by Marvin Kaye
EDITORIAL INFORMATION
Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine #7 (Vol. 3, No.1 – Spring 2012)
Publisher: John Betancourt
Editor: Marvin Kaye
Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine is published by Wildside Press, LLC. Single copies: $10.00 + postage. U.S. subscriptions: $39.95 (postage paid) for the next 4 issues in the U.S.A., from: Wildside Press LLC, Subscription Dept. 9710 Traville Gateway Dr., #234; Rockville MD 20850. International subscriptions: see our web site at
www.wildsidemagazines.com. Available as an ebook through all major ebook etailers, or our web site, www.wildsidemagazines.com.
The characters of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle are used by kind permission
of Jonathan Clowes, Ltd., on behalf of Andrea Punket,
Administrator of the Conan Doyle Copyrights.
CORRECTION
Last issue, we credited the wrong cover artist. The cover was actually by Rhys Davies. (Sorry, Rhys!)
CARTOON, by Marc Bilgrey
FROM WATSON’S SCRAPBOOK
Mrs Hudson is still in Yorkshire nursing her mother’s ailing sister Ruth, but though she is unable to contribute her customary column to this issue of Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine, she did manage to talk on the telephone with C E Lawrence, whose latest suspense thriller Silent Victim was excerpted in our last issue. (C E, by the way, is the pen name of our ongoing contributor, Carole Buggé). I am pleased that Mrs Hudson found the time to send us a record of their conversation.
I am less pleased, however, about what I am about to tell you. You see, in our preceding issue, I persuaded (retired) Inspector Lestrade to send us a few of his recollections, in lieu of Mrs Hudson’s usual column. In this regard, my co-editor Mr Kaye made contact with Holmes’s ongoing nemesis Professor James Moriarty, and, to my surprise and dismay, actually persuaded him to contribute a column of his own. And unlike Lestrade, who was flattered to be asked, the Professor naturally insisted on being paid! I shudder to think what use our funds may be put to!
* * * *
In this number of Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine, Holmes and I appear in two different adventures. The first one is my own reportage of A Scandal in Bohemia. I pray that anyone who reads it here for the first time will pay attention to what I have actually written concerning Holmes and affairs of the heart. So far as I know, he never harboured feelings that could in any fashion be construed as romantic in the emotional sense of that word, and that does include the Woman—although I do admit there is a mystery that I have never fathomed concerning that stout consulting detective based in New York City.
To my astonishment, the other Holmesian narrative in this issue, The Dead House, was written up by none other than Holmes himself!
And now it is time to hear from my co-editor Mr Kaye.
—John H Watson, MD
* * * *
One might well call this our “retro” issue of Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine. Normally, we like to balance our mix with adventures from days bygone and modern, but most of the tales in this seventh issue of SHMM, are set in earlier times. The only comparatively recent story is Janice Law’s The Double, but even it depends partly on earlier Russian Communist history. Marc Bilgrey’s A House Divided tells an American Civil War incident, while both David Ellis’s A Letter from Legrand and Michael Mallory’s The Premature Murder take place in Nineteenth Century America.
Edgar Allan Poe is central to the latter pair of stories. A Letter from Legrand is an ingenious sequel to Poe’s classic The Gold-Bug. While it is not necessary to know the original story, I believe a reacquaintance with it will enhance reading enjoyment of Mr. Ellis’s sequel. The Premature Murder, though fiction, is a striking investigation into the mysterious death of Edgar Allan Poe in 1849 in Baltimore.
Next issue will feature a far-flung assortment of authors—an amusing tale of a stolen baseball bat by Jeff Baker, of Wichita Kansas; a new Kelly Locke story from Hal Charles in Kentucky; a delightful Sherlock Holmes pastiche by Christian Endres, of Germany; a horrifying semi-science fictional murder story by Ben Godby, of Ottowa; a clever SF pastiche of Sherlock Holmes, and an upsetting story of wrongful death (which the author says really happened) by Stefanie Stolinsky, of Los Angeles.
See you soon!
Canonically yours,
Marvin Kaye
MORIARTY’S MAILBAG
When I, Professor James Moriarty, was approached by the editor of this magazine, and asked if I would contribute an advice column for the present issue, I was, to say the least, surprised. Foremost, I wondered, how this editor find me? The world’s greatest detective, Sherlock Holmes, has been searching for me for years, without the slightest success. So, for that matter, has Scotland Yard. Yet, now, a mere editor of a second rate penny dreadful, takes it upon himself one afternoon, to make a few preliminary inquiries, and suddenly, within minutes, manages to discover my ultra secret inner sanctum sanctorum. I am not some petty pick pocket who lives in a run-down flophouse in White Chapel, I am the most powerful criminal mastermind on earth. (Though, I must say, I do occasionally enjoy a nice stroll in the White Chapel district, but that is neither here nor there.)
In addition I am repulsed by the decision to name this publication, Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine, after my arch enemy, and sworn nemesis. (Not to mention despised rival.) What resident lunatic at the Bedlam Asylum thought this was a sensible idea? A far more appropriate name for a quality periodical, would be, Professor James Moriarty’s Mystery Magazine. I suggest the publishers consider making this change as soon as possible.
All of which brings me back to the self-same editor of this little pulp digest. What could possibly have possessed this ink drenched renegade from Grubb Street to make him believe that I, the greatest villain who ever lived, would even be interested in answering questions about my criminal methods for the general public? After all, I have a vast crime network to oversee. Does this editor really think I have the time to waste in the petty pursuit of his frivolous and misguided enterprise?
But as it happens, I must admit that I was intrigued by the sheer audacity that this man displayed in seeking me out, and upon further reflection, I now find my interest somewhat piqued . . . as a result, I have decided to temporarily set aside my disdain for the entire human race long enough to participate in this exercise in futility and respond to some missives from the general populous.
[Editorial note—I fear the Professor has underestimated my friend Holmes, for it was he who informed Mr Kaye of the address of Moriarty’s eyrie, so to speak.—JHW]
* * * *
Dear Professor Moriarty,
I have recently embezzled a sizable suym from my employers at a large, and well respected bank. What shall I do with the money?
—Loaded in Lancashire
Dear Loaded,
Place it all in a bag, and send it to me.
* * * *
Professor Moriarty,
I have an excellent plan for an extortion plot involving a number of prominent citizens. How can I avoid being caught?
—Confident In Cornwall
Dear Confident,
To begin with, I would suggest that you don’t send letters to people you don’t know, boasting about crimes you haven’t yet committed.
* * * *
Dear Professor Moriarty,
I am an inmate at Newgate Callendar prison. I would like to escape. Can you help me?
—Your friend, 248072931
Dear 248072931,
Enclosed is a file and a recipe for a cake that you can bake the file into.
* * * *
Dear Professor Moriarty,
&
nbsp; I’m an artist who is planning to counterfeit fifty pound notes. Your thoughts would be appreciated.
—Baffled in Blackpool
Dear Baffled,
When you draw Her Royal Majesty, Queen Victoria, make sure she isn’t winking, or in her knickers.
* * * *
Dear Professor Moriarty,
My husband is having an affair with my best friend. I plan on poisoning the both of them. What kind of poison would you recommend I use?
—Beth in Bath
Dear Beth,
I’m very sorry, madam, but I simply cannot condone a crime that is committed for any reason other than profit.
* * * *
Dear Professor Moriarty,
Why are you called the Napoleon of crime? Since the English defeated Napoleon, why aren’t you called the Wellington of crime?
—Concerned in Kensington
Dear Concerned,
You sir, are an idiot.
* * * *
Dear Professor Moriarty,
Is it true that you control all the crime in London?
—Wondering in the West End
Dear Wondering,
Yes, it’s true. If a school boy steals a loaf of bread from a bakery, I get half.
* * * *
Dear Professor Moriarty,
What is the best way to rob a bank and not get caught?
—Befuddled in Brighton
Dear Befuddled,
Subcontract.
* * * *
Dear Professor Moriarty,
What is your opinion of Sherlock Holmes?
—Curious in Cardiff
Dear Curious,
I think he’s a fat, bloated, pompous, know it all. No, wait, that’s his brother, Mycroft. Sherlock is all right, though he does tend to go off on those silly tangents of his about cigar ashes, different kinds of mud, boot marks , and the like. Oh, let’s face it, the man is a crashing bore.
* * * *
Dear Professor Moriarty,
How is it that you did not die when you fell into the Reichenbach Falls with Sherlock Holmes?
—Pondering in Picadilly
Dear Pondering,
That’s simple. It wasn’t me who fought Holmes that day, it was a look-a-like actor that I hired to play me. And, in an odd twist of fate, apparently Holmes had done the same. Sadly, both actors drowned. While they were locked in mortal battle, Holmes and I were having cocktails in Davos. Afterwards, we went to our banks in Zurich, and visited our money.
* * * *
Dear Professor Moriarty,
How have you managed to elude capture for all these years?
—Reluctant in Regent Park
Dear Reluctant.
I own a very, very well oiled bicycle.
* * * *
Dear Professor Moriarty,
How can I get my boyfriend of five years to propose to me?
—Betty in Billingsgate
Dear Betty,
You must have me confused with Miss Katherine, the agony columnist, for the Daily Mail.
SCREEN OF THE CRIME, by Lenny Picker
The Adventures of the Six Napoleons…of Crime
Whatever else Sherlock Holmes: Game of Shadows does, it deserves credit for enabling a return to movie prominence of one of the all-time great villains and, arguably, the third most interesting Canonical character, who makes a strong impression all out of proportion to his very limited time on-screen. Watson, our trusted eyes and ears, only sees him twice, but his impact on the Good Doctor’s life could hardly have been greater. I refer, of course, to Professor James Moriarty, the ne plus ultra of arch-enemies, a genius who is “the organizer of half that is evil and of nearly all that is undetected” in the London of 1891. But as intriguing a character as Moriarty is, filmmakers using him as the main bad guy have almost always had to depart from one of the most remarkable aspects of his criminality.
It’s always best to return to fundamentals, so let’s revisit Holmes’s (apparently)1 first description of his intellectual equal in “The Final Problem.”
He is a genius, a philosopher, an abstract thinker. He has a brain of the first order. He sits motionless, like a spider in the center of its web, but that web has a thousand radiations, and he knows well every quiver of each of them. He does little himself. He only plans. But his agents are numerous and splendidly organized. Is there a crime to be done, a paper to be abstracted, we will say, a house to be rifled, a man to be removed—the word is passed to the Professor, the matter is organized and carried out. The agent may be caught. In that case money is found for his bail or his defence. But the central power which uses the agent is never caught—never so much as suspected.
That passage tells us why it is if not actually impossible, it’s highly improbable for the writers of TV or movie pastiches to stay faithful to one of his most unique qualities. Remember: “He sits motionless,” “He does little himself. He only plans.” Taken at face value, Moriarty is not, as he’s popularly labeled, Holmes’s evil twin. His armchair malevolence is really the mirror-image of the Canon’s great sedentary collection of grey cells, and the inspiration for Nero Wolfe, Mycroft Holmes. But it would take an extremely gifted writer to make an armchair vs. armchair battle of wits gripping, and even such an author would find translating such words on the page (or e-reader screen) to dialogue and moving images daunting.
Similarly, Moriarty’s immobile inhabiting of the center of his web is also nearly-impossible for a pastiche. The Canonical Moriarty has multiple layers insulating him from culpability—a concept brilliantly realized in Bert Coules’s flawless adaptation of “The Final Problem” for radio—where Holmes compares the Moriarty organization to a pyramid, with the Professor at the apex, who has dealings only with the nine members of his High Table. But having the main bad guy only seen issuing orders to his minions isn’t a recipe for dramatic conflict. All of which is to say that it would be a tough sell for studios and audiences alike to have a Moriarty who just sits and thinks at the center of his gang.
If the frenetic previews of Game of Shadows, which contain action sequences similar to those in the first film, are a reliable barometer, they suggest that Jared Harris’s Professor will be mixing it up physically with Downey’s energetic detective.
But if the latest Moriarty ends up striking viewers as less-than-Canonical (hopefully a judgment that takes into account all of his scenes, not just the presumed fight ones), there is ample precedent for a movie Napoleon of Crime who is active in the field, which, I contend, is a necessary departure from the Canon. In the interests of presenting depth rather than breadth, (and justifying this column’s intended-to-be-clever title), I will look at only six predecessors to Harris in essaying the role. Limiting coverage to film and TV portrayals excludes two of the most memorable ones—Orson Welles, in the Gielgud/Richardson radio series of the 1950s, and Michael Pennington, in the standout Merrison/Williams complete audio Canon of the 1990s—but the scripts they benefitted from adhere closely to the language of “The Final Problem.” That advantage would make comparing them to the film versions like comparing apple pips to orange pips.
Basil Rathbone’s first of three different Moriartys, George Zucco in 1939’s The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, remains one of my personal favorites, and not just because the film was the first Holmes one I’d seen.
The epigraph sets the stage for a movie where the Holmes-Moriarty duel is front and center. The viewer is treated to an excerpt of Holmes’s journal, while a haunting tune, that would later prove a key to a murder mystery, plays in the background: “In all my life I have encountered only one man whom I can truthfully call the very Genius of Evil—Professor Moriarty. For eleven years he has eluded me. All the rest who have opposed him are dead. He is the most dangerous criminal England has ever known.”
(In yet another inexplicable, unnecessary departure from Canon—albeit less egregious than tampering with the dog in the nighttime classic line in the Christopher Plummer Silver Blaz
e—the signed entry is dated 1894, three years after the Reichenbach duel of the Canon.)
This opening spells out explicitly the immensity of the challenge before Holmes, who has tried to bring the professor to book for over a decade2, a reasonable extrapolation from the Final Problem’s duration of the battle—“For years I have endeavored to break through the veil which shrouded it.” And the first scene gets right to it—we see a bearded and bespectacled Moriarty in the dock for murder, acquitted moments before Holmes rushes in too late to present his proof that the crucial alibi—giving a lecture before numerous members of the Royal Society, is a fabrication. (Sherlockian film historians have revealed that the explanation for how such an alibi could have been faked was included in the original script, but this is a case where speculating about how Moriarty pulled it off is better than reading what the writers actually came up with.)
We should stop here to note that the Canonical Moriarty would seem to never need an alibi—he’s a planner, not an executioner, or as T.S. Eliot put it in “Macavity, the Mystery Cat,” “And whatever time the deed took place—MACAVITY WASN’T THERE!” He wouldn’t get his hands bloody—one of the unresolved issues for me from the Canon is why the Professor, who is not a physically imposing man, and who knew of Holmes’s self-defense prowess, resorted to hand to hand combat, when some remnants of his organization who had escaped the net could have been utilized.
But what Edwin Blum and William Drake’s screenplay—billed as based on Gillette’s play, but apart from naming one of the Professor’s henchman Bassick, resemblances are relatively few—demonstrates is that even such a departure can work when the spirit of the confrontation is preserved. And the scene where a freed Moriarty offers Holmes a cab-ride back to Baker Street is one of the high points of all Sherlockian cinema. Listen to Rathbone’s Holmes: “You’ve a magnificent brain, Moriarty. I admire it. I admire it so much I’d like to present it pickled in alcohol to the London Medical Society.” Some of the dialogue is lifted straight from “The Final Problem”’s Baker Street encounter. The writers cleverly make Moriarty echo Holmes’s sentiments from “The Final Problem”—during their cab ride together, Moriarty says that “once [he’s] beaten and ruined [Holmes], I’ll retire,” reinforcing the notion that the two men are two sides of the same coin3. Moriarty also displays his hubristic scheming brilliance by telling his adversary that he will “pull off the most incredible crime of the century,” right under Holmes’s nose, a boast that he comes very close to realizing.
