The Return of Moriarty Page 8

  In the Lady Chapel, where the Blessed Sacrament—the consecrated Host, which is to Christians the Body of our Lord Jesus Christ—is kept in a tabernacle on the altar, he broke into the tabernacle and stole the pyx, in which the Blessed Sacrament is kept so that it can easily be removed and transported to the sick, or those on the point of death, so that they may partake of the sacrament and undergo the last rites.

  Lee Chow then went to St. George’s Hospital, Hyde Park Corner, and there asked to see Nursing Sister Gwendolyn Smith, who was an old and valued accomplice of the Professor. The nurse nodded understanding and bade Lee Chow wait, finally returning with a small bottle, wrapped in linen.

  “You can tell him,” she said, “that this is the best. The child was born only two hours ago and I took it from the umbilical cord.” The bottle was made of thick dark blue glass and was warm to the touch.

  To complete his master’s instructions, last of all Lee Chow went to Moriarty’s prime bordello, the one known as Sal Hodges’s House in St. James’s, where he demanded that their prettiest harlot, “Bold” Bridget Briggs, come with him; so, together, they returned to the Professor.

  Lee Chow handed him the two objects, wanting leave to fly away as quickly as was feasible. He wished he could grow wings or be transported like people in the stories his mother used to tell him long ago. But Moriarty sternly bade him stay. “Come, Lee Chow, you must witness this act. Get that tall glim”—indicating a candle—“and follow me. You as well, Bridget. Come.”

  They went together down the main staircase, and then farther, to the cellars, where the Professor unlocked an old door leading into a long, narrow chamber at the far end of which stood a table with five crosses etched into its surface: one at each corner and one in the middle. The stone walls had been whitewashed recently, though there was a trace of a dank smell when you went near them. This place was raw, bone-consumingly cold; it ate into you, like a rodent. Lee Chow began to quake; he did not like what was going on and what Moriarty was about to do. Some other sense told him that evil was close to him, swirling about Moriarty, and he was sore afraid. Strange, this, for Lee Chow was a strong, tough cove, yet somehow Moriarty’s actions disturbed him, and he not even a Christian.

  He was told to light the candles on the table, and when he did so he saw that they were black candles in brass holders. Between the candles, at the rear of the table, there was a crucifix turned upside down and slotted into a recess built into the table.

  When he turned around, Lee Chow saw Moriarty preparing himself with robes: a cassock over which he got into a long white alb and an amice, which he pulled on over his head. Then a black stole and a maniple, the stole around his neck, threaded through a girdle, and the maniple on his left wrist. These, Lee Chow knew, were vestments worn by priests celebrating the Holy Mass, the greatest of the Christian acts of worship. As a priest vested himself he would kiss the stole and maniple, but Moriarty spat on them, and last he put on a gorgeous black chasuble, decorated in gold with a depiction of a goat within the symbol of the pentacle.

  The Professor now ordered the harlot to divest herself of clothes. “I shall have use for you soon enough, Bridget,” he said sharply. “Just stay close to me, girl.” His voice cracking like a whip so that she wailed; she was a good girl, really, a Roman Catholic who went to Mass most mornings and prayed for custom that day.

  The Professor smiled to himself. He knew that within days the superstitious men and women who worked for him would learn that he had danced with the devil, and thus they would fear him even more than before. And they would hold him in greater awe—all of them, the lurkers and punishers, the dips and whizzers, shofulmen, rampsmen, collectors and cash carriers, fences, cracksmen, macers, whores, and abbesses. All of Moriarty’s family would know.

  Thus apparelled in his vestments, Professor Moriarty called the whore to him: “Bridget, come to me now. Now, just as you are.” And the poor girl was sobbing like a child, shaking in all her limbs, her fingers faltering with buttons and tapes as she stripped naked, quivering as though her last moments had come. Which they may well have done. Who knew? The child was distraught, blubbering, the sobs wracking her, like a seven-year-old caught out, breathless in her contrition and consuming tears. Pitiful.

  Now, Moriarty approached the table that was his altar, followed with blundering steps by Bridget, who was so panicky that she could not walk straight. He carried with him a silver chalice and paten, stolen long ago from some country church. He spat on the altar and started to say the Black Mass.

  And that is such an evil thing, dear reader, that I cannot even bear to describe it.

  6

  Decimated

  LONDON: JANUARY 17, 1900

  ALBERT SPEAR SOUGHT OUT, and found, his former bodyguard, a strong-arm by the name of Harold Judge. The Professor always laughed at the name. “Is the judge with you today?” he would ask in jocular fashion; or, “Has the judge got his black cap with him today?”—a reference to the piece of black cloth a judge draped over his head as he pronounced the death sentence, followed by a benediction, “And may the Lord have mercy on your soul.” After which the chaplain would sonorously intone, “Amen.”

  Spear and Judge walked together across Hyde Park to its northeastern corner, where the big marble arch had been moved, the one John Nash had constructed, based on the Arch of Constantine in Rome. Originally the arch had been made to front Buckingham Palace, but on erecting it they discovered the centre of the structure could not accommodate the passage of royal coaches. This caused a small embarrassment and the removal of the arch to the west end of Oxford Street (the northeast corner of Hyde Park), hard by London’s great shops and department stores, glittering temptations to empty your purse.

  Judge was eagle-eyed, watching every person they passed and paying attention to everyone who flowed around them, ready with a pistol in his pocket, a truncheon hidden by his long jacket, and a knife scabbarded on his belt—a walking arsenal. When you were as close to Moriarty as Albert Spear was you had enemies: the envious, people who harboured bad intentions against Moriarty himself and the many whom Spear had seriously incommoded over the years—those who would profit, financially or in conscience, by his demise.

  Even on this chilly day, there were plenty of people about: Army officers, smart in their crimson or blue coats, rode on Rotten Row, together with ladies in stylish habits; in the park itself nannies were pushing perambulators and lovers passing the time, dallying under the trees, or strolling beside the placid Serpentine while boys of all ages sailed their model yachts. The rime of last night’s hard frost still spiked the grass, and from far away came the sound of a military band, giving selections from Gilbert and Sullivan. In this tranquil, unperturbed atmosphere thoughts of evil and criminal design seemed far away, but they were forever close to the minds of men like Spear and Judge. Times had changed, and the random violent crime of the early half of the last century had now settled into a different pattern, the evil warp and weft of criminal acts, organized and urged forward like an army on wartime manoeuvres. To be effective, the criminal class needed a leader, and in Professor James Moriarty it had found its field marshal.

  Arriving at Marble Arch, Spear and his companion crossed the wide, busy road, dodging hansom cabs, omnibuses decked with placards, and the commercially viable conveyances advertising vans, while the pavements were crushed with people out to gaze at the winsome, beckoning windows, gorge themselves in chophouses or seven ale bars, or simply breathe the congested air, thick with the scent of horse dung and humanity—which was certainly preferable to the stench of human waste, which had, until the middle of the last century, pervaded the atmosphere of the metropolis, rising from the thickly polluted river Thames, the reservoir for London’s daily tons of bodily solid litter, cesspool to rich and poor alike.

  So they stepped around a hurdy-gurdy man, turning the handle of his machine to jingle-jangle “Ta-Ra-Ra-Boom-De-Ay!,” Lottie Collins’s hit music-hall song; and with Moriarty’s he
nchman, Spear, muttering alternative words to himself, the pair disappeared into the burrow of streets and lanes north of Oxford Street, streets with names like Seymour Street and Old Quebec Street, leading to Bryanstone Square and Montague Place. Here were good houses, mostly not as grand or large as the kind of mansion Moriarty had appropriated in Westminster, but houses valued by professional men, or the bachelor still waiting for Miss Right to come along.

  Deep within this enclave, in one of the many old mews of the area, Moriarty owned a good-sized house of pleasure. Now, having viewed the house from the outside, Spear and his man, Judge, entered it and talked to several of the workers within. They were there some ten and thirty minutes, and later, Spear reported to the Professor, “It’s your biggest house, your largest money box for the girls. I can hardly believe what’s happened.”

  Moriarty nodded and gave an impatient gesture with his right hand, a kind of tired wave.

  Spear told him, “I asked for Dirty Ellen, who’s always been abbess there, and they said she’d gone, didn’t live there anymore. I waited a while and saw young Emma Norfolk—”

  “Dark girl, pretty, button for a nose …” Moriarty gave a wink of a smile, warm, there one minute gone the next, a remembrance of things past perhaps, Spear thought.

  “That’s the one. I walked with her a short way and she told me they was rushed one night, a year or so ago. Rushed, crowded out, and the next day all the old protectors had gone. Most of the girls stayed, frightened to leave, as they was threatened; but all our toughs were gone, replaced: the men who did the protection, the fighters and the cash carriers. Overnight they disappeared like snow in sunshine. Idle Jack Idell’s men there now, aplenty, thick as glue.”

  “And what of you personally, Bert Spear? What of your people?”

  “I hardly dare tell you, Professor. When we left England I had over two hundred men and women loyal and true to us, doing everything you could think of. Now, I’d be lucky to pull in half of them. And I had three good Aarons under me, all on ’em Hackums: Hard Harry Wickens, Jawcrack Makepiece, and Glittering George Gittins …” An Aaron, one supposes, is a captain, Hackums being bravo bullies.

  “I remember him, George Gittins. Big fellow with a lot of hair.”

  “You used to call him a golden lad; his face has a healthy look from the sun, like a farmer’s boy.” Glittering George Gittins was so called on account of his hair: It was golden and had such a sheen to it that one wag said, “Take a glim near him and he’ll reflect it and light up the street.”

  “Yes, well Shakespeare says that golden lads and girls all must, like chimney sweepers, come to dust. But I’ll wager the ladies think him a right belvedere.”

  “He hasn’t come to dust yet, sir. I seen him. They put frighteners on him, but George’d need a host of frightening. We’ve been decimated, though, Professor, decimated.”

  “We have that, Bert.” The Professor paused and looked down at his fingers. “So you’re shorthanded?”

  “We are shorthanded, sir. My men are your men, Professor.”

  Moriarty nodded absently, his mind elsewhere. “You said the house was rushed, Bert. What’s your meaning there? How rushed?”

  “Some of the girls go out on the streets, as you know. Go out to tempt blokes, usually trying to attract men that are half seas over, three sheets to the wind, you know, to save themselves the trouble of chauvering them; letting the muscle take care of ’em in the house: strip ’em then shove ’em out, minus their cash and even minus their trousers in some cases.”

  “Yes, so?”

  “Well, one of the girls said they should’ve noticed that night. The lads they brought back were only putting on drunk, pretending. Idle Jack had likely lads on the streets where the girls go hunting—lads who looked like they needed their greens, some appearing swell. Lurking and lusting. They were younger an’ all, while the walk-in trade were big set-up boys. It seems the house was full by midnight. Unusual. Then the trade started fights, took our lads to pieces. Cut ’em up. Ejected our hard boys. Took over.”

  “And your people who’ve left?”

  “Gone to Idle Jack like the rest. He’s copped the lot. Working for him like they used to work for you, Professor.”

  “And the same with Terremant’s folk?”

  “Exactly. That good house he ran near St. Paul’s, that’s gone to Jack, who’s getting a lot of tribute which, by rights, should be yours, Professor: a might of hard cash from robberies, street work, the girls, garrotting, cash to keep things nice,* blaggings, and the saucy books. Some hundred and a half men and women gone from Jim Terremant’s teams.”

  “And what of Sal’s house?”

  “It appears untouched, but you’d have to ask Sal to be sure.”

  Sal Hodges, who took care of all the Professor’s whores, ran a good house herself, with the pick of the girls, just off St. James’s. However, the general belief was that she paid less to the Professor than the other houses because of her relationship with him.

  “You’ve seen her?” Moriarty asked, looking up sharply.

  “No, I haven’t laid eyes on her since we were all together in New York. I presumed that she’d gone to Rugby to see Master Arthur.”

  “Never presume, Spear.” The Professor looked troubled for a moment. “I think maybe it’s time to fight back, good Spear. Take them at their own game. Gently to start with. Have one of your hard lads with you—same for Terremant—and make a little conversation with some of these backsliders.” Then, raising his voice, “What’s the cause, Spear? How’s he tempting them?”

  “Promises. He’s promising the earth. Less of a cut for him; food and drink he’s providing, he says. In the early days he claimed you wasn’t coming back. Just straight talk that you was out, and he was in. Pop goes the weasel.”

  “Lost sheep,” Moriarty mused, looking grave-faced, most serious; sad even. “If you’re unsure of anyone, then don’t bring him back. Let them think everything in the garden’s lovely, then throw a little surprise party. Allow the sun to disappear; clouds, maybe thunder and lightning.” He gave an evil grin and drew his right fingers over his throat. “Understand?”

  “We’re not to take risks. That’s sense. And perhaps I should make an example of one or two.”

  Moriarty nodded, happy. He had always liked Spear, and prayed to heaven that he was not the traitor in their midst. “Go, then, and come back to me in a pair of days. Don’t tarry. Make haste.”

  As Spear reached the door, Moriarty called him back. “One more thing. The boot boy at the Glenmoragh? The boy, Sam?”

  “Took care of that first thing, yes.” Spear told how he’d been up betimes and gone to a school supplies business just off St. Giles’s High Street and purchased a cane of the kind they used in all schools for corporal punishment, for flogging. He was waiting with Terremant at the back of the hotel when Sam came off duty at half past eight. They had a cab ready and took the lad to a quiet house that Terremant knew of and had arranged to be vacant. “Didn’t want to bring him here, Professor, lest he didn’t take his medicine proper. As it was, he was a mite difficult in the cab, so Jim Terremant had to cuff him round the head.”

  In the basement of the house, Terremant held the boy by his wrists over a stuffed chair, while Spear flogged him. Twenty-four stinging strokes that had Sam gasping after three and howling after half a dozen.

  “I swished him good and proper, told him to hand in his notice at the Glenmoragh, then come to me at my lodgings for a new job. Little bleeder could hardly walk when we left him. He won’t peach again, and he’ll wear the stripes for several weeks.”

  When it was over and Sam was taking great gulps of air, trying to control himself, his world diminished to the scalding area of his backside, Spear told him, “You’re never to go near Idle Jack nor his people again, otherwise it’s your neck that’ll be stretched, not just your arse stinging. Think on it, lad. And come to see me tonight. If you prove yourself true there’ll be work and riches and responsib
ility for you.”

  “Howled liked a wolf, wept like a willow,” he told the Professor.

  “It’ll be the making of him,” Moriarty said flatly, convinced.

  “No more’n lads get at boarding school.” Spear, in the back of his mind, wondered how young Moriarty—Arthur James as he was known, son of Moriarty and Sal Hodges—was doing at Rugby School, and he saw what he could only describe as a kind of pause in the Professor’s face, the mouth starting to open to form a word; then he altered his mind, eyes alight, darting somewhere else. Then a total change. “Yes.” The Professor gave a series of small nods—like a monkey on a stick, Spear thought—Indeed, yes. Make a man of him. In his head Bert Spear shuddered, hearing again the terrible swippy-swish of the cane and the flat thwackering as it came down, cutting across the boy’s buttocks. He did not envy boys who went to public schools and were beaten for the slightest irregularity. Spear’s father had leathered him, but with his belt, usually across his back and shoulders, and he’d learned the art of turning away to avoid the worst. From what he’d heard of public schools, the beatings were laced with ritual and filled with pain—dreaded, like an execution.

  “Out you go, Spear. Use your men wisely and bring my lost sheep into my pen, and if they won’t come, put them to the slaughterhouse.” He gave a wheezing chuckle, as if he relished the idea of an abattoir, his head oscillating in that strange, slow reptilian manner of his.

  Spear nodded, exchanged no more words, turned on his heel, and left to keep an appointment with Jim Terremant and his own golden lad, Glittering George Gittins, who wanted to prove his loyalty to the Professor.

  As he went, Spear sang, under his breath, one of his favourite music-hall songs:

  “And the tears fill her eyes,

  While she fondly sighs,

  He’s getting a big boy now—