“It is with a heavy heart,” Doctor John Watson wrote in 1893, “that I take up my pen to write these the last words in which I shall ever record the singular gifts by which my friend Mr. Sherlock Holmes was distinguished.”
The rain outside the window. Eighteen months since John’s last appointment with his therapist. “You know why I’m here. I’m here because – ” He handwaves the end of the word off in a puff of unspeaking pain. “Sher – my best friend – Sherlock Holmes – is dead.”
Making Moriarty a convincing character is so difficult that Arthur Conan Doyle didn’t try.
“You have probably never heard of Professor Moriarty?” said he.
“Never.”
“Ay, there’s the genius and the wonder of the thing!” he cried. “The man pervades London, and no one has heard of him. That’s what puts him on a pinnacle in the records of crime.”
Edinburgh Eye 