Victorian Villainy (7 page)

“Not really sisters? Then they were—what?”

“They were lovers,” I told him. “There are women who fall in love with other women, just as there are men who fall in love with other men. The ancient Greeks thought it quite normal.”

“Lovers?”

“Andrea preferred women to men, and Lucinda was her, ah, mate.”

“But—Professor Maples is her husband.”

“I assume it was truly a marriage of convenience. If you look at the bedrooms it is clear that Andrea and Lucy usually shared a bedroom—Lucy’s—as they both have quantities of clothing in it. And I would assume that Professor Maples and Mr. Crisboy have a similar arrangement.”

“You think the professor and Crisboy—but they....”

“A German professor named Ulrichs has coined a word for such unions; he calls them homo-sexual. In some societies they are accepted, and in some they are condemned. We live in the latter.”

“Holmes sat down in the straight-back chair. “That is so,” he said. “So you think they derived this method of keeping their relationships concealed?”

“I imagine the marriage, if there was a marriage, and Andrea’s adopting Lucy as her ‘sister’ was established well before the menage moved here. It was the ideal solution, each protecting the other from the scorn of society and the sting of the laws against sodomy and such behavior.”

“But Andrea went to the cottage to have, ah, intimate relations with Faulting.”

“She liked to flirt, you must have observed that. And she obviously wasn’t picky as to which gender she flirted with, or with which gender she, let us say, consummated her flirting. There are women like that, many of them it seems unusually attractive and, ah, compelling. Augustus Caesar’s daughter Julia seems to have been one of them, according to Suetonius. Andrea found Faulting attractive, and was determined to have him. My guess is that she and Lucy had words about it, but Andrea went to meet Faulting anyway, while Lucy remained in her room and worked herself into a jealous rage. She didn’t intend to kill Andrea; that’s shown by the fact that she didn’t open the sword cane, although she must have known about it.”

Holmes was silent for a minute, and I could see some powerful emotion growing within him. “You had this all figured out,” he said, turning to me, his words tight and controlled.

“Much of it,” I admitted. “But don’t berate yourself for missing it. I was familiar with the idea of homo-sexuality through my reading, and several acquaintances of mine have told me of such relationships. I had the knowledge and you didn’t.”

But I had misjudged the direction of Holmes’ thoughts. The fury in him suddenly exploded. “You could have stopped this,” he screamed. “You let it happen!”

I backed away to avoid either of us doing something we would later regret. “I knew nothing of Andrea’s tryst,” I told him, “nor Lucinda’s fury.”

Holmes took a deep breath. “No,” He said, “you couldn’t have stopped the murder, but you could have stopped Lucy’s suicide. Clearly you knew what she intended.”

“You credit me with a prescience I do not possess,” I told him.

“You were fairly clear on what she intended an hour after the event,” he said. “Why couldn’t you have rushed out here before?”

“I don’t know,” I told him. “Until you told me what she had said to you, it didn’t strike me—”

“It didn’t strike you!”

“You spoke to her yourself,” I said, “and yet you guessed nothing.”

“I didn’t know what you knew,” he said. “I was a fool. But you—what were you?”

I had no answer for him. Perhaps I should have guessed what Lucy intended. Perhaps I did guess. Perhaps, on some unconscious level I weighed the options of her ending her own life, or of her facing an English jury, and then being taken out one cold morning, and having the hood tied around her head and the heavy hemp rope around her neck, and hearing a pusillanimous parson murmuring homilies at her until they sprang the trap.

* * * * * * *

A few minutes later the police arrived. The next day Professor Maples was released from custody and returned home. Within a month he and Crisboy had packed up and left the college. Although nothing was ever officially said about their relationship, the rumors followed them to Maples’ next position, and to the one after that, until finally they left Britain entirely. I lost track of them after that. Holmes left the college at the end of the term. I believe that, after taking a year off, he subsequently enroled at Cambridge.

Holmes has never forgiven me for what he believes I did. He has also, it would seem, never forgiven the fair sex for the transgressions of Lucinda Moys. I did not at the time realize the depth of his feelings toward her. Perhaps he didn’t either. His feeling toward me is unfortunate and has led, over the years, to some monstrous accusations on his part. I am no saint. Indeed, as it happens I eventually found myself on the other side of the law as often as not. I am pleased to call myself England’s first consulting criminal, as I indulge in breaking the laws of my country to support my scientific endeavors. But when Holmes calls me “the Napoleon of crime,” is he not perhaps seeing, through the mists of time, the blanket-covered body of that unfortunate girl whose death he blames on me? And could it be that he is reflecting on the fact that the first, perhaps the only, woman he ever loved was incapable of loving him in return?

At any rate, I issue one last stern warning to those of you who repeat Holmes’s foul canards about me in print, or otherwise: there are certain of the laws of our land that I embrace heartily, and the laws of libel and slander ride high on the list. Beware!

REICHENBACH

You remember, I assume, the newspaper accounts of the accidental deaths of the consulting detective Sherlock Holmes and the eminent mathematician Professor James Moriarty at Kessel Falls at the River Reichenbach in Switzerland. Or perhaps you’ve read Dr. Watson’s account of the confrontation at, as he called it, “Reichenbach Falls” between Holmes and the “master criminal” Moriarty. It seems that everyone in the English speaking world has read of, or at least heard of the incident. And then, you will recall, some three years later Holmes reappeared to Watson and explained his absence and supposed death in some detail. Well, I am here to tell you that almost every word of these accounts, including Holmes’s recantation, is false, and I should know. I am Professor James Moriarty.

It is not the fault of the newspapers, who published with no more than their usual disregard for the facts, nor of Dr. Watson, who believed everything told to him by his friend and companion Sherlock Holmes. There can be no greater friend than one who believes whatever he is told no matter how strongly it is belied by the evidence to the contrary. Is that not, after all, the basis of most religion?

This, then, is an account of the events that led up to the disappearance, and what transpired for a short time afterward. I was going to say a “true account,” but I refrained, because memory is faulty, and there were some facts that I was not privy to that might make a difference in the truth of what happened. It is, then, an account of the events as they appeared to me at the time.

It was on the evening of Wednesday, the 22
^nd
of April, 1891, that Mr. Maws, my butler, ushered a man named Tippins into my study. A tall, thin, angular man wearing a black frock coat with red cuffs and pockets, and large brass buttons, he stood, top hat in hand, before my desk and peered at me through oversized gold spectacles. His nose, while not large enough to be truly grotesque, was the most prominent object on his face, possibly because of the web of red veins beneath the roseate skin. A brush mustache directly beneath the nose added character to the face, but it was not a character whose acquaintance I would have gone out of my way to make. “I have come to you from Mr. Holmes,” he began. “He requires your assistance, and has asked me to direct you to the secret location where he awaits you.”

I am not easily surprised. Indeed, I spend a good bit of time and effort making sure that I am not surprised. But I confess that, for a second, I was astounded. “Holmes wants to see me? Is this some sort of trick?” I demanded.

He considered. “Naw, I wouldn’t think so,” he said finally. “He’s much too stout to indulge in that sort of tomfoolery, I should think.”

“Ah!” I said. “Stout, is he? So it’s Mr.
Mycroft
Holmes who desires my assistance.”

“Indeed,” Tippins agreed. “Isn’t that what I said?”

“I thought perhaps his brother....”

Tippins snorted. “The consulting detective chap? What has he to do with foreign policy?”

“Foreign policy?” I inquired.

“Perhaps you’d best just go and find out for yourself,” Tippins suggested.

“To the Foreign Office?”

“Naw. Mr. Holmes don’t want it known that he’s meeting with you, so he has arranged for my services to get you to his, so-to-speak secret location.”

“Services?” I asked. “What sort of services?”

He tapped himself on the chest. “I’m a conniver,” he said.

“Interesting,” I allowed. “You scheme and plot for Her Majesty’s government?”

“I enable people to do necessary things in unusual ways, when the more usual ways are not available.” He smiled. “I occasionally perform services for Mr. Holmes, but few others in Her Majesty’s government have availed themselves of my services.”

“And what necessary service would you perform for me in your unorthodox fashion?” I asked him.

“Your house is being watched,” Tippins said.

I nodded. I had been aware of a steady watch being kept on my house for the past few weeks. “No doubt by that very consulting detective chap you were mentioning,” I said.

“Mr. Holmes did not want it known that he was to speak with you,” Tippins explained, “so he sent me.”

“I see,” I said. “How are you going to get me there unseen?”

“I have a carriage waiting outside,” Tippins said, unbuttoning his frock coat. “The driver knows where to go. You will leave here as me. I will await your return here, if you don’t mind. I have brought a book.” He took off the frock coat and handed it to me. “Put this on.”

“It is distinctive,” I said, examining the red pockets. “But I’m not sure we look alike enough, ah, facially, for the masquerade to work.”

“Ah! There we have the crux of the matter,” he told me. He reached for the gold frame of his glasses and carefully removed them from his face. With them came the red nose and the brush mustache. The face beneath was quite ordinary, and the nose was, if anything, rather small.

“Bless me!” I said, or perhaps it was a slightly stronger expression.

He smiled. “Simple but effective,” he said. “The watchers will see what they expect to see.”

I put on the glasses, with the accompanying nose and mustache, and shrugged into the coat.

“Here,” Tippins said, handing me his top hat. “It will complete the illusion.”

And indeed it did. Wrapped in Tippins’ frock coat and wearing much of what had been his face, I thrust the journal I had been reading into the coat pocket and left my house. I clambered into the waiting carriage, a sturdy but undistinguished hack, and the jarvey spoke to the horse, and we were on our way. I waited about ten minutes before removing the facial part of the disguise. Perhaps I shouldn’t have taken it off so soon, but I felt foolish enough in the coat of several colors without wearing that nose one moment longer than I had to. I kept a careful eye out the rear window, but as far as I could tell no one was following us or taking an undue interest in our passage.

After several turns designed to force anyone following us to come into view, the jarvey took a fairly straight course to Regent’s Park Road, turned off on a side street, and pulled to a stop in the middle of a block of flats. He hopped down from his perch and opened the carriage door for me. “That door there,” he said, indicating a brown door much like all the other brown doors along the street. “You’re expected.”

It crossed my mind that this might be a trap. There are people in London who would rather see me dead than steal a million pounds, and one of them might have been inside that door instead of the rotund Mr. Holmes. But I have an instinct for such things, and this was both too elaborate and too commonplace to be anything other than what it seemed. So I pulled up the collar of my borrowed coat against the chill wind, crossed the walk, and pulled the bell-pull at the indicated doorway.

No more than three seconds later the door opened and a short woman of immense girth dressed as a maid gestured me in. Whether she was actually a maid, or some employee of the Foreign Service in masquerade I cannot say. “This way, Professor Moriarty sir,” she said. “You’re expected.”

She showed me into a room that might have been the waiting room in some doctor’s surgery, or for that matter the outer office of the booking agent for a music hall. There was a wide, well-worn black leather couch, several large and sturdy chairs, a heavy table of some dark wood, ill-lit by three wall sconces with the gas turned low and a window with heavy light-green muslin curtains, which were drawn. A deep throbbing sound came faintly into the room; I could discern neither the location nor the function of its agent. Some sort of machinery? On the right-hand wall, leading to the back of the house, a pair of double doors were drawn closed. “Please wait,” she said. “
He
will be with you shortly.” The timbre of her voice changed when she said “
He
,” the added resonance giving the word importance, as though I were awaiting Aristotle or Charles Darwin himself. “Please don’t open the shades,” she added as she left the room.