The Fall (8 page)

Obviously, Moriarty kept the flow of information to a minimum. I found that highly annoying. Why did he want these weapons? What war did he fear? The thought of the woman next door diverted my focus. Who was she and why did she remain in her room all day? Was she a prisoner, too? My heart ached as my mind steered back to my imprisoned father.

I rubbed my brow. Thoughts were raging in my tired brain, but without anything of significance being learned. It took a while to push the crowd of fears and thoughts aside.
 

My mind crawled slower and slower, until I finally closed my eyes and let it escape to the Sussex Downs. I opened the door to my cottage, replaced my dress with trousers and a shirt, picked up my crossbow and ventured out into the dark to hunt rabbits. Gently, the realisation sunk in that what I could create I could also destroy.

— day 14 —
 

G
off would lead me to the library and hang on me like a tick for the remainder of the day. In the laboratory he allowed me room to move about, but whenever we ventured into a populated area, he turned into my personal parasite. For a while I had wondered why he had been chosen as my assistant and gaoler. Perhaps Moriarty’s reasons were twofold. First of all, Goff was a swot and would do anything to please his employer. He was a man who had learned his textbooks by heart. This meant he might spot deceit in the laboratory rather swiftly and would report it equally fast. Secondly, his eagerness to please his master must have made him easy to control and manipulate.
 

But Goff lacked the slightest bit of energy for creative play and most of all, he lacked imagination. He lived in his own world of normalcy, where intelligent women did not exist. Yet, I had to be careful not to think him too stupid and allow myself to grow sloppy in my attempts to communicate with the outside world. It was unlikely that Goff would report my fake behaviour of knowing little and looking up to him. It was what an upper-class female would do. Normalcy has always been invisible. However, I could expect him to tell Moriarty these things without really knowing the breadth of information flowing from his mouth. If confronted, I would excuse my charade as an adaptation to my surroundings to prevent social uproar. As a compromise seemed much less likely to provoke a confrontation with Moriarty, I decided to modulate my behaviour a little towards being my real self. Goff visibly suffered from so much female power.

I pushed the heavy oak door open. The old wood was cracked and slightly worm-eaten, its width embraced by black iron bands. The hinges creaked invitingly and the smell of aged leather, old paper, and oiled wood shelves pulled me inside.

The librarian spotted us instantly. Without moving his head, his eyes darted over his spectacles and quickly back to his book. His hair was black and sleek from Macassar oil that held the few strands tightly to his skull — a shiny sphere striped black and white. Underneath that were scrubby mutton chops in a silvery shade, and further down, a lean and well-dressed person.

I had observed him for several days now and believed him to be a sensitive, intelligent and observant man. Others might think him slow of intellect, because he read with his index finger tracing down the pages, moving his lips quietly with the words that formed in his head, as though his eyes and brain needed a crutch. He was slow in responding to requests and when he spoke, he used words sparingly.

To me, though, he appeared like a lynx, with ears constantly pricked to detect the slightest disturbance in his kingdom. While I walked back and forth between the shelves, picking out volumes of journals and medical history books, I noticed that the librarian observed me, too. I was the only woman here and thus a curiosity. Besides, I was absolutely certain he had noticed the strangeness of my companion. But what would the man conclude? Judging from my reading, he must believe I had a medical education. Goff’s disinterest in reading anything at all must leave the oddest of impressions. What man visits a library only to hang onto a skirt?

For the past two days I had been testing the man by flinching, or grabbing a desk or a shelf for support whenever Goff got too close to me. The librarian’s eyes shot towards me for a second, brow furrowed. More and more did he seem to follow me around the large room with his eyes and ears wide open in a most discreet fashion. Perhaps he was a good actor, but definitely observant. I would continue playing my game a little longer; act one — damsel in distress. He could be my saviour. All I needed was to place an advertisement in
The Times
.

Moriarty awaited me in his study after supper. My father’s answer to my letter was overdue. I had not even tried to sneak in a secret message. The two pages I had written could have essentially been put in two lines:
How are you? I am well.
With yet another morning having no sign from him, my mistrust had transformed into dread.
 

‘Have you got a letter for me?’ I asked as soon as I entered the room.

He raised his head, an expressionless face directed at me, then a flicker of a cold smile as his hand slid underneath a pile of papers. He pulled out an envelope. I stepped forward and took it from his offering hand.
 

‘Read it now,’ he said.

‘As you wish.’ I extracted the letter and unfolded it. Seeing my father’s childlike scrawl softened the rock in my stomach. I sighed in relief, lowered myself into a chair and read his words written in German:

My dear Anna,
 

I would like to put more into this letter than I am allowed to. I am told to answer your question, so you know I am alive. Let me tell you first that I am being treated well. Please don’t worry about me and do what you must. You asked what you dreamed of when you were a little girl. You dreamed of many things, but most of all, you wanted to understand the language of the trees. I think you did, in a way. You understood our cherry tree.
 

I hope you are well.

Love, Papa.

The letter sank into my lap and two drops slid down the sides of my nose, landing on the blue ink, smudging my father’s words. I turned away and covered my eyes with my hand.

‘Are we settled now?’ Moriarty rasped.

My head snapped towards him and I nodded.

‘I will write him once a week and ask him a personal question in each letter. If I don’t get an answer within ten days, I will assume he is dead. Can we agree on that?’

‘Certainly,’ he said with a smirk, as though he had anticipated my request.

I sat on my bed, bending close to the candle on the nightstand, and unfolded my father’s letter again. I let my fingers trail over the lines he had written, imagining I could feel his hands. I held the paper close to my nose and inhaled, but the aroma of fresh wood shavings that followed him wherever he went, was missing. He hasn’t been in his workshop for weeks now.
 

“…
do what you must. … You understood our cherry tree.”
 
The essential information. Our cherry tree… My mother died soon after giving birth to me. It had been a cold winter with a great amount of snow, as my father had told me so often. When she ran a high fever, no one could come to help, and no one came to bury her, either. My father had dug a hole in the snow under our cherry tree. There she rested for four weeks. When I was a child, I believed her soul lived in that tree.
 

My father’s mentioning of our cherry tree and writing that I should do what I must, was, I feared, his way of letting me know he had no hope of leaving his prison alive; and he was giving me free reign, trusting I would do the right thing. I could not bear the thought that all I should ever see of him now were pieces of paper.

It felt as though I were watching three hourglasses: one for my father — much too small, the sand falling too fast. One for my time with Moriarty — so big I couldn’t even see its outlines, and one of unknown size — for me to find a gap in Moriarty’s net and contact Holmes.
 

I lay facedown on the bed, thinking of the great difference between the time measured and time felt and began to wonder when I had stopped using Holmes’s given name.

The silence had been interrupted. Or did the sudden silence interrupt? Something had awakened me and whatever it was, it screamed into my ears. I did not dare move, only blinked twice to spot the two shadows cutting through the light underneath the door. Again, Moriarty stood in front of my room, waiting. Or listening? Had I talked in my sleep? I tried to remember my dreams, but without success.
 

As suddenly as he had appeared, he walked away again. His footfall was light and energetic, as it always was when he came from the woman next door. He used her like a privy. Every night he went into her room, disposed of his sperm and sexual energies, only to emerge an hour later, noticeably relaxed.

Not once had I seen signs of a fight on his face or hands. No scratches or bruises. She either did not want to fight or couldn’t. The thought of her being tied to the bed, being raped every single night, was sickening.