"Of course!" I said. "Lividity. I should have known."
"Lividity?" Lord Tams asked.
"After death the blood pools at the body's lowest point," I told him, "which makes the skin in that area appear red. I've seen it many times as a reporter on the New York police beat. I'm just not used to hearing of it on faces."
"Your brother was at the Paradol Club to avail himself of the services of Dr. Papoli," Moriarty said, turning in his chair to face Lord Tams. "The doctor claimed to have a method to rejuvenate a man's lost vitality. He transfused his patients with youthful blood. Thus they regained youthful vigor. It is a not uncommon desire of men, as they get older, to recapture their youth. Papoli was preying on men who could afford to attempt it. Occasionally one of his patients died, because for some reason as yet unknown, some people's blood will cause a fatal reaction when injected into another. Papoli claimed that he had devised a machine that would solve that problem — the strange apparatus that was between the two beds. But he was obviously mistaken."
"How do you know that?" Lestrade asked.
"I went to talk to your prisoner this morning," Moriarty said. "He is extremely indignant that he is in jail. He considers himself a savior of man. He is quite mad."
"So other men died besides my brother?" Lord Tams asked.
"Yes, several. But they were elderly men, and their natural vanity had kept them from telling anyone about the operation, so his secret remained safe. Occasionally one of his donors died, but they came from the poorest classes of the city and they were not missed."
"But my brother was not that old."
"True. It was his obsession with sexual vitality that made him seek the operation. It failed. Papoli and his assistant thought your brother had died on the table. They left him there, not wanting to carry a body through the hallway early in the evening. Later, when they came back to take him to his room, they found that he had briefly regained consciousness and partially removed his restraining straps. The upper half of his body fell off the table in his dying convulsions, and he was left hanging from a strap around his legs. That explains his hands, which had fallen toward the floor. When they lifted him, rigor had set in and his arms looked as though they were raised."
Lord Tams sighed. "Poor Vincent." He stood up. "Well, Professor Moriarty, you have saved my marriage, and possibly my life. I had the impression that Inspector Lestrade was preparing to clap me in irons at any second."
"That's as it may be," Lestrade said. "No hard feelings, I trust?"
"None, Inspector. I invite you — all of you — to my wedding. I must be off now to see Miss Whitsome and tell her the happy news. Professor Moriarty, you will send me a bill, whatever you think is right, and I will pay it promptly, I assure you."
Moriarty nodded, and Lord Tams clapped his bowler on his head and was out the door. A minute later Lestrade followed.
"Moriarty," I said, refilling my coffee cup, "two last questions."
Moriarty held out his own cup for a refill. "What?" he asked.
"Do you think the new Lord Tams will keep his brother's rooms at the Paradol?"
"I never speculate," Moriarty said, "it is bad for the deductive process." He leaned back. "But if I were a betting man, I'd put a tenner on it. What else?"
"Miss Lestrelle told us that Vincent had made some reference to Shelley, and you said that that told all. Were you serious? I looked through my copy of Shelley this morning, and I could find nothing that applies."
Moriarty smiled. "I fancy you were looking up the wrong Shelley," he said.
"The wrong—"
Moriarty reached over to the bookshelf and tossed a book across to me. "Try this one."
I looked down at the book. On the cover, in an ornate Gothic type, was the title: Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley.
-
Moriarty was out all this morning, and he came back with a painting by Lenore Lestrelle. It is all green and brown and blue blotches and seems to be some sort of pastoral scene. I am afraid that he intends to hang it in the dining room.
Death by Gaslight
Now entertain conjecture of a time
When creeping murmur and the poring dark
Fills the wide vessel of the Universe.
From camp to camp, through the foul womb of night
…
— William Shakespeare
PROLOGUE
When I consider life, 'tis all a cheat.
— John Dryden
The tall, thickset man in the gray frock coat walked slowly between the double row of headstones. He looked neither to the left nor the right, but stared at something ahead of him that the older man who walked beside him could not see. They stopped at a newly turned grave, not yet covered with sod, and the tall man crouched and placed his hands flat on the bare earth.
"This is it," he said, turning his vacant eyes on his companion. "This is where she lies."
"I'll take care of it, right enough," the old man said, squinting at the ground to note the number on the painted board that marked the place where the headstone would be. "Like she was my own daughter. My word."
"Flowers?"
"Ivery day. My word."
"She likes flowers." The tall man rose and turned to his companion. "I'll meet you at the gate," he said.
The old man stared at him for a second, and then said "A' course," and walked away.
The frock-coated man turned back to the bare earth. "I am here," he said.
The day was somber and the fog was dense. What light there was gladly fled before the encroaching dusk.
"I have discovered another one for you," he whispered. "Another death for your death. Another throat for the blade. It doesn't help. God knows it doesn't help. God knows—" The man's face contorted. "God! — God!" He fell to his knees, his hands twin tight-fisted balls before his eyes. "Someday I'll stand before the God who made what befell you part of His immortal plan; and then — and then—"
He stood up and slowly willed his fists to open. Semicircles of blood had formed where his nails had dug into his palms. "But until then, the men," he whispered, "the godlike men. One by one they shall fall like reeds before the avenging wind. And I am the wind."
He held out his hand and there was a bouquet of flowers between his fingers, which he placed gently down on the moist earth. Beside the bouquet he laid a small gold amulet with an intricate design. "Here is another," he said. "From the last one. The last murderer. The last to die before the wind. This is the sign by which we know them, you and I. The mark of Cain. The hell-mark of the damned."
Standing again, he brushed off his trousers. "I love you, Annie," he murmured to the bare earth. "I do not do this for you; I know you would not ask it, the killing. I do not do it for me; I have always been a gentle man, and it does not ease me. I do not like the blood, the moment of fear. But it is all I can do. I cannot stop myself. I have become the wind, and they shall all die."
He turned and slowly walked away.
ONE — NIGHT AND FOG
There was a Door to which I found no Key; There was a Veil past which I could not see.
— Edward Fitzgerald
Throughout much of March in the year 1887 the city of London was covered by a thick, almost tangible fog that swept in from the North Sea. It chilled the flesh, dampened the spirit, and oppressed the soul. It all but obscured the sun by day, and by night it occluded the stars, the moon, the streetlamps, and the minds of men. Things were done in that fog, in the night, that were better left undone.