Who Thinks Evil: A Professor Moriarty Novel (Professor Moriarty Novels)

by Kurland, Michael

  “Left, has he?” asked the younger one, pursing his lips and brushing his nose thoughtfully with the tips of his fingers.

  “Sorry, miss,” said the older one with the thick brush mustache, jumping to his feet and standing as ramrod straight as a sergeant on parade. “I’m Mr. Mortimer, and my associate here’s Mr. Pellew. We don’t mean to be a bother, indeed we don’t. But the baron’s coach has been awaiting the baron in the mews, horse, coachman, and all, for these past five hours, and the baron has not appeared in its vicinity. If you could tell us just when he left, or where he was headed, we would be most appreciative. It’s our job, you see, to look after the baron, and it’s as much as our job is worth to lose track of him. Sadly, he’s not always thoughtful enough to enumerate his comings and goings before he comes and goes.”

  Mollie looked at them thoughtfully. “You’re a pair of his watchdogs, then? Why didn’t you come inside all this time and wait in comfort, such as it is? Like that Mr., ah, Fetch, who follows him about everywhere.”

  Mr. Mortimer smiled. “We’re his outside watchdogs, miss.”

  “Speaking of which,” said Mr. Pellew, “where is the aforesaid Mr. Fetch?” He peered about the room as though he expected Fetch to spring up from some chest or cabinet like clockwork.

  “Why a young, handsome gentleman like the baron needs to be guarded and escorted hither and yon is more than I know,” Mollie said. “P’raps you could explain it to me.”

  “It’s just the way of things, ma’am,” Mr. Pellew said, spreading his arms wide in explanation.

  “It’s his mother, you see,” added Mr. Mortimer, “and his grandmama. They don’t want to know just what he’s doing, if you see what I mean, but they don’t want him to get into any trouble while doing it.”

  “Well,” Mollie said, shaking her head. “That’s as may be, I suppose.”

  “You say he’s gone?” asked Mr. Pellew. “And Mr. Fetch with him? Do you know just when they left?”

  “I don’t keep a watch on my gentlemen callers,” Mollie said severely, dropping primly down onto the couch and waving the two men into seats.

  “Not even to receive, ah, recompense?” suggested Mortimer, cautiously settling into an overstuffed chair.

  “Come now,” Mollie said severely. “Do you think we’re a gaggle of streetwalkers in here?”

  Mortimer considered the question and decided not to say just what it was he thought.

  “So you don’t keep track of the comings and goings of your guests?” Pellew asked, cocking his head to one side and peering at her like a sparrow inspecting a beetle.

  “Only as it happens in the course of providing for their amusement,” Mollie told him. “The porter sees them in, but there’s a side door by which they may depart, if they’ve a mind to. At the end of the evening the girls tell me what, ah, services have been provided, and it’s put to the gentleman’s account.”

  “So you can’t say for sure that the baron and Mr. Fetch have indeed left, is that so?”

  Mollie shifted nervously in her seat. “I didn’t see them leave, if that’s what you mean, but it was some time past. I was in the upstairs hall, it must be a good hour ago, and Mr. Fetch was no longer in his chair outside the room. And when Mr. Fetch is gone from the hall, it stands to reason that Baron Renfrew is gone from the room.”

  “Excuse me?” asked Mr. Mortimer.

  “Mr. Fetch, like a faithful dog—perhaps that’s why he’s called Fetch, do you suppose?—always waits outside his master’s door. I have no notion of what he fancies he’s guarding his master from, but he’s quite earnest about it. One of the girls once offered to entertain him in her room while he was waiting, as an act of kindness, you might say, but he would have none of it. Very serious and dedicated, Mr. Fetch. Nancy was quite put out. No one had ever turned her down before; it’s usually her what does the turning down. So we give him a comfy chair and a bit of fizz from the gasogene, with just a touch of brandy to take away the nasty taste, as he says, and there he sits until the baron emerges.”

  Mortimer nodded. “I see,” he said.

  “So, since Mr. Fetch is gone, the baron likewise must have emerged.”

  “But you didn’t actually see him leave?”

  “I can’t say I did, no.”

  “Did anyone?”

  Mollie sighed. “It’s quite late. Most of the girls are asleep.”

  Mr. Pellew sat primly on the red plush sofa behind him and began absently playing with one of the tassels that formed a fringe around the sofa’s edge. “With which young lady was the baron spending the evening?” he inquired. “Perhaps we could speak with her.”

  Mollie pushed herself to her feet. “Needs must as wants will, I always say.” She sighed once more and shook her head sadly and left the room.

  Half a minute later they heard her scream.

  Mortimer and Pellew jumped to their feet and rushed upstairs, followed closely by the porter, who brandished a great oak cudgel that had mysteriously appeared in his hand. The screams stopped as they reached the long, dimly lit hallway, but doors were opening and the young ladies of the establishment, their flannel nightgowns held tightly around them against the draft, were peering cautiously out. At the end of the hallway one of the loo players, cards in hand, had emerged from the cardroom and was sniffing the air cautiously. Fire was a constant worry in these old buildings. Seeing nothing of that sort amiss, the man retreated back into the cardroom with one last aggravated sniff and a muttered “Women!” and slammed the door.

  Several of the girls had gathered around one of the open doors. Mortimer paused to turn up the gas on a wall sconce near the door, and bright white light from the mantle filled the hallway. The bedroom was a rectangle about fourteen by twenty feet, holding an oversized bed, a nondescript night table, a drop-front bureau in the style of Queen Anne, a rose-colored wardrobe with a frieze of somber angels painted around the top, and a washstand with a porcelain washbasin. A colored etching of a schooner in a windstorm, an oil painting of a cow, and two framed mirrors hung on the walls, which were otherwise covered with a flocked wallpaper in a tulip pattern.

  A girl lay stretched out on the bed, and Miss Mollie was bending over her. The light from the hall bouncing off the mirrors onto the walls and ceiling cast weird reflections around the room and kept most of it in deep shadow as the men entered, and for a second it seemed that mysterious half-seen entities were gliding about in the unlit corners.

  A shaft of light illuminated the face of the girl, a pretty, freckled-faced young redhead. She lay on her back, naked, with a sheet thrown over her middle for modesty, her hands and feet spread apart and tied with some sort of thick satin cord to the four bedposts. Some trick of the lighting seemed to cast a dark shadow across the sheet.

  “I didn’t know our master was a devotee of the Marquis de Sade,” remarked Mr. Mortimer quietly.

  “Let us not dwell on this,” said Pellew, turning away and gazing earnestly at another part of the room. “Untie the girl, Miss Mollie, and I’ll see that she gets an extra two—no, five—pounds for her, ah, trouble.”

  “Rose, she called herself,” Mollie said without looking up. “Because of her coloring, if you see what I mean; red hair, red cheeks. Rose.”

  “Called herself?”

  One of the girls in the hall lit a second gas mantle, which threw more light on the bed. Mortimer stepped closer and peered over Mollie’s shoulder. Rose’s eyes stared sightlessly at the mirrored ceiling. Her mouth was open, her lips shaped into an oval O—an eternal silent scream of horror. A deep gash splayed open her too-white skin from her throat down between her breasts and disappeared beneath the sheet. What had seemed a dark shadow across the middle of the bed was a pool of slowly congealing blood.

  “Well, I’ll be…,” began Mortimer, taking an involuntary step backward, his hand across his mouth. After a few moments of silent gulping, he managed, “What a horrible thing! Horrible!”

  Pellew turned back and stepped closer t
o the bed to examine the carnage. “Awful, indeed,” he said. “Tragic. Such concentrated fury attacking this poor girl. I haven’t seen anything like this since—well, for some time.” He turned to Mortimer. “You don’t think this could be the work of … our master … do you?” he asked in an undertone. “There were … rumors … at the time, I remember.”

  “Bosh,” said Mortimer. “Then and now—bosh! Don’t believe it for an instant. Something horrible has happened here, but you can’t think that … the baron … had aught to do with it.”

  “Well, where is he, then?” asked Pellew, peering around the room.

  Suddenly Mollie screamed once more and jumped back from the bed. “Something grabbed my leg!” she shrieked.

  The gaggle of girls gathered in the hallway outside shrieked in sympathy, then shrieked again as an arm emerged from beneath the bed, its hand reaching … reaching …

  Mortimer and Pellew jumped for the arm and pulled. It was attached to a wizened little man in a white shirt and black breeches who slid out from under the bed and lay prone and motionless on the floor. The girls shrieked once more.

  “Why, it’s Mr. Fetch,” Mollie said, peering down at the man.

  Fetch opened his eyes and blinked at the light. “Where am I?” he croaked, rolling over. “What happened?”

  “Never mind that,” Mr. Mortimer said severely. “Where’s the baron?”

  Fetch tried to sit up but lay back down with a weak groan. “I was bumped,” he said. “Banged. Bopped aside the head. Something grabbed me from behind, and—oww!” He had tried to touch the spot above his left ear where the damage had been done, but the pain was too great.

  “What sort of something hit you?” Mollie asked.

  One of the girls outside the door put her hand to her mouth. “Ghosts and ghoulies,” she whispered in a loud and earnest whisper. “There’s strange things walks these corridors at night.”

  “Mighty strange,” one of the other girls agreed. “I have felt their presence as a cold, clammy hand on my back in the dark!”

  “None stranger than yourself, Gladys Plum,” Mollie said severely. “Go back to your rooms now, all of you, and stop frightening each other, or you’ll be feeling my cold hand where it’ll do some good.”

  The cluster of young women looked at her wide-eyed and made no attempt to move.

  “Where is your master?” Mortimer repeated, bending over the prostrate Fetch. “Where is the baron?”

  “Don’t know,” Fetch mumbled. “Where am I?”

  Mollie squatted on the balls of her feet next to Fetch. “You’re in Rose’s room,” she told him. “Until moments ago you were under Rose’s bed.”

  Moving his head gingerly, Fetch looked around the room. “I was?” he asked, wonderingly. “What was I doing there? Where’s the baron got to, then?”

  “Wait!” Mortimer said. “What’s that sound?”

  “Sound?” Pellew straightened up and looked searchingly around the room.

  “Be quiet and listen,” Mortimer instructed, holding his forefinger to his lips.

  They listened silently for a few moments. A couple of the girls in the hall giggled nervously, but Mollie looked sternly at them and all giggles subsided.

  “What sort of sound?” Mollie whispered.

  “It’s a sort of soft scratching, thumping, sobbing sort of sound,” Mortimer said. “Coming from…” He looked around him, trying to locate the sound. “There it is again, but I cannot tell where it’s coming from.”

  Mollie lifted her eyes to the ceiling and held her breath. “I do hear it,” she said. She waved a finger around the room like a compass needle gone wild and then steadied it to point to the wardrobe. “There,” she said. “It comes from there.”

  Pellew tiptoed over to the wardrobe with exaggerated caution and paused in front of the door to look back at Mortimer. Mortimer nodded and, standing behind him, the porter raised high his cudgel.

  Pellew stood to the side of the wardrobe and yanked at the door handle—with no effect. He yanked again and again it did not budge, but this time a loud squeal emerged from inside the wardrobe.

  Pellew frowned and, moving in front of the door, took the ornate round knob firmly in both hands. Spreading his legs to brace his feet against the sides of the wardrobe, he yanked again with all his might. There was a creaking and a snapping and the door flew open, throwing Pellew onto his back in an undignified sprawl.

  In the wardrobe were hanging a few frocks and jackets, a teal blue velvet cloth coat, and a red silk dressing gown with Japanese pretensions. Crouched under the dressing gown in as tight a ball as she could manage was a small girl in a frilly white chemise, her pert round face wet with tears and red with the long effort at suppressing a scream—a series of screams—that now began to tumble forth.

  Mollie squinted at the girl and took a step forward. “Here now, here now, Pamela,” she said sharply. “Let’s have none of that. You must control yourself. Whatever were you doing in the wardrobe? You must take a deep breath and control yourself.”

  Pamela gulped and stopped sobbing long enough to take a deep breath, then broke out into a fresh paroxysm of sobs.

  Mortimer moved up and took the girl in his arms, patting her sympathetically if awkwardly on the back. “There, there,” he said. “I have a gel at home just about your age, maybe a peck younger. You mustn’t upset yourself so. What were you doing in the wardrobe?”

  Pamela sobbed.

  “Were you there while … it … happened?” Pellew asked. “Whatever it was? Take a deep breath, now.”

  Pamela looked at him, took a deep breath, and sobbed.

  “I don’t think,” Mollie said, “that deep breathing is going to help.”

  Mortimer took an oversized white handkerchief from his jacket pocket and wiped off Pamela’s moist face. “So it would seem,” he agreed.

  “I’ll take her into her room,” Mollie said, gathering the girl into her own arms. “We’ll talk to her later, after she’s had a chance to … whatever it is she needs to do.”

  Mr. Mortimer looked at Mr. Pellew, and Mr. Pellew looked at Mr. Mortimer. “Go for the specials,” Mortimer told Pellew. “I’ll stay here and do what can be done.”

  “Put someone at each door,” Pellew said.

  “Of course,” Mortimer agreed, “but I fear the horse is long gone.”

  “What horse?” Mollie demanded. “What specials?”

  “The Special Household Branch of the CID, at Scotland Yard, ma’am,” Mortimer told her. “There’s nothing for it, I’m afraid. There’s been murder done, and His—ah, Baron Renfrew is missing.”

  “What household?” Mollie squealed, her hands flying up to her face. “I don’t want the rozzers in here,” she protested, looking around wildly as though she expected them to jump through the window any second.

  “Oh, these aren’t the regular police,” Mortimer assured her. “This is a very discreet group of gentlemen specially trained to handle situations like this. Mr. Pellew will take our coach and fetch them. Will you please see that all outer doors are secured?”

  “Situations like what?” Mollie asked. “Just what is this’ere Special Household Branch?”

  “Go, Mr. Pellew,” Mr. Mortimer said, taking charge with a firm hand. “See to the door, if you please, Miss Mollie. All will be revealed to you in the fullness of time. Which in the present case will probably be within the next half hour, I should say.”

  Mr. Pellew trotted off down the corridor, the cluster of girls parting before him like the Red Sea before Moses. If, Pellew thought, a religious simile wasn’t too inappropriate at a time like this.

  “I say!” a voice bellowed from down the hall. “Will you girls please keep it down? We’re trying to play cards in here!”

  [CHAPTER THREE]

  INDECISION

  Pleasure is nothing else

  but the intermission of pain.

  —JOHN SELDEN

  MUMMER TOLLIVER, Professor Moriarty’s diminutive ass
istant, perched precariously on the seat of the green damask armchair in the Barnetts’ sitting room. His small patent-leather-shod feet swung to and fro viciously, a visual counterpoint to the sharp anger in his voice as he spoke.

  “You got in to see the professor, is what,” he said.

  “Just barely,” Benjamin Barnett admitted from the depths of his overstuffed easy chair.

  “But they won’t let me see him, is what,” Mummer continued, “and they wouldn’t pass along the bundle of necessaries what I had brought for him. ‘Concerned for his safety,’ they says. Me, what’s been the professor’s confidant and midget-of-all-work for the better part of two decades. And it ain’t just me what they’re so-called protecting him from. Mr. Maws is upset ’cause they won’t let him bring no cleaned and starched and pressed clothes to the professor. It ain’t right is what he says for the professor to be without his shirts and collars and suchwhats. And if it comes to that, it ain’t right is what I says.”

  “Mr. Maws?” Barnett’s wife, Cecily, looked up from her seat at the writing desk between the tall front windows. “Oh yes, the professor’s butler.”

  “Butler and facto-te-tum and bodyguard when such is called for—not that the professor can’t take care of ’imself in a scrap.”

  “The authorities are making it quite difficult to get in to visit the professor,” Barnett agreed. “Special forms from the Home Office, special permission from the governor of the prison, neither of which they seem inclined to pass along easily. It took them four days to process my request, and I’m a journalist.”

  “Yes, well, I’m a midget,” said the mummer. “Ain’t midgets got no rights in this’ere queendom?”

  Cecily raised an eyebrow. “Queendom?”

  “Stands to reason, don’t it?” said the mummer. “T’ain’t nary a kingdom at the present moment, is it?”

  “No, t’ain’t,” Cecily agreed.

  “Even when I got to see the professor,” Barnett expanded, “they didn’t make it easy. They brought me into a tiny stone-walled room with a guard at the door—inside the door, mind you, and sat me across from him at a wooden table that was screwed to the floor. And the chairs—they also were fastened in place. Which place was too far from the table to comfortably write or whatever. A truly large guard stood between us and glowered down at us as we talked. The professor was wearing manacles, which the guards refused to remove. And they searched me twice—at the inner gate and then again at the door to the room. I had to empty my pockets. I was allowed to bring in nothing but my notebook and a pencil. Only one pencil, mind you. I was worried the whole time that the point would break while I took notes.”