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enemies. They
    might even have let him pursue some of his other interests –
    beekeeping, for example – on the side.
    Instead, Holmes goes haring off on a journey that seems to
    have nothing that resembles an itinerary and he asks Watson
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    to accompany him. Why? The most incompetent criminal
    will surely work out that where one goes, the other will quite
    probably follow. And let’s not forget that we are talking here
    about a criminal like no other, the master of his profession, a
    man who is equally feared and admired by Holmes himself. I
    don’t believe for a minute that he could possibly have under-
    estimated Moriarty. Common sense tells me that he must have
    been playing another game.
    Sherlock Holmes travels to Canterbury, Newhaven, Brussels
    and Strasbourg, followed every step of the way. At Strasbourg,
    he receives a telegram from the London police informing him
    that all the members of Moriarty’s gang have been captured.
    This is, as it turns out, quite false. One key player has slipped
    through the net – although I use the term ill-advisedly as the
    big fat fish that is Colonel Sebastian Moran has never been
    anywhere near it.
    Colonel Moran, the finest sharpshooter in Europe, was wel
    known to Pinkerton’s, by the way. Indeed, by the end of his
    career, he was known to every law enforcement agency on the
    planet. He had been famous once for bringing down eleven
    tigers in a single week in Rajasthan, a feat that astonished
    his fellow hunters as much as it outraged the members of the
    Royal Geographical Society. Holmes called him the second
    most dangerous man in London – all the more so in that he
    was motivated entirely by money. The murder of Mrs Abigail
    Stewart, for example, an eminently respectable widow shot
    through the head as she played bridge in Lauder, was com-
    mitted only so that he could pay off his gambling debts at the
    Bagatelle Card Club. It is strange to reflect that as Holmes sat
    reading the telegram, Moran was less than a hundred yards
    away, sipping herbal tea on a hotel terrace. Well, the two of
    them would meet soon enough.
    From Strasbourg, Holmes continues to Geneva and
    spends a week exploring the snow-capped hills and pretty
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    villages of the Rhône Valley. Watson describes this interlude
    as ‘charming’, which is not the word I would have used in
    the circumstances but I suppose we can only admire the way
    these two men, such close friends, can relax in each other’s
    company even at such a time as this. Holmes is still in fear of
    his life, and there is another incident. Following a path close
    to the steel-grey water of the Daubensee, he is almost hit by
    a boulder that comes rolling down from the mountain above.
    His guide, a local man, assures him that such an event is quite
    commonplace and I am inclined to believe him. I’ve looked
    at the maps and I’ve worked out the distances. As far as I can
    see, Holmes’s enemy is already well ahead of him, waiting for
    him to arrive. Even so, Holmes is convinced that once again
    he has been attacked and spends the rest of the day in a state
    of extreme anxiety.
    At last he reaches the village of Meiringen on the River
    Aar where he and Watson stay at the Englischer Hof, a
    guest house run by a former waiter from the Grosvenor
    Hotel in London. It is this man, Peter Steiler, who suggests
    that Holmes should visit the Reichenbach Fal s, and for a
    brief time the Swiss police will suspect him of having been in Moriarty’s pay – which tells you everything you need
    to know about the investigative techniques of the Swiss
    police. If you want my view, they’d have been hard pressed
    to find a snowflake on an Alpine glacier. I stayed at the
    guest house and I interviewed Steiler myself. He wasn’t just
    innocent. He was simple, barely taking his nose out of his
    pots and pans (his wife actually ran the place). Until the
    world