Moriarty (32 page)

Lee Chow left about an hour later, following a long talk with Moriarty. He headed for Paddington Railway Station to pick up one of his special boys, a tall Chinese, name of Ho Choy: a most serious man, taciturn, a man who spoke only when it was absolutely necessary.

At Paddington Station they boarded a train to Bristol, travelling third class and assuming positions of great humility, helping men and women with their luggage and generally showing that they knew their place.

B
ACK IN HIS HOUSE
on the fringes of Westminster, Professor James Moriarty looked at the letters that had come in the afternoon post, around four o'clock. There was a packet sent on that very morning by Perry Gwyther—papers requiring his signature, and concerning the purchase of the warehouse. Also there was an envelope addressed in pencil, shakily written and bearing a small cross in the upper left-hand corner of the envelope.

This is Gorgie Porgie writing
, the short letter began.
I have done as instrocted and hav some gud things to say. Here they are getting in tuch with some one called Shleyfstine; also another called Grisomb and a third man who is named Sansionare. There is a forth man called Seegobey. Some of this I have seen rit down. Others I have eared. These fulks are all from foren parts and Idel Jak seems to think it is important for him to plot sum thing with them. I will keep workin and wachin
.

Moriarty knew immediately who these men were in Sam Brock's report. He had already had dealings with all of them: Jean Grisombre, the short, slim Parisian, leader of one of the largest gangs of thieves in the world, based in Paris and ruthless in their quest for the acquisition of rare and valuable jewels; the one Sam called Shleyfstine was the tall and correct Wilhelm Schleifstein, who looked more like a banker than
a criminal yet held sway over the criminal classes of Berlin, particularly the trade in human flesh. Then there was the fat, suave Luigi Sanzionare, son of a baker who had risen to become one of the most sought-after criminals in Rome. Lastly, there was the man spoken of as the Shadow of Spain, Estoban Bernado Segorbe, a quiet, dignified, neat, and unassuming man with a controlling interest in crime and vice, based in Madrid.

Moriarty had been involved in close dealings with all these men in the past and had no doubt that Idle Jack was now attempting to forge a partnership with them. If this was so, there were things he could, and must, do now to circumvent any activity Idle Jack planned with the continental mobsters. But first, he considered, he had to take care of matters concerning Karl Franz von Hertzendorf: Little Boy Blue.

Fifteen minutes later he was ringing for Wally Taplin, whom he charged with taking a letter by hand to Joey Coax. “And do not forget,” he reminded Wally, “do not go into the man's studio.”

“Don't worry, Professor, sir. Mr. Terremant calls him a—”

“Yes, Walter, I know what Mr. Terremant calls him.”

A
T FOUR O'CLOCK
in the morning, down by Bristol Docks there was a violent explosion as a ship burst into flames and burned and burned, sinking low in the water, then finally disappearing, leaving only an oily slick on the surface where it had been moored, and three of the twenty men aboard did not make it to shore again.

People who flocked down to help with the fire almost tripped over a body lying on the dockside, about a quarter of a mile away from where the ship had been moored. The body—that of a man—had been badly beaten about the head, and also had a strange injury to the face, where the soft flesh of the man's cheeks had been cut out and removed.

Later the body was identified as Ebeneezer Jephcote, captain of
Midnight Kiss
, the ship that had burned beside the docks.

O
N THE MORNING
of Wednesday, January 24th, Sal Hodges travelled with the six girls she had chosen to go to the studio in St. Giles's. They were quiet and sitting patiently waiting for things to start, and to be told what they were to do: Red Annie, Gypsy Smith, Connie Best, Sukie Williams, Dark Delilah Amphet, and Goldie Goode. Excellent choices, Moriarty thought, as he viewed them from the balcony. All were attractive, voluptuous, and had that special quality in their eyes, the one that appeared to invite men into their arms and, indeed, further.

The balcony was one of the reasons he had chosen this nice room, which was once a public ballroom for the good people of St. Giles's. From the balcony he could observe without being himself observed, for he had no desire to become personally involved with Joey Coax and his photography.

Coax presently appeared, with three assistants lugging in cameras, tripods, and other jigamarees connected with the business of taking likenesses, and, as soon as work began, Moriarty was pleasantly amazed at the excellent and professional way in which Coax approached the job in hand. He seemed to know exactly what he required of all concerned, and issued his instructions without any of what the Professor thought of as “effeminate faffing on.”

Only once was there a problem. He had positioned Dark Delilah Amphet on a couch, hard by Little Boy Blue. “Now,” the photographer instructed, “look as if you're whipping the harpoon into her.” The Austrian did not understand the instruction and, in the end, Moriarty himself had to call out an impolite expression in German, which made von Hertzendorf give a somewhat injured sigh.

First thing the following morning, a boy left a thick buff envelope for the Professor.

The photographs were magnificent, Moriarty considered. Coax certainly knew what he was doing. He had positioned the lighting so exactly that the flesh of the women on display seemed to glow, breathe, and live in the likenesses.

The posing was also done with a certain tastefulness that stopped short of crudity, though few would doubt what they were viewing: the late Prince Albert, the Prince Consort, lickspittaling and poodle-faking with six different luscious, partly clad women, on chairs, draped on a chesterfield, and one—Dark Delilah Amphet—across a large bed.

Moriarty rubbed his hands gleefully, summoned Harkness and the hansom, and set off immediately, with Daniel Carbonardo as protection, to Gray's Inn Road, to see what kind of an impression the photographs would make on his advisor, Perry Gwyther.

LONDON: LATE JANUARY–APRIL 15, 1900

P
EREGRINE
G
WYTHER WAS
well-heeled, rich, prosperous, tall, and immaculate of dress, confident, and gleamingly clean. He sported a bald head, one of those sleek heads of skin that glisten in any light, shining, bordered by neatly barbered snow-white hair: soft, lying smooth and silky at the back and sides. By the sight of Perry Gwyther's head you knew of his cleanliness.

Perry was normally a person who would greet people with a smile and open-armed gestures, welcoming in a way that was completely un-threatening. He was not smiling now, as he looked up at the Professor from behind his desk. “And what are these?” he asked, passing his hand over the pile of photographs, his voice tilted to the brink of revulsion.

“What do you think they are?” Moriarty smiled, amused and jovial.

“I know what I am meant to think.” Gwyther's face was sombre, no trace of pleasure. “Sir, what did you imagine you were doing?”

“I am set to put the Queen at a disadvantage.”

“Have you taken leave of your senses, Professor? How did you think you could use these unpleasant photographs?” he asked, his voice on a rising note.

“The idea was that she would do almost anything to stop them being distributed to the newspapers. She pined for long enough after his death—the Widow of Windsor—surely she would do anything to stop a scandal of this magnitude. I pay you to advise me, Perry. I know you can reach into the royal court. I hoped you would be in a position to—”

“The Queen, Professor, would not even look at these …” his voice barking, angry, cheeks flushed, and his hand again sweeping over the photographs, “… these…” a frustrated note from the back of his throat, “from… these… these… filthy fraudulent pictures.”

“Not even look?” Moriarty shuddered, taking a deep breath. Then again, “Not even look?”

Gwyther shook his head slowly, three times, not meeting Moriarty's eye with his. “One glance and she would be near fainting. The late Prince Consort is sacrosanct. Even if she looked at these, she could never believe them. She would deny them utterly. She would see them as the stupid, irrelevant, dirty trick that they are.”

“But he is the spit and image of Albert …”

“Indeed, your model looks like Albert. Looks to a great degree like Albert, but nobody would possibly believe this, least of all Queen Victoria. It simply could not happen.”

“Why on earth not? Even in royalty there must be such a thing as jealousy. You yourself have said that she—”

“Much enjoyed the pleasures of the marriage bed? Yes, indeed, that is true, but that pleasure was tinged with a strange prudery, Professor,
and a total trust in Prince Albert. What your photographs show just could not occur. The idea is ludicrous.” Gwyther could hardly credit Moriarty with plotting such idiocy. “My information is first class. Yes, I can, as you put it, reach into the court. If you had come to me with this absurd plan I would have advised you to bury it in the deepest well, sink it in the darkest ocean. How can you have expected this to give you any hold over Her Majesty?”

“I met the man, the man in the photographs, by accident. In Vienna.” Moriarty laid a hand, palm down, on the corner of Gwyther's desk. “Schleifstein, the criminal overlord in Berlin, put me on to him, and the moment I saw him I imagined we could use him …And now…” He appeared to struggle for the right words. “And now … This is hopeless … You mean I have spent time and money—a lot of money—for nothing?”

“Nothing, Professor. Victoria is a sad old lady, in her eighty-first year, with declining health. She is like to die at any time. Her doctors say she has indicated that she would not fight hard against a mortal illness.”

“So she would in no way fight against these photographs being published?”

“I have told you. She would not even believe them. This is the woman who relied on Albert in all things. Who enjoyed, as you have said, the marital bed, yet could not even bring herself to explain human reproduction to her daughter—the Princess Alice—and left it to Albert; she is the woman who claimed to know of her son's shenanigans with the girl Nellie Clifden,
*
but said she did not know 'the disgusting details.' Do you not see what I am getting at?”

Moriarty, usually the most stoic of men, almost wrang his hands. “All that time!” he cried. “All that time; all that money. For nothing?” In his mind an even worse thought prowled—that he had been foolish to think this plan could have worked at all; that he had allowed himself to believe there was any merit in this threadbare scheme.

“Professor, you would be advised to bring your energies to bear on Idle Jack. You have such talent, and have made such a difference to the class we are both proud to share. You have so much more to give. I beg you, concentrate on that villain so we can see him put to rights.”

Moriarty gave an animal-like cry, a small howl that made Gwyther jump in his skin. “Na-ntaaacht!” The sound, part snarl, part cry of anguish, and part warning of attack, echoed through Perry Gwyther's rooms in the Gray's Inn Road so that two of his clerks in an adjoining office recoiled as though they had heard the call of some feral beast about to harass them, and were thrown into such terror that it drove them shivering into the street and, so, home at this early hour.

Moriarty left Gray's Inn Road some twenty minutes later, refreshed by a cup of Indian tea made for him by Abott, Gwyther's chief clerk, who was, as Perry himself remarked, a “dab hand when it came to infusing tea.”

Moriarty was refreshed, but still raging inside: furious and, worse, questioning his own self-confidence, as he sat shoulder to shoulder with Daniel Carbonardo in the hansom, silent, locked within himself for fifteen, nearly twenty, minutes, swaying against Carbonardo as the cab rolled back to Westminster.

Finally he leaned close and spoke quietly. “Tomorrow, Daniel. Tomorrow, take the Austrian home.”

“All the way to Vienna?”

Moriarty shook his head. “No, Daniel. No. You take him
home
.”

Indeed, on the following day Carbonardo accompanied von
Hertzendorf onto the packet sailing from Dover to Calais. Nobody saw him with the Austrian when they reached France. Twenty-four hours later Daniel returned alone to London, where Moriarty had been particularly busy. Von Hertzendorf was not heard of again.

During the night—around three in the morning—Moriarty had personally wakened Joey Coax with the news that there was special work, dangerous work, to be done, after which the photographer would be paid in full. He then drove him, Moriarty himself at the whip, at great speed, to a remote house on the Ratcliffe Highway, where he handed over the terrified Coax to a pair of his most adept punishers. The house, between Wapping and Stepney, was destroyed by fire a year or so later, and the site has since been rebuilt upon. Joey Coax is possibly still there, sleeping through the years, fast in the reddish soil of the area that gave the name to Redcliff, and so Ratcliffe. This tale bears out the truth that it was not in your best interest to become professionally involved in any scheme put to you by Professor James Moriarty, particularly if you had some signal skill that he required to use. Rarely did the Professor leave witnesses in the present to speak of what had happened in the past.

Also, in the early morning of that same day, the barque
Colleen of Cork
was returning to Plymouth, coming in to The Sound, making way for Devonport, after calling in for a day at the French port of Le Havre, where two members of the crew—both Chinese—appeared to have deserted ship. A box of firecrackers, accidentally ignited, set fire to a powder keg kept under lock and key. In turn, the keg set off other inflammable and unstable materiel. The explosion was heard from as far away as Polperro, and several bodies were washed up along the coast, notably that of her captain, Michael Trewinard, and her first mate, Bernard Carpenter, both of whom were identified, in St. Austell, by family members.