Moriarty

ANTHONY HOROWITZ

Moriarty-prelims-ac.indd 3

11/08/2014 13:12:58

First published in Great Britain in 2014

by Orion Books,

an imprint of The Orion Publishing Group Ltd

Orion House, 5 Upper Saint Martin’s Lane

London wc2h 9ea

An Hachette Livre UK Company

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

Copyright © Anthony Horowitz 2014

The moral right of Anthony Horowitz to be identified as the

author of this work has been asserted in accordance with

the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be

reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted

in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,

photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior

permission of both the copyright owner and the

above publisher of this book.

All the characters in this book are fictitious, and any

resemblance to actual persons, living or dead,

is purely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is

available from the British Library.

isbn (Hardback) 978 1 4091 0947 1

isbn (Export Trade Paperback) 978 1 4091 0948 8

isbn (Ebook) 978 1 4091 0949 5

Typeset at The Spartan Press Ltd,

Lymington, Hants

Printed in Great Britain by Clays Ltd,

St Ives plc

The Orion Publishing Group’s policy is to use papers that

are natural, renewable and recyclable products and made

from wood grown in sustainable forests. The logging and

manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the

environmental regulations of the country of origin.

www.orionbooks.co.uk

Moriarty-prelims-ac.indd 4

11/08/2014 13:12:58

From
The Times
of London

24th April 1891

HIGHGATE BODY FOUND

Police have no explanation for a peculiarly brutal murder

that has come to light close by Merton Lane in the normally

pleasant and quiet vicinity of Highgate. The deceased, a man

in his twenties, had been shot in the head but of particular

interest to the police was the fact that his hands had been tied

prior to the killing. Inspector G. Lestrade, who is in charge

of the enquiry, inclines to the belief that this dreadful act

took the form of an execution and may be related to recent

unrest in the streets of London. He has identified the victim

as Jonathan Pilgrim, an American who had been staying at

a private club in Mayfair and who may have been visiting

the metropolis for reasons of business. Scotland Yard has

been in contact with the American legation but so far no

address has been found for the dead man and it may be some

weeks before any relatives come forward. The investigation

continues.

1

Moriarty-text-ac.indd 1

11/08/2014 13:14:20

ONE

The Reichenbach Falls

Does anyone really believe what happened at the Reichenbach

Fal s? A great many accounts have been written but it seems to

me that all of them have left something to be desired – which

is to say, the truth. Take the
Journal de Genève
and Reuters, for example. I read them from start to finish, not an easy

task for they’re both written in that painfully dry manner of

most European publications, as if they’re reporting the news

because they have to, not because it’s something they want you

to know. And what exactly did they tell me? That Sherlock

Holmes and his foremost adversary, Professor James Moriarty,

of whose existence the public were only now learning, had

met and that both of them died. Wel , it might as wel have

been an automobile accident for all the excitement those two

author ities managed to put into their prose. Even the headlines

were dull.

But what really puzzles me is the narrative of Dr John

Watson. He describes the entire affair in
Strand Magazine
,

starting with the knock on the door of his consulting room

on the evening of April 24th 1891 and continuing with his

journey to Switzerland. I yield to no one in my admiration for

the chronicler of the adventures, exploits, memoirs, casebooks

and so on of the great detective. As I sit at my Remington

Number Two improved model typewriter (an American

invention, of course) and begin this great labour, I know that

I am likely to fall short of the standards of accuracy and

3

Moriarty-text-ac.indd 3

11/08/2014 13:14:21

entertainment that he maintained to the end. But I have to

ask myself – how could he have got it so wrong? How could

he have failed to notice inconsistencies that would have struck

even the most obtuse police commissioner as glaringly obvi-

ous? Robert Pinkerton used to say that a lie was like a dead

coyote. The longer you leave it, the more it smells. He’d have

been the first to say that everything about the Reichenbach

Fal s stank.

You must forgive me if I seem a touch overemphatic but

my story –
this
story – begins with Reichenbach and what

follows will make no sense without a close examination of the

facts. And who am I? So that you may know whose company

you keep, let me tell you that my name is Frederick Chase,

that I am a senior investigator with the Pinkerton Detective

Agency in New York and that I was in Europe for the first –

and quite possibly the last – time in my life. My appearance?

Well, it’s never easy for any man to describe himself but I

will be honest and say that I could not call myself handsome.

My hair was black, my eyes an indifferent shade of brown. I

was slender and though only in my forties, I was already too

put-upon by the chal enges life had thrown my way. I was

unmarried and sometimes I worried that it showed in my

wardrobe, which was perhaps a little too wel worn. If there

were a dozen men in the room I would be the last to speak.

That was my nature.

I was at Reichenbach five days after the confrontation that

the world has come to know as ‘The Final Problem’. Well,

there was nothing final about it, as we now know, and I guess

that just leaves us with the problem.

So. Let’s take it from the start.

Sherlock Holmes, the greatest consulting detective who ever

lived, flees England in fear of his life. Dr Watson, who knows

the man better than anyone and who would never hear a word

said against him, is forced to admit that at this time Holmes

4

Moriarty-text-ac.indd 4

11/08/2014 13:14:21

is at less than his best, utterly worn out by the predicament in

which he finds himself and which he cannot control. Can we

blame him? He has been attacked no fewer than three times

in the space of just one morning. He has come within an inch

of being crushed by a two-horse van that rushes past him on

Welbeck Street; he has almost been hit by a brick that falls

or is thrown from a roof on Vere Street – and, right outside

Watson’s front door, he finds himself attacked by some good

fellow who’s been waiting with a bludgeon. Does he have any

choice but to flee?

Well, yes. There are so many other choices available to him

that I have to wonder what exactly was in Mr Holmes’s mind.

Not, of course, that he’s particularly forthcoming in the stories,

all of which I’ve read (without ever once guessing the solution,

for what it’s worth). To begin with, what makes him think he

will be safer on the Continent than he will be closer to home?

London itself is a densely knit, teeming city, which he knows

intimately and, as he once confided, he has many rooms (‘five

small refuges’, Watson says) scattered around the place, which

are known only to him.

He could disguise himself. In fact he
does
disguise himself.

Only the next day, after Watson has arrived at Victoria Station,

he notices an aged Italian priest in discussion with a porter

and even goes so far as to offer him his assistance. Later, the

priest enters his carriage and the two of them sit together

face to face for several minutes before Watson recognises his

friend. Holmes’s disguises were so brilliant that he could have

spent the next three years as a Catholic priest without anyone

being the wiser. He could have entered an Italian monastery.

Padre Sherlock
… that would have thrown his enemies. They

might even have let him pursue some of his other interests –

beekeeping, for example – on the side.

Instead, Holmes goes haring off on a journey that seems to

have nothing that resembles an itinerary and he asks Watson

5

Moriarty-text-ac.indd 5

11/08/2014 13:14:21

to accompany him. Why? The most incompetent criminal

will surely work out that where one goes, the other will quite

probably follow. And let’s not forget that we are talking here

about a criminal like no other, the master of his profession, a

man who is equally feared and admired by Holmes himself. I

don’t believe for a minute that he could possibly have under-

estimated Moriarty. Common sense tells me that he must have

been playing another game.

Sherlock Holmes travels to Canterbury, Newhaven, Brussels

and Strasbourg, followed every step of the way. At Strasbourg,

he receives a telegram from the London police informing him

that all the members of Moriarty’s gang have been captured.

This is, as it turns out, quite false. One key player has slipped

through the net – although I use the term ill-advisedly as the

big fat fish that is Colonel Sebastian Moran has never been

anywhere near it.

Colonel Moran, the finest sharpshooter in Europe, was wel

known to Pinkerton’s, by the way. Indeed, by the end of his

career, he was known to every law enforcement agency on the

planet. He had been famous once for bringing down eleven

tigers in a single week in Rajasthan, a feat that astonished

his fellow hunters as much as it outraged the members of the

Royal Geographical Society. Holmes called him the second

most dangerous man in London – all the more so in that he

was motivated entirely by money. The murder of Mrs Abigail

Stewart, for example, an eminently respectable widow shot

through the head as she played bridge in Lauder, was com-

mitted only so that he could pay off his gambling debts at the

Bagatelle Card Club. It is strange to reflect that as Holmes sat

reading the telegram, Moran was less than a hundred yards

away, sipping herbal tea on a hotel terrace. Well, the two of

them would meet soon enough.

From Strasbourg, Holmes continues to Geneva and

spends a week exploring the snow-capped hills and pretty

6

Moriarty-text-ac.indd 6

11/08/2014 13:14:21

villages of the Rhône Valley. Watson describes this interlude

as ‘charming’, which is not the word I would have used in

the circumstances but I suppose we can only admire the way

these two men, such close friends, can relax in each other’s

company even at such a time as this. Holmes is still in fear of

his life, and there is another incident. Following a path close

to the steel-grey water of the Daubensee, he is almost hit by

a boulder that comes rolling down from the mountain above.