Victorian Villainy (20 page)

The second floor corridor was dark, and we moved along it by feel, running our hands along the wall as we went. “Here,” Moriarty said. “This should be the doctor’s door.” He put his ear to the door, and then tried the handle. “Damn—it’s locked.”

A match flared, and the light steadied, and I saw that Moriarty had lighted a plumber’s candle that he took from his pocket. “Hold this for me, will you?” he asked.

Moriarty handed me the candle and took a small, curved implement from his pocket. He inserted it into the lock and, after a few seconds fiddling, the door opened. We entered a large room which was dark and deserted. I held up the candle, and we could see a desk and couch, and a row of cabinets along one wall.

“There should be a staircase in here somewhere,” Moriarty said running his hand along the molding on the far wall.

“A staircase?” I asked.

“Yes. I measured the space when we were here earlier, and an area just below this room has been closed off, with no access from that floor. Also water has recently been laid on in this corner of the building and a drain put in. You can see the pipes hugging the wall from outside. Logic says that—aha!”

There was a soft click and a section of the wall swung open on silent hinges, revealing a narrow stairs going down. A brilliant shaft of light from below illuminated the staircase.

Moriarty, his revolver drawn, crept down the staircase, and I was but a step behind him. The sight that greeted my eyes as the room below came into view was one that will stay with me forever. It was as though I was witness to a scene from one of
Le Grand Guignol
’s dramas of horror, but the chamber below me was not a stage setting, and the people were not actors.

The room was an unrelieved white, from the painted walls to the tile floor, and a pair of calcium lights mounted on the ceiling eliminated all shadow and cast an unnatural brightness over the scene. Two metal tables of the sort used in operating theatres stood several feet apart in the middle of the room. Surrounding them was a madman’s latticework of tubing, piping, and glassware, emanating from a machine that squatted between the two tables, the purpose of which I could not even begin to guess.

On the table to my right, partially covered by a sheet, lay an elderly man; on the other table a young girl similarly covered had been tied down by leather straps. Both were unconscious, with ether cones covering their nose and mouth. Between them stood Dr. Papoli, his black frock coat replaced by a white surgical apron, absorbed in his task of inserting a thin cannula into the girl’s thigh. His assistant, also in white, was swabbing an area on the man’s thigh with something that left a brown stain.

“All right, doctor,” Moriarty said, starting toward the tables. “I think it would be best if you stopped right now!”

Papoli looked up, an expression of annoyance on his face. “You mustn’t interrupt!” he said. “You will ruin the experiment.”

“Your experiments have already ruined too many people,” Moriarty said, raising his revolver. “Get away from the girl! The police will be here any second.”

Papoli cursed in some foreign language and, grabbing a brown bottle, threw it violently against the wall. It shattered and, in an instant, a sickly-sweet smell filled the room, a smell I recognized from some dental surgery I’d had the year before.

“Don’t shoot, Professor!” I yelled. “It’s ether! One shot could blow us all into the billiard room!”

“Quick!” Moriarty said, “we must get the duke and the girl out of here.”

Papoli and his assistant were already halfway up the stair. Doing my best to hold my breath, I staggered over to the tables. Moriarty lifted the duke onto his shoulders, and I unstrapped the girl and grabbed her, I’m not sure how, and headed for the stairs.

While we were on the staircase two shots rang out from the room above, and I heard the sound of a scuffle. We entered the room to find Lestrade glaring at the doctor and his assistant, who were being firmly held by two large policemen. “He shot at me, Moriarty, can you believe that?” Lestrade said, sounding thoroughly annoyed. “Now, what have we here?”

We lay our burdens gently on the floor, and I stanched the wound on the girl’s thigh with my cravat.

Moriarty indicated the unconscious man on the floor. “This is the Duke of Claremore,” he said. “It would be best to get him out of here before his presence becomes known. Dr. Papoli can safely be charged with murder, and his accomplice, I suppose, with being an accomplice. We’ll see that the girl is cared for. Come to Russell Square tomorrow at noon, and I’ll explain all over lunch.”

“But Moriarty,”

“Not now, Lestrade. Tomorrow.”

“Oh, very well,” Lestrade said. He turned to a policeman by the door. “Get a chair to seat his lordship in, and we’ll carry him downstairs,” he instructed.

We took the waiting cab to Abelard Court, and Beatrice Atterleigh herself opened the door to our knock. She did not seem surprised to find us standing at her door supporting a barely-conscious girl at one in the morning.

“Will you take care of this girl for a few days?” Moriarty asked. “She has been mistreated. I have no idea what language she speaks.”

“Of course,” Mrs. Atterleigh said.

The next morning at quarter to twelve our client arrived at Russell Square in response to a telegram. Lestrade arrived at noon sharp, thereby demonstrating the punctuality of the detective police.

We sat down to duckling a l’orange and an ‘82 Piesporter, and Moriarty regaled us with a discourse on wines through the main course. It was not until the serving girl put the trifle on the table and Moriarty had poured us each a small glass of the Imperial Tokay—from a case presented to Moriarty by Franz Joseph himself upon the successful conclusion of a problem involving the chief of the
Kundschafts Stelle
and a ballerina—that he was willing to talk about the death of Lord Vincent Tams.

“It was obvious from the start,” Moriarty began, “that Lord Tams did not die where he was found. Which raised the questions why was he moved, and from where?”

“Obvious to you, perhaps,” Lestrade said.

“Come now,” Moriarty said. “His hands were raised and his face was flushed. But corpses do not lie with their hands raised, nor with their faces flushed.”

“This one did,” Lestrade said. “I saw it.”

“You saw it full in the grip of
rigor mortis
,” Moriarty said, “which makes the body rigid in whatever position it has assumed. But how did it assume that position? The face gives it away. The head was lower than the body after death.”

“Of course!” I said. “Lividity. I should have known.”

“Lividity?” Lord Tams asked.

“After death the blood pools at the body’s lowest point,” I told him, “which makes the skin in that area appear red. I’ve seen it many times as a reporter on the New York police beat. I’m just not used to hearing of it on faces.”

“Your brother was at the Paradol Club to avail himself of the services of Dr. Papoli,” Moriarty said, turning in his chair to face Lord Tams. “The doctor claimed to have a method to rejuvenate a man’s lost vitality. He transfused his patients with youthful blood. Thus they regained youthful vigor. It is a not uncommon desire of men, as they get older, to recapture their youth. Papoli was preying on men who could afford to attempt it. Occasionally one of his patients died, because for some reason as yet unknown, some people’s blood will cause a fatal reaction when injected into another. Papoli claimed that he had devised a machine that would solve that problem—the strange apparatus that was between the two beds. But he was obviously mistaken.”

“How do you know that?” Lestrade asked.

“I went to talk to your prisoner this morning,” Moriarty said. He is extremely indignant that he is in jail. He considers himself a savior of man. He is quite mad.”

“So other men died besides my brother?” Lord Tams asked.

“Yes, several. But they were elderly men, and their natural vanity had kept them from telling anyone about the operation, so his secret remained safe. Occasionally one of his donors died, but they came from the poorest classes of the city and they were not missed.”

“But my brother was not that old.”

“True. It was his obsession with sexual vitality that made him seek the operation. It failed. Papoli and his assistant thought your brother had died on the table. They left him there, not wanting to carry a body through the hallway early in the evening. Later, when they came back to take him to his room, they found that he had briefly regained consciousness and partially removed his restraining straps. The upper half of his body fell off the table in his dying convulsions, and he was left hanging from a strap around his legs. That explains his hands, which had fallen toward the floor. When they lifted him, rigor had set in and his arms looked as though they were raised.”

Lord Tams sighed. “Poor Vincent.” He stood up. “Well, Professor Moriarty, you have saved my marriage, and possibly my life. I had the impression that Inspector Lestrade was preparing to clap me in irons at any second.”

“That’s as it may be,” Lestrade said. “No hard feelings, I trust?”

“None, Inspector. I invite you—all of you—to my wedding. I must be off now to see Miss Whitsome and tell her the happy news. Professor Moriarty, you will send me a bill, whatever you think is right, and I will pay it promptly, I assure you.”

Moriarty nodded, and Lord Tams clapped his bowler on his head and was out the door. A minute later Lestrade followed.

“Moriarty,” I said, refilling my coffee cup, “two last questions.”

Moriarty held out his own cup for a refill. “What?” he asked.

“Do you think the new Lord Tams will keep his brother’s rooms at the Paradol?”

“I never speculate,” Moriarty said, “it is bad for the deductive process.” He leaned back. “But if I were a betting man, I’d put a tenner on it. What else?”

“Miss Lestrelle told us that Vincent had made some reference to Shelley, and you said that that told all. Were you serious? I looked through my copy of Shelley this morning, and I could find nothing that applies.”

Moriarty smiled. “I fancy you were looking up the wrong Shelley,” he said.

“The wrong—“

Moriarty reached over to the bookshelf and tossed a book across to me. “Try this one.”

I looked down at the book. On the cover, in an ornate Gothic type, was the title:
Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus
, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley.

Moriarty was out all this morning, and he came back with a painting by Lenore Lestrelle. It is all green and brown and blue blotches and seems to be some sort of pastoral scene. I am afraid that he intends to hang it in the dining room.

THE PICTURE OF OSCAR WILDE

I make no apologies for what follows,
it begins.
It is my intention that none shall read these words for the next—let us say—100 years. But that is not as much out of the well of modesty for which I am widely known and justly admired; but from a desire that I shall trouble no one with my peccadillos, and no one shall trouble me with their approbation. I am quite able to disapprove of myself without outside assistance.
”

There it breaks off. Below it on the page are a few random thoughts.

Without the approbation of one’s friends where would one be?

And:

One lives for joy and wit and friendship—but I can’t make out what one dies for.

These words are on the first page of an otherwise pristine notebook on the cover of which is printed “OFOW January 91.”

The playwright, poet, novelist and gadfly Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wilde left the notebook in my house sometime during the second week in, as it happens, January of 1891. He never called to reclaim it; perhaps in the flurry of that month’s events, he forgot its existence. Perhaps he began again in some other notebook, recounting the events to their sad conclusion, and put the narrative someplace where, in time, his version of the tale will be revealed.

Here is my version.

My name is Benjamin Barnett and I am the proprietor of the North Atlantic Cable News Service, bringing news of Britain and the Continent to North American readers. And I am a friend and erstwhile minion of Professor James Moriarty, who figures largely in this story. The professor rescued me from a Turkish prison some years ago, and in recompense for this service I stayed in his employ for a number of years upon my return to London before establishing the news service.

Oscar Wilde had been writing an irregular column for me on the London theatre scene for the past two years, under the pen name of Fingal Wills. When I asked him why he refused to use his own name, he had told me, “Writing for the American public is like appearing as the rear end of a musical hall horse. One does it only for the money, and one would as soon not be recognized.” I couldn’t argue with him.

It was around eight o’clock on a Tuesday night early in January, if memory serves, when our maid entered my study, where I was going over the accounts of some recent murder trials to see if any might interest a Boston newspaper whose readers seemed to relish British gore. “That’s all right, Tilda,” I told her. “You can go to bed. I’ll turn down the lamps and chivvy my own cup into the pantry.”