The Three Monarchs Page 4
Meanwhile, Dr Watson, realising he has been tricked, rushes back to the scene where an abandoned alpenstock and a set of footprints tell their own tale. He summons help and investigates the scene with several men from the hotel and a local police officer by the name of Gessner. Holmes sees them but does not make himself known, even though he must be aware of the distress it will cause his most trusted companion. They find the letter. They read it and, realising there is nothing more to be done, they all leave. Holmes begins to climb down again and it is now that the narrative takes another unexpected and wholly inexplicable turn. It appears that Professor Moriarty has not come to the Reichenbach Falls alone. As Holmes begins his descent – no easy task in itself – a man suddenly appears and attempts to knock him off his perch with a number of boulders. The man is Colonel Sebastian Moran.
What on earth is he doing there? Was he present when Holmes and Moriarty fought and, if so, why didn’t he try to help? Where is his gun? Has the greatest marksman in the world accidentally left it on the train? Neither Holmes nor Watson, nor anyone else for that matter, has ever provided reasonable answers to questions which, even as I sit here hammering at the keys, seem inescapable. And once I start asking them, I can’t stop. I feel as if I am in a runaway coach, tearing down Fifth Avenue, unable to stop at the lights.
That is about as much as we know of the Reichenbach Falls. The story that I must now tell begins five days later when three men come together in the crypt of St Michael’s church in Meiringen. One is a detective inspector from Scotland Yard, the famous command centre of the British police. His name is Athelney Jones. I am the second.
The third man is tall and thin with a prominent forehead and sunken eyes which might view the world with a cold malevolence and cunning were there any life in them at all. But now they are glazed and empty. The man, formally dressed in a suit with a wing collar and a long frock coat, has been fished out of the Reichenbach Brook, some distance from the falls. His left leg is broken and there are other serious injuries to his shoulder and head, but death must surely have been caused by drowning. The local police have attached a label to his wrist, which has been folded across his chest. On it is written the name: James Moriarty.
This is the reason I have come all the way to Switzerland. It appears that I have arrived too late.
PRAISE FOR THE HOUSE OF SILK
“Exceptionally entertaining . . . One can only applaud Horowitz’s skill . . . Impressive . . . An altogether terrific period thriller and one of the best Sherlockian pastiches of our time.”—Washington Post
“The latest edition to [Sherlock’s] distinguished legacy . . . Admirers of Horowitz’s TV series Foyle’s War and Sherlockians will delight in equal measure. With consummate grasp, Horowitz unfolds an intricate and rewarding mystery in the finest Victorian tradition . . . For all its deft and loving fidelity, The House of Silk sees the great detective in grisly and unfamiliar straits.”—Vanity Fair
“Cliffhanger plotting . . . Watson’s elegiac voice should silence the objections of even the most persnickety Sherlock scholar.”—National Public Radio (NPR)
“A book firmly rooted in the style of Doyle, faithful to the character as created and with just enough wiggle room to allow the author to say all the things he’s been longing to say about the world of 221b Baker Street . . . The House of Silk will satisfy.”—Huffington Post
“A tone-perfect, action-packed story of corruption, greed and dissolution, all the while capturing the sights, smells and social problems of 1890s London . . . This reader, albeit no Holmes expert, totally forgot the novel wasn’t from Doyle himself. Grade: A.”—Plain Dealer
“Worthy of [its] canonical inspiration . . . An impressive read . . . Horowitz plots masterfully, foregrounding Holmes’s trademark investigative techniques against Watson’s pacey narration.”—Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
“Horowitz truly pulls off the wonderful illusion that Arthur Conan Doyle left us one last tale . . . Close your eyes and you can smell the shag tobacco of Holmes’s church-warded pipe as he sorts through the evidence.”—San Diego Union Tribune
“The hype surrounding what’s being billed as the first pastiche ever officially approved by the Conan Doyle estate is amply justified . . . [and] authentic. Horowitz gets everything right—the familiar narrative voice, brilliant deductions, a very active role for Watson, and a perplexing and disturbing series of puzzles to unravel—and the legion of fans of the originals will surely be begging for Horowitz to again dip into Watson’s trove of untold tales.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Nicely captures the storytelling tone of Holmes’s inventor in a galloping adventure that boasts enough twists, ominous turns and urgent nocturnal escapades to make modern moviemakers salivate . . . Author Horowitz delivers some dramatic tableaux in these pages, including a railway robbery, a prison escape and a horse-drawn carriage chase . . . The Holmes we see here is just as cryptic and clever as we’ve come to expect.”—Kirkus Reviews
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
One of the UK’s most prolific and successful writers, ANTHONY HOROWITZ may have committed more (fictional) murders than any other living author. His recent novel The House of Silk has sold over 450,000 copies worldwide in more than 35 countries. His bestselling Alex Rider series for young adults has sold more than 19 million copies worldwide. As a TV screenwriter, he created Midsomer Murders and the BAFTA-winning Foyle’s War, both of which were featured on PBS’s Masterpiece Mystery; other TV work includes Poirot and the widely acclaimed miniseries Collision and Injustice. Anthony regularly contributes to a wide variety of national newspapers and magazines, and in January 2014, he was appointed an Officer of the British Empire for his services to literature. He lives in London.
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ORIGINAL SHORT STORY BY ANTHONY HOROWITZ
The Three Monarchs
COPYRIGHT
Excerpt from MORIARTY. Copyright © 2014 by Anthony Horowitz.
THE THREE MONARCHS. Copyright © 2014 by Anthony Horowitz. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Published in Great Britain in 2014 by Orion Books, an imprint of The Orion Publishing Group Ltd.
EPUB Edition November 2014 ISBN 9780062387844
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