Moriarty

Peregrine, Percy or Perry was perhaps the most remarkable of the three. Although almost impossible to believe, he had begun life as the youngest son of the Duke of Lomond and would have been entitled to a comfortable, even a cosseted, life had he not taken violent exception to the private school in Edinburgh where he had been sent at the age of seven. The place was run by Jesuits who gave their students the Bible and the birch in equal measure and, after one week, Perry ran away and came south to London. His despairing parents began a nationwide search and offered a huge reward for information as to his whereabouts, but a boy who is determined not to be found will not be, and Perry disappeared cheerfully into the metropolis, sleeping under arches and in doorways in the company of the thousands of other children who somehow managed to scratch a living in the capital. For a short while — and there is a certain irony in this — he was a member of the Baker Street Irregulars, the gang of street urchins who attended upon Sherlock Holmes, but the wages were derisory and anyway, Perry had quickly discovered that he preferred crime. I am deeply fond of him but I will admit that there is something quite disturbing about him, perhaps a result of cross-breeding within the Lomond family. By the time I met him, he was eleven years old and had already, to my knowledge, killed at least twice. He killed more frequently after I had taken him into my service — there was no preventing it — and I must add, somewhat regretfully, that his bizarre bloodlust could occasionally be useful to me. Nobody ever noticed Perry. He seemed to be nothing more than a blond, rather plump child, and with his fondness for disguises and theatricality he could inveigle himself into any room, any situation. He found his métier with me. I will not say that I became a second father to him — it would have been far too dangerous as Perry had a loathing of authority figures and would gladly have murdered the first. But we were, in our own way, close.

I need write less about Colonel Sebastian Moran. I have described him already and Dr Watson will provide any further information you may require. Educated at Eton and Oxford, a soldier, gambler, big-game hunter and, above all, sniper, Moran was my first lieutenant for many years. We were never friends. That simply was not his way. Gruff in manner and prone to almost uncontrollable fits of rage, the wonder is that he stayed with me for as long as he did and, in truth, he only did so because I paid him handsomely. He would never have joined Devereux for he had a strong antipathy towards Americans — indeed, to many foreigners — and that marked him out from the start. If I remind you that his weapon of choice was a silenced airgun, invented by the German mechanic Leopold Von Herder, you will perhaps be able to work out his role in this tale.

Finally, I come to Jonathan Pilgrim, the son of my old student, Roger. His father and I had gone our separate ways — he to an early retirement in Brighton. He had become a wealthy man during his time with me and his wife had been afraid for him from the start, so I was hardly surprised and only a little saddened when he begged leave to part from me. There are all too few friends in the life of a master criminal, too few people one can trust, and he was both. However, we corresponded occasionally and sixteen years later he sent me his son who had grown up as wayward as his father had once been. Quite what his mother made of this strange apprenticeship I will never know but Roger had recognised that Jonathan would turn to crime with or without me and had decided that with me was the better option. He was an extraordinarily good-looking boy with a freshness and an openness that one could not help but like, and to this day I regret the fact that, in my desperation, I allowed him to infiltrate Devereux’s inner circle. Everything that you have read in this narrative, everything I have done, began with his murder.

Never has a man felt more alone than I, when I came across Jonathan’s body in Highgate, where we had arranged to meet so that he could provide me with whatever fresh information he had gathered. The manner of his death, the way he had been bound and then executed, disgusted me. As I knelt beside him, with tears streaming from my eyes, I knew that Clarence Devereux had outmanoeuvred me and that this was as low as my fortunes could fall. I was finished. I could flee the country. I could do away with myself. I could not endure any more.