Professor Moriarty: The Hound Of The D’urbervilles (45 page)

Dynamiting a pillar box on the corner of Wigmore and Welbeck Streets just after the post had been collected and it was empty...

Bestowing one hundred pounds upon a respectable solicitor in Taunton on the condition that he dash acid at the portrait of a former alderman which hung in the local assizes (respectable or no, the shyster went through with it)...

Contriving a delay of twenty minutes on the City & South London Railway to ensure a minor government clerk did not keep an appointment with an optician in King William Street...

Injecting minute quantities of a bacillus into every bottle but one of a case of port wine – tricky thing, using a hypodermic needle on the cork without leaving an obvious hole – presented to the Chief Coroner of Cardiff, ostensibly by a grateful widow lately exonerated of husbandicide.

Whatever that little lot was all about went over the waterfall, so your guess is as good as mine. The Professor was always doing things like that. Usually, there would come a moment when I could see the point of these preliminary moves, and a grand scheme would be apparent. In these cases, that moment never eventuated. I think of this as Moriarty’s
Unfinished Symphony of Crime.

In years to come, a mastermind as yet unborn might read this passage, see at once the design thick old Basher couldn’t make head nor tail of, and set out to complete Moriarty’s final coup. Good luck to you, mate. Post me my cut – care of Box Brothers Bank – if I’m still living.

The only profit to come from the Fal Vale excursion was a welcome addition to the Firm. Three weeks after the loss of the
Kallinikos,
who should present herself at Conduit Street but Miss Sophy Kratides, bearing the card Moriarty had given her. She sought employment suitable for her skills.

To reach our reception room, she had to climb the stairs past Mrs Halifax’s establishment, uncommonly busy at that time of the morning. Swedish Suzette and Mistress Strict,
en deshabille,
were riding a publisher and a merchant banker across the landing. Not a few of their gentlemen callers liked the bit between their teeth and the lash on their flanks. At the last formal event, I’d won seven guineas wagering on the Librarian of Jesus College to best a muscular Christian poet by a full length. Coming across this sporting event gave Sophy the wrong idea about the line of work on offer.

She charged into our rooms het up, red in the face and knife out, intent on avenging any slur against her virtue. Since the Prof did not emerge from his study to investigate the commotion – which was mostly in Greek – I was responsible for calming the tigress with assurances that we only wanted her to stick her knives into people. Eventually, I persuaded her to put away the blade and share a divan with me for a proper job interview. I had Mrs Halifax send in tea, without her deadly biscuits. Mercifully, Polly remembered to wear the full uniform – not just mob-cap and apron – when she brought in the tray.

‘Do you have references?’ I enquired.

Sophy opened her pocketbook and handed me a newspaper clipping from an English language periodical published in Hungary. The news item involved Harold Latimer and Wilson Kemp, two dissolute Englishmen, who were reckoned to have quarrelled and stabbed each other to death
^[4]
. Kemp, also known as Davenport, was a familiar if unwelcome face. Crooked as a corkscrew but not half so handy, he’d done a share of minor minionage about town, obtaining compromising letters for the blackmailer Charles Milverton or suborning young idiots onto the books of the shylock Dan Levy
^[5]
. Moriarty had several times turned down Kemp’s petitions to join the Firm, rating him unreliable, vile and inept. Getting stabbed in Budapest proved the Prof right again. Latimer was a new to me, but if he knocked about with Kemp it was a fair bet that he was a c--t of the first water.

Sophy claimed both for her bag. She’d been settling a personal score – avenging a murdered brother. One had to appreciate not only the dainty knife-work but the care taken to arrange matters so the Hungarian peelers had a cut-and-dried solution to the mystery and no need to trouble the lady said to be travelling with the deceased clots.

In finishing Kemp and Latimer, she’d discovered an aptitude for wet red work and had taken to it professionally. She had stabbed a French
juge d’instruction
through the lungs for
Les Vampires
on a freelance basis, but turned down the Grand Vampire’s offer of a permanent position. She shrewdly reckoned the rising Irma Vep would not take kindly to competition for the title of deadliest woman in Paris. A bureau of the Greek government gave her employment, on the condition that she stay out of Greece, then contracted her to look after the late George Lampros – mention of whom prompted me to hem and haw somewhat – as a liaison with the British Department of Supplies.

‘The death of Lampros counts as a black mark on your record,’ I said, making sympathetic moon-eyes from the other end of the divan. ‘I imagine you’re motivated to do better in your next position.’

She spat out a mouthful of tea.

‘You misunderstand my former commission, Colonel...’

‘Call me Sebastian, or Basher even, Sophy, if I may...’

I own I might have twirled my moustache. I know it’s a tiresome old look-at-me-I’m-a-roué stage gesture, but – dash it – I’ve got a moustache (a big one too), and it’s there for the twirling. I’d lick my thumb and twirl my eyebrows if I thought it’d produce the desired results. I mean, I was on a divan, with a trembling young miss (and her knives) prettily arranged on the cushions, in need of tea and sympathy and a job... and the warm possibility she might accommodate to an obliging gent who saw his way to help her in this wicked world. If you don’t twirl the old ’tache then, you might as well not have whiskers at all.

As it happens, the minx was all business.

‘My orders were to keep Lampros alive, unless it seemed probable that he, and the secret of Greek Fire, were at risk of becoming the property of another power... in which case...’

She made an expressive pass across her throat with a barbed thumb and pulled an unmistakable grimace.

‘I would have killed him myself, Colonel.’

That was a facer. Did she suspect what even Moriarty hadn’t tumbled to, that mine was the bullet that had done for the oily inventor? There was no time to further discuss the matter. For, at this point, Moriarty emerged from his bolt-hole. He did not seem surprised to find Sophy Kratides in our parlour.

‘Has Moran discussed terms?’ he asked. ‘£4,000 per annum, payable in advance every quarter. An account will be opened for you at Box Brothers. This is acceptable, yes?’

She nodded. This was acceptable, yes.

Moriarty continued to talk at her, head bobbing as usual. ‘Do you own a black dress and veil? You are to be a widow this afternoon. If you do not have such items in your wardrobe, Mrs Halifax will provide. You will be furnished with a wedding ring, photographs of your late husband, and keepsakes of your two children – who were lost in a boating accident on the Serpentine. Since I don’t need to remember them but you do, you may choose their names. Your husband, Benjamin Thoroughgood, was English, so I suggest you do not choose Greek names.’

‘Will and Harry,’ she said.

Moriarty paused in his oscillation, elevating an eyebrow. He picked up the reference. Told you he memorised crimes from all over the world.

‘Very apt. My condolences on your loss, Mrs Thoroughgood. Colonel Moran and I will accompany you to Kingstead Cemetery this afternoon for the funerals. I suggest you put something in your eyes. You will have been crying for days.’

Sophy set down her teacup, sat up straight and arranged herself neatly on the divan. She put her hands in her lap, took a deep breath, paused... and let out a banshee wail. She tore her hair, screwed up her eyes, and slapped her cheeks. Tears poured out in floods. Mrs Halifax and Polly looked in, startled... but backed off when they saw Moriarty impassively watching the show. Sophy clawed the air and howled. Her screech set the teeth on edge more than la Castafiore’s high notes. I applauded and would have tossed roses if any had been to hand. Moriarty nodded approval and told our new employee to give Mrs H. her measurements.

Lot of rum doings in Kingstead Cemetery. The real Thomas Carnacki has a whole evening’s worth of spook anecdotes about the place. The management have had to double the night guard since the Van Helsing scandal broke in the
Westminster Gazette.
An old Dutch crank was arrested for repeatedly breaking in, vandalising the tombs and desecrating the corpses. Especially young, relatively fresh lady corpses. No accounting for taste, but –
really? –
is there nothing foreigners won’t sink to?

As it happens, we should have seen that coming. The degenerate quack was a regular of Fifi’s in Amsterdam and London. His particular jolly involved his lady companion of the evening sitting in a bath of ice water for half an hour to get her temperature down, then lying still, cold, silent and unresponsive on a garlanded bier while he did something unmentionable with a length of wood. I suppose this performance was all very well to take the edge off, but in the long run it didn’t quite slake the appetite. If I ever run into the johnny, I’ll give him a length of wood all right...
and
fill his mouth with garlic.

The Thoroughgood funeral was at three o’clock.

From their crowded tomb in the cemetery’s Egyptian Avenue, you’d reckon the Thoroughgoods must be the most unfortunate family in the land. Never were such people for dying. It seemed to be all they ever did. That was, indeed, the case. There was no Thoroughgood family. It was an account established with Bulstrode & Sons, undertakers. Said account was settled, generously and promptly, in cash.

Moriarty also supplied illicit and expensive materials to the senior Mr Bulstrode, an enthusiast of obscenity reckoned to have the finest collection of pornography in private hands in Europe. The Bulstrode Archive of Smut perhaps rivals the legendary section of the Vatican library at the personal disposal of the college of cardinals. I am proud that a presentation copy of
My Nine Nights in a Harem
reposes in a coffin-shaped bookcase in Bulstrode’s private mausoleum between
The Secret Life of Wackford Squeers
and
The Intimate Encounter of Fanny Hill and Moll Flanders.

The Firm was tied in with Bulstrode because, on occasion, we found ourselves inconvenienced by a corpse who would not do for the river. Those fortunates were entombed with all due solemnity, as members of the Thoroughgood family. After many an enjoyable funeral, Moriarty, Moran and party had popped into Jack Straw’s Castle for pies, pints and ironic toasts to the dear departed. Not a few folk down on the lists as ‘disappeared without trace’ have ‘Thoroughgood’ in marble over their final resting places. If you ever wondered where to find Baron Maupertuis, the Belgian who tried to corner
quap,
you could have done worse than enquire after poor old Uncle Septimus Thoroughgood
^[6]
.

I wasn’t aware of any surplus stiffs on the premises – though I’d not have been surprised if one or two decedents showed up under the sideboard or in the window-seat. That had happened before. I was given pause by the two smaller coffins sharing the second funeral carriage. To my knowledge, the Professor had only ever murdered one circus midget... and that was in the way of an experiment. He wished to determine whether a child-sized corpse ‘burned beyond recognition’ in a bread-oven could be proved in autopsy not to be a particular missing heir. Guess what? It can. It was back to the drawing board in the Finsbury Disinheritance Caper.

Moriarty and I, hats ringed with black crepe, sat either side of the faux widow in an open calêche, holding up black umbrellas against the drizzle. Sophy sniffled like Eleanora Duse upon learning her fiancé has been assassinated in
Fédora.
Chop, suitably top-hatted and dour, sat up on the box, holding the reins as two fine black horses, with plumed headdresses, drew us up Kingstead Hill. At least one of the nags from Bulstrode & Sons was dappled, but soot-blacked every morning to fit the mood. In the rain – and have you noticed how it always rains at funerals? – the blacking began to run.

Other mourners awaited in Egyptian Avenue. Select souls, mostly in crow black. Sombre faces, betokening the friends of bluff Ben Thoroughgood and poor little lost Willy and Harry. Even I was shocked to see who’d turned out. I didn’t know ’em all straight off, but recognised enough faces to take a guess as to who else might be signing the condolence book. There were veiled ladies in the party, none making as much effort as Sophy.

I had, of course, brought my Gibbs side arm and pearl-handled pocket razor. In addition, a coil of piano wire nestled inside my hat – a trick I learned from the late Nakszynski, the Albino. In case of special circumstances, the ferrule of my umbrella came off to unsheath a needle which was envenomed by squeezing a bulb in the handle. Judging from the cut of everyone’s mourning clothes at this send-off, I wondered if I’d not come underarmed.

Grimes, a well-paid sexton, had the tomb opened and berths cleared for the three newcomers. Coffins were stacked up like child’s building bricks, suggesting that the Thoroughgood family would soon have to purchase another wing for their needs. I gallantly assisted the widow down, while Moriarty held the umbrellas. One or more of the mourners whistled.

A pair of Bulstrode sons shifted the coffins into the tomb. Mr Beebe, an entirely legitimate – if myopic in everything – clergyman, droned a sermon. We used to ask Mrs Halifax’s girls to come along for a pleasant outing, but their giggles and rude remarks put the parson off his stroke. Now, only those who could remain ‘in character’ – like the estimable Sophy – were entrusted with invitations.

Several of the Thoroughgood men were interred anonymously by the terms of contracts they had signed with Mrs H. It was a service she provided to any clients who died of a coronary, asphyxiation or sheer exhaustion in the pursuit of their pleasures, and would rather disappear than have loved ones know the exact circumstances of their deaths.