Moriarty

All my efforts had been directed towards extracting Clarence Devereux from the legation and when we arrived for our interview with Robert Lincoln, both Colonel Moran and Perry were already in place, one on a nearby rooftop, the other in the street, now disguised as a costermonger. They have, all along, been superbly efficient. It is true that Moran is interested only in the money that I pay him, while Perry is highly disreputable, an underage sadist, but even so I could not have chosen two better companions.

And Jones! I think by the end he had actually guessed — perhaps not who I was, but certainly who I was not. All along he had been aware that something was wrong. His problem was, he simply couldn’t work out what it was. His wife had been right about him. He was not as clever as he thought and that was to be the undoing of him. Ironically, she had been the wiser of the two for she had mistrusted me from our first meeting and even, at the very end, voiced her suspicions out loud. I feel sorry for her and for her daughter, but there could be no alternative. Jones had to die. I pulled the trigger, but I wish even now that it could have ended another way.

He was a good man. I admired him. And although in the end I was forced to kill him, I will always think of him as my friend.

TWENTY-TWO A Fresh Start

I took out my own gun. Jones looked at me and I think I saw shock, dismay and finally resignation pass through his eyes.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said, and shot him in the head.

He was killed instantly, his body falling sideways as his walking stick tumbled to the ground one last time, rattling against the paving stones. Everything had to happen very quickly for I knew that there were many Scotland Yard men nearby. I climbed down from the curricle and walked the few steps to the Black Maria which had stopped in the middle of the road. Both the driver and his companion were dead. The constable who had been positioned at the rear was still clinging onto the door as if it was his duty to keep it shut. I shot him in the back and watched him crumple. At the same moment, Colonel Moran fired a third time and the policeman standing next to Perry spun round and fell. I saw Perry scowl. It was one less person for him to kill.

I climbed onto the Black Maria, pushing one of the dead men out of the way. I was vaguely aware of pedestrians pointing and screaming but of course none of them approached. They would have been mad to try and I had counted on their fear and panic to give me time to make my escape. Perry hurried over, wiping his knife on a rag, and climbed up next to me.

‘Can I drive?’ he asked.

‘Later,’ I said.

I whipped on the horses. They had already calmed down — but then the police would have trained them to make their way through noisy protests and hostile crowds. With Perry beside me, I directed them a few yards up Victoria Street, then pulled on the reins to force them into a tight turn. This was another mistake that Athelney Jones had made. He had deployed his men along the route that would take us to Scotland Yard, but I had no intention of going that way. As we completed the turn, Colonel Moran appeared in a doorway, his face flushed, the Von Herder airgun already returned to the golfing bag that he carried over his shoulder. He climbed onto the back of the Black Maria, as we had agreed.

Another crack of the whip and we were hurtling past Victoria Station and down towards Chelsea. There were more crowds at this end of the street and they were aware that something had happened but could not tell what it was. Nobody tried to stand in our way. We rattled over a pothole and I heard Moran swear. Part of me wondered if he would still be there when we reached our destination and I have to say it rather amused me to think of him being hurled off in one of the suburbs. At the same time, I wondered what our passenger must be thinking. He would have heard the shots. He would have felt the carriage turn. It was quite likely that he had guessed what had occurred but the doors were locked and there would be nothing he could do.

We passed through Chelsea and into Fulham — or West Kensington as its residents insisted it be called. When we reached the hospital, I handed the reins to Perry who guided the horses with a happy smile on his face. We were proceeding more slowly now. It would be hours before the gaggle of inspectors at Scotland Yard could mount anything that resembled a search and there was no point drawing attention to ourselves. I called out to Colonel Moran and received a grunt by way of reply. It seemed he was still hanging on.