Moriarty (2 page)

His guide, a local man, assures him that such an event is quite

commonplace and I am inclined to believe him. I’ve looked

at the maps and I’ve worked out the distances. As far as I can

see, Holmes’s enemy is already well ahead of him, waiting for

him to arrive. Even so, Holmes is convinced that once again

he has been attacked and spends the rest of the day in a state

of extreme anxiety.

At last he reaches the village of Meiringen on the River

Aar where he and Watson stay at the Englischer Hof, a

guest house run by a former waiter from the Grosvenor

Hotel in London. It is this man, Peter Steiler, who suggests

that Holmes should visit the Reichenbach Fal s, and for a

brief time the Swiss police will suspect
him
of having been in Moriarty’s pay – which tells you everything you need

to know about the investigative techniques of the Swiss

police. If you want my view, they’d have been hard pressed

to find a snowflake on an Alpine glacier. I stayed at the

guest house and I interviewed Steiler myself. He wasn’t just

innocent. He was simple, barely taking his nose out of his

pots and pans (his wife actually ran the place). Until the

world came knocking at his door, Steiler wasn’t even aware

of his famous guest’s identity and his first response after the

news of Holmes’s death had been revealed was to name a

fondue after him.

Of course he recommended the Reichenbach Falls. It

would have been suspicious if he hadn’t. They were already

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a popular destination for tourists and romantics. In the

summer months, you might find half a dozen artists dotted

along the mossy path, trying to capture the meltwater of the

Rosenlaui Glacier as it plunged three hundred feet down into

that ravine. Trying and failing. There was something almost

supernatural about that grim place that would have defied

the pastels and oils of all but the greatest painters. I’ve seen

works by Charles Parsons and Emanuel Leutze in New York

and maybe they would have been able to do something with

it. It was as if the world were ending here in a perpetual

apocalypse of thundering water and spray rising like steam,

the birds frightened away and the sun blocked out. The walls

that enclosed this raging deluge were jagged and harsh and as

old as Rip van Winkle. Sherlock Holmes had often shown a

certain fondness for melodrama but never more so than here.

It was a stage like no other to act out a grand finale and one

that would resonate, like the falls themselves, for centuries

to come.

It’s at this point that things begin to get a little murky.

Holmes and Watson stand together for a while and are

about to continue on their way when they are surprised by the

arrival of a slightly plump, fair-haired fourteen-year-old boy.

And with good reason. He is dressed to the nines in traditional

Swiss costume with close-fitting trousers tucked into socks that

rise up almost to his knees, a white shirt and a loose-fitting

red waistcoat. All this strikes me as a touch incongruous. This

is Switzerland, not a Palace Theatre vaudeville. I feel the boy

is trying too hard.

At any event, he claims to have come from the Englischer

Hof. A woman has been taken ill but refuses for some reason

to be seen by a Swiss physician. This is what he says. And

what would you do if you were Watson? Would you refuse to

believe this unlikely story and stay put or would you abandon

your friend – at the worst possible time and in a truly infernal

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place? That’s all we ever hear about the Swiss boy, by the

way – although you and I will meet him again soon enough.

Watson suggests that he may have been working for Moriarty

but does not mention him again. As for Watson, he takes his

leave and hurries off to his non-existent patient; generous but

wrong-headed to the last.

We must now wait three years for Holmes’s reappearance

– and it is important to remember that, to all intents and

purposes, as far as this narrative is concerned, it is believed that he is dead. Only much later does he explain himself (Watson

relates it all in ‘The Adventure of the Empty House’), and

although I have read many written statements in my line of

work, few of them have managed to stack up quite so many

improbabilities. This is his account, however, and we must, I

suppose, take it at face value.

After Watson has left, according to Holmes, Professor James

Moriarty makes his appearance, walking along the narrow

path that curves halfway around the falls. This path comes

to an abrupt end, so there can be no question of Holmes

attempting to escape – not that such a course of action would

ever have crossed his mind. Give him his due: this is a man

who has always faced his fears square on, whether they be a

deadly swamp adder, a hideous poison that might drive you

to insanity or a hell-hound set loose on the moors. Holmes

has done many things that are, frankly, baffling – but he has

never run away.

The two men exchange words. Holmes asks permission to

leave a note for his old companion and Professor Moriarty

agrees. This much at least can be verified for those three sheets

of paper are among the most prized possessions of the British

Library Reading Room in London where I have seen them

displayed. However, once these courtesies have been dispensed

with, the two men rush at each other in what seems to be less

a fight, more a suicide pact, each determined to drag the other

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into the roaring torrent of water. And so it might have been.

But Holmes still has one trick up his sleeve. He has learned

bartitsu
. I had never heard of it before but apparently it’s a martial art invented by a British engineer, which combines

boxing and judo, and he puts it to good use.

Moriarty is taken by surprise. He is propelled over the edge

and, with a terrible scream, plunges into the abyss. Holmes sees

him brush against a rock before he disappears into the water.

He himself is safe … Forgive me, but is there not something

a little unsatisfactory about this encounter? You have to ask

yourself why Moriarty allows himself to be challenged in this

way. Old-school heroics are all very well (although I’ve never

yet met a criminal who went in for them) but what possible

purpose can it have served to endanger himself? To put it

bluntly, why didn’t he simply take out a revolver and shoot his

opponent at close range?

If that is strange, Holmes’s behaviour now becomes com-

pletely inexplicable. On the spur of the moment, he decides to

use what has just occurred to feign his own death. He climbs

up the rock face behind the path and hides there until Watson

returns. In this way, of course, there will be no second set of

footprints to show that he has survived. What’s the point?

Professor Moriarty is now dead and the British police have

announced that the entire gang has been arrested so why does

he still believe himself to be in danger? What exactly is there

to be gained? If I had been Holmes, I would have hurried

back to the Englischer Hof for a nice Wiener schnitzel and a

celebratory glass of Neuchâtel.

Meanwhile, Dr Watson, realising he has been tricked, rushes

back to the scene, where an abandoned alpenstock and a set of

footprints tell their own tale. He summons help and investi-

g ates the scene with several men from the hotel and a local

police officer by the name of Gessner. Holmes sees them but

does not make himself known, even though he must be aware

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of the distress it will cause his most trusted companion. They

find the letter. They read it and, realising there is nothing more

to be done, they all leave. Holmes begins to climb down again

and it is now that the narrative takes another unexpected and

wholly inexplicable turn. It appears that Professor Moriarty has

not come to the Reichenbach Falls alone. As Holmes begins

his descent – no easy task in itself – a man suddenly appears

and attempts to knock him off his perch with a number of

boulders. The man is Colonel Sebastian Moran.

What on earth is he doing there? Was he present when

Holmes and Moriarty fought, and if so, why didn’t he try to

help? Where is his gun? Has the greatest marksman in the

world accidentally left it on the train? Neither Holmes nor

Watson, nor anyone else for that matter, has ever provided

reasonable answers to questions which, even as I sit here ham-

mering at the keys, seem inescapable. And once I start asking

them, I can’t stop. I feel as if I am in a runaway coach, tearing

down Fifth Avenue, unable to stop at the lights.

That is about as much as we know of the Reichenbach Falls.

The story that I must now tell begins five days later when

three men come together in the crypt of St Michael’s church

in Meiringen. One is a detective inspector from Scotland Yard,

the famous command centre of the British police. His name

is Athelney Jones. I am the second.

The third man is tall and thin with a prominent forehead

and sunken eyes which might view the world with a cold

malevolence and cunning were there any life in them at all.

But now they are glazed and empty. The man, formally dressed

in a suit with a wing collar and a long frock coat, has been

fished out of the Reichenbach Brook, some distance from the

falls. His left leg is broken and there are other serious injuries

to his shoulder and head, but death must surely have been

caused by drowning. The local police have attached a label

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to his wrist, which has been folded across his chest. On it is

written the name: James Moriarty.

This is the reason I have come all the way to Switzerland.

It appears that I have arrived too late.

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