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

by Kurland, Michael

  “Very well,” said the duke. “If we’re going to trust you to do this, we might as well start off by trusting you. Where do you wish to begin?”

  “I shall begin by examining the sites of the two murders,” Moriarty told him, “and for that Epp’s assistance will be useful, and gratefully accepted. I must find some indication, however slender, of the direction in which the truth may lie.”

  Sir Anthony shook his head. “There’s nothing of any value to be found at either place, I assure you,” he said.

  “Nonetheless I shall look,” said Moriarty. “Let us hope you’re mistaken.”

  “Very well.”

  “One suggestion,” Moriarty added. “Have your people be alert for any word of this leaking out, or any rumor that is suggestive of a problem among the royals.”

  “Yes,” Sir Anthony said. “Of course. We’re doing that already.”

  “Then try to, delicately, ascertain where and how the rumor originated. If His Highness is, indeed, not responsible for these acts, then someone is going to a lot of trouble to make it seem that he is—and at some point they’re going to want to make the matter public.”

  “My God!” exclaimed the Duke of Shorham. “That could bring down the government. Why, if the people thought we were concealing it from them, it could well threaten the monarchy.”

  “Exactly,” said Moriarty.

  “My God!”

  [CHAPTER TEN]

  ROSE’S ROOM

  Aliorum vulnus nostra sit cautio.

  (Let us take warning from another’s wound.)

  —ST. JEROME

  THE FOUR-HORSE CARRIAGE PULLED UP in front of Mollie’s establishment on Gladston Square in early evening. The gas mantle above the front door was unlit, and the few lights that shone through the windows on the upper floor were soft and subdued, the curtains drawn closed to keep out the night. The porter was long in answering the pull of the bell cord, and he looked curiously out at the two well-dressed visitors and the ornate carriage from which they had emerged as though he had no idea why they might be standing there. “Gentlemen,” he said. “Miss Mollie is not entertaining clients at present. I trust this causes you no inconvenience.”

  “I am Epp of Scotland Yard, and this is Professor Moriarty,” Epp said, pointing a bony finger at the professor. “We have come about the murdered girl, Rose. You might remember—I was here before.”

  “Was you now?”

  “With the police,” Epp explained. “I’ve come back to look at the girl’s room.”

  The porter looked out at the carriage again and then back at Epp. “The police, you say?”

  “Indeed.”

  “Scotland Yard?”

  “That’s correct, my man. Idem quod. Is there a problem?”

  “Not if you say there ain’t, then there ain’t.”

  “Good. About the girl?”

  “They’ve taken poor Rose away,” said the porter. “As is no more than right. She lay there for two days before anyone thought to move her, and then I truly believe it was more the smell than the propriety of the thing. You Scotland Yard people are a thoughtless and peculiar lot, is what I say.”

  Moriarty stepped forward. “The room,” he asked sharply, “has it been disturbed?”

  “The room in what she died?”

  “That room.”

  “Hasn’t nobody been in it since they took the body out. The missus says as how we’ll have to clean it up, but none of us managed to get it done yet.”

  “Good, good!” Moriarty rubbed his hands together in obvious delight. “Here is a stroke of unexpected good fortune.”

  The porter stared at him and then shook his head slowly. “A peculiar lot, I says, and a strange and peculiar lot you is—if you don’t mind me saying so.”

  “It’s no more than the truth,” Moriarty agreed. “A strange and peculiar lot we are indeed. May we come in?”

  “If you’ve a mind to,” the porter agreed. “Settle yourselves down in the front room while I fetch Miss Mollie.”

  Mollie appeared at the head of the stairs two minutes later dressed all in black. Perhaps a bit more form-fitting than was absolutely proper for mourning garb, but all in black nonetheless. “Gentlemen,” she said, holding the bannister tightly as she descended. “I’m Mollie Cobby, the proprietress of this establishment. I understand you wish to look at poor Rose’s room. I don’t know what sense of morbid curiosity has brought you hither—”

  “I am with Scotland Yard, madam,” Epp interrupted her, “and this is my, ah, colleague Professor James Moriarty. Morbid curiosity is, you might say, his ignis fatuus.”

  “Is it indeed?” Mollie stared at Moriarty for a second and then turned her attention back to Epp. “You coppers have already thoroughly knocked about in poor Rose’s room,” she said. “Why would you want to return?”

  “We don’t wish to inconvenience you,” Moriarty told Mollie. “I hope to discover some indications of the murderer: his appearance, his method, his motive, his provenance, and possibly from whence he came.”

  “From an empty room?”

  “Even so,” Moriarty said. “Depending perhaps on just how much knocking about the authorities have done. Has anyone aside from the police been in the room?”

  Mollie shook her head. “I haven’t had the stomach to have it cleaned up. The business is closed, and I’ve sent the girls away for a fortnight to give them something else to think about. I’ll be using the time to paint a little and put down new carpets, and I suppose I’ll have to get to that room before the girls return, but it will wait.”

  “With your permission,” Moriarty said, “I should very much like to visit the room.”

  Mollie looked sharply at each of them and considered. “Very well, then. Follow me.”

  They climbed the stairs. The light in the upstairs hallway was low, and the bedroom doors were all closed. From behind one of the doors came the soft, insistent sound of a woman sobbing. Epp gave an involuntary shudder and tried to banish from his mind the superstitious images conjured up by the sound. Moriarty looked at Mollie and raised an interrogative eyebrow.

  “Pamela, that is,” Mollie told him. “Calls herself ‘Heather’ while she’s working for some reason. Her specialty is—well, no reason to concern you gentlemen with that. She was hiding in the wardrobe in that room while Rose was … what happened to Rose, and she hasn’t been right in the head since. She didn’t see nothing, mind you. At least I don’t think she did. She hasn’t talked about it. She hasn’t talked about anything much since … that night. She wouldn’t leave with the other girls. Said she had nowhere to go. I told her to stay at a guest house at Bath what I know of. She said she didn’t know anyone at Bath, and anyway she’d rather stay here. She’s been crying like that, no loud blubbering, just quiet and steady, pretty much since it happened. She was Rose’s special friend.”

  “What does that mean,” Epp asked suspiciously, “‘special friend’?”

  “I would like to speak with Pamela after I examine the room,” Moriarty said.

  “I wish you would,” Mollie told him. “Talking about it might serve to take her mind off it, if you see what I mean. That sounds kind of contrariwise, but…”

  “I do see, Miss Mollie,” Moriarty told her. He moved down the hall. “Is this the room?” he asked, stopping in front of a door.

  She said, “It is,” and took a deep breath. “I will await you downstairs, if you’ve no objection.”

  “None,” Moriarty said, “and I thank you.”

  “You ain’t no copper,” Mollie said. “They ain’t got much thanks in them.”

  Moriarty pulled open the door. The room was as it had been four days before when a prince had disappeared and a girl had died. Except, of course, that Rose’s body had been removed. “Light that wall sconce, if you don’t mind,” Moriarty said, and Epp took out a pack of lucifers and turned on the gas. “As bright as it will go,” Moriarty directed.

  The professor began with a slow and
careful examination of the bed and the pools of dried and caked blood on the sheets and blanket. Then he transferred his gaze to the carpet by the bed, studying each fall of blood at length, as though, thought Epp, who stayed by the wall under the light, he were attempting to read from it the story of what had transpired that fatal evening.

  Epp didn’t hold with that sort of mumbo-jumbo. It was a waste of time that could be better used interviewing suspects, perhaps with the aid of a little friendly persuasion, in the back room of some convenient station house. The American police had developed that sort of back-room persuasion into a science, Epp had heard. However, Epp had been ordered to stay with Moriarty and let the professor do what the professor would do.

  Moriarty paused to light a double-globe paraffin lamp from the bedside table, turned its wick up until it burned as brightly as it would without smoking, and then removed his pince-nez glasses and took a monocle from his vest pocket, which he settled firmly against his right eye. Holding the lamp over his head, he spent some time inspecting the wardrobe where the girl Pamela had evidently been hiding, and then he knelt on the carpet and began a minute examination of the floor, peering into corners and beneath the few articles of furniture.

  “I’m afraid the most suggestive features are obscured,” he said. “There have been many people in here since the event. Policemen—there’s the unmistakable mark of a gum rubber sole. I noticed the tread of the mortuary cart outside the door, but I see they didn’t bring it in. That’s helpful. Yes, here are the footsteps of the mortuary attendant and his helper. Small feet, must have been a lad. I imagine he had something to tell them back at home that evening.”

  Epp grunted. “You can see all that?” he asked with a faint sneer.

  Moriarty looked up. “You doubt me?” he asked mildly.

  “I wouldn’t say that,” Epp said. “Let’s say I’m withholding judgment, but I don’t see how any of this—even if you can tell one footstep from another—gets us any for’rader with our, ah, problem.”

  “Oh, I can tell a lot more than that,” Moriarty said, “and I do believe that some of it will be helpful.” He put the lamp down by the side of the bed and pointed at the floor. “What do you see?”

  “Blood,” said Epp.

  “Go on,” said Moriarty.

  Epp squinted at the floor. “Blood,” he said again. “Dried blood.”

  Moriarty stood up, holding the lamp at waist level, and pointed down at the blood-soaked coverlet on the bed. “And?” He urged.

  “And more blood,” said Epp, his voice showing his impatience with the questions.

  “What of the absence of blood in this space?” Moriarty indicated an elongated area on the bed that was largely blood-free. “How do you account for the void?”

  “Yes, there’s little blood in that space,” Epp admitted. “I would say that it has somehow avoided the blood.”

  “And on the floor?” Moriarty moved the lamp to reilluminate the carpet.

  “Nothing but blood—and a bit of bare carpet where there isn’t no blood.”

  “Exactly!” Moriarty said. “How come, do you suppose, that there ‘isn’t no’ blood in those spots?”

  Epp contrived to look as though he were puzzling it out, although in truth the question made no sense to him. “There isn’t no blood there,” he said finally, “because it happened that no blood fell at that there spot.” He smiled. “I admit to not being wise in the mysterious ways of blood.”

  “A pity,” Moriarty said. “You could do your job so much better if you were.”

  “Say, now—” Epp began.

  “Imagine, if you will,” Moriarty said, pointing first to the coverlet and then to the floor next to the bed, “the event that caused the blood to splatter thus.”

  “I’d rather not,” Epp offered.

  “It appears that a knife was thrust into the body”—Moriarty made a thrusting motion, and Epp grimaced—“and rapidly withdrawn—many times. Thirty-seven separate stab wounds, I believe the coroner’s report said.”

  “I see no need to dwell on such things,” said Epp. “Aside from establishing the fact that the killer was a homicidal maniac, which we already know, where does it get us? Quidam.”

  Moriarty carefully replaced the lamp onto its spot on the table. “Everything follows from something, Mr. Epp,” he said. “If you know the end result of any action or process, it should be possible to hypothesize the beginning and even, quite possibly, what set it into motion. If we plot the course of the planet Jupiter we can tell not only where it will be ten years from now but where it was ten thousand years ago.”

  “What has the planet Jupiter to do with this?” asked Epp. “You saying this was some sort of astro-logical crime?”

  Moriarty smiled. “Thus, if we examine these stains,” he continued, “we can arrive at certain conclusions as to how they were created.”

  “She was stabbed,” Epp reiterated stubbornly.

  “With considerable force,” Moriarty agreed. “Some thirty-seven times. By a man who stood”—Moriarty carefully placed his feet in two blood-free gaps in the carpet by the bed—“here.”

  Epp examined Moriarty’s pose and the blood surrounding him. “Possible,” he admitted. “Those two clear spots could be where he stood, but then how came the blood splatter behind him?”

  The professor took his pince-nez glasses from his pocket and held them in his closed fist like a dagger. “When he raised the blade after each stab”—Moriarty stabbed the coverlet with the pince-nez several times, throwing his hand up each time only to bring it down with greater force—“the blood sprayed from the blade, spotting everyplace except where he was standing. Look up at the ceiling and you’ll see what I mean.”

  Epp stared for a long moment at the blood-splattered ceiling and nodded. “Ah!” he said. “So?”

  “One other place remained clear,” Moriarty went on, pointing with the pince-nez at the blood-free space on the coverlet.

  “Where the girl lay.” Epp nodded again. “Where the man stood and where the girl lay. Two voids. Ipso facto.”

  “That,” Moriarty said, pointing across the bed to a different area where the blood was pooled and smeared thick and deep and free of splashing, “is where she lay. The blood gathered around and under her as she died.”

  Epp stared at the spot. “I could have happily lived into my dotage without knowing that. Or,” he added, “seeing what difference it makes.”

  “The void at this spot,” Moriarty said, shifting his attention back to the blood-free space on the near side of the bed, “was caused by another person, or possibly object, lying there while the girl was stabbed.”

  “Object?”

  “I merely allow for all possibilities,” Moriarty told him. “My guess is that it was a person—your missing prince, no doubt.”

  “So His Roya—er, Baron Renfrew didn’t stab the girl himself?”

  “So it would seem.”

  “Yet he just lay there while she was stabbed—repeatedly?”

  Moriarty nodded. “Then mutilated, which certainly took some little time. I would assume that the baron was rendered unconscious first, else he would not have lain so still.”

  Epp nodded. “Interesting,” he said, “and—I admit it—useful. Although I didn’t for a moment believe that the, ah, baron could be guilty of such a monstrous act, it is good to have some sort of outside corroboration.”

  “This was a crime of some audacity,” Moriarty said, “and I would judge that there was more than one man involved.”

  Epp stared down at the clotted blood, trying to see what Moriarty saw and understand how he saw it. “More than one man?”

  “Clearly.”

  “How can you tell that?” he asked.

  “That’s not important,” Moriarty said. “What matters is what it tells us—what it means.”

  “Still—” Epp began.

  Moriarty took a small square of flannel from his pocket and polished his pince-nez glasses. “Re-
create in you mind,” he said, “the events that must have transpired here. The prince’s guardian, Mr., ah—”

  “You mean Fetch?”

  “Fetch. Who was knocked out as he stood guard outside the door. Then he was dragged inside and thrust under the bed. Surely no matter how, ah, lustily the prince was engaged in whatever he was engaged in, he would have paused at such an intrusion—and, no doubt, attempted to do something about it. Which would have involved leaping from the bed.”

  Epp pondered, looking from the door to the bed and back. “You’re saying as how one man couldn’t have done it? Surely he could—with a little luck.”

  “Ah!” Moriarty said, “but he couldn’t have counted on that luck. This was not a sudden inspiration but a carefully plotted scheme. The means for spiriting His Highness away would have to have been in place before the crime. That in itself implies more than one man.”

  I see,” said Epp. “An iunctis viribus, as it were.”

  Moriarty turned around and stared at the little man. “Where,” he asked finally, “did you learn your Latin?”

  Epp beamed. “Noticed that, did you? I picked it up all on my own. Been studying it for some time now.”

  “That would explain it,” Moriarty agreed.

  “I carry a phrase book about with me at all times.” Epp pulled a well-creased buckram-bound volume from his rear pocket: Dr. Mortimer Philpott’s Book of Latin Phrases and Sentiments. “It is the mark of the educated man,” he said. “I would like to raise the standards of the police force by requiring everyone from the rank of sergeant to study Latin, thus enabling them to make appropriate remarks when the occasion warrants. Mutatis mutandis, you might say.”

  “You might,” Moriarty acknowledged.

  “The educational and intellectual standards of this country must be raised, regardless of social standing,” Epp espoused. “In lieu of a public school education, one can learn Latin and play cricket.”

  “And do you? Play cricket, that is?” Moriarty asked.

  Epp nodded. “I have a bat and the leg guards and the gloves and everything.”