Who Thinks Evil: A Professor Moriarty Novel (Professor Moriarty Novels) (33 page)

Well …

With a sudden gesture the princess pulled her hand free as one would recoil from a deadly adder and took a step back, a look of horror on her face.

What?

The prince turned toward her and giggled—that was clearly a giggle—and grabbed at her shirtfront, pushing her up against the curtain. There was a long silver object in his hand. A knife?

Why would he…?

The princess gasped and tried to break free of his grasp, but he held fast. He raised the knife. She screamed.

Those below were curiously silent, as though they were watching a play and didn’t know how they were meant to react to this scene. Some sort of joke, of course, but in very bad taste.

“My God!” It was Albreth, their host, yelling at the top of his voice and running across the room toward the balcony “Not here, not now, not
her
!”

Henry turned and leered at the crowd below, then turned back and slashed—

—at where the girl’s throat had been a moment before. But the princess’s blouse had ripped, loosening his grip, and she dropped to her knees, her hands up to avert the blow. His blade missed its target, cutting her arm and slashing the side of her head. He looked annoyed and grabbed for the princess, who had fallen, screaming, to the floor beneath him.

The door at the rear of the balcony suddenly swung open and Moriarty pushed in, thrusting and slashing the air ahead of him with his walking stick. With one sharp blow he knocked the knife from Henry’s hand, and then the two were grappling and swaying at the edge of the balcony, a furious Henry clutching madly at an implacable Moriarty. They twisted this way and that so that first one and then the other was pushed against the railing. Then, with a sickening cracking sound, the railing gave way, sending the two of them in a roiling mass to the floor below.

Henry landed on top, and within seconds he had risen and launched himself into the crowd. Moriarty, stunned, lay where he had fallen for a few seconds longer before pushing himself to his feet and stumbling after.

From somewhere about his cummerbund Henry produced a second knife, a long, thin, wicked blade, and he lunged forward, the guests parting before him like the Red Sea before Moses. In this open lane stood only Pamela, mute and eerily composed, directly in his path.

Henry grabbed Pamela and lifted her, and she went limp in his arms. He continued forward, using her body as a shield as he ran toward the door.

Pamela twisted slightly in his grasp and seemed to punch him in the chest, and a look of surprise came to his face, but he kept moving. Then she thrust at him again and again, in the chest, in the neck, in the face, and he staggered. Blood was coming from wounds in his neck and face. He stumbled.

Pamela was on top of him now. With a heave of his body he threw her off and tried to rise, but she was back in an instant, sobbing and thrusting again and again with the long hatpin between the fingers of her closed fist. A peculiar gasping noise came from his mouth, and his body shuddered and was still.

Cecily ran over to them, and in a moment of inspiration quelled the muttering from the people behind by calling out in her clear soprano voice, “My God—it’s not His Highness at all—it’s an impostor!” Then she knelt beside Pamela, who continued to stab the body, and tried to stay her arm. “You can stop now,” she said. “He is dead.”

“Not dead enough,” Pamela cried and stabbed him once, twice, three more times before crumbling in a faint beside the body.

*   *   *

Sir Anthony was in a long hallway now, trying to work his way toward the small balcony, which was somewhere to his right and above. He tried the doors as he passed them—small room, small room, toilet—aha! Here was a flight of stairs leading up. It was unlit, but the door above was open, spilling light onto the steps. He started climbing.

Suddenly a tall man appeared on the landing below him, silhouetted by the light behind. He was brandishing a long blade, which gleamed in the reflected light. Before Sir Anthony had a chance to react, the man stopped and peered up at him and then lowered his weapon. “It’s you,” he said. “What luck!”

“Moriarty!” Sir Anthony exclaimed, feeling his heart pounding in his chest. “By God, man, you gave me quite a start! What’s happening?”

“Come and help me,” Moriarty said, sheathing the sword back inside the protective body of his owl-headed walking stick. “The slasher is, I think, dead, but his master is still at large. But first—it will take the two of us, and we must be quick!”

“Help you do what?”

“His Royal Highness is in a small room behind the balcony, and he’s under the influence of some powerful narcotic. We have to get him out of here.”

Moriarty joined Sir Anthony, and they hurried up the stairs and pulled open a door next to the one leading to the balcony. A man who was undoubtedly HRH was leaning against the wall, looking with wide-eyed wonder around him. The prince’s uniform jacket was spattered with blood, and his tunic was torn. “My God!” said Sir Anthony, touching the blood smears, which felt dry and cold under his fingers. “What on earth…”

“They were setting the stage for His Highness to be found after the princess was stabbed,” Moriarty said. “It is, I imagine, cow’s blood or pig’s blood, but it would have done the trick. Help me get him downstairs. We’ll take him out the back way.”

Sir Anthony took one arm and Moriarty the other, and between them they eased His Highness out of the room and along the corridor. A very short man in servitor’s costume poked his head out from a door farther down. “This way, Professor,” he called in a stage whisper that reverberated down the hall. “I has found the egress.”

“Very good, Mummer,” said the professor. “You lead the way.”

Along the corridor, into a narrow hallway, down another flight of stairs, and into a room with a large brick oven, perhaps once used as a bakery.

“Hello,” said a man in a leather apron, coming in from a doorway in the far wall. “You some of the daily help, are you? Waiters, I fancy, by your garb.”

“You’ve got it, mate,” the mummer agreed.

“What’s all the fuss and commotion I’m hearing upstairs?” the man asked, pointing with his finger in the general direction of upstairs.

“Some sort of accident,” Moriarty told him. “Perhaps you should go help. This chap has fainted, and we’re taking him outside.”

The man nodded, seeing the wisdom in this. “Too much alki-bloody-hall,” he opined. “Shouldn’t partake whilst you’re at work, I says. Through that door there will get you out the back.”

They nodded their thanks and continued out the door with their burden.

The beam from a bull’s-eye lantern turned to shine on them as they came out into the mews. “Ah!” said a familiar voice, “you’ve made it—and with His Highness. Good, good.”

“Is it you, Holmes?” Moriarty asked. “The Belleville Slicer is dead, but his companion—his keeper—is still at large in the house. Unless he managed to leave during the ongoing festivities.”

“He tried to,” Holmes said. “I have him here.” He turned the lantern so the beam shined on a man sitting on the sparse sidewalk and glaring up into the light. “I imagine this is the man you want. He was one of the gentlemen who brought His Highness in, and he seemed to be in charge. So when he emerged in something of a hurry a few minutes ago, I scuppered him up. He was not happy about it, and there was something of a scuffle, but I prevailed. I found this in his pocket.” Holmes waved a crumpled scrap of paper at them. “It’s the ‘Macbeth’ cable from France.”

“Ah!” said Moriarty. He turned to the man. “Then you must be the fabled Macbeth. A pleasure, I must say, to finally make your acquaintance.”

The man struggled to his feet. His evening jacket was in disarray, his heavily starched collar was pulled out in front, and his extravagant mustache was pointing up one one side and down on the other, giving his face a look of bewildered indecision. “You will release me at once!” he demanded, waving his manacled hands in front of him. “This is an outrage! You cannot do this to me!”

“Really?” Moriarty asked, sounding sincerely interested. “Why not?”

The man came to a position of attention, or as close as he could manage with his hands tied. “I am Colonel Auguste Pierre Marie Lefavre of the French general staff, currently serving as military attaché to the French ambassador. I have the diplomatic immunity. Whatever you may think I have done, it is of no consequence. You must release me immediately!”

Silence descended on the group as they considered this.

“You could just shoot ’im, Professor,” the mummer suggested.

“I couldn’t watch such a thing,” said Holmes. “I’d have to turn my back.”

“What?” Lefavre took a step back. “No—you couldn’t…”

“Why not?” Moriarty asked. “You seem to have little hesitation about taking a life—or two—when it serves your purpose.”

“That was different.”

“How?”

“Those people were…” Lefavre paused.

“Expendable? Sacrificed for the greater good?”

Lefavre said nothing.

“We shall not shoot him,” said a quiet voice, and a dark figure stepped out of the shadows by the doorway.

“Your Grace,” said Holmes.

Moriarty turned and recognized the Duke of Shorham, who walked slowly forward until he was standing in front of the man who had been Macbeth.

“I didn’t think—” Lefavre began.

The duke raised his hand, and Lefavre was silent. “You will be taken from here directly to the Tower of London,” pronounced the duke. “You will not communicate with anyone between here and there. Once there, you will be held at Her Majesty’s pleasure. I would say that Her Majesty’s pleasure might well include taking you out into the courtyard early one morning and putting a noose around your neck, but that’s not up to me.”

“Pity,” said Holmes, turning to Moriarty. “I’ve never actually seen you shoot a man, Professor. It would have been an enlightening experience.”

Lefavre said, “You can’t—”

“I can,” said the duke. “In the name of Her Majesty and by the power intrusted to me by the Special Committee of the Privy Council, I will.” He turned and whistled, and a carriage started toward them from down the street. After a brief and curiously silent struggle Lefavre was thrust into the carriage, the duke went in behind him, and the carriage began its unhurried journey to the west.

Sir Anthony murmured something.

“What’s that?” asked Moriarty.

“‘We ’ave ’eard o’ the Widow at Windsor,’” Sir Anthony recited,

“‘It’s safest to let ’er alone: / For ’er sentries we stand by the sea an’ the land / Wherever the bugles are blown.’”

“A bit of Kipling,” said Holmes, “never hurts.”

[CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE]

A MIDNIGHT DREARY

He, who through vast immensity can pierce,

See worlds on worlds compose one universe,

Observe how system into system runs,

What other planets circle other suns,

What varied Being peoples every star,

May tell why Heaven has made us as we are.

—ALEXANDER POPE

IT WAS NINE THIRTY TUESDAY MORNING;
the sky was overcast, and the air was moist. Benjamin and Cecily Barnett left their hansom cab at the Brook Street corner of Hanover Square, unfurled a large black umbrella, and walked the short distance to the Roman pillars marking the portico of the otherwise stolid brick facade of the Earl of Scully’s London residence. They were admitted by a butler, stoic of face and precise of dress, who led them to an oak-paneled room at the back of the house with large bay windows overlooking the garden.

The earl, the Duke of Shorham, Sir Anthony, Moriarty, and the Holmes brothers were sitting around an oval mahogany table strewn with cups of coffee, the remnants of an extensive breakfast, and two copies of every London morning and evening newspaper.

“Good day, good day,” said the earl. “Welcome. Coffee? A spot of breakfast? Cruther, bring them what they want.”

“We’re fine, thank you milord,” said Cecily.

“Very good, then. Ah. Sit down, sit down. I was just going over the newspapers. The story of Saturday night’s, ah, events is on the front page of every paper except
The Times
. Still today, three days later.” He lifted a couple of papers from the pile in front of him with the air of a man examining a dead hedgehog and allowed them to drop back down. “They’re all coming up with more details, more facts, more theories, and each of them has it quite wrong and turned about.”

“The presence of HRH is still not mentioned, or even hinted at, in any of them,” observed the duke. “They’re not even all agreed that it was His Highness that the madman was trying to imitate. So we may ride clear of this yet.”

“And Miss Dilwaddy comes off as quite the heroine,” said Sir Anthony. He turned to Cecily, who was sitting quietly by the door. “How is she doing, if I might ask?”

“Outwardly she’s quite recovered,” Cecily told him, “but I’m afraid the events of that night will be with her for some time.”

“Ah, yes,” said Duke Albert. “Whatever are we to do with Miss Dilwaddy? We can’t send her back to, um, her former, um…”

“I am taking her into my household,” the Earl of Scully said. “I have spoken to my wife,” he added hastily, a spot of color appearing in his cheeks, “and she quite agrees.”

“Good, good,” said the duke.

There was a silence, which was finally broken by Sherlock Holmes. “I sent a cable to Paris,” he said.

They looked at him. “Saying what?” asked Sir Anthony.

“Here.” Holmes pulled a form from his pocket and passed it to Moriarty. It was addressed to Princess Irene, Abbess of the Paris chapter of the Holy Order of the Sisters of Mary Magdala, and it read:

TELL MLLE DESCHAMPS HE IS DEAD SHERLOCK

Moriarty read it and passed it on.

“Good thought,” said Barnett. “Very good.”

“That little princess is going to be all right,” offered Sir Anthony after a pause. “The scar on her forehead should be barely visible in a few months, although the one on her arm is going to be more troublesome. Or so says the surgeon.”