Moriarty Returns a Letter (4 page)

The Inspector had never put the protocol in writing—he wanted deniability, as he wanted deniability for so many things since becoming head of Special Branch.

But he did follow it. And now he said to the Royal Mail carrier:

“Did you carefully steam the sealing wax until it was soft, then open the letter and look at it, and then carefully seal it back up so that no one would know?”

“Of course not, sir. The Royal Mail does not open people’s private correspondence.”

“Then did you hold it up to a lamp and try to peer through the envelope?”

“I may have done, inadvertently.”

“And based on what you inadvertently saw, you think it belongs here?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then you think it mentions a crime?” said Standifer.

“It not only mentions one; it confesses to it,” said the carrier.

Now they were done with the protocol.

“Let’s see it, then,” said Standifer.

The Royal Mail worker willingly surrendered the letter; Standifer opened it without further ceremony and took a look:

Dear Mr. Holmes:

I want you to know, first of all, that I would never had done it if I’d had any choice in the matter. But the bookies were after me for fifty quid, and for another ten every week that I didn’t pay, and those are not blokes you want to mess with, if you understand me.

And so I did it. I am very sorry for it. But it was only one mistake. Surely you won’t send a young lad like me to Newgate, just for that?

Well, all right. I know I can’t fool a man like you, the world’s greatest detective, so I won’t even try. I’ll own up to it, right up front: It wasn’t the first time.

But I truly believe that if only I’d had a better upbringing, I’d never have done any of it at all. I know it must seem to you like a very poor excuse, but Dad left when I was only five, and my mum was always lacking in what they call the maternal instincts. Who can blame me for turning out the way I did?

Be that as it may. I want you to know that I have reformed. I won’t do any of it ever again. Here’s the twenty quid that I took from the pensioner’s purse on Shaftesbury Street. I hear she’s recovering nicely.

Please don’t send me to Newgate.

Yours Truly, An Anonymous Felon

Oh, what’s the use—my name is Evan Berkshire. You’d only figure it out anyway.

But please don’t send me to Newgate.

Yours Truly,

Evan Berkshire

“It’s a growing city,” said the inspector to the postal worker now. “One of these days I suppose they’ll expand the Marylebone district a bit, and then there might very well be a two-hundred block in Baker Street. What will you do then?”

“I’ll deliver the mail to where it’s addressed, sir. If I ever find a Mr. Sherlock Holmes, I’ll deliver it to him. If I ever find a 221B Baker Street, I’ll deliver it there. But since I can find neither—”

“You deliver it here. Very well,” said Standifer. “Thank you, that will be all.”

But the letter carrier remained in the doorway.

“Was there something else?”

The young man produced another letter from his bag.

“I hope not, sir. But I fear it.”

The inspector opened the letter and began to read.

And then he took a deep breath and sat down.

With the opened letter still in front of him, he said to the letter carrier:

“When you pass Sergeant Turner’s desk on the way out, send him over, will you?”

“Certainly.”

“And say nothing to anyone else at all about this one.”

“Yes, sir.”

The letter carrier exited. The inspector remained seated, staring at the letter, for the next two minutes, until Sergeant Turner arrived in the doorway.

“What is it, sir?” said the thirty-year-old sergeant.

“Close the door,” said the inspector, and the sergeant did so.

The inspector shoved the letter across to the sergeant. The sergeant looked. The letter was handwritten, it was signed with a flourish by someone named Redgil at the bottom, and it read as follows:

Dear Mr. Sherlock Holmes:

Some say you are real. Some say you are made up.

I’ll tell you straight off that I used to be with those in the second camp. But I recently learned otherwise.

However, as I’m sure you know,
The Strand Magazine
says that you are now dead. You have plunged over the Reichenbach Falls, which I’m told are a terrible sight, to your doom—along with the legendary Professor Moriarty.

If it is true, I am glad of it, if you’ll pardon my saying so.

But if it is not true—and indeed I suspect it is not, because no bodies were recovered, not yours, and not Professor Moriarty’s, and there were no witnesses, just your handwritten note, if indeed it was yours, wedged on a rock on the ledge—so if this is just a clever ruse on your part, and you are even at this moment lurking in London to take advantage of poor blokes like me when we come out of hiding—I want you to know of the great favor that I have done for you.

Professor Moriarty is now in fact dead. For I have killed him.

How can I prove that, you say? How do I know the man I killed was Moriarty?

Well, for one, he said he was. Just before I did him in.

And I put him in some pain before he expired. No extra charge for that.

I will not tell you my address or real name, of course, but I am known as Redgil. You can reply to me in
The Times
if you like. And all I ask of you is this—should Scotland Yard contact you regarding me and my endeavors, kindly decline. You may hear rumors. Kindly ignore them. What is fifty thousand pounds, after all, in the grand scheme of things? You have royal scandals and the fates of nations to worry about. Turn your attention to such other matters, and let the little fish like me swim through. That will be best for all concerned.

Live and let live is my motto, Mr. Holmes. If you stay out of my way, I shall stay out of yours.

Now the sergeant became as somber as the inspector. He put the letter down.

“This man named Redgil, and this thing about fifty thousand pounds…” he said quietly.

“Yes,” said the inspector. “That’s the counterfeit operation our American operative was infiltrating.”

“And what it says about ‘pain before he expired’…”

“Yes, Turner, they tortured him, I don’t doubt it at all, if that’s what you’re asking.”

The inspector said that quite sharply, and then looked up at the young sergeant.

“Sorry,” he said. “It’s been a long morning.”

The sergeant sat down in the chair opposite the inspector’s desk. He stared at the letter, at the inspector’s somber face, and then back at the letter again.

“So what’s all this about a Professor Moriarty?” said Turner. And then, quickly, very softly, “I suppose … our man was growing delusional under the duress?”

The inspector shook his head. “Not at all. In point of fact, he and I had been considering something like this earlier.”

“What do you mean?”

“Our American agent was so persuasive as a criminal recruiter that aspiring perpetrators flocked to him even more rapidly than we had hoped. We originally intended to just round a few of them up every couple of weeks or so—spaced out, you see, with time enough between each so that no one would make a connection. But there were too many, too quickly. We realized that a felon might get nicked, meet another in jail, they’d tell each other how it happened, and next thing you know, they realize that they’ve both been working for the same man. And once they discover that—well, these fellows aren’t bright, but even they would smell something wrong. So we needed a cover—something to explain why the nastier felons kept getting caught. Someone to blame it on. Just last week we began considering the use of Sherlock Holmes for that.”

“You mean you seriously considered getting criminals to blame their failed plots on a character in
The Strand
?”

“The criminal element believe him to be real. So yes—a fictional character as the scapegoat for what our agent was doing in reality. Of course, if we’d known Conan Doyle was going to kill his character off, we wouldn’t have considered it. But we didn’t know. And if we could make Redgil and others think their plans were being foiled not by a snitch in their midst, but by an intellect so powerful that he could foil their plots by simply reading the morning paper and deducing the details of their criminal actions—well, yes. Why not?”

Turner nodded. “All right. But I’ve heard of Sherlock Holmes,” he said. “I haven’t heard of this Moriarty character.”

“You will. He just popped up in this month’s issue. I’d never heard of him, either, before that. But as you can see from the letter—anyone who can be persuaded that Sherlock Holmes is real is likely to believe the Moriarty line as well.”

Now the inspector pushed the Redgil letter aside in disgust. “Real enough that they’ll do something like this.”

“I understand that our American agent has a wife,” said Turner.

“Yes.”

“And that she’s with child,” said Turner.

“Bloody hell,” said the inspector. He hadn’t known.

He paused for a long moment, pondering all that.

And then, having decided on a course of action, he stood.

“Steps will need to be taken,” said the inspector. “We can’t have these rotters finding out about his widow, or they’ll be after her, too, to see what he might have told her. And it won’t matter that he told her nothing.”

“Yes, sir. But they don’t know her name, do they?”

“No, they don’t. And we’re going to keep it that way. We’re going to preserve her husband’s cover.”

“You mean the notion that his name is Moriarty?”

The inspector nodded, and said, “You used to work Forgery, didn’t you?”

“Yes, sir. Still do.”

“Did you get good at it?”

“I’m not sure what you—”

“Don’t play dumb with me, Turner. When a smart cop works a particular beat, he acquires the same skills the crooks have. So I’m asking you—how are your skills?”

“Passable, sir.”

“Good. You’ll need to alter a few records. They’re asking if the man they killed was Moriarty, and I’m going to let them think it was. In case they check, that’s what the death certificate has to read. You may need to visit the passport office as well. The records have to be made consistent with his cover.”

“I get you, sir.”

“I’m going to reply to this letter with a posting in
The Times
. I’m going to sign it ‘S.H.’ I’m going to tell them that both Holmes and Moriarty survived the Reichenbach Falls, but now that these louts have indeed killed Moriarty, they’ll have hell to pay when his minions learn of it. I want them on edge. I want them to believe the lie our agent told every bit as much as they believe the fiction in that magazine.”

“Sir?”

“
The Strand,
Turner,
The Strand
. Pick it up. That’s a good lad. There it is, ‘The Final Problem.’ Except for our claim that both Holmes and Moriarty survived the Falls, every trace we leave of our man must be consistent with what you see in there.”

“Will do, sir.”

“And Turner…”

“Sir?”

“Once you’ve finished with that…”

“Yes, sir?”

“We’ll never speak of this again. Not to each other. Not to anyone. Ever again. Understood? I’m in trouble enough with my superiors as it is.”

“Perfectly, sir.”

“On your way then.”

The young sergeant exited.

The inspector sighed and sat at his desk. He picked up his own copy of
The Strand,
opened it, and stared for a long moment at the story it contained.

“You were becoming a great help to us, Mr. Doyle. And now you’re becoming a great bother. Our fault of course—we should have told you what we were planning. But perhaps someday you’ll help us make amends.”

3

A FEW DAYS LATER

Inspector Standifer had the window closed against the brisk December morning, but he was having a better day than earlier in the week.

He was beginning to worry about the Irish Problem. And the Anarchist Problem. These were improvements on worries over the grubby counterfeiting gangs he’d been dealing with, and much more likely to bring positive recognition from his superiors. He was beginning to feel that he was indeed on his way up.

And then he heard Turner’s annoying knock. The young sergeant opened the door and stuck his head in.

“There’s a woman to see you, sir,” said Turner.

“Name?”

“She said, and I quote: ‘Apparently that is a matter of some dispute.’”

That could not be good, thought the Inspector.

“Bring her in,” he said.

The sergeant stepped out of the office for a brief moment; then he opened the door again and admitted a young woman. The inspector recognized her immediately.

It was the American agent’s wife. His widow.

She was perhaps as old as twenty-four, a petite figure, with jet-black hair, and emerald green eyes that made you want to stare but a little afraid to do so.

And—it was apparent now—she was indeed with child.

His heart sank. It was enough that the murdered American agent was leaving a widow. It was too much that there would be a fatherless child as well.

The inspector stood up to greet the woman.

“Do you remember me, Inspector?” she said.

“Certainly, Mrs.—”

He knew her real name—her husband’s real name—but she interrupted too quickly for him to speak it.

“Moriarty,” she said. “Or so they think, apparently, at the coroner’s office.”

“Please sit down,” said the inspector, pulling out the chair for her. “I will explain about that. I had hoped,” he began, then faltered. “I had hoped that you would not feel the need to—to view him until the undertaker has finished.”

“View him?” she said. “Is that the term we use? Is he an exhibit now?”

“I’m very sorry.”

“He is my husband, Inspector,” said the woman, quite calmly. “And I can well understand that you would not want me to see how he died.”

The inspector took a breath and tried to think of something comforting to say. It wasn’t easy.

“The results of a train accident,” he began, “are … are very difficult to look on. But for the victim of the accident, they are at least … instantaneous.”