Who Thinks Evil: A Professor Moriarty Novel (Professor Moriarty Novels) (18 page)

“A Russian name, is it, Natyana?” Moriarty asked.

“Could be, could be,” Washburn agreed. He reached behind him and tugged several times at a bell pull hanging from the wall. “She’ll be here directly and you can ask her yourself.”

A short, slender woman with high cheekbones and piercing dark eyes in a narrow face, Natyana wore a mask of complete composure, effectively covering any emotions she might be feeling. She knocked, entered, crossed the room, and settled into a chair with the placid look of a duchess arriving at the local vicarage for tea. Only the white knuckles of her clenched left fist gave an indication of the emotional strain she was feeling. “Yes, gentlemen?” she asked. “How may I assist you?”

Epp looked sternly at the woman, his eyes taking in the dark, severely cut dress, the maroon shawl, and the button shoes. “Natyana?”

“That is my name.”

He scowled. “Natyana what, if I may ask? You have a surname? And what was your name before it was Natyana?” The words came out sharply in the harsh tone of an interrogation.

She looked at him mildly, showing no anger or resentment at his tone, but her left hand clutched convulsively at the folds of her skirt. “The name Natyana is on my certificate of birth,” she said, “of which I have a copy. You’ll have to go to St. Petersburg to see the original, I’m afraid. I am told that in one of my past lives my name was Sharima, and that I was an odalisque in the hareem of the great Kublai Khan, but of that I’m afraid I can provide no documentation.”

“Chief Inspector Epp does not approve of you,” Moriarty told her. “I’m afraid there is much of which Mr. Epp does not approve. He is a policeman. My name is Professor Moriarty, and I am not a policeman. May I ask you some questions?”

Natyana looked at Washburn and then back at Moriarty. “There you are, and here I am,” she said. “You might as well ask what you like.”

“To satisfy Mr. Epp’s curiousity,” Moriarty said, “what is your patronym?”

“I couldn’t say,” Natyana answered. “My mother had no idea who my father was. She believed he was probably one of the men I grew up calling ‘uncle,’ but it might have been someone else entirely. On my birth certificate it says,
‘Otets nyeizvestnyh.
’”

“A bit severe, isn’t it?” asked Moriarty. “‘Father unknown.’”

“The tsar’s bureaucracy tends to be rather precise and inhuman,” Natyana said. “
Otets nyeizvestnyh.
And so, I’m afraid, he shall remain. You speak Russian?”

“Sufficiently,” Moriarty said. “Let us now, if you don’t mind, speak of what transpired here two days ago.”

“If we must,” she said. “I could go for a long time without bringing that back to memory.”

“Of course,” said Moriarty. “Let us go through the event this one last time, lightly touching on the salient facts. It would assist me greatly, and perhaps after that you’ll never have to think of it again.”

Natyana sighed deeply and stared at the wall. For perhaps a minute she was silent. And then she spoke. “Peccavi and the lad went up to the room at around three, I think it was. His associate remained in the greeting room. It was some time after Peccavi left that I realized that the lad had not yet come from the room. I don’t know how long.”

“Peccavi?” asked Moriarty.

“Each of our gentlemen has a name that he assumes while here. For our records, you understand.”

“You keep records?” asked Epp, sounding somewhere between astonished and disbelieving.

“Certainly,” Washburn interjected. “Have to know who purchased what service, just when, and for how long.”

“We don’t know the true identities of many, perhaps most, of our members,” Natyana said. “A new initiate is put up for membership by an existing member, seconded by another, and approved by the chatelain. It lets the members feel more secure and free from possible outside entanglements if they don’t know one another and we don’t know who they really are.”

“By ‘outside entanglements’ you mean blackmail?” Moriarty suggested.

Natyana nodded.

“That’s about the size of it,” Washburn agreed. “When a bloke comes up for membership I give him a look over, give him the thumbs-up, and he’s in. Never do ask him what his real name might be.”

“On what basis do you approve new members if you don’t know who they really are?” Moriarty asked.

“Mainly on my finely honed instincts and whether they can come up with the membership dues.”

“Ah,” said Moriarty. “And what does it cost to become a member?”

“Two hundred for most of them,” Washburn said.

“Two hundred pounds?” asked Epp, sounding startled.

“Guineas,” Washburn corrected.

“Guineas? For membership in this organization?”

“Yes, well, gentlemen will pay for their little entertainments, won’t they?” said Washburn. “And they wouldn’t have no respect for you if you didn’t charge them in guineas. A hundred and twenty is the membership fee, and the other eighty is put on the books for expenses. Whenever the account gets below twenty guineas, they ponies up another eighty. That’s why we don’t have to know who they are in the outside world; they have paid in advance for their little pleasures. The fact that a member puts them up and they have the requisite nicker goes a long way—and then once they passes my glom, they’re in. Of course, special members what might be useful to have around, like the two aforementioned coppers, get a special rate.”

“What did your finely honed instincts tell you about Peccavi?”

Washburn looked up at the ceiling and thought for a moment. “He joined us about six months ago. Put up, as I recall, by a member who signs himself ‘Saint Jerome.’”

“Interesting,” Moriarty said. “Jerome. Anglicized from the Greek Hieronymus.”

Epp snorted. “Greek, Egyptian—that’s all very good, but just where does knowing that get us?”

“The utility of any fact cannot be ascertained in the absence of that fact,” Moriarty said. “It may do us no good whatever to know that ‘Jerome’ took his name from an early Christian saint, or that St. Hieronymus used to visit those places in Rome that would most remind him of the terrors of Hell.
‘Horror ubique animos, simul ipsa silentia terrent,’
as you might say.”

“How’s that?” asked Washburn.

“The horror and the silence terrify the soul,” Moriarty translated. “Isn’t that right, Mr. Epp?”

“Might be,” Epp conceded.

“I quote St. Hieronymus,” Moriarty explained. “Of course, he was quoting Virgil. Assuming that your Jerome has a classical education, was he commenting on this establishment when he chose his nom de guerre? Does it matter? If it has any bearing on his introducing Peccavi to membership, it may. It is in such obscure and seeming unimportant details that people often give themselves away.”

He removed his pince-nez and began polishing the lenses with the ever-present square of red cloth. “Let us return to what you recall of the gentleman who called himself Peccavi.”

Washburn nodded. “Squat and wide he was, as I remember,” he said. “Prominent nose and ears. Well dressed. Brown sack suit and old-boy tie. Just which old boys I couldn’t say. Well groomed. Military bearing. Typical public school pitch to his voice. If you’d been here you could probably have told me which one.”

“No doubt,” Moriarty agreed.

“But a bit whiny-sounding for all that. And shifty. Wouldn’t look you in the eye.”

“Pardon,” Natyana interrupted. “But that gentleman is not the Peccavi I’ve seen.”

“Ah!” said Moriarty, rubbing his hands together. “Now we may be getting somewhere. Pray describe the man as you saw him.”

“Tall and slender,” Natyana began and then paused to consider. “Well, perhaps not so much tall, now that I think of it, as elegantly slender. Not that he was short, but his slimness of body and his posture—quite upright and regal it was—gave him an impression of added height. If you see what I mean.”

“Quite so,” Moriarty said. “Anything else strike you about him?”

“He laughed quite a bit.”

“Laughed?” asked Epp. “At what, may I ask?”

“Well, not so much laughed as, I suppose, chuckled. No—giggled. At everything. He giggled when he came up to the room, and he giggled when he left the room. With that poor boy—the way he was.” She shuddered and averted her eyes, as though speaking of it had brought the scene into her thoughts, and she was turning away from looking at it again. “What sort of man could do such a thing?”

“That’s what we must find out,” said Moriarty. “The gentleman you describe as his associate—he waited downstairs while Peccavi went up?”

“That’s right, sir.”

“But they left together?”

“That’s so.”

“Tell me about him—this other man.”

“I only saw the top of his head. That was when he joined Peccavi downstairs. He was wearing a wide red-and-black domino mask tied at the back with a red ribbon. I remember that a little round spot at the back of his head was devoid of hair. The remaining hair was black, parted at the middle and brushed or combed very flat to his head.”

“What name did he use when he came in?”

“He entered as Peccavi’s guest,” Washburn said. “No name was used.”

“Come, come,” Epp said. “Surely someone must have seen something. This could be important.
Ipso facto.
”

“He spent his time in the boys’ locker room, but he didn’t show much interest in the lads,” said Natyana. “I asked about him after … after.” She sighed and shook her head from side to side as though trying to clear troublesome images from her brain. “Was it our fault—what happened? Could we have known?”

“There have been organizations like this in London since the seventeenth century,” Moriarty told her. “Perhaps before, but I have found no earlier records. Some pretty unwholesome things have happened in them over the years. But the wanton and pointless murder of a young boy and the dissection of his still-warm body…”

Natyana made a soft screeching sound and brought both hands, balled into fists, to her mouth. Her eyes seemed to grow larger, wider, and more distressed.

“I apologize, madam,” Moriarty said. “That was unnecessary and thoughtless of me.”

“If you’d seen it—” she began.

“Ah, well,” he said, “distressing as it would have been, I wish I had. It might have given me some useful insights. I must deal in facts, not surmises, if I am to sort this out. But I’m sorry that you had to witness such a sight.”

Natyana closed her eyes and put her balled fists in front of them. “I thought I had seen horror,” she said. “In Constantinople, in Cairo—but like this? No—never like this.”

Washburn got up and moved over next to Natyana, taking her hand. “Is there anything else?” he asked them.

“One thing,” Moriarty said. “Was anyone close enough to overhear anything either of the men might have said?”

“I’ve asked that,” said Natyana. “The domino mask said nothing the whole time he was here. A few murmured comments to his, ah, friend, perhaps, but nothing to anyone else. The giggling man—the murderer—said a few words to the girl in the cloakroom on his way out.”

“The girl in the cloakroom?”

“Yes. She told me so, but I did not think it important. They were the sort of words one says to a cloakroom girl—devoid of content.”

“Perhaps so,” Moriarty said, “but I would like to know what was said.”

“I don’t know what he said, word for word.” Natyana stood. “The girl’s name is Wendy. I will go fetch her.”

“We are wasting our time,” Epp muttered as Natyana left the room. “For the love of—what possible use could it be to know what the man said to this girl?”

“
Acta non verba,
eh, Epp?” Moriarty said. “Well, who knows. Perhaps he told her his name and address.”

“Bah!” said Epp.

Wendy was a petite blonde with delicate hands and what the French would call a pert face. Unlike on the evening when she worked the cloakroom, she was clothed in a pink wraparound cotton peignoir with a fluffy collar. “You wanted to see me, sir?” she asked.

“Yes, indeed, young lady,” said Moriarty. “Wendy, is it? Thank you for coming.”

Her eyes widened slightly at that. “I didn’t know as I had a choice,” she said.

“Well, thank you anyway.” Moriarty smiled his most disarming smile, which under other circumstances had caused strong men to suddenly realize that they had urgent business elsewhere. At this moment it was devoid of menace, and Wendy smiled back, shyly and tentatively, as though she were afraid his smile might be withdrawn without notice.

“The man who caused all the trouble a few days ago,” Moriarty said. “You remember him?”

This time her eyes did widen, and her lips quivered. “Oh, sir,” she said. “He went right by me, he did. And I smiled at him and bobbed as I gived him his cloak and hat, and he gived me a shilling, he did. His eyes all bright and his mouth all giggly. How was I to know?”

“Now, Wendy, don’t blubber!” Natyana said sharply.

“That’s all right,” Moriarty said soothingly. “How were you to know? Let’s not think about that part of it for now. Let’s think about the man and his friend. Can you describe them—the giggly man and his friend?”

“The chubby one had this long mustache with the ends like twisted into points, but that’s all I could see.”

“And the other?” asked Moriarty. “Can you describe him?”

“The elegant-looking gent—I should think so. Besides, I’ve got his picture, don’t I?”

Epp sat up with a sudden jerk. “Here now, what’s that?” he demanded. “His picture?”

“What do you mean?” Washburn asked, almost leaping to his feet. He leaned forward over the table. “How did you get his picture? What are you talking about?”

Wendy put her hands in front of her face. “I didn’t mean nothing, I didn’t. It ain’t my fault.” She broke into earnest tears.

Epp stood up and pointed an accusing finger at her. “You have his
picture
? And you said
nothing
? Stop that blubbering, girl, and explain yourself!”

Which caused her to sob even louder until, in a few seconds, she was gasping for breath.

“Now, Wendy,” Natyana said soothingly, going over and putting her arms around the girl. “Nobody’s blaming you. We just need to know what happened.”