Night Music (43 page)

For those unfamiliar with the institution, the Caxton came into being after its founder, William Caxton, woke up one morning in 1477 to find a number of characters from Geoffrey Chaucer's
Canterbury Tales
arguing in his garden. Caxton quickly realized that these characters—the Miller, the Reeve, the Knight, the Second Nun, and the Wife of Bath—had become so fixed in the public imagination that they had transcended their literary origins and assumed an objective reality, which was problematical for all concerned. Somewhere had to be found for them to live, and thus the Caxton Private Lending Library & Book Depository was established as a kind of rest home for the great, the good, and, occasionally, the not-so-good-but-definitely-memorable of literature, all supported by rounding up the prices on books by a ha'penny a time.

Of course, Mr. Torrans had been anticipating the appearance of the Dickens characters long before the death of the author himself, and the subsequent arrival of the first editions. Some characters were simply destined for the Caxton from the moment they first appeared in print, and Mr. Torrans would occasionally wander into the darker realms of the Caxton, where rooms were still in the process of formation, and try to guess which figures were likely to inhabit them. In the case of Dickens, the presence of a guide to the old coaching inns of Britain provided a clue to the future home of Samuel Pickwick, and a cheap bowl and toasting fork would serve as a reminder to Oliver Twist of the terrible early start to life that he had overcome. (Mr. Torrans was of the opinion that such a nudge was unnecessary under the circumstances, but the Caxton was mysterious in its ways.)

In fact, Mr. Torrans's only concern was that the characters might include rather more of the unsavory sort than he would have preferred—he was not sure what he would do if forced to deal with a Quilp, or a Uriah Heep—so it came as a great relief to him when, for the most part, the influx was restricted to the more pleasant types, with the exception of old Fagin, who appeared to have been mellowed somewhat by the action of the noose. Hanging, thought Mr. Torrans, will do that to a man.

But the tale of the Dickens characters is one for another time. For the present, we are concerned with one of the stranger stories from the Caxton's annals, an occurrence that broke many of the library's long-established rules and seemed destined, at one point, to undermine the entire delicate edifice of the institution. . . .

•  •  •

In December 1893, the collective imagination of the British reading public suffered a shock unlike any in recent memory with the publication in the
Strand Magazine
of “The Final Problem,” in which Arthur Conan Doyle killed off his beloved Sherlock Holmes, sending him over a cliff at the Reichenbach Falls following a struggle with his nemesis, Professor Moriarty. The illustrator Sidney Paget captured the hero's last moments for readers, freezing him in a grapple with Moriarty, the two men leaning to the right, clearly on the verge of falling, Moriarty's hat already disappearing into the void, foreshadowing the inevitable descent of the two men.

The result was a disaster for the
Strand
. Twenty thousand people immediately canceled their subscriptions in outrage, almost causing the collapse of the periodical, and for years after staff would refer to Holmes's death only as “a dreadful event.” Black armbands were said to have been worn in mourning. Conan Doyle was shocked by the vehemence of the public's reaction, but remained unrepentant.

It's fair to say that Mr. Headley, who by that point had succeeded Mr. Torrans as the librarian upon the latter's retirement, was just as shocked as anyone else. He was a regular subscriber to the
Strand
and had followed the adventures of Holmes and Watson with both personal and professional interest: personal in the sense that he was an admiring, engrossed reader, and professional because he knew that, upon Conan Doyle's death, Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson would inevitably find their way to the Caxton. Still, he had been looking forward to many more years of their adventures, and so it was with no small amount of regret that he set aside the
Strand
after finishing “The Final Problem” and wondered what could have possessed Conan Doyle to do such a thing to the character who had brought him both fame and fortune.

But Mr. Headley was no writer and did not profess to understand the ways of a writer's mind.

•  •  •

Let us step away from the Caxton for a moment and consider the predicament of Arthur Conan Doyle in the year of publication of “The Final Problem.” In 1891, he had written to his mother, Mary Foley Doyle, confessing that “I think of slaying Holmes . . . and winding him up for good and all. He takes my mind from better things.” In Conan Doyle's case, those “better things” were historical novels, which he believed more worthy of his time and talents than what he described as the “elementary” Holmes stories, the choice of that word lending an unpleasing ambiguity to Holmes's own use of the term in the tales.

Here, then, was the apparent reason for killing off Holmes, but upon Conan Doyle's death a peculiar piece of manuscript was delivered to the Caxton Private Lending Library, tucked into the 1894 first edition of
The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes
, the volume that concluded with “The Final Problem.” It was written in a hand similar to Conan Doyle's own, although with discernible differences in capitalization, and with an extensive footnote relating to the etymology of the word
professor
that was untypical of the author.

Attached to the manuscript was a letter, clearly written by Conan Doyle, detailing how he woke one morning in April 1893 to find this fragment lying on his desk. According to the letter, he wondered if it might not be the product of some form of automatic writing, for he was fascinated by the possibility of the subconscious—or even some supernatural agency—taking control of the writer in order to produce work. Perhaps, he went on to speculate, he had arisen in the night in a semiconscious state and commenced writing, for aspects of the script resembled his own. Upon the discovery of the manuscript he examined his right hand and discerned no trace of ink upon it, but was astounded to glance at his left and find that both the fingers and the edge of his palm were smudged with black, a revelation which forced him to seek the comfort and security of the nearest chair.

Good Lord, he thought, what can this mean? And, worse, what consequences might it have for his batting? Could he somehow be transforming into an ambidexter or, God forbid, a favorer of the left hand, a sinister? Left-handed bowlers on the cricket pitch were one thing—they were largely harmless—but left-handed batsmen were a nuisance, necessitating the rearrangement of the field and causing all kinds of fuss, bother, and boredom. His mind reeled at the awful possibilities should his body somehow be rebelling against him. He might never be able to take the crease for Marylebone again!

Gradually Conan Doyle calmed himself, and fear gave way to fascination, although this lasted only for as long as it took him to read the manuscript itself. Detailed on its closely written pages was a conversation between Sherlock Holmes and Professor Moriarty, who had apparently taken it upon themselves to meet at Benekey's in High Holborn, a hostelry noted for the privacy offered by its booths and the quality of its wines. According to the manuscript, Moriarty had instigated the meeting by way of a note delivered to 221B Baker Street, and Holmes, intrigued, had consented to sit down with the master criminal.

In his letter, Conan Doyle explained what he found most troubling about the contents upon first perusal: he had only begun writing about Moriarty days earlier and had barely mentioned him in the course of the as-yet-untitled story. Yet here was Moriarty, seated in Benekey's, about to have the most extraordinary conversation with Sherlock Holmes.

Extract from the manuscript (Caxton CD/ MSH 94: MS)

Holmes regarded Moriarty intensely, his every nerve aquiver. Before him sat the most dangerous man in England, a calculating, cold-blooded criminal mastermind. For the first time in many years, Holmes felt real fear, even with a revolver cocked in his lap and concealed by a napkin.

“I hope the wine is to your liking,” said Moriarty.

“Have you poisoned it?” asked Holmes. “I hesitate even to touch the glass, in case you have treated it with some infernal compound of your own devising.”

“Why would I do that?” asked Moriarty. He appeared genuinely puzzled by the suggestion.

“You are my archnemesis,” Holmes replied. “You have hereditary tendencies of the most diabolical kind. A criminal strain runs in your blood. Could I but free society of you, I should feel that my career had reached its summit.”

“Yes, about that archnemesis business . . .” said Moriarty.

“What about it?” asked Holmes.

“Well, isn't it a bit strange that it's never come up before? I mean, if I'm your archnemesis, the Napoleon of crime, a spider at the heart of an infernal web with a thousand radiations, responsible for half that is evil in London, and all that kind of thing, and you've been tracking me for years, then why haven't you mentioned me before? You know, surely it would have arisen in conversation at some point. It's not the kind of thing one tends to forget, really, is it, a criminal mastermind at the heart of some great conspiracy? If I were in your shoes, I'd never stop talking about me.”

“I—” Holmes paused. “I've never really thought about it that way. I must admit that you did pop into my mind quite recently, and distinctly fully formed. Perhaps I took a blow to the head at some stage, although I'm sure Doctor Watson would have noted such an injury.”

“He writes down everything else,” said Moriarty. “Hard to see him missing something like that.”

“Indeed. I am lucky to have him.”

“I'd consider it a little annoying myself,” said Moriarty. “It's rather like being Samuel Johnson and finding that, every time you lift a coffee cup, Boswell is scribbling details of the position of your fingers and asking you to say something witty about it all.”

“Well, that is where we differ. It's why I am not a scoundrel.”

“Hard to be a scoundrel when someone is always writing down what one is doing,” said Moriarty. “One might as well just toddle along to Scotland Yard and make a full confession, thus saving the forces of law and order a lot of fuss and bother. But that's beside the point. We need to return to the matter in hand, which is my sudden arrival on the scene.”

“It is somewhat perturbing,” said Holmes.

“You should see it from my side,” said Moriarty. “Perturbing isn't the half of it. For a start, I have an awareness of being mathematically gifted.”

“Indeed you are,” said Holmes. “At the age of twenty-one you wrote a treatise on the binomial theorem, with a European vogue.”

“Look, I don't even know what the binomial theorem is, never mind how it might have gained a European vogue—a description that makes no sense at all, by the way, when you think about it. Surely it's either the binomial theorem or it isn't, even if it's described in a French accent.”

“But on the strength of it you won a chair at one of our smaller universities!” Holmes protested.

“If I did, then name the university,” said Moriarty.

Holmes shifted in his chair. He was clearly struggling. “The identity of the institution doesn't immediately spring to mind,” he admitted.

“That's because I was never chair of anything,” said Moriarty. “I'm not even very good at basic addition. I struggle to pay the milkman.”

Holmes frowned. “That can't be right.”

“My point exactly. Maybe that's how I became an ex-professor, although even that doesn't sound plausible, given that I can't remember how I was supposed to have become a professor in the first place, especially in a subject of which I know absolutely nothing. Which brings me to the next matter: how did you come to be so expert in all that stuff about poisons and types of dirt and whatnot? Did you take a course?”

Holmes considered the question.

“I don't profess to be an expert in every field,” he replied. “I have little interest in literature, philosophy, or astronomy, and a negligible regard for the political sphere. I remain confident in the fields of chemistry and the anatomical sciences, and, as you have pointed out, can hold my own in geology and botany, with particular reference to poisons.”

“That's all well and good,” said Moriarty. “The question remains: how did you come by this knowledge?”

“I own a lot of books,” said Holmes, awkwardly. He thought he could almost hear a slight question mark at the end of his answer, which caused him to wince involuntarily.

“Have you read them all, then?”

“Must have done, I suppose.”

“Either you did or you didn't. You have to recall reading them.”

“Er, not so much.”

“You don't just pick up that kind of knowledge off the street. There are people who've studied dirt for decades who don't know as much about it as you seem to.”

“What are you implying?”

“That you don't actually know anything about dirt and poisons at all.”

“But I must, if I can solve crimes based entirely on this expertise.”

“Oh,
somebody
knows about this stuff—or gives a good impression of it—but it's not you. It's like me being a criminal mastermind. Last night, I decided I was going to try to commit a perfectly simple crime: jeweler's shop, window, brick. I walk to the jeweler's, break window with brick, run away with jewels, and don't look back.”

“And what happened?” asked Holmes.

“I couldn't do it. I stood there, brick in hand, but I couldn't throw it. Instead I went home and contrived an elaborate plan for tunneling into the jeweler's involving six dwarfs, a bald man with a stoop, and an airship.”