The Mammoth Book of the Adventures of Professor Moriarty

The Jamesian Conundrum Jan Edwards

After the disastrous events at the Reichenbach Falls, I had returned to London a wretched man. My grief at the loss of my dear friend Sherlock Holmes was immeasurable and, at that time, in my mind, intolerable. That his sacrifice also saw the end of Professor Moriarty was small recompense. It was only the love and support of my darling wife, Mary, that enabled me to carry on with the everyday duties of my medical practice; and, at times, with the very act of breathing.

Indeed it was Mary who suggested I write an account of that fateful day, to refute the version of events reported by the professor’s brother, one Colonel James Moriarty. It was a splendid show of generosity on her part given the manner in which Holmes had treated both her, and my leaving Baker Street. His had been a mercurial mind of immense range and ability, ever questing after new facts and investigating anomalies. Yet his inability to accept change in real terms was one of his greater quirks among many.

My recounting emerged in the press as ‘The Final Problem’, and, as Mary had intimated, the writing of it had indeed been a cathartic process. The reception of it by the public at large was also quite gratifying.

Imagine my chagrin then, to receive a note some days later, from Holmes’s brother, Mycroft, asking that I visit him at my earliest convenience to discuss my ‘ill-advised publication of the facts’.

‘It’s all perfectly correct, Mycroft,’ I told him. ‘Nothing is written there that cannot be verified.’

Mycroft shifted his bulk, the better to gaze at me from the depths of a vast wing-back chair in the Strangers’ room of the Diogenes. He examined me minutely, as a toad might a fly that it considered consuming, and so complete was that image that when he finally opened his mouth to speak I very nearly started back to avoid the curled, sticky tongue I felt sure was about to envelope me.

‘Facts, my dear boy, are exactly the problem,’ he said. ‘It is patently obvious that you gave a true account. The whole of London is talking about it.’ He puffed ruminatively on his cigar, softening his jowly features in a haze of blue-grey fumes. ‘By and large that would not be a problem, except that Professor James Moriarty was not the only person to use that name.’

‘Colonel Moriarty?’ I said. ‘My recounting was in answer to his abominable attack on Sherlock’s memory. Also a James I believe?’

‘Some parents lack imagination, or else the elder was not expected to live.’ Mycroft laughed, a bubbling chuckle from deep in that cavernous chest. ‘No. I doubt that man is any keener to confront you directly than he would Sherlock. He is not a fighting man despite his rank. But you know the form. Eldest gets the title, the rest have politics, soldiery or the Church. There is … a younger brother.’ Mycroft took a sip from the brandy balloon at his side, savouring the gold-brown liquor for a moment before continuing. ‘In point of fact there are – were four brothers, but one seemed to have passed on some years ago. I am referring to the youngest, also James, though he calls himself Jacob.’

‘He took the cloth?’

‘No … The youngest of the clan is a humble stationmaster, would you believe, near the family home in the West Country.’

‘And what is he to do with all this?’

‘He is a wild card. Sent down from Oxford. Cashiered from the Dragoons. Bad lot all round. Disinherited in theory, though as his sainted father died before he arrived home from India who’s to say? The will is a matter of court record. The estate specifically excluded him from benefitting in any way but his siblings appear to have supported him nevertheless. Hence the railway appointment.’

‘In some isolated spot away from polite society?’

Mycroft snorted quietly. ‘I think the location has far more to do with its convenient links with … illicit sea-trading?’

I nodded. Tales of smuggling in that county were as old as the land itself. ‘You feel this Jacob Moriarty is liable to do me ill?’

‘I have reliable information that not only is he liable to cause you considerable harm but has plans afoot to do so.’ Mycroft leaned forward, the leather creaking beneath him, as loud as unoiled hinges in the quiet of the Diogenes. ‘My advice to you, Doctor Watson, is to take a little trip. I am told Scotland is quite lovely at this time of year. I believe your mother had connections there?’

‘How did you know …’

‘I know you have gone to some pains to hide that link, which is good. Few people know of it. Go. Find your roots. Take your good lady wife, and allow us to deal with James Moriarty the younger.’

‘I have never walked away …’

‘I am not asking you to walk away, my dear chap. I am strongly advising you to run. I will contact you when we have the situation under control.’

‘But how on earth … ’

Mycroft only smiled, before sealing his lips around his cigar and obscuring himself from my gaze behind fresh tobacco fog; a familial gesture that I knew too well. Argument would be futile.

That was not to say that I would do as bidden. Hiding like a child was not in my nature. I am a fair pugilist, perhaps not in Holmes’s class, but can make a good fist when required of me, and I was certainly the better marksman with pistol and rifle alike. Yet I had responsibilities. Mary should not be placed at risk, of course. I also had a thriving practice and patients who needed my expertise, or at very least a suitable stand-in to care for it all. It was this duty that delayed my departure. My damnable sense of duty and obligation.

So it was three days later that we, my Mary and I, were on our way to Euston Station to catch the sleeper train to Carlisle and thence on to my ancient family home. Accidents are not uncommon, and I had indeed requested the cabbie to hurry, as time was short. The first we knew of it were the shouts of the driver before that terrible impact.

It was a dream. A nightmare. Vague images of darkness and fire … sleet and rain had only added to the chaos of shouting men and screaming horses … and the sergeant major calling for stretcher bearers in the heat of the Afghan plains. Pain in my shoulder and leg and dizzying effects of blood loss … the cries of injured men, no, singular: a man, little more than a boy, or perhaps a woman. I was trying to crawl free, pulling myself across the wreckage, and gunfire … a gunshot …

I woke in a hospital bed – screaming – for my Mary. My poor darling. Gone. Dead. I knew that before I opened my eyes, because I remembered, even in my dreams.

Massive bruising and minor lacerations. All minor really. Only the wound to my head had been enough to render me unconcious. A severe blow, the young doctor told me. I knew otherwise. I had treated enough of them in my army medical corps days to know them.

I knew who was the cause. Witnesses told later that a dray had pulled across the street and shed a rim. Nobody could explain why the dray had no team attached, or who it had belonged to. I knew.

Mycroft had moved me to a private sanatorium after the accident and, to those who asked, I had died with my dear wife. Mycroft explained in great detail that there was an operation in progress to mop up the residue of Moriarty’s empire and that by the time I was recovered it would all be over. I did not bandy words with him. I had ideas of my own.

It was a month or more before I was able to slip away from my jailors. Protectors, Mycroft insisted. But I saw it otherwise. I left the sanatorium at the dead of night and was on the early train to St Ives before the nurses’ first rounds.

As always in such moments the question I had begun by asking myself was ‘What would Holmes do?’ The answer would always be to examine the facts and deduce. And since I was unlikely to gain any help from Mycroft I had to rely on my own wits.

It took just a few enquiries at Waterloo to ascertain where James ‘Jacob’ Moriarty plied his trade. Lellantrock had once been a thriving village, but had become little more than a halt on an isolated section of the Cornish north coast. It had grown up around two tin mines, which had, I was told, ceased to be some twenty years before.

Not wanting to alert my quarry, I alighted at the next station and found lodgings at a local inn before hiring a horse to ride the coast paths. I had thought to pass myself off as a hiker, thinking that would have been the kind of ruse Holmes might have perpet rated, but my old injuries gathered in the Afghan campaigns would never allow me to hike the distances required. Horseback was the safer option, travelling the lesser byways. Not as a doctor but as a student of local customs and antiquity. Such persons asking questions and taking notes would, I reasoned, barely register in local minds. The preservation of the memory of arcadia was a near obsession in some quarters. As Holmes once said to me, ‘One can hardly move for historians in any country tavern you care to enter.’

So, clad in country tweeds and riding one of the local moorland ponies, I trotted into the village, pausing first at the post office.

‘Because in the country there is nothing like a postmistress and the publican for knowing all there is to know,’ Holmes had maintained. And, as ever, he was correct. Under the guise of gathering additional information for the Ordnance Survey, I asked casual questions about the village and its byways and, as currency for my visit, asked for a book of postage stamps.

‘The railway station is used still?’ I asked. ‘Now that the mine is closed there can’t be a great deal of use for it.’

‘I often think that myself,’ the postmistress said. She was a handsome woman of middle years, her dark hair, paling at the temples, pulled into a nest chignon and fastened with plain silver combs. Her dress was of the immaculate kind that you would expect of an educated woman. High-necked dress in a plain dark green with just a hint of cream lace around the neck and cuffs. An educated woman, yes, but one all too eager to chatter on about her neighbours and neighbourhood. ‘The village is half the size it was. But then there’s some folks always get what they want.’

‘Local squire is not fond of industry?’

The postmistress glanced each way, though I was sure she knew the room was devoid of all others but the two of us. ‘The old squire turned the mines into a good living. He was a devil, but he worked hard. His son’s a different kind of demon. Never seen up at Lellantrock House. He’s always away up in Lund’n with his sciency ways. But funny you should mention the railway.’ Another quick glance to right and left before she leaned across the counter and said in muted tones, ‘It’s that one down there. He’s the one as says what’s what.’

‘Really?’ I feigned surprise that would have made Holmes proud. ‘Who would that be, Mrs …’

‘Saxby. Gertrude Saxby, sir. And I means smugglers.’

‘Smugglers? Here?’

She leaned back to stare at me, a probing stare that saw all there was. ‘Not local are you?’ she said at last. ‘Down from Lund’n yourself?’

‘Well … yes. That is where our offices are.’

Mrs Saxby nodded. ‘You’d be excused for not knowing. This coast’s got a long tradition for the Gentlemen. Mostly local, and mostly brandy and stuff. Harmless really. My uncle George wasn’t past bringing the odd barrel ashore. But him down that railway! He’s not like any of the Gentlemen I ever met.’ She sniffed, derision in every nerve. ‘But then he’s a bad’n. Educated man, but a bad’n. Too much learning’s not always a good thing for some. Meaning no offence, sir.’

‘None taken.’ I leaned towards her a little. ‘So this chap is a bit of a villain is he?’

She flushed around her neck and her gaze flickered towards the door. I noted the muscles in her jaw tightened as what I was certain was her natural tendency to gossip fought with … fear? ‘Doesn’t do to gainsay,’ she murmured. ‘Not with Jake being the squire’s kin.’

‘I never divulge my sources, especially a good woman such as yourself,’ I added. ‘But smuggling? It all sounds very exciting.’ I smiled. ‘You should not tempt me with such snippets, ma’am.’

She blushed once more, her plump cheeks cherry red and I felt a little guilty at my deception. ‘Well, sir, I can’t say as I know much. ’Tis common talk all those Moriarty boys are a bad lot. Their poor mother would be mortified. Alice, my own mother’s cousin, nursed her ladyship at the end.’

‘Ladyship? I was led to believe the gentry here were not titled.’

‘Her ladyship was the last one. James Moriarty the elder was an engineer. He turned a dying estate around, but it didn’t make life easier for all of us.’ She leaned close, so that stray hairs escaping her cap brushed my forehead. ‘Folk’ve gone missing, sir. Local lads. Half a dozen at least.’ She scowled. ‘My cousin Mave’s boy, George, just last year. Vanished. Told his mother he was going across to Redruth for a few days’ work, carting, and never came home. Good lad, always looked after Mave after her Percy was lost at sea.’

‘Singular,’ I said. ‘For a family man to vanish.’ I smiled at her. ‘You said “them”. Do I take it this Jake has an accomplice?’

‘Off and on. Mostly off. He’s not so liable to taunt the Excise when the squire’s up in the house. He’s back home from foreign parts. My aunt, Alice, got called back there to nurse him like she did his mother before him. Mortal ill I heard, though I’ve not seen Alice for a month at least.’

‘Is that so?’ I looked, my heart pounded, a miasma descended across my senses as I digested the import of her words. I moistened my lips and looked down, searching my watch pocket for a coin or two as a ruse to hide my shock. Had I heard correctly? That Moriarty lived? When my dearest friend had perished? I had come to avenge my wife; convinced that Moriarty the younger was responsible. But this changed all things. I could not doubt that if Professor Moriarty lived then it would be he who had ordered my assassination, and that of my wife. The fuzz of anger subsided and I forced myself to smile lightly and listen to what else the woman had to say.

‘Yes, indeed,’ the postmistress was saying. ‘Nothing much goes on in these parts that doesn’t get talked of by someone. And I tell you that …’

A cart rumbled past the shopfront, heading up hill, and slowed as it drew level. From the dark of the shop interior, it was easy to see the outside quite clearly and I watched as the man seated next to the driver stared at my horse tied to the post outside and then towards the post office. His massive head, held low between his shoulders as though his thin neck struggled to support it, swung towards me. He was a thin man, though in no way puny, more rangy like a wolfhound, and with something of the wolf in his gaunt features. I was reminded with a jolt of the time I had seen a face very like that. He clutched a shotgun across his knees, which he caressed thoughtfully as he peered towards the shopfront.

I doubted they could see much of the dimly lit interior but nevertheless the postmistress stopped short at the sight of him. Her face had turned such an ashen white that as a medical man I was concerned for her.

‘Miss? Are you feeling well?’

‘What? Oh. Yes … My goodness look at the time. There’s last post to sort. I can’t stand chatting all day. That is a shilling for your stamps. If there’s nothin’ else you’ll be wanting, sir?’

‘That fellow seemed very interested in my livery horse. Who was he?’

‘Mr Moriarty, sir. That was Jacob Moriarty.’ Her face was devoid now of all its animation of the previous moments, guarded and wary. Yet she was a good woman at heart because, with a glance to the window to be sure the cart had moved on, added, ‘He does not welcome incomers or visitors. If you are a wise man, and I think you are, then leave here. Now.’ She leaned across the counter to touch my arm. ‘Please, sir. Go back to where you came from and hope that evil young pup does not choose to hunt today.’ She turned away and hurried into the next room. The conversation was plainly at an end.

Yet I had heard enough. Jacob Moriarty was every bit as much a villain as his brother, if on a lesser scale. That the lawful squire of this backwater estate was none other than the professor himself, and that the arch-enemy of my closest friend; perhaps even the nemesis in its truest sense as the cause of his demise. That the greatest villain of all time was living still. I felt inordinately proud of gaining that information with relatively little effort. Though I could not help feeling these were facts that the elder of the Holmeses could have furnished me with in far shorter order. I did not imagine Mycroft was not very aware of the professor’s survival, and it explained his insistence that I go into hiding until the threat had been overcome.

Mycroft was quite certain that Moriarty – one or both, or perhaps all three, because I could not ignore the existence of the military Moriarty – were planning to do me harm. To kill me, in fact. I could not deny that I had helped Holmes in his various skirmishes with Moriarty so perhaps some kind of revenge was to be expected. Be it a trained brigade or a pack of brigands, in times of conflict one took sides and one fought and hoped that you had might and right on your side. But I knew a deal of good men who had perished in various conflicts and any assertion that right was might could not be relied upon.

There was a great deal to consider. My first instinct was to fly to Mary’s tender embrace; except that Mary’s arms were no longer embracing, or tender. She was gone, and it seemed to me that running was not the answer in any event. If Moriarty wanted to find me then he would, and the postmistress had been quite sure about his imminent mortality. My answer lay in dealing with him whilst he was still vulnerable. How that could be done I had yet to ascertain, but I was suddenly resolved to do what I must. I am a medical man first and foremost, but also a military one. Running went against everything I had been brought up to.

I stepped out into the quiet village high street and collected the horse, taking the time it took to adjust the girth and mount up to look in either direction. The cart that had silenced the in estimable Mrs Saxby so effectively was jolting out of sight amongst the trees lining the road leading up to the cliff top and Lellantrock House. My first step would seem to be to test the lay of the land; spy out the enemy’s lair. I turned the gelding towards the hill and tailed the cart at a discreet distance.

Lellantrock had possession of an idyllic spot, perched on a high, wooded hilltop, overlooking the glittering blue sea, yet its builders seemed not to have taken account of that beauty. Even from a distance it was a grim square building constructed from local grey stone. There were no vines to soften its starkness. Tall dark windows of the kind popular at the start of the century marched around its three floors in a symmetrical pattern. Behind it lay a series of low single-storey buildings in similar style, giving the overall effect of building blocks abandoned there by some giant child. This was a fortress, and was by no means quiet in the absence of its ‘squire’.

I pushed my mount at an easy pace along a well-worn path that led around the estate. The main house was surrounded by a stone wall, which I estimated to be some six to eight feet high, and the gate through which the cart had gone was manned by no fewer than three men. They seemed at ease, but I was aware of how carefully they watched me as I walked the bay gelding up the steep incline towards the cliff top. I tipped my hat to them and called out a polite greeting. Two of them replied with curt nods and tugged caps.

The third man was none other than Jacob Moriarty. He stared at me with narrowed eyes and then melted away into the courtyard beyond the archway. I am sufficiently vain to consider myself possessed of a pleasing face. Perhaps not a truly handsome man, and not as memorable as Holmes had been, but sufficient to be easily remembered. I had no doubt a description of myself and my mount would be with Moriarty residing within in very short order.

I pushed the horse on a little faster. It was foolish of me to come here. Had I been identified then I was in immediate danger. There was no way I could have known of the professor’s survival, but I should have anticipated that some of his henchmen would be loyal to the estate.

Holmes would not have been so headstrong. He would have come here, of that I had no doubt, but he would have had a plan. Perhaps with one of his cunning disguises to conceal his identity. Or else hiring one of his seemingly endless associates to scout the territory for him. What he would not have done was parade himself past the main gate like some Soho streetwalker.

I kicked my horse into a trot and moved out of sight of the gates. There was little cover along the cliff path beyond a few stands of scrubby gorse and hawthorn and I kept moving until I came to the tall, square fortress-like mine building, which stood almost a quarter of a mile from the walled house and garden. I dismounted and secured the gelding by a convenient trough in the shaded side of the stone building. As the horse drank, I sat back on the remnants of a cart and considered my options.

The mine was abandoned, and seemed to have been for some time. The wheel that should have topped the station was already gone and the windows stood dark and glassless. I tried the only door and found it locked, which was curious in a place so obviously ill kempt. I peered through the nearest window. The inside was stacked with boxes, barrels and chests, all far newer than the abandonment of the building would allow. Not hard to imagine what was in the array and easier still to link it all from the postmistress’s gossip to Jacob Moriarty.

I stepped back to peer around the side of the sheds towards the house visible across the rabbit-cropped sward. There, in that stately array, was the man I found in the darkest portion of my heart to hate with an implacable depth of feeling I had not thought myself capable of. A hatred that doubtless bordered on insanity in that moment.

The weight of my service revolver, which I always kept close when travelling wilder places, pressed heavily on me as a reminder of my soldierly past.

Presumably the reputation of the family, and the fact that it was broad summer daylight, lulled them into believing themselves safe from intruders. I am certain no sane person would have attempted entry, but in the event it was simplicity itself even taking in my own derisory health.

Once inside, I made my way to the house in short order through a neglected garden and ramshackle collection of recently constructed outhouses. It must have been an impressive manor at some point but had been let go. Sad, in some respects, but to my advantage when it gave me a great deal of cover to approach the house itself.

I slipped across a small walled terrace and in through an open window. Still no sign of any guards or staff, though I could hear voices coming from the service quarters raised in ribald laughter. Plainly not a house run on traditional lines, because no butler or housekeeper of my acquaintance would have allowed such laxity. But once again this was only to my advantage.

Once inside, however, I was at a slight loss. I crammed myself into a dark alcove, praying I would not be discovered, and stood for some minutes weighing up my situation and wondering if I should retreat.

Above stairs was eerily quiet with none of the noise I had heard earlier permeating into the main house. Like the gardens, the house was shabby, and as clean as one might anticipate. The carpets were unswept and the walls stained above the lamp sconces. No electricity or even gas in this ancient place, just oil lamps and candles like any commoner’s cottage. I was surprised, therefore, to hear the tinkling of a telephone. A tall figure strode across the hall to where the instrument sat. It was Jacob. His end of the conversation was abrupt and the call short and unwelcome from the way the younger Moriarty slammed the handset back into its cradle.

He turned back the way he had come, shouting ‘Cole! Get my horse. We have a cargo!’ He paused. ‘Mrs Dench? Mrs Dench!’

‘Yes Mr Jacob, sir?’ A portly woman of mature years bustled along the hallway. She was dressed in the traditional blue dress and white apron and cap of a nurse and I smiled. This, I reasoned, must be the postmistress’s missing Aunt Alice.

‘I must be out for a few hours.’ He glanced up the stairs and swore vehemently – and I saw the poor woman flinch. ‘I will be back as soon as I may. I trust you to keep things on an even keel.’ He swept away, leaving the woman visibly shaken. Once he had gone, she hurried up the staircase, and to the end of the landing. She entered a large bedchamber, and I was close behind.

Inside the room was dark and fetid. The curtains were drawn and a fire lit despite the warmth of the day. It smelled strongly of bodily functions, of sweat and urine and worse. And there, in the depths of a huge four-poster bed, lay the man that I had dreamed of facing ever since my return from the Reichenbach Falls.

As I stared at Professor James Moriarty so Mrs Dench was staring at me.

‘Who are you?’ she demanded.

‘A doctor,’ I replied. ‘How is the patient?’

‘Close to the end, sir. The infection of the lungs is too deep.’

I nodded, approaching the bed as calmly as I was able, though my blood raced noisily in my ears. ‘Fever?’

‘Up and down, sir. Mostly up. And his pulse is weaker by the hour.’

I nodded and smiled. ‘Thank you, Nurse. Would you be so good as to fetch me some soap and water?’

‘Sir.’ She inclined her head and withdrew.

Only when she had left the room did I approach the bedside.

The man was little more than a skeleton: eyes sunken deep into hooded brows as dark as bruises; yellowed skin, taut across his face, dampened with fever. He lay prone in a welter of snowywhite pillows, his cracked lips moving slightly with silent words as he raised his head.

He was a pathetic wreck of a man yet those eyes blazed with every particle of that vast intellect which had made him infamous still very much intact. This was the man who had driven Holmes into fleeing across to the Continent, and the man who had taken the dive into those violent waters of Reichenbach. The man, I had no doubt in that moment, who had ordered the carriage accident and who had ordered me shot – executed.

The eyes opened slowly, pale blue eyes that were surprisingly sharp for one deep in the grip of ague. Eyes that focused on me and crinkled in amusement. ‘Ahh … my—’ he struggled to draw a noisy breath ‘—good … Doctor … finally.’ He laughed … wheezed … coughed, and laughed again. His frail shoulders shook with the effort and his eyes watered, but through the tears those gimlet eyes never left mine.

Blood hammered at the back of my eyes in a red rage, which fogged my thoughts. I don’t recall picking up the pillow. I have no recollection of holding it between both hands and pressing it firmly across the arrogant face of the most evil man I had ever encountered.

His hands brushed at mine, too feeble to grip my wrists or push me away. His legs moved, knees raising the coverlet by just a few inches and back again. His hands fell away to flop across the cover, twitching feebly for a second or two longer before even that slight resistance had ceased.

I raised the pillow to stare at that face. Those eyes were wide and staring. Looking at me and yet not. I did not need to feel for a pulse to know he was dead. And at my hands – I who had sworn an oath to protect all life. To treat. To heal.

There was a slight scuffing from across the room and I turned rapidly, the pillow dropping from my nerveless fingers, to see Alice Dench in the doorway, watching me with a shrewd gaze.

She advanced, setting the jug of hot water on the washstand before asking, ‘How is the patient, Doctor?’

Her expression held the paucity of emotion employed by all our profession. Had she seen what I had done? I had no way of knowing. Indeed I hardly believed it myself.

‘Gone,’ I whispered.

‘I thought as much.’ She pulled the cords from the drapes around the bed and sat in the bentwood chair at the dresser. ‘I suggest you render me unable to raise an alarm. Doctor Watson, isn’t it?’

‘How do …’

She motioned to the door and held a finger to her lips. ‘Young Mr Jacob has been studying your likeness, and your good lady wife’s for many a month. Ever since Mr James here was brought home,’ she murmured. ‘He holds you to be a part of Mr James’s illness. He already knows you are here in Cornwall. He said as much not half an hour since. And now? He will kill those dear to you. That is what Jacob does.’ She sighed, her hand going to her throat. ‘Leave, quickly. Save her.’

I closed my eyes and shuddered. ‘I should stand judged for what I …’

She touched her lips lightly once again. ‘You only hastened what the Good Lord and our own medical man had predicted. He had days at most. And the world will not miss him. Praise God their dear mama did not live to see what her boys have become. I would not be here, but for her memory.’ She blanched at a strident voice from the main hall. ‘Go, Doctor. Go back the way you came. But …’ She held up the cords. ‘Bind me. That way at least I may survive.’

I hesitated, for the smallest of moments. Guilt was far harder to overcome than she might wish. But I thought of Mary and her awful fate and knew I could not fail her memory now. I took the silk rope and sat her in the chair, and bound her hands behind her. I raised the fine scarf she had around her neck to gag her mouth, noting the scars that it revealed, and was only able to wonder what dire circumstance had led to them. I gave a final tug at the ropes to see that they were loose enough not to cause pain but sufficient to appear real.

I gave one last lingering look at the cooling body on the bed and hardened my resolve.

I crossed to the window balcony and looked out. The ivy covering the wall was as neglected as the rest of the garden and thick enough to take my weight. It went against all I held sacred to leave a woman in peril, and to leave a crime of my doing unacknowledged. But Mary … The garden on this side seemed empty still and I swung myself out on to the green ladder to swarm ground-wards with all speed that my old injuries allowed.

I ran for the wall, very much aware of the furore breaking out in the house behind me and scaled it in good order. Another time I might have been proud of that, but all I saw was open space to where my horse was secured.

The garden was full of noise: voices and gunshots and yammering of dogs. No time to plan. Just to run. I set off across the grass, keeping to what small cover there was, until I reached the mine, the noises of pursuit loud in my ears. I skittered into the yard. My horse was there, exactly where I had left it, but not as I had left it.

The poor creature lay in a pool of its own blood. Its throat had been slit and belly slashed. Death would have been rapid at least. My pity for the animal was short-lived as I was forced to take stock of my own situation. My human and canine pursuant alike were closing fast. Perhaps a half-minute behind. The mill’s door was firmly secured still, and the windows barred so there was no chance of seeking refuge within the building itself, and thus the mineshafts that lay beneath.

I ran through the yard and out into the cliff path beyond. The trackway lay open to left and right for some distance. Too far for a wounded old soldier to even consider sprinting. And even had I been as lithe of limb as I had been before my war service, I could never have outrun the dogs.

I scurried to the edge of the cliff, looked down and swallowed hard. The tide was in, with white-foamed waves surging against the rock face. Time slowed, lending added grace to the wheeling gulls over the sea, and gazelle-like spring to dogs and men who closed in from the landward side. At the head of the pack was Jacob Moriarty, his face impassive and implacable. I had seen that face before on old comrades charging into battle. The very visage of death.

Another glance towards the water and the foaming waves, with no way of knowing what obstacles lay beneath. Yet even as I made the decision to jump I was hit amidships by a flying mass of solid muscle. I felt myself topple, arms flailing, felt the wind in my hair, my ears, felt the impact with the water hard as iron … and then I hit the water, which felt every bit as solid as the ground above, knocking the breath from me as a hammer blow. Waves wrapped themselves around me as the current sucked me down and the light faded. I wondered in that moment if this was what Holmes had felt in his final moments at the falls.

Then I felt myself being pulled upwards. I kicked hard to propel myself through the water, and found myself being hauled none too gently into the bottom of a lobster-fisher’s skiff. I made to sit up and was kicked soundly by a sea-booted foot.

‘Stay down,’ a voice growled. ‘We’ll be landed soon enough.’

I did as I was bid, curling low in the bottom boards amongst the spare pots and ropes and debris. My lungs ached, as did a dozen abrasions and bruises that I dared not investigate. I was chilled through to the bone despite the sun, but I was alive. Against all odds, I had survived the drop. ‘I thank you, sire.’ My voice was hoarse and I found myself coughing up saltwater, retching frothy bile into the bilge.

The fisherman watched me with no comment or emotion and only when I lay back exhausted did he make comment. ‘I’ve to take you along the coast,’ he said. ‘The gent from Lund’n has an agent waitin’.’

‘What gent …’

The man looked down to me and tapped his nose. ‘Not fer me to say. So don’t you ask.’

‘But who?’

‘A friend. I was set to watch fer you. An’ just’s well. You’d be fish bait, else. Quite a tumble you took.’

‘I was pushed …’

‘Argh, you were’n all. Big dog it were. Gorn now.’ He said no more, hand to the tiller and gaze fixed on the shore. He seemed of a kind, familiar and yet not. I was fairly sure we had not met, and equally sure I would never see him again once we reached the small harbour. I stepped ashore to find a package awaiting me.

My own valise with a change of clothes and money, and a single sheet of paper with a few curt sentences written upon it:

“A foolish move that was wholly expected. I will be waiting for you at Baker Street. Go there and await my further word. I have news that will be of great interest to you. M.H.”

I did not think to argue. Indeed I doubt that I could have, had my life depended on it. Instead, I lay in the gently rocking embrace of my rescuer’s chariot, gazing up at the sky and contemplated what the ‘other’ Holmes might have in store.