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

by Kurland, Michael

  “Je voudrais voir l’abbesse, s’il vous plaît,” Holmes ventured.

  There was a pause, and then the woman’s face contorted into what she probably meant as a smile. She was, Barnett decided, unaccustomed to smiling. “Ah!” she said. “You are ze Ainglishman who visited among us previously, is it not?”

  “Oui,” Holmes agreed. “That was I.”

  “Ze lady, she is upstairs. Come weeth me.”

  L’abbesse grise was younger than Barnett had thought she would be and—was it sacrilegious to think?—extremely pretty. No, Barnett corrected himself. Comely. It meant the same thing, but somehow it was a more decent way to put it when referring to a woman in religious orders. Exceedingly comely. She was dressed in gray, not in the robes of a religious order but rather in a severely cut silk jacket with puffy sleeves and a skirt that looked to his untrained eye to be in the latest fashion, or certainly not far behind.

  She turned and stretched her hands out. “Sherlock,” she said. “How good to see you again.”

  Sherlock? Nobody ever called Holmes “Sherlock.” His brother, perhaps, but nobody else, and the French in particular were punctilious about correct speech, even more than correct behavior. A lot more than correct behavior, if it came to that, Barnett thought. Holmes and the abbesse must have developed a particularly close relationship in what must have been a very short time. Or perhaps … he decided not to take that train of thought any farther along the track.

  “And is this,” the abbess asked, extending her hand to Barnett, “the elusive Dr. Watson, whom I hear so much of but never get to meet?”

  Holmes chuckled. “May I present my, ah, friend, Mr. Benjamin Barnett,” he said. “Mr. Barnett, may I introduce the Princess Irene, abbess of the Paris chapter of the Holy Order of the Sisters of Mary Magdala.”

  Barnett bowed slightly and shook the slender hand. “A pleasure, ma’am,” he said.

  “No, the pleasure is mine,” the abbess said. “If you are a friend of Sherlock Holmes, then you are a friend of mine. But,” she added, turning to Holmes, “I hope someday to meet this mythical Dr. Watson.”

  “I will bring him when next I come,” Holmes told her. “If I can convince him to leave the comforts of wife and home for long enough to embark on such a discomfiting journey.”

  “He does not like to travel, then, this doctor of yours?” asked the abbess.

  “Watson has traveled extensively,” Holmes said, “but I admit he doesn’t seem to be overly fond of the experience. It’s pipe and slippers and a well-done cut off the roast, with his good wife to look after him, that makes him happy these days.”

  “So,” the abbess said. “What is it that brings you to visit me this day?”

  “A series of mysterious murders,” Holmes told her.

  Her eyes widened. “Really? What would I know of such things?”

  “We can but hope,” he said. “If I may explain?”

  The abbess sat herself on a delicate-looking chair by an even more delicate desk and waved the two men to sturdier wooden chairs at the side of the room. “Please begin,” she said.

  “The situation is this…” Holmes briefly and concisely explained what there was to explain. The Abbess Irene followed the narrative intently and interrupted but twice to ask relevant questions. To the first Holmes turned a querying eye to Barnett, who replied, “A production of Arrigo Boito’s Mefistofele I understand. The victim was a singer named Mathilde van Tromphe.”

  The abbess nodded. “Lyric soprano,” she said. “Lirico-spinto, as they call it. Impressive vocal technique. Wide range. I hope she recovers.”

  To the second question Holmes again deferred to Barnett, who shook his head. “You’re right. There must be an aim—a purpose—to all of this, but what it is we do not know.”

  A prolonged silence followed Holmes’s completion of the narrative while the abbess thought over what he had told her. “I may, just may, be able to help. Or at least add to your store of information. There is a girl…” She turned to her desk and took one of the new Waterman fountain pens and a sheet of paper from a drawer. Lowering her head to stare at the floor, she held the pen tentatively over the paper. She was, Barnett noted, left-handed.

  After a minute she wrote a few sentences on the paper, folded it several times, and sealed it with a bit of gummed tape. “Margarete!” she called.

  A young woman in a white smock and the sort of hat one associates with hospitals appeared in the doorway.

  “Take this,” the abbess said, holding out the paper, “to Mademoiselle. Deschamps. You know where she lives?”

  “Yes, Sister,” said the girl, holding the sides of her skirt and bobbing her head in an abbreviated curtsey. “And if she isn’t in?”

  “She’s almost always in, but if she’s absent, leave it under her door.”

  “Very good, Sister.” The girl repeated the curtsey and tiptoed rapidly out the door.

  [CHAPTER NINETEEN]

  THE MENDICANTS GUILD

  The law, in its majestic equality,

  forbids the rich as well as the poor

  from sleeping under bridges,

  begging in the streets,

  and stealing bread.

  —ANATOLE FRANCE

  OF THE FOUR SCORE OR SO GUILDS OF LONDON, some dating back to the twelfth century, most represent craftsmen who perform some useful service, create utilitarian and even beautiful objects, and possess learned skills that are passed down through the generations. Over the years these guilds have devised banners with odd devices and pithy sayings, and strange and singular raiment for their members to wear when appearing in pageants, at fairs, or behind the closed doors of their guild halls. Royal charters from this king or that queen are displayed under glass in their halls, and they are on occasion visited by the Lord Mayor or a royal duke or duchess.

  Then there are those guilds that are seldom spoken of and may or may not still exist—some of which may indeed never have existed. The Worshipful Order of Leeches and Bleeders disappeared without a backward glance sometime in the eighteenth century. The Respectful Guild of Spokeshavers was subsumed by the Carpenters and Cabinet Makers Guild within the living memory of some very old craftsmen, although that useful instrument the spokeshave, in all of its infinite varieties, is still with us. The Exemplary Order of London Pudding and Duff Makers turned out to be an elaborate hoax, which persisted through the last half of the seventeenth century.

  The Poisoners Guild is mentioned in several fourteenth-century manuscripts and court records. Its members performed a useful service for wives wishing to demonstrate their devotion to overbearing husbands and young men desiring to ease the mundane burden of their rich fathers or doddering uncles. White arsenic, the guild’s instrument of choice, became known as “inheritance powder” in certain select circles. Individual poisoners were apprehended and convicted from time to time, and hanged or burned at the stake depending on the temper of the times, but the existence of an organized guild was never proven.

  The Guild of Assassins is surely apocryphal, and the flurries of assassinations, political or otherwise, that occasionally break forth are merely symptoms of particularly willful or deranged men and women living in particularly virulent times.

  The Doxies Circle, also known as the Pavane d’Odalisques, which name is believed to be an oblique inside joke, certainly existed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and is probably still around today, although references to it are few and obscure. Its members are said to support each other financially and morally in times of distress, and to apprise each other of clients whose needs are specialized, or who should be avoided altogether. The ladies of the guild occasionally work together to influence social legislation.

  The Mendicants Guild, we are assured, does not really exist. What would be the point of a society of beggars, who would collect the dues, and what possible benefits could accrue to the members? Where would a gathering of the homeless gather?

  * * *

  An old
, hunchbacked man with a twisted arm, a gimpy leg, and a leering expression frozen on his withered face, one eye larger than the other under bushy white eyebrows, fondles a thick brass-knobbed hobbling stick and peers at you as you approach the doorway where he sits at the end of Entwhistle Mews, off Poultry Lane in Cripplegate. If you ignore him—for he will do nothing to hinder your approach—you will find the door open, and a long hallway with walls fashioned of ancient bricks will lead you, with sharp twists to the right and left, to a flight of stairs going down, terminating in a closed door, which will open grudgingly if you push at it and enter. It will close behind you when released and will not reopen.

  When you have gathered your courage to continue, a narrow hall that smells of things long deceased will take you to a small room, lit by a naked gas fixture, which may contain a wizened old man who will be polishing his wooden leg as you enter, but will more probably be deserted. The man, if he is there, will not answer questions or, indeed, utter any sound beyond the squeaks of his rag on the glossy wood of his leg. Passing that room you will ascend a second flight of stairs and emerge into a stone and brick chamber illuminated by daylight, if it happens to be day, passing through slits some ten feet above you. You will probably not recognize the chamber as being a part of an ancient Roman fort that was incorporated into the city wall in the twelfth century. Pushing open the narrow door in the far wall of the chamber, you will find yourself in a small yard some ten feet below street level on the north side of the church of St. Mary-in-the-Fields, Cripplegate, some two blocks away from where you began.

  If the hunchback recognizes you at your approach, or if you murmur the word of the day to him and perhaps drop a small coin in his cup as you pass, your experience upon entering the doorway will be quite different.

  It was two in the afternoon of an overcast day when Sir Anthony Darryl followed in Professor Moriarty’s footsteps as the professor, swinging his silver-owl-headed ironwood cane rhythmically in time with his step, strode down Entwhistle Mews. Moriarty nodded at the beggar at the doorway and raised his right thumb. The old man tapped his nose twice and returned the nod. Moriarty entered the hallway and paused; Sir Anthony barely avoided bumping sharply into him, the stop was so sudden and unexpected. After a few seconds there was a muted click-click, and a section of the brick wall on the right-hand side swung open, revealing the bricks to be mere facings set into a wooden door.

  “Well!” said Sir Anthony. “This is getting interesting. Into what secret conclave are you taking me?”

  “You shall soon see,” replied Moriarty.

  The doorway led to a staircase, which went up, turned to the left, and continued up again, ending at a corridor framed in brick, lit with three gas mantles spaced along the wall, and permeated with the musty smell of ancient decay. At the end of it a large man with a twisted lip, wearing brown trowsers and a wool pullover of indeterminate color made for a gent even larger than he, was leaning against the wall, speculatively cleaning his fingernails with a knife of the sort made popular by the late American Colonel Bowie. When he saw who was headed toward him, the knife disappeared with the suddenness of the Great Blackstone’s Vanishing Birdcage Illusion, and a great smile centered itself on his face. “Well, if it ain’t the perfesser,” he said. “What brings you here, if I might ask, amongst the hoi and the polloi?”

  “I have come to speak to Twist and ask something of him and your, er, organization,” Moriarty said.

  “And who you got with yer?” asked the large man apologetically. “You know I has to ask.”

  “This gentleman is Sir Anthony Darryl,” replied the professor. “I vouch for him.”

  “Sir Anthony, is it?” the large man repeated. “My, isn’t we getting toney.” He stuck his head through the doorway and bellowed, “The professor what is Moriarty and one coming in,” and turned back to them. “Enter,” he said. Raising his right hand and putting his left hand over his heart, or at least the upper part of his belly, he added, “May no evil befall you whilst you is among us, so we pledge.”

  “And I pledge for myself and my companion,” Moriarty said, duplicating the large man’s gesture, “to harbor no evil thoughts or designs against this honorable society.”

  The room was surprisingly large and well lighted by a row of windows high on the north wall. It bore a variety of threadbare drapes and ancient tapestries along the walls, depicting maps of faraway places, some of them real; exotic fauna, little of it bearing a strong resemblance to any animal known to science; and pictures of castles and manor houses, some with mottoes over or under them in Latin or Greek that would serve to identify the great family who had dwelled in the house to someone conversant with the mottoes of the extinct lines of the nobility.

  The floor was covered with rugs of all sizes, shapes, and conditions, and the rugs were inhabited by people; misshapen, grotesque, incomplete people, and the contrivances with which they pulled, pushed, dragged, rolled, stumped, hopped, or simply limped through London while making their daily rounds. A man rose from the middle of this mélange as Moriarty and Sir Anthony entered. He hobbled over to them, pausing to stare up at Moriarty with his one good eye—the right one had a great patch over it—and then either bowed or doubled over in great pain, Sir Anthony wasn’t sure which. The flourish of the battered bowler hat that the man achieved with his left hand in the next second made it more probable that the gesture was meant as a bow. “Good morrow, Professor,” he said.

  “Twist,” Moriarty said, with a slight inclination of his head in the direction of the man. “A pleasure to see you again.”

  “It’s been a dog’s age,” said Twist. “Indeed it has. Who’s your friend?”

  “Ah! Mr. Twist, may I present the Honorable Sir Anthony Darryl. Sir Anthony, Mr. Twist, chief factotum of the London Maund, largest chapter of the Mendicant’s Guild.”

  “Just Twist, if you please,” said the man, peering at Sir Anthony with his good eye. “No ‘Mister’ and no ‘Sir,’ and no ‘Lord,’ and not very honorable, if I do say so meself.” He stuck out his hand, which was balled into a fist with the thumb sticking out the side.

  “It’s their version of a handshake,” Moriarty told Sir Anthony. “The thumb touch. As the name suggests, just touch thumbs.”

  “Um,” Sir Anthony said and complied, feeling a bit foolish. Twist seemed satisfied, nodding and turning back to Moriarty. “To what does we owe the honor of this visit, Professor?” he asked.

  Moriarty fixed his pince-nez in place and spent a few moments looking around the room, then turned back to the man. “Nice digs,” he said.

  Twist straightened up. “’At’s right,” he said. “You ain’t been here since when we moved.”

  “I ain’t,” Moriarty agreed.

  “We was forcibly ejected from the place in Godolphin Street, what they is planning to tear down and in its place erect a government building, or some such. What they ain’t started yet and it’s going on two years now, but nonetheless we was outed—and here we are.”

  “Actually, I’d say it’s an improvement,” Moriarty told him.

  “Took a bit o’ mopping and dusting and suchlike,” Twist said, looking about him with a proprietary air, “but it is beginning to shape up right enough.” He waved a hand in the general direction of the far wall. “Come along over here where we can transact our business. We do have some business to transact, I would say. You’ve not come after all this time just to get a gander at me phiz, pleasant a prospect as that may be.”

  “Your face is, indeed, a work of art,” Moriarty agreed as they moved together in the general direction of the indicated wall. “Rembrandt would have treasured you. Raphael—not so much. But, as you say, we may have a bit of business at hand.”

  When they reached the wall, Twist poked at the tapestries, each poke raising a little puff of dust, muttering, “Never can find the bloody thing,” until a bit of the tessellation of a castle wall sank in under his probing finger.

  “This must be the place,” he
said and lifted the tapestry to reveal the doorless entrance to a small room beyond. “Come into my sanctum,” he said, “and we’ll jabber.”

  The room was lit by a high window through which the spire of a church, presumably St. Mary-in-the-Fields, could be seen. The walls were covered by ancient velvet hangings with red-and-gold-flocked representations of tulips in different attitudes. The room held a desk and chair that Henry VII might have sat at, some overstuffed chairs of indeterminate ancestry, and a mahogany bookcase crammed full of books. Sir Anthony leaned over to get a look at some of the titles. There was a partial set of the works of Dickens, a complete set of the Waverley novels, a County Guide to Nottinghamshire, a few bound volumes of Punch, and several of the novels of Anna Katherine Green.

  “Interesting, ah, variety of books you have here,” Sir Anthony said when he noticed that Twist was watching him.

  “Eclectic is what,” Twist offered. “They are brought to me from all over this great metropolis by my fellow guild members, most of whom does not read. So they does not choose the books for their content as such, but they does, on occasion, come across them in what may be described as interesting circumstances. That one, for instance,” Twist said, indicating a volume lying sideways on the shelf, “was hurled out of a hansom cab by an elderly gent who snarled, ‘Bah! What utter rubbish!’ as it left his hand. Flew right by the nose of young Nobby the Gimp, who brought it here. I ain’t had a chance to peruse it myself, so I can’t comment on the gentleman’s judgement.”

  Sir Anthony peered at the spine of the book. The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex, it read, by Charles Darwin. “Perhaps the gentleman who hurled it,” he suggested, “was expecting, based on the title, something other than what he got.”

  “P’raps,” Twist agreed. “Now.” He rubbed his hands together as though he were warming them before a fire. “Let’s get down to it. What can we wretched mendicants do for you two gentlemen?”

  Moriarty considered. “How many of your, er, members do you suppose can understand, or at least recognize, French when they hear it?”