Sherlock Holmes--A Betrayal in Blood

by Mark A. Latham

  “One Detective Inspector Cotford is mentioned very briefly in the dossier, scribbled faintly in pencil and clumsily erased. It was a small matter to me to discover that he was formerly with B Division before serving for some short time in the Purfleet constabulary, which would almost certainly have brought him, a senior policeman, into contact with Professor Van Helsing and his merry band. I could find no further reference to Cotford, nor any police report originating from Purfleet, which is one of several notable omissions in the narrative. I now hope you can illuminate these matters, Inspector—a hope that I did not entertain when first you arrived at my door.”

  Bradstreet beamed as though Holmes had paid him a compliment, though I was fairly sure it had been a slight. I poured some tea and handed a cup to the grateful inspector as he relaxed and began his story.

  “Frank Cotford is an old friend, as I said, Mr Holmes, and a colleague of some long standing. We worked together in Whitechapel, cut our teeth on the worst vice and murder to be seen in this or any other city, before we both made our way out of that pit—me to Chelsea, and him to Purfleet. Over time we drifted apart; duty and locale have a way of doing that. The last time I saw him, he was in a bad way. He’d taken to drink, and was speaking in riddles about some ‘Dutch devil’ who had set himself in opposition to the law.”

  Holmes shot me a glance. “How long ago was this meeting?” he asked.

  “It must have been November last. Frank said he’d had a run-in with some gents, including the Dutchman, and… well, to tell the truth I couldn’t get much sense out of him. All I know is something happened—something to do with this ‘Dracula’—and it was the ruin of Frank Cotford. Twenty years on the force gone up in smoke.”

  “You must have seen him again, or else why seek my counsel?” Holmes said.

  “I saw him in the distance two weeks ago, though he was gone before I could speak to him—I admit I was a little afraid to approach him, his expression was so severe. I made a few enquiries as to why he looked so down at heel. The regulars in his local pub said that he rants and raves about vampires and crooks and devils, and swears they’ll come for him before long. I think the loss of his position has taken its toll on Frank’s mind, Mr Holmes, but even so—if I ever called myself his friend, I would be remiss in not making a few discreet enquiries on his behalf.”

  Holmes pressed his fingers together and stared straight ahead, thinking hard. Finally, he spoke. “Where is the former Inspector Cotford now?”

  “Back where he started,” Bradstreet said ruefully. “Whitechapel.”

  “Then that is where we shall begin. Drink your tea, Inspector.”

  “We’re going now?” I asked, giving voice to the inspector’s expression.

  “There is no time like the present, Watson. And on the way, I shall educate you in the discrepancies of the Dracula Papers. There is a mystery to be solved here, a very great mystery. More importantly, I believe I will soon have the opportunity to match with a truly worthy adversary. And so soon after the last one—such fortune should not favour a man twice in one lifetime.”

  “You are on your second lifetime,” I said.

  Holmes’s eyes lit up as he considered the jest approvingly, and at once his tiredness seemed to melt away. “How right you are, Watson,” he said. “How right you are.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  INSPECTOR COTFORD

  Bradstreet insisted on accompanying us to the home of his former friend, not only to make the necessary introductions, but also to offer some protection. Cotford had apparently been forced into early retirement on the grounds of deteriorating health, and his meagre police pension afforded him a flat on Wentworth Street, just a stone’s throw from some of the worst doss-houses and black thoroughfares that the East End had to offer.

  Even as our coach clattered along the cobbled roads, Holmes’s hawkish eyes darted about, taking in every detail of the locale. But it was not the squalling children in the gutters nor the gin-soaked sots sleeping upon heaps of rubbish that he was interested in.

  “Up ahead there, is that not Chicksand Street?” Holmes asked the inspector.

  “It is, sir. What of it?”

  “Chicksand Street is noted in the Dracula Papers as one of the Count’s lairs, discovered by one Jonathan Harker of Van Helsing’s infamous group. Strange that Inspector Cotford would retire to a residence just a few minutes’ stroll from that place, is it not?”

  “Curious, I’ll grant you,” said Bradstreet, as the police carriage came to a halt outside a squalid terrace, black from soot and filth. The smell of rotten vegetables, stale beer and things far worse drifted into the confines of the coach. “Cotford was always adamant that the whole Dracula affair had been his ruin, and seemed somewhat fearful of all involved; perhaps he dwells here out of necessity. It cannot be good for his state of mind, that being the case.”

  Holmes was first to step out of the carriage, and bade the inspector make haste to the door. I was still unclear on the exact details of the papers my friend had read, and knew I would have to digest them soon if I were to keep up with Holmes. I could tell from the spring in his step and that familiar gleam in his eye that he had the scent of villainy, and would stop at nothing until the wrongdoer was brought to justice.

  Bradstreet rapped hard on the front door of the downstairs flat, the sound almost masked by the infernal clattering and bumping of a dray passing close by.

  We waited a moment on the doorstep before Bradstreet rapped again. This time, a growling expletive was fired from somewhere behind the door, instructing us in no uncertain terms to make ourselves scarce. Holmes raised an eyebrow and looked at Bradstreet. The inspector grimaced, before leaning into the peeling paintwork and shouting in his bullish fashion, “Frank? It’s Roger. I’m here on official business. Better open up.”

  Seconds later, the door was yanked open with such force that it cracked upon the hallway wall. Before us stood a tall, grey-haired man, with narrow flinty eyes beneath dark brows, tanned-leather skin, and a bushy moustache. He looked more like a rangy cowboy from the cover of an American dime novel than a policeman of Whitechapel, former or otherwise.

  “I’ve got no official business to answer, Roger Bradstreet,” the man growled. His fists were clenched, and he rocked unsteadily like he was on the deck of a ship. A waft of gin-breath emanated from him, though it was barely past nine in the morning.

  From the look on Bradstreet’s face—and his uncharacteristic loss for words—I guessed he had not expected his old friend to look in quite such a state, nor to face him so belligerently. It was Sherlock Holmes, not Inspector Bradstreet, who spoke up.

  “Detective Inspector Cotford, is it not? Sherlock Holmes at your service. I have never had the pleasure, though I have heard nothing but good about your police work.”

  Cotford’s face crumpled into a frown. “Sherlock Holmes, is it? The great detective himself, risen from the grave and come to my door, perhaps to investigate the sorry affair of my missing fortunes. Take a good look, sir, and then take your leave, for there is naught you can do for me now.”

  “On the contrary, Inspector,” said Holmes, continuing to use the defunct title. “Your good friend Bradstreet here has employed me to take up your case; to assist you where Scotland Yard cannot, or will not. I am no martinet, I am not bound by legal duty, by political machination, or by petty jurisdiction. If there is a case to answer, I am apt to discover the culprit. And there is at least one culprit who has thus far evaded your long arm, is there not? You know of whom I speak.”

  “The Dutchman,” Cotford muttered, with venom.

  Holmes nodded.

  “You’d best come in, Mr Holmes.”

  * * *

  “So y’see, it has to be Van Helsing. That devil pursued the Count halfway across the world, and murdered him in cold blood.” Cotford offered around a tarnished hip flask for the third time, and we all politely declined again.

  Cotford’s flat was something of a hovel, but for his books
helves, which were filled with neatly ordered volumes, mostly journals. They looked singularly out of place; it was easy to forget that Cotford had once been a respectable man of the law.

  “Why would he do such a thing?” Holmes asked. His eyes were closed, his fingers pressed together, his lips pursed as he concentrated on every word of Cotford’s slurred testimony.

  “How should I know? But you only have to look at him to know his sort. A schemer.”

  “So you have no evidence to support your suspicions?”

  Cotford made a sound that was half belch, half snarl. “Confiscated, the lot of it. Van Helsing made a complaint to the powers that be. Someone bent the ear of the assistant commissioner; the assistant commissioner slapped me down. That’s how it works, Mr Holmes. Politics, as you said. They took all me files and handed them over to that little Dutch devil, and I bet he burned the lot. ’Cept…” he stopped abruptly.

  “Except for what, Inspector Cotford?” Holmes said, opening his eyes and fixing the man with an expression of intense scrutiny.

  “The journals,” Cotford replied, with some reluctance. He waved his flask at the bookshelf. “I write everything down, always have. I copied every letter, every note, plus my own observations, o’ course.”

  “You mean to say that those journals contain copies of the entire Dracula Papers?” I interjected.

  “All that I saw, or held in my own two hands, at least. And s’far as I know, some of the things I copied down, and some o’ the statements I took, never did make it before the courts.”

  “Such as?” Holmes asked, a hard edge entering his tone.

  “I’ll show you,” Cotford said with an air of defiance, and staggered to his shelves to fetch a slender volume. He flipped through the pages before handing the open book to Holmes. “Record of an exchange of letters between one Miss Wilhelmina Murray—later Mrs Harker—and Miss Kate Reed, a schoolmistress at the Blackall School for Girls, Exeter. The letters were written between 23 and 26 May last year, 1893, while Mr Jonathan Harker was in Transylvania. You’ll remember his own account in the Dracula Papers tells us he was being held prisoner by the Count at the time.”

  “You are a credit to your profession, Inspector,” said Holmes. “The contents of the letters are not here noted. You have them?”

  “I do not.”

  “But you know their contents?”

  “I do not.”

  “Then what leads you to suspect anything is untoward?”

  “I am a thorough man, Mr Holmes. I see something of that same thoroughness in you.” (I tried to hide my smirk almost as hard as Holmes tried to hide his annoyance at the comparison.) Cotford went on, “I spoke to Miss Reed, and though she would tell me nothing, there was something in her manner that put the bit between my teeth. She was hiding something, and it was to do with gossip regarding Miss Murray and Miss Lucy Westenra.”

  Holmes’s interest visibly piqued again. “Miss Reed knew the late Miss Westenra, of Hillingham?”

  “They were all three of them at school together. And there was something more—I would stake my claim on it that Miss Reed was afraid of Miss Murray.”

  “This is your policeman’s intuition?”

  “You could call it that.”

  “But you have no evidence. Indeed, you never saw these letters at all.”

  “No, but I did check with the local post office. It is a small enterprise and the postmaster’s wife there knows every coming and goin’. Said she’d known Miss Reed and Miss Murray since they was nippers. She confirmed that the letters were sent, and recalls that it was the last time the three girls exchanged letters at that post office, s’far as she knows, presumably on account of Miss Westenra’s untimely demise.”

  “A garrulous soul is a true virtue in detective work, Inspector.”

  “She confirmed that, beyond the letters to Miss Reed, Miss Murray had sent only one other letter that week of the 23 May—to Miss Lucy Westenra.” Cotford looked proud of himself.

  “You already told us that,” I said, now thinking that the man was merely a delusional drunk, and that perhaps we should not be humouring him so.

  “No, Watson!” exclaimed Holmes, excitedly. “The inspector has answered a question that I had not yet got around to asking.”

  I exchanged a glance with Bradstreet, who shrugged.

  “Why did Miss Mina Murray,” Cotford said, with some swagger, “not write a letter to her fiancé, all the way in Transylvania. We have seen the journal transcripts. We know she was worried about him. We know she wrote to Miss Lucy about him. But she never tried to reach him directly.”

  “Perhaps she did not have the address of this remote Transylvanian castle,” I said with a frown.

  “But Mr Harker’s firm surely had it, and they could have provided it,” Cotford retorted. “If she was so concerned, she certainly would have tried. Hardly seems like the actions of a doting sweetheart, now does it? S’why the postmaster’s wife remembered it so clear—said she asked Miss Murray about her gentleman, and received short shrift in reply.”

  “And so what is your conclusion, Inspector Cotford, based on these findings?” Holmes asked.

  “Not just based on these findings, Mr Holmes. Based on many more like ’em.” He gesticulated toward the shelves again. “And my conclusion is that we have a conspiracy, the product of which was several murders.”

  “You believe Lucy Westenra was killed by someone other than Count Dracula?”

  “I certainly do.”

  “Mina Murray?”

  “No, although I think she knows more than she’s telling. I think the Dutch professor did for the girl, and the Harker woman, her simple-minded husband, and that Arthur Holmwood covered up the mess.”

  At that name, Inspector Bradstreet sucked air through his teeth. Holmes’s lip twitched upwards, on the cusp of a knowing smile. I could not see any good coming of throwing around such accusations.

  Sherlock Holmes now addressed Cotford firmly. “You are bold to implicate Lord Godalming in this matter. I ask again for your evidence, or is this also intuition?”

  “And again I say everything I have is in these books. If you have read the Dracula Papers, then you should surely be able to work it out, ‘detective’.”

  Holmes scowled.

  Cotford took no notice, and went on, “A fine matter indeed when a peer of the realm, within days of inheriting his father’s estate due to the sudden death of the old man, finds himself without his betrothed and his mother-in-law soon after. And a finer matter, too, when said peer of the realm inherits the Westenra estate, due to a most unusual and ill-advised clause in the elder Mrs Westenra’s will. I say Holmwood had motive and means, Mr Holmes. What say you?”

  “You mentioned conspiracy, Mr Cotford,” said Holmes. “A serious charge in itself.”

  “If you truly mean to take on this case, Mr Holmes, then you’ll know what I speak of soon enough. The famous vampire hunters are thick as thieves, and no mistake.”

  “And what of their illustrious mentor, the good professor?”

  Cotford spat. “There’s nothin’ good about him. Thinks himself the lord o’ Carfax now. Another rum deal, of which the law cannot make head nor tail. He has inherited the Count’s newly acquired property, where he lives like a king. So I’m told.”

  “You have not been tempted to see for yourself?”

  “I have not.” It was plain from Cotford’s demeanour, even to me, that he was lying. “I—”

  “You cannot, can you, Frank?” interrupted Bradstreet. He turned to us to explain. “It was a condition of Frank’s honourable acquittal from his duties that he would leave Van Helsing well alone, on pain of arrest. No charges have ever been brought against the professor, and it seems, after the court ruling, that none ever shall.”

  “And that’s final, is it, Roger?” Cotford grumbled.

  Holmes stood quite abruptly and said, “Mr Cotford, may we borrow your journals, so that we might make a thorough comparison between the
m and the official papers?”

  “You may not, sir.”

  “Oh?”

  “I don’t know you. I will not entrust such a body of work to a stranger, even one so famous.”

  “Then how about me, Frank?” Inspector Bradstreet asked.

  “Nor you neither, Roger Bradstreet. ’Specially not you. It was the law that brought me low; the law that ignored my testimony and handed what evidence I had to that Dutch devil.”

  “But what use are they to you now?”

  “More than you could know, but that is my own business.”

  I interjected, seeing an opportunity. “Mr Cotford, we have no desire to bring more police into what is now a private matter. But your cooperation would be appreciated. Otherwise, perhaps the police could be informed of your continuing investigation. You have visited the property on Chicksand Street, have you not?” It was speculation on my part, but from Cotford’s reaction I saw that I had guessed correctly. From the look on Holmes’s face I also saw that I had acted out of turn.

  “You would dragoon me, sir, in my own home?” Cotford growled, drawing himself to his full height and balling his large fists. “All of you will kindly leave this instant. I withdraw my ’ospitality.”

  “Frank, out of friendship—” Bradstreet started.

  “Out!” shouted Cotford. “If you want friendship, you come for a drink down the Ten Bells—you don’t come ’ere with no detectives poking into my business and issuing threats. Out!”

  * * *

  “I’m sorry, Holmes,” I said, as the police carriage trundled away from those squalid environs and bumped along Whitechapel High Street. “I rather put my foot in it.”

  “Yes, Watson, you did,” Holmes remarked. “But it is not to be helped. Besides, it was not a total loss.” He pulled a notebook from his jacket pocket.

  “You stole a journal!” said Bradstreet.

  “Borrowed, Inspector, borrowed. This is the book that Mr Cotford selected as a prime example of discrepancies in the Dracula Papers. It stands to reason, as it was the first volume he searched for, that it is the most important. When his disposition towards us turned sour, I knew I could not leave without it. When we are done, I shall of course place this book in your hands, Inspector, and you may return it to your former colleague as you wish.”