Reconsidering Moriarty Once More

This month's tale for our local discussion group was one we're all very familiar with, "The Final Problem." And as I considered it this time around, I found myself mentally breaking this short, short story into two stories: The London story and the Escape from London story. The latter always gains our focus, as the death of Sherlock Holmes is a turning point for the entire Canon of Holmes. But the first half, the half we often see as prologue to that big event, is where we learn of Professor Moriarty for the first time.

And it all goes by so quickly.

So very quickly. We don't often stop to fully appreciate what we're being told.

"My horror at his crimes was lost in my admiration of his skill."

"Hereditary tendencies of the most diabolical kind."

"Dark rumours gathered round him in the university town, and eventually he was compelled to resign his Chair and come down to London . . ."

Now think of every villain who crossed the threshold of 221B Baker Street. Think of Watson picking up fireplace pokers and grabbing chairs, sensing the threats of the bad, bad men that wandered into the sitting room he shared with Sherlock Holmes. Now think of the one time Sherlock Holmes considers it necessary to have a gun in his pocket. And the one man Sherlock Holmes felt he needed the gun for.

This was 1891. A phrase like "horror" being applied to crimes has a high bar to get over, the Jack the Ripper murders being only two years behind London. And even then, on February 13, 1891, a prostitute was found with her throat slashed and the belief was that the beat constable had interrupted the killer's work. And what was it Moriarty said . . .

". . . by the middle of February I was serious inconvenienced by you . . ."

Maybe it wasn't PC Ernest Thompson who interrupted Frances Coles's murderer after all . . .

Consider this for a moment: A math professor comes down to London and criminals just suddenly start consulting him on how to get away with their crimes. A man like that must have some credentials to cite, some previous crimes he infamously got away with, right? You don't just come down to London and start a criminal empire from scratch -- maybe you start with one enterprise, like prostitution, establish yourself as a man not to be crossed by making some examples, and build quickly from there.

And if a man comes to your apartment you know for his horrific knifework, you do keep a gun in your dressing gown pocket. And if a maniacal genius thinks he's just going to take you out at Reichenbach Falls without a gun, well, maybe it's because the blade is his weapon of choice.

"Then will come the greatest criminal trial of the century," Holmes says of Moriarty's hoped-for capture, "the clearing up of over forty mysteries, and the rope for all of them."  

But only if Moriarty was captured. And only if all the evidence came to trial. And if Moriarty disappeared into a Swiss abyss, anything the British government (or the man who was same) decided did not need to be public knowledge was not made public knowledge . . . .

There's a very great mystery in the question of why Sherlock Holmes never worked the Jack the Ripper case, the greatest mystery of his time as a detective. And there have been multiple stories by multiple authors full of conjecture about him doing so. But what if Watson actually had already given us one, so very long ago . . . and we just didn't see it for what it was?

Dark rumours, indeed.