The Shadow of Reichenbach Falls (19 page)

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Authors: John R. King

BOOK: The Shadow of Reichenbach Falls
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Lestrade snatched the postcard, held it up, and read silently. His hand trembled.
“What is it?” asked several of the other detectives.
“It’s from Jack, I’d wager,” I said, “another taunt, yes?”
Giving me an imperious glare, Lestrade drew a deep breath and read:
I was not codding dear old Boss when I gave you the tip, you’ll hear about Saucy Jacky’s work tomorrow double event this time number one squealed a bit couldn’t finish straight off. Ha not the time to get ears for police. thanks for keeping Mr. M. back so I got to work again.
“One of you morons gave him my name!” I raged.
Anna glared at me, a look that combined frustration and fear. Then she asked Lestrade, “Are we free to go now?”
Lestrade snorted and gestured to his comrades to unshackle me.
I stood, rubbing my chafed wrists, and said, “I hope you buckle him—Boss.”
REVENGE
FROM THE MEMOIRS OF PROFESSOR JAMES MORIARTY:
 
A
nna and I cleaned ourselves up, purchased new clothes, and headed to Victoria Station. There, I bought two tickets to Cambridge.
“Cambridge?” Anna objected. “We can’t go home. We almost got him. We could catch him in Paris. Do you think Lestrade will catch him?”
I laughed aloud. “We tracked him, we found him, we got his name, we would have captured him this very night if not for the police. No, they know less than the papers, and the papers know nothing.”
“Then we have to go to Paris!” Anna pressed.
I stepped from the platform onto the train. “Do you honestly believe that John Harder will be on that boat when it docks in France?”
Anna shook her head sullenly. “Of course not.” She took my hand.
I lifted her up beside me. “Of course not.”
She was trembling; my darling Anna was trembling. All through that insane night, she had been a rock, even when Jack the Ripper was spewing his rancor into her face, but now she trembled.
Anna clutched my coat sleeve. “What will we do?”
“Mrs. Mulroney,” I said heavily, leading her into an empty coach compartment. “We’ll stay at the boardinghouse
tonight. Jack’s canny, but not so canny that he will have traced us out that far. We need a night’s rest, need to be able to think clearly to outsmart him.” I sat down.
Anna melted against me, all the trembling terror pouring out of her. “Oh, Father, I’m glad of it. A night’s sleep—Mrs. Mulroney—a warm, safe bed tonight.”
“Yes.”
Evening was drawing down over the Cambridge platform when we arrived. I held Anna back, kept our train compartment dark, and watched out the windows to see if Jack lurked there. Every last passenger debarked. The conductor called, “All aboard to Ely!” Porters and passengers made their way onto the train, but still we waited. The first blasts of steam came as the brakes disengaged and the pistons surged—and Jack was nowhere to be seen.
“Let’s go!” Grabbing Anna’s hand, I hurried her from the compartment, through the aisle, and down the steps. Already the train was rolling, and the platform scrolled away below our feet. “Hit the ground running,” I advised and leaped, barely able to stay upright. Anna followed—good girl—and landed with more grace than I.
The moment we had caught our balance, we ran together to the station house, passed through it, reached the street, and hailed a hansom. A cab pulled up with a rumpled man sitting on the board, his cap dragged down over his brow. Before letting Anna climb in, I stood up on the fender and knocked the hat off the man’s head.
“What’s this?” he asked, scrabbling to grab his cap even as I tugged his goatee. “Ow!” It was real.
“No offense, good man,” I said, slipping a crown into his hand. That hunk of silver covered a multitude of sins. Then, as Anna clambered into the coach, I cupped the cabby’s fuzzy ear and whispered, “The Red Gables on Charles.”
We had a quiet ride, Anna and I. The steady clop of the horse’s hooves sounded mournful on the cobbles. I kept Anna back from the windows, kept the curtains drawn except for a narrow slit of light out of which I peered. There was no sign of Jack or of pursuit of any kind.
At last, we reached the Red Gables. I paid the cabby well to keep mum about us, and then Anna and I dashed to the door. We knocked. When the doddering old proprietress answered the door, we forced our way inside.
She wailed, trying to drive us out.
“It is a matter most urgent, madam,” I told her. “We’re not safe on the street. This is Anna—don’t you remember her?”
The gray suspicion on the old woman’s face flushed to a pink smile, and she said, “Oh, the girl with Mrs. Mulroney.”
“Mrs. Mulroney, yes.”
The proprietress said, “Go ahead then, Anna, dear. I suppose Mrs. Mulroney is expecting you.”
“You can suppose,” I replied.
Up the stairs we went, and down the hall we came to our nanny’s room and knocked. She opened the door in nightshirt and cap and stared at us in shock.
“We’re in desperate need of your aid, Mrs. Mulroney,” I said. “You must let Anna stay here with you tonight.”
The governess, always a steady woman, gestured behind her to the small room. It held only a bed, a washbasin, and a folded cot. “Anna is always welcome, of course … . But what desperate business is this?”
“You’ll be safer not to know,” I said.
“I’ll tell you,” Anna said, stepping into Mrs. Mulroney’s arms and hugging her tightly. After a moment, Anna pulled back and cast a glance my way. “But you must also let Father stay.”
Mrs. Mulroney’s mouth dropped open. “Anna. It would not be proper—”
“Quite right,” I replied. “Not my intention: I spied a comfortable settee downstairs in the parlor. It’ll allow me to keep watch over the whole place. I wouldn’t wish to bring danger down on this house.”
“But you need sleep,” Anna protested.
“I’ll have sleep,” I told her flatly. Then stepping into Mrs. Mulroney’s room, I embraced both women. “Now, it’s time for you two to get some rest.”
Anna clung to me as if she knew what mischief I had in mind. At last, I pulled away from her and bowed my thanks to Mrs. Mulroney. “Lock your door, Mrs. Mulroney, and don’t open it for anything until dawn.”
The door closed on my words, and the bolt snicked into position.
Turning, I stalked away down the hall. I had no intention of sleeping on a settee that night. I would occupy my own bed, but only after I had made it—and all the world—safe from Jack the Ripper.
Descending the stairs, I went to the kitchen of the Red Gables and found a long knife. Secreting it in the sleeve of my coat, I left the Gables out its back door and listened with satisfaction as the flustered proprietress locked it behind me.
There was no fear left. I was on the hunt. Perhaps this was how the Ripper felt night after night—knife in hand and murder in heart.
Jack was, of course, in our apartments, waiting in ambush. He would watch out the bay window to see my approach, would listen for my key in the keyhole and would slide into position to take me unawares. A marvelous plan, except that he had failed to factor in my own thirst to kill.
I did not approach up the front walk, but came through the back alley. Also, I did not enter through the back door, but instead climbed a trellis two houses down and made my way over slick slates, rooftop to rooftop, until I stood just beside my bedroom window. It was a simple thing to slide the tip of the knife beneath the sash and pry it slowly, soundlessly up. Then I extended my leg in over the sill and drew myself within.
The air inside was stifling. The apartments had a closed-up feeling. My hope began to fade. I stepped lightly across the floor, avoiding the boards that creaked, and made my way to the bedroom door.
Beyond, the parlor looked empty. The curtains were undisturbed.
With knife out before me, I crept through the parlor. The curtains revealed no one. I opened the cloakroom door and stabbed through the coats, but the knife found only fabric and air. Next, I checked Anna’s room—in the wardrobe, beneath the bed. Then the kitchen, the larder, the dining room … .
I’d been a fool. I’d overestimated the man. Jack may have had my initial—Mr. M.—but he didn’t know my name, didn’t know I was
Professor Moriarty.
He couldn’t have found out where I lived.
A breeze from the bedroom gusted into the hall, rolling tiny motes of dust across the floor and against the toes of my shoes.
I should shut the window
. Going into the bedroom, I stepped past the bed, along the open wardrobe—
I saw him out of the corner of my eye, leaping from the wardrobe.
Jack the Ripper smashed down on my back, legs around my hips, arms grappling my shoulders, knife at my throat. Ugh, the weight of the man—not a big man, but bony, wiry.
Bent on killing me. As I collapsed to the floor, I managed to shove my left hand up over my throat.
He drew his blade. It slashed the back of my hand. I hardly felt the cut, the knife was so sharp, but only pressure and the warm gush of blood.
Jack felt the blood, too, and he laughed, sitting up on my back. “So easy. Like a whore, you are. Go down hard and stay down with throat gushing.”
He couldn’t see my bleeding hand—laid open along the tendon from wrist to ring finger. He thought it was a neck wound. I gurgled and shuddered to keep him thinking it. Best of all, though, he couldn’t see the knife from the Red Gables lying just under the bed, just within reach of my right hand.
Jack’s tone changed to mock regret. “Sorry, Boss. I’d have left you alone if you’d have left me alone. I’m not down on professors like I’m down on whores—but you hunted me. You and your girl did. And you found out who I was. Couldn’t let you go telling everyone who Jack is.”
I let the gurgling sounds subside and released a long, sputtering groan. Then I lay still, hoping he would get off me before I had to gasp another breath.
“Too bad you got wise about my little trap. Climbing in the way you did. Leaving your daughter somewheres. I’ll find her, I will. Not hard to get information from people. Just smile and seem a little daft and a little in trouble, and they tell you whatever you want. That’s how I got your name, by the bye. Just showed up at Scotland Yard, pretending to be an idiot, asking them to let my brother go, crying, getting hysterical, saying he wasn’t no Jack the Ripper—making them tell me it wasn’t my brother they’d caught, but some fellow from Cambridge. ‘My brother’s from Cambridge!’ I said to them, and they barked out, ‘Is your brother named Moriarty?’
Ha-ha, that’s when I had you. Mr. M., I called you—not knowing you were a professor and all.”
My stamina was running out, but so was his story.
Jack gave a sigh and patted my back gently. “Well, there it is. I won’t be cutting you any more. You’re not my type.” He pulled his knees up and stood, still straddling me.
I chanced a slow, silent breath, filling my lungs for an attack.
Jack lifted his right leg to step away. “’Course, that daughter of yours—”
I grabbed the Red Gables knife, flipped over, and slashed across the back of Jack’s left thigh—just above the knee. His leg was planted, his knee locked, and I bore down with all the fury in me. The knife severed fabric and folded back skin like warm butter and laid open tendons and made them snap. Jack’s hamstrings leaped up in pain, bunching beneath his buttocks.
He jolted on that uncertain leg, staggered, could not bend his knee to catch himself, and crashed down on the floor beside me.
I scrambled to my feet. My left hand ached, blood falling hot from it, but the rest of me felt magnificent. I was standing, knife in hand, over the convulsing figure of Jack the Ripper. He looked small now, with a pale, pinched face and a weak jaw. “Is this how it feels, Jack, to stand above a person and hold life and death in your hand?”
He tried to scrabble away from me, crab-walking on his hands and his one good leg. He’d lost his razor, and now it lay on the floor beside a wide trail of blood from his sliced knee.
I kicked the razor away and stepped up to him and drew my knife across the back of his other knee. Now he was truly hamstrung. “There’ll be no escape, Jack.”
He twisted in pain, teeth gritting. How like a frightened
child he seemed—caught—shifting from belligerence to bargaining. “So, it’s the police for old Jack, after all.”
I laughed. “No. They’re on your side. They held me while you did your last job. No. There’ll be no police.”
Jack smiled broadly. His rumpled face smoothed so that his head seemed a jack-o’-lantern. “You can’t rip me, Doctor. You can’t rip the Ripper.”
I growled low, “My wife was killed by a man like you, murdered in this very apartment. It was because of her that I came after you. And now you’ve threatened my daughter. I very much can rip you.”
His grin faded away, and his mercurial face now resembled only a wadded-up gunnysack. “I’ll squeal.”
“Then squeal. I’ll still cut your throat. And when the police arrive, I’ll tell them what happened, that you ambushed me in my own bedroom and tried to kill me—that you said you’d kill my daughter. They won’t care about the hamstringing. You’re Jack the Goddamned Ripper. I’ve got all the testimony I need to prove it. It’ll be an inconvenience for me, of course, with all the interrogations, all the news stories, but in the end, I’ll be the man who killed Jack the Ripper, and you’ll be just a cut-up little corpse.”
He looked sullen. Resigned. “And if I don’t squeal?”
“If you don’t squeal, I’ll slit your throat and dispose of your body, and your legend will live on.” A light entered his eyes, and I knew I had him. Here was a man concerned about his trade name, a man who wanted to live forever in infamy. Demonic. “And whenever another hacked-up body is found, folk will whisper that perhaps it was Jack the Ripper.”
The light in his eyes intensified, becoming an actual glow. In those dark apartments, Jack’s eyes shone red like the eyes of a cat in moonlight. So uncanny was that aspect, so preternatural
the effect, that I paused for a moment, the knife hanging loose in my hand.

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