The skeleton had been laid out piece by piece on the slab before us, arranged as it would have been when muscle, tendon, and sinew had held it together to form a body. It was not quite complete, but the major bones had been accounted for, so that only a vertebra here or carpal bone there stood out as missing to my medically trained eye. It was clear that it had spent much time in water - for even after they had been cleaned, the bones retained a sickly greenish-gray hue. It was almost difficult to believe, as we clustered around the table in the morgue, that we may have been looking at the earthly remains of Professor Moriarty.
Inspector Lestrade stood at some distance with his hands behind his back, watching Holmes expectantly as he circled the table, inspecting the remains from different angles.
I watched Holmes as well, though with some measure of concern.
He seemed to me to be giving the matter before him much more thought than it was due. His eyes were a pair of grey storm clouds, narrowed in consideration, his lips pursed and his features keen in thought. He had taken on that fierce, bird of prey look he could at times when faced with a puzzle which provided a true challenge. Could it be, I wondered, that he had seen something about the bones which suggested such a conundrum? To me it seemed that there was far too little to be had from them for this to be true. What else, then, could have roused this hunting hound side of his character so?
At length he paused, passing a hand over his mouth thoughtfully.
"Well, the age is right," he told Lestrade.
"Very good," nodded the Inspector.
"And the height and build fit," added Holmes. "There is also the addition of a nick in the right scapula. Moriarty was stabbed there, and such a mark is consistent with this."
Lestrade nodded again and made a note on a leaf of his notebook. "Well, gentlemen - this in combination with the Doctor's testimony" - I had already examined the damage to the bones and identified the various fractures as being consistent with a fall from a great height - "is enough evidence for a positive identification to my mind. I trust neither of you have any further reason why we might delay releasing the remains to the family?"
"None at all," I said, eager to have the whole affair done with.
Holmes only shook his head, eyes still fixed darkly on the skeleton.
The funeral was announced in the paper some weeks later. I had risen later than was my habit that morning, owing to an emergency with a patient the night before, and found the newspaper already riffled through and scattered around the sitting room. The breakfast sat on the table, untouched, curls of steam rising from plates forlornly as though aware of their neglect. Holmes slouched in his armchair, eyes flat and inscrutable as slate, his old clay pipe clenched cold and unlit between his teeth.
Recognizing that I had found him in a rather uncommunicative humor, I merely heaved a sigh and busied myself by gathering up the discarded pages of the paper. I snatched a few up from beside Holmes' chair, and then the sections which were draped still folded over the arm of the settee, finally folding them all together again - though rather out of their original order - and laying them on the table. As I did, the small announcement of the Professor's burial - a scant few lines, naming the place and time and little more - caught my eye. A painful memory surfaced in my mind as I remarked the relative anonymity in which Holmes' greatest adversary would be laid to rest, while Holmes' own disappearance had caused such a stir those years before.
No flag would fly at half-mast for the Professor. No black muslin would appear, draping the buildings of the city in somber remembrance, and no policemen or grateful former clients would be seen going about in mourning dress. It had seemed, when Holmes had appeared to die, that all of London had, in some measure, grieved him.
As for Professor Moriarty, there was no more extraordinary gesture made concerning his death than the fact that, beside the announcement of his funeral in the paper, Sherlock Holmes had placed a small mark in pencil.
It was a stark, lonely patch of ground, and the polished black marble of the headstone which stood upon it did nothing to improve the fact. Rather than have his brother's remains transported to the old family plot in Ireland, Colonel James Moriarty had found it a more prudent course of action to inter them in London, quickly and quietly. He stood at the foot of the patch of raw earth that formed the newly covered grave, military posture relaxed slightly, the cold, sharp wind tugging at the hem of his overcoat.
The younger man beside him was crying.
He would have never thought to see tears from this particular fellow, not in all the years his brother had known him. And yet, his unusual, pale eyes shone with a dampness that collected at the corners and caught in his lashes, threatening to spill over.
"An astroid," he remarked with a nod towards the geometric figure inscribed above the Professor's name on the headstone, voice steady but low and somber with emotion.
The Colonel nodded. "He would have wanted it. It was the work he was most proud of." He thought for a moment, then added cautiously: "He was proud of your hand in it, too."
Sherlock Holmes' only reaction to this was a faint, bitter smile at the irony of life.
