Paternoster shook his head—perhaps just to clear it. “Well, what I’ve heard—well. It surprises me to see you gadding about with the rozzers, is all.”
“Ah, those stories,” Moriarty said with a sigh. “They will follow me about. I assure you there’s no more truth to them then, ah, say, some of the things I’ve been hearing about you.”
“The Napoleon of crime,” Paternoster said, an inescapable overtone of awe in his voice.
“Really?” Moriarty asked. “That’s what you heard?” He leaned back in his chair and laced his fingers together under his chin. “There is one man who calls me that. How did you come to hear it?”
“Well, now—a fella came by here, must have been six or eight months ago, looking for work. A lascar by the look of him. Claimed he jumped ship and daren’t go back. Said he was a cook by trade, skilled at the sort of Indian dishes favored by the British pukka sahibs.
“Well, he wasn’t no cook, that became clear pretty quick, and he wasn’t no lascar neither. A bit of the nut-brown color of his skin rubbed off on the back of his shirt. I didn’t mind that too much—we all got secrets—but I had taken him on as a cook, and it was a cook I needed. So I gave him the sack.”
“I have no doubt that I know the gentleman in question,” Moriarty said. “Do you have any inkling as to what he was actually doing in your establishment since, as you surmised, he assuredly is no cook?”
“He came here looking for you,” Paternoster said. “That is, if you is indeed the Professor Moriarty he was gabbing about. He didn’t say nothing about astronomy or any moby’s band.”
“Looking for me?” Moriarty took his pince-nez from his nose and began polishing the lenses with a scrap of red flannel. “That’s odd. He certainly knows where I live. He has spent countless hours loitering about my house in some puerile disguise or another.”
“Well,” Paternoster considered. “Before he found his way out the door he gave me to understand that he was ‘wise’ to my ‘nefarious schemes,’ and that they could have been devised by no one other than Professor Moriarty. I said as how I didn’t know any Professor Moriarty, and he said not to try his patience.”
“And what were these nefarious schemes of yours?”
“He never did say.”
“Perhaps something about how you run this establishment?”
Paternoster snorted. “There ain’t nothing nefarious about this place. Just a bit of the old slap and tickle, and a little mumbo-jumbo and some fancy costumes for, as it were, atmosphere.”
“And the name,” said Moriarty. “Le Château d’Espagne.”
“Yes, well. I had to call it something, didn’t I?”
“You chose well, it would seem by your membership list.”
“Well, the château’s oh-so-patrician membership wouldn’t have been so eager to sign up if I’d called it the Bubble and Squeak, or if they’d known that the mysterious master of the establishment was plain old Charley Washburn of Canning Town, would they now?”
“It would have been a bit off-putting,” granted Moriarty.
“What piqued their interest was the odor of the mysterious East,” said Washburn. “Metaphorically speaking, as you might say. So that’s what I gave them. That and the ritual and appurtenances, which I dragged in to add that air of verisimilitude, as Mr. Gilbert might put it. And of course the smut. Nothing draws a toff in like high-class smut, or so I’ve found.”
Epp sniffed. “And children,” he added.
“Ah, well,” said Washburn. “Most of the lads are not as young as they look, some of them by quite a bit. The lasses, too, for that matter. Slum kids tend to be smaller and younger-looking for some years due to the wondrous nutritional opportunities they are afforded, and then, all at once, into their twenties, they look older, much older. It’s the way we have in this civilized country we inhabit.”
Epp gave him a stern glare. “You sound bitter, my man.”
“Not I,” Washburn said. “I, who was given the splendid opportunity to travel around to various parts of the world, courtesy of Her Majesty’s forces, and even remunerated for my troubles at the rate of one and six a day, minus reimbursements for this and that. And all I was required to do in exchange was shoot at people I didn’t know while they were shooting back at me.”
Epp stiffened. “That, sir, is hardly the way to describe honorable service to queen and country,” he said with a sneer in his voice. “Ipso facto. You must have been something of a credit to your regiment, I have no doubt.”
A smile flickered across Washburn’s face and disappeared, briefly revealing a row of uneven, discolored teeth. “They thought so,” he said. “I was awarded a medal for what I would now describe as extreme stupidity in the face of the enemy, another for obeying the orders of the idiot who was my superior officer—he got himself killed in that one—and a third for saving the life of the idiot who took command after the first idiot was killed. Then a jezail bullet took a nick out of my femur, and a grateful government declared me unfit for duty and kicked me out.”
“So you found—no, created—a new line of work for yourself,” suggested Moriarty.
“I did that,” Washburn agreed. “By a series of fortuitous circumstances, and a bit of timely assistance from here and there, I worked my way up the ladder of the demimonde of the erotica until, two years ago, I set up this establishment.”
“And the ‘odor of the mysterious East’?”
Washburn shrugged. “Mostly just a smell. A hint of the Levant can be found in many of London’s less distinguished areas, along with a touch of Egypt, a heady dose of the Celestial Empire, and a smattering of Balkan this and Russian that. Many of my children are, indeed, from strange and exotic corners of the earth, but for the most part I found them much closer to home.”
“What of the child that was killed?” Moriarty asked.
“Istefan,” Washburn said. “He was, I think, sixteen. Looked fourteen perhaps. I wondered when you were going to get around to asking about him. He may have been a child of the Jago, but nobody deserves to die like that.”
“My sympathies for the lad,” Moriarty said. “Tell me about the gentleman he was with.”
“The one what sliced him apart?” Washburn grimaced. “I’ve been wondering about him, too.”
“What about him?” demanded Epp.
“Well,” Washburn said, “you should know, shouldn’t you? What with your people in and out of here for the whole day, looking here, sniffing there, peering into this and opening that.”
“A murder investigation, my good man, is no respecter of privacy,” Epp told him.
“Up to a point it ain’t,” Washburn agreed. “Then, suddenly, everything changes, and privacy is what we got too much of. We ain’t to talk to anyone about what happened, and there’s a gent in plain clothes and flat feet at the door, which ain’t so good for custom, all things considered. Ain’t no member come through the door in the past two days.”
“We have our reasons, my man,” said Epp, “and they ain’t for you to question.”
“What can you tell me about the killer?” Moriarty asked. “Who was he, if you know, and how long had he been a member?”
Washburn grimaced. “I told the Scotland Yard blokes all this already.”
“Yes, well, then,” Epp said, “you should have it fresh to mind, shouldn’t you?”
“I just don’t like talking about it,” Washburn said. “I mean, with what happened and all.”
“You want us to catch the man who did it, don’t you?” Moriarty asked.
“Of course,” Washburn asserted, “but are you sure you want to do the catching?”
Epp leaned forward pugnaciously. “What does that mean?” he demanded.
“Well, it stands to reason. If you wanted to catch him you’d have done it already. Just marched up to his house, wherever it may be, and knocked on the door and taken him away. And if you’d done that, you wouldn’t be here asking me all these questions, now would you? It stand
s to reason.”
“So you told the inspectors who the man was?” Moriarty asked.
“Not me. I didn’t see him, did I? It could have been any of our guests for all of me. It was Natyana who got a glom at him when he came out of that room.”
“Natyana?” Moriarty asked.
“She’s the chatelaine, as we call her. Same title as me but with an e on the end. It’s a way the French have with names. My partner, she is, and I was lucky to find her. In truth, she pretty much runs the place.”
“Really?”
“Oh, yes. I strut about and impress the clientele with my dark secrets and manage any squabbles that come up, and I see to admitting new clients and make sure that we get our proper remuneration for services rendered. Natyana actually keeps the books and manages the household and such.”
“A Russian name, is it, Natyana?” Moriarty asked.
“Could be, could be,” Washburn agreed. He reached behind him and tugged several times at a bell pull hanging from the wall. “She’ll be here directly and you can ask her yourself.”
A short, slender woman with high cheekbones and piercing dark eyes in a narrow face, Natyana wore a mask of complete composure, effectively covering any emotions she might be feeling. She knocked, entered, crossed the room, and settled into a chair with the placid look of a duchess arriving at the local vicarage for tea. Only the white knuckles of her clenched left fist gave an indication of the emotional strain she was feeling. “Yes, gentlemen?” she asked. “How may I assist you?”
Epp looked sternly at the woman, his eyes taking in the dark, severely cut dress, the maroon shawl, and the button shoes. “Natyana?”
“That is my name.”
He scowled. “Natyana what, if I may ask? You have a surname? And what was your name before it was Natyana?” The words came out sharply in the harsh tone of an interrogation.
She looked at him mildly, showing no anger or resentment at his tone, but her left hand clutched convulsively at the folds of her skirt. “The name Natyana is on my certificate of birth,” she said, “of which I have a copy. You’ll have to go to St. Petersburg to see the original, I’m afraid. I am told that in one of my past lives my name was Sharima, and that I was an odalisque in the hareem of the great Kublai Khan, but of that I’m afraid I can provide no documentation.”
“Chief Inspector Epp does not approve of you,” Moriarty told her. “I’m afraid there is much of which Mr. Epp does not approve. He is a policeman. My name is Professor Moriarty, and I am not a policeman. May I ask you some questions?”
Natyana looked at Washburn and then back at Moriarty. “There you are, and here I am,” she said. “You might as well ask what you like.”
“To satisfy Mr. Epp’s curiousity,” Moriarty said, “what is your patronym?”
“I couldn’t say,” Natyana answered. “My mother had no idea who my father was. She believed he was probably one of the men I grew up calling ‘uncle,’ but it might have been someone else entirely. On my birth certificate it says, ‘Otets nyeizvestnyh.’”
“A bit severe, isn’t it?” asked Moriarty. “‘Father unknown.’”
“The tsar’s bureaucracy tends to be rather precise and inhuman,” Natyana said. “Otets nyeizvestnyh. And so, I’m afraid, he shall remain. You speak Russian?”
“Sufficiently,” Moriarty said. “Let us now, if you don’t mind, speak of what transpired here two days ago.”
“If we must,” she said. “I could go for a long time without bringing that back to memory.”
“Of course,” said Moriarty. “Let us go through the event this one last time, lightly touching on the salient facts. It would assist me greatly, and perhaps after that you’ll never have to think of it again.”
Natyana sighed deeply and stared at the wall. For perhaps a minute she was silent. And then she spoke. “Peccavi and the lad went up to the room at around three, I think it was. His associate remained in the greeting room. It was some time after Peccavi left that I realized that the lad had not yet come from the room. I don’t know how long.”
“Peccavi?” asked Moriarty.
“Each of our gentlemen has a name that he assumes while here. For our records, you understand.”
“You keep records?” asked Epp, sounding somewhere between astonished and disbelieving.
“Certainly,” Washburn interjected. “Have to know who purchased what service, just when, and for how long.”
“We don’t know the true identities of many, perhaps most, of our members,” Natyana said. “A new initiate is put up for membership by an existing member, seconded by another, and approved by the chatelain. It lets the members feel more secure and free from possible outside entanglements if they don’t know one another and we don’t know who they really are.”
“By ‘outside entanglements’ you mean blackmail?” Moriarty suggested.
Natyana nodded.
“That’s about the size of it,” Washburn agreed. “When a bloke comes up for membership I give him a look over, give him the thumbs-up, and he’s in. Never do ask him what his real name might be.”
“On what basis do you approve new members if you don’t know who they really are?” Moriarty asked.
“Mainly on my finely honed instincts and whether they can come up with the membership dues.”
“Ah,” said Moriarty. “And what does it cost to become a member?”
“Two hundred for most of them,” Washburn said.
“Two hundred pounds?” asked Epp, sounding startled.
“Guineas,” Washburn corrected.
“Guineas? For membership in this organization?”
“Yes, well, gentlemen will pay for their little entertainments, won’t they?” said Washburn. “And they wouldn’t have no respect for you if you didn’t charge them in guineas. A hundred and twenty is the membership fee, and the other eighty is put on the books for expenses. Whenever the account gets below twenty guineas, they ponies up another eighty. That’s why we don’t have to know who they are in the outside world; they have paid in advance for their little pleasures. The fact that a member puts them up and they have the requisite nicker goes a long way—and then once they passes my glom, they’re in. Of course, special members what might be useful to have around, like the two aforementioned coppers, get a special rate.”
“What did your finely honed instincts tell you about Peccavi?”
Washburn looked up at the ceiling and thought for a moment. “He joined us about six months ago. Put up, as I recall, by a member who signs himself ‘Saint Jerome.’”
“Interesting,” Moriarty said. “Jerome. Anglicized from the Greek Hieronymus.”
Epp snorted. “Greek, Egyptian—that’s all very good, but just where does knowing that get us?”
“The utility of any fact cannot be ascertained in the absence of that fact,” Moriarty said. “It may do us no good whatever to know that ‘Jerome’ took his name from an early Christian saint, or that St. Hieronymus used to visit those places in Rome that would most remind him of the terrors of Hell. ‘Horror ubique animos, simul ipsa silentia terrent,’ as you might say.”
“How’s that?” asked Washburn.
“The horror and the silence terrify the soul,” Moriarty translated. “Isn’t that right, Mr. Epp?”
“Might be,” Epp conceded.
“I quote St. Hieronymus,” Moriarty explained. “Of course, he was quoting Virgil. Assuming that your Jerome has a classical education, was he commenting on this establishment when he chose his nom de guerre? Does it matter? If it has any bearing on his introducing Peccavi to membership, it may. It is in such obscure and seeming unimportant details that people often give themselves away.”
He removed his pince-nez and began polishing the lenses with the ever-present square of red cloth. “Let us return to what you recall of the gentleman who called himself Peccavi.”
Washburn nodded. “Squat and wide he was, as I remember,” he said. “Prominent nose and ears. Well dressed. Brown s
ack suit and old-boy tie. Just which old boys I couldn’t say. Well groomed. Military bearing. Typical public school pitch to his voice. If you’d been here you could probably have told me which one.”
“No doubt,” Moriarty agreed.
“But a bit whiny-sounding for all that. And shifty. Wouldn’t look you in the eye.”
“Pardon,” Natyana interrupted. “But that gentleman is not the Peccavi I’ve seen.”
“Ah!” said Moriarty, rubbing his hands together. “Now we may be getting somewhere. Pray describe the man as you saw him.”
“Tall and slender,” Natyana began and then paused to consider. “Well, perhaps not so much tall, now that I think of it, as elegantly slender. Not that he was short, but his slimness of body and his posture—quite upright and regal it was—gave him an impression of added height. If you see what I mean.”
“Quite so,” Moriarty said. “Anything else strike you about him?”
“He laughed quite a bit.”
“Laughed?” asked Epp. “At what, may I ask?”
“Well, not so much laughed as, I suppose, chuckled. No—giggled. At everything. He giggled when he came up to the room, and he giggled when he left the room. With that poor boy—the way he was.” She shuddered and averted her eyes, as though speaking of it had brought the scene into her thoughts, and she was turning away from looking at it again. “What sort of man could do such a thing?”
“That’s what we must find out,” said Moriarty. “The gentleman you describe as his associate—he waited downstairs while Peccavi went up?”
“That’s right, sir.”
“But they left together?”
“That’s so.”
“Tell me about him—this other man.”
“I only saw the top of his head. That was when he joined Peccavi downstairs. He was wearing a wide red-and-black domino mask tied at the back with a red ribbon. I remember that a little round spot at the back of his head was devoid of hair. The remaining hair was black, parted at the middle and brushed or combed very flat to his head.”
“What name did he use when he came in?”
“He entered as Peccavi’s guest,” Washburn said. “No name was used.”
Who Thinks Evil: A Professor Moriarty Novel (Professor Moriarty Novels) Page 14
