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My loathing for the blackmailer Charles Augustus Milverton does not cease though he has been dead for over ten years.
Many might think this anger of mine excessive attention paid to the corpse of a vile parasite who fed, jovial and conscienceless as a grinning hyaena, on the most vulnerable in our society – men and especially women of good name, respectable officers whose private amours were of no-one's concern and did not affect their sterling service, human beings who committed the sin of momentary romantic indiscretion combined with a misguided trust in treacherous servants.
I had never seen nor confronted Professor Moriarty, so Milverton was my first true glimpse into the face of pure evil. Those glass-like eyes, that smile, the light that flashed off his gold-rimmed spectacles, haunt me still.
(I do not regret my foray into burglary and property damage with Holmes; that fire, fed by Milverton's ill-gotten correspondence, saved the reputations of hundreds.)
His murder should have ended the business. But to my horror I discovered his grip still upon my mind.
For soon afterward, I opened my copy of Mr. Dickens' Pickwick Papers – and the illustration of the benevolent and bespectacled Mr. Pickwick, whose likeness to the monstrous Milverton I'd noted when I first saw the man, made me sick, and I closed forever my favourite book.