Moriarty (20 page)

“Knowing Sarah, she always had an eye for the main chance. If she believed Jack was really the coming man, going to take over your family, James, maybe she was trying to side with him. Get a good position in his family.” She gave a little two-note laugh, her voice like a little phrase played on a cello. “It would be like her to want what was mine. If she saw it was an opportunity to get the Haymarket place for herself, she'd tell any tale.” Sal laughed again. “I shouldn't say it, but I'm pleased she's out of it. Always a trouble, Sarah.”

Moriarty gave a quiet nod of understanding, but he scribbled a note in his mind to make a few enquiries concerning the house in the
Haymarket. Look about and see if there was anything unsatisfactory. Sal was efficient, but she was a woman, so, like all women, she was prone to making mistakes.

The Professor did not normally go out and about on family business as either his real self or his alter ego Professor Moriarty—he of the tall stooping walk, the sunken mesmeristic eyes, and the reptilian movement of the head. As well as his great power to organize, James Moriarty was an actor—a man of a thousand faces, and two thousand voices. Today he decided to meet Joey Coax as the character he christened “the banker.” This was a disguise he had used many times and knew well, a part he could take on with ease, a role he disliked but one that he could fit inside, like a second skin. He even had a name for him: Tovey Smollet, financial genius and parsimonious pedant.

So, around eleven o'clock that morning he began to prepare, first clearing his mind of all other problems and taking on the personality of Smollet. Then came the makeup, starting with the excellent wig, made by the same wigmaker who had supplied his amazing Moriarty wig.

Smollet's hair was dark and thinning, combed straight back, slick and smooth, with a touch of grey at the temples and behind the ears. The role also demanded him to straighten his nose, lengthening it a fraction and making it a straight Roman beak, using the nose putty he found so useful; also, he had long ago purchased a special pair of spectacles that distorted the eyes so that they appeared to others to be much smaller and closer together. The resulting image was of a man without humour, whose mind was centred on money; a one-dimensional man, pernickety and unattractive, just the sort of person to bore Joey Coax stupid, he imagined.

Just as Moriarty was preparing to leave, Spear came up to see him with the news that Billy Jacobs had been out and about and had
brought his brother, Bertram, back with him. “Says he has plenty to tell you, Professor.” Spear looked as though he doubted the fact.

“Bertram Jacobs?” Moriarty asked.

“No, sir. Billy.”

“Wants to talk to me?”

“Says it is urgent.”

“Well, he'll have to wait until after my meeting this afternoon. Is he behaving himself?”

“Good as gold. Helped with everything. Was polite and obedient—better than the two boys, 'cos they're young rips, the pair on 'em. Anyway, Billy toddled off and came back with Bertram, who's looking a picture, healthier than brother Bill.”

“I'll see him later, then, Albert,” and so the Professor went off in the hansom with Harkness at the whip, too busy to hang around. Something that was later to give him pause.

LONDON: JANUARY 19, 1900

O
F ALL THE PUBLIC
dining rooms, restaurants, and chophouses he owned, Moriarty liked The Press above the rest. It was sumptuous, yet somehow managed to capture the air of a private club. Possibly this was because its clientele was made up mainly from people who worked in the business of writing and publishing newspapers.

Located on the second floor of a building tucked away in an as-yet unadopted, narrow road running off Fleet Street, parallel to Chancery Lane, The Press Dining Room was ideal for journalists and editors working nearby, who could eat there in some style and much better than they could at home in Wimbledon, Woolwich, or Putney. Certainly, some of these good people used The Press like a club and they would often bring names to have luncheon or dine there—the kind
of names that were well known, and who made the news: Politicians, men of business, actors, writers, captains of industry, and men of the cloth would all be taken to this large, elegant room on the second floor of a building owned outright by Moriarty, upon which he got a good return for letting all but that floor, mainly to newspapers and their publishers, or those working for firms adjunct to the papers.

The Professor in fact cultivated people connected with the newspaper business and secretly had some journalists, and at least one editor, on a retaining fee, for they were often the first people to get hold of important information. They, naturally, had no idea they were working for the Professor. Just as he had his lieutenants of what he called his Praetorian Guard, he also had lieutenants on a completely different level: men with offices and desks, men in charge; leaders; men with responsibility. It was for them that his spies in the newspaper industry worked, and from them Moriarty gained much knowledge of financial, legal, and political value. “It is better,” he would often say, “to have the gentlemen of The Press with you rather than against you.”

The Press was pleasant, even lavish, in the way it was decorated and organized. When full, it could dine a little over one hundred and fifty people at the forty-odd tables scattered across its wide floor, the tables smart, covered in immaculate starched white linen, with gleaming silverware and glasses and spotless napery, the whole against a background of mahogany panelling set on a deep carpet the colour of fresh thin blood and with rich dark blue velvet curtains sashed aside its four high windows, floor to ceiling, arched at the top, all glinting from the light that splintered, night and day, from three plump crystal chandeliers.

The manager of The Press was a smooth, silky, immaculate little Frenchman by the name of Guy Grenaux, known to friends as G.G.,
a man whose whole life appeared to be absorbed in the restaurant and its daily course. G.G. was consulted on even the smallest detail: He knew the menu and chef's limitations backwards, was familiar with all his kitchen staff and waiters, and knew their families, their hopes, fears, and most intimate problems. Some six years down the road, after he died, suddenly of a seizure on a Friday morning as he inspected the freshly bought fish with Chef Emile Dantray, it was revealed that G.G.'s interest in even the trivia of his employees was to a purpose: He had skilfully skimmed some twenty to twenty-five percent off the top of both takings and individual tips, not to mention his side deals with the butchers, fishmongers, and grocers from which the food was bought. Some of this money was shared with the man who turned out to be his lover, the fastidious, perfect head waiter, Armand—the relationship quite unsuspected by all, including the Professor. But that is another story.

Moriarty arrived before Joey Coax, as he had planned; the head waiter, Armand, had already been warned of the Professor's impending pseudonymous appearance by a note brought over by Billy Walker, he of the unruly hair and cheeky grin. Already there were people at the tables, and he was met by the appetizing smell of food, the pleasant murmur of conversation, and the occasional clink of silverware on plates.

It was only when Coax appeared, being shepherded to the table by Armand, that Moriarty was alerted to the possibility of having made a mistake.

He had no trouble with the fact, already known to him, concerning Joey Coax's sexual persuasion: He was a homosexual. What people did in their private lives did not matter to the Professor. “As long as they don't expect me to do it with them,” he would laugh. “And as someone else has already said, as long as they don't do it in the streets and frighten the horses, they won't bother me.” He would always be quick
and amusing on the subject, and he would certainly never criticize men for being what in those days they referred to as “queer,” an offence thought to be so serious against both God and man that it was punished by lengthy terms of imprisonment. Indeed, in the early years of the nineteenth century, buggery itself was punishable by death.

What he had not been prepared for was the overt mincing queenery of the man, and he blamed himself; he knew he should have taken a closer look at this person before setting things in motion. The trouble was that Joey Coax was the most able man for the job the Professor had in mind—in fact, he was the
only
professional who could be relied on; and here he was, this swinging cockatoo, in a public place, and everyone aware of him.

The fact that he did not criticize men like Coax did not mean that the Professor approved. Certainly there were whole areas of some people's sexual mores that Moriarty loathed; indeed, he may well have allowed Idle Jack's businesses to exist close to his own, on a live-and-let-live basis, if it had not been for one area of Jack Idell's work.

Coax was not likeable in looks, but portly, a shade ungainly, and pudgy-faced; he dressed in clothes that were flamboyant, a plum-coloured suit of his own devising, with a lavender-coloured full scarf knotted below an exaggerated wing collar, the scarf flapping about, with four tails making its wearer look like some cartoon of an artist from a humorous paper. The man's hands floated about him, dipping and fluttering like two uncontrolled birds, his beringed fingers turning this way and that; his shoulders moved back and forth independent of his trunk, while his voice, loud and lisping, could have been heard in the street below—“Over here, dear man? Really, where next, then? Where next? Oh this is too much. Where?”—and was drawing all eyes in the room toward him.

Moriarty's rule was that under no circumstances should you call attention to yourself. That had been part of his long success and the
aim of disguise: the way in which he moved, invisible among ordinary human beings out and about in the world. His greatest coups had all contained within them this one magnificent moment, the final act in which he revealed himself as the Professor: James Moriarty. Complete invisibility was demanded of those who went with him in public. In a sentence, Joey Coax offended and embarrassed him. He also drew attention to him—a cardinal sin.

Now Coax was fast approaching the table, with his little squeaks; the grimace at other people already lunching; the occasional pretence of knowing individuals, mainly women; and the nodding bowing of the head, “Hallo, dear, and how are you? … Ah, Sir Duncan… How are you, Cecil?”

Moriarty made some instant decisions, thinking on his feet as it were, preparing small changes to his plans. Moving this, replacing that, to get ready to face this walking gee-gaw.

“
You
are James Moriarty?” The tubby, almost bloated face of Joey Coax, with its inflated nostrils, rubbery lips, and eyes enhanced (Moriarty could hardly believe it) with a few touches of bluish makeup, looked down at the—thank God—disguised face of Tovey Smollet. “
You
are James Moriarty?” as though this just could not be possible. Heads turning, ears twitching.

“Alas, no,” Moriarty answered crisply. Then, with eyes showing intense distaste, “Mr. Coax, I presume?”

“Yeeeaaas,” drawn out, an embroidered acknowledgement that sounded uncertain as to his own name.

“Then sit down, sir. Be quiet and let me explain.” Charming and at the same time cold. Pleasant, yet with a hard block of steel not under the surface but clear and visible. If Joey Coax knew what was good for him, he would take his seat quietly and listen with every fibre of his being.

For a second or two he seemed to behave himself, as Armand held the chair for him and as Moriarty indicated to the waiter that he would have to return with the menu later. Then Coax opened his mouth, but Moriarty lifted a finger and hissed, “No! Listen! James Moriarty has been delayed. He bids you start your lunch without him. I am his representative and we can deal with the business side of this meeting now, before Moriarty arrives. Understand?”

Again he had to hush Coax, who had taken a further gulp of air prior to holding forth.

“My Principal has asked me to make you an offer. It is that you spend one day working for and with James Moriarty. The purpose will be to take a series of photographs similar to the artistic pictures already referred to in his letter. Understand?”

Once more he had to hush the man, who was ready to burst out chattering again. “In a matter of days you will be told when and where these photographs are to be taken. Moriarty will supply the models, and the studio. You will supply your photographic equipment, and you will be paid handsomely.” He slid a small piece of card across the table. “That will be your fee, plus, of course, any monies you may lose through a clash of my Principal's set date with any work you have to put aside.” Damnit, he thought to himself, if he only had more time to get another photographer as good as Coax! But von Hertzendorf would arrive on Monday, and he could not have the man hanging around in London waiting to do the pictures. The session of photography would have to take place on Wednesday or Thursday—most probably Thursday, to enable von Hertzendorf to get some rest before the event.

Coax was looking at the sum of money written on the card. It was more than his entire earnings for the past calendar year—and Moriarty knew it. “Agreed?” Moriarty asked, and Coax gave a soundless but firm nod, eyes wide with amazement.

Moriarty often said, “There is one thing people of all classes, creeds, and stations find hard to resist. Money.”

“Good,” he told Coax, with a thin, humourless smile. “It will be on one day next week. Hold yourself in readiness and do not breathe a word of this to anyone. You must understand that.”

Coax looked alarmed. “Are you threatening me?” he asked.

“In a word, yes.” The affirmative came as if from a long way off, borne on a bitter blizzard. “If this gets out, my Principal will kill you. No doubt of that. Now enjoy your luncheon. The rare roast beef is excellent here, but don't forget to tip the carver.” Then, as he turned: “Oh, yes. It is not certain that my Principal will put in an appearance. Go with God!”