by Kim Newman
Quartz puffed more smoke. ‘“Übermenschen of the law”? That’s putting the case a bit strong, ain’t it, Moriarty? Pinkertons and vigilantes and flatfeet...’
‘They are coming, Quartz. We will face them. Agencies are being constituted in all our countries. In America, more than anywhere else. Individuals will hear a call. Detectives, adventurers, superior policemen, prosecutors. Men with unique abilities. Men who have badges, men who wear masks, men who are – and I do not exaggerate for effect – a match for us. Some will rise to fight for abstract notions of justice... some to protect the downtrodden... some to seek revenge. The most dangerous will be dispassionate thinkers for whom solving a mystery will be reward enough. We have all been setting puzzles which are to the scientific investigator what an unclimbed peak is to a mountaineer.’
‘Moriarty, you truly think the barbarians are at our gates?’ Raffles asked. ‘Is there nothing that can be done?’
‘We have to strike now,’ Moriarty insisted. ‘We must not wait to be crossed, inconvenienced, incommoded, hampered or persecuted. We must single out our enemies and smash them before they make their first moves. We must find these heroes... yes, Nikola, heroes... in their cribs and strangle them or beat their brains out. Kill their parents, assistants, comrades, sympathisers in the police or the press. They must never come to be. If we are to enjoy a utopia of crime, we cannot allow our adversaries to rise. Do you understand?’
A pause. Goggle eyes all around. People who impressed, hypnotised and terrified everyone they met were impressed, hypnotised and terrified. I felt the chill of the grave, but then again I was sat on a coffin in a tomb after a funeral. As always, I’d had no idea what had been going on in Moriarty’s brain.
Unsurprisingly, it was Irene who dared speak first.
‘Prof, I take it all back. That thing they call you. I always took it for a joke, but you’re the silver dollar. Rupe, gimme that jug, I want to – no, I have to – raise a toast. To Professor James Moriarty, the Napoleon of Crime!’
She took Hentzau’s flask and drained it at a gulp.
VI
Grimes let us out of the Thoroughgood tomb, in case you were worried he’d forget. We emerged, veils lowered and hats back on, into afternoon gloom. The rain had stopped, but the bushes were dripping, the slate tombs slick and black.
The original plan for Kingstead Cemetery was to offer four distinct styles of funerary pomp. Patrons could select the Egyptian Avenue, Roman Avenue, Grecian Avenue or Gothic Avenue. Three of these imperial modes didn’t catch on, but a lasting craze for all things pharaonic prompted a proliferation of obelisks, animal-headed gods and columns etched with hieroglyphs. Marble angels, a faun or two and the odd hooded skeleton relieved the monotony, but these rare items were crowded into neglected corners.
Dominating Egyptian Avenue was a sphinx which was alarmingly stamped with the distinctive whiskered face of a certain dead banker. I knew his eternal riddle: when will you pay me? I had my own answer – which was why said moneybags was now mummy-wrapped in a gilt-covered sarcophagus under fifty tons of statuary built to thwart tombrobbers. It was not entirely pleasant to be confronted with the weathered features of a recent customer, five-times life-size, on a lion the length of a London omnibus. I blame Mad Margaret Trelawny’s fancy dress party, and not being able to forget that they’d toyed with making a mummy of me. Actually, like a great many foul things, the Egyptian rot started with that little Corsican oik – the Napoleon of Being Napoleon as we might say, if we were drinking a toast out of his brain-pan in the den of the Grand Vampire.
Founded in 1839, the cemetery had been built to seem ancient. Its artisans had skimped on materials, so there was more crumbling, cracking and moulding after fifty years than the bereaved might care for. It was one thing to want your forebears to rest in picturesque semi-ruins, yet another to find out they were interred with shoddy workmanship at an inflated price.
‘Fresh air and sunlight, eh?’ Rupert of Hentzau declared, filling his lungs. Like a lot of sword-wallahs, he had the prancing gait of an acrobat or a ballerino. He was practically jumping up and down to be out of the confined tomb. A natural show-off, he needed space and freedom to move – which was worth jotting down mentally. ‘Professor, I owe you an apology,’ he continued. ‘Irene and I idly considered that you might have some scheme in mind whereby you slipped out of the tomb alone, then shut the door on your guests, leaving us without even a cask of sherry to make our few remaining hours more pleasant. Eliminating your competition altogether. It’s not as if you’ve no history of such... amusing stratagems.’
He tossed his head towards Mad Margaret and the Creeper. Behind a veil, her white mask looked almost natural, while an outsized funeral hat and giant morning coat – bespoke tailoring was clearly among the benefits of hooking up with the Cult of Queen Tera – did not make him stand out less. Both wore scars which served as advertisements for distrusting Professor Moriarty.
Word of the Battle of Conduit Street had got round the world’s rogues and villains. Rupert’s amusement was doubtless sincere. Everyone who was in the game for thrills and boodle wished they’d thought of it first. Stamping down the fanatics, however temporarily, made for a more convivial, profitable, worry-free life of crime.
Meanwhile, I was none the wiser. Proving once again that Rupert was just a younger version of me with more hair oil, I’d also suspected the Prof intended a coup to wipe out his peers at a stroke. It’s not as if I’d be let in on the blessed great design, even when it came to pointing and telling me to shoot. Moriarty hadn’t taken me into his confidence when invoking the Six Maledictions, ensuring an enfeebled lunatic benefited from the Bermuda Tontine, or impersonating a broken-necked lady ghost in Wessex (his best acting role, by far). He burdened me with no more information than he deemed necessary for me to perform as a cog in contraptions conceived in the coils of his swollen brain. Sometimes I ruminated darkly that I wasn’t paid enough for the grief, though I kept my grumbles to myself. I knew what happened to crims who quibbled with the Professor about their cut of the take – in fact, I was what happened to them.
That bitch was smirking and cooing in German with her dashing Count – useless language for love-making, German, but she made it sound obscene enough to get what she wanted. I felt my colour rising. To my mind, there’d been too much clever talk lately... and not enough blood. Much of Moriarty’s lecture in the tomb was above my head. I was no diabolical mastermind. In this company, I got lumped in with knife-women, bag-carriers, bodyguards, sneak thieves and fast swords. When Moriarty knocked heads with the Lord of Strange Deaths, Countess Cagliostro and Dr Nikola – even the upstart Mabuse, the crass Quartz and whoever this Grand Vampire was – I might as well sit in the kiddies’ corner with imbeciles like ‘Bunny’ Manders and the Creeper.
Normally, at this juncture, I would have suggested a pie and a pint at the Spaniards. Maybe a round or two of whist. This company could surely boast other practiced hands with the pasteboards.
But it hadn’t been that sort of Thoroughgood funeral. Bulstrode & Sons were paid and gone, and Old Mr Bulstrode had graciously accepted rubbings from brasses found in a section of Barchester Cathedral definitely not open to the public. Everyone wanted to get away as swiftly as possible.
‘Houses don’t burgle themselves,’ Raffles said. I suspected he’d said it before and would say it again. ‘Let’s do this again soon. Another Thoroughood must be on his deathbed somewhere. Toodle-oo.’
All our colleagues had crimes to get to.
Our carriages lined up outside the cemetery. Chop and the other coachmen stood in a silent knot, out-staring each other, hands casually near concealed weapons. A word or a gesture could spark a fuse, and they’d pull guns, hatchets and long knives and go to work. Soldiers all, the coachmen were almost disappointed that the party broke up without bodies strewn on Kingstead Hill.
Some of the company left with ceremony, in ostentatious coaches. Quartz had hired something bulletproof and en
ormous, prompting me to ponder two or three different ways someone riding in such a secure monstrosity could be murdered. Others made a point of vanishing without trace when no one was looking. Mabuse and Alraune: there one moment, gone the next. Irma Vep only pretended to leave, bless her. She slid behind a lichen-pockmarked angel, keeping an ear out for fresh developments.
As host – theoretically nearest and dearest of the imaginary deceased – Moriarty remained while the rest were beetling off. Sophy, of course, was with us, dabbing a hankie under her veil. Irene lingered a while and tried to tweak the Prof by flirting with him. She’d have got more of a rise from the statue of Weary Death at the door of the Forsyte tomb. As ever, that bitch was after something but wouldn’t say what it was. If the hussy wanted to know the time, she’d make suggestive gestures with an unlit cigarette then half-inch your watch while you were striking a lucifer.
Finally, she gave up and fetched Rupert away to the Café Royal.
Moriarty, head oscillating, was deep in thought again. With him, it was either a lecture lasting for pages and pages or pin-drop dead silence. He had no chit-chat in him.
Sophy lifted her veil and cut off the waterworks.
‘I wish I’d snaffled one of Raffles’ Sullivans,’ I said.
Sophy produced the cracksman’s cigarette case from her widow’s weeds. For the first time, the Greek woman smiled broadly.
‘I take... for practice,’ she said.
I laughed out loud. Raffles would be livid.
‘Did you haul anything else out of him?’
‘Yes,’ she said, handing me back my wallet. The French postcards were all there, including the one I swore was Irene Adler wearing a domino mask and little else. I’d not felt a thing and could swear I’d not let the cricketer near me.
‘Cheeky bugger,’ I said, admiring the deftness of the lift. ‘Hah, that’s funny, you know, because Raffles is...’
‘One of those. Yes. We have them in Greece.’
‘Of course you do. Practically invented it.’
‘His friend, though. “Bunny”. Him... not so much. He like the French girl. Irma Vep.’
Another reason for Raffles to blow his top. When they got home, Manders would get an old-fashioned thrashing. The duo had been in it together since school, when the soppy new bug had fagged for the captain of the eleven. At Eton, they made me slave to a prefect, supposedly to build ‘character’. It worked, but not the way they wanted. After I stabbed Timkins with a letter-opener, he polished my boots and cooked my breakfast. Goes to show how folks take differently to the old school tie.
I doubted Irma would be interested in the Manders clot, but didn’t shout out to ask. She could look after her own love-life.
While I was gossiping with Sophy, Moriarty kept thinking.
Eventually, he snapped out of it and had Chop drive us home – with a detour to call at the Hospital for Sick Children in Great Ormond Street. There, the Professor approached a matron to ask after three particular patients. These unfortunates had been wasp-stung during a picnic in Crystal Palace, hosted by a charitable society with a mania for getting unwashed slum tykes into the open air for healthy living and physical jerks. With practiced tact, the woman gave the sad news that one urchin had succumbed, another gone blind and the third wouldn’t stop shaking. Quietly pleased with himself, Moriarty noted the results of the experiment in a little book. A delicate girl, being discharged after being cured of fainting spells, took one look at the crow-black Prof, head bobbing like a vulture and hands knotted like a praying mantis, and had a relapse. Some brats – like some dogs and one or two horses – have the knack: they know a wrong’un straight off. Moriarty should have been more worried about common children than phantom heroes.
VII
Back in Conduit Street, something was up. My hunter’s instincts pricked and my whiskers twitched. Mrs Halifax was queerly excited by our return, and a peculiar air of conspiracy prevailed among the tarts. A long parcel had arrived, from Germany, and sat on my desk. Not something I was expecting.
‘It is the custom, I believe, to include a card with such presentations, Moran,’ Moriarty said, suddenly too close to me. ‘In this case, it would be contrary to my ruling on not leaving an evidentiary paper chain. Furthermore, no sentiment is required, for I believe – though others have argued the matter – you would not welcome such were it to be extended...’
I’d no idea what he was waffling about. One of us might have gone mad, but I’d be hard pressed to say which. First, a gathering of the world’s premier criminals for a summit. Then, experiments with wasp stings. Now, what...?
Moriarty trailed off, and gave Sophy the nod. She turned down the gaslights. It was evening dark out, and the room became a jungle of shadows. I tensed, prepared for attack. Had the Prof hired the woman to murder me and then replace me? Was I to be driven from the tribe like an old, broken-tusked elephant who can no longer trumpet? I’d not go without a scrap. Reaching for the pistol holstered in the small of my back, I discovered someone – Raffles, you bounder!? – had lifted it. So, it was just teeth and claws! If this were how it ended, I was ready to give an account of myself which would not be forgotten.
Then Mrs Halifax entered the darkened room, proudly bearing a cake – solid, brandy-saturated stodge under an inch of lemon cream – surmounted by a forest of thin candles. Little flickering flames lit up the room and the faces of the girls of the house – well, those who weren’t presently occupée – as they trouped in after the Madame. Fairy Mary Purbright, Throttler Parker, Filthy Fanny and other faithfuls of the Firm were also in the procession. Chop brought up the rear, pushing a trolley which bore ice buckets full of champagne bottles and a tray of Waterford crystal glasses.
Raggedly, the company sang ‘For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow’. To me.
I was less surprised the time I spotted the Bishop of Bath and Wells using the kink-wrist Mississippi shuffle and dealing from the bottom of the deck.
‘Happy birthday, Colonel Basher,’ Mrs H. said. ‘And many more of ’em.’
I was less surprised the time the Pirate King of the Lepers turned out to be my old Eton whipping boy Porky Sourbright, duffer of the second eleven.
The Madame passed the cake off to Two-Ton Tessie – not someone I’d have trusted it with – and lurched up to me. Harriet Halifax administered a ginny kiss which left powder on my cheeks and lip-rouge in my moustache. She still had the eight-inch tongue that made her name in her Stepney youth.
I was less surprised the time the Burmese Python Lady turned out to be a bloke.
In the ten years – god, ten years! – I’d been with the Firm, Professor Moriarty had given no indication he was even aware I had a birthday, let alone knew when it was (it’s in Who’s Who, of course). Since being fleeced of my birthday money by Rosie at fifteen, I’d not made much of the day myself. I bagged a white tiger on my thirty-fifth birthday after all the bearers had fled. Captain Jellinek served nicely as tethered kid, having hobbled himself by twisting his ankle. I personally skinned my cat, thinking a white winter coverlet would be my fine present to myself. That fur went missing, stolen by dirty natives, and Jammy Jelly died without settling his gambling debts, so the day was a curate’s egg. The look in the tiger’s eyes, though, as she raised her head with Jellinek’s heart in her jaws and saw me sighting on her... that was an exquisite moment. Not a day goes by that I don’t think at least once of those magnificent tiger eyes, the ropes of blood dangling from her maw, that contemptuous snarl of kill-me-if-you-must-but-you’ll-never-come-close-to-knowing-what-I-am [7]. If I were back in school again, perish the thought, that would be my ‘Most Memorable Birthday’ essay topic. Otherwise, while I was out of the country, Augusta and Christabelle – the blessed unmarriageable – annually dispatched knitted socks or scarves to my postings. I’d neglected to inform them of my London address. Really, I had meant to dash off a postcard, but just hadn’t got round to it... for ten years. It had been a busy decade, I supposed, and it was now a
trifle late to tell my sisters I’d returned to Merrie Olde England. I imagined I’d worn out my heroes’ welcome at their rented hearth, if I’d ever have had one.
Somehow, even I had forgotten my birthday.
‘Blow them out, blow them out,’ chanted the girls and Purbright. If he kissed me, I’d knock his bobby’s helmet off.
I puffed and extinguished all but three of the candles. Mrs Halifax pretended I’d managed the clean sweep and earned my wish. She pinched them out while the Ranee of Ranchipur distracted me with a peck on the cheek.
Purbright turned up the gaslight again. I winced at the details which sprang up when the room was properly lit. There were mirrors.
‘Fifty years old,’ Mrs Halifax said, as if commiserating with a sufferer from a deadly disease. ‘It comes to us all, or at least all of us as is fortunate not to get killed off otherwise...’
Fifty! At that age, old Sir Augustus – for whom I was now a veritable twin – died of apoplexy. His once-iron constitution was weakened by the lingering effects of the brain fever which cut short his appointment as Minister to Persia in the forties – my first spoken language was Fārsi, have I ever mentioned that? But in the end a towering rage did for pater. He was set off by something snide Lord Palmerston’s undersecretary said when Prime Minister Pam was too busy dealing with Gladstone’s latest resignation to bother with a petition from a diplomatic corps warhorse who felt he should have been made ambassador to somewhere more important and less flyblown than Paraguay. Sir Augustus had been in a bate for years, probably his whole life – certainly, I can only remember him in states of dudgeon ranging from high to stratospheric – and his lid was forever on the point of boiling over. He was red in the face and steaming from the ears when he booted me out of the family home after I was sent down from Oxford for boxing a bursar’s ears and throwing the oik through a leaded Elizabethan window. He threw a threepenny bit in my eye and said it was the last coin I’d ever get from him. On the day of his funeral, the 19th of October 1864, I lost seventeen quid at Ascot, got drunk on Scotch whisky I couldn’t pay for and was jugged for the night on a drunk and disorderly. In Windsor clink, I roomed with Prince Stanley, a gypsy who later taught me how to thieve like a champion but took a knife to my face when he found I’d tupped his sister from behind. I first let my moustache grow to cover the scar Prince gave me; that, I realised now, was what had begun my slow transformation into a double for my father.
