“Exactly!” said the duke, thumping a thick forefinger on the arm of his chair.
“So you’ve sent for me,” said Moriarty.
“I, ah, wouldn’t put it precisely like that,” said Lord Montgrief, “but to simplify the situation—to cut through to the heart of the matter—yes.”
“I’m honored,” Moriarty said dryly.
They sat in a room toward the rear of the ground floor, Moriarty and the four men whose influence, and whose great need, had plucked him from Newgate Prison and brought him to Wythender Hall for this meeting. Moriarty put down the cup of Soochow Special Reserve tea and leaned back in his chair. Judging by the strained expressions of his hosts, it had been an act of will for them to wait the almost two hours since he had arrived. The walls of the room were lined with bookshelves; the floor held a great oaken table of advanced age and a cluster of nondescript chairs. For reasons lost in antiquity it was known as the map room, although no maps were in evidence. One of the two men who had not yet spoken had been introduced to Moriarty as Sir Anthony Darryl, with no further elucidation; the other, a dour-looking angular man of about forty who had pulled his chair away from the table, and now sat in a corner of the room glowering at the others, had not been introduced, and the oversight had not been explained.
“You have done Her Majesty a service once before,” said His Grace, “and it has not been forgotten. For this reason, and at the suggestion of Mycroft Holmes, who occupies a position unique, influential, and, ah, otherwise indescribable in Her Majesty’s government, you have been called. Mr. Holmes insists that you can be trusted.”
“I respect Mr. Holmes,” Moriarty said, “and will try not to do anything to disabuse him of his opinion. What’s to happen to me if I take your assignment?”
“What’s—?”
“In regard to my present, ah, legal troubles.”
“Ah! You are, as of the moment you accept the task we put to you, granted a royal pardon for the, ah, specific offense in question,” His Grace said.
“And any other charges that might arise from the same offense,” added the man introduced as Sir Anthony.
Moriarty removed his pince-nez and began polishing the lenses with a piece of flannel from his jacket pocket. He raised an eyebrow. “Satisfactory,” he said. “I request the right to establish my innocence of the charges at some future time and present such proof to the home secretary.”
“Totally unnecessary,” His Grace said.
“Not to me,” said Moriarty. “I will not tolerate being used in the fashion that … somebody is attempting to do.”
His Grace nodded. “Very well,” he said. “I’ll see that you are able to present such evidence and have it put on the record—whatever the appropriate record may be.”
“Thank you, Your Grace,” Moriarty said. “Now back to the matter at hand. Describe for me, as best you can, your dilemma.”
“We are doing what we can do,” said His Grace. “Putting such men to work as we can do, without further endangering the situation, but I doubt whether that will accomplish anything truly useful.”
“I take it that this is on the same matter that Your Lordship discussed with me yesterday?” Moriarty asked Montgrief.
“Just so,” the earl agreed.
“A man has disappeared and you want my help to find him?”
“It’s a bit more complicated than that,” said Montgrief.
“I thought it might be,” Moriarty said.
His Lordship turned to the gentlemen to his left. “Sir Anthony,” he said, “perhaps it would be best if you were to tell, ah, to explain … to narrate the story as we know it so far. Sir Anthony,” His Lordship explained, turning back to Moriarty, “has a special post within the Home Office.”
Sir Anthony, a youthful-looking, slender man with a handsome face with a sharp nose and troubled blue eyes, stared thoughtfully at the far wall and took a curved and twisted briar pipe from his jacket pocket. He filled it from a pouch from another pocket, tamped the tobacco, and, thrusting a wood sliver from yet another pocket into the flame of a gas fixture on the wall, puffed the pipe into life. “The missing man,” he said finally, dropping the wood sliver into a convenient cup, “is known as Baron Renfrew. He disappeared from an … establishment … on Gladston Square eight days ago. He had been visiting a young woman of, um, what I believe is usually described as ‘loose character,’ a resident of the establishment.” He paused and looked questioningly at Moriarty.
“I see,” Moriarty said. “Pray, continue.”
“Ah,” said Sir Anthony. “Just so. When Baron Renfrew’s men came in to look for him—they estimate it was five in the morning, His Lordship being some hours past his usual departure time—it was discovered that His Lordship had indeed left some time before, but how and to where is unknown.”
“Who are these ‘men’?” Moriarty asked.
“Pardon?”
“These ‘men’ who came in looking for the baron, who are they, and why does he have ‘men?’”
“Well…”
“I’ve encountered many a baron walking about entirely unencumbered with superfluous ‘men.’”
“It’s his grandmama, you see,” explained Sir Anthony. “She is, ah, quite wealthy, and she does worry about him. So she employs several gentlemen to, you might say, watch over him.”
“I see,” said Moriarty.
“Then there was His Lordship’s manservant, who was awaiting His Lordship in the corridor outside the young woman’s room. He had been knocked on the head, rendered unconscious, and was unaware of the manner of His Lordship’s going.”
“Curious,” said Moriarty. “Who did the knocking?”
“He doesn’t know. He didn’t see his assailant. It may have been His Lordship.”
“Ah!” said Moriarty.
“The woman, a respectful and industrious young woman by all accounts, whose name apparently was Elsbeth Hooten, but who called herself Rose, had been murdered most foully with a sharp implement of some sort and then butchered after her death. At least it is to be hoped that it was after her death.”
Moriarty raised an eyebrow. “Butchered?”
“Indeed so,” said Sir Anthony. “In an unseemly and, if I may put it this way, highly original manner.”
Moriarty leaned forward, his hands laced together under his chin. “Come now,” he said briskly, “this is most … interesting. When you say ‘an original manner,’ can you describe for me just what was done? Not in all the presumably repulsive details, I have no need for that yet, and I see no need to offend the sensibilities of anyone present, but in general terms.”
Sir Anthony thought for a moment. “Anatomical dissection is how I would describe it, and some of the organs brought forth and laid out as it might be for inspection. I might even say it was neatly done, but for all the blood and gore.”
“An apt description,” agreed the Earl of Scully. “Blood and gore. Dreadful business.” He winced at the memory. “As bad as anything I’ve ever seen, and I was at Sebastopol in ’fifty-five.”
“You were there, my lord?” asked Moriarty. “At the establishment in question, I mean,” he added to cut off further discussion of Sebastopol.
“I was,” said His Lordship. “I arrived some hours after the, ah, event. Sir Anthony had me sent for. Decisions had to be made.”
Moriarty nodded as though he understood, but what decisions, besides the obvious, he had no idea. It sounded like a reprise of the Jack the Ripper murders of two years before. Indeed, perhaps it was—the Ripper had never been caught, after all. Why, Moriarty wondered, would Sir Anthony have sent for the Earl of Scully to join him at the scene of a gruesome homicide, even if it did involve a minor member of the nobility—and one with “men” at that? What, for that matter, was Sir Anthony doing there? Just what was “a special post within the Home Office”? He refrained from asking. Let them tell it their way.
Sir Anthony took up the tale. “A search was instituted immediately to see wh
ether anyone had seen Baron Renfrew leaving, or perhaps had just seen the baron at any time during the evening. A few had seen him enter and go to the girl’s room, but no one who was there remembered seeing the baron after that. At any rate most of the, ah, visitors had long since gone home.”
“What has been accomplished since?” Moriarty asked.
“The body of the unfortunate young woman has been removed to a private mortuary,” Sir Anthony said.
“And the police? Scotland Yard?”
“The necessary authorities were notified.” Sir Anthony discovered that his pipe had gone out and went through the process of lighting it again. “We couldn’t go through the usual channels, you understand.”
“Actually…,” Moriarty began.
“We’ll get to that,” said the Earl of Scully. “We’ll have to, won’t we?” He turned to his companions, who nodded and looked unhappy.
“Perhaps,” suggested Sir Anthony, “we should let Chief Inspector Epp explain.”
They all turned to the dour man in the corner.
He remained silent for several heartbeats and then looked up and said, “I’d just as soon not.” His voice had the quality of coarse gravel running down a washboard.
“We’ve been over this,” the Duke of Shorham said severely.
Epp pulled himself and the chair he sat in across the carpet and up to the table. “If there’s nothing for it, then. Ipso facto.” He turned his eyes toward Moriarty. “It’s not that I object to you, you understand,” he told the professor. “Although, actually, I do, from what I’ve heard of you, but in this case if the devil himself were able to assist us, I’d give him a cheer. It’s that I don’t think you—or anyone—can help us. I’m afraid that we must prepare for the worst, and pray that what befalls is something less.”
“You may be right,” Moriarty assented. “I know nothing to contradict you, as I know nothing of the problem you are facing at all beyond the fact that a young lady is dead and a man must be found. Also the scene of this poor girl’s demise must be examined carefully to determine whether the missing baron is a murderer or a victim.”
Epp shrugged a broad expansive shrug. “What do you expect to learn from the girl’s bedroom?” he demanded, looking around at the others as though to say “See what I mean?”
“Something might be discovered,” Moriarty said mildly.
Epp shook his head. “Two Scotland Yard men have looked at what there is to look at, and found nothing of interest,” he said. “I accompanied them, and I can assure you that they were most thorough. Quam proxime. We must look elsewhere.”
His Grace of Shorham’s eyes had closed during the conversation, but at this they popped open. “Two Yard men?” he demanded. “Whom, and by what authority?”
“Inspectors Lestrade and Fitzbadely,” said Epp. “Both good men. I sent for them. They know only what they had to know, and they’ve been sworn to secrecy.”
“I suppose,” said His Grace, “but the wider the circle, the harder it will be to close.”
“Yet—” Epp began, pointing his chin toward Moriarty.
“It was Mr. Mycroft Holmes’s idea that we bring him here,” the Earl of Scully reminded them, “and Her Majesty herself concurred.”
The queen herself? Moriarty thoughtfully pinched his pince-nez glasses back over his nose and stared through them at his assembled hosts. This cut deeper than he had suspected. For all the implicit urgency, for all the ugliness of the crime, he had not thought it something that affected the palace. Although during the Ripper outrage there had been rumors … He put off that line of thought. Allowing oneself to formulate deductions before all the facts were known could lead to avoidable misdirection.
Epp sighed and turned back to Moriarty. “As I said,” he continued, “the site of the crime has been searched. The crime is done, the victim is dead, the killer has fled. The Scotland Yard inspectors looked and discovered nothing. The trail is cold.”
“Nonetheless,” said Moriarty, “if you wish my assistance I would examine what there is to examine. Although first—” He turned to the others. “I presume there is more to the story?”
The duke waved an arm vaguely about in the air like a walrus checking the wind. “Unfortunately there is,” he said. “There has been a second killing.”
“Ah!” Moriarty said, leaning back in his chair. “Interesting.”
“Horrifying, rather,” said the earl. “It was a butchery, like the first.”
“Tell me about it,” Moriarty said. “When?”
“Last night,” said Sir Anthony. “Or rather the night before. I’ve been up so long I’ve quite lost track of time.”
“Where?” asked Moriarty.
“At another, ah, establishment,” said His Grace the duke.
“This one a rather exclusive private club,” said Sir Anthony. “Catering to what I might describe as a clientele with an advanced taste in erotic stimulation.”
“Another girl was killed and mutilated?”
“A young lad, actually,” Sir Anthony corrected mildly, “and this killing was if anything, more thoroughly repulsive than the first.”
“Two in a row,” Epp said, smacking his right fist into the open palm of his left hand. “I worked on the Ripper murders two years ago, and what it looks like to me is Fleet-Foot Jack is back.”
The others shifted uncomfortably in their seats at Epp’s words and looked elsewhere, as though they had no desire to associate themselves with his remark. Moriarty took note of their reaction but again withheld comment. There was an undercurrent of … something … tugging at the people in this room, and they were going to have to acknowledge it before it swept them away.
“Mustn’t say that, old man,” murmured the Duke of Shorham.
“It would behoove one not to venture there,” barked the Earl of Scully.
“We most assuredly must not let anyone dwell on such a comparison,” Anthony said firmly. “Not for a moment!”
Epp scowled. “Seems unavoidable,” he said. “The facts are there. Ipso facto.”
“Actually,” Moriarty began, and everyone paused and turned to look at him. “The comparison with the Ripper murders had occurred to me, but based on what you’ve just said we can put it aside. The person who perpetrated these deeds might have had the Ripper in mind as a model, but it is highly unlikely that whoever did this is actually the Ripper.”
The Earl of Scully’s eyes widened at this, and he nodded. This one statement, if it could be demonstrated, would prove the worth of soliciting the aid of Professor Moriarty.
The Duke of Shorham leaned his head back until he was looking over the heads of everyone present and they were staring at the short, well-clipped spade beard that emerged from his chin. “Why do you say that, Professor?” he asked the ceiling.
“You might not find my reason very convincing at the moment,” Moriarty said, “so I shall reserve it. Mr. Epp, tell me everything known about this second murder, if you please.”
“Baron Renfrew was seen to enter the establishment in question,” Epp said.
Anthony raised a hand in interruption. “A man presumed to be the baron was seen to enter,” he corrected. “He was, after all, masked.”
Epp pursed his lips. “If you would have it that way,” he said.
“We must withhold our conclusions without further evidence,” said Anthony.
“I’m afraid we have enough to convict now,” Epp said. He turned to Moriarty. “The man wore a mask, as did everyone who entered the establishment. One of their quainter rules. He had the height and build of the baron, and identified himself as the baron by using the proper word of entry. No one who saw him inside doubted that he was the baron.”
“And once inside?” Moriarty asked.
“He retired to a room upstairs with a lad named, ah, Istefan, leaving his companion downstairs in one of the common rooms.”
“His companion?”
“Yes.”
“Who was, I presume, not one
of the aforementioned ‘men’?”
“No, sir, this was a squat gentleman whom nobody was able to identify. He subsequently left with the baron.”
“No one similar is known to associate with the baron?”
“No.”
“Just to be clear, the baron’s whereabouts between the two killings are unknown?”
Epp nodded. “And after. He disappeared again.”
Moriarty looked around at all the serious faces. “I take it this lad Istefan was the victim?”
“Yes. The baron was in the room with Istefan for about three-quarters of an hour. About fifteen minutes after he left the lad was found, ah, as he was found.”
“There’s been no sign of the baron since?”
“None.”
“And the body?”
“Still as it was. The room has been closed off while we decide what to do.”
“We can’t have these two events connected in the public mind,” Sir Anthony explained.
“The public seems to have been carefully and deliberately kept unaware of either event,” Moriarty said gently.
“Word gets out,” said the Duke of Shorham crossly. “The great beast that is the public would seem to believe that it’s entitled to know things that are not its concern. There is a great thirst for titillation, for scandal.”
Moriarty polished his pince-nez. “I must speak with these people,” he said, “and now you must tell me what you haven’t yet told me.”
The duke coughed. “Excuse me?” he asked.
“Come now. Two people are murdered, and a member of the minor nobility, who might be the perpetrator or another victim, is missing, and because of this a state of near-panic ensues among those who know, the information is suppressed, and the queen herself is consulted—and a desperate felon, if I may describe myself in those terms, is released from prison to search among the criminal classes for … for what? There is a piece missing from this story, and that piece will explain why you gentlemen are here and why I am sitting among you. I can do nothing useful if facts are withheld.”
The Earl of Scully looked around at the others, who seemed determined to remain mute. He took a deep breath. “This is not to go beyond this room,” he said.
Who Thinks Evil: A Professor Moriarty Novel (Professor Moriarty Novels) Page 8
