Moriarty Page 3

  ‘It is this man that interests you and not Moriarty?’

  ‘He is the reason I am here.’

  Jones shook his head. ‘Sergeant Gessner was explaining to me as we came here that the police have already made enquiries and have been unable to discover where Moriarty was staying. He may have established his base in a village nearby but if so he certainly used an assumed name. There is nowhere outside here that we can search. What makes you think he might have this letter on him?’

  ‘Perhaps I’m grasping at straws,’ I said. ‘No, I’ll admit it. I am grasping at straws. But the way these people work … sometimes they use signs and symbols as a method of identification. The letter itself could become a passport – and if so, Moriarty would have kept it close.’

  ‘If you wish, we can examine him one more time.’

  ‘I think we must.’

  It was a grisly task. The body, cold and waterlogged, felt utterly inhuman in our hands and as we turned it, we could almost feel the flesh separating itself from the bones. The clothes were slimy. Reaching into the jacket, I found the shirt had been rucked back and my hand briefly came into contact with dead, white skin. Although there had been no prior arrangement between us, I concentrated on the upper part of the body while Jones busied himself with the lower. Just like the police before us, we found nothing. The pockets were empty. If they had contained anything more than the few items Jones had mentioned, the rushing waters of the Reichenbach Falls must have brutally ripped them away. We worked in silence. Finally, I reeled away, the gorge rising in my throat.

  ‘There is nothing,’ I said. ‘You were right. It was a waste of time.’

  ‘One moment.’ Jones had seen something. He reached out and took hold of the dead man’s jacket, examining the stitching around the breast pocket.

  ‘I’ve looked,’ I said. ‘There’s nothing there.’

  ‘Not the pocket,’ Jones said. ‘Look at this seam. This stitching has no business being here. I think it has been added later.’ He rubbed the fabric between his fingers. ‘There might be something inside the lining.’

  I leaned forward. He was right. A line of stitches stretched out a couple of inches below the pocket. ‘I have a knife,’ I said. I took out the jackknife that I always carried with me and handed it to my new friend.

  Jones inserted the point into the seam and gently sliced down. I watched as the stitches were cut through and the material came away. There was a secret pocket in the dead man’s jacket – and there was indeed something inside. Jones eased out a folded square of paper. It was still wet and might have disintegrated had he not handled it with the greatest delicacy. Using the flat blade of the knife he laid it on the stone table next to the body. Carefully, he unfolded it, a single page covered in handwriting that could have been a child’s.

  We leaned over together. This is what we read:

  HoLmES WaS CeRtAiNLY NOt A DIFFiCulT mAn to LiVe WItH. He wAs QuIeT iN HiS WAYs and his hABiTS wErE REgulAr. iT wAs RARE fOR HIm To BE up AfTeR TEN at nighT aND hE hAD INVariABLY breAKfasteD AND GoNE OUT BeFOrE i RoSe in The morNINg. SOMEtImEs He SPeNt hiS DAy At ThE ChEmiCaL lABoRatORY, SoMeTimes IN THE dIsSeCting ROoms And oCcAsionaLly iN lOnG WALKs whICH ApPeAREd TO taKE HIM INtO THE LOwEsT PORTioNs OF thE CITy. nothINg COuld exCEeD HiS ENErgY WHeN tHE wORkING FiT WAs upOn HiM.

  If Jones was disappointed, he didn’t show it. But this wasn’t the letter that I had described. It did not seem to be relevant in any way at all.

  ‘What do you make of it?’ he asked.

  ‘I … I do not know what to say.’ I read the words a second time. ‘I know this text,’ I continued. ‘Of course I know it. This is part of a narrative written by Dr John Watson. It has been copied from Lippincott’s Magazine!’

  ‘I think you will find it was actually from Beeton’s Christmas Annual,’ Jones corrected me. ‘It is from Chapter Three of A Study in Scarlet. But that does not make it any the less mysterious. I take it this is not what you expected to find.’

  ‘It was the last thing I expected.’

  ‘It is certainly very puzzling. But I have been here long enough. I suggest we retreat from this grim place and fortify ourselves with a glass of wine.’

  I took one last look at the dead man on the slab then turned and together we climbed back up, Jones limping heavily.

  THREE

  The Midnight Watch

  Athelney Jones had taken a room at the Englischer Hof and suggested that I do the same. We headed there together after we had parted company with the Swiss policemen, walking through the village with the sun brilliant in a cloudless sky and everything silent apart from our own footsteps and the occasional jangle of a bell coming from the sheep or goats that were grazing in the nearby hills. Jones was deep in thought, reflecting on the document we had discovered in the dead man’s pocket. What on earth was Moriarty doing with an extract from a Sherlock Holmes story hidden about him as he travelled to Switzerland? Had he perhaps been seeking some insight into his adversary’s mind before the two of them met at the Reichenbach Falls? Or was it actually the communication I had described, the reason for my long journey to Switzerland? Could it have some secret meaning unknown to both of us? Jones did not address these questions to me but I could see that they were plainly on his mind.

  The hotel was small and charming with shapes cut into the wood and flowers hanging around the windows; the very image of a Swiss chalet that every English traveller might dream of finding. Fortunately, there was room for me, and a boy was dispatched to the police station to collect my luggage. Jones and I parted company at the stairs. He had the page in his hand.

  ‘I would like, with your permission, to hold onto it a while longer,’ he said.

  ‘You think you can make some sense of it?’

  ‘I can at least give it my full attention and … who knows?’ He was tired. The walk from the police station had not been a long one but, combined with the high altitude, it had almost drained him.

  ‘Of course,’ I said. ‘Will we meet again this evening?’

  ‘We can dine together. Shall we say eight o’clock?’

  ‘That will suit me very well, Inspector Jones. Apart from anything else, it will give me time to walk to the famous Reichenbach Falls. I never thought I’d find myself in Switzerland of all places, and this village – it’s quite delightful, like something out of a fairy story.’

  ‘You might perhaps ask about Moriarty. If he didn’t stay in a hotel or a guest house, he might have taken a room in a private home. And someone may have seen him before he met up with Holmes.’

  ‘I thought the Swiss police had already made these enquiries.’

  ‘Wachtmeister Gessner? An admirable man doing the best that he can. But it won’t hurt to ask again.’

  ‘Very well. I’ll see what I can do.’

  I did as I was asked and strolled through the village, talking to those inhabitants who spoke my language, not that there were many of them. There were two words though that they all understood: Sherlock Holmes. At the mention of his name, they became serious and animated. That such a man had visited Meiringen was extraordinary; that he had died here beyond belief. They wanted to help. Sadly, though, none of them had seen Moriarty. No stranger had taken a room in their midst. They had nothing to offer me but broken English and sympathy. Eventually, I returned to my own room. On second thoughts, I had no desire to walk to the falls, which were at least two hours away. The truth was that I could not even think of them without shuddering and visiting them would have told me nothing I did not already know.

  Athelney Jones and I dined late that night and I was glad to see that he had recovered his strength. We sat together in the snug hotel restaurant with the tables packed closely together, animal heads on the wall, and a roaring fire quite out of proportion to the size of the room. It was needed though, for with the darkness a torrent of cold air had come twisting through the mountain passes and settled on the village. This was, after all, only May, and we were at an elevation
of almost two thousand feet. There were only a few other diners around us and we had chosen a table close to the inglenook so that we could talk together undisturbed.

  We were welcomed by a small, round-shouldered woman wearing an apron dress with puffed-out sleeves and a shawl. She brought us a basket of bread and a pint of red wine served in a pitcher and, setting them down, introduced herself as Greta Steiler, the Swiss wife of our English host. ‘We have only soup and roast meat tonight,’ she explained. Her English was excellent and I hoped the cooking would be the same. ‘My husband is alone in the kitchen today and you are lucky we are only half full. If we had any more guests, I do not know how we would manage.’

  ‘What has happened to your cook?’ Jones asked.

  ‘He went to visit his mother in Rosenlaui because she hasn’t been well. He was due back almost a week ago but we haven’t heard from him – and this after he has been with us five years! And then we have this business with the falls and with all the police and the detectives asking us their questions. I wait for Meiringen to be back as it was. We do not ask for all this excitement.’

  She bustled off and I poured myself some wine but Jones refused, helping himself instead to water. ‘The document …’ I began. From the moment we had sat down, I had wanted to ask what he had made of it.

  ‘I may be able to shed a certain light on the matter,’ Jones replied. ‘To begin with, it is very likely that it is the communication of which you spoke. It certainly seems to have been written by an American.’

  ‘How can you possibly know?’

  ‘I have examined the paper closely and found it to be clay-coated groundwood and therefore very probably American in origin.’

  ‘And the content?’

  ‘We will come to that shortly. But first, I think, we should reach an agreement.’ Jones lifted his glass. He swirled it round and I saw the firelight reflecting in the liquid. ‘I am here as a representative of the British police. As soon as we heard that Sherlock Holmes was dead, it was felt that one of us should attend upon the scene, if only as a matter of courtesy. He had, as I am sure you are aware, been helpful to us on a number of occasions. And anything relating to the activities of Professor James Moriarty was naturally of interest to us. What happened at the Reichenbach Falls seems straightforward enough but even so there is clearly something afoot, as Mr Holmes was wont to say. Your presence here and your suggestion that Moriarty was in contact with a member of the American underworld—’

  ‘Not just a member, sir. The master.’

  ‘It may well be that we have mutual interests and should work side by side although I must warn you that, generally speaking, Scotland Yard has a certain reticence about dealing with foreign detective agencies, particularly private ones. It may not be helpful, but that’s how it is. It follows that, if I am to make the case to my superiors, I need to know more. In short, you must tell me everything about yourself and the events that have brought you here. You can do so in confidence. But it is only on the strength of what you tell me that I can decide what course of action I should take.’

  ‘I will willingly tell you everything, Inspector Jones,’ I said. ‘And I’ll make no secret of the fact that I am greatly in need of any help you and the British police can provide.’ I broke off as Frau Steiler returned to the table with two bowls of steaming soup and Spätzle – which was the word she used to describe the little dumplings floating in a murky brown liquid. It smelled better than it looked and, with the scent of boiled chicken and herbs rising in my nostrils, I began my narrative.

  ‘I was, as I have already told you, born in Boston, where my father was the owner of a very highly regarded law practice with offices in Court Square. My childhood memories are of a family that was correct in every detail, with several servants and a black nanny – Tilly – who was very dear to me.’

  ‘You were an only child?’

  ‘No, sir, I was the second of two boys. My brother, Arthur, was quite a few years older than me and we were never close. My father was a member of Boston’s Republican Party and spent much of his time surrounded by like-minded gentlemen who prided themselves on the values which they had brought with them from England and which they felt set them apart as a sort of elite. They were members of the Somerset Club and the Myopia Club and many others. My mother, I’m afraid, was fragile in her health and spent much of the time in bed. The result was that I saw very little of either of my parents and that might explain why, in my teens, I became quite rebellious in nature and finally left home in circumstances which I still regret.

  ‘My brother had already joined the family firm and it was expected that I would do the same. However, I had no aptitude for the law. I found the textbooks dry and almost indecipherable. Besides, I had other ambitions. I cannot quite say what it was that first interested me in the criminal world … it may have been stories that I found in Merry’s Museum. This was a magazine read by every child in the neighbourhood. But there was also an incident I remember very clearly. We were members of the congregation at the Warren Avenue Baptist Church. We never missed a service and it was the one place we were together as a family. Well, when I was about twenty, it was discovered that the sexton, one Thomas Piper, had committed a series of quite gruesome murders—’

  ‘Piper?’ Jones’s eyes narrowed. ‘I recall the name. His first victim was a young girl …’

  ‘That’s correct. The story was widely reported outside America. As for me, although my entire community felt nothing but outrage, I must confess that I was thrilled that such a man could have concealed himself in our midst. I had seen him often in his long black cape, always smiling and beneficent. If he could be guilty of such crimes, was there anyone in our community who could genuinely claim to be above suspicion?

  ‘It was at this moment that I found my vocation in life. The dry world of the lawyer was not for me. I wanted to be a detective. I had heard of the Pinkertons. They were already legendary throughout America. Just a few days after the scandal came to light, I told my father that I wanted to travel to New York to join them.’

  I fell silent. Jones was watching me with an intensity that I would come to know well and I knew that he was weighing my every word. There was a part of me that did not wish to open myself up to him in this way but at the same time I knew that he would demand nothing less.

  ‘My father was a quiet man and a very cultivated one,’ I continued. ‘He had never raised his voice to me, not in my entire life, but he did so on that day. To him, with all his sensibilities, the work of the policeman and the detective (for he saw no difference between the two) was lowly, disgusting. He begged me to change my mind. I refused. We quarrelled, and in the end I left with hardly more than a few dollars in my pocket and the growing fear that, as my home slipped away behind me, I was making a terrible mistake.

  ‘I took the train to New York and it is hard to convey to you my first impressions as I left Grand Central Depot. I found myself in a city of extraordinary opulence and abject poverty, of astonishing elegance and extreme depravity, the two living so close by that I only had to turn my head to pass from one to the other. Somehow I made my way to the Lower East Side, a part of the city that put me in mind of the tower of Babel, for here there were Poles, Italians, Jews, Bohemians, all of them speaking their own languages and observing their own customs. Even the smells in the streets were new to me. After my long, protected childhood, it was as if I were seeing the world for the first time.

  ‘It was easy enough to find a room in a tenement; every door carried an advertisement. I spent that first night in a dark, airless place with no furniture, a tiny stove and a kerosene lamp and I will admit that I was very glad to open my eyes and see the first light of dawn.

  ‘I had considered applying to the police force in New York, thinking that I would need some experience as a guardian of the law before I could apply to the Pinkertons, but I soon discovered that such a course of action would be practically impossible. I had brought with me no letters of rec
ommendation; I had no connections, and without preferment of one sort or another, it would be hard even to get a foot through the door. The police were poorly resourced and corruption was rife. Would the famous detective agency, “The Eye that Never Sleeps”, even consider a rash and inexperienced youth? There was only one way to find out. I went straight to their office and applied.

  ‘I was fortunate. Allan Pinkerton, the most famous detective in America and the founder of the company, and his sons, Robert and William, were actively seeking recruits. It may surprise you to learn that police experience was not a requirement. In fact, it was the other way round. Many senior police officers in America first learned their trade with Pinkerton’s. Honesty, integrity, reliability … these were the qualities that counted and I found myself being interviewed along with former bootmakers, teachers and wine merchants, all hoping to better themselves in the company. Nor did my youth count against me: I was well presented and I had a good knowledge of the law. By the end of the day I had been recruited as a special operative, working on a temporary basis for $2.50 a day plus bed and board. The hours were long and it was made clear to me that my employment could be terminated at any time if I was found wanting. I was determined that it should not be.’

  Briefly, I stirred my soup with my spoon. A man at a table on the far side of the room suddenly broke into loud laughter, I think at his own joke. It struck me that he laughed in a way that was peculiarly Germanic, although perhaps it was an unworthy thought.

  I began again. ‘I am moving quickly forward, Mr Jones, because my own life story will be of little interest to you.’