Professor Moriarty,
I have an excellent plan for an extortion plot involving a number of prominent citizens. How can I avoid being caught?
—Confident In Cornwall
Dear Confident,
To begin with, I would suggest that you don’t send letters to people you don’t know, boasting about crimes you haven’t yet committed.
* * * *
Dear Professor Moriarty,
I am an inmate at Newgate Callendar prison. I would like to escape. Can you help me?
—Your friend, 248072931
Dear 248072931,
Enclosed is a file and a recipe for a cake that you can bake the file into.
* * * *
Dear Professor Moriarty,
I’m an artist who is planning to counterfeit fifty pound notes. Your thoughts would be appreciated.
—Baffled in Blackpool
Dear Baffled,
When you draw Her Royal Majesty, Queen Victoria, make sure she isn’t winking, or in her knickers.
* * * *
Dear Professor Moriarty,
My husband is having an affair with my best friend. I plan on poisoning the both of them. What kind of poison would you recommend I use?
—Beth in Bath
Dear Beth,
I’m very sorry, madam, but I simply cannot condone a crime that is committed for any reason other than profit.
* * * *
Dear Professor Moriarty,
Why are you called the Napoleon of crime? Since the English defeated Napoleon, why aren’t you called the Wellington of crime?
—Concerned in Kensington
Dear Concerned,
You sir, are an idiot.
* * * *
Dear Professor Moriarty,
Is it true that you control all the crime in London?
—Wondering in the West End
Dear Wondering,
Yes, it’s true. If a school boy steals a loaf of bread from a bakery, I get half.
* * * *
Dear Professor Moriarty,
What is the best way to rob a bank and not get caught?
—Befuddled in Brighton
Dear Befuddled,
Subcontract.
* * * *
Dear Professor Moriarty,
What is your opinion of Sherlock Holmes?
—Curious in Cardiff
Dear Curious,
I think he’s a fat, bloated, pompous, know it all. No, wait, that’s his brother, Mycroft. Sherlock is all right, though he does tend to go off on those silly tangents of his about cigar ashes, different kinds of mud, boot marks , and the like. Oh, let’s face it, the man is a crashing bore.
* * * *
Dear Professor Moriarty,
How is it that you did not die when you fell into the Reichenbach Falls with Sherlock Holmes?
—Pondering in Picadilly
Dear Pondering,
That’s simple. It wasn’t me who fought Holmes that day, it was a look-a-like actor that I hired to play me. And, in an odd twist of fate, apparently Holmes had done the same. Sadly, both actors drowned. While they were locked in mortal battle, Holmes and I were having cocktails in Davos. Afterwards, we went to our banks in Zurich, and visited our money.
* * * *
Dear Professor Moriarty,
How have you managed to elude capture for all these years?
—Reluctant in Regent Park
Dear Reluctant.
I own a very, very well oiled bicycle.
* * * *
Dear Professor Moriarty,
How can I get my boyfriend of five years to propose to me?
—Betty in Billingsgate
Dear Betty,
You must have me confused with Miss Katherine, the agony columnist, for the Daily Mail.
SCREEN OF THE CRIME, by Lenny Picker
The Adventures of the Six Napoleons…of Crime
Whatever else Sherlock Holmes: Game of Shadows does, it deserves credit for enabling a return to movie prominence of one of the all-time great villains and, arguably, the third most interesting Canonical character, who makes a strong impression all out of proportion to his very limited time on-screen. Watson, our trusted eyes and ears, only sees him twice, but his impact on the Good Doctor’s life could hardly have been greater. I refer, of course, to Professor James Moriarty, the ne plus ultra of arch-enemies, a genius who is “the organizer of half that is evil and of nearly all that is undetected” in the London of 1891. But as intriguing a character as Moriarty is, filmmakers using him as the main bad guy have almost always had to depart from one of the most remarkable aspects of his criminality.
It’s always best to return to fundamentals, so let’s revisit Holmes’s (apparently)1 first description of his intellectual equal in “The Final Problem.”
He is a genius, a philosopher, an abstract thinker. He has a brain of the first order. He sits motionless, like a spider in the center of its web, but that web has a thousand radiations, and he knows well every quiver of each of them. He does little himself. He only plans. But his agents are numerous and splendidly organized. Is there a crime to be done, a paper to be abstracted, we will say, a house to be rifled, a man to be removed—the word is passed to the Professor, the matter is organized and carried out. The agent may be caught. In that case money is found for his bail or his defence.
