by David Fable
“Forgive me if I sound strident, Doctor. I would like to see if I can help with any observations before there’s further contamination,” he said with consummate self-confidence. Apparently, in addition to the sciences, he had been tutored in brashness at Oxford.
“I see,” I responded, and left it at that. “Is there anything I can do for you, Mrs. Hudson?” I proffered.
She had composed herself by this point. “No. I’m sure you know what to do, Doctor Watson.”
“Then I shall go.” I put on my hat, nodded to the mother and son and took my leave.
Outside, the mist had turned to rain. As I hailed a cab, I heard Christopher Hudson calling to me from the doorstep. I turned as he approached. “Dr. Watson, he will use Holmes’s murder to beguile you. Be careful not to let him use this for his own purposes.”
He turned and walked away as if no response needed to be given to his statement. He was correct. We both understood what he meant. A cab pulled up behind me and I got in.
The conditions at the Bethlem Hospital had improved considerably over the past twenty years. The age of patients naked, chained and put on display for visitors willing to pay a few pence to see the “loonies” was an unpleasant memory. Gone were the barbaric therapies of binding patients in icy sheets and feeding them emetics and purgatives. These practices were replaced with “occupational therapy,” beneficial drugs and something called “psychoanalysis” introduced by the famous Austrian doctor Sigmund Freud. I had often discussed Dr. Freud with Holmes, who found the doctor’s theories to be overly complex and unsupported by any real physical evidence. I myself had read some of the Freud’s works and thought them to have merit, particularly his book on dreams. I found that fascinating.
As I mounted the steps of the institution and passed through the stately columns of the domed building, I recalled my last visit to this hospital that had been nicknamed “Bedlam” centuries ago. Ten years before, I had come to see a cousin, Thomas Callaghan, after he returned from the Boer War. He was suffering from profound melancholia and sleeplessness. He would lapse into a stuporous state and remain fixed and rigid for hours at a time. He was finally committed to hospital when he awoke one day and did not recognize his family. I’ve no doubt that these symptoms were residual from his experiences in that grisly African war. Once, in a more lucid moment, he confessed that his sleeplessness resulted from a vision of a battlefield strewn with dead. I do believe that the poor man had what I’ve observed as survivor’s guilt. After a yearlong stay, he was released from Bedlam and sent home “uncured.”
I entered the reception area and was greeted by a pleasant young woman who bade me to approach the desk and sign the register. “I am Dr. John Watson,” I volunteered, and, as I picked up a pen, I heard a voice call out, “Dr. Watson. I was told you were coming.”
A tall man, about sixty, with receding white hair and a similarly colored, trimmed beard hurried toward me. “I’m Chaplain Edward Geoffrey O’Donohue,” he said extending a hand.
Chaplain O’Donohue’s face was long, and the flesh around his eyes heavy, as if he were sleep deprived. He wore a very plain, dark three-piece suit with a watch chain hanging across the full width of his stomach. I thought it interesting that he wore no cross nor clerical collar nor any evidence of his occupation. There was kindness in his manner and a practiced gentleness in his voice.
“I’m sorry that Superintendent Smith couldn’t be here. I have been appointed to accompany you,” he said cordially. “What occasions this visit? Has some crime been committed?”
I hesitated, not wanting to say the words out loud. I motioned for us to move away from the reception desk to gain some privacy. This signaled the chaplain that my purpose here was one of great seriousness, and he leaned his ear toward me, hungry to hear what I had to impart. “It will be in tomorrow’s papers. Mr. Sherlock Holmes has been murdered.” I communicated this with as little emotion as possible.
The chaplain raised his head and blinked at me as if poleaxed. “Oh my word,” he stammered. “Villainous…This is terribly shocking… .I will take you to him at once.”
As if on a mission from God, Chaplain O’Donohue quickly led me out of the reception area, through a heavy glass and wrought-iron door and into a long, spacious gallery with floor-to-ceiling windows facing the front lawn. Approximately a dozen female patients populated this “women’s wing,” attended by nurses in uniform. The room was furnished with paintings, potted plants, birds in cages, statuary and carpeting. It had the atmosphere of a hotel. All this was a product of the renovation the notorious hospital underwent in the late part of the last century. The heating was updated, hot water pipes were installed as were new water closets, and the unpleasant smells that had previously been attributed to the mentally afflicted residents of Bedlam disappeared as those effluvia had actually been emanating from the old, decrepit toilets and urinals.
Chaplain O’Donohue moved briskly through the room, paying not the least bit of attention to the patients as I trailed a few hurried paces behind him. One woman rocked back and forth in front of a window with a silly grin as if amused by her own reflection. A group of four women was gathered around a table playing cards, appearing as natural as any bridge club. Halfway down the long gallery, we approached a woman painting at an easel. Another female patient stopped to admire the painting. “It’s so beautiful!” she declared.
“Thank you so much,” the artist beamed. The admirer reached out reverently to touch one of the paintbrushes, and, with great swiftness, the painter slapped her so hard across the face that it sounded like a pistol shot. The admirer let out a wail of despair as nurses rushed forward. We sped by and I felt a bit as if I were chasing the White Rabbit.
At the end of the gallery, we came to a heavy, arched wooden door and the chaplain dug his hand into his pocket. As I waited for him to open the door, a female patient, wringing her hands and staring into a birdcage, caught my eye. For some reason she looked vaguely familiar to me. She was fair-skinned with long waves of ungroomed raven tresses. She must have felt my gaze, for she turned toward me and fixed me in a dull stare with the most haunted eyes I have ever seen. We held that gaze for a moment, and then surprisingly the corners of her mouth turned up in a slight smile, just as quickly that smile turned into an expression of near panic.
“Here we are,” declared Chaplain O’Donohue. He pushed open the door and ushered me toward a stone stairway lit at intervals with old-fashioned, flickering gaslights. Together we descended.
“We plan to gut this entire basement wing when he’s moved to the new Rampton Secure Hospital. It’s scheduled to be completed this summer,” he said glancing back at me over his shoulder. “I’ll be glad when it happens. This place feels like one of King Henry’s dungeons.”
Indeed, this basement wing of the hospital did resemble something from the Middle Ages, cold and dark, with rough- hewn granite walls and floors and the sour smell of mildew.
After two flights down, we reached a guard sitting at a desk in an alcove. He was perhaps thirty years old, a bit too heavy for his blue uniform, with red hair protruding from under his cap. He was guarding a steel-sheeted door with rivets in it and passing his time with one of those weekly joke magazines geared to a fourteen-year-old mentality. The guard rose to his feet and nodded respectfully. “Afternoon, Chaplain,” he said, in an accent that revealed a working-class, East London heritage.
“Freddy will attend to you from here,” said Chaplain O’Donohue. And then, with a sympathetic hand on my shoulder, he continued, “I’m very sorry for the loss of your friend. It is a great loss to us all. If you’d like to talk about it…” He gave my shoulder another firm squeeze. I thanked the chaplain for his assistance and he departed.
Freddy removed a key ring from a hook on the wall. “Are you ready to go in, sir?”
“Yes, please,” I responded anxiously.
Freddy nodded, unlocked the steel-plated door and pushed it open. Beyond was a short, dimly lit circular r
oom with four wooden cell doors, each with three broad, tarnished iron bands bolted crosswise and a rectangular, barred peephole. All but one cell appeared to be empty. Freddy led to me to the furthest door and fumbled for a different key on his ring. I wasn’t sure what to expect. Eight years in this dungeon could make a man a raving lunatic or a hopeless catatonic.
Freddy unlocked the door, and it swung open on creaking hinges. Inside the cell, his left hand manacled with a length of chain bolted to the granite wall, was Professor James Moriarty. He laid his sunken eyes upon me and rasped, “So it’s true.”
2
E ight years of rotting in this cell had done nothing to dull Moriarty’s malevolence, both in appearance and character. Though now approaching sixty and slightly bent at the shoulders, Moriarty stood several inches over six feet. He had straight, heavy eyebrows above narrow, wolflike eyes. He was clean-shaven during his trial, but now had grown a broad moustache that turned down around the corners of his mouth. He was wearing faded dark pants, resembling tuxedo pants, a stained white shirt and, I guessed as an eccentricity, he was allowed to wear a cravat. He couldn’t have been wearing it for my benefit since my visit had been unannounced. The manacle around his wrist restricted his approach to the door but allowed him to move around the cell comfortably enough.
The cell was more hospitable than he deserved. There was a small writing desk and chair, a bed that looked far more accommodating than the usual cot, a toilet, basin and a rug that reminded me of the ones I’d seen in Afghanistan during the war. Freddy brought me a chair and then quickly departed. Moriarty took a seat behind his desk.
“How was he killed, Doctor?” He asked with a tone that gave me the genuine impression that he did not know the circumstances.
“A blow to the head,” I responded. Moriarty was fully aware of why I was here, but my intention was still to let him take the lead. If somehow he was behind this or knew anything of it, I wanted to finesse it out of him if possible. Letting egos as big as Moriarty’s demonstrate their superiority is often the best strategy. I knew there would be no concealing my distressed state of mind from him, and he would take full advantage of that, so I concentrated on being the reactor and not forcing some false confession that would allow him to lead me off on some useless unicorn hunt.
“A blow to the head!” he said angrily, as if offended by the thought of it.
“And another to the chest,” I volunteered.
He placed both hands on his desktop and exhaled as if trying to control his anger. “What does that stupid cunt Lestrade think?” he snarled. Despite his breeding and education, Moriarty often spoke like a whorehouse barker. During his trial, the judge had been forced to gag him more than once. He had shouted out threats to the witnesses, calling them all manner of vile names. Holmes had been convinced he was doing this for effect and even found it somewhat amusing. It was intended to intimidate and confuse. Everything that Moriarty did was thoroughly calculated.
“Scotland Yard is still investigating. I haven’t spoken to Lestrade yet,” I volunteered calmly.
Moriarty shook his head in disbelief. “Killed by a blow to the head. Perhaps it was a frying pan, eh? Perhaps it was that old cow, Mrs. Hudson?” he said mockingly.
“Look here, Professor, this act is wasted on me.” I wanted to be forceful with him and get him to drop this pretense of sarcasm. It was a thin disguise for whatever his real thoughts were.
“Quite right, Doctor Watson. The gravity of this situation demands our best comportment.” He opened a desk drawer. “Care for a cigar?” He produced two cigars from the drawer. He could see my surprise that he was allowed such luxuries.
Moriarty smirked, “The guards do me favors in return for compensation. We’ll all be here for quite a spell, so we’ve learned to get along.” He held the cigar toward me.
“Thank you, no,” I said curtly.
He lit his cigar, took a seat and puffed deeply, creating whirls of gray smoke in the cell. “You remember Colonel Moran, I assume?” He did not wait for an answer as there was no need. He was fully aware that, eighteen years prior, I had witnessed Moran’s attempt on Holmes’s life as Holmes and I crouched in the dark of the building across from the Baker Street flat and watched Moriarty’s paid assassin put a bullet in the head of the mannequin that Holmes had placed as a silhouetted decoy. “He died last week in that cell right over there,” he continued. “They determined it was a stroke. I was wondering why he wouldn’t answer me that morning.” Moriarty checked the ash on his cigar and tapped it into the sink. “His plan to kill Holmes, though flawed, had a certain elegance to it. Mind you, as I’ve said before, I did not authorize it. It was a totally renegade enterprise, but still I had to admire using a silenced air rifle to try and kill Holmes in his own world-famous Baker Street flat.” He paused for a long moment as if considering Moran’s death or some other thought that had flown into his head. “And now you tell me that someone has bashed in the skull of Sherlock Holmes. I won’t have it!” he bellowed and slammed his free hand down on the desk with thunderous force.
I honestly could not tell if this was an act. Moriarty was unstable, to be sure. He had demonstrated these outbursts before. In this case, it might be premeditated to throw me off.
“With Colonel Moran gone, I have no company any longer, you see, Doctor,” he said rather pathetically. “We were in the middle of a chess match.”
His sudden change of mood put me off balance. “Yes, well, I’m told you’ll be moved to Rampton shortly,” I offered, though I have no idea why I had the urge to give this monster any comfort. “Perhaps when you get there, they will—”
“So you’ve come here for help,” he barked, cutting me off and showing absolutely no sign of the sadness he had exhibited seconds before for his poor, departed friend, Colonel Moran.
“I came here because I thought you’d want to hear from me the circumstances of Holmes’s death,” I said calmly.
“Stop lying!” he shouted. “The man has been murdered, and you don’t have a fucking idea who did it, even though there are scores who would be happy to see him dead.”
“The vast majority of those are in prison,” I responded.
“As am I, and yet, you seem to suspect me.”
This exchange had been a misstep on my part. Both the clumsy lie that I’d come to inform him of the circumstances of the murder and then the pointed comment about the criminals in prison thanks to Holmes’s efforts. He would see through the lie and take the second comment as a challenge to match wits with him, exactly the kind of conversation I wanted to avoid.
“You’re quite right,” I acquiesced. “I have come here for your help.”
He was silenced by the abruptness with which I surrendered. It was a good strategy apparently. He let his eyes wander about the cell as he plotted his next move. He placed his cigar on the desk and fixed me in a level stare. “There are many things you don’t know about Sherlock Holmes, Doctor.”
It was a presumptuous statement, as if he knew more about Holmes than I. “There are many things we don’t know about all men, Professor,” I responded, betraying no resentment.
“That is quite true,” he said with satisfaction. “Now let me ask you a question. The elaborate lie that Holmes created of our mutual death struggle at the Reichenbach Falls, did he ever explain that to you?”
“Of course he did,” I responded.
“And what was his reason for that deception?” he asked slyly.
“It was to evade you and your murderous henchmen,” I said with a hint of contempt that I trust he detected.
“And did you see me during this adventure with Mr. Holmes in Switzerland?”
“Yes. I saw you running toward our moving train in a failed attempt to catch up with us.”
“Did you get a good look? Because I wasn’t at the train station,” he said silkily. “I was in Genoa involved in some other business matters during that time.”
I had to admit to myself that I had been direct
ed by Holmes to look at a man that he identified as Moriarty running toward the train that day. I’d never laid eyes on the professor before that time, so any taller-than-average commuter running for a train would have sufficed for Holmes purposes. Seeing Moriarty several years later, my memory could have easily transposed his face onto the man at the train station.
