Moriarty Meets His Match: A Professor & Mrs. Moriarty Mystery (The Professor & Mrs. Moriarty Mystery Series Book 1) (19 page)
Authors: Anna Castle
Peg, Zeke, and Sebastian shared a four-wheeler to the West End theater district. Sebastian was going to work. Peg and Zeke were going to spend another rollicking evening of music hall at the Alhambra. Zeke liked to sit with the gods in the upper gallery, buying beer and peanuts for his pals. They must be wondering where he got the coin. Rumors were already spreading about the mysterious veiled woman in Box F. How long could Peg resist the urge to reveal herself to her old mates backstage?
Angelina ticked through her list of worries over and again. How long would it take the police to notice the link among the burgled households and start setting a watch? How long before some bright-eyed cove identified Sandy’s cab, idling once again after midnight near Cheshire House, or spotted a dandy with extra-wide hips climbing in the dining room window? How long before Lady Lucy got tipsy on the champagne she hadn’t learned to hold and spilled everything she knew about the infamous Mrs. Gould?
Two weeks at the outside, one to be safe. One week to find Sebastian’s letters or something hot enough to blackmail Oscar Teaberry into giving them back. After that, she would brook no further arguments. She would gather up the clan and scarper, leaving everything they cared about behind.
Enough! She would worry some more tomorrow. Tonight she was on her way to the opera to meet Lucy and Reginald and others in their set. She’d dressed as unassumingly as she could given the occasion, in her oldest dark gray gown, hoping to fade into the background tonight. This would be Lucy’s first outing since her stepfather’s death, and Angelina was determined to push Reginald toward the girl if she had to use actual physical force.
If she ever actually arrived at the theater. Traffic on Baker Street had ground to halt. Sandy, able to see farther from his perch atop the cab, reported that two omnibuses had crashed into each other up ahead.
Angelina tapped a satin-slippered foot impatiently. She parted the curtain to gaze into the quiet streets leading away from the crowded thoroughfare and saw Professor Moriarty striding along a few yards ahead. She recognized him even before he showed his profile, turning onto one of those quiet streets. She knew his coat and the set of his shoulders.
“That’s the professor!” She tapped on the trap. “He just turned left onto the next street. Let’s follow him!”
“That’s a cul-de-sac, Lina. Are you sure —”
“Yes, yes! Let’s stop him! It’s a stroke of luck. I’ve been hoping for a private chat.” She’d wanted to send him another note to arrange another rendezvous, but her time had not been her own. Lady Carling had taken full advantage of her status as a freshly bereaved widow and dropped all her duties into Angelina’s lap. She’d even had to order meals in addition to answering all the cards and letters of condolence. Being invited to stay at Cheshire House had seemed like such a coup at the start — the savings, the entrée to the uppermost circles — but it had turned into another obstacle.
Sandy clucked at his horse and nudged the cab in front of him to move forward enough to make the turn. Angelina peered out of the window. The short street seemed to have nothing of interest save one well-swept stoop with a red lantern already lit against the gathering twilight. “Where is he going?”
“Ah,” Sandy said. Angelina could almost hear him smoothing his moustache. She had guessed the answer as soon as she’d posed the question but let him stumble on. “It’s a house of — er. A well-run establishment, I hear. Not that I — I mean, I have on occa — well, a man has his needs, Lina, and this —”
Angelina burst into laughter. “I
am
a widow, Sandy. I do actually understand.” Moriarty approached the stoop. “Oh, don’t let him go in! Stop, stop, stop!”
Sandy pulled his cab neatly to a halt at the curb in front of the brothel. Angelina leaned out the window and cried, “Professor Moriarty! What a delightful surprise!”
He had lifted one foot to mount the step. Now he whirled on the other, nearly losing his balance. Recovering quickly, he raised his hat and bowed toward the cab. “Mrs. Gould?” His tone was incredulous, as if he’d dreamed of her and she’d appeared out of a drifting fog.
No, wait, that was her fantasy. Angelina felt a stab of envy for the woman inside that house. That talk of a man’s needs had awakened her own lightly sleeping lusts. She held her hand out the window, forcing him to walk toward her and take it. “I
do
hope I haven’t caught you at an awkward moment, Professor.”
“No, no. Not at all.” He let go of her hand and scratched his cheek. He glanced at the house and then turned his back squarely to it. “I was just — it’s the home of a — I have a —” He pressed his lips together and frowned. The tan he got doing whatever it was he did to maintain his physique hid his blush, but she’d embarrassed him, most unfairly.
Pressing his arm with her gloved hand, she said, “I know what kind of a house it is. I don’t judge you.” She gestured at the angled door of the cab. “Won’t you ride with me for a few moments, if your appointment can be delayed? I have been wanting to speak with you again. Meeting like this is the purest good luck.”
Moriarty hesitated, but only for a moment. He tilted his head as if to say to himself,
Why not?
and climbed into the cab beside her.
Angelina spoke to the trap in the roof. “Would you drive us around for a few minutes, please, Cabman?” Sandy clucked at his horse and they started to move. He left the trap ajar, playing the chaperone. Or the bodyguard?
Angelina and Moriarty sat side by side in silence for a long moment. She studied his face as they returned to the thoroughfare, going in the opposite direction from the omnibus jam. The lamplighter and his boy had been working their way toward them, so now they drove through shifting frames of yellow light.
The professor seemed a little wary, which was only to be expected after their odd near-encounter at the Royal Society reception. He’d looked so handsome in his evening dress. His collars were a decade out of date, but the old suit still fit him to perfection, and the tailcoat made him seem even taller.
She noticed him the moment he’d appeared in the arched doorway, sweeping the room with that intense gaze. She doubted he realized what effect that intensity had on people. Some found it daunting, off-putting; others took it as a challenge. He’d spotted her and stopped in his tracks. He’d smiled a little and then relaxed his whole posture, from head to toe. He’d been hunting, and he’d found what he sought. Her.
He’d been content to stand at the back and watch her in the mirror. He wasn’t the type to push himself to the front. She’d scarcely known what she’d said to anyone after that. Her attention was fixed on him, a sort of bodily awareness sustained by occasional glimpses. When she’d caught his eyes in the mirror, she couldn’t resist shooting him that wink. She wanted him to know that she knew she was playing a role on a stage. She wanted him to know that he alone in all that glittering crowd knew the real Angelina.
And if that were true, he knew more than she did.
“You look well,” she said.
“Thank you.” Nothing more. Not even a routine compliment on her gown.
She smiled, with more effort this time. Why did he have to be so devilishly hard to read? It was like trying to peer through thick shutters clamped across a dark house. She wanted to fling them open with a bang. She hated this cool control; it foxed her, like trying to sing opera to a crowd expecting “Slap, Bang, Here We Are Again
.
” Or the other way around, which would be worse.
She tried picking up where they’d left off in Russell Square. “Have you heard any further news about Lord Carling’s murder from your friend Sherlock Holmes?”
“He’s hardly a friend.”
She clucked her tongue. “I used the term ironically.”
“Ah, yes, you do seem to have a gift for it. But then you have so many gifts.” This time, his gaze traveled down her figure with insulting slowness, taking in her artfully placed curls, diamond earrings, and tulle-framed décolletage. She felt like a horse at a Smithfield fair.
She should have left him to his whore. She’d stopped on impulse, mainly because she wanted to flirt, but also because they really did need help with those blasted account books.
She tried another approach. “I’ve been worried about you, Professor. I’m terrified you’ll be blamed for these terrible crimes. Nobody tells us anything, not even about our burglary. Lucy and I are absolutely on tenterhooks.”
“Ah, yes, your dear friend Lady Lucy. The one you were helping toward an engagement with Reginald Benton, her
beau ideal.
That plan seems to have been abandoned. Does she know yet? Or are you waiting to make a general announcement?”
Angelina sank back against the padded leather seat. So that was it. He’d heard about the Hainstone dinner party. Those five hideous minutes had engulfed her life like one of the flash floods she’d learned to fear in the West.
“I don’t care two figs about Reginald Benton.” She let the sadness color her words, turning her face toward the little window at her side. “You won’t believe me, of course. No one does.”
She felt him turn his face toward her. He lowered his voice to a soft rumble that thrummed into the base of her spine. “I know you’re involved in these events somehow, Mrs. Gould. You have some kind of history with Oscar Teaberry and his companies. I urge you to confide in me. I’ll help you if I can.”
She wanted to tell him so badly, to lay the whole tangled, dangerous family mess on his broad shoulders. She wavered, not quite trusting him enough, not when he was in this harsh mood. He would help her
if
he could. And if he couldn’t?
Sherlock Holmes, who might or might not be an agent of Scotland Yard, suspected him of murder. Her intuition told her this man was one of the most honorable she’d ever met, but then she had a weakness for bald heads and soft brown eyes. She longed to trust him. But what would he do if his own back were pressed against the wall?
She’d let the silence drag out too long. She didn’t know what to say and couldn’t bear the shilly-shallying for one more minute. She flung her arms around his neck, knocking off his hat, and kissed him for all she was worth.
In half a second, he was kissing her too, his strong arms pulling her tight, drawing her in like a man drinking the first life-restoring draught after a week in the desert. She let herself be drawn, giving herself up to her own frustrated desires. Time vanished.
The cab turned sharply, jolting them half off the seat. Angelina found herself pressed into the corner, one leg braced against the front window and her satin skirt hiked up past her knees. Moriarty lay solidly between her stockinged legs, one hand grasping the back of her head, the other wrapped firmly around her naked breast.
The cab came to a stop. They struggled to right themselves, adjusting their clothing in silence, faces averted. Glancing out the window, Angelina saw that Sandy had returned them to Moriarty’s brothel. She ran her fingers over her hair, hoping it wasn’t a total disaster. “I don’t know why I did that.”
“I do.” Then he met her eyes and smiled at her for the first time that evening. “I don’t mind.” He opened the door and climbed out of the cab.
“You’re a gentleman to the fingertips, aren’t you, Professor Moriarty?”
“I thought I was.”
“You’d never dream of taking advantage of a private moment to kiss me.”
He stepped onto the pavement and stood beside her window. “Dream? Nightly. But I’m a clerk in the Patent Office, Mrs. Gould. I have nothing to offer a woman of your attributes.” He closed the door, tipped his hat to Sandy, and mounted the stoop. Sandy clucked his horse to motion before the door was opened.
She didn’t want to see who greeted him anyway. It was so unfair. His release was right inside that door, while she would have to suffer through an interminable opera in a state of unrequited lust.
Wednesday morning, Moriarty found another letter from Mark Ramsay on his breakfast tray. This one invited him to a meeting that afternoon in Oscar Teaberry’s city office.
Dear Professor Moriarty,
I may be stepping outside my brief, but I fear Mr. Holmes is looking in the wrong direction. He may actually suspect
you
of having something to do with Lord Carling’s tragic death. I don’t presume to know you, Professor, but I do know Mr. Teaberry and the gentlemen who sit on his boards. Without naming names, I can safely say that there is friction and even mistrust. Some transactions may not have been entirely on the up-and-up.
I must confide in someone, and I feel instinctively that you are a man I can trust. I discovered something in the books the other day when comparing the accounts I had drawn up with those sent me by Mr. Teaberry’s secretary. I was debating whether to show it to you when Durham House was robbed. Could the Bookkeeper Burglars be retrieving copies of the same disturbing document? It seems far-fetched, I know, and yet each of their victims had received payments from Mr. Teaberry in the past month.
“I trust you will keep this communication in confidence. Given the nature of my employment, I am unable to speak openly, but I cannot sit silently by and allow a private inquiry agent to accuse you of crimes when alternative explanations, which in my view are far more likely, could be explored. If you attend the meeting this afternoon, they may feel obliged to treat with you more fairly.
Your servant,
Mark Ramsay
Moriarty read the letter twice while eating his eggs and toast. He owed it to himself to attend that meeting, but it meant another afternoon of work missed. He might save himself from the noose only to find himself out of a job. At least it would give him something to think about besides the taste and texture of Mrs. Angelina Gould.
* * *
Teaberry’s building on Nicholas Lane had been erected in the previous century to house a private bank. Inside, the ceilings soared twenty-five feet overhead. The furnishings had consumed whole forests of oak and mahogany, now gleaming under coats of hand-rubbed wax. The brass fittings on doors and cabinets shone in the light streaming through banks of tall windows across the front. Men in dark suits filled the vast lobby, writing on, carrying, or filing papers into infinite banks of drawers. The whole building echoed with the sounds of hushed efficiency.
The setting had been designed to impress and it succeeded. Moriarty was as thrilled as a schoolboy when the clerk ushered him into a private elevator to ride smoothly all the way up to the tenth floor. He found more mahogany in Teaberry’s spacious office, along with velvet upholstery, Turkey carpets, and a magnificent view of St. Paul’s Cathedral with the Thames coiling like liquid silver in the background.
The view outside might be serene, but the atmosphere within jangled with the tension of an argument cut short by his arrival. Six men stood about the room in various postures. Lord Nettlefield and Oscar Teaberry faced one another across an expanse of polished desk. Mark Ramsay waited a few feet behind his employer, his hands folded before him. A similarly patient man stood a few feet behind Teaberry. Sherlock Holmes and John Watson stood at the window, pointing out features of the city below, plainly enjoying the novel perspective.
All six heads turned as Moriarty entered.
“What are you doing here?” Lord Nettlefield demanded.
Teaberry flashed his teeth at Nettlefield in an alligator grin and stepped forward with his hand outstretched. “Professor Moriarty, isn’t it? We met at the Exhibition. From the Patent Office, aren’t you? I was impressed by your knowledge of our engine, very much impressed. Perhaps you can shed some light on the problems dogging us now.”
Moriarty shook his hand, grateful for the welcome. Now the others would assume Teaberry had invited him. He nodded curtly at Holmes and Watson.
“We meet again,” Holmes said. He seemed to revel in the tense atmosphere and relish the intrusion of his favorite suspect; or else the man possessed supernaturally exuberant spirits.
Nettlefield acknowledged Moriarty with a sneer. Moriarty repaid his rudeness with a bland smile and a touch of his hat. “Your lordship.”
Nettlefield sniffed and turned toward Holmes. “You were telling us about the evidence for tampering.”
“Yes,” Holmes said, “it’s irrefutable. The engine was deliberately sabotaged with the intention of producing an explosion when the lever was pulled. This is undeniably a case of murder, gentlemen.”
“I find it incredible,” Teaberry said. “Why would anyone want to murder Carling? I never cared much for the man, but apart from his title, he was a nobody. Easily led and just as easily avoided.”
Nettlefield’s kept his eyes on Moriarty as he said, “But you don’t believe Carling was the intended victim, do you, Mr. Holmes?”
“I consider it unlikely. His lordship’s decision to attend the event surprised even his own household. I consider it even more unlikely that anyone could have set so ingenious a trap on short notice.”
Teaberry scowled. “You can’t mean someone intended to murder me!”
“Don’t be so vain,” Nettlefield said. “Your name is only in the catalog as a proxy. Everyone knows that; it’s standard practice. The ranking peer always does the honors. If Carling hadn’t turned up, I would have opened the show. That rigged engine was meant for me.”
“Who would want to kill you?” Teaberry scoffed. “Except your son. You keep him on too short a leash, if you want my opinion. You should let him have that damned woman if he wants her. She’s rich, by all accounts, and a blind man could see she’s beautiful. They say she has connections with mining people in America. We might be able to use her.”
Moriarty’s ears pricked. He must mean Mrs. Gould, but he spoke as if he barely knew her. Interesting how Teaberry’s first thought was Reginald Benton. All the evidence against Nettlefield served equally well to implicate the son, with the addition of a compelling motive. Far better to be a viscount than an Honorable, especially when wooing the Sensation of the Season.
A grim corollary to that proposition leapt into his mind. Mrs. Gould had maneuvered herself into the perfect position to help Benton achieve that aim. The gossips said she’d come to land a titled husband; perhaps the gossips were right. Perhaps she and the lordling were working together. That would explain everything, especially the need for the account books. The son would want to know everything about the father’s business arrangements, especially if he knew about or suspected his father of cheating. He might be planning to pick up where the old man left off.
Moriarty’s judgement was impaired where Mrs. Gould was concerned. That, of course, was her central function — to distract and confound. He should have thought of this possibility from the outset. How could he test it? He doubted she would answer direct questions, not truthfully, but she seemed to trust him. He might be able to find a way.
He suppressed a smile. He’d have to see her again to make the attempt.
“I’m not certain about her fabled wealth,” Nettlefield said. “Things don’t add up. I mean to have her fully investigated.” He snapped his fingers at the detective. “Holmes! Look into Mrs. Gould’s background while you’re at it, will you?”
Watson chuckled like a man about to watch an amusing performance.
“With all due respect, Lord Nettlefield,” Holmes said loftily, “I choose my own cases.” He had several inches on the viscount and employed them to advantage, looking down his axe of a nose with a supercilious smile. “If you desire information concerning an American citizen, I suggest you communicate with the Pinkerton Agency. Your secretary should be able to locate their address.”
Nettlefield spluttered at him. Holmes merely raised a sardonic eyebrow. Moriarty began to understand Watson’s affinity for the man.
When the spluttering wore down, Holmes asked, “Shall we return to the subject at hand? The simplest assumption is that the murderer took the catalog at face value. You are a successful man of business, Mr. Teaberry. You’ve risen fast and made a great fortune in a short period of time. You must have made enemies along the way.”
“Others have risen right along with me. Who would kill the goose that’s laying all the golden eggs?”
“Someone who thought he wasn’t getting his share of the produce?” Watson suggested.
“Or someone who thought the goose was losing its magic,” Moriarty said. “We shouldn’t be too hasty in assuming that sabotage entails a deliberate attempt at murder. The possibility remains that the saboteur intended only to discredit the company.”
“I’ve dispensed with that argument,” Holmes said. “Many other means could have employed to achieve the lesser goal of public embarrassment.”
“Assuming a villain whose capacity for logical analysis is as great as your own.” As he spoke the words, Moriarty understood the basis for the detective’s obsession with him. Holmes longed for an opponent worthy of his mettle. Finding such a person in the milieu of the crime, his attention had been drawn like a magnet to an iron core.
“A lesser man,” Moriarty continued, “might have miscalculated. He might have intended only to create a loud noise and a dramatic burst of steam.”
Sherlock Holmes frowned and shook his head. “No one with the competence to make and install that false sensor plate could have been so oblivious to the potential hazard.”
They smirked at each other for a moment, like cricket players from rival schools. No conclusions could be reached by their bickering.
Watson adroitly shifted the subject. “How badly was the company hurt by the incident, if I may ask?” He moved closer to the desk to set down his newspaper.
Teaberry shrugged. “Not at all. Companies are structured to absorb shocks, especially in the early stages.” Watson looked puzzled, so he elaborated. “Initial stock purchases provide the funds for product development. The money is nonrefundable. Those shares offer the greatest rate of return in exchange for the highest level of risk. So the company comes out all right either way. Better, sometimes, since we don’t have to manufacture a product that might not catch fire, as we say.” He nodded at Watson as if reassuring a potential investor. “You needn’t concern yourself, Doctor. No one was injured by this fiasco.”
“Except Lord Carling,” Holmes said.
“And the shareholders,” Ramsay murmured. Moriarty doubted anyone else heard him.
“You should look for someone with a grudge against me and my companies,” Teaberry said, pointing at Holmes.
“I follow the evidence,” Holmes replied. “I don’t dictate the direction in which it leads.”
“Then you do it, Professor.” Teaberry snapped his fingers at his secretary. “Draft him a check, Illingworth.”
“Absolutely not!” Nettlefield said. “That’s like hiring the fox to find a missing chicken.”
“I couldn’t accept payment,” Moriarty said.
Although . . . why shouldn’t he? Holmes got paid for this sort of thing and seemed to be doing well enough out of it. “I have been drawn into this situation willy-nilly. If someone in your circle is responsible, then the answer may be found in their account books. Call them in and conduct a comparison.”
“Fine advice,” Nettlefield said. “But as you very well know, most of them have been stolen.”
“The Bookkeeper Burglars,” Watson said, nodding his chin at the newspaper. “They’re all over the morning papers. I see they struck Durham House last night, your lordship.”
“The bastards,” Nettlefield growled. “They cleaned out my files and the butler’s pantry. I would have had to come back to town anyway, even if it weren’t for this meeting. I won’t leave again without an extra complement of sturdy footmen in place.”
“These burglars must be stopped,” Teaberry said. “I’ll pay a handsome reward to the man that gets there first.” He waggled his bushy eyebrows at Moriarty.
Moriarty was intrigued by the unexpected, but not, perhaps, unreasonable offer. Why shouldn’t he earn a reward for his efforts? He wondered how much it could be. Enough to buy a new evening jacket? He’d noticed his suit was showing its age the other night. If he meant to pursue the maddening Mrs. Gould through London society, he ought to cut a better figure.
Although so far that pursuit had been entirely imaginary, and one did not require new clothes for that.
Nettlefield said, “Getting those books back must take priority, Holmes. I want you to drop everything and catch those thieves.”
Moriarty exchanged amused shakes of the head with Dr. Watson. His lordship consistently failed to understand the people around him.
“I do not investigate routine burglaries,” Holmes said. “Scotland Yard is quite competent in this area. They’ll trace the stolen goods sooner or later.”
“Later won’t be soon enough,” Teaberry said. “The police are baffled, although these damned crooks are obviously targeting members of my board. It must be a rival company. I can think of a few who might stoop to such a trick. There’s no telling what might be in those accounts, especially Carling’s.”
“That secretary of his is a blithering idiot. God knows what he might have —” Nettlefield cut himself off with a tight frown.
