The room is dark when I wake up, and for a moment I am so disoriented I don’t know what time it is, or where I am. Then, through the hotel window, I hear city traffic and pedestrians laughing on the street, and I remember.
I’m in London. With Daddy.
Packed in my suitcase is the wooden urn containing my father’s ashes. A box of merely two hundred cubic inches contains all that remains of the man who rocked me to sleep when I was a baby, who held my hand at my mother’s funeral, who danced at my wedding and dried my tears after my divorce. Tomorrow, I will scatter his ashes on a field somewhere in the Surrey hills, near the village where he was born.
I’m bringing you home, Daddy. Just as you wanted.
Something rustles in the darkness and I turn on the lamp to see that an envelope has just been slipped under my door. I assume it’s merely a welcome note from hotel management, but when I open it, I find a heavy correspondence card with a handwritten message:
My deepest condolences on your loss. JSW.
I stare at the card, baffled. I don’t know anyone with those initials. In fact, I don’t know anyone in London, and I’ve told no one in this hotel why I’ve come to England, for fear I’ll violate some law by scattering human ashes in the countryside. For a few moments I sit on the bed, struggling for an explanation, and finally just toss the card on the nightstand. I’m too jetlagged to solve this mystery right now, and too hungry as well. The last meal I ate was breakfast, after I’d arrived on the overnight flight from Boston; it’s time to hunt down supper.
When I step out of the hotel, I’m overwhelmed by the bedlam of Covent Garden. It’s a Saturday night in May and the streets are riotous with honking horns and rowdy laughter and the clip-clip of countless high heels on pave- ment. I thread my way through the crowd and catch savory scents that waft from the restaurants I pass: fish and chips and curries, pizza and kebabs. Whatever cuisine you crave, in London you can find it. I spot exactly what I’m looking for right across the street: an Italian restaurant. Pasta and salad and a glass of wine. Yes. A bus is rumbling toward the intersection, so I halt on the curb to let it pass.
That’s when a hand lands on my back. It’s not merely a touch but a brutal shove that sends me toppling forward onto my knees in the street. Time freezes to a standstill. Headlights rush toward me. Brakes shriek.
Someone grabs me by the collar of my jacket and wrenches me back onto the sidewalk.
Time suddenly leaps ahead. I see faces, so many faces, open-mouthed and staring at me. The driver jumps out of the bus and shouts: “Miss? Miss, are you all right?”
I’m barely able croak out an answer. “I—I’m fine. I think . . .”
Someone in the crowd snorts: “Aw, it’s just another Yank, looking the wrong way.”
But I didn’t look the wrong way. Already the crowd is dispersing, and no one hears me when I say the words aloud: “I didn’t look the wrong way. Someone pushed me!”
“I know,” a voice says.
It’s the man who pulled me out of the street. The man who saved my life. In his tweed jacket, his black hair streaked with silver at the temples, he looks like a distinguished college professor, not someone I’d expect to see wandering among these late-night revelers.
The man glances up and down the street. “He managed to slip away, but I doubt he’s gone far.”
“You saw him?”
“And not for the first time. Come, we need to get you out of sight.” He raises his arm to flag down a taxi. It pulls over to the curb and he opens the door for me. “Hurry, Eve. Before he returns.”
He knows my name. I hesitate, staring into the shadowy interior of the taxi. “Where are we going? I don’t even know who you are!”
“Forgive me, I should have introduced myself. Julian Watson. I was going to pay you a call in the morning.”
JSW. The initials on the card. “Should I know your name?” “Your father never mentioned me?”
“No.”
“Then you have a great deal to catch up on.” He gestures urgently toward the waiting taxi. “Please. We may not have much time.”
I step into the taxi.
Watson slides onto the seat across from me, and as the taxi navigates the maze of London streets, he studies me intently. The facing seats leave me exposed to his gaze, and I have no choice but to stare back at him. Lit by the intermittent flashes from the streetlights we pass, his face is all sharp angles—jutting cheek- bones, a wedge of a chin, a prominent brow. He obviously knows me, so I must have some memory of this man, perhaps one that’s been tucked away since my childhood, but I cannot retrieve even a wisp of a memory.
“You have your father’s eyes,” he observes. “You sound as if you knew him well.”
“I saw him only three months ago, the last time he was here in London. I can’t believe he’s gone.”
“Why did he never mention you?”
“It seems there’s a great deal he never told you.” He scans the roadway, checking if any vehicles are tailing us. “I’m afraid that’s placed you in a dangerous situation.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” “Do you know how your father died?”
“It was an accident. He was on a business trip in Brussels. The police said he slipped in the hotel bathroom and hit his head.”
“Yes, that’s usually how it’s done. Made to look like an accident.” “You’re saying it wasn’t an accident?”
He looks out the window again. “Here’s where we get out.”
The taxi has brought us to a quiet residential neighborhood where I don’t see a single soul. Watson climbs out of the taxi, but I hesitate to step out onto the eerily silent street.
“If you want to know the truth about your father, if you want to know who you really are, come with me.” He holds out his hand.
After a moment, I take it.
We slip through a locked gate into a private garden that’s enclosed by high walls and dense shrubbery. The grass is overgrown, and the scraggly hedges appear long neglected. As he unlocks the door of a stately house, I notice dead leaves scattered across the front steps, a sign that no one has been here in some time. When we step inside, I smell dust and dank air that has been trapped inside far too long.
He turns on the lights and I blink in surprise at what I see. Everywhere I look in this cavernous room, I behold wonders: A medieval tapestry of a lady and a unicorn in a bower of trees. An Egyptian funeral mask, agleam with gold. The mounted head of a monstrous canine, its citrine eyes glaring at me. I cross the vast room to peer into a cabinet of curiosities and marvel at intricate ivory carvings and mounted birds with brilliant
plumage. On one shelf is a speckled snake, posed by the taxidermist as if it’s about to strike.
“Is this a museum?” I ask.
“No. This was your uncle’s house.”
I turn to him in surprise. “What uncle? I have no uncle.” “Your father never told you about his older brother?” “No. What happened to him?”
“His name was Colin. Twenty-seven years ago, he fell from the tenth-floor window of his London office. His death was deemed a suicide.” He gazes around at the room, where dust layers every surface. “His house still stands empty. Waiting for someone to return.”
I shake my head, stunned by this new information. An uncle I never knew about? A father whose death was not an accident? The room suddenly tilts around me. Or maybe it’s jetlag and hunger that sends me reeling toward a green armchair. Legs wobbling, I sink onto the velvet cushion and sit shivering.
He lights the gas fireplace. Flames suddenly leap up in the hearth, bright and cheery, and I hear the squeak of a cabinet being opened and the clink of glassware.
He hands me a crystal tumbler of whiskey.
“When your uncle Colin died, your father was already living in America. He believed he was safe there. He never thought they’d bother to hunt him down. Perhaps that’s why he never told you about his brother or about his family. He must have thought ignorance would protect you.”
“Protect me from what?”
He pours himself a glass of whiskey and sits down in the chair facing me. The silver hair at his temples flickers with reflected gold from the firelight. “What do you know about your birth name, Eve?”
“Moriarty?” I shrug and take a gulp of whiskey. “The name is Irish, I think.
Not a particularly unusual one.”
“True, there are Moriarty families scattered all around the world. But there’s only one Moriarty bloodline that’s directly descended from your ancestor.”
“Which ancestor?”
“You may have read about him. Professor James Moriarty.”
As the heat from the whiskey seeps through my bloodstream, everything I’ve seen and heard tonight suddenly snaps together, like the pieces of an absurd puzzle. Professor James Moriarty. Julian Watson. The mounted head of the giant hound on the wall. The speckled snake in the cabinet.
“Oh, for god’s sake.” I stare at him. “This is a candid camera prank, isn’t it? Some stupid media stunt.”
“I assure you, everything I’ve said is absolutely true.”
“Right.” I’m so annoyed, I slam down the whiskey glass. “And now you’re going to tell me this so-called Professor Moriarty died at Reichenbach Falls.”
“He did. Pushed off the cliff by Mr. Sherlock Holmes.” In disgust, I rise to my feet. “I’m going back to my hotel.” “That would be most unwise.”
“What, are you going to stop me?”
“I can’t stop you. But I will point out it’s not safe for you to leave.”
“Hey, is someone filming this right now?” I look around the room and yell: “You can turn off your camera! I’m leaving!” I head toward the door.
“Please, Eve. Stop and think,” he says, his voice perfectly calm. “If this is merely a media stunt, would we risk your life by pushing you in front of a bus?”
My hand freezes on the doorknob. Slowly I turn to look at him. He’s made no move to follow me and he sits relaxed in the green velvet armchair, his long legs crossed, his hands casually joined to form a steeple. There’s nothing to prevent me from walking out the door and calling a taxi back to my hotel. Nothing except the logic of what he just said.
Someone did try to kill me tonight.
He seems not at all surprised when I quietly return to the chair and sit down. “I knew you’d see reason,” he says. “Just as your father always did.”
“How can I believe anything you say?” I tell him. “These names you talk about—they’re the names of fictional characters, invented by a storyteller. Sherlock Holmes never actually existed.”
“I assure you, Holmes was real. As real as you and me.” “And Dr. Watson? Professor Moriarty?”
“Also real. But they were nothing like the characters described by Arthur Conan Doyle. His stories twisted the truth and libeled good people. He portrayed Professor Moriarty as a monstrous criminal, when the real James Moriarty stood for all that was right and decent.”
I rub my temples, struggling to absorb this upside-down view of everything I’d read in the Conan Doyle stories. “Then who was the real Sherlock Holmes? Are you saying he wasn’t a brilliant detective?”
“Oh, Holmes was definitely brilliant. Far more brilliant than that gullible Conan Doyle, who never questioned the falsehoods that Holmes told him. Falsehoods designed to smear Moriarty’s reputation and justify his murder at Reichenbach Falls. No one mourned James Moriarty because everyone believed he was a criminal mastermind who deserved to die. When in truth, the real mastermind was Sherlock Holmes himself.”
Dazed, I reach for the glass of whiskey but it’s empty. He refills it and patiently waits for my next question.
“And Dr. Watson? He was your ancestor, I presume?” “Yes. And like James Moriarty, also a victim.” “Holmes again?”
He nods. “A few months after Moriarty fell to his death at Reichenbach Falls, John Watson met his own death on a London street, when he fell under the wheels of a carriage. It was declared an accident. Just as your death tonight would have been. But Holmes didn’t know that John Watson had been keeping meticulous diaries, documenting in painstaking detail all of Holmes’s criminal enterprises—names, dates, aliases, account numbers. Incriminating evidence that could expose the real Sherlock Holmes.”
“What happened to those diaries?”
“Years after Dr. Watson’s death, his son found them hidden in his late father’s study. He immediately shared them with Professor Moriarty’s son, who happened to be his good friend.”
“Surely the sons set the record straight?”
“They tried to, but no one believed them. By then, Conan Doyle’s stories had already been devoured by millions of readers and the legend of Sherlock Holmes was as good as carved in stone. Nothing could dim his sterling reputation. The sons of Watson and Moriarty were dismissed as jealous frauds, and they eventually dropped out of public view. Meanwhile, Holmes’s criminal enterprises expanded, nurtured by his descendants. They will do anything to avoid exposure, anything—including murder—to hide the criminal origins of their wealth. That’s why our two families, the Watsons and the Moriartys, formed an alliance. It’s for our own survival.”
“Even now, after so much time has passed?”
“We’re still dangerous to them, because we know the truth. And we’re the guardians of John Watson’s diaries.”
“Then you should publicize them! Share them with the world!”
“That’s exactly what your uncle Colin tried to do. He sent copies of the diaries to half a dozen journalists, but no one dared follow up on the story. It took only a few threats, and then your uncle’s death, to scare everyone off. It scared off your father, too. It was years before he dared return to London.”
“Is that when you met him?”
“Yes.” He gazes up at an iron chandelier hanging high above us in the shadows. “This house is where the three of us would meet. Your father, my sister, and me. This room is where we mourned our losses and debated our next moves. And that chair where you’re now sitting—that’s where he’d sit, sipping whiskey.” Sadly he shakes his head. “Now your father’s gone. And Jane and I are the only ones left.”
I hear the pain in his voice. The echoes of loss after loss. “What will you do now?” I ask.
He sighs. Shakes off his gloom and sits straighter in his chair. “We’ll do what we’ve always done. We’ll fight to be heard. We’ll keep gathering evidence. And we’ll try to stay alive.”
Alive. I stare at the flames in the hearth and mull over everything that’s happened to me tonight: the shove on the street, the bus careening toward me. I think of my father and my uncle, whose deaths were not accidents. “Now I’m part of this, too,” I murmur. “Or they think I am.”
“It’s obvious they think you know the truth. Even if you return home, you will be tracked. Are you prepared for that?”
I take another gulp of whiskey, hoping it will steady my nerves, but when I set down the glass, my hand is shaking. “How does one prepare for something like this? I have no idea what to do next. Or where I should go.”
“That’s why I brought you here. My sister, Jane, is on her way now, to meet you. This house should be safe for you, a place to shelter while we catch you up on the facts. Where you can train for whatever might come.”
“So I can’t go home.”
“Not until you’re ready to face them. But I promise you won’t be facing them alone. The Watsons and the Moriartys have always stood together. We’ve always fought together. You have no choice now, Eve. You’re one of us.”
I see both sympathy and inevitability in his eyes. He knows I did not ask to be part of this embattled alliance. I did not ask to be born a Moriarty and inherit the burden that comes with my bloodline. Yet here I am, following in the footsteps of my father, and his father before him.
I take a deep breath and I hold out my hand to shake his. “Teach me,” I say. “Teach me everything I need to know.”
He grasps my hand. “Eve Moriarty, welcome to the war.”
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