially removed his restraining straps. The upper half of his body fell off the table in his dying convulsions, and he was left hanging from a strap around his legs. That explains his hands, which had fallen toward the floor. When they lifted him, rigor had set in and his arms looked as though they were raised.”

  Lord Tams sighed. “Poor Vincent.” He stood up. “Well, Professor Moriarty, you have saved my marriage, and possibly my life. I had the impression that Inspector Lestrade was preparing to clap me in irons at any second.”

  “That’s as it may be,” Lestrade said. “No hard feelings, I trust?”

  “None, Inspector. I invite you—all of you—to my wedding. I must be off now to see Miss Whitsome and tell her the happy news. Professor Moriarty, you will send me a bill, whatever you think is right, and I will pay it promptly, I assure you.”

  Moriarty nodded, and Lord Tams clapped his bowler on his head and was out the door. A minute later Lestrade followed.

  “Moriarty,” I said, refilling my coffee cup, “two last questions.”

  Moriarty held out his own cup for a refill. “What?” he asked.

  “Do you think the new Lord Tams will keep his brother’s rooms at the Paradol?”

  “I never speculate,” Moriarty said, “it is bad for the deductive process.” He leaned back. “But if I were a betting man, I’d put a tenner on it. What else?”

  “Miss Lestrelle told us that Vincent had made some reference to Shelley, and you said that that told all. Were you serious? I looked through my copy of Shelley this morning, and I could find nothing that applies.”

  Moriarty smiled. “I fancy you were looking up the wrong Shelley,” he said.

  “The wrong—“

  Moriarty reached over to the bookshelf and tossed a book across to me. “Try this one.”

  I looked down at the book. On the cover, in an ornate Gothic type, was the title: Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley.

  Moriarty was out all this morning, and he came back with a painting by Lenore Lestrelle. It is all green and brown and blue blotches and seems to be some sort of pastoral scene. I am afraid that he intends to hang it in the dining room.

  THE PICTURE OF OSCAR WILDE

  I make no apologies for what follows, it begins. It is my intention that none shall read these words for the next—let us say—100 years. But that is not as much out of the well of modesty for which I am widely known and justly admired; but from a desire that I shall trouble no one with my peccadillos, and no one shall trouble me with their approbation. I am quite able to disapprove of myself without outside assistance.”

  There it breaks off. Below it on the page are a few random thoughts.

  Without the approbation of o
ne’s friends where would one be?

  And:

  One lives for joy and wit and friendship—but I can’t make out what one dies for.

  These words are on the first page of an otherwise pristine notebook on the cover of which is printed “OFOW January 91.”

  The playwright, poet, novelist and gadfly Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wilde left the notebook in my house sometime during the second week in, as it happens, January of 1891. He never called to reclaim it; perhaps in the flurry of that month’s events, he forgot its existence. Perhaps he began again in some other notebook, recounting the events to their sad conclusion, and put the narrative someplace where, in time, his version of the tale will be revealed.

  Here is my version.

  My name is Benjamin Barnett and I am the proprietor of the North Atlantic Cable News Service, bringing news of Britain and the Continent to North American readers. And I am a friend and erstwhile minion of Professor James Moriarty, who figures largely in this story. The professor rescued me from a Turkish prison some years ago, and in recompense for this service I stayed in his employ for a number of years upon my return to London before establishing the news service.

  Oscar Wilde had been writing an irregular column for me on the London theatre scene for the past two years, under the pen name of Fingal Wills. When I asked him why he refused to use his own name, he had told me, “Writing for the American public is like appearing as the rear end of a musical hall horse. One does it only for the money, and one would as soon not be recognized.” I couldn’t argue with him.

  It was around eight o’clock on a Tuesday night early in January, if memory serves, when our maid entered my study, where I was going over the accounts of some recent murder trials to see if any might interest a Boston newspaper whose readers seemed to relish British gore. “That’s all right, Tilda,” I told her. “You can go to bed. I’ll turn down the lamps and chivvy my own cup into the pantry.”

  “There’s a gentleman,” she said. “At the door.”

  “A gentleman?”

  “He says he’s a gentleman,” she told me, holding out the small silver tray on which rested the gentleman’s card.

  Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wells Wilde

  “A gentleman indeed,” I agreed. “Although what...never mind. Show the gentleman in, Tilda, and then you may retire.”

  A few moments later Wilde came through the door. His face was paler than usual and his hair was disarranged in an artless manner. “Thank you for seeing me with no notice,” he said, flopping onto a chair. “I hope I’m not interrupting anything. Thank God you’re home. Your wife—how is your wife?”

  “Cecily is upstairs suffering from a headache. She finds both light and sound painful when these come on her, so I try to annoy her as little as possible.”

  “Cecily,” he said. “Lovely name.” He sat bolt upright as though a sudden spasm had gripped his body and an expression of extreme pain—anguish?—flitted across his face. “Benjamin,” he said, “you must help me. It is a trick of the gods that I am acquainted with you and that you, I understand, are acquainted with a man named Professor Moriarty.”

  “I am,” I said. I was, I confess, puzzled. I could not picture two men less alike than the intense, reserved man of science, Professor James Moriarty, and the mercurial, effervescent, witty aesthete, Oscar Wilde. They both possessed massive intelligence and keen intellects, but they directed these gifts in entirely different directions.

  “I must meet him. I must speak with him,” Wilde said. He was tugging at his cravat as though it were the source of his troubles, but he did not seem to notice what he was doing. “And as soon as possible. The business is private, but urgent. Very urgent. Can you take me to him?”

  “Of course.” I considered. “I’ll send him a note first thing in the morning and arrange a meeting.”

  “My dear boy,” Wilde said, “who knows what evils might befall us between now and the morning? Could you not arrange a meeting this evening?”

  “Now?” I asked, surprised.

  “Why not?” Wilde asked, his voice sharp and anxious. He gestured toward the study window. “It has stopped snowing, the night is pleasant, the streets are moderately clear. I assure you the need is vital.”

  Putting aside my misgivings I gave in to his evident distress and rose from my chair.

  “Good, good,” Wilde said. “Thank you, thank you. I have held my Hansom, which awaits by the door.”

  “Then let us go,” I said, shrugging into my jacket. “If the professor is home, and will see us, we’ll be there in ten minutes.”

  Wilde retrieved his overcoat, top hat and walking stick from the rack by the door and I assembled my gear from the hall closet and we left. No more than ten minutes later we were knocking on the door of 64 Russell Square. Mr. Maws, Professor Moriarty’s butler, admitted us, relieved us of our outerwear, and bade us wait in the front room while he went to see if the professor would receive his unexpected guests.

  We had no more than sat down—well, I had sat down and Wilde had commenced pacing back and forth on the oversized Khasmani rug (a gift from the Grand Mufti of Rumelia for an extraordinary—but I digress)—when Professor Moriarty appeared in the doorway. A tall, thin man with a slight forward stoop, as though he were perpetually adjusting to living in a world of people smaller than himself, Moriarty had deep-set dark eyes under heavy brows, giving him the visual aspect of a brooding hawk. One eyebrow was raised quizzically as he looked over his visitors.

  “Barnett, what an unexpected pleasure,” he said, stepping into the room. “And this must be the amazing Mr. Oscar Wilde whom one can’t help hearing about wherever one goes in London these days.” He extended his hand. “It is a pleasure to finally meet you.”

  “I fear I cannot shake hands with you, sir,” Wilde said, stepping back from the offered hand and thrusting his own hands theatrically into the pockets of his jacket. “Mr. Sherlock Holmes has told me all about you!”

  “Oh dear,” Moriarty said. “My own personal Javert is busy again. What slander is he spreading now?”

  “His, ah, belief is that you are responsible for all the important crimes committed in London, and for many of the lesser ones,” said Wilde.

  “So he has averred to Scotland Yard time and again, and yet I am still here.”

  “And that you are most assuredly the mind behind a devious and infernally pernicious plot against me.” Wilde made a vague and somehow plaintive gesture in the air, suddenly looking very tired. “I come here to find out whether this is true.”

  “Ah!” Moriarty said. “I think I can safely say that it is not. Come into my office, and tell me of just what crime I stand accused.”

  We crossed the hall and Moriarty paused to turn up the gas lamps and then settled into the large oak chair behind his massive oak desk and waved us to seats. Mr. Maws came in behind us bearing a tray holding several cut glass decanters and a gasogene. “If you’ll excuse me, sir,” he said. “I thought perhaps....”

  “Yes, of course,” Moriarty said. “What have you brought us?”

  Mr. Maws indicated each decanter in turn. “O’Brian’s Reserve Irish Whiskey,” he said, “Louis XVII closed cask Cognac, and Port wine Garrafeira, 1826. Just coming into its own, I think.”

  “O’Brian’s....” Wilde looked interested.

  “A good choice sir. And just a splash?” Mr. Maws poured two inches of the golden liquid into a glass, worked the handle of the gasogene to add an equal amount of soda water, and handed the glass to Wilde.

  I admitted that the concoction looked good to me, and had one of the same. The professor took a small glass of the port.

  “Now,” Moriarty said as Mr. Maws left the room, closing the door gently behind him. “Tell me the story. I know you suspect me of being intimately involved in it, but relate it as though I know nothing.”

  Wilde glared suspiciously at Moriarty, but the glass of Irish whiskey in his hand seemed to reassure him, and sipping at it to fortify him
and raise his, if you’ll excuse the expression, spirits. “Blackmail,” he said shortly.

  “Ah!” Moriarty replied. “And in what manner are you being blackmailed?”

  Wilde shook his head, his face turning an uncharacteristic red color.

  “Surely, sir,” Moriarty said, “if I’m the one blackmailing you, then I must already know how it’s being done. And if I’m not—and I assure you I am not—then perhaps I can help.”

  Several emotions, and I am not qualified to say just what they were, but I would judge they were not pleasant, played across Oscar Wilde’s face. Then in one gesture he pulled a stiff card from his inner jacket pocket and thrust it toward Moriarty. “Here,” he said.

  Moriarty took the card and, holding it under the lamp on his desk peered at it through a powerful pocket lens, going over it slowly and carefully.

  Wilde’s manner made it clear that I would not be welcome to cross to the desk and investigate the item for myself, but I subsequently had the opportunity to examine it closely. It was a photograph of two men reclining on what appeared to be a rug in front of an unlit fireplace. They had no clothes on. Their positions and proximity made them appear to be, shall I say, intimate friends. One of them was Wilde. I trust this is enough of a description to explain the situation without being sufficient to excite pruriency. And to those of you who profess shock at even so brief a description, well, all I can say is that I find your shock suspect and wonder what emotion resides behind it.

  “This picture has been staged, I believe,” Moriarty commented.

  “Indeed,” Wilde agreed.

  “At first I thought that perhaps it was some sort of composite, putting your head on the body of another. But that is difficult to do well, and there is no sign of it here. And the body itself is, ah, identifiable.”

  “Yes,” Wilde agreed. “I’m afraid that, were I to remove my clothes, there would be little doubt the head is attached to the correct body.” He gave a tired smile. “Such flaws as are evident cannot in this case be blamed on my tailor.”