Sherlock Holmes - The Stuff of Nightmares Read online

  The barb found no purchase in the CID inspector’s thick hide.

  “I’m ever willing to shift my viewpoint. You were the one, were you not, who insisted adamantly to me that the Bloody Black Baron is real.”

  “What if this is a killing made to look as though Cauchemar committed it? A put-up job? What would you say then?”

  “I would say that the simplest explanation is almost always the truest one. And what’s more, Mr Holmes... Mr Holmes? Hullo, Mr Holmes? Can you hear me? Am I talking to myself?”

  My friend had become distracted, no longer listening to Lestrade. His attention had been caught by the appearance of an enclosed black brougham which had drawn up at the end of the alley. Its driver sat hunched at the reins, face almost entirely obscured by the brim of his trilby and the upturned collar of his ulster, although I noted a bristling moustache and a fierce, forthright nose. He summoned Holmes over with a slow curl of the forefinger, and my friend complied, setting off towards the carriage.

  I made to follow, but the brougham driver barked, “Stand your ground, the lot of you. Just Mr Holmes. No one else.”

  “Stay put, Watson,” said Holmes. “I shan’t be long.”

  “But...”

  I couldn’t fathom quite why the black brougham so disturbed me, but disturb me it did. There was something sinister in the way all the blinds were drawn down, rendering the interior entirely in shadow. The very fact that the coach had turned up at the scene of a murder, out of the blue, set my nerves on edge. Who could be in it? What did they want with Holmes?

  Had I known then what I know now, I would have gone down on my hands and knees and pleaded with Holmes not to clamber inside the brougham, which squatted like some huge malevolent beetle, ready to consume him.

  For, as I was shortly to learn, the carriage belonged to none other than Professor James Moriarty.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  THE BOOBY-TRAPPED BROUGHAM

  The driver leaned round and opened the brougham’s door, revealing a rectangle of pure darkness. Holmes stepped in and was swallowed from sight. The door shut, and thus the carriage remained for the next quarter of an hour, stationary, with Holmes and its passenger engaged in who-knew-what within. The horse, a jet-black gelding, stamped its hooves and whinnied a couple of times, the driver smoked a cigar, and Lestrade, Sergeant Bryant and I watched and waited.

  I’m minded to say a word or two about Professor Moriarty here. I first made mention of the “Napoleon of crime” – to use Holmes’s own striking epithet – in the story entitled “The Final Problem”. There I detailed how my friend apparently met his end locked in mortal combat with his arch-enemy. This marked the beginning of Holmes’s three years of self-imposed exile from these shores, the period now commonly known as the Great Hiatus which saw him wandering the world’s more exotic, far-flung regions and during which he was believed by all and sundry, not least me, to be dead. (Only Mycroft was apprised of the true state of affairs.) I wrote in that tale about a conversation Holmes and I had during which he asked me if I had ever heard of Professor Moriarty and I declared, “Never.”

  The events in “The Final Problem” occurred in 1891, yet in The Valley of Fear, which I published in 1914 but which harks back to the year 1888, Holmes and I chat freely about Moriarty in the very first chapter.

  Critics who take huge delight in spotting inconsistencies in these narratives of mine have gloated over this apparent chronological discrepancy. Perhaps I ought to be flattered that they care enough about my works, and about Sherlock Holmes, to devote so much time and effort to finding fault, scrutinising the texts for flaws like chimpanzees grooming for nits.

  To these people, I reply: in 1893, when “The Final Problem” first saw print, I was reluctant to admit publicly that I knew anything about Moriarty at all, so sinister were the man and his machinations. My true recollection of that conversation with Holmes, backed up by my notes, is that I of course had heard of him, only too well; but I chose to amend the record. At the time, I felt that people were not ready to learn the true extent to which the latter’s criminal empire had spread through society, its tentacles insinuating into nearly every walk of life. I quoted Holmes’s description of Moriarty as “the organiser of half that is evil and of nearly all that is undetected in this great city” but spared my readership the full, precise details so as not to alarm or disquiet them. Not only that but certain of the examples I could have cited were sub judice, still undergoing prosecution and trial, and I did not want to interfere with the workings of the justice system in any way.

  Furthermore, and more pertinently, I had no wish to dwell too deeply on my friend’s antagonism towards Moriarty, which had been even more intense and protracted than I gave everyone to believe. I was, let us not forget, in mourning when I penned the tale. I believed Holmes to be dead, and Moriarty to have been the agent of his demise, so why should I spare Moriarty any more attention than the minimum necessary?

  I am not proud that I committed the small evasion I did, but I felt then that it was warranted and justified, and still do to this day. Let the carpers carp. I am old now, old enough to be blithe about the opinions of others, and one seeming error does not invalidate Holmes’s legacy or my worth as his biographer.

  At any rate, when Moriarty’s brougham showed up, I was already aware of the villain’s existence, albeit ignorant that the carriage was his and he the passenger. I was likewise ignorant that the driver was his infamous henchman Sebastian Moran, disgraced colonel of the 1st Bangalore Pioneers, who four years hence would attempt to assassinate Holmes with a German-manufactured airgun. My instinct was that the situation was inherently wrong; but it wasn’t until it was over that I discovered how wrong.

  At last, after what seemed an age, the brougham door reopened and Holmes emerged. It gladdened my heart that he was safe and sound. Well, safe at least, for there was a discernible wobble in his stride as he moved away from the carriage. He looked not a little shaken, and this a man gifted with the steeliest of nerves.

  The driver whipped the horse and the brougham clattered off. Holmes did not turn round to watch it go, but his shoulders unbent with its departure, as though a weight had been lifted from them. Indeed, the air itself seemed the cleaner for the brougham’s absence.

  “Watson,” Holmes said, “come. I am in dire need of a pick-me-up. Let us repair to a coffee house, if we can find one open at this ungodly hour. Lestrade? I bid you adieu.”

  “But Mr Holmes, the Abbess...”

  “There is nothing I can do for the unfortunate woman right now, Inspector. Her death is not irrelevant to the case I am investigating, but it muddies waters that are already murky, rather than clearing them. Rest assured that, in due course, I will identify the guilty party and present him to you. You have my solemn word on that.”

  I asked Holmes, as we walked, whom he had met in the carriage and what they had discussed, but he would not answer me until he had a measure of strong black coffee inside him. Happily for us, not far from the brothel there was a coffee house whose proprietor had been prepared to brave the streets after the night’s disturbances and open up for custom. Other, neighbouring businesses were doing likewise, although several of the less fortunate proprietors were having to sweep up broken glass into heaps and compile a list of breakages for their insurers.

  “Watson,” my companion said as he set his empty cup down, “it is not in my nature to indulge in hyperbole. However, I’m willing to vouchsafe that I have just been in the presence of the most egregiously malignant individual ever to walk the planet. You will perhaps be able to deduce to whom I refer.”

  It was not difficult.

  “Professor Moriarty,” I intoned.

  A silence fell momentarily over the coffee house, as though merely being within proximity of the mention of the name sent an unconscious shiver down the spine of every patron present. It was like one of those silences that fall at dinner parties, when a guest will often remark in grim jest that the angel
of death has just passed over.

  “The very same,” said Holmes. “I knew, even before I got into the brougham, that it was he who lurked within.”

  “Yet you entered nonetheless. What on earth possessed you, Holmes? You yourself once called him ‘one of the first brains of Europe, with all the powers of darkness at his back.’” I recalled verbatim this description from my notes for The Valley of Fear, which I had recently been compiling, although almost a quarter of a century would elapse before I got round to writing them up in narrative form. “You strolled willingly straight into the lion’s den. Good God, man, it could quite easily have been a trap. A fatal one!”

  “I entertained that notion. Yet, on the balance of probabilities, I decided I was not in immediate danger. Would Moriarty really abduct me, in plain view of two officers of the law, not to mention your good self? In broad daylight? That is not how he works. His way is far more subtle and insidious. To move against me overtly like that would be to risk exposing himself to the glare of scrutiny. He does not wish his criminal endeavours to be suspected by anyone. He would like to be known simply as a harmless academic who, although forced to resign his chair amid a swirl of dark rumour and whispered allegations of impropriety, continues privately to pursue his researches into binomial theorem and other, more obscure mathematical disciplines. The spider scuttles into the shadows when light is shed on it, and the same is true of Professor Moriarty. He hides, and commits his malefactions from the cover of darkness, utilising a network of proxies and underlings. To approach me directly, in person, as he did this morning, is a rare act from one normally so circumspect and shrewd.”

  “Well, if he did not plan on killing you, did you at least consider not showing him the same courtesy?” I was only half joking. Slaying Moriarty would have eliminated most of the crime in London at a stroke and spared countless future victims of his nefarious schemes.

  “It occurred to me. I am not someone who is liable to commit cold-blooded murder, but I daresay I could have conquered my scruples and managed it on this occasion, and not lost a night’s sleep over it afterwards. I was unarmed, but my bare hands would have sufficed. It will come as no surprise when I tell you that Moriarty had anticipated such an eventuality. The brougham, he assured me as soon as I entered, was fitted with a half-dozen booby traps which could silently eliminate a man in an instant.

  “‘At the flick of one of several secret switches,’ he said, ‘I can trigger a pneumatic device that will fire a curare-tipped blowdart into your neck. Or a set of hollow spikes will pierce through the upholstery of your seat and inject you hypodermically with a lethal toxin derived from the liver of the pufferfish. Or a porcelain reservoir embedded in the roof above you, containing concentrated nitric acid, will dump its corrosive load onto your head. Many and terrible are the ways this brougham can end your life, should you attempt to lay a hand on me in violence. So kindly refrain from doing so, Mr Holmes. Hold very still, keep your hands where I can see them at all times, and you should survive this encounter.’

  “I did not doubt him, either. In my experiences of dealing with his various plots and conspiracies, he is ruthless and quite without conscience or compunction. These were no idle threats he was making.

  “‘Although it would,’ Moriarty went on, ‘be a tremendous pity to have to destroy you. I regard you as not only my great adversary but also my intellectual equal, perhaps the only person alive to meet the criteria for that position.’

  “‘I am honoured,’ I said, not without irony.

  “‘You should be,’ he replied, not without sincerity. ‘How intriguing it is to be in such immediate physical propinquity with you. Hitherto we have always competed at one remove from each other, have we not? Like chess grandmasters, with London our board, its citizens our pieces. You have inflicted reversals on me, though not as many as I on you.’

  “I could have disputed the point, but refrained from doing so.

  “‘Every time you manage to outwit me, I find the defeat instructive,’ Moriarty continued. ‘I learn from it and resolve not to make the same mistake twice. You are useful to me, Mr Holmes. You are the anvil on which I forge my strategies, the whetstone on which I sharpen the blade of my wits. This is why you continue to live – for now. It is the only reason I haven’t arranged to have you done away with in some “accident” or other. You oppose me, and in opposing, strengthen me.

  “‘That will not always be the case, mark you,’ he added. ‘There will come a time, and it may not be too long hence, when you and I clash in one final, all-out battle, our endgame. Then we shall discover who is whose nemesis.’

  “‘I look forward to it,’ I said, ‘as one looks forward to any true test of one’s mettle.’”

  “The tone of the exchange sounds almost cordial,” I remarked.

  “It is a queer business, my relationship with Moriarty,” Holmes said. “I detest the man and all he represents, and yet in some strange way that even I cannot understand I respect him too. He would appear to feel likewise. He is not wrong with his chess analogy. We are playing a game, he and I – an elaborate, deadly game, the outcome of which will inevitably be the loss of my life or his.”

  My stomach churned at the thought of Sherlock Holmes perishing at Professor Moriarty’s hands. I felt a frisson, almost a presentiment of things to come.

  “But to the purpose of our conversation,” said Holmes.

  “Which was?”

  “As far as I can tell, principally for Moriarty to gloat. He raised the subject of the present public unrest. I suggested that perhaps the troubles were bad for business, impeding his well-laid plans.

  “‘On the contrary,’ said he with glee. ‘Granted, I have had to curtail one or two carefully developed stratagems, postponing their point of fruition. But nothing is happening that will affect my long-term goals too adversely. I have made sure of that.’

  “‘What a relief that is to hear,’ I said dryly.

  “‘Chaos is, in truth, fertile soil. There is always opportunity when nobody is sure of anything and the general mood is of panic and outcry. I expect to prosper in the coming days. It is likely, after all, that there will be interruptions to the supply of foodstuffs and other essentials, if matters continue as they are. A wise man who makes provision to stockpile such goods may then profit by selling them to people who will pay any price he demands.’

  “I cannot tell you, Watson, how smug he looked as he spoke these words. The massive dome of his forehead seemed to throb from within, like some pale pulsing octopus, and his deep-sunken eyes fairly glowed with self-satisfaction. I might gladly have broken his neck on the spot, and would have launched myself at him but for the threat of those booby traps.

  “I should have disguised my thoughts more clearly, for Moriarty’s fingers strayed towards a false panel set beside him, within easy reach, beneath which must lie the switches he had mentioned.

  “‘We must endeavour to remain civil,’ he warned.

  “‘I am nothing but,’ I replied.

  “‘What you seem unable to perceive, Mr Holmes, is the true extent of the danger posed to this country. I, on the other hand, do, and should things work out the way I anticipate – and I cannot foresee that they won’t – then I shall prosper immensely.”

  “His smile – it was not a pretty sight. I am not sure it should even be termed a smile. It was as ghastly as any death’s head grin, his thin lips peeling back like a gash splitting flesh, to reveal long yellow teeth. Brrr.”

  I shivered in sympathy, thanking all the stars that it had been Holmes in the back of that brougham, not me.

  “Might we not wonder if Moriarty has had a hand in the bombings himself?” I said.

  “Not his style.”

  “But if they are to his advantage...”

  “Too disruptive,” Holmes stated firmly. “Too blatant. The effects are too hard to predict or control. He is happy to exploit the situation, and I warrant that somewhere, at some remove, he is involved. It would
be astonishing if, as the pre-eminent criminal mastermind of our times, he were not. But he is not the instigator. The hints he dropped suggest that he is, rather, an abettor and a benefactor, something like a godfather.” Holmes succumbed to an enormous yawn. “Another coffee, I feel.”

  “Shouldn’t you be finding time to rest?” I said. “Rather than resorting to stimulants? You look wrung out, man.”

  “It has been a busy forty-eight hours. But I do not feel that I can take a breather quite yet.”

  Having given his order to the serving girl, Holmes resumed the thread of his narrative.

  “Hoping to goad Moriarty into further revelations, I broached the topic of Baron Cauchemar. ‘The bombings may not be bad for your business,’ I said, ‘but can the same be said for this vigilante roaming the East End?’

  “Moriarty nodded as though pained to concede it. ‘That... personage has been of considerable inconvenience to me. His shenanigans have curbed several of my more lucrative enterprises and put a number of my operatives out of action. I have even had employees come to me and ask to be excused from duties until further notice. I do not need to tell you how astonishing that is. They fear the Bloody Black Baron more than they do me!’

  “‘Remarkable,’ I said.

  “‘No matter how I chivvy or browbeat them, they will not be swayed. They refuse to work for me while Cauchemar continues to stalk the streets. I have had to make an example of one or two of them, but even that has failed to bring the rest into line.’

  “‘When I and the baron next meet, I shall remember to congratulate him warmly on a job well done.’

  “‘He is a blight,’ Moriarty hissed. ‘A scourge. If I ever find him, if I ever have him in my clutches, by God I will make him pay. He will rue the day he ever crossed the path of James Moriarty.’

  “He made it clear that our meeting was at an end, but he had one final word of warning for me.