The Silent Contest: The Man or Woman Who Got Away (Part 3)
No story by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle reveals how or when Sherlock Holmes first learned about Professor Moriarty. The hints in the Final Problem are vague and misleading, and the Valley of Fear corrects the record only in part.
But if we re-examine the very first story, A Study in Scarlet, in light of the Silent Contest that I have argued underlies all the early Holmes stories, signs suggest that Holmes may have learned about Moriarty during the course of this story, around the same time that he met his friend, partner, and publicist Dr. John Watson.
We begin by thinking about what we can actually trust in Watson’s writing. As we examined in previous articles, Watson did have some incentive to lie about certain aspects of Holmes’ abilities, and he lied in A Study in Scarlet about Holmes’ lack of astronomical knowledge and about Holmes’ “brain attic.” Accordingly, when we get to the actual mystery at the heart of A Study in Scarlet, we need to consider how much is actually “true” within Watson’s reality. For example, did Sherlock Holmes really undercut the inspectors as much as Watson says he did? Or did Watson simply claim this in order to lull Moriarty’s suspicions?
We can trust that the murders of Enoch Drebber and Joseph Stangerson did occur because Watson refers to newspaper accounts of the murders. Similarly, we can trust that Inspector Gregson, Inspector Lestrade, and Sherlock Holmes all were actually involved in the investigation. And, finally, we trust that taxi driver Jefferson Hope was arrested at 221B Baker Street. Watson refers to newspaper articles reporting such facts, and he is unlikely to have made up fake newspaper articles that Moriarty could have checked.
But many of the details of the investigation are up for grabs, and Watson’s account leaves some holes, particularly one particular loose end that Watson curiously highlights.
While investigating the scene of Enoch Drebber’s murder, Holmes finds a ring nearby in the street and realizes that the ring is valuable to the murderer. Holmes places an advertisement in the newspapers, and expects the murderer to come retrieve the ring. Instead, an old woman comes to 221B Baker Street, gets the ring, and leaves in a cab. Holmes perches himself on the back of the cab, only to realize later that the woman somehow has managed to leave the cab while moving and without him or the driver noticing.
“It must have been a young man, and an active one, too, besides being an incomparable actor. The get up was inimitable. He saw that he was followed, no doubt, and used this means of giving me the slip,” Holmes says (according to Watson) upon returning to 221B. “It shows that the man we are after is not as lonely as I imagined he was, but has friends who are ready to risk something for me.”
Later, after catching Jefferson Hope, Holmes asks him about this person.
“There is only one point on which I should like a little more information. Who was your accomplice who came for the ring which I advertised.”
Jefferson Hope, according to Watson, “winked at my friend jocosely.” Then, according to Watson, Hope said:
“I can tell my own secrets, but I don’t get other people into trouble. I saw your advertisement, and I thought it might be a plant, or it might be the ring which I wanted. My friend volunteered to go and see. I think you’ll own he did it smartly.”
This answer makes little sense. According to Watson’s account, the person probably committed no crime at all, except maybe not paying his taxi driver. This person retrieved property that belonged to Jefferson Hope, rather than stealing something. This person lied to a private detective who was lying to him, but most lies are not crimes (in the United States, only certain lies are crimes, such as lies under oath or lies to government officials). And he slipped out of a moving taxi cab, which may have endangered himself but was no crime.
So why would Watson claim in print that Hope declined to give the name of his multi-talented friend?
Probably because that man was no friend. Probably because that man was Hope’s link to Moriarty, and perhaps the first clue that Holmes received about Moriarty’s existence.
Consider Jefferson Hope.
He was an American who had spent years seeking revenge on the two men who had driven the love of his life to death. He had hunted them across the Atlantic Ocean to London and the European continent, all the time carrying her wedding ring, and having “vowed that [Drebber’s] dying eyes should rest upon that very ring, and that his last thoughts should be of the crime for which he was punished.” He had come to London almost destitute, and had taught himself the streets of London in order to fund his hunt as a cab driver (a challenge that now takes modern taxi drivers years). He had tracked down his prey, and brought each of them to the justice he had long sought. And he had done all this on the verge of dying from a heart problem that had grown worse over the years and that killed him just hours after being captured.
How did a single-minded man like this, a newcomer to London, happen to have a friend who was smart enough, acrobatic enough, daring enough, and sufficiently good at acting to outsmart Sherlock Holmes while retrieving the wedding ring that Hope had lost after killed Drebber?
And why would a man like this continue working as a cab driver after having accomplished his life’s mission? He says, according to Watson, that he was trying to make enough money to return to America, but that makes no sense, given how close he was to death.
And what happened to the ring, anyway? There is no mention of it when Hope is captured, which is odd since it would have been a key piece of evidence tying Hope to the murder had it been found in his pocket or on his person.
Perhaps Hope’s side of the story unfolded very differently. Perhaps it unfolded like this.
After Jefferson Hope killed Drebber, he realized that he had lost the ring that he had carried with him for years, and had gotten back to the scene of the crime too late to retrieve it. He knew that there was a risk in answering the ad that Holmes had placed, and he knew that it would be better if someone else went in his stead. Hope did not actually have any real friends, let alone a friend who just happened to have the specific set of skills needed to avoid suspicion.
Desperate for help, Hope sought out help in London’s criminal underworld, and ended up going to Moriarty or one of Moriarty’s lieutenants, because that’s what criminals knew to do when they needed help.
Moriarty then arranged for the acrobat/actor to go in Hope’s place.
But Moriarty and the acrobat/actor would not have done this for free. They probably could see that Hope would do anything for the ring that he was so desperate to retrieve, and they probably kept the ring for themselves. They probably told Hope that the only way that he could get the ring back was to pay for it.
Hope thus had no choice other than to keep working after killing Drebber and Stangerson. It was the only way that he could get back the ring from Moriary or his accomplices. He had sought help from London’s criminal mastermind and had been outplayed.
This sequence of events would explain how Jefferson Hope happened to have a “friend” who could outwit Holmes, why he continued to work as a cab driver, and why there was no mention of a ring when Hope was caught.
And so, when Holmes asked Jefferson Hope about his accomplice, perhaps Hope answered very differently.
Perhaps this was the moment when Hope revealed to Holmes how the criminal underworld actually worked and how there was a man whom people knew to go for help. A man named Moriarty.
Perhaps Hope gave Holmes the name of the acrobat/actor, and perhaps Holmes followed this lead, the first real connection he had to Moriarty’s network.
Perhaps Holmes tracked down the acrobat/actor, and told him that he would not reveal his identity so long as he provided assistance when possible about Moriarty’s network.
That might be why Watson chose to write about the murders of Enoch Drebber and Joseph Stangerson, rather than about some other case. It was not just an introduction to Sherlock Holmes, but a work of deception to conceal the identity of Holmes’ inside man within Moriarty’s network. Moriarty would have read A Study in Scarlet, chuckled about that little matter he intervened in years before, and perhaps laughed about it with the acrobat/actor, not suspecting that the acrobat/actor was cooperating with Holmes.
Now that we’ve explored the lies and probable lies of A Study in Scarlet, and now that we’ve seen how Holmes’ investigation of Moriarty might have begun, we’ll turn to what we know about the early stages of that investigation. For that, we will turn to the Valley of Fear and the identity of the mysterious person known only as Porlock.
