Are You There, Moriarty

Are You There, Moriarty? is a parlour game played by the Cope family during Dexter Mayhew’s visit, and it becomes an impromptu trial of whether their unwelcome-seeming guest can take a joke—or a blow—without losing his poise. The game’s orderly rules, blindfolds and rolled newspaper turn the family living room into a miniature arena. For Dexter, who already feels pressed to prove himself a winner among the self-sufficient Copes, the contest makes social unease physical: he must try to dodge an unseen opponent while everyone else watches.

Introduction and Domestic Setting

The game is proposed by Murray after Dexter enters the living room, where the family’s conversation has fallen into a hush. The room’s carefully cultivated country-house atmosphere—low floral sofas, a coffee table displaying Country Life, Private Eye and the Economist—makes the sudden announcement feel like another display of a household with its own established customs. The family approves the suggestion, including Sylvie Mayhew, while Dexter has to ask what the game is. Their shared familiarity marks him as an outsider before anyone puts a blindfold on him.

Helen, more animated than she has been all evening, presents the game as a long-standing family amusement. Sam starts preparing a copy of the Daily Telegraph, rolling it into a stiff rod; Murray searches the antique writing table for sellotape and passes it to him. These domestic objects are repurposed as equipment. The game does not require a formal playing space or special gear: the family makes its instrument from a newspaper and stages the contest on the faded rug in the middle of the room. Its home-made quality helps keep the violence within the frame of a joke, even as the blows leave Dexter stung and humiliated.

Rules and Play

The participants sit opposite one another, both blindfolded. The player holding the rolled newspaper calls, “Are you there, Moriarty?” The other must contort or duck, then answer “Yes!” or “Here!” The caller listens for the voice and tries to strike its source with the newspaper baton. Each player has three attempts. A player who misses all three stays in place to be hit by the next contestant; a successful strike allows the striker to choose the next opponent. The game therefore combines a test of evasion with a test of aim, and its rules make a miss consequential rather than merely embarrassing.

The repeated call is both practical and theatrical. It asks the blindfolded player to reveal a location by answering, then turns that answer into a clue for the person trying to hit them. Dexter responds “Here,” making himself momentarily findable even as he leans away from the first blow. The game’s title thus names the exchange that drives the action: a question, an answer, and an attempt to convert sound into a strike. The family’s description of it as a Victorian parlour game sits comically beside Murray’s invitation to try some “Extreme Sports.” The contrast captures the game’s particular mixture of genteel household ritual and mock combat.

Dexter’s Trial and the Reversal

The family decides that Sam will play Dexter and that Sam will have the baton. Sylvie leads Dexter onto the rug and ties a large white napkin over his eyes; he sees Sam kneeling opposite, smirking behind his own blindfold and tapping the baton against his palm. Dexter is suddenly intent on winning and showing the family what he is made of. Sylvie’s encouragement—“Show them how it’s done”—makes the contest feel less like neutral entertainment to him and more like an opportunity to establish himself in front of her family.

Dexter evades the opening attempt by leaning backwards, but Sam’s first blow catches him just below the eye. The Copes laugh and comment on his pain. Dexter rubs his cheek and laughs along, conceding the hit as if good humour could contain its sting of humiliation. Sam has, in effect, found an advantage: Dexter’s effort to appear unbothered gives way to the family’s laughter at his expense. The rules leave him exposed to further attempts, and the contest continues with the baton still presented as Sam’s.

At the third call, Dexter twists at the waist and ducks down and to the right. The resulting blow lands instead as an insolent poke in his shoulder, sending him sprawling backwards into the coffee table. Convinced that Sam must be cheating, Dexter tears off his blindfold to confront him. The reveal is that Sylvie, not Sam, has made the final strike; she is leaning over him and laughing, apparently unconcerned with what the laughter does to her face. The change of attacker matters more than a simple rule-bound loss. The family’s shared amusement has become a moment of intimacy between Sylvie and Dexter, but it also leaves him unable to control how the game’s apparent alliances work.

Narrative Function

The game concentrates the pressures already present in Dexter’s visit. He is not frightened of people in general, but the Cope family’s self-sufficiency and assurance make him defensive, and he is determined not to let them get to him. A contest in which he is blindfolded, struck and watched gives that anxiety a visible form. His first response is to laugh off the blow; his final response is to rip away the blindfold and demand to know who hit him. Between those gestures, the game exposes the effort behind his easy-going performance.

The episode also turns a familiar family pastime into a small change of footing. Sam begins as the designated opponent, with the newspaper baton in hand, while Sylvie positions Dexter and encourages him. By the final blow, Sylvie is the one standing over him, laughing. The rules promise a predictable contest between two blindfolded players, but the reveal unsettles that arrangement and redirects Dexter’s attention from the game to the person who struck him. Are You There, Moriarty? is therefore both a comic set piece and a social test: its call-and-answer ritual invites Dexter to take part, while its shifting agency makes clear that he has entered a family world whose rules and alliances he does not yet understand.