Elementary! Has scholar solved the thriller behind the id of Sherlock Holmes’ best nemesis?
He was the mysterious and ruthless ‘Napoleon of crime’ in the Sherlock Holmes novels by Scots author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
But now a leading Scottish scholar has claimed the true identity of Holmes’s great nemesis Professor Moriarty is the literary detective’s own brother, Mycroft.
Mycroft Holmes – played by Mark Gatiss in Sherlock, the BBC version of the tales – is described by Sherlock Holmes as being even more of a genius than the famous occupant of 221B Baker Street.
After studying the stories by Edinburgh-born Conan Doyle, author Robert J Harris, who writes Holmes continuation novels, believes the true identity of Moriarty is Mycroft – who Holmes says is ‘one of the queerest men’.
Outlining the theory in Sherlock Holmes Magazine, inset right, Mr Harris said ‘numerous clues pointing in this direction’ were left by Dr John Watson, Holmes’s friend and helper, who narrates the stories but never meets Moriarty.
Dr Watson, played by Martin Freeman in the BBC’s Sherlock, gets only a distant glimpse of Moriarty in The Final Problem, when the supervillain struggles with Holmes and they both appear to fall to their deaths in Switzerland – though we later learn Holmes did not die and he reappeared in The Adventure of the Empty House.
Mr Harris, who lives in St Andrews, believes Moriarty was ‘merely a senior member of a vast criminal network, which had been discovered by Sherlock Holmes’. He writes that ‘in order to conceal the shocking truth, Watson’s account conflates two separate individuals under the name Moriarty’ – one is a ‘relatively harmless’ professor, and the ‘other is the true criminal mastermind, Mycroft Holmes’.
Benedict Cumberbatch as the BBC’s Sherlock Holmes with Mark Gatiss as his brother Mycroft
Mark Gatiss playing Mycroft in Sherlock – the BBC version of the Conan Doyle tales
The novels were written by Scots author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
The first mention of Mycroft – who has also been played by Christopher Lee and Stephen Fry – comes in The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter. Holmes ‘lets slip, almost inadvertently, the existence of his brother’.
When Dr Watson suggests Holmes’s gifts are the ‘result of the training’ rather than genetics, the detective says his genius may be from his grandmother.
When Dr Watson presses him as to why he is so sure it is hereditary, Holmes responds: ‘Because my brother Mycroft possesses it to a larger degree than I do.’
He says his brother ‘has an extraordinary faculty for figures and audits the books in some of the government departments’.
Mr Harris writes: ‘We cannot help but note how closely this description of Mycroft parallels that of Professor Moriarty.’ Holmes later reveals Mycroft is arguably the most powerful figure in the corridors of government, explaining ‘in that great brain of his everything is pigeon-holed and can be handed out in an instant’.
Mr Harris writes that Mycroft ‘determines the policies that govern the country’ – in the same way as the ‘Napoleon of crime’ decided ‘which crimes would and would not be committed’.
The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans, the second and final Mycroft story, is about a stolen document – and Mycroft ‘makes the pre-emptive move of inserting himself into the investigation, so that he can keep an eye on his brother’s progress’.
Mr Harris speculates it is ‘highly likely that in his account of this affair, Watson has left out much of the true story, including its denouement, where Sherlock Holmes unveils the proof that it is the diseased mind of Mycroft which lies behind this and other’ criminal acts.
He concludes: ‘We can guess, therefore, that Sherlock gave his brother the opportunity to resign his government post and retire to the country.’
Mr Harris’s own Holmes novels include A Study in Crimson and The Devil’s Blaze.
