Moriarty (37 page)

But what of Sal Hodges and the dreadful weight of her secret? The night she returned to Moriarty's chamber the bed springs sang their sweet harmonies, and when they were done, Sal was still weeping, distraught with the loss of Arthur. Or so one would have thought.

“Come, my princess, my dolly darling,” Moriarty soothed. “Don't take on so. Arthur has gone and we must continue our journey in peace.” He lit a lamp and looked upon Sal and saw that she was shivering with emotion, her eyes scarlet and dreadfully blotchy, while her cheeks were raw with the salt tears, making the skin sore and rough. “Come, dearest Sal. Arthur was a good boy and I miss him. But…”

And she said it before she could stop herself.

“But he was not your son!”

She looked at him hard, expecting this to maybe be the last moment of her life; expecting to see his face changed into a violent thundercloud.

Instead, Moriarty smiled at her and nodded, slowly and with infinite understanding.

She knew all about him, knew that he had killed, or ordered murder on a whim almost, knew that he had done horrific things; but she could not believe what she saw now.

“One gets a sense of what's what,” he said, quietly, in control of himself. “I knew there was something, not quite …” The hands spread in a gesture more eloquent than words.

“You …?” she began, and he said softly, “Tell me what happened.”

“You were so insistent. All the time you spoke of your
son
. You told me I was so good, being the conduit through which your son was coming into the world. You spoke all the time of our unborn baby as
our son
. And I could not gainsay you. ‘
Our
son… our
boy
 …
My
son.' Not a day went by without you talking of him. I began to dread the birth because I thought it might not be a male child. Then, with one thing and another, I became so fearful. I knew I could not fail you, so I went to your friend, the nurse. Gwendolyn Smith. Gwen Smith. I begged her and she saw to it the boy was smuggled in. He was there when I bore you a daughter.”

She looked at him hard, her eyes searching his face as though looking for some fissure, some fault, a crack in his physical makeup, but could find none. He looked down at her with affection, that smile playing over his lips and clawing up to his eyes.

“You are not angry?” she asked.

“The Lord takes away, and the Lord gives. Where is she? My daughter?”

“You have seen her, James, though you have never met her. She's the girl who assists me at the Haymarket house. Polly.”

“Polly,” he said, and nodded. Then he said they should sleep and he would meet Polly tomorrow.

Of course
, Sal thought.
Of course. I should have known he would take it in his stride
. Moriarty was always flexible, tempering things to the changing winds. Always trimming his sails.

So, on the following morning Sal brought Polly to the house and introduced her to James Moriarty. “This is Professor Moriarty, Polly. This is your father.” He took her in his arms and looked into her eyes and saw himself there, deep and devious, cunning as a cat, lovely as the first rose of summer, deadly as a lethal weapon.

It was during that summer that father got to know daughter, and daughter plumbed the depths of her father. She accepted him for what he was, admired his ingenuity and genius of organization, and he taught her all things: took her around his lairs, introduced her to those who worked in the world for her. In that one summer, Polly learned all the dodges from fawney dropping to the three card; she learned how to crack a crib, how to blow a safe, how to shoot, and how to handle a knife with dexterity, how to smash and how to grab.

As the summer progressed, Polly saw the way the warehouse in Poplar was taking shape, and even made some suggestions of her own.

In early autumn, one still, balmy evening when father and daughter had arranged to dine together at The Press off Fleet Street, they
found that part of the road had been blocked, which meant they would have to walk some sixty yards or so over cobbles. Harkness helped Polly down from the cab and said he would make his way round and be outside when they had eaten.

She took Moriarty's arm, and the pair started to walk toward the famous restaurant where Sal would meet them, for she had been having a fitting for the dress she would wear for the wedding on Christmas Day in the warehouse, which would be ready by then.

As they paced along the road, some music reached their ears from an open window: the sound of a piano and a well-known voice. It came from a rehearsal room hidden away in this quiet side street, and the voice was that of the great male impersonator Vesta Tilley. That evening she was trying out a new song, which in a few months would have the errand boys whistling and people's feet tapping.

As Polly matched her stride to that of her father, and as they both took up the rhythm of the song, Vesta Tilley's voice floated out into the street, singing:

The piano took up the refrain, and James Moriarty and Polly, arm in arm, almost danced together over the cobbles.

In any book set among the criminal classes at the turn of the century you would expect to come across the criminal slang of the day. I have tried throughout to make the meaning of the slang obvious and clear. I include this small glossary of more arcane terms reluctantly. When I first published a work set in the nineteenth century and included such a glossary, some young reviewer wrote, “Gardner has also been dipping into a slang dictionary.” What price erudition and scholasticism?

*
With the new information given to us in the coded
Moriarty Journals
, we now have three versions of what occurred at that last meeting of James Moriarty and Sherlock Holmes at the Reichenbach Falls: There is also Watson's own account, and Holmes's account, as related by Watson in
The Final Problem
and
The Empty House
(on Holmes's “return from the grave”). Needless to say, the Holmes/ Watson accounts differ considerably from Moriarty's own narrative. In his telling of the tale we have what appears to be the definitive description (which I have set down in detail in
The Return of Moriarty
): It is Moriarty—in the midst of planning a huge robbery—who finally follows Holmes across Europe to Switzerland and so to the Reichenbach Falls. Professor Moriarty did not confront the Great Detective on his own on that ledge high in the mountains—as in the Holmes/Watson versions—but was backed up by one of his cohorts from the Swiss branch of his crime family. Also present was Albert Spear, armed and dangerous. In the Moriarty version, Holmes is held at a distance in a kind of Mexican standoff while Moriarty dictates his terms. He points out that if there is any act of aggression, Spear will shoot Holmes “like a dog.” He then demands that they go their separate ways and pursue their own destinies. He proposes a truce, after which, “I will endeavour not to cross your path again, on the understanding that you will not cross mine.” Personally, I am not completely convinced by the Moriarty account. The problem is nothing I can put my finger on, except that it seems self-serving in the extreme and there appears to be something missing.

*
For details of Pip Paget's terrible treachery, see
The Return of Moriarty
.

*
So successful was Moriarty's trail of misdirection that some have even confused Adam Worth with James Moriarty himself: See Ben MacIntyre's excellent and knowledgeable book
The Napoleon of Crime
(HarperCollins, 1997).

†
This was not the first time that Moriarty had substituted a forgery for a real work of art. Readers of
The Revenge of Moriarty
will recall that the Professor owned the great da Vinci
Mona Lisa
by this same subterfuge.

*
The common picture of Professor Moriarty is, of course, that of the tall, thin, elderly man with dark sunken eyes and the forbidding visage, plus that strange reptilian tic of moving his head from side to side, not the lithe, agile younger man he really was—the academic's younger brother; more of that anon.

*
There is something quite strange about this information concerning the Gainsborough painting. It is only mentioned as a talisman late in the
Journals
. Earlier we are left to imagine that his great talisman is a painting of a young, virginal girl reputed to have been painted by Jean-Baptiste Greuze. I cannot account for this discrepancy.

*
It may be of interest in passing that Moriarty's choice of lodging for his closest lieutenants is significant. In Baedeker's guide to London for 1900 there is a specific warning that reads, “The stranger is cautioned against going to any unrecommended house near Leicester Square, as there are several houses of doubtful reputation in this locality.”

*
There is a note at the end of
The Revenge of Moriarty
that suggests that Sal Hodges had only recently given birth to Moriarty's son, Arthur James Moriarty (baptized in 1897). It is more likely that this baptism record is yet another of the Professor's clues to mislead the unwary through bending of facts, for young Moriarty was undoubtedly a boy of at least eleven or twelve years of age in 1900.

*
Sir George Cathcart was killed in the action, and the 68th DLI displayed their collective gallantry by throwing off their grey greatcoats and fighting in their scarlet jackets, the only regiment to fight in scarlet that day.

*
For more on Wilhelm Schleifstein, Berlin's criminal leader and organizer, see
The Return of Moriarty
. In 1894 Moriarty made an alliance with several of the European heads of crime, including the powerful Schleifstein.

*
By 1900 almost all the 91,000 streetlights in London had been switched from the old gaslights to the new electric system.

*
”All Sir Garnet” became a popular expression in Victorian times. It is taken from Field Marshal Garnet Joseph Wolseley, First Viscount Wolseley (1833–1913), who was famous for his military efficiency. It means all is in hand.

*
There is mention in the
Journals
that Moriarty was forced to leave Liverpool at one time. He did not go straight to London, and the inference is that he had come under suspicion—probably concerning a bank robbery. It is clear that he was in the West Country for a time and eventually resurfaced in London. The period seems to be covered as “lost years,” and the minutiae are suitably lacking in colour.

*
The description referred to is of course Sherlock Holmes's famous word picture, documented by Dr. Watson in
The Final Problem:
“He is extremely tall and thin, his forehead domes out in a wide curve, and his two eyes are deeply sunken in his head. He is clean-shaven, pale and ascetic looking, retaining something of the professor in his features. His shoulders are rounded from much study, and his face protrudes forward, and is forever oscillating from side to side in a curious reptilian fashion. He peered at me with great curiosity in his puckered eyes.”

*
Because they charmed doors open.

*
By which he meant protection.

*
Where she was playing Prince Heliotrope opposite her sister in
Cinderella
.

*
To twig is to comprehend, so
twiggez-vous
, do you understand?
Twiggez-nous? Nous twiggon?
etc. From early in the nineteenth century. Used by Kipling in
Stalky & Co
. The popular song was by George le Brunn and Richard Morton.

*
At this point it may be convenient to remind readers of English currency at that time, for it had nothing to do with the decimal logic of other countries. One shilling was made up of twelve pence; a penny could be cut in half with a halfpenny (a ha'penny) or quartered with a farthing, and the shilling could be halved with a silver sixpence; prices could end in three farthings (a small silver coin, a thrupp'ny bit), so 1s113/4d would be spoken of as “one and eleven three.” There were twenty shillings to the pound sterling; and £100 was, by the end of the nineteenth century, roughly the equivalent of £1,000 in today's spending power. The pound coin was gold and known as a sovereign, while silver coins were the crown (five shillings); the half-crown (two shillings and sixpence); the shilling; and the florin (two shillings). The double florin (four shillings) was still in circulation, though rarely seen, and the Bank of England issued notes of 5, 10, 20, 50, and 100 pounds. Colloquial English rendered the pound as a quid, the shilling as a bob, and the threepenny bit as a Joey. The penny was represented by a
d
for denarius, a Roman coin.