Well Sir Arthur Conan Doyle may not have spelled out what happened behind closed doors on Baker Street, but Andrew Scott, who plays James "Jim" Moriarty on the BBC drama Sherlock, has solved the mystery of his sexual orientation by coming out to The Independent, on Friday.

Scott, 37, told the paper:

Mercifully, these days people don't see being gay as a character flaw. But nor is it a virtue, like kindness. Or a talent, like playing the banjo. It's just a fact. Of course, it's part of my make-up, but I don't want to trade on it. I am a private person; I think that's important if you're an actor.

But there's a difference between privacy and secrecy, and I'm not a secretive person. Really I just want to get on with my job, which is to pretend to be lots of different people. Simple as that.

While it looked like Holmes dispatched Moriarty in the last season of Sherlock, don't count out dastardly villain out yet—he's something of a fan favorite.

“Moriarty came as a real surprise to people," says Scott. “He doesn't have to do the conventional villain thing. He is witty, and people like that. He is also a proper match for Sherlock. He's very mercurial, too... He changes all the time.”

Even if we've seen the last of Scott on Sherlock, his dance card is hardly empty:  He's about to star as KGB spy Viktor Koslov in the BBC2 Cold War drama Legacy, airing November 28.

Apparently his Russian accent is top-notch. He tells the Independent:

There isn't a huge amount of footage of Russians speaking English as a second language, so I started looking at Vladimir Putin videos on YouTube. But then Putin introduced anti-gay legislation this summer – so, being a gay person, I switched to Rudolf Nureyev videos instead. It was another Nureyev defection of sorts!

Oh, we're liking Andrew Scott more and more.