The Return of Moriarty

by John Gardner

  They talked on for a good hour, chattering of days gone by, Pip and Fanny Paget telling Spear how they had laid low after getting out of London, then how Pip had reasoned it would be safer if he settled himself close to where Moriarty had property. “We’ve made ourselves a good and happy life here,” Fanny said, her voice, to Spear, still soaring and deep, like a well-tuned string instrument. She made some tea, brought out a cake, and invited Harry Judge in to warm himself by the fire.

  Finally, almost four in the afternoon, Bert Spear said they must go as it would be getting dark soon, they had to be getting back to the Smoke, and how nice it was to have seen them. As though they were relatives on an afternoon visit. “I’ll do my best to put off that business,” he told them, giving nothing away in front of Judge, out by the gate.

  The light was going, and the skeletal trees looked more stark than ever against the squirrel-grey sky that hung over them as they urged little Smudge into a walk, heading back on the long ride to Oxford.

  On the road again, Spear glanced back over the flat fields and could just glimpse the Pagets’ cottage, where he saw lights starting to come on. He thought of their cozy parlour, and the oil lamps that Fanny would be lighting; how she would be drawing the dark red curtains over the windows, making it cozy for them once the night drew in.

  Then, from away behind them, from the big meadow that contained the cattle, he thought he heard the whinny of a horse, and it concerned him because it sounded uncomfortably like the whinny of Archie, Moriarty’s horse, though he knew it could not be. There was no time for the Professor to have driven from London. Just impossible, unless he owned some unknown form of travel that simply ate up the miles, that went at some incredible speed.

  So they drove on toward Oxford, the air biting cold now and dusk giving way to misty darkness. They passed The White Hart on the edge of Twin Willows, picking up a nice trotting run. Spear would be glad when they were on the train, happier still when back in London.

  If he had some magic ability, and was able to return for a moment to the meadow by the track leading to Pip Paget’s cottage, Spear might just have made out a figure stepping from the stand of trees out in the middle. A dark figure in a black greatcoat with a fur-edged collar.

  “I shall go round to the back, I think,” Moriarty said softly to Daniel Carbonardo, who remained with their horses deep among the trees.

  “That ’ud be your best way, Professor. Round the back and in through their kitchen door. I’ll keep an eye on the front.”

  Moriarty started to pace silently through the meadow, heading for the track and the cottages that lay beyond. The evening mist was coming up, hanging heavy near the ground. Carbonardo thought the Professor looked as creepy as some avenging ghost advancing, floating gently above the grass, moving inexorably toward the cottage.

  14

  The Pagets and Their Future

  OXFORDSHIRE & LONDON: JANUARY 20, 1900

  MORIARTY HAD BEEN with Spear, Judge, and the Pagets for most of the day, waiting and watching, and this was all thanks to Wally Taplin, who had overheard Albert Spear talking to Harry Judge that morning, early, outside the back door. The Professor expected Wally to report any interesting conversations, and often tipped him well if the exchange was important enough. “You are my one good spy now, Walter,” he told the boy. “You must live up to the high expectations I have of you. You must always walk in my ways.”

  One of the things Wally liked about Professor Moriarty was that he often talked like the Sunday school teachers talked when he was in the home for boys, after his parents had gone. He did not particularly like the home, but he did like the certainty presented to him at Sunday school. In the end everything was going to be all right, forever and ever, amen. That was a good and helpful thought.

  Moriarty knew well enough what comfort his boys, men, and women drew from the pious words spoken in church, from the Bible and the prayer book; he was well aware of the way the archbishops, bishops, and priests went about their work. Indeed, he had used this knowledge in allowing Lee Chow to see him dance with the devil by celebrating a Black Mass. You can control people with eternal promises, he thought, make them do exactly as you wanted. So why shouldn’t he control in that manner also? Religion offered a giant prize in return for dull humiliation in life, and they could well be right. The Professor, in turn, promised a satisfactory life with enough money and safeguards if you remained true to him, to James Moriarty—if you did what he asked, used your skills in his service. Moriarty without end, amen. Fear and promise were two sides of the same coin. To mix metaphors, it was the carrot and the stick: exactly what religion did.

  That morning Wally had wanted to pee and he slipped out the kitchen back door, as opposed to the house back door along the passage. He had decided to pee outside, in the bushes round the back, because he was averse to following Terremant into the downstairs lav in the mornings. This was wise, because following Terremant anywhere after he had been out on the booze, round the pubs looking for the Professor’s backsliders, could be daunting.

  So, Wally nipped outside, unbuttoned, and had his slash into the bushes. It was during this procedure that he heard Spear come out of the back door and engage in conversation with the Beak—as they called Harry Judge, beak being the general slang for a judge, so they thought it a mite witty to call Harry the Beak.

  “We’re going for a trip out; going on the monkery, Harry.”

  “Where, boss?”

  “Out Oxford way. Going to look up an old chum …”

  “… If the roads aren’t clear we’ll just have a nice dinner in some tavern; quaff some ale and come home again.”

  “That sounds more like it.”

  This was the conversation Wally reported back to Professor Moriarty, who was well pleased, tipped him half a tosheroon, and told him to send Mr. Carbonardo up. “Good boy,” he said, giving Wally’s hair a ruffle. “Very good boy.”

  Wally Taplin came back into the kitchen after giving the message to Danny Carbonardo, delighted with himself, clutching the silver half-crown. Not seeing Terremant, who was in one of the larger sculleries, and thinking himself alone, Wally lifted a leg and broke wind, loudly in the key of G, and sniggered, as boys do.

  “You dirty little bugger.” Terremant came out of the scullery. “When I was a boy…”

  Bloody hell, Taplin thought, here he goes again. Terremant was forever harping on about when he was a boy, trying to draw parallels with his childhood, a tack that did not succeed because his experience of childhood was in a different age, at a different time, so you could not draw any conclusions by placing one against the other. The world had moved on.

  “When I was a boy in Cumberland, learning to be a pugilist, if you did what you just done the other lads would gather round and pinch you, pull your hair, punch you, kick your shins, stamp on your toes and chant—

  “Rannel me! Rannel me!

  Grey goose egg,

  Let every man lift up a leg,

  By the high, by the low,

  By the buttocks of a crow,

  Fish, cock or hen?

  “Then, if the answer be ‘cock’ they would shout, ‘Give him a good knock.’ If ‘fish,’ it was ‘Spit in his face.’ So you think on, lad. Could be better these days, but stop your arse from singing when I’m around.”

  “Yes, Mr. Terremant. Sorry, Mr. Terremant.” Wally had learned to be polite with Jim Terremant because he had big hands and was not averse to catching you a thump round the earhole. Wally turned away, about to shed a tear because he would have liked to share this with Billy Walker, make him laugh, but he was never going to be able to do that ever again. This made him deeply sad.

  “Well, he’s going in the right direction,” Moriarty said to Danny Carbonardo when he came upstairs. Then he explained that he had sent Bert Spear looking for Pip Paget. Of course it was not a question of looking for Paget, because Moriarty—with his army of knarks*—knew exactly where Paget was. So, once more it was a question o
f testing Albert Spear’s loyalty.

  “We shall follow at a discreet distance,” the Professor said. “Train to Oxford, then on horseback to see what they’re playing at.” Hoping against hope that Spear was being straight with him. He didn’t know what he would do if Spear had turned traitor.

  Already he knew exactly what he would do about Pip Paget.

  Presently the Professor came down and summoned Daniel Carbonardo to go out with him, and while Daniel was getting into his ulster, the Professor told Wally that he would soon be having company again. “I’ve told Mr. Spear to bring over the boy Sam who used to be at the Glenmoragh Hotel, the boot boy. He’s coming to work with you here, and it will be your business to teach him manners and show him how to behave.”

  After they had gone, Terremant said that he did not think Sam the boot boy would be much of an addition to the household. “I reckon you’ll have your work cut out learning that boy,” he told Wally. “I reckon that Sam is a quarter-flash to three parts stupid.”

  Moriarty and Danny Carbonardo did not call for Ben Harkness but hailed a hansom at the street corner close to The Duke of York, instructing the cabbie to take them to Paddington station, where they caught the first available train to Oxford.

  They travelled first class. Moriarty always travelled first unless he was in a disguise that prevented it, and they found a compartment on their own, where Moriarty held out at length to Carbonardo about Pip Paget and his wife, Fanny.

  “I want you to remember, Daniel,” he said finally, a couple of minutes before the train pulled into Oxford station, “whatever’s said and done in the end, when he has served his purpose Pip Paget will be your business. He lives now on time loaned to him by me. He is alive only by my generosity of spirit. He is a dead man living. You understand?”

  “Perfectly, guv’nor.” Carbonardo gave a little nod, just a simple, single inclination of the head that would not even be noticed if they were being clandestinely observed.

  Once at Oxford, Moriarty headed to the livery stable he always used in that university city, near the railway station; he had used it years ago, on that fatal picnic near The Rose Revived public house when he had done away with the Draughtsman. Now he hired a pair of horses: a spry little roan for Carbonardo and a big black gelding for himself. While making the arrangements, he questioned the owner of the stables about others who had hired horses that day and so learned of the two men who had taken the gig a couple of hours earlier. From the descriptions, they were obviously Spear and his man Harry Judge.

  “We’d best go by a circumlocutious route,” he told Carbonardo, and led them along side roads and across fields, finally coming out in Steventon itself, where they stopped for some fifteen minutes. Then across the fields once more, down to Willow Manor and so crossing Sir John Grant’s estate, ending in the glade of trees that gave summer shade to Sir John’s cattle in the four-acre meadow but was today bleakly chilling to the marrow, tree branches slick with ice.

  The wait was long and numbingly cold, relieved only by the bread, cheese, and brandy that Moriarty had bought for them at The Swan in Steventon. Finally, however, as the winter light died and the mist unfurled over the grass of the meadow, as Tom the cowman came down and herded the beasts off for milking—the milk, Moriarty thought, would certainly come frozen in a pail today—so they saw Pip and Fanny Paget leave the cottage with Albert Spear and Harry Judge, all talking together a mite too friendly for the professor’s liking.

  Don’t let him see you, he had counselled.

  Inside the cottage, in the parlour, Fanny and Pip Paget now settled down for a quiet evening, talking amicably in front of the fire. Fanny had some thick bacon rashers in the kitchen cold safe built into the wall at the back of the house and screened with tight metal mesh. She planned to do them in the oven for a nice supper later, with mashed potatoes, cabbage, and an onion sauce, because Pip adored her onion sauce and, since they had been here on the Willow Manor estate, she was able to do it properly using butter and fresh milk, which they were never without.

  But tonight Fanny was, not unnaturally, deeply concerned. “Does Mr. Spear worry you?” she asked now, as Pip leaned forward to give the fire a poke and pat Snapper as the dog made himself more comfortable, curling and settling himself on the mat to doze.

  After a moment’s pause for reflection, he said, “The Professor worries me far more than Bert Spear.” He straightened up and reached over to clasp her hand. “Life has been… what’s the word I’m searching for, Dove?” It was his favourite word for her, Dove.

  “Peaceful? Tranquil? Idyllic …?”

  “All three of them and more besides.”

  “And now it is over, Pip. That’s what you want to say, is it not?”

  “I don’t want to say it, my Dove, but it is what must be said.”

  “We are just going to walk out on Sir John and Lady Pam?”

  “What option have we? I think we must go, and the sooner the better. To France, maybe. I hear there’s a community of English gentlefolk there in the south at a place called Mentone, got their own church, like an English village church and everything. We’d be bound to get places there with some family, and the weather is clement.”

  Fanny nodded, not even attempting to hide the tears starting in her eyes.

  “Look, Fan,” he said quickly. “We talked about this some time ago. When we first came here. We knew it would not last.”

  “Could not last,” she said. “But now it has …”

  Snapper, the dog, was suddenly alert, rising up and growling, pointing toward the kitchen door, his right paw raised in expectation. Anyone could walk in through the back door, be in the kitchen in a trice; folk around here had no reason to lock their doors.

  Pip got to his feet, standing, silent, moving behind his chair. Fanny, who had been seeing to some mending, dropped it into her lap and looked around, noting that one of the shotguns was in its usual place in the corner. Then her hands flew to her face as both sections of the kitchen door swung back and, as though by some theatrical illusion, James Moriarty stepped into the room, his presence almost electrifying, certainly commanding; he was carrying his silver-topped cane and wearing his half-tall top hat, the long, bulky black greatcoat with its handsome fur collar, and a white silk scarf around his neck, stylishly tucked inside the coat.

  “Sit down, Pip. I have not come to kill you.” A little bow. “And good evening to you, Fanny.” He began to remove his soft, hand-stitched leather gloves.

  Snapper’s growl became louder, the dog crouching, baring his teeth, ready to spring. Moriarty gave a low-pitched whistle, a hissing sound, one arm moving, a finger pointing. The dog gave a little yelp and trotted over to sit in the corner to which the finger had been pointing. The Professor’s uncanny mesmeristic skill spread to the control of animals, legendary among those close to him. “Are you going to invite me in, Pip? Fanny?” he asked, calm and not unfriendly.

  Paget’s eyes flitted toward the door.

  “Do not even consider it,” the Professor cautioned, his face like stone, the eyes still and heartless. “I have Daniel Carbonardo at the front. You recall Danny the Tweezers, Pip?”

  Paget remembered Carbonardo as a confident who lived apart from Moriarty’s family. He remembered him as a short man, splendidly fit, always glowing with good health; a man with sallow good looks, adored by women. What he remembered most were the screams.

  “Come, let us sit together.” Moriarty took Paget’s vacated chair and Fanny slowly got to her feet, indicating her chair to her husband, who sat in it, with Fanny sinking and finally squatting on the floor at his feet.

  “So, here we are.” Moriarty smiled at them, like a father happy to embrace his family; he ran his right thumbnail down his cheek, from just under the eye to the jawline.

  “Let us get right to the heart of matters. Albert Spear has been to see you today. What had he to say for himself?” He raised a hand as though to stop them speaking immediately. “I should tell you that
I bade good Spear not to let you see him. Not to show himself to you. Yet it is obvious he did.”

  “He couldn’t help himself, Professor. He is more used to city ways. I had him here, over a barrel as they say. Well, over two barrels—the shotgun, that is.” He tried a cheeky smile, and Moriarty nodded, showing that he understood.

  “I have good friends here,” Paget continued, “and was warned so that I got to him, rather than him getting to me.”

  Moriarty gave a grim smile and a nod. “I can understand that. You were always exceptionally good at your work, Pip. When you disappeared after your wedding it was like someone vanishing and leaving no trace. It took several months for me even to get a whiff of you, and then only because Sir John Grant is a good and valued friend. Now, both of you. Do you admit to your sin of disappearing from my employment? Do you admit to the manifold sins and wickedness which you have committed most grievously by thought, word, and deed?”

  “It was my fault, sir. I take the full blame. Never was it Fanny here.”

  “So.” He appeared to be weighing up the situation. “You put me at risk, Pip Paget, and you have both provoked my wrath and indignation. Can you show any sorrow for what you have done? Can you repent?”

  Fanny gave a little sob, and Pip looked at her, saw the tears, and felt a little indignation of his own. “I repent. Sincerely,” Fanny said, her eyes downcast.

  “And you, Pip Paget. Is there any reason for me not to set Daniel on to you?”

  “I betrayed you, Professor. I knew what I was doing and I have dreaded this moment of meeting you again. Coming face to face with you. I know you have extreme ways of punishing those who are disloyal.”

  “Can you show any repentance, sorrow for what you have done?”

  A whole album of pictures ran through Paget’s mind: the times he knew of when Moriarty had ordered the deaths of those who had crossed him. In the back of his head he heard words from the past, in the Professor’s quiet voice: “You have played the crooked cross with me, so be it.” Names floated through his head, people he had known who could still be alive today had it not been for them crossing Moriarty.