The Return of Moriarty Read online

  MORIARTY

  JOHN GARDNER

  MORIARTY

  First published in Great Britain in 2008 by

  Quercus

  21 Bloomsbury Square

  London

  WC1A 2NS

  Copyright © 2008 by The John Gardner Estate

  The moral right of John Gardner to be

  identified as the author of this work has been

  asserted in accordance with the Copyright,

  Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication

  may be reproduced or transmitted in any form

  or by any means, electronic or mechanical,

  including photocopy, recording, or any

  information storage and retrieval system,

  without permission in writing from the publisher.

  A CIP catalogue reference for this book is available

  from the British Library

  ISBN (HB) 978 1 84724 587 8

  ISBN (TPB) 978 1 84724 588 5

  ISBN (EBOOK) 978 1 84916 818 2

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters,

  businesses, organizations, places and events are

  either the product of the author’s imagination

  or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to

  actual persons, living or dead, events or

  locales is entirely coincidental.

  You can find this and many other great books at:

  www.quercusbooks.co.uk

  ALSO BY JOHN GARDNER

  JAMES BOND NOVELS

  Licence Renewed

  For Special Services

  Icebreaker

  Role of Honor

  Nobody Lives Forever

  No Deals, Mr. Bond

  Scorpius

  Win, Lose or Die

  Brokenclaw

  The Man from Barbarossa

  Death Is Forever

  Never Send Flowers

  SeaFire

  Cold

  License to Kill (from the screenplay)

  Goldeneye (from the screenplay)

  THE BOYSIE OAKES BOOKS

  The Liquidator

  Understrike

  Amber Nine

  Madrigal

  Founder Member

  Traitor’s Exit

  Air Apparent

  A Killer for a Song

  THE MORIARTY JOURNALS

  The Return of Moriarty

  The Revenge of Moriarty

  THE KRUGER NOVELS

  The Nostradamus Traitor

  The Garden of Weapons

  The Quiet Dogs

  Maestro

  Confessor

  NOVELS

  Golgotha

  Flamingo

  The Dancing Dodo

  The Werewolf Trace

  To Run a Little Faster

  Every Night’s a Bullfight

  The Censor

  Day of Absolution

  Blood of the Fathers

  (published under the name of Edmund McCoy

  and republished in 2004 as Unknown Fears)

  THE GENERATIONS TRILOGY

  The Secret Generations

  The Secret Houses

  The Secret Families

  SUZIE MOUNTFORD NOVELS

  The Streets of Town

  Angels Dining at the Ritz

  Troubled Midnight

  No Human Entry

  COLLECTIONS OF SHORT STORIES

  The Assassination File

  Hideaway

  AUTOBIOGRAPHY

  Spin the Bottle

  DEREK TORRY NOVELS

  A Complete State of Death

  The Cornermen

  For Trish

  Then, now, and forever

  Sometime when you have a year or two to spare I commend to you the study of Professor Moriarty.

  —Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

  Sherlock Holmes in The Valley of Fear

  Ex-Professor Moriarty is the Napoleon of Crime … organizer of half that is evil and nearly all that is undetected.

  —Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

  Sherlock Holmes in The Final Problem

  Contents

  Author’s Introduction

  Before the Tale Begins

  CHAPTER 1: Back to the Smoke

  CHAPTER 2: Return of the Guard

  CHAPTER 3: Questions and Conversations

  CHAPTER 4: The Professor Reminisces

  CHAPTER 5: Plot on the Boil

  CHAPTER 6: Decimated

  CHAPTER 7: Death of a Courtesan

  CHAPTER 8: At Home with the Professor

  CHAPTER 9: Resurrection

  CHAPTER 10: The Lifting of Billy Jacobs, and What Happened to Sarah

  CHAPTER 11: The Hanged Man

  CHAPTER 12: Benefit Night at the Alhambra

  CHAPTER 13: The Monkery

  CHAPTER 14: The Pagets and Their Future

  CHAPTER 15: Georgie Porgie

  CHAPTER 16: Little Boy Blue

  CHAPTER 17: Holy Week

  CHAPTER 18: Summer Term

  CHAPTER 19: The End Game

  CHAPTER 20: Sal Hodges’s Secret

  Glossary

  Author’s Introduction to the Moriarty Books

  THERE IS NEED FOR some explanation regarding this volume and how it came into being. Therefore certain facts should be made clear at the outset.

  In the summer of 1969 I was engaged in research concerning the current problems and operational methods of both the Metropolitan Police and the sprawling criminal underworld of London and its environs. During this period I was introduced to a man known to both the police and his associates as Albert George Spear.

  Spear was at that time in his late fifties, a large, well-built man with a sharp sense of humor and lively intelligence. He was also an authority on criminal London—not only of his time but also of the previous century.

  Spear was not without problems, being well known to the police, with a record of many arrests and two convictions—the latter carrying with it a sentence of fifteen years for armed bank robbery. In spite of this he was a thoroughly likable man, whose favorite pastime was reading any book that came to hand. On our first meeting he told me that he had read all my Boysie Oakes books, which he found amusing and entertaining rubbish—a criticism not far removed from my own view.

  One night toward the end of August, I received a telephone call from Spear saying that he urgently wished to see me. At the time I was living in London, and within the hour Spear was sitting opposite me in my Kensington house. He brought with him a heavy briefcase, which contained three thick leather-bound books. It is as well to say here that the bindings and paper of these books have since been subjected to the usual tests and indisputably date back to the second half of the nineteenth century. The writing contained in them, however, cannot with absolute certainty be dated, the results of chromato-graphic analysis and further tests being inconclusive.

  Spear’s story concerning the books was intriguing, the volumes having come into his possession via his grandfather, Albert William Spear (1858–1919), and in turn his father, William Albert Spear (1895–1940).

  My informant told me that he had not really examined the books until recently. All three generations of Spears seem to have been involved in criminal activities of one kind or another, and Spear remembers his grandfather talking of a Professor Moriarty. He also claims that his father spoke much about the Professor, who was apparently a legendary figure in the lore of the Spear family.

  It was on his deathbed that William Spear first spoke to Albert about the books, which were kept locked in a strongbox at the family home in Stepney. They were, he claimed, the private and secret journals of Moriarty, though at the time o
f his father’s death the younger Spear was more concerned with the activities of one Adolf Hitler than with the family legend.

  Although Spear was an avid reader, he had not read or studied the works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle until the late 1960s—a strange omission, but one that did not worry me since I was also a latecomer to Dr. Watson’s chronicles concerning the great detective. However, when Spear began to read the saga, he quickly came across the few references concerning Holmes’s archenemy, Professor James Moriarty, and was immediately struck by the descriptions in the Holmes books that had bearings on some of the things his father had told him.

  One night he became so intrigued by both the similarities and paradoxical inconsistencies that he began to examine the books he had brought for me to see.

  The pages were in good condition, and all three books were crammed with careful, rather sloping, copperplate handwriting. One could make out certain dates and street plans, but the remaining script was at first sight unintelligible. Spear was convinced that his father had told him the truth and that what he possessed were the real Professor Moriarty’s private journals, written in cipher.

  I cannot deny that my first sight of those books gave me an immense thrill, though I remained on guard, expecting the sharp Spear to put in a plea for hard cash. But money was not mentioned. It would please him, he told me, if someone could decipher the journals and perhaps use them to good advantage. His interest was purely academic.

  In the days that followed, I came across a number of immediate inconsistencies, not the least of which was the fact that the journals continued for many years after the spring of 1891—the year in which, according to Watson, Holmes disappeared at the Reichenbach Falls, presumed dead after a fight with Moriarty, only to reappear in 1894 with the story that it was Moriarty who had perished. If these journals were those of the same Moriarty, then obviously someone was either glossing fact with fiction or there was some strange case of mistaken identity.

  My own knowledge of ciphers being small, I eventually took the books to my good friends and publishers Robin Denniston (who has had much experience with codes and ciphers) and Christopher Falkus. After many long hours of arduous trial and error, coupled with applied science, the cipher was broken. The result is that at the time of this writing, some one and a half books have been decoded.

  Quite early in this operation we realized that the documents could not be published as they stood. Even in these permissive times there is little doubt that Moriarty’s inherent evil—which lurks on every page—could cause concern. Also, the memories of too many revered and famous personalities would be subjected to wanton rumor and scandal.

  We decided, therefore, that it would be best for me to publish Professor Moriarty’s story in the form of a novel, or novels. This is why some of the locations and events have been slightly altered—though in some cases, such as Moriarty’s involvement in the Ripper murders and the so-called de Goncourt scandal, there is no point in concealing the facts.

  A further reason for this form of treatment is that Spear disappeared shortly after handing the journals to me. As I have already stated, we cannot positively date the writings, so it is just possible, though I do not believe this, that Albert Spear, with a mischievous sense of humor, has taken some pains to perpetrate the second-largest literary hoax of the century. Or maybe his grandfather, who is much mentioned in the journals, was a man of imagination? Perhaps the publication of these volumes may bring us some of the answers.

  I must, however, add one final acknowledgment, which is, I believe, of interest. I am deeply indebted to Miss Bernice Crow, of Cairndow, Argyllshire, great-granddaughter of the late Superintendent Angus McCready Crow, for the use of her great-grandfather’s journals, notebooks, correspondence, and jottings—papers that have been invaluable in writing these volumes.

  Before the Tale Begins

  IN THE SUMMER OF 1969, so the story goes, three bulky leather-bound volumes changed hands in the sitting room of a small, pretty little house in Kensington. I was not to know that these books, crammed with tiny ciphered writing, maps, and diagrams, were to take me—almost physically at times—back to the dark, brutal, and secret places of the Victorian and Edwardian underworld in London.

  It is now common knowledge that these books are the coded journals of James Moriarty, the diabolically cunning, highly intelligent criminal mastermind of the late nineteenth century known as Professor Moriarty.

  The known felon who handed the books to me, on that hot and heavy evening all those years ago, went by the name of Albert George Spear, and his claim was that these books had been kept by his family since they were given for safekeeping to his grandfather, who was Moriarty’s most trusted lieutenant.

  I have already told the story, in the foreword to The Return of Moriarty, of how the cipher to the journals was finally broken and how those who advised my professional life quickly realized that it would be impossible to offer these extraordinary documents to the public in their original, unvarnished form. For one thing, they present grave legal problems; for another, there are incidents contained in them of such an evil character that, even in this permissive age, they could be accounted a corrupting influence.

  There is also the small possibility that the journals might just be a hoax, perpetrated by Spear himself, or even by his grandfather, who figures so largely in them. I personally do not believe this. However, I think it quite possible that Moriarty, the great criminal organizer, has, in writing the Journals, sought to present himself in the best possible light and, with his consummate cunning, may not have told the entire truth. In some places Moriarty’s Journals clash strongly with other evidence—most notably the published records of Dr. John H. Watson, friend and chronicler of the great Mr. Sherlock Holmes. In others it clashes with the evidence I have been able to amass from the private papers of the late Detective Superintendent Angus McCready Crow, the Metropolitan Police officer assigned to the Moriarty case toward the end of the nineteenth century and during the early years of the twentieth century.

  Taking these matters into account, my closest advisors most wisely felt it was more appropriate for me to write a series of novels based on the Moriarty Journals, occasionally altering names, dates, and places wherever this seemed advisable. This has been done, leaving me with only two items that require further examination.

  First, after the publication of The Return of Moriarty and its sequel, The Revenge of Moriarty, it became apparent that some reviewers were not as familiar with the work of Dr. John Watson as they claimed. There were those who appeared not to have heard of the fact that Moriarty had come from a family composed of three brothers, each of whom bore the name James. Now, I will admit that some Sherlockian scholars do seem to make heavy weather of this fact. Heaven knows why, because the situation is crystal clear when you examine Dr. Watson’s sources. It is further clarified by the Moriarty journals in my possession.

  Take Dr. Watson’s written word. References are made to Professor Moriarty, Mr. Moriarty, the Professor, and Professor James Moriarty in five of the cases written up by Dr. Watson. They are The Valley of Fear, His Last Bow, The Missing Three-Quarter, The Final Problem, and The Empty House. Further, a Colonel James Moriarty is referred to in The Final Problem; and a third brother, reported to be a stationmaster in the West Country, is spoken of in The Valley of Fear.

  Sherlockians, to my mind, often seem to have difficulty with the possibility of the three brothers Moriarty each bearing the same Christian name, James. The Moriarty Journals certainly solve that problem. As far as I can make out, James is a family name, and in the Journals Moriarty makes it plain that the three brothers regarded this as an idiosyncrasy, and spoke of each other as James, Jamie, and Jim. In the Journals, Moriarty claims that he is, in fact, the youngest brother, a criminal from an early age, who, incensed with jealousy because of his eldest brother’s academic success, finally becomes a master of disguise and sees to it that his brother is disgraced and removed from the Chair of Mathe
matics in the small university where he is becoming ever more famous. Moriarty then tells us that he murdered his brother and, wonderfully disguised, took his place, so becoming a figure of awe to his underworld minions. This seems to me to have a certain validity, though for once Mr. Sherlock Holmes appears to have been taken in by the subterfuge.

  Second, after the publication of The Return of Moriarty some voices were raised in strident—in a few cases, hysterical—concern that I had re-created Moriarty as a kind of nineteenth-century Godfather figure, leader of a vast army, a man with an almost unthinkable knowledge of crime and the coarse language and manners of the Victorian underworld. Indeed, many seemed genuinely upset that the question of sex and licentiousness had barged into the formerly placid world of Baker Street—placid, that is, except for the drug abuse and certain unspoken vices. To those who were, and possibly are, upset, I can only apologize.

  To some, this view of Moriarty seems to be unpleasant and vulgar, as though the Sherlockian world was being violated while it sat quietly doing crossword puzzles. I have news for them: The Victorian and Edwardian underworld was exceptionally vulgar and unpleasant, and the text of the Sherlock Holmes cases leaves us in no doubt concerning Moriarty’s place within the Victorian underworld. In The Final Problem, Holmes speaks of Professor Moriarty as “… [the] deep organizing power which forever stands in the way of the law.” He mentions Moriarty’s involvement in “cases of the most varying sorts—forgery cases, robberies, murders….” Moreover, he describes him as “the Napoleon of Crime … the organizer of half that is evil and nearly all that is undetected in this great city [London] … a genius, a philosopher, an abstract thinker. He has a brain of the first order. He sits motionless, like a spider in the centre of its web, but that web has a thousand radiations, and he knows well every quiver of each of them … his agents are numerous and splendidly organized …” and so on in the same manner. Is there not something familiar about this description? Something resembling a Godfather-like criminal family? Indeed, in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, to be a member of such a family was to be a villain.