Moriarty

14 Setting the Trap

I slept fitfully that night. My rest was once again disturbed by my troublesome neighbour who had never once left his room but who seemed to haunt the hotel with his presence. He seemed to eat neither breakfast nor dinner. He had arrived at the same time as me—or so the maid told me—but he never went out. I thought of confronting him but decided against it. For all I knew, he might be a perfectly innocent traveller, transformed into a threat only by my imagination. Indeed, had it not been for the noise of his coughing and that one, brief glimpse at the window, I would not even be aware of his existence.

Far more disturbing were my weird, distorted dreams of Clarence Devereux. I saw his face, his malevolent eyes, those ridiculous fingers of his, too small for any man. ‘I do not eat meat!’ I heard him cry, but then I found myself lying on an oversized plate with a knife on one side, a fork on the other, and I was certain he was about to eat me. I was back at the legation with Robert Lincoln and his wife. I was at Bladeston House with blood pooling around my feet. Finally, I was at the Reichenbach Falls, plunging down for an eternity with the water crashing around me only to open my eyes and find myself in bed, the sheets crumpled and a rainstorm lashing against the windows.

I had no appetite and ate little breakfast for I was anxious to hear from Jones as to what, if anything, had ensued as a result of our evening’s adventure. The news, when we met, was not good. Contrary to my expectations, an official complaint had already been made by the American legation, naming Jones and addressed to the Commissioner.

‘Our friend Coleman De Vriess had the temerity to sign it himself,’ Jones said as we sat together in another cab, splashing through the puddles that the brief storm had left behind. ‘It was delivered at nine o’clock this morning. Fast work, would you not say?’

‘What will happen?’ I asked.

‘I will almost certainly lose my position.’

‘This is my doing…’

‘Tut, man, it is of no importance. My beloved Elspeth will be delighted for one and anyway we have several days before any action will be taken. First there will have to be an interrogation, then a committee, then a report, a review and finally a recommendation. This is how the British police force works. A great deal can happen in that time.’

‘But what can we do?’

‘We have a dilemma, it is true. We cannot arrest Clarence Devereux. It will be difficult even to interview him without the permission of his envoy and I suspect that will not be forthcoming, particularly in the light of last night’s events. What proof do we have that he is involved in any nefarious activity?’

‘You have seen the files that I brought from New York. And you heard what your colleague Stanley Hopkins had to say. Devereux’s name is known all over London.’

‘But the name of Coleman De Vriess is not. I have to say, it is an ingenious idea for a criminal to hide behind the curtain of diplomatic immunity.’ Jones chuckled. He did not appear remotely put out. ‘No. There is only one way we can lay our hands on Mr Devereux and that is to capture him red-handed. We must set a trap. The moment he makes an appearance outside the legation, we will have him.’

‘Where will we begin?’

‘The answer is perfectly obvious. Indeed… Slow down, driver! I believe we have arrived.’

We had driven but a short distance and, looking around me, I saw that we had returned to the top of Chancery Lane. I had almost forgotten Silas Beckett and his unpleasant barber’s shop, such had been the pace of events. But as we climbed down, I saw that a group of police constables were waiting for us, out of sight of both the shop and the hurdy-gurdy man whose lamentable playing could be heard around the corner. ‘Stay close to me,’ Jones commanded. Then, to the nearest of the officers: ‘You know what to do?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Do not on any account show yourselves until we are in the shop.’

This was something else that Jones had inherited from Sherlock Holmes; the maddening habit of not explaining himself until the last minute—and not even then, it would seem, for he did not say a word as we turned the corner and began to walk down the rutted track that led to Staples Inn Gardens. The moment we appeared, the hurdy-gurdy man stopped playing and I recalled that he had behaved in exactly the same way the last time we had come here. It would have been natural for Jones to make straight for the barber’s shop—was that not why we were here?—but instead he walked up to the silent musician.

‘Hair tonic, sir?’ the man asked. ‘Cut or shave?’

‘Not today, thank you,’ Jones replied. ‘But since you mention it, I would be interested to see the style of your own hair.’ And before the man could stop him, he had reached out and plucked the top hat off his head, revealing a shock of bright red hair. ‘It is just as I thought.’

‘What do you mean?’ I asked.

‘Red hair!’

‘What can the colour of his hair possibly have to do with the matter?’

‘It has everything to do with it.’ He turned to the indignant musician. ‘I believe I am addressing Mr Duncan Ross—at least, that is the name you were using two years ago. Your true name, however, is Archie Cooke and this is not the first time you have been engaged on an enterprise such as this!’ The other man started and would have fled but for the weight of the musical instrument which held him down. Jones grabbed his arm. ‘You and I are going to enter the barber’s shop together. Let me advise you against making any trouble. It may go easier for you in the end.’

‘I am an honest man!’ Cooke protested. ‘I play music. I’m paid to advertise the shop. I know nothing more.’

‘That’s enough of that, Archie. I know everything. Disown your partner if you must, but waste no more of my time.’

The three of us crossed the road and re-entered the dingy parlour where we had first met Silas Beckett. I noticed that Archie was limping heavily. As the door closed behind us, the barber appeared, once again climbing up from the basement. He was astonished to see the hurdy-gurdy player and one look at Jones told him that his game—whatever it was—was up. I thought he would turn and run. There might be another way out of the building. But Jones had anticipated him.

‘Stay where you are, John Clay!’ he commanded, releasing the other man and propelling him into the well-worn leather chair. ‘Yes! I know your true name. I know exactly what you are doing here. Do not attempt to run. I have officers at both ends of the street. But if you will trust me and play fair with me, there is still a chance that this may not end too badly for you.’

The barber considered. Then I saw him slump and it was as if he had allowed a coat to slip from his shoulders. He had visibly changed into an older, wiser man and when he spoke his voice had altered too. ‘I prefer Mr Clay,’ he said.

‘I am surprised to see you out of jail so soon.’

‘The judge, a very civilised gentleman, recognised the damage that a lengthy sentence would have on a delicate constitution such as mine.’ It was hard to believe that it was the same man speaking. ‘It may also have helped that we had, by coincidence, both gone to the same school.’

‘What… ?’ I began.

‘Let me introduce you to Mr John Clay, the well-known murderer, thief, smasher and forger—or so Sherlock Holmes described him. He is a criminal of the utmost ingenuity, Chase, the inventor of the so-called Red-Headed League.’

‘The robbery at Coburg Square!’ I exclaimed. Had I not seen a newspaper article about the very same, pinned to the wall in Jones’s study?

‘The failed robbery. When I first came here, I found it hard to believe that I was encountering the very same John Clay and that he had once again returned to his favourite modus operandi. And yet I quickly perceived it had to be the case. You will permit me to explain, Mr Clay?’

‘You can do what you like, sir. It is a matter of indifference to me.’

‘Very well. What we were presented with here was a barber’s shop that had been expressly designed to put off customers. Not only was the room filthy, but the barber’s own hair has been quite hideously cut. It would be a foolish soul who would allow the razor to come anywhere near their head in such a place or, for that matter, to purchase a hair tonic whose principal ingredient would appear to be glue. Why, I would be more comfortable at Sweeney Todd’s! But that, of course, was the idea. For Mr Clay had more pressing matters to attend to. Just across the road is the Chancery Lane Safe Deposit Company. For five years or more it has provided strongrooms for London’s wealthiest families.’

‘Six thousand safes,’ Clay muttered, sadly.

‘Mr Clay has been tunnelling beneath the road, intending to break into the vault. His associate, Archie Cooke, was a necessary part of the operation, providing two services. First, the appalling noise of his playing would cover the sound of the digging taking place beneath his feet. I was able to work out how far the tunnel extended by his position in the street. You are, I believe, almost there.’

‘Another few days and we will be done.’

‘He also provided a warning should anyone approach the shop.’

‘He stopped playing!’ I said.

‘Precisely. The silence would alert Mr Clay and give him time to climb back up to the surface. He could not, however, change his trousers. I saw at once that the knees were very creased—the very same clue that Holmes noticed last time, by the way.’

‘You asked if he was religious.’

‘He had clearly been kneeling. Had he been at prayer, the result might have been the same. As soon as he told me that he did not attend church, I knew that my conclusion was correct. On the last occasion, Mr Clay used an ingenious fabrication to persuade a London pawnbroker to absent himself from his premises. This present ruse shows that he has lost none of his inventiveness.’

John Clay bowed. There was something close to a smile on that strange, boyish face. ‘I have to say, sir, that it gives me some consolation to be arrested by the best. Sherlock Holmes last time and now you! Permit me to say, though, that I have never actually murdered anyone. There was a death, it is true, but we had both been drinking and the person in question fell. He was not pushed.’

‘I have no interest in your past, Mr Clay. It may be that you can escape arrest—or at least ameliorate your situation by assisting me. Can I trust you to be honest?’

‘You are speaking, sir, to a distant relative of Her Majesty the Queen—albeit one who has long been ignored. If it is possible to come to some sort of arrangement that will help me in my current difficulties, I will be true to my word.’

‘It is as I hoped. Let me tell you then how I found my way to Chancery Lane in the first place. My friend and I visited the scene of a number of vicious murders, Bladeston House in Highgate. The owner, one Scott or Scotchy Lavelle, had written the name of this establishment, and part of its address, in his diary.’

‘I knew Lavelle. I didn’t kill him. But I can’t say I was too sorry to hear of his demise.’

‘Is the name Jonathan Pilgrim familiar to you?’

‘No.’

‘He was an agent of Pinkerton’s, the American law-enforcement agency, and he also knew of your scheme. He was himself murdered but he left behind one of your advertising cards which also brought us here.’

There was a brief silence. Then Clay drew himself up. ‘Archie, old pal, make some tea. Gentlemen, can I invite you into my back parlour? I never thought I would be glad to meet two officers of the law, nor to have the bracelets snapped on my wrists, but I am glad to see you. Have tea with me and I will tell you my story. You have my word, on my royal blood, that it is my overwhelming desire to help!’

We repaired to the back room and sat on rickety chairs at a bare wooden table while Archie poked among the coals. Following Jones’s revelations, Clay seemed to have regained so much of his composure that the three of us could have been three old friends, discussing something that we had been planning from the start.

‘I came out of Holloway,’ Clay began. ‘Not a pleasant place. To a gentleman of breeding, something like a pigsty and I couldn’t even pay chummage to get a room of my own. Never mind. The judge, a charming man as I may have mentioned, had at least been lenient—and I cast about me, wondering what I might do next. The failure of my red-headed scheme had been something of a shock to me. What do you say, Archie? It had required a great deal of preparation. It was a shame that Holmes got involved. Another few days and we’d have got away with it.

‘This was in February and the moment I stepped outside, I knew that something was wrong. All my old chums were lying low and the pubs of Shoreditch could have been funeral parlours for all the fun that was to be had. It was as if the Ripper himself had come back to haunt the streets of London… that or something worse.

‘It was worse, as I found out soon enough. A new mob had arrived. Americans, it was said. I have never been very partial to Americans myself, present company excepted. In my view, it was a great shame that my ancestor, King George the Third, allowed the colonies to slip through his fingers. But I digress… These people had come over from New York and, having planted themselves in the city, they had spread like syphilis. I have lost many friends, many colleagues. They didn’t play by our rules and for six weeks the streets and alleyways had been running with blood and I can assure you that I’m not employing a metaphor in this particular instance. I mean it. These people were vicious.’

The kettle had boiled. Archie filled the teapot and brought it to the table. He was still moving with difficulty and I saw that he was in pain.

‘Where was Moriarty?’ I asked.

‘Moriarty? I never met him myself, although I knew of him, of course. We all did. There was a man to be feared if ever there was one. And he took his cut too! There was no crime committed in London that he didn’t take his share of and we all used to complain about it—in whispers—although to be fair he was always there when you needed him. I’ll say that for him. But he’d gone, disappeared. This fellow, Clarence Devereux, had taken his place. And Devereux made Moriarty look like a fairy godmother though he too never showed himself, sending his lieutenants to do his dirty work.

‘Archie and I were sitting in our little lodging house owned by a Jew in Petticoat Lane when they came calling, Scotchy Lavelle, a nasty, pig-eyed man, surrounded by a bunch of hooligan boys. They were English, to their eternal shame and damnation, for that was how these newcomers worked. They recruited straight from the gutter. That gave them the muscle for an army drawn from the rookeries and the opium dens who would do anything for half a crown. No loyalty. No patriotism. And they were well informed. They knew everything about the city and the professionals who worked it—the busters and the screwmen, the skittle-sharps and the rest of them. And they knew about me.

‘They bust in while we were having breakfast and tied Archie to a chair. Scotchy did nothing himself. He stood there, strutting, while his boys did the dirty work for him. Then, finally, he laid out his proposition. Why do I call it that? It was a demand and it would be death if I refused, no doubt of that.

‘There was an empty shop just off Chancery Lane, opposite the Safe Deposit Company. They reckoned it would take me a few weeks to tunnel underneath the road and break in. The place was filled with gold and silver, jewellery and cash. They would pay the rent for the premises but Archie and me, we would do all the filthy work, squatting underground. We’d take all the risk. And what did they want in return for their kindness? Mr Devereux would take half of everything, they told me. Half! Even Moriarty never demanded more than twenty per cent.’

‘And you agreed?’ Jones asked.

‘When you’re surrounded by five cutthroats and the bacon’s gone cold, it’s best not to argue. Even so, I have my dignity. I protested in no uncertain terms. And that was when that devil turned to poor Archie. “Hurt him!” he said. The words were spoken. There was nothing I could do.’

‘You could have stopped them,’ Archie mumbled.

‘It all happened too quickly. It was horrible. They pulled his shoe off and right in front of me…’ Clay stopped. ‘Show them, Archie.’

The red-haired boy leaned down and took his shoe off. And now I understood why he had been limping when we brought him into the barber’s shop. He had lost the nail from his big toe, which was still swollen and bloody.

‘They did this to me!’ he whispered, and there were tears in his eyes.

‘They used a pair of pliers,’ Clay continued. ‘There was a lot of screaming and it quite put me off my breakfast, I can tell you. And I knew it could be worse. If I refused, they might start on me! I had never seen such wanton savagery and of course I knew at that point I had no choice.

‘We moved in here. It was my idea to reopen the barber’s shop and—you’ve got it in one—to do everything in my power to prevent customers from entering. In the entire time we’ve been here, I’ve only had to give half a dozen haircuts—and didn’t do too bad a job, though I say so myself. I’ve been underground with Archie as my lookout and it’s been the devil’s own work, I can tell you. Mudstone, limestone, chalk! Whatever happened to good old-fashioned London clay?’

‘After the murder of Scott Lavelle, did you hear from Clarence Devereux?’ Jones asked.

Clay shook his head. ‘Not from Devereux. I read about the death in the newspapers and Archie and I went out and celebrated with a bottle of gin. I thought it was too good to be true. The next day we had a visit from an even nastier piece of work. I’ve never been a nark, but I’ll make an exception for these fine fellows. His name was Edgar Mortlake. He was tall, well-dressed with oily black hair.’

‘We know him.’

‘You don’t want to know him! He gave us another two weeks to get into the vault. After that, he said, we’d lose another toenail.’

‘You didn’t lose a toenail!’

‘You know what I mean, Archie. That was what he said and we’ve been working night and day ever since.’

‘And what was the arrangement to be, once you had broken into the vault?’

‘Mr Mortlake said he would communicate with us personally.’

‘You are to hand over the proceeds to him?’

‘Oh yes. He wants to see it all for himself. They trust no one, these Americans. You can forget your honour among thieves. Archie and I even wondered if they would be content with half. They might draw us into a trap and cut both our throats.’

‘There will be a trap,’ Jones muttered. ‘But it will not be you who falls into it. And now, I would very much like to see this tunnel of yours. It must be quite a feat of engineering. And I would be interested to know how you intended to break through the walls of the vault itself.’

‘It is only London brick. There is steel plating on the first floor but the safes are less well protected below. Mr Devereux had made the necessary enquiries, I’ll at least give him that.’

We got up from the table, leaving the tea unpoured, and made our way down a steep and narrow staircase that brought us into a cellar beneath the shop. There was barely enough room for the four of us as most of the floor was taken up by mounds of soil and broken brickwork. One of the walls had been battered through and, crouching down, I saw a circular tunnel disappearing into the distance, lit by oil lamps and held up by rough planks of wood. It amazed me that John Clay would have been able to breathe in there. Even in the cellar, the air was warm and dank. He would only have been able to progress on his knees, with his body bent forward, passing the loose soil behind him as he went.

‘You have been more than forthright with me, Mr Clay,’ Jones remarked, the oil lamps casting dark shadows across his face. ‘And whatever crimes you may have committed in the past, they are not, for the time being, under consideration. A great evil has come to this country, just as I was warned, and here is the opportunity to be rid of it once and for all. Come, Chase. Let us return to the surface. We have been in the dark for far too long and little time remains.’

We climbed the stairs and left the barber’s shop. I had never seen Jones more determined nor more confident, leaving me in no doubt whatsoever that although he seemed to hold all London in his grip, Devereux’s time would soon be done.