Further Associates of Sherlock Holmes Page 2

  Lucrecia Lorenzoni was a rare talent. She was as skilled with a brush, charcoal and pigment as any that have lived, or so I am advised. In another age that might be blind to her sex, she might have remade the world of art and sold her creations for the coin of kings. We do not live in that age, however. Her father was a deficient artist, but a good broker of art to the wealthy of Florence. His indulgence and modest fortune let Lucrecia discover her talent and pursue its growth in the cradle of great art. Her elder brother was prone to accumulating debts without care or limit. With their father gone, and their inheritance exchanged by Antonio’s need for a brief thrill at the card table, they fled from the Continent to London. That is where I found them.

  You see, Lucrecia was not only a sublime artist; she could look at the work of other artists and make their hand hers. She did not just imitate, she had the knowledge of techniques that are almost lost. She could make the glory of Caravaggio live again, or da Vinci seem alive amongst us. Without money, such talent only had one use.

  In imitation of his father, Antonio began to sell forgeries of paintings of modest value. He set up a brokerage, drew a line of credit and loyal customers across London. In time, greed would have made him overreach, of course. Sooner or later his hunger for losing money would have made him squander what he had, and then he would have asked his sister to paint something that would have been impossible to accept as real. They would have been discovered, and then they would have paid the price.

  That did not happen, however. An agent of mine noticed one of the forgeries, and traced it back to its source. I saw potential. I bought every painting Antonio Lorenzoni sold. I fed his coffers, and watched him run up debts around every gaming table in London. I bought each of his markers. I was both the feeder of his habit and the consumer of his despair. Once I owned him utterly, I made my offer: his sister would work for me. They agreed.

  People are made weak by emotion. Lucrecia Lorenzoni could have walked away from her brother and left him to the end he deserved. She did not though. Love – was there ever a greater crack made in the stone of rationality?

  Now, what use I put Lucrecia Lorenzoni and her brother to might seem obvious: I engaged them to produce forgeries of pictures, and then sell those pictures to the wealthy of the land. That is not all, however. Anyone could have taken Lucrecia’s talent and enacted such a scheme. Indeed, Antonio had tried exactly that. No, I did not just use them to create and sell forgeries. I used them to sell genuine paintings too, and by doing so put people of wealth in my debt.

  Once he worked for me, Antonio stopped selling forgeries for a time. Using various agencies at my disposal I made him party to a number of sales of several fine paintings. The sales went smoothly, and his role as the source of provenance, and his reputation for honesty, were impeccable. Through careful engineering he was instrumental in saving a number of buyers from purchasing forged works. Within a year he was not only trusted, but he was sought out by all those who deal in such matters.

  His sister had not been idle. She had begun producing two types of forgeries. The first were works that were new, but produced in such a way that they could be attributed to an artist of worth. Such was her skill that these works could, and do, hang unsuspected beside the works of the authentic master. Other parts of my network provided fake provenance, and Antonio helped to sell them.

  The second types of forgery were copies of works that existed and were being sold by their owners. With these sales Antonio’s reputation for trustworthiness and knowledge was key. People sold and bought through the House of Lorenzoni because they believed that it was safe. During the transaction, Antonio would substitute Lucrecia’s forgery for the original. No one realised what had happened, and the sale was completed to the satisfaction of all. Only later would Antonio approach the sellers with concerns that the works were forged. He would apologise but produce proofs: the blend of pigment, a subtle mistake in the wood of a canvas frame, an errant colour. He would say that he had no choice but to reveal this to the buyers of the work. He would say that he would also pursue damages and speak in court against the seller as having knowingly tried to deceive both him and the buyers.

  Reputation. Reputation and vanity – to the powerful there are few more effective levers by which to turn them to thieves. I selected the targets for this method with care. All saw their position with their peers and the public as fragile. None could risk such scandal, and so they agreed to work for my interests. Words from the privy council, papers from the cabinet office, decisions from the keepers of the exchequer: all have come to me as payment for keeping quiet crimes that were committed only by me. And, naturally, we kept the original paintings, and shipped them abroad to be sold on the other side of the world. Beautiful, I am sure you will agree.

  This is what I saw in ruins when I saw Lucrecia and Antonio dead on the floor of her studio. Someone had taken one of my creations and broken it. I hope that you can appreciate the anger I felt at that. Vengeance is the only pure human instinct.

  * * *

  “Tell me,” I said when Moran returned to my study on the second night after the killing.

  He sat again and lit his pipe as before. His eyes were shards of coal beyond the smoke.

  “The verbatim, or in brief?” he asked.

  “As close to the reality as you can recall,” I said, putting aside the paper I had been working on. He inhaled, shifting his body to relax. I could sense that the days of observing and coordinating watchers were not sitting well with him. I would have something to sate his impulse soon enough.

  “Holmes went to the House of Lorenzoni,” he said. “It was left uninhabited as you instructed. He spent ten minutes on the pavement looking at the front of the building. The doctor complained that if he had known they were going to be outdoors he would have brought a heavier coat. Holmes did not respond, but they did go inside.”

  “What did he do inside?”

  “He stood in each room for a minute each time, three in the main storeroom. He looked at two paintings, smelled the paint, turned the frames over.”

  “Which paintings?”

  “Both were Maturins, the two genuine articles from the Duke and Duchess of ——”

  I nodded. Maturin was an artist who had been much in favour several decades before. Immoderation of drink had meant that he had not produced anything new for over a decade. The last that had been heard of him, he had fled to France after striking a bailiff. Whether alive or dead it did not matter to the operation. His work was commanding a high price again, and his fondness for the bottle meant that producing plausible provenances for works that might have been his was simple.

  I sat back, steepling my fingers, trying to see the lines of fact and inference connect between what I knew and what I was being told. I could see possibilities, nets of connection and opportunity. I saw how if I were an enemy I could use these circumstances to attack my operation. I saw how I could turn it to my advantage. But I could not see an answer – who could have done this?

  “The Maturins were the only canvases slashed by the killer,” I said out loud.

  “The doctor made the same connection,” said Moran. “Holmes seemed not to think it worthy of remark.”

  “How so?”

  “He talked of the brushwork, of the style, of the use of pigment and texture to create brightness. The doctor said that Holmes had never mentioned being a connoisseur of art. The reply was that he had spent the night reading the notices of Maturin’s exhibitions in The Times archive.” Moran gave a dry chuckle.

  “What is amusing?” I asked.

  “The doctor said that he had not known that Holmes had gone out. That seemed to please Holmes.”

  I blinked away the irrelevant detail. My mind was shifting through the threads of my operation. The Maturins… Antonio had been preparing a sale of a mixed portfolio including work from the Duke and Duchess of ——, and a number of fresh works created by Lucrecia in imitation of his style. Buyers had already expressed i
nterest. The killings could have been to prevent the sale. Of all of those involved with the Maturin sale, could the Duke of —— have discovered what was happening? Was this a way of his heading off the damage to his reputation? But the man was a sheep, for all his birth. This was an act of directness. I began to think of people connected to the duke. What other agency might have an interest in protecting his reputation that they would take this step?

  My mind came back again to a traitor. It was always a possibility that there would come another human as gifted as myself, with the clarity of sight and the will to attempt what I have achieved.

  “Holmes then went to Antonio’s office,” continued Moran. “He sat in his chair. He looked at his desk, tasted the liqueur in his cabinet, and looked at every bottle. He went along the ledgers in Antonio’s office of business. He did not open any of them, just pulled them off the shelf far enough to see the edges of the pages. The doctor looked at them in more detail while Holmes roamed the offices. He wondered out loud if it could have been someone who had bought one of the fake paintings that had killed Antonio and his sister. Holmes laughed once.”

  Moran tapped his teeth with his pipe, stood, and moved to my own drinks cabinet and proceeded to pour himself a brandy. I did not object to the presumption. The cabinet exists for others’ vices, and I have no need of deference from Moran. He knows he is mine, and I know that he knows. Moran sat again and took a drink, baring his teeth as he lowered the glass.

  “‘This, Watson, is an operation far too developed and finely balanced to have been conceived, let alone executed, by Antonio Lorenzoni.’ That is what he said.”

  “The consultant is as perceptive as ever. On what basis did he make that leap?”

  “The doctor asked the same question,” replied Moran. “‘He was a man of excess, Watson,’ said Holmes. ‘He also lacked good judgement or caution to maintain such a scheme once it was in motion. You can also see it in the ledgers. Not in the numbers but how they are kept. The earliest ledger dates back to when the business opened, but only those covering the past two years show any regular use. Before that the paper is fresh, only written on the once, when the fictional entries they contain were written to pull a curtain over Antonio’s previous activities. After that the ledgers show the wear and tear of regular use. Someone came in and took over Antonio’s operation two years ago, someone with an eye for detail, and with a lot of patience.’”

  “You are certain they were not aware of you?” I asked as Moran finished his recitation.

  “Certain,” said Moran.

  I did not press it further. I trust Moran; you have to trust someone, don’t you, even if only a little?

  “What else did he deduce?”

  “Everything,” said Moran. “The broad outline and purpose of the House of Lorenzoni. How it worked, even the reason for Antonio fleeing the Italian peninsula. All he was missing were names. He left, and sent a message to Lestrade to turn over the House of Lorenzoni and to go through the ledgers. He said that a number of the most notable sales would be of forged pictures.” Moran paused, eyes glittering, fingers tapping on the arm of the chair. “They are going to undo the entire operation. If you wish to act, it must be now.”

  I waved the words away. “The events you describe must have occurred several hours ago. What is the consultant doing now?”

  “Nothing,” said Moran with a shrug. “He has gone back to his lodgings in Baker Street. He sent out a boy runner, but I missed what he told him. I set people to follow the boy. He went to a drinking house on the Southbank, then went back to Baker Street.”

  “What did the consultant say to him?”

  “Nothing. The boy just said ‘gone three nights’, and Holmes gave him a coin.”

  I leant back in my chair. The fire flickered in the grate before my eyes. In truth I had no notion of what the words meant or how they fitted in.

  “Is this drinking house known to us?”

  Moran shook his head. “It is like all the rest, all the small sins and pitifulness poured into one place.”

  “Who did the boy ask about? If he replied ‘gone three nights’ he must have asked when someone was last seen there.”

  Moran nodded. “He asked about a seaman without a ship, using the name of Grade.”

  “Do we know the name?”

  Moran shook his head. “Do you want the word put out?”

  “No,” I said, and stood. “Have the carriage brought. I want to be close to Baker Street before dawn. Make sure we have a net around the place and ready to move. When Holmes moves so do we.”

  * * *

  I was waiting in the cold grey of the pre-dawn when Moran swung up into the carriage and told the driver to go. His breath was white on the coal-scented air.

  “They are going to the East Docks,” he said. “Their carriage is just pulling up.”

  He drew his pistol and checked the rounds, and then took the carbine from under the carriage seat and checked that. The carriage lurched into motion, and then it was swaying as the horses pulled it through the fog and lamplight.

  “I want whoever it is alive. Maim them, but keep them alive.”

  “And Holmes?” he asked.

  I shook my head, and pulled the fur collar of my coat closer. The pre-dawn held a chill that even I did not find pleasant.

  “He is not to be harmed.” I smiled. “He is to be thanked.”

  Moran frowned.

  * * *

  I watched as Holmes got down from the carriage and walked to the end of the Ottoman Quay, moving between stevedores unloading the ships. I watched through a hand-scope while Moran tracked him in his sights from some high vantage amongst the warehouse windows. I saw Holmes smile as the dawn began to brighten, and the winds catch the edge of his coat. I saw him stop at the furthest mooring post and look out at the river, at the ships and the colour-washed sky. I watched and waited. He stood there for a full minute, and then I saw him take a letter from his pocket and pin it to the mooring post. Then I watched him turn and go back to his carriage.

  My people followed him back to Baker Street, but I stayed, and sent Moran for the letter.

  “Professor James Moriarty” the outer fold read. I will confess I was surprised. I sat there and looked at it, and then ordered to be taken back to my rooms, my office, and the purity of my thoughts. I did not read it until I was back at my desk. Even then I considered throwing it into the fire.

  I opened it and read. There was no greeting. It simply began:

  The case that you have watched me briefly engaged with is concluded. That end will not serve your needs for your revenge, nor any wider purposes that you may have harboured for discovering the killer of Lucrecia and Antonio Lorenzoni. They are free of you, and what harm they did on your behalf is gone with them. The police will dismantle your web of criminality relating to the House of Lorenzoni. That consequence you must have envisaged even if you did not foresee this one. I will not explain what mistakes you made, nor those by which you revealed your hand, suffice to say that the marks were there.

  I will give you an answer to the question of who killed the Lorenzonis only because I know that soon it will be public knowledge.

  Edward Maturin killed them both. On the night of the killing he had followed Antonio from his offices to the studio. He killed Lucrecia first as she tried to stop him slashing one of the canvases of his copied work. Her brother reached for Maturin as he did the deed and was stabbed. Maturin stabbed him several times more, and then used the same knife to slash the remaining canvases. Then he fled. The knife he used had a heavy, broad blade of the type that dock loaders use to cut ropes. One can see wounds of the same kind in any of the river margin streets if one cares to observe such things.

  He had been frequenting a drinking house on the Southbank, when he had the funds, and was known for his temper and his debts. He tried to get passage on a boat the same night he killed the Lorenzonis, offering to work as a deckhand, but the blood on his clothes was enough to get hi
m turned away. After several days he secured berth on a ship heading to Lisbon. That is where Dr Watson and Inspector Lestrade will have arrested him this morning. I do not know but I would hazard that he will not deny the charges.

  Why he committed the crime he will hang for is simple: pride and jealousy. Antonio Lorenzoni displayed several of the false works created by his sister alongside genuine work by the artists they imitated. Maturin saw them. His world was inside a bottle, his talent a memory. He saw his work, and beside them work that was not his but imitated his style better than he could now create. You never looked at his work, I know, not truly. Lucrecia Lorenzoni mocked him with her talent, and so he killed her. It is that simple.

  Of your presence, Maturin knew nothing, and still knows nothing. His crime was one that you did not see because you could not imagine that your web could be broken by human emotion rather than intellect or intent. For that insight I am grateful.

  Yours,

  Sherlock Holmes

  I confess that he is correct. I was blind to the obviousness of humanity’s destructive urges. But if I am blind so is he. He believes in justice, that the structures of order are strong in foundation even if their walls are crumbling.

  That clink further down the corridor? Yes, I hear it too; our time must be drawing to an end. I am sorry for that. For the damage and waste you have caused my endeavours, I cannot forgive, even if I am grateful for the lesson. Why, if I had the choice I would not let you see the hangman’s noose, Mr Maturin. I would give you to people I trust, people who would draw a measure of recompense for what you did to something that was not yours. That is what I would do, and I would be satisfied in that knowledge.

  That must be the sound of the warden coming.

  Why do you flinch? What could be coming down the corridor to this cell other than the warden with the key to open the door and the candle to guide my way out?

  You hear another set of steps outside? Surely that is not uncommon?