So: does Moriarty exist, or not? Well no, not really, and not just in the literal sense of being a fictional character. He’s hardly even that. We have no evidence beyond Sherlock Holmes’s word, and if you look at Holmes’s behaviour in ‘The Final Problem’ you can see an almost classic case of paranoia — brought on, no doubt, by a heavy cocaine binge. Michael Dibdin, in his The Last Sherlock Holmes Story, therefore proposes that Holmes and Moriarty are the same person, which does redeem Holmes’s otherwise hasty and implausible dispatch by his creator over the Reichenbach Falls.
Anyway, he appears here, in the same year (as far as I can tell) as the events described in The Final Problem; but the meeting is with Dr Watson, so we know it must be true. Or ‘true’. Kidnapped by one of Moriarty’s minions, Watson is brought face to face with the Napoleon of Crime:
‘I have often wanted to meet you, Dr Watson,’ my host began.
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