Moriarty

‘He made fools of all of us,’ exclaimed yet another inspector. ‘It’s true that I also benefited on one occasion from his expertise. But is it not the case, perhaps, that we were becoming too dependent on Mr Holmes? Did we ever solve anything without him?’ He turned to the colleagues on his left and right. ‘As hard as it is and as ungrateful as it may sound, perhaps we should embrace his going as an opportunity for us to achieve results on our own two feet.’

‘Well said, Inspector Lanner.’ It was MacDonald who had spoken and now all eyes were on him. ‘I never met Mr Holmes myself,’ he continued in his thick Scottish accent. ‘But I think we are agreed that we owe him our thanks and our respect and it’s now time to move on. For better or for worse he has left us on our own and, having acknowledged as much, let us consider the matter at hand. He picked up a sheet of paper that had been lying in front of him and read from it. ‘Mr Scott Lavelle, tortured and his throat cut. Henrietta Barlowe, smothered. Peter Clayton, a petty criminal who was known to us, stabbed. Thomas Jerrold and Lucy Winters strangled. An entire household in a respectable suburb wiped out in the course of one night. We cannot have it, gentlemen. It cannot be allowed.’

Everyone in the room murmured their agreement.

‘And as I understand it, these are not the first atrocities that have taken place recently in Highgate. Lestrade?’

‘You are right. There was a death not one month ago, a young man by the name of Jonathan Pilgrim. Hands tied, shot in the head.’ Lestrade gazed at me as if I had been the one responsible and for a moment I felt the anger rise within me. I had been close to Pilgrim. It was his death, more than anything, which drove me on in my pursuit of Clarence Devereux. But I understood this was simply Lestrade’s manner. He meant nothing by it. ‘Pilgrim carried papers that showed him to be an American only recently arrived in the country,’ he continued. ‘He must have had an interest in Lavelle as his body was found only a short distance from Bladeston House.’

I felt it was time for me to speak out and so I did.

‘Pilgrim was investigating Clarence Devereux,’ I said. ‘I myself sent him to this country for that purpose. Devereux and Lavelle were working in collaboration and must have somehow discovered my agent. It was they who killed him.’

‘But in that case, who killed Lavelle?’ Bradstreet asked.

MacDonald held up a hand. ‘Mr Chase,’ he said, ‘we have been given a full explanation of your presence in London by Inspector Jones and I must say that it is only due to the exceptional circumstances of this case that you find yourself here today.’

‘I’m grateful for it.’

‘Well, you have him to thank. We will hear from you shortly. But it seems to me that if we are going to get to the bottom of these appalling murders, we need to go back to the very start … even to the Reichenbach Falls.’ He turned to an inspector who had not so far spoken. This was a slight, grey-haired individual who had been nervously picking his nails and who looked like someone who never wanted to be noticed. ‘Inspector Patterson,’ he said, ‘you were responsible for the apprehension of Moriarty’s gang. You helped to drive him abroad. I think you should share with us exactly what occurred.’

‘Certainly.’ Patterson did not look up as he spoke, as if his report were engraved in the tabletop. ‘You are all aware that Mr Holmes approached me last February although it had been his intention, I think, to meet with Lestrade.’

‘I was on another case,’ Lestrade explained with a scowl.

‘In Woking, I believe. Well, yes, in your absence, Mr Holmes came to me and asked for my co-operation in the identification and arrest of a gang that had been operating in London for some time — or so he said — and in particular, one man.’

‘Professor Moriarty,’ Jones muttered.

‘The very same. I have to say that at the time the name was unknown to me and when Holmes explained that he was famous throughout Europe for some theory he had devised and, moreover, that he had held the Chair of Mathematics at one of our most prestigious universities, I thought he was making fun of me. But he was of the utmost seriousness. He referred to Moriarty in the very darkest terms and went on to furnish me with evidence that could leave no doubt of what he said.

‘By the beginning of last month, assisted by Inspector Barton here, I had drawn together a schematic — you might say a map — of London that showed an extraordinary, interlinking network of criminality.’

‘With Moriarty at the centre,’ Barton added, puffing on his pipe.