Victorian Villainy

by Michael Kurland

  “It looks to me as though you have been posed. Were you conscious at the time?”

  “As I have no memory of the event, I must assume not,” Wilde told him.

  “Do you have any idea when the, ah, event might have occurred?”

  Wilde considered. “Saturday last,” he said. “I was napping in an office on the second floor of the theater. I awoke several hours later with a violent headache to find my clothing strangely disarranged.”

  “What did you think at the time?” I interjected.

  Wilde turned to look at me. “I assumed it was some sort of practical joke. Several of my friends have rather robust senses of humor. I thought this was rather over the top, but I didn’t know who to blame or what the intent was—at the time. The next day I received the photograph in the afternoon mail. With it was a very brief note.”

  “Ah!” Moriarty said. “Do you still have the note?”

  Wilde took a crumpled piece of paper from his pocket, smoothed it out, and handed it to Moriarty. In large print, which I could easily make out from where I sat, the note said simply:

  £ 10.000

  “Succinct,” Moriarty commented.

  “I thought so,” Wilde agreed.

  “And you have heard nothing further?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Do you have access to that sort of money?”

  “Not if I sell all I own. Not if I sell my soul.”

  Moriarty turned to me. “You see why, Barnett, were I to resort to blackmail, I would not choose artists, writers or actors as my targets. Few of them have sufficient wealth for the project to be worth the effort.” He returned his attention to Wilde. “Do you know who the other gentleman in the photograph is?”

  “His name is Rob Reynard,” Wilde said. “He is an understudy in the theatrical company that is now putting on a new play of mine. ‘Lady Windermere’s Fan.’ The play is now in rehearsal.”

  “And what does he know of this?”

  “I have not had the opportunity to speak with him since receiving the picture. He did not appear at rehearsal yesterday or today.”

  “Have you actually had any, er, relationship with this young man?” Moriarty asked.

  Wilde shook his head. “Even were I interested in such a liaison, Mr. Reynard is not my type. He’s much too earnest a young man. I must have frivolity and clever badinage, and poor Rob seems incapable of either.”

  Moriarty thought for a moment. “Do you have any idea where this photograph was taken?” he asked.

  “I believe it’s the drawing-room set of Lady Windermere,” Wilde said. “It looks as though we were placed and, ah, arranged on stage.”

  “And this stage is?”

  “At the St. James Theater.”

  Moriarty rose. “Then let us go forth,” he said. “I would tread those boards.”

  “At this hour?” I asked.

  Moriarty pulled out his pocket watch and consulted it. “It’s barely ten o’clock,” he said. “Surely the theater will still be inhabited.”

  “Rehearsals often go on until past midnight,” Wilde affirmed. “But I trust it won’t be necessary to mention why you are there.” I noticed that Wilde had accepted the professor’s innocence of involvement without further discussion.

  “Of course not,” Moriarty agreed. “Incidently, if you went to see Mr. Sherlock Holmes, why did he not take your case?”

  “Apparently he believed some of the more outrageous stories about me, even if he wasn’t convinced that the photo was genuine.” Wilde said. “His words were that he doesn’t choose to defend immorality.”

  “Ever the prig,” Moriarty commented. “Well, let us be off!”

  The rehearsal had ended for the night when we arrived at the theater, and Moriarty had the stage to himself. He spend some time comparing the stage to the photograph, measuring distances and angles with a tape measure and a protractor, and jotting notes and formulas in a small notebook. He had Wilde show him the room from which Wilde had presumably been abducted and he examined the staircase off the front vestibule that led to it.

  It was about an hour and a half later when the professor closed his notebook and returned it to his jacket pocket. “I suggest we adjourn for the night,” he said.

  “Have you discovered anything?” asked Wilde.

  “I believe I see a course of action that might be not without profit,” Moriarty told him.

  “Umph,” said Wilde.

  “Be at my house tomorrow at, say, three in the afternoon, and I may have some news for you.”

  And we had to be satisfied with that.

  I was not sure that I should include myself in the invitation to return to Moriarty’s house on the morrow, but Wilde assured me that he desired my continued presence, and so I acquiesced. I confess that I had a strong desire to see the thing through.

  Wilde and I showed up at the professor’s doorstep within moments of each other at three on Wednesday. Mr. Maws showed us into the professor’s office, where we found him behind his desk fiddling with a square black object about the size of a small footstool. “This is the cause of your troubles,” he told Wilde, placing the object on his desk.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “It’s the new Baum-Lamphier self-loading camera.” He spun it around and demonstrated. “Lens here, ground glass viewing screen on the back.” He turned the thing upside-down. “A film pack of twelve glass plates is loaded in here, and then you turn this lever.” He swung it upright again. “And now it’s loaded and ready to take the first picture. A modern advance in photography which allows the taking of pictures more rapidly if not more artistically.”

  “That machine took the photograph?” Wilde asked.

  “Well, not this very one, but something very much like it.”

  “How do you know that?” I asked.

  “There is a slight black bar at the top of Mr. Wilde’s photograph,” said Moriarty.

  “Not my photograph,” Wilde interjected bitterly.

  “Ah, yes. But nonetheless there is the bar. Approximately an eighth of an inch long by a sixteenth of an inch wide, and three-eights of an inch from the top of the photograph on the left-hand side.”

  “Not much of a bar,” I opined.

  “But sufficient,” Moriarty said. “Sufficient.”

  “What does it signify?” Wilde asked.

  “Observe,” Moriarty said, raising the camera. He pointed it toward the window and clicked the shutter. “Now that one negative plate has been expended,” he said, “we need to put a new plate in position. But we don’t have to remove the used plate first, a process that is time-consuming and destructive of the artistic impulse. Instead—” Moriarty pulled a lever and turned the camera upside down. A loud click and a soft thud sounded from inside the camera. Moriarty released the lever and righted the camera. “Voila! The fresh plate is now in position.”

  “Clever,” I said.

  “Oh the wonders of modern science,” Wilde said, “will they never cease?”

  “Held in place,” Moriarty continued, “by a spring and two pins, one on each side of the plate. And, due to what I must assume is a slight but normally unnoticeable manufacturing flaw, the left pin protrudes slightly into the frame of the photograph.”

  Wilde looked thoughtful for a moment, and then smiled. Perhaps for the first time in days. “I see,” he said. “By, I assume, an eighth of an inch?”

  “Precisely,” Moriarty agreed.

  “So this is the camera....”

  Moriarty lifted a folded piece of foolscap from his desk. “The camera is only recently been brought over from Bohemia, where it is manufactured,” he said. “And only two stores in the London area have them. I have here the names of the fourteen people who have purchased a Baum-Lamphier since they first arrived six weeks ago.” He handed the paper to Wilde. “Do you recognize a name?”

  Wilde perused the list, his finger running down the page, muttering the names to himself. Then he suddenly sat back and excla
imed a sharp epithet which I will not record here.

  “Ah!” said Moriarty. “There is a familiar name on the list?”

  “Bromire,” Wilde said, spitting the name out. “Alexis Bromire.

  “And he is?”

  “The company’s lighting director.”

  “I suspected as much,” Moriarty said. “The contrast and the lack of shadow in the photograph made me suspect that the scene had been carefully—and perhaps professionally—lit.”

  “A strutting little man with a repulsive toothbrush of a mustache occupying much of his upper lip,” Wilde said. “Dresses in overly-tailored black suits like a—” Wilde searched for a phrase “—like a dancing mortician.”

  “What do we do?” I asked. “We can’t very well go to the police.”

  “I suggest we pay Mr. Bromire a visit,” Moriarty said. “Perhaps we can convince him of the error of his rather repulsive ways.” Rising, he opened the left-hand drawer of his desk and removed a Webley service revolver, which he thrust into the pocket of his suit jacket.

  “I say,” I said, “you’re not going to—”

  “It is best to be prepared for any eventuality,” Moriarty said.

  “It does rather ruin the, ah, hang of the jacket,” Wilde commented. “I’d rather go unarmed into the fray than have the line of my suit compromised.”

  “I have an underarm holster somewhere,” Moriarty said, “but that makes an unattractive bulge over the heart.”

  “An insufficiently explored sartorial challenge,” Wilde said. “Do you have Bromire’s address?”

  “I do,” said Moriarty. He lives in Notting Hill.”

  “I should have guessed,” said Wilde.

  It was an unattractive gray day and the snow had turned to slush when we left Moriarty’s house. Mr. Maws ran to the corner and, after several blasts on his whistle, managed to secure us a four-wheeler.

  It was about quarter past four when we pulled up in front of the house, an old Georgian with four Doric columns astride the front door and a round window above. It had been broken up into flats in the distant past, and Bromire occupied the first floor left front. The front door was off latch and we entered and started up a wide staircase that had probably been one of the features of the house before it had been cloven.

  We heard the yelling when we reached the first landing. It came thinly through the walls, but there was no doubt that it would be a quality performance if we were in the room from which it emanated. Two voices: one shrill and the other low and growling like an angry dog. There was a staccato quality to the sounds, as though the actors were taking short breaks for air, or to dredge up new and fresh invectives before recommencing their mutual verbal abuse.

  “What do you suppose—” I began, when the remainder of my supposition was cut off by two sharp cracks and a scream. Then silence.

  “Gunshots!” Moriarty exclaimed, running up the stairs ahead of us. We followed close on his heels.

  Bromire’s door was closed, and Moriarty knocked, waited for a second, and when he got no response slammed his foot powerfully against the lock. At the third kick the door burst open and we rushed into the room.

  The scene that greeted us was like a tableau from the Grand Guignol: to our right a slim young man in his shirt sleeves, collar askew, hair scrambled, eyes wild, panting violently from fear and panic. His face and neck seemed to be covered with small scratches. He was holding a small revolver limply in his right hand, which was mottled with a curious blue stain. To our left, an overturned table, papers, photographic plates, envelopes and writing materials scattered about the floor. And, behind it, the crumpled body of a small, immaculately-dressed man lying in an ever-widening pool of his own blood.

  The young man started away from us in a panic but stopped as a look of recognition crossed his face. “Mr. Wilde,” he exclaimed. “Is it you? Ah, I see that it is. I’m glad that you’ve come. But how did you—” he broke off and stared down at the body. “But never mind. It’s too late—too late!”

  “Reynard!” Wilde said. “What are you doing here?”

  “The same as you, I fancy,” the young man said. “Trying to come to terms with a blackmailer.”

  “Unsuccessfully, I gather,” Moriarty said.

  “He came at me and—” Reynard shook his head. “But who are you?”

  “My name is Professor Moriarty. I’ve come to assist Mr. Wilde in resolving this, ah, matter.”

  “What on earth happened here?” Wilde asked.

  “Let us come inside and close the door,” Moriarty suggested. “There doesn’t seem to be anyone else in the building—or at least on this floor—now, or someone would assuredly have appeared in the hall. But people should be coming home from their day’s work any time now, and we don’t want to attract unnecessary attention.”

  We entered the flat and closed the door behind us as best we could. Most of the door was still in place, but the lock had burst out from the last kick. “What other rooms are there?” Moriarty asked.

  “There’s a bed room and a lav, and a sort of kitchen—the sort that isn’t much good for actually cooking,” Reynard said.

  Moriarty nodded. “Now,” he said. “What are you doing here?”

  “Are you going to call the police?” Reynard asked, keeping has voice steady.

  “Should we?” Moriarty responded.

  “Needless to say, I’d prefer it if you didn’t,” said Reynard. “He was a vile blackmailer, and he’s better off dead, don’t you think?”

  “There is a law against killing people,” Wilde commented. “Even blackmailers and wealthy maiden aunts.”

  We turned to look at Wilde, who shrugged. “It just came out that way,” he explained. “When I begin a sentence it often wanders off in unexpected directions. That, I fancy, is my genius.”

  “In this case,” I said, “if there was any way—surely Moriarty, there must be some way....”

  “I think I should thank you, Reynard,” Wilde said, “and then perhaps we should all get out of here and let the police make what they will of this. Does anyone know you’re here?”

  “Only you gentlemen,” Reynard answered.

  Moriarty shook his head slowly “I think perhaps we had better call the police after all,” he said.

  I looked at him in surprise. “You? Of all people, you?”

  “It’s one thing to cover up for a man who has just rid the world of a blackmailer,” Moriarty said deliberately. “It’s quite another to help his accomplice escape justice.”

  “What?” Wilde exclaimed. “But why do you think—?”

  “I’m sure of it,” Moriarty said. “Look at his hand.”

  “His hand?”

  “That blue stain. It’s from the developing solution. Mr. Reynard has been developing the plates. He is not a victim. He is an accomplice. It took two people to do this—to carry you downstairs and set you up for the scene, if nothing else.”

  “Well, I’ll—” Wilde began. “Reynard, why would you...?”

  Reynard raised the pistol and held it rock-steady in his hand, pointing at Moriarty. He pulled back the hammer. “All right, Professor Whatever-Your-Name-Is. Think you’re smart, do you? Well I’m—”

  That was as far as he got. One shot from Moriarty’s Webley, fired from in the coat pocket, tore into his chest, and he was dead before he hit the ground.

  There was a moment of shocked silence, and then Wilde said, “I’ll be—I don’t know what I’ll be.”

  “Unfortunate, but perhaps it’s better this way. You’d never have been free of him if he got away,” Moriarty told Wilde. “Search the flat for photographic plates, while I arrange the bodies to make it look like mutual destruction. Then we’d best cautiously leave the scene.”

  “He was not a gentleman,” Wilde said decisively. “One can tell by the cravat. A true gentleman has an unerring taste in cravats.”

  “And we’d best take the camera, too,” Moriarty said.

  And so we left. None of
us, to my knowledge, ever spoke of the incident again.

  BORGO PRESS BOOKS BY MICHAEL KURLAND

  The Princes of Earth: A Science Fiction Novel

  A Study in Sorcery: A Lord Darcy Novel

  Ten Little Wizards: A Lord Darcy Novel

  The Trials of Quintilian: Three Stories of Rome’s Greatest Detective

  The Unicorn Girl: An Entertainment

  Victorian Villainy: A Collection of Moriarty Stories

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  The author of over thirty novels and a melange of short stories, articles, and other stuff, Michael Kurland has been writing professionally for over three decades. His stories are set in epochs and locations from Ancient Rome to the far future—anyplace where the reader won’t spot the anachronisms too easily. His works have appeared in Chinese, French, Italian, Spanish, German, Swedish, Polish, Portuguese, Japanese, Czech, and some alphabet with a lot of hooks and curlicues. They are believed to be the fragments of one great opus, a student of the Untermensch. He has been nominated for a Hugo, two Edgars, and the American Book Award, and various book clubs have picked up various of his books. More can be learned at his website:

  www.michaelkurland.com