Sherlock Holmes: The Army of Doctor Moreau

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Stepping out onto Great Russell Street, I wondered quite what to do with myself. As far as I knew, Holmes was, at that very minute, poking through the evidence at the home of the man he knew to be “Moreau”. Given my absence, the last thing I fancied doing was returning to our rooms and waiting there like a dutiful wife.

I was furious, walking down the street, banging the paving stones with my cane. I would have given anything to have Holmes there, I would have given him a piece of my mind that even he, in his cold and logical way, would struggle to dismiss.

How dare he be so patronising! I would come to the same conclusion, and would feel more vindicated by coming to it under my own steam, would I?

Well, I dare say I could come to the same conclusion. As much as Holmes liked to paint me the idiot, it was a distinctly uncharitable impression. I might not have the same skills as he did, the same leaning towards deduction and the interpretation of data, but that didn’t make me a dullard. We had already decided that there was a limit to who could continue Moreau’s work, either the man himself or someone who had worked closely with him. From what Holmes had said then it was clear that he didn’t believe the culprit to be Moreau himself. That was logical enough. Even if we ignored Prendick’s statement that the man had been torn limb from limb he would be decrepit by now, and the rampaging pig-faced man did not sound like a fellow in his dotage. So we were left with the people who worked with him. Those who studied his methods well enough to be able to duplicate and continue them. So, Prendick or Montgomery, both of whom were also apparently dead, the former to the satisfaction of a police inspector whose opinion I had trusted enough to consider the matter a fact. So what about Montgomery, the drunk, the sometime employee of Mycroft’s Department?

As I walked I became increasingly unaware of my direction. I was simply marching the streets, powering my thoughts with the urgent pounding of my feet.

Ideas were flooding through my head, random words and phrases, mental images. I saw Prendick’s mad writing on the wall of his home: Fear the Law!—the phrase uttered by “Moreau” when wishing to bring his animal army under control at the Houses of Parliament; repeated by Moreau’s creatures on the island, according to Prendick’s manuscript. I thought of that single copy of The Times and the pile of copies of The Chronicle he had kept. That made me pause. I actually stopped stock-still in the street. It didn’t make sense. If he normally read The Chronicle then why had he received a copy of The Times? Had that been sent to him as a threat? Most likely. And what of the religious pamphlet with its bizarre quote? Was that relevant?

I took Prendick’s manuscript from my pocket and flicked through the last few pages. People had to veer around me, tutting and moaning at the distracted man who stood in the middle of the street reading sheets of paper. I barely noticed them as I skimmed through the climax of his report. I read of Moreau’s death and suddenly a piece of the jigsaw fell into place.

“‘Children of the Law,’” I read aloud, quoting Prendick’s words as he faced Moreau’s creatures after the man’s death. Prendick was scared of them, convinced that they would turn on him and Montgomery unless he persuaded them to stay true to the dead man’s principles, Moreau’s “religion”. “He is not dead,” Prendick had continued. “He has changed his shape—he has changed his body … For a time you will not see him. He is … there.” At this point in his account, Prendick describes how he pointed to the sky, suggesting Moreau’s elevation to the divine, “where he can watch you. You cannot see him. But he can see you.” Then that phrase again, “Fear the Law.”

These were familiar words of course, copied onto that religious pamphlet, along with the newspaper, the trigger that had driven Prendick to suicide.

But who had sent them? Montgomery? It must be—he was the only man left to have worked with Moreau.

And then it hit me, and those sheets of Prendick’s manuscript fluttered from my hands as I realised what I had been missing all along. Montgomery was not the only other man to have worked with Moreau. There was another. One who would have had easy access to Prendick’s statement when he had first returned from the South Pacific, who would have found it only too easy to trace him and send him a copy of a newspaper and a veiled threat. There was one man who had hidden in plain sight throughout the whole affair. Knowing it—and like Holmes has said in the past, even without proof I did know it, it was nothing less than a fact to me— the sense of unity that washed over my mind was incredible. For all his loathsome behaviour, Holmes had been quite right, in that to have come to the realisation myself was something that quite simply took my breath away. I knew who had been behind it all.

It was something of a surprise to find he was climbing out of a carriage and walking across the road towards me.

“Hello Doctor,” said Mitchell. “I’ve been hunting for you ever since my operatives told me you were leaving The British Museum.”

“You!” I said, still somewhat in shock, both at my own realisation of the identity of the new “Moreau” and the fact that he was now right here in front of me. “All that time you helped him, undercover, writing your story, all that time, damning him in public, ensuring he was hounded out of the country … all that time …”

“I was thinking what I might gain from such fascinating work, yes,” Mitchell said. “But here is not the place for such conversations.” He gestured towards the driver of the carriage, who stepped down and walked slowly towards us. His bowler hat was pulled low, a muffler covering most of his face. But when he came right up to me I found I was looking directly into the eyes of a cat. The driver tugged the muffler down slightly, enough to reveal the shiny black skin and snarling fangs of a panther.

“I have need of your company,” said Mitchell. “Please don’t be so stupid as to refuse. My friend here could take your head off with one swipe of his arm.”

I had no doubt this was true. No doubt this was the very beast that had so viciously savaged Fellowes’ security officer.

“What do you want from me?” I asked, as the driver took hold of my arm and pulled me towards the carriage.

“Oh, a little leverage,” said Mitchell, following behind us, “and a man can never have too many living specimens to work on.”

As I was yanked into the darkness of the carriage, he stepped in behind me, and his smile was as animalistic as any of his creations’. “Just you wait until you see what I can make of you!”