The Return of Moriarty Read online

  To me, Moriarty’s place in the criminal scheme of things is obvious, plain, and straightforward and should be accepted at its face value.

  All the reader needs to know at the start of this book is that in May 1897, pursued by Sherlock Holmes and Inspector Angus McCready Crow, Professor Moriarty was forced to flee London. At the start of this work he has returned, quietly and without fuss; and we hear little of either Holmes or Crow during this episode.

  I need say no more, except to declare my heartfelt thanks to the following for their great personal help in preparing this, the third book in a planned quartet: Otto Penzler, who provided the impetus for this third volume; my luscious agent, Lisa Moylett, who does magic things; Patricia Mountford, who gave me a wonderful idea, now embedded in the plot; Philip Mountford, for specialist assistance; and Jeff and Vicki Busby, for even more specialist help. Last but far from least, my daughter Alexis and my lovely son-in-law, John, plus my smashing son Simon all caused this book to be written by a generous and surprising present. They know what they did. Thank you.

  1

  Back to the Smoke

  LONDON: JANUARY 15, 1900

  DANIEL CARBONARDO could not distinguish the house until he was almost upon it. Daniel killed—that was his job in life: death. He killed for chink; murdered for geld; a few sovereigns and the person named was dead, while Carbonardo disappeared like smoke on a zephyr. Yet his favourite interest, next to murder, was obtaining intelligence—putting people to the question.

  It was said that Daniel had learned the trade of torture from within his family, who traced their ancestors back to the Tower of London: people who were begetters of truth, one of whom had come over in the retinue of Catherine of Aragon, daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, first wife of Henry VIII.

  Catherine of Aragon ended up in a convent; many in her retinue, including the Carbonardos, ended up broke, staying in England to work for the royal household, where some became great exponents in the extraction of truth from unwilling tongues. That particular work, gaining intelligence by torture, threat, pain, or promise, was on Daniel’s mind tonight; and he knew it all, from the rack and the boot to Skeffington’s daughter, and even more esoteric methods of prising the truth from people disinclined to talk.

  “She knows,” the Professor had said. “She’ll give you the name. There are three of them and Spear.”

  Daniel felt he had heard words similar to those many times before. “From your Praetorian Guard?” he asked, incredulous. “You can’t mean your Praetorian Guard, Professor!” and Moriarty nodded, slowly. “The very same,” he muttered. “We have a traitor, Daniel. Right at the top, among my most trusted. A traitor who has burrowed, like a little animal into my organization.”

  “But who would…?” Daniel began.

  “To whom would some turncoat sell his soul? Who?” Moriarty chuckled.

  “Sherlock Holmes?” Carbonardo asked again and the Professor laughed louder, a high, animal bark.

  “Holmes? Holmes? I think not. Holmes bothers me little these days. We had our moment of conflict and I think came to a mutual understanding. I doubt if I shall ever hear again from Mr. Holmes.”*

  “Then who?”

  “There is one.” He rested the nail of his right thumb just below his eye, then ran it down to his jaw, tracing a line down his cheek. “Angus Crow. Crow is a skilful policeman who has sworn to trap me. Indeed, it is his one aim in life. I am his one big case.” He paused, his head moving forward like the head of an old turtle, then swaying from side to side. “And of course there are others. One in particular who has used my recent absence to plunder my former organization, my family.”

  Carbonardo shook his head in puzzlement, finding it hard to believe that one of the Professor’s closest lieutenants could be a turncoat.

  The four men who comprised Moriarty’s so-called Praetorian Guard were Ember, Spear, Lee Chow, and Terremant, who had been inducted into the Praetorians following the disappearance of the fine big lad Pip Paget.

  Ember was a small, foxy, unpleasant little man, who acted as a contact, running between Moriarty and the lurkers, demanders, and punishers, the street men, the patterers, the magsmen, the dodgers, whizzers, dips, nightwalkers, dollymops, gonifs, and those who specialized: the petermen, confidence sharks, fences, assassins, and jewellers.

  The two main members of the Guard were the Professor’s true lieutenants, the distinctive Albert Spear and Terremant—Spear with his broken nose and the telltale forked-lightning scar down his right cheek, and the big tough known only as Terremant. This pair were leading street gangers, mobsters, men who made decisions and had the final say-so, most feared out in the highways, byways, and alleys of London.

  Last, and possibly least, of the Praetorians was the evil Chinee, Lee Chow, who dealt with the Eastern foreigners and lowlifes, running opium dens and dispensing cruel justice. He was feared by all because he would do Moriarty’s bidding, no matter what, and never turn a hair of his pigtail. It was known that one of his best tricks was to cut the cheeks from a man or woman, leaving the victims appallingly disfigured and unable to use their mouths as normal persons.

  The Professor locked eyes with Carbonardo, who felt a nudge, partly of awe, partly fear, as he looked deeply into the dark, knowing, glittering eyeballs that had seen much evil and knew even more. Like many, Daniel tried to avoid looking straight into Moriarty’s eyes, for they held a mesmeristic power that it was said could remove a man’s own will and command him to do unmentionable things.

  His gaze dropped, and he saw that Moriarty was smiling. A slight, cynical raising of the corners of his lips, an evil smirk that in no way crept up the face to bring warmth to the eyes.

  “You think members of my closest circle, my business intimates, are exempt from duplicity?” he asked, the terrible eyes never leaving Carbonardo’s face.

  “Well, Professor…Well, I…”

  “You have heard of Pip Paget, who at one time was counted almost as a son to me, a prime member of the Praetorians? Surely you’ve heard of him?”

  “Who hasn’t, sir? Who indeed?”

  “Pip Paget saved my life, Daniel. Shot a murderous skunk dead and saved my life, yet he’d already betrayed me.” He thumped his chest with a clenched right fist. “Me!” He thumped again. “Me, who was a father to him, who had been present at his wedding, stood for him, provided his marital feast, blessed his union with another member of my organization… my family …” His voice rose as if in anger, tumbling the words one upon another. “Seen and blessed his marriage to that little jigster Fanny Jones. Me!”*

  Carbonardo nodded. He knew the story of how Paget had sold out details of the Professor’s most secret hiding place to Inspector Angus McCready Crow of the Metropolitan Police Force, and passed on intelligence that almost led to Moriarty’s downfall.

  “You do well to nod, Daniel. It is meet and right for those who earn their stipend through me to know of my justice.”

  Moriarty paid what he called a retaining fee to Daniel Carbonardo: bunce to ensure that he had first call on the man’s services. It was a generous jingle of cash, enough to enable Carbonardo to maintain his pleasant villa in the thriving and rising area of Hoxton, the house just off North New Road, five minutes’ walk from the parish church of St. John the Baptist: a modest home with the name Hawthornes, though there were no bushes or greenery adjacent to the terraced property—two reception rooms and a small study; three bedrooms; a privy indoors, a luxury; a little bathing room; and a basement kitchen with area steps.

  It was down those steps, seventy-two hours previously, that the little old, bent hansom cab driver had come asking for Mr. Carbonardo, refusing speech with anyone but Mr. Daniel Carbonardo, enunciating the name with care, rolling the Rs in almost an Italian or Spanish manner.

  On being taken upstairs to the study and being introduced to the master by Tabitha, his one servant, the caller assumed a subservient manner, hands clasped low, head bent, waiting for the master of th
e house to speak. Daniel was brusque with the man; indeed, he had immediate reservations about him: Old, bent, and with an unhealthy, greyish pallor, the fellow should never, he considered, be allowed to drive a cab.

  “What is it, then?” he asked. “I am a busy man and cannot spare you more than a couple of minutes.”

  “You’ll spare me more when you hear the purport of my business.” The man had the gravel throat of one who liked spirits and tobacco more than was good for him. He spoke low, quietly, in a way that set Daniel thinking of another whose speech was always low, the voice dropped to make certain you listened carefully.

  Now, Carbonardo looked hard at the man’s face, peering into his eyes, lifting his chin slightly as though searching for some clue. “I know you,” he said at last. “Harkness, isn’t it?”

  “The same, sir. Indeed. I’ve had the pleasure of driving you many times.”

  Daniel Carbonardo took a pace back. “You used to work for the Professor. I remember you well: Moriarty’s private cabbie, right?”

  “Oh, indeed right, sir. Yes. Moriarty’s personal cab driver. But what d’you mean, used to work for the Professor?”

  “Surely you cannot work for him anymore, for he’s left the country. He’s not been heard of for some years.”

  “Back, sir. He’s back.” The little man paused as though for dramatic effect. “Returned to London, sir.” He continued. “Back here in the Smoke. Back and waiting to have words with you. Waiting even as we speak.”

  “Where?” Now Daniel’s voice was hoarse, his throat dry, the news of Moriarty’s homecoming making him wary, vigilant. Maybe even a mite frightened.

  “Never mind the where or the why, Mr. Carbonardo. I am to take you to him instantly. Indeed, every minute we tarry will edge the Professor closer to irritation, something neither of us require, sir.”

  Daniel shook his head in a small flurry of discontent. “No! No!” he muttered, stepping briskly to the door. “If you have orders, then take me now.” In the hall he shrugged into his dark green ulster, nodded to Harkness, then followed the cabbie down the front steps and into the waiting hansom.

  It took near five and forty minutes for the cab to travel west, to one of those anonymous squares that had, over the past half century, started to appear close by the borough of Westminster. But at last they came to a halt, and Harkness called down to tell Daniel they had arrived.

  “You’re to go straight in and up to the second floor,” he called through the partition that separated cabbie from passenger below.

  Alighting, Carbonardo found they had stopped in front of a fine, large, terraced house with broad steps leading to a solid oak front door. From behind the windows came the bright glare of electric light, and the area in which he found himself smelled of money: It was the kind of London square where men of substance lived and kept their families, tended by wealth, surrounded by luxury. These were the manner of houses fast taking the place of the crushed, cramped buildings that had previously made up a vast part of Westminster: the sprawling dense huddle of structures, leaning in on one another, tipping over and locking together to make up the rookery known as the Devil’s Acre, a region that had teemed with men and women with whom Daniel Carbonardo himself would have had second thoughts about associating.

  “You’re to go straight up, sir. He has rooms on the second floor. Go straight up, there’s no cause for concern. He’s expecting you.”

  The front door was unlatched, and inside, in the spacious hall, Daniel was puzzled to find no fitments or furniture—just bare boards, and stark stripped walls with outlines where pictures had once hung or furniture stood.

  The heels and soles of his boots thumped against the wooden flooring, sending echoes loud through the house, and, as he made his way up the stairs, he was conscious of the gas mantles unlit behind their glass bowls. What electric lighting had been introduced was obviously recent, and did not exist throughout the entire house.

  As he reached the second-floor landing, Carbonardo heard a sound from below. The front door through which he had just entered creaked again, while a second footfall sounded, crossing and starting to mount the stairs behind him, a shadow passing over the scrubbed bare boards. Swiftly, Daniel took two steps into the passage that led, forking from the landing, off to the right. He turned and, flattening his back against the wall, barely breathing as he listened, watchful, to the footsteps coming closer.

  Finally, as the interloper reached the top of the stairs, Daniel hardly dared breathe, lest the shallow rise of his chest call attention to him, silent in the shadows. He waited, conscious even of his heartbeat, thinking the sound might be so loud that it would give away his position. To his left he glimpsed a tall cloaked figure pausing on the landing, then crossing and opening the one door facing the staircase. He heard the footfalls, then the turning of the brass knob, the unlatching of the lock, and the sound of the door moving over what was probably a thick carpet as it swung inward. Before the door closed again he heard a single laugh, a throaty chime of what could have been either amusement or triumph.

  Counting silently to himself to quell the alarm and jangling of his nerves, Daniel Carbonardo followed the figure who had moved so stealthily across the landing and into the facing room. Taking a deep breath, he turned the doorknob, pushed with his shoulder, and stepped into the room.

  Moriarty smiled at him, one hand raised as he seemed to peel off part of his face. It took Daniel a moment to realize that what he removed was in fact a piece of stiffened molded linen that altered the shape of his cheek, as if he were removing half of Harkness’s face to reveal his own beneath it. “I told you that you’d give me more time, young Daniel, once you’d heard the purport of my business,” he said in the familiar voice, half whisper, half threat, and wholly commanding, one of the many facets of the Professor’s physical makeup—the eyes, the authoritative manner, and that distinctive voice, once heard never forgotten.

  “Come, Daniel, let us sit, perhaps take a glass of good brandy wine. Come, make yourself comfortable.”

  “You all the time, Professor! I could have sworn it was your man Harkness.” He looked around, for the first time taking in the room, feeling the deep pile Wilton under his feet, the coal fire roaring in the well-blackened grate, the old polished furnishings, the scent of beeswax in the air, the desk with inlaid red, gold-trimmed skivers, a pair of padded chairs, an ornate corner cupboard with a selection of leather-bound books on its shelves, good pictures on the walls, the heavy velvet curtains in a crushed gold shade complementing the creamy carpet.

  “There.” Moriarty peeled the treated linen from his other cheek, then from around his nose until he was revealed as the man Daniel Carbonardo knew as Professor James Moriarty. “I always enjoy taking on the role of another.” He straightened, a smile twinkling on his lips and in his eyes. “But you know that, Daniel. You know how addicted I am to disguise, and how I delight in stepping into the shoes of other men… and their bodies, of course.” He rubbed his hands together briskly. “This weather, it can’t make up its mind. Topsy-turvy.” The smile again. “You know my man Terremant of course.” A gesture to the shadows at the farthest end of the room, out of which the big bully of a man stepped, appearing as if by magic.

  “Terremant was at one time in charge of my people known as the punishers,” he said with a sly chuckle, as though the name amused him. “When I had to say good-bye to Pip Paget I required a replacement, and good Terremant seemed to fit the bill, as they say.” There followed the conversation already recounted.

  Then—

  “I have work for you, Daniel. Important work. You must entice intelligence from an unwilling tongue for me.” Turning to the big man still half in the shadows, he said, “Stop your ears to this, Tom Terremant. Stop your ears and freeze your brain.”

  “Aye, Professor,” the giant of a man grunted.

  “No,” Moriarty snapped. “Go. Wait on the landing. I can trust no one.”

  The big Terremant shrugged in goo
d humour, then lurched from the room.

  “And stand away from the door, Tom. Go down and see to my horse, Archie.”

  Terremant grunted and closed the door behind him.

  “My horse, Archie,” Moriarty laughed. “Short for Archimedes. He’s a good horse, but he belongs to my man Harkness. I bequeathed the horse to him when I last went away, what? Some six, seven years ago?” The Professor laid a finger against his nose, then tiptoed to the door, pulling it open suddenly to reveal the landing was empty.

  From below came the sound of Terremant’s tread as he crossed the hall to open the front door.

  Moriarty came back into the room. “Good. Now listen to me carefully, Daniel. Tomorrow you must go to a certain private hotel and make arrangements. Then, on the following night I require you to find out who has been upending me, making a fool of me. You’ve doubtless heard of Sal Hodges, Daniel.”

  “Why of course, Professor, yes.”

  “Mmmm. Of course, and you still doubtless think of her as my bed warmer.”

  “Well, sir. It’s said that …”

  “That Sal Hodges and Professor James Moriarty dance the horizontal jig, and that she’s mother to my child.”

  “Well, sir…”

  “‘Well, sir. Yes, sir.’ Don’t be shy, sir. Of course that’s what’s said, and to some extent it is true. Maybe is still true.”

  Daniel Carbonardo nodded and said a silent affirmative.

  “The night after next, Daniel. The night after next you must find out who the traitor is. She’ll know, Daniel. Sal Hodges’ll know, mark me.”

  So now, two nights later, shrouded in fog, Daniel Carbonardo crossed the street and went lightly up the steps of the Glenmoragh Private Hotel. Standing in front of the door he took shallow breaths that formed little clouds from his lips, willing himself not to cough. From somewhere over the roofs came the striking of a clock: three in the morning. Silent, cold, menacing; the world muffled by the thick, bitter mist.