by John Gardner
“What did she become, Sally? Your half sister in Hendred.”
Sal gave a gurgling laugh. “By the time she was thirteen she was the village stargazer. Lay on her back in the fields, or under the hedges, stargazing. They all knew her. Stargazing Sarah. Even in the winter she would be out there giving the local lads a ride. And she was a lustful girl, what Bert Spear ’ud call a gobble-cock. Enjoyed the work. There was even a time when she suggested that perhaps we could work together.”
“And she came to London, Sal? Recently was it?”
“She’s been coming to London a long time now, James. But she’s become a nuisance lately. Dropping in on me for a little swig of the O be joyful; a handful of silver; wanting me to tip the quids; or maybe just a kind word. Sarah didn’t get many kind words, James.”
“The lot of the common whore, Sal.”
“That’s true. I gave her the occasional kind word, but I never gave her trust. I couldn’t trust her. I knew she’d steal from me, lie to me, do me down.” She paused there, as if coming to a decision. “Lately she’s worried me.”
“How so?”
“We looked so alike. I simply had the feeling that she was on some dodge of her own.” She frowned deeply. “Some dodge that would affect me, because we looked so alike. I thought she was passing herself off as me, James, and it looks as though she was.” She went silent, troubled thinking about her half sister and a whole maze of deceptions. “Maybe all she wanted was a knocker on her front door. Respectability. A penn’orth of paradise. We were alike, James, and I think that was a great temptation.”
“I have a theory.” For a moment, the Professor looked as though he was about to dispense great wisdom. “I’ve had it for some years now. I believe that every person here on earth has what they call a double, like you and your half sister, though not always for the same reason—not always because of a bloodline. What in the horse-racing world they call a ringer, a horse that can be substituted; and there is a German word—a doppelganger. That has a touch of the spook about it—shivery, makes you wonder. There are stories—come face to face with your doppelganger and you die. Well, that’s maybe how it works sometimes.” Once more he ran his thumbnail down his cheek. The Professor knew about doubles, ringers, doppelgangers. He had spent the past eighteen months looking for one, in Berlin and other cities nearby, and he had finally run down the one he was searching for in Vienna.
“The scar on Sarah’s back. Left shoulder. How did she get that?” he asked, changing tack, swerving from the general back to the particular.
“Poor little cow. Stargazing under a hedge. Felt the pain but didn’t want to stop. Found out later she’d been lying on a broken bottle. Great laceration she had, very deep, cut to ribbons, and she used to laugh about it. Horse doctor sewed it up for her.”
They finished the meal almost in silence, and the boys came in to remove the dishes. When they had gone, Sal suddenly, with no warning, started to weep—not for her half sister, she said, but for herself. Moriarty told her that was usual in cases of grief. “We weep for ourselves,” he told her, not that he had ever been known to weep.
Softly he stood and moved across to her, put an arm around her shoulders, helped her to her feet, spoke quietly to her, murmured an endearment, and guided her to the bedroom, where he pleasured her, with what passed for softness and feeling in a man like Moriarty. The act incidentally provided huge pleasure for the Professor, which was an expected bonus.
They were entwined one with another, under the sheets and blankets on the Professor’s bed, and so fell asleep. Indeed, James Moriarty slept like a baby, untroubled by the knowledge that, for the larger part of his waking hours, he walked in the paths of extreme darkness.
10
The Lifting of Billy Jacobs, and What Happened to Sarah
LONDON: JANUARY 19, 1900
SO THE WORD went out: first from Moriarty to Albert Spear. Bring me that slimy toad Jacobs. William Jacobs.
From Spear to Terremant; then to Lee Chow and Ember, and so filtering along the invisible rivers of sound that ran through the great arterial roads of London. Passed from mouth to ear. Whispered. Muttered. Called softly. Always moving, sluicing through the streets, passed on from dips and whizzers to magsmen, rampsmen, cash-carriers, punishers, and demanders, trickling down the tributaries of lanes, the brooks that spread out from the roads; emptying into courts and alleys; caught, noted, and passed on; waterfalling down steps, then building into waves of intelligence, rivulets of instructions. Bring in William Jacobs: Billy Jacobs. Wanted by the Professor. Bring him in. It rippled even into police stations, into the ears of men who, for a fee, informed the Professor’s people, passed them secret intelligence, spies within the police giving Moriarty what he needed to hear.
So the call dripped into Moriarty-owned whorehouses, carried along by the boys now working for the Professor, his shadows; into public houses and meeting places, into whirlpools of men lurking still on the streets; the whisper taken on the tide until most men and women out and about on this cold winter night heard the call and were skinning their eyes, tilting their heads, earwigging for the first word of Billy Jacobs, onetime Moriarty’s man, brother of Bertram Jacobs.
So the word hit gold and one of the shadows passed it on to Albert Spear that Billy Jacobs had been seen, earlier that night, drinking heavily in the Blue Posts tavern down Berwick Street, by the market, deep in Soho on the fringes of London’s West End. Billy Jacobs, a small man, young, in his late twenties, gone grey, though, from being in prison six years before. Smiling Billy Jacobs, who tried to please everyone.
Spear, with Lee Chow and Terremant, were in Josiah Osterley’s growler, turning into the great sweep of Regent Street when they spotted him swaggering in the direction of Piccadilly Circus, not a care in the world, swaying slightly. Happy. In good humour, helped by a liberal libation of spirits.
“Hallo, then. What we got here?” he called loudly. “If it ain’t Billy Jacobs, my old mate! Come along then, Bill. Come for a ride with us, then.”
But Billy, even slightly tipsy, knew better. He saw big Bert Spear, and behind him caught sight of the evil Chinee, Lee Chow, and knew him not just from reputation, for in his time he had worked with Chow and had seen what he could do to a person.
“Hold hard there, Billy!” Spear shouted as Jacobs took to his heels. But he didn’t get far. Lee Chow slipped from the coach in less than an intake of breath and was after him, hellity-split, had him down on the paving stones in one quick movement, sending Jacobs sprawling with a crash and a howl, then feeling the tip of a knife blade close to his neck, terrified, as he had once seen the Chinaman do his speciality act, the cheek trick: how the knife was there one minute and the next two lumps of bleeding flesh were being flung across the street and the poor bugger that was the victim stood, shocked and sucking air, could not understand why his tongue couldn’t find the inside of his cheeks, why his throat was full of blood and what the blinding pain was across his face.
“No!” Jacobs cried out. “No, you horrible little yellow bugger. Leave me be!”
“Then you get up, Billy, and come for a ride with us.”
It was almost a relief to see Bert Spear standing there looking down on him with his cracked, scarred face and shark’s smile.
“Yea, you come lide wi’ us,” the little Chinese grinned, very happy with the idea that he could terrify someone by just showing him his filleting knife, the one he had stolen years ago from a fishwife down Shanghai docks, with its simple wooden handle and the little cropped blade kept razor sharp by old Mysson with his hunched back and grinding stone.
Inside the coach, they put Billy Jacobs between Spear and Terremant.
“You’ve led us a right polka, Billy.” Terremant wrapped a huge hand around William Jacobs’s arm.
“Oh. I have, Mr. Terremant? How come?”
“Birry Jacob,” Lee Chow breathed quietly. “Farte’bellies.”
“Wouldn’t surprise me.” Terremant leaned bac
k. “We looked everywhere, Bill.”
“Led us all round the town.” Spear leered at him. “Looking for you, Billy. Lot of people looking for you.”
“Looking for me, Mr. Spear?” Coming the old innocent. “Why would you be looking for me?”
“Now, Bill. The Professor wants a word with you and don’t you give me that newborn-babe look, because we know, and the Professor knows. Last night you were there when a lady was done to death in Bedford Square. You sent Sidney Streeter and Rouster Bates out on a job, palmed off a corpse on old Dropsy Carmichael at The Beehive lodging house up Brick Lane. Slipped him some tin for his trouble. Memory coming back now, is it, Billy?”
“I’m not sayin’ nothing.” Billy Jacobs looked all around the coach, avoiding what he could see of their eyes in the glimmering light from the streetlamps.
“Please yourself.” Spear leaned back. “The Professor’s got an old pal o’ yours waiting. Danny Carbonardo. Danny the Tweezers. Remember him, Billy?”
“What you mean, the Professor? Everyone knows the Professor’s gone away. Left years ago. Idle Jack’s King Coal now. Ask anybody.”
“Oh, we have, Billy; and I suspect you know the truth: that Moriarty is back. Unexpectedly, I’ll grant you, but he is back. Twice the size and four times as natural. So you’d better make yourself ready. Poor old Dropsy’s had a good hiding for his part, so if I was you I’d start pleading for mercy as soon as you see the Old Man.”
Indeed, Spear himself had ordered the four men to do the work. Dropsy Carmichael came out of his grubby lodging house at half past four that afternoon to buy a pair of kippers for his tea. Instead of kippers he found himself facing these four grim coves, big as bull-beef, demanders by trade and ready to give him a fanning, which they did, advising him to keep out of the Professor’s way in future and never to speak with any from Idle Jack’s family again. Within fifteen minutes, Carmichael had three broken ribs, a broken arm, a cracked cheekbone, a badly swollen eye, and was minus five teeth.
“Where did you get all this from? This Comic Cuts about a corpse and Dropsy Carmichael—haven’t seen old Dropsy in I don’t know how long.” No doubt about it, Billy Jacobs was tenacious; he didn’t give up easily.
“Alas.” Spear pitched his voice high and parsonical. “Alas, it came first hand from your old friend Sidney Streeter, who has since, sadly, departed this life on account of it. But you, Bill, and young Rouster Bates, you are still here and have to answer for your sins.”
They took him straight up to find Moriarty waiting for them, Daniel Carbonardo in attendance and looking dead leery. Sal Hodges was in the little bedroom, the Professor having counselled her to stay hidden until he called for her.
“Professor, sir.” Sudden, surprised. Surprised and delighted, both. “Oh, it is good to see you, Professor. We all thought we’d never set eyes on you again.” Billy Jacobs took the view that he might best bluff it out, using the disappearing Professor defence. And why not, for he, together with his brother, had been close confidants of the Professor and his family, even adjuncts to the Praetorian Guard. Close as God’s curse to a whore’s arse, Bert Spear thought, crudely, as he looked upon the scene before him. Only a few years ago these men would have sat down as friends, confederates in crime, with William Jacobs on easy terms with Professor James Moriarty and Terremant lolling back in sociable camaraderie with both of the Jacobs boys, for he, under Moriarty’s direction, had played a large part in getting the Jacobs brothers out of the “Steele,” Coldbath Fields prison.
Now young Jacobs sat, with Terremant’s unfriendly hand on his shoulder, weighing him down, and Moriarty boring into him with those dark mesmerist eyes.
“William, this is a sad pass.” The Professor spoke in a quiet, almost whispering voice. Indeed, because it was pitched so low and soft, the Professor’s voice was more frightening, more fearsome.
“Have I not proved my friendship to you and your family, Billy?” He sounded weary, as if this was something too much. “Did your mother, the good, God-fearing Hetty Jacobs, not come to me first when you were so wrongly accused and sent for an impious season of imprisonment? She trusted me, Billy, not the cash-hungry leeches who pose as lawyers. She trusted in me and I acted on her behalf. I had you unlocked and out of the Steele in no time. I had it hidden and was like a father to you both: gave you work; paid you well; saw that you were clothed, watered, and fed. Is this a way to repay me, Billy?”
“No, sir,” Billy Jacobs said, subdued and ashen-faced.
“No, sir, indeed, Bill; and what should I do with you?”
“I plead for mercy, Professor. We were told that you had gone, left us all in the lurch …”
“And you believed that? You truly believed that I would do such a thing …Me?” He thumped his chest with a balled fist. “Me, the one who has stood for you over so many years? You believed this tissue, this insubstantial story? You believed it, with no scrap of evidence to substantiate it, to prove it, Billy?” A pause for breath, then, “I am ashamed of you!” The sentence was delivered as though it had been cast down on the floor at Billy’s ungrateful feet.
“Idle Jack can be most persuasive, Professor. He had both me and my brother convinced that you’d had to flee, never to return.”
“And nobody converted you otherwise?”
“There were so many, Professor; so many had the same story; we became totally sure that you had gone.”
“Well, it’s true that I had to flee, but only for a few seasons. You should know I’d never leave my family for good. Not me.” He made a big shrugging movement, as if trying to physically rid himself of blame. “Now I am back. What say you to that?”
“You must know, Professor, that now I know you are back all I’ll want is to serve you as before. I’m sure my brother Bert will do likewise. I beg to be invited back into the family.”
Moriarty’s hand went to his cheek, drawing the right thumbnail from just below the eye to the jawline as he grunted. “What do you think, Bert Spear?” he asked, his eyes so intense in fervour that Spear was forced to look away. “Should we take him back, or cast him further into the darkness he has chosen?”
“I think that depends, Professor.”
“Depends?”
“On what surety he can give.”
“Aye, that’s a fair way,” he agreed, turning once more to Jacobs. “Billy, our intelligence has it that you were present when Sal Hodges died in Bedford Square, in Idle Jack Idell’s house. Would you like to tell me about that?”
“What can I tell you, sir?”
“Don’t be a fool, Billy. Who did it? Who did the killing? You?”
“Not me, sir. No. Strike me dumb if I did. I was flabbergasted! Distressed, for she was a proper lady, Sal.” His eyes roamed from side to side, looking around the room as if for a way of escape. “Made me sick as a cat what happened.”
“If not you, then, Bill, who?”
“Why, who else? Idle Jack himself of course.”
“You were there?”
“I was. Saw it all—well, most of it all—and there was nothing I could do. If I’d been able, I’d have saved her, but when Sir Jack’s temper is frayed there’s no reasoning with him.”
“Why was she there in the first place, Billy?”
“There was a message come in the afternoon that Sally Hodges wanted to see Sir Jack. On a matter of great importance, it said. So word was passed back that he would see her at six.”
“And she arrived? You saw her come to the house?”
“I did, Professor, yes …”
“And…?”
“I let her in and showed her upstairs. Jack has his office up in what used to be the withdrawing room, up there, second storey. Big room, all done up like a tart’s parlour. He has little real taste, Idle Jack. Not like you, Professor…”
“Enough of the flannel, Billy. There’s no need for it.”
“Sorry, guv’nor.”
Spear could see that Jacobs was frightened—what in the Bible th
ey called sore afraid. Indeed, he thought to himself that Billy Jacobs was sorely sore afraid. Sore afraid enough to piss himself.
“You took her upstairs?”
“I did, and was concerned for her.”
“Why so?”
“She had become so reduced, sir. Lost all her sparkle; become dowdy even. It was like she had slid from favour and didn’t look over clean, if you follow me.”
Moriarty nodded. “But Jack greeted her, welcomed her in?”
“He did, yes. Said it was good to see her and even asked after you.”
Moriarty grunted. “After me?”
“He said, ‘It’s good to see you, Sal Hodges, and how’s the Professor? I hear he’s been listening to the music in Vienna.’”
“Really? He actually said that about me and Vienna?”
“Those were his words, Professor.”
“And what had she to say to that?”
“She said you were well and back in London.”
“And how did he take that news?”
“He said he already knew you were back, sir, and he was hoping to talk to you.”
“And they were comfortable together?”
“Perfectly. He bade Sal be seated, asked if she would care for a glass of something, but she said no. Said she’d rather talk.”
“Mm-hmm. So what did they talk about?”
“This is where it becomes difficult, sir, because Sir Jack asked me to leave the room.”
“So you heard none of the conversation?”
