Professor Moriarty Wants to Retire.

About a month had passed since Moriarty began staying with the Whateley family.

Contrary to Moriarty’s initial concerns, nothing particularly problematic had occurred regarding his safety during this time.

He had worried about facing severe consequences from the parents of the village children he had confronted, but since that day, the children had stopped bullying Lavinia.

When Lavinia used to go out alone, she could only suffer the bullying without much resistance, but now she had a bodyguard who instilled fear in the children always accompanying her.

‘If this happens again… you know what comes next without me having to say it.’ The children succumbed to Moriarty’s threat. Thanks to this, Lavinia could enjoy peaceful night outings.

Even Lavinia Whateley’s father, who Moriarty was certain would cause some conflict, didn’t particularly harm the guest his daughter had brought in.

Lavinia thought this was because her father hadn’t discovered Moriarty’s existence, but from Moriarty’s perspective, always hiding at Lavinia’s guidance, Lavinia’s father had already noticed Moriarty’s presence long ago.

Whenever Moriarty hid somewhere, that man’s gaze would accurately turn towards his hiding place. Lavinia hadn’t noticed, but Moriarty had already made eye contact with him several times.

It was surprising that nothing had happened despite this. Moriarty thought there must certainly be some scheme at play.

Anyway, thanks to Lavinia’s active protection and her father’s neglect, Moriarty had been able to leisurely investigate the village of Dunwich and the Whateley family for a month.

“What are you writing?”

“Investigation records… Think of it as a kind of diary.”

First of all, Dunwich, which appeared on the surface to be a peaceful mountain village, had serious problems like any closed society.

“Defor…mities…”

The first thing that caught his eye was the deformed appearance of the residents.

Many of the residents he saw had uniformly ugly, distorted appearances or disabilities. Flat noses, protruding jaws.

There was a resident who mumbled certain words repeatedly in a slurred speech while throwing stones by the stream at night and another who was mentally normal but suffered from a disease where their blood wouldn’t clot.

Moriarty judged all these to be genetic diseases and symptoms caused by inbreeding, just like Innsmouth.

Unlike there however, he was confident that this was simply an inbreeding problem rather than the influence of strange creatures like the Deep Ones because their symptoms varied from person to person.

The appearance of Innsmouth’s residents, except for the old drunkard Zadok Allen, was similar. This was probably because Deep One blood had mixed in.

“What are Deep Ones?”

“They’re a thing. Think of them as fish people.”

But among Dunwich’s residents, while some cases had similar characteristics, there were just as many cases where symptoms didn’t overlap. Even with the same symptoms, there were often differences between individuals.

In Moriarty’s view, this was a typical side effect of inbreeding.

Of course, like Innsmouth, he couldn’t be absolutely certain that they weren’t influenced by something else.

“Miss Whateley, could you step away for a moment? I’d like to concentrate on writing.”

“Oh, w-were you very uncomfortable…?”

“It’s not that I’m uncomfortable. It’s just that… I’m originally a gloomy person who likes to keep secrets to myself.”

Right away, there were more than one or two suspicious points about this Whateley family. Moriarty carefully organized the information he had gathered by investigating inside and outside the mansion and asking residents about the Whateley family.

What the residents said about the Whateley family was mostly similar. Terrible screams or strange noises are heard every night. They used to be normal but became strange after becoming obsessed with the occult.

There were eyewitness accounts of family members fleeing with terrified faces in the middle of the night and, conversely, accounts of people entering the Whateley house and never coming out again.

To summarize, the Whateley family, once a relatively prestigious family in Dunwich, suddenly became obsessed with the occult at some point, went mad, and turned into a den of cannibalism.

“…Is it a ghost story?”

If this were just a simple ghost story, it could be called an exemplary case.

“Pardon?”

“It’s nothing.”

The problem was that looking at the occult evidence found while investigating the mansion, it didn’t seem to be just a baseless rumor.

To exaggerate a bit, the Whateley mansion felt like a lump of occult as if a wealthy person who loved the occult had personally decorated it from top to bottom.

Traces of sorcery, grimoires, strange attire, and unknown writings on walls here and there.

Moriarty described the Whateley house as a den where even a person of sound mind and body might have their spirit completely drained after living there for a few months.

Anyway, the important thing was that he was now in the middle of that den.

It might be the right decision to get out right now, but that was difficult for Moriarty, who had nothing.

At least while staying with the Whateley family, he could meet his basic needs. The food, though, was a problem.

Unlike the old fisherman in Innsmouth, who drugged the food and revealed his true colors, Lavinia consistently treated Moriarty kindly. She always ate the food first to reassure him when he suspected it might be poisoned, showing a dedicated attitude.

BANG—!!

“…!! Q-Quickly, hide…!!”

Whenever her father came up from the basement, Lavinia always hid Moriarty.

Such behavior showed Moriarty that while Lavinia feared her father, she had the will to protect Moriarty from him.

“H-Hello, Father….”

“…..”

The timing of Lavinia’s father coming up from the basement was irregular.

He normally stayed in the basement for at least two days, but sometimes he came out before that and sometimes after a week.

Thanks to him always opening the door with a bang, there were no awkward encounters while outside, but did that have any meaning at a point where they were already aware of each other’s existence?

“Again… again?”

Every time he came up to the ground floor, Lavinia’s father always showed the same behavior pattern.

Briefly looking at where Moriarty was hiding, then taking Lavinia to the basement.

What was the reason for not uttering a single word during this process? All Moriarty could know was that he wasn’t mute.

Even that he wouldn’t have known without Lavinia’s testimony.

As an outsider, Moriarty couldn’t know what he was making his daughter do in the basement.

Judging from Lavinia’s always unpleasant expression when she came up alone after usually three or four hours, he could guess that it wasn’t beneficial for her.

As usual, the man went down to the basement, grasping Lavinia’s arm, who was trembling as if afraid of going to the basement.

“……”

What on earth was happening in that basement? What was Lavinia Whateley enduring down there?

Moriarty, born with the temperament of a scholar and researcher before becoming a villain, couldn’t contain his curiosity. Until now, he hadn’t investigated for fear of unnecessarily causing trouble.

“….?”

As he waited again for Lavinia and her father to enter the basement, Moriarty suddenly felt something strange and went outside.

Lavinia’s father always strongly closed and locked the door every time he went down to the basement to prevent others from entering.

But this time, the door closing wasn’t heard even after a long time. It was well past the time they should have entered if they had gone to the basement.

What Moriarty’s eyes caught as he cautiously came out was an unclosed door.

The door leading to the basement of the Whateley house was not closed. It was not locked.

He looked around in case they hadn’t gone to the basement but somewhere else, but there wasn’t even a trace, let alone any sign of people.

A wide-open door beyond which endless stairs could be seen.

In fact, if he wanted to maintain his immediate safety, he should not have paid attention to the internal affairs of the Whateley house.

But Moriarty thought that danger could strike at any time, even if he was safe for now since the mansion’s owner had already discovered him.

Rather than being exposed to danger without knowing anything, it’s a hundred times better to directly face the danger and overcome it.

If the story had flowed normally, it would have been because of this belief that Professor Moriarty lost his life at Reichenbach Falls, but who knows?

He is different from ordinary people. The story’s author made James Moriarty a special human being different from ordinary criminals.

That personality would be an obstacle for him, who seeks to find a fate other than that of a villain after escaping from the author’s hand.

Who knows? Thanks to that personality, he might be able to turn his back on the fate of a villain he so desperately wanted to avoid.

Whether he would turn his back on it, alive or dead, was unknown.

Anyway, Moriarty’s footsteps headed towards the basement.