The Last Moriarty Read online

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Text copyright © 2015 Charles Veley

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Thomas & Mercer, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Thomas & Mercer are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781477829721

  ISBN-10: 1477829725

  Cover design by Todd Alan Johnson

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2014957572

  For Pam

  CONTENTS

  START READING

  PREFACE

  PART ONE REMEMBER, REMEMBER

  1. INSOMNIA, INTERRUPTED

  2. A BODY IS EXAMINED

  3. A YOUNG AMERICAN

  4. A REQUEST FOR ASSISTANCE

  5. A DELIGHTFUL PERFORMANCE

  6. AN EFFUSIVE IMPRESARIO

  7. A SURLY SET SUPERVISOR

  8. AN ATTRACTIVE ACTRESS

  9. A MUSICIAN’S APPEAL

  10. POLITICAL CONSIDERATIONS

  11. OUR MOST OBVIOUS DIFFICULTY

  12. BREAKFAST AT 221B BAKER STREET

  13. MISS JAMES NEEDS HELP

  14. THE IRREGULARS

  15. SOMERSET HOUSE

  16. THREADNEEDLE STREET

  17. A TRAP IS BAITED

  18. A CONFRONTATION WITH A LADY

  19. A DISCOVERY AT CLAPHAM COMMON

  PART TWO TREASON AND PLOT

  20. A JOURNEY TO DARTMOOR

  21. INTERVIEW WITH A VICAR

  22. AN INVALID COMES TO LIFE

  23. A SECOND FUNERAL

  24. A NARROW ESCAPE

  25. MISS JAMES HAS NEWS

  26. A SURPRISE VISIT

  27. A CONVERSATION WITH MISS ROSARIO

  28. TWO REVELATIONS

  29. PLANS, INTERRUPTED

  30. MR. ROCKEFELLER OPINES

  31. MR. PERKINS’S SOUL

  32. A BACKSTAGE DISCOVERY

  33. A JOURNAL DECODED

  34. BREAKING AND ENTERING

  35. PHILOSOPHY WITH MR. ROCKEFELLER

  36. COMMISSIONER ROOSEVELT’S REPORT

  37. A TRAITOR IS UNMASKED

  PART THREE I SEE NO REASON

  38. A SMALL GLASS VIAL

  39. A WALK IN THE FOG

  40. THE MORIARTY FAMILY

  41. A CALL FOR ASSISTANCE

  42. A MATTER OF HONOR

  43. ON THE FIFTH OF NOVEMBER

  44. RETURN TO THE SHAMROCK

  45. LUCY MAKES AN OFFER

  46. A FRUITLESS SEARCH

  47. MR. MORGAN’S DEMAND

  48. THE REPORT FROM DARTMOOR

  49. OUT OF TUNE

  50. LESTRADE AND FLYNN REPORT

  51. LIGHT BECOMES DARKNESS

  PART FOUR NEVER FORGOT

  52. TAKEN

  53. THE OLD SHIKARI

  54. A REVELATION

  55. MR. WORTH REACTS

  56. AN IMPOSSIBLE DEMAND

  57. ACTION AND REACTION

  58. CACOPHONY

  59. AWAY

  60. AN EXPLANATION FOR THE COMMISSIONER

  61. WHAT THE PAPERS SAID

  62. A BANKER APPEARS

  63. NUMBER 10 DOWNING STREET

  64. HOLMES ADMITS A POSSIBILITY

  65. A VIOLIN BRINGS US TOGETHER

  66. INSOMNIA REVISITED

  HISTORICAL NOTES

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Remember, remember the Fifth of November,

  The Gunpowder Treason and Plot,

  I see no reason why Gunpowder Treason

  Should ever be forgot.

  Anonymous poem

  PREFACE

  These papers describe certain events that occurred during a period of five days in early November of last year. For reasons that will be obvious, I have sworn faithfully to Mr. Sherlock Holmes that this account will never be published during my lifetime, and that I will not even mention the existence of two of the principal characters in any of my other chronicles. I have therefore instructed my executors to delay publication of these papers until the twenty-first century. In that far-distant future, I trust, readers who love Sherlock Holmes will want to learn even more about this most brilliant and honorable man.

  John H. Watson, MD

  London, 5 April, 1896

  PART ONE

  REMEMBER, REMEMBER

  1. INSOMNIA, INTERRUPTED

  My story begins before dawn on Friday the first of November, 1895, All Souls Day. Nearly three years had elapsed since my beloved wife, Mary, had departed this life. Nearly two years had gone by since I had returned to the lodgings I had shared with Sherlock Holmes at 221B Baker Street.

  Holmes never explained why he had asked me to come back, but I believe that he wanted me close at hand, where I would be readily available to employ my medical skills. Only a very few clients and senior government officials knew that he had survived his fateful confrontation with the evil Professor James Moriarty at the Reichenbach Falls four years before. Yet he had been busier than ever, immersing himself in his work in a manner that I could see was taxing even his strong constitution. Of course he ignored my repeated warnings. I believe that some inner guide told him that one day he might go too far, however, and that my immediate help might then be urgently required. I should also like to believe that Holmes at least equally valued my friendship and concern, and that I filled a need for emotional support, even in one who presented himself to the public as purely an impersonal, calculating, machinelike intellect.

  Holmes had slept fitfully that night, as I knew from being awakened intermittently by the sounds of him moving about amid the customary clutter in our sitting room and his laboratory space. I had not had to endure this disquiet when Holmes and I had shared our Baker Street lodgings prior to my marriage, but since my return, his wakefulness had occurred almost nightly. Accordingly I was convinced that the cause of Holmes’s insomnia was somehow connected with the ordeal he had suffered at Reichenbach with Moriarty and his ruthless associate, Colonel Sebastian Moran, and that he had not told me the whole story of that fearsome encounter.

  I also felt there was some connection with this event and his refusal to let me publish any account of his return, or tell the public of the many singular triumphs he had attained during the past four years. Further, although Holmes continued to perform brilliantly during his waking hours, I sensed a growing frustration in his manner, as if he felt that the cases that occupied his time were somehow lacking in significance, and that there was some other, greater problem that he felt unwilling to share with me. Each time I woke and heard him rustling his papers or rattling his lab equipment below my sleeping quarters, I tried to fathom the cause of his distress. To calm my spirits and return to sleep, I comforted myself with the vow that in some manner, someday, I would help him with whatever afflictions might be troubling him.

  My wakeful thoughts were running along these lines before dawn on that November 1, when they were interrupted by the sound of footsteps ascending the stairs that led from Baker Street up to our rooms.

  Concentrating, I realized th
e steps were heavier than Mrs. Hudson’s, and slower, and were those of one individual rather than a group. From the firmness and regularity of the sounds, it was plain that the intruder was making no effort to conceal his presence. I sat up in the darkness, recalling that my service revolver lay unloaded in the top drawer of my dressing cabinet.

  The footsteps stopped as they reached the hallway outside our door. Our rooms had been set ablaze by the Moriarty gang four years ago, and shot at by Colonel Moran from across the street eighteen months previously. Were we now to be invaded? But Colonel Moran was behind bars, and Professor Moriarty, the leader of the gang, was dead. Many of his former associates had been arrested and tried, and were now in prison. The gang had in all likelihood withered away and would no longer be a criminal force to be reckoned with. I chided myself for such a foolish fear.

  Still, as quietly as I could, I got out of bed and hurried into my robe, neglecting to put on my slippers. I went to my dressing cabinet, my wakeful mind filled with the vague notion that if I were wrong and there really was danger, a show of my service revolver might be useful even if it was not loaded. Below me I heard Holmes’s rapid footfalls on our sitting room floorboards. The steps softened as he crossed our Oriental rug, and then slowed and stopped as the latch in our entry door clicked open. Then I heard Holmes’s voice:

  “Mycroft. Do come in.”

  I felt immediate relief, but nonetheless my heartbeat quickened as I heard the name. Whatever had brought Mycroft Holmes to Baker Street would be momentous. Only the most extreme national peril would induce Holmes’s brother to leave his familiar, well-protected universe in Whitehall.

  I opened my bedroom door and, coming down the small flight of stairs that led from my room to our sitting room, I saw the faint glow of the street lanterns below our bow window, along with another light at the entrance to our chambers. There, Holmes’s older and magnificently corpulent brother stood patiently just inside our doorway, holding a brass candleholder with a lit candle. In the yellow-gold candlelight, Mycroft’s round face shone beneath his top hat and above the cape that enfolded his body. His facial expressions conveyed concern, embarrassment, and a sense of crisis.

  Holmes was clad in his dressing gown. He said, “You were too overwrought to notice the switches to our electric lamps.”

  “The matter is urgent, as you have deduced.”

  “What time is it?”

  “5:40. I did not want to wake Mrs. Hudson. Where is Watson?”

  “I am here,” I said from my stairway.

  “Ah. Watson, good morning. Sherlock, get dressed.”

  “Tell me why.”

  “The Prime Minister is waiting. Lansdowne and Goschen are with him.”

  I recognized the names of the Secretary of State for War and the First Lord of the Admiralty.

  “Where?”

  “St. Thomas Hospital.”

  “So there is a body. Whose?”

  “I have a carriage outside. At the hospital you will learn all about the case.”

  And with that, Mycroft withdrew, carefully maneuvering the candleholder as he closed our door.

  We heard Mycroft descending the stairs. And my heart surged with a familiar feeling of anticipation as Holmes said, “I take it you will come?”

  2. A BODY IS EXAMINED

  In the glow of the streetlamp, wisps of yellow fog greeted us as we emerged from 221B Baker Street. Mycroft’s carriage awaited us at the curb just outside our doorway. I noticed a black four-wheeler cab drawn by a powerful bay horse waiting for someone not far down the street. As our carriage pulled away from the curb, the cab moved out to follow us.

  Holmes and Mycroft were both silent during the carriage ride. Traffic at that hour was light, and soon we had driven past Parliament and crossed over Westminster Bridge to where we could see the hospital, a sprawling chain of brick buildings newly constructed in the Gothic style. As we approached Lambeth Palace Road the huge structures loomed darkly above us, their pointed rooftops silhouetted against the first showings of the sunrise in the eastern sky.

  We came to a stop behind the last of four well-appointed carriages, all waiting in a line along the curb in front of the hospital entrance. A cluster of uniformed drivers and footmen stood beside the first carriage, smoking and chatting among themselves.

  Dismounting from our carriage, I noticed the same black cab had stopped about twenty feet behind ours, on the far side of the hospital entrance. I pointed this out to Holmes.

  “Thank you, Watson” was his only reply.

  Inspector Lestrade was waiting on the curb. The Scotland Yard man looked nervous, his sharp features paler and his small black eyes even more worried than usual.

  Holmes indicated the cab, visible at the edge of the yellow fog. He asked Lestrade, “Is that yours?”

  “Should it be?”

  “If you intended to provide us protection with it, then yes. It followed us from Baker Street.”

  “Maybe it’s the Commissioner’s doing.” Lestrade shook his head and turned away from the cab. “I’m to escort you.”

  The four of us passed through the entrance hall with its statue of the Queen seated on her throne in full ceremonial robes, and soon entered the hospital’s operating theater, a spacious area behind the entry lobby. The room had been specially constructed for medical school instruction and demonstration, with soaring walls and steeply raked seating that could accommodate nearly one hundred onlookers. Today there was a mortuary gurney positioned at the center of the lower level, draped in a water-stained olive-drab blanket. The blanket covered a human shape. Small rivulets of water seeped from brown towels placed on the floor beside the gurney wheels. Light came from a skylight high overhead, supplemented by electric lamps placed strategically at the head and foot of the gurney. The lamps would illuminate its contents without disturbing the view of the five very important gentlemen who, we saw, were to be Holmes’s audience.

  These leaders of England sat on the wooden benches above us, their shoes at our eye level as we stood beside the gurney. I recognized the Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury, perched uncomfortably in the front row, his face a mask behind the spreading curls of his magnificent black beard. To his right was George Goschen, now First Lord of the Admiralty, a bluff, hearty gray-haired former businessman who, in his previous role as Chancellor of the Exchequer, had been grateful for Holmes’s assistance on several occasions. Beside him sat Baron Halsbury, Lord Chancellor of Her Majesty’s courts. Holmes and I knew of him, of course, though none of Holmes’s cases had come before him. The papers were fond of caricaturing him in the form of a toad, for his face was corpulent and pouting, and he sat hunched over, as if prepared to spring up at any moment. Behind Goschen was a younger man I did not recognize. Slender and flaxen-haired, the young man wore a steel-rimmed monocle in his left eye, along with a haughty expression, possibly, I thought, to compensate for his junior status.

  Sir Edward Bradford, Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, sat at the young man’s side. Also an admirer of Holmes’s work, Sir Edward was normally the very essence of urbane white-haired aristocracy. Today I thought I detected a tremor in his wide white mustache and a note of anxiety in his greeting.

  “Thank you for coming, Mr. Holmes. I hope you are prepared to help us. And thank you as well, Dr. Watson.”

  “I will do what I can, Commissioner.” Holmes was already circling the gurney. I merely nodded. Clearly the stage was Holmes’s and the august personages in this audience had no interest in whatever response I might make.

  Mycroft had hauled himself up the steep stairs to the first level of seats and settled beside the young flaxen-haired man. I quickly joined him. Mycroft leaned forward to speak, but the younger man spoke first.

  “I am Henry Clevering, chief of staff for Lord Lansdowne, who I believe you know is Secretary of State for War. He unfortunately could not be with us this mo
rning. I am authorized to represent him.”

  Holmes nodded.

  “Your task, Mr. Holmes, is to discover why the unfortunate American gentleman on the gurney there chose to commit suicide last night by leaping from the Westminster Bridge and drowning himself.”

  Taking his cue, Lestrade drew back the blanket from the gurney, revealing the body of a clean-shaven middle-aged male Caucasian in water-soaked evening dress. The formal white shirtfront and white bow tie were stained yellow-gray, presumably from the waters of the Thames.

  The dull brown eyes held no clues for me as they stared vacantly upward at the skylight.

  “Who is he?” asked Holmes.

  As if in answer, Lestrade removed the wool blanket completely. At the foot of the gurney was a soggy black wool cape lined with black silk. Positioned as I was in the front row, and close to that end of the gurney, I was able to discern next to the cape a man’s black leather wallet, opened to reveal possibly a dozen five- and ten-pound notes, and a silver card case. Beside the wallet was a large brass key attached to a round brass key tag. Holmes turned it over and said, “On one side of this key tag is engraved the number 404. On the other side is the word Savoy.”

  Holmes picked up the wallet and glanced at its contents. “Mr. Frederick Foster, of 21 Riverside Drive, New York, New York. Has anyone here seen Mr. Foster before?”

  Mycroft, Goschen, and Clevering all nodded.

  “Why is he so important?”

  “We have not yet decided whether to disclose that.” Clevering glanced at the Prime Minister for confirmation, but Lord Salisbury remained impassive.

  From inside the silver case Holmes withdrew and held up several identical business cards, each presumably with Foster’s name. “Perhaps I should ask Mr. Rockefeller how he would like the investigation to proceed?”

  “No!”

  This from Goschen, who went on, “The matter is entirely too sensitive.”

  Clevering turned accusingly to Mycroft. “Sir! What have you told your brother?”