Echoes of Sherlock Holmes

by Laurie R. King

  He shrugged in the way Frenchmen do, the kind that allows for so many interpretations. “Context will encourage understanding.”

  “Go ahead then, but please be quick about it.” I said it with bad grace, not feeling that this strange gentleman deserved more than the shallowest civility, his many apologies notwithstanding.

  “There is an organization operating through Europe,” he said as he took my arm and led me back to the bench. “A criminal organization that is as subtle as it is vast. It has operatives by the hundred, though I doubt that many of them know they are part of something larger than their own local gang. From the basest petty street thief to the most sophisticated stock swindler, the underworld of Europe has been sewn like threads into a tapestry of corruption, evil, and criminality. The replacement of priceless art with brilliant forgeries in the Louvre is but one example. The sale of stolen military secrets in Russia and England has been attributed to spies working for foreign governments, but those spies are actually under the employ of this organization of which I speak. Jewel thefts and quiet murders, apparent suicides and arson, intimidation and blackmail . . . these are all the tools of this empire.” He cut me a shrewd look. “I can see by your expression that you know something of which I speak.”

  “No . . .” I began but did not pursue what would have been a lie. Dupin nodded.

  “You think I am mistaken, perhaps?”

  “The organization to which you refer was the creation of Professor James Moriarty,” I said, “and he is dead.”

  “He is,” agreed Dupin. “Though his body was never found. Nor was, I believe, that of Mr. Holmes. Both men smashed upon cruel rocks and whisked away by an unforgiving river.”

  “That is what happened,” said I. “And with the death of Moriarty, so came the fall of his criminal empire.”

  “Ah, if that were only true,” said the old man. “You know firsthand that there have been serious attacks on the credibility of M. Holmes since his death, just as I presume you are aware that these attacks have been made by friends and—some say—relatives of the late professor.”

  “Impugning a dead man’s good name is the act of a coward,” I said, “but that hardly suggests that Moriarty’s confederates are behind it.”

  “You’re saying they’re not?”

  “Oh, they are, but it is not because they want to defend the memory of a man they claim was cruelly wronged by M. Holmes. No, hardly that. By deflating the importance of what Holmes achieved, they reduce the veracity of his claim that Moriarty was anything more than an eccentric academic. I believe you suspected this, which is why, after two years of silence, you chose to publish an account of the last battle between your friend and his great enemy.”

  I nodded. “As you say. But to my point about Moriarty being—as Holmes put it—the Napoleon of crime, has not criminal behavior dropped significantly since Moriarty’s fall?”

  “In England? Mm, perhaps it would appear so, from a certain distance. Arrests have, to be sure. Obvious crime has changed in frequency. But, Doctor, the death of Professor Moriarty has not resulted in the destruction of his empire.”

  “It has.”

  “It could not have,” insisted Dupin, “because Moriarty was not the emperor of crime that your late friend suggested. He was formidable, make no mistake, and had he lived he might well have risen to become the true king of kings to the world of crime. A strong case can be made for that, though not an unbreakable one. After all, Moriarty became known, did he not? M. Holmes discovered his name and was able to provoke him so thoroughly that in the end, the professor was trapped into believing that there was nowhere left to turn except direct physical attack. Alas, M. Holmes rose to this challenge and they fought like animals on a cliff, and in their folly plunged to their deaths.”

  We sat for a moment with the heaviness of his words weighing upon us. I wanted to argue, to defend Holmes’s rash action in descending to barbarity when his intellect had always been his keenest weapon. Even now, three years since that horrible moment, I could not understand why he did it in that way. He robbed the world of himself and of all the good he could do.

  Finally, I cleared my throat and said, “Holmes sacrificed his life to protect the world from Moriarty.”

  “He did,” agreed Dupin, “but the matter has greatly disturbed me, for the way in which it played out offends logic. Having read your account I know that it offends you, too.”

  “For someone who has never met Sherlock Holmes or Professor Moriarty you profess to know much about them and their motives.”

  Dupin nodded. “It is my particular, ah, method to try and open a door into the head of a person in order to try and think as they think. It is a kind of subjective analysis overseen by logical process, do you follow?”

  “I believe so.” And I did, because I had read about it in Poe’s stories—and seen examples of it with Holmes. To understand a criminal, or at times a victim, he needed to tune his thoughts to what he supposed theirs must have been. I said as much to Dupin and he nodded.

  “Very good, Doctor, and well put. You are a remarkable fellow and perhaps do not give yourself enough credit in your accounts of M. Holmes’s investigations.” He patted his thighs with his palms. “As for Messieurs Holmes and Moriarty . . . their actions trouble me because they are out of keeping with who they were. Moriarty was, at least in terms of his dominance of crime here in England, a Napoleon of sorts. Holmes was, inarguably, an intellect of the first order. If you have not exaggerated his powers—and I believe the contrary to be the case—one might say he was a Da Vinci. Ahead of his time, and energetic enough to make sure that he did not squander his gifts. For my part, Doctor, I confess that I have been content to allow the police to consult occasionally with me, but I seldom went in active pursuit of a case. My family was once wealthy and we fell upon hard times, and perhaps I suffer from a kind of familial ennui. I have my skills, but I have always lacked the energy to find new battles in which to test them.”

  I immediately thought of Mycroft Holmes, who Sherlock said suffered from a similar kind of lassitude.

  “Unlike me, M. Holmes appeared to believe that he had some obligation to oppose villainy. Perhaps it began as a hobby, something to satisfy a mind that needed some problem upon which to chew, but I do not think so. Was he not already studying the science of criminality in its many forms when first you made his acquaintance? Medicine, surgery, anatomy, chemistry, and more? His natural gift of intelligence may explain the curiosity he had for knowledge, but it cannot explain the depth and breadth of the specific fields of knowledge to which he became addicted.”

  I almost flinched at that last word but managed to keep it off my face. “What is your point?”

  “Holmes was not born to a study of crime,” said Dupin, “but instead made it his particular field of expertise. It is possible that he will influence the next generations of actual police detection, should they actually begin to study his methods. They should. Some are poking at it even now.”

  I nodded. That was true enough. Since we met, in 1881, I had seen some Scotland Yard detectives attempt to employ Holmes’s method of evidence collection and analysis. Not to great degrees of success, but the influence was there to be seen.

  “That M. Holmes was making inroads into the local empire of Professor Moriarty is evident. But there was a greater battle to be fought and surely Holmes was aware of it. The larger—the true—empire of crime is still out there. I cannot and will not believe that Sherlock Holmes was unaware of it, or indifferent to it.”

  “And if he was?”

  “Then why throw his life away in a senseless battle? Why die to remove a rook or bishop from the board when the other side still has so many pieces? Why leave the ruling pieces in play?” He shook his head. “No, Doctor, M. Holmes’s death as it appears spits upon logic. It offends M. Holmes’s own methods. He would not sacrifice himself when there is so much work still to be done.”

  “He did it to save others,” I said. “T
here were threats made—”

  “Doctor, please,” said Dupin. “Although you believe Holmes to be sentimental toward you and a few others, he was a general in the midst of a great war. When the stakes are this high then what are a few lives?” He paused. “Oh dear, I can see that I am being offensive once more.”

  “Continue with your argument,” I said, my words squeezed from a tight throat.

  He sighed. “It would have been much smarter, much more in keeping with the subtlety and vision of a man like Holmes, to simply put a bullet in Moriarty’s head. No, don’t yell, Doctor, I am being practical. This is war of which we speak, and although there are not vast armies marching under banners or cannons firing, have no doubt that nations could fall. The lives of many thousands of innocents are at risk. Knowing this, what would it be to a general to kill an enemy who has vowed to continue doing great harm? Would you, a former soldier, eschew taking such a shot if you knew it would have saved the life of your friend? Could you sit there and tell me with a hand raised to all that you believe, that you would not fire a bullet into the heart of a monster who would willingly kill the helpless and innocent? Yes, of course you would, because even though you are a doctor sworn to protect life you are also a practical man of the world. Wars happen and wars need to be fought.”

  “Perhaps,” I said softly.

  “The war rages on, Doctor,” he said, and he sounded sad. “If I were a younger man I might even shake off my laziness and step onto the field. I daresay I might have struck a blow or two—yes sir, I may have.”

  “Perhaps,” I said again. A bit unkindly.

  He half turned. “This war of which I speak is not entirely concerned with stealing paintings and swindling the stock market. Men like Moriarty have bigger ambitions, and it is not an exaggeration to say that they, or their trusted agents, stand in the shadows of thrones. They have the ear of kings and presidents, and this is a process that has been grinding forward for many years. Decades without a doubt, and perhaps centuries. But the cunning! In Canada there is a man named Simon Newcomb who is revered, like Moriarty, as a mathematician, but he is every bit the secret and nefarious manipulator of criminality as the professor. Adam Worth of Germany is a colleague of his, and Duke Yurivich of Russia, and Bellini of Florence.”

  “I don’t know those names.”

  “You would not because they do not choose to be known. That I know them is significant because I have paid attention.”

  “I thought you said you don’t get involved, that you lack energy for this kind of thing?”

  “Oh, this is a recent burst of energy that has come too little and, I fear, too late. I have made some discreet inquiries and drawn inferences from information I have obtained, but what can I do? I’m an old man cursed with a curious mind and a change of heart that has come too late in my own game.”

  “Then, forgive me, but why are we having this conversation?” I demanded.

  “Because wars are fought by the young, Doctor, and you are much younger than I.”

  “I am not a detective.”

  “Nor was I. That word did not exist when I began assisting the police with a few of their more outré cases. But what does that matter? You assist the police even now, and it would surprise me if they did not expect from you some of the same methods and observations for which M. Holmes has become so famous.”

  “I do not pretend to be his equal,” I protested, “not even by a tenth or hundredth.”

  He flapped a hand to dismiss that. “I make no such accusation. My point is that you are involved in this war, Doctor, and I merely wanted to provide some useful intelligence. Listen to me when I tell you that the war is ongoing, and it is much larger and more extensive than you know.”

  “So you say,” I said, still stubbornly fixed on my belief that Holmes sacrificed himself to remove the enemy general from the field.

  He raised the flower. “So says this, Doctor Watson.”

  “It is a flower. What of it?”

  “One was sent to me when it became obvious in some quarters that I was asking the wrong kind of questions to certain persons.”

  “Meaning what? That it is a threat?”

  “A warning more than a threat,” he said. “Or . . . perhaps it is even a challenge.” He moved his fingers so that the stem rolled between them and the flower twirled. Because he stood at the edge of the shadows thrown by an elm tree, the tips of each petal moved in and out of darkness only to return to the light again. “I told you that this is a subspecies of Leontopodium alpinum, but I did not give you its full and complete scientific name.”

  “Which is?”

  He looked into the heart of the flower. “Leontopodium alpinum Reichenbachium.”

  “I beg your pardon . . . ?” I gasped.

  “Yes,” said Dupin, “it is a delicate flower that grows in meadows and along streams that feed the Reichenbach Falls of Switzerland.” He raised his eyes to study me. “I see that you remember now where it was you last saw this singular bloom. You would have taken particular note of it only in passing, for there are many mountain flowers in that region of the world, but it grows along the banks of the river. And as a friend of the late M. Holmes, there is no doubt at all that you scoured the riverbanks for miles in hopes of finding your friend.”

  “Yes,” I said weakly. “But what does it mean? Who would put these flowers here, on an empty grave? And to what end?”

  “Those are indeed the correct questions,” said Dupin. “Who indeed, and why?”

  “You think it is a warning from these other criminals?” I demanded. “From confederates of Moriarty?”

  “Perhaps,” he said.

  “That makes no sense,” I said. “It calls attention to their existence, even if in a vague way. How does that benefit them?”

  “Maybe it does not. Surely M. Holmes had secret friends and allies, some of whom you know and some you do not. Perhaps this is a message from them.”

  “What kind of message? After all, a flower was sent to you.”

  “And how suggestive that is,” he said.

  “In what way?”

  He spread his hands. “Are we not having this conversation? Have we not discovered that we are also players on the same chessboard?”

  “If that’s what we are,” I said cautiously.

  “I prefer to think we are,” he said. “Though it makes me wonder if similar flowers have been sent to other addresses and inspired other encounters and conversations. Who knows? It is a large and interesting world.”

  “It does not explain who sent them,” I protested, “or who laid this bouquet on my friend’s grave.”

  “Do you call it that?” he asked. “Was it a bouquet you discovered?”

  “A scattered one,” I said. “I collected them and laid them as you see.”

  “And ruined evidence in the process, no doubt,” he said, once more sighing.

  “What evidence? They are flowers.”

  “They are pieces of a puzzle, Dr. Watson. You see them as a whole, but perhaps they were not brought here by one person, but by many. Perhaps there has been a whole procession of people drawn here to this empty grave, each one following a clue whose connection is obvious.”

  “It was not obvious to me. I received no flower.”

  “No, of course not. If this was a message by someone who understood M. Holmes, then surely they would have understood you as well. Your devotion to your friend is well known, and surely you would come to visit his grave. A simple observation of your habits would establish that.”

  “Perhaps,” I said grudgingly, taking his point. “So naturally I would find the flowers.”

  “As you have.”

  “Again I say, to what end? Why would someone take such elaborate pains to make so obscure a statement?”

  Dupin sniffed the flower, smiled sadly, crossed the grass, and, with some effort and a flicker of arthritic pain, bent to place it on the green grass of the quiet, empty grave. Then he held out his hand for th
e dried one he had received via the post. I gave it to him and Dupin placed it next to the others. I took his arm and helped him straighten. For an old and infirm man, his arm was solid and muscular, suggestive of a great deal of wiry strength in his youth. He took his arm back as if uncomfortable with a younger person supporting him, and then stood for a long moment, rubbing the handle of his cane with the ball of his thumb, a thoughtful expression on his face.

  “This world is cold and vicious so much of the time,” he said at length, “and it is easy to fall out of love with it. But . . . if an old and frequently rude man may be permitted to give advice to a friend who has many years left ahead of him . . . ?”

  I nodded.

  “Do not lose hope,” said Dupin.

  “In what? Hope for winning the war? You paint it as an impossible fight.”

  “Oh, no,” he said quickly, “the war cannot be won. It can only be fought. It needs to be fought, and with intelligence and energy. It needs to be fought with bright minds, strong arms, and good hearts. But that is not the hope to which I refer.”

  I stood. “Then what, sir, for I confess that your meaning is still as obscure to me now as it was when first you spoke.”

  “What I mean, dear doctor, is that you should not believe that you are alone in this fight. There are other players on the board, and unlike chess, there are no inflexible rules. Who knows? A piece once removed from the board may yet be played.”

  “Riddles to the last,” I said.

  He gave another Gallic shrug. “Perhaps. Time, like distance, often provides clarity to understanding.” He paused and cocked his head. “Tell me, Doctor, do you believe in ghosts?”

  “Not as such, no.”

  He smiled and there was an enigmatic twinkle in his eye. “Neither do I.”

  With that he tipped his hat and, leaning heavily on his cane, walked away along the crooked path in the old cemetery.

  I returned to the bench and sat for some time in the quiet of the cemetery. No one else accosted me. I will admit that my thoughts were scattered and dark, for much of what Dupin told me was deeply troubling. A war? A plague of master criminals, uniting to form a secret empire across the globe? It was appalling. And it made me feel the loss of my friend so very deeply. How could he leave us when his powers and wisdom were so badly required?