Moriarty (10 page)

“Mmmm…on a temporary basis.” He tipped his hand from side to side, fingers open, flat, palm down. “He's guarding Idle Jack, Spear.
We want him to pass on Jack's movements, put Daniel here in a position so he can pass
him
on, if you follow me.”

Spear nodded and drew a finger across his throat.

“Precisely.” Moriarty licked his lips. “There's another thing, Bert Spear. I want you to find Sal Hodges. Don't hurt her, don't threaten. She may well have been taken unawares like Daniel. Just bring her to me and I'll do the business with her, find out what's what.”

“I seek Sidney ou'.” Lee Chow's face went still; no grins now as he looked up toward the Professor. “I a'ange Sidney.” Chilling, making a pledge. He would be responsible for bringing the traitorous Streeter back, a penitent, to Professor Moriarty.

“Very well, Lee Chow.” Moriarty raised his eyebrows at Spear. “Better if Ember goes with our Chinese brother, eh?”

And Spear gave a confirmatory nod as Moriarty dismissed the boy, then raised his voice, making each word seem to spark from his lips, throwing back his head and barking out the most momentous announcement of the night.

“I want all of this dealt with, and quickly. You will start first thing in the morning, for it is now already near the devil's suppertime. Those of our men and women who have wandered in the direction of Idle Jack must be brought back into our fold. If they will not come, or if any of them appear to you not to be worthy of returning—by which I mean people who could still pose a threat to our family—then you must deal with them as you see fit. In these cases I suggest that if they pay the highest penalty, then you must make certain that they pay it as publicly as is convenient. I want no hole-in-the-corner mutilations, or bodies turning up in dark cellars three years hence, or under the ground and unaccounted for.

“Idle Jack must be demolished. I don't much care how you do it, but he should be swept away—him and whatever family he has already constructed around himself.

“Now, I'll tell you that I have a plot on the boil, and when that plot comes to fruition it will put all of us well out of the reach of the clutches of any Sherlock Holmes, Inspector Lestrade, or Angus Mc-Cready Crow, or any other rozzer or bluecoat who fancies himself my match. When I have completed this ploy, none of us will have to concern ourselves about wearing the broad arrows ever again. We will not have to fear Jack Ketch or any of his houses of correction. We shall be free to make our rich livings as we please without threat or hindrance. We will have a Royal Warrant, lads.”

There was spontaneous applause from the Praetorian Guard, followed by an excited murmuring among them.

“Go, then, and be about my work.” The Professor dismissed them; then, as if by an afterthought, he called back Lee Chow.

“Lee Chow, my friend. A small job for you before the night is over…”

And as he told Lee Chow what he required, the sly Chinese man's eyes widened. He was not a religious man, but he felt a dreadful fear, low in his bowels, then exploding through him so that he shook and almost lost control of his limbs. He would have to do what Moriarty asked, but it terrified him in a way he had never experienced before.

For his part, Moriarty had chosen well; he knew his Chinese underling could be garrulous and would be the first to carry a report of what he experienced to his colleagues, and so word would go out like ripples from a large stone cast into a still pool.

Lee Chow left the house, carrying a small jemmy and some picklocks—his charms, he called them
*
—in his commodious pockets, and made his way to the nearest Roman Catholic church, where he broke in and committed an appallingly sacrilegious act.

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.

LONDON: JANUARY 17, 1900

A
LBERT
S
PEAR 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 henchman, 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.