Echoes of Sherlock Holmes: Stories Inspired by the Holmes Canon(104)

“What a vile thing to say!”

“Would you claim that Holmes never fooled you in some cruel way if it served his love of the dramatic revelation? How would you feel if a conductor on a train or a beggar on the street suddenly revealed himself to be none other than your friend, not dead but quite alive? Would that not be in keeping with M. Holmes’s theatricality?”

“There were limits,” I said, “even for him.”

“Indeed,” said Dupin diffidently. “Perhaps I am in error.”

“I believe you are, sir.”

“Then you will have another apology from me.”

“No,” I snapped, “I don’t want another apology. What I want is an answer to your riddle about the edelweiss.”

“Ah.”

“You say I should know this particular species of that flower. Tell me your thoughts on that, because a graveyard is an ill place for a child’s guessing game.”

He rose again and bent carefully to pick up one of the flowers from the bouquet on the grave, then came back and held it up so that we could both see it. I joined him.

“First,” he said, “I will tell you a bit of history.”

“More drama?”

He shrugged in the way Frenchmen do, the kind that allows for so many interpretations. “Context will encourage understanding.”

“Go ahead then, but please be quick about it.” I said it with bad grace, not feeling that this strange gentleman deserved more than the shallowest civility, his many apologies notwithstanding.

“There is an organization operating through Europe,” he said as he took my arm and led me back to the bench. “A criminal organization that is as subtle as it is vast. It has operatives by the hundred, though I doubt that many of them know they are part of something larger than their own local gang. From the basest petty street thief to the most sophisticated stock swindler, the underworld of Europe has been sewn like threads into a tapestry of corruption, evil, and criminality. The replacement of priceless art with brilliant forgeries in the Louvre is but one example. The sale of stolen military secrets in Russia and England has been attributed to spies working for foreign governments, but those spies are actually under the employ of this organization of which I speak. Jewel thefts and quiet murders, apparent suicides and arson, intimidation and blackmail . . . these are all the tools of this empire.” He cut me a shrewd look. “I can see by your expression that you know something of which I speak.”

“No . . .” I began but did not pursue what would have been a lie. Dupin nodded.

“You think I am mistaken, perhaps?”

“The organization to which you refer was the creation of Professor James Moriarty,” I said, “and he is dead.”

“He is,” agreed Dupin. “Though his body was never found. Nor was, I believe, that of Mr. Holmes. Both men smashed upon cruel rocks and whisked away by an unforgiving river.”

“That is what happened,” said I. “And with the death of Moriarty, so came the fall of his criminal empire.”

“Ah, if that were only true,” said the old man. “You know firsthand that there have been serious attacks on the credibility of M. Holmes since his death, just as I presume you are aware that these attacks have been made by friends and—some say—relatives of the late professor.”

“Impugning a dead man’s good name is the act of a coward,” I said, “but that hardly suggests that Moriarty’s confederates are behind it.”

“You’re saying they’re not?”

“Oh, they are, but it is not because they want to defend the memory of a man they claim was cruelly wronged by M. Holmes. No, hardly that. By deflating the importance of what Holmes achieved, they reduce the veracity of his claim that Moriarty was anything more than an eccentric academic. I believe you suspected this, which is why, after two years of silence, you chose to publish an account of the last battle between your friend and his great enemy.”

I nodded. “As you say. But to my point about Moriarty being—as Holmes put it—the Napoleon of crime, has not criminal behavior dropped significantly since Moriarty’s fall?”

“In England? Mm, perhaps it would appear so, from a certain distance. Arrests have, to be sure. Obvious crime has changed in frequency. But, Doctor, the death of Professor Moriarty has not resulted in the destruction of his empire.”

“It has.”

“It could not have,” insisted Dupin, “because Moriarty was not the emperor of crime that your late friend suggested. He was formidable, make no mistake, and had he lived he might well have risen to become the true king of kings to the world of crime. A strong case can be made for that, though not an unbreakable one. After all, Moriarty became known, did he not? M. Holmes discovered his name and was able to provoke him so thoroughly that in the end, the professor was trapped into believing that there was nowhere left to turn except direct physical attack. Alas, M. Holmes rose to this challenge and they fought like animals on a cliff, and in their folly plunged to their deaths.”

We sat for a moment with the heaviness of his words weighing upon us. I wanted to argue, to defend Holmes’s rash action in descending to barbarity when his intellect had always been his keenest weapon. Even now, three years since that horrible moment, I could not understand why he did it in that way. He robbed the world of himself and of all the good he could do.