Moriarty Wishes He Were a Natural Disaster

It sometimes amazes me, looking back over the many adventures I shared with Sherlock Holmes, that the public at large seems to consider Jim Moriarty our greatest adversary. I mean, yes, he killed people—but fewer than some of the other men we've faced. Yes, he ran a criminal organization—but we took down more than one of those. Yes, he was insane—but then, most of Sherlock's villains were. That's why he picked them. That was part of what made them so interesting.

In a way, I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. Moriarty did the best he could to set himself up as Sherlock's ultimate enemy. He played the media and the people around him and hyped himself as a super villain rather than just a run-of-the-mill criminal type.

But I can't help remembering Mycroft.

I don't mean Mycroft as I know him now, as Sherlock's watchful big brother. I mean Mycroft as I first met him in that warehouse, so long ago.

I remember a tall man, beautifully and expensively dressed. His expression was closed, his smile deadly. He stood in silence and oozed power. He knew things. He had my therapist's notes. He looked at me and saw things no one ever had. He knew me, but he was a complete stranger. He stood alone, seemingly unprotected, but the hairs at the back of my neck prickled. I would not have dared touch him. I knew I would be dead in a moment, if I did.

I was a soldier, and I knew how to deal with fear. But that doesn't mean I wasn't afraid.

Mycroft was the first to kidnap me. Moriarty was the third. That sort of thing happened rather a lot in those days.

Mycroft had remained a mystery to me throughout our interview, but Moriarty announced himself immediately. He dressed himself as expensively as Mycroft, but his clothes didn't quite fit, and he wasn't quite comfortable in them. He kept fidgeting and felt he had to announce "Westwood!" to impress us.

We weren't impressed.

I was busy thinking of other things at the moment, but later it occurred to me how pathetic this was. Moriarty was like a child dressing himself up in his father's clothes and then trying to impress his friends. Didn't he realize that people who were really used to fine things didn't feel the need to point them out? Sherlock and Mycroft dressed as well as any men I've ever met (I'd never say this to his face, but Mycroft is a bit foppish about it. So is Sherlock, but I've never had any trouble saying things to his face) but they never once brought it up. It would surprise them to hear it could be brought up. They dressed that way simply because they thought it was how one dressed.

Fine clothing was normal for Holmes, but Moriarty bragged and preened. He was like a man who met the queen and tried to impress her by putting on what he believed to be an educated accent—still dropping his Hs but inserting others where they shouldn't be to make up for it, and thereby making a far greater fool of himself than ever his native accent would have.

Really, that's what Moriarty was, through and through: a poor attempt to mimic the Holmeses. Moriarty announced his snipers. He showed us explosives. He rhapsodized about his power. He demonstrated the limits of his abilities, and so sapped our fear. He capered about like a clown and then screamed at Sherlock to dance for him. He tried to up the Holmeses' flair for the dramatic by becoming melodramatic.

And don't even get me started on those devastatingly idiotic nicknames.

Moriarty tried and tried and tried to be like the Holmes, and the more he tried, the more pathetic he became. He didn't understand that Mycroft and Sherlock don't have to try. They simply are.

As a villain, Moriarty was a disaster.