Sherlock Holmes--A Betrayal in Blood

by Mark A. Latham

Inspector Bradstreet nodded, and unfolded his arms. “Well, Holmes, despite there being a great deal of conjecture in your theory, it is certainly a more plausible story than the alternative.”

  “Such a commendation from a man of the Yard is praise indeed,” Holmes said, with a thin smile.

  “What would possess Miss Kidd to embark upon such a terrible endeavour?” I asked.

  “Money. More than anything,” Holmes said with a wave of his hand. “Even now, I suppose Van Helsing pays her a handsome stipend, whilst draining her husband’s estate. If he does not pay her, he surely threatens her. Of course, for an ambitious young actress, the social status alone would be worth the ignominy of becoming Van Helsing’s puppet. She is seen on occasion at the best society balls, is she not? Even without her husband?”

  “I believe so.”

  “There you have it. Now, if I may continue?”

  “Of course.”

  “Let us look to Van Helsing, for it was he that claimed the bloofer lady was Lucy Westenra, and secured witnesses to verify her identity—first showing her to Dr Seward, alone, and then later to Seward, Morris and Lord Godalming together, the last of whom struck the stake through the heart of his deceased love, and has paid for that act with his sanity since.

  “When Lucy Westenra was first interred, Van Helsing placed upon her lips a crucifix. He gave no explanation for this wholly useless act, though Dr Seward believed it was to prevent Lucy from rising to become Un-Dead. Later, the crucifix was revealed to be in Van Helsing’s possession once again. He claimed it was stolen by a woman—who goes unnamed—and that he recovered it. This incident spurred Van Helsing to return to the cemetery with Seward to see if Lucy had indeed become a vampire.”

  “All well and good,” Bradstreet said.

  “Not in the slightest, Inspector! Do you not see? It is highly unlikely that a low working woman would enter a tomb, and in later descriptions of Lucy’s resting place there is no mention of any other thefts, despite the funerary trappings of Miss Westenra being somewhat opulent. The crucifix was retrieved by Van Helsing himself when he returned to the tomb to tamper with the body, and the story of the theft was used to cover this unsavoury fact and give a reason for Seward to accompany him to the cemetery to witness the vampire Lucy walking abroad.”

  “A difficult task for one old man acting alone,” Bradstreet said.

  “If he was acting alone, that is true enough. But Van Helsing had the key to the tomb, supposedly because he planned to give it to Arthur Holmwood later. This would have made his progress much simpler.”

  The Inspector frowned. “If he had a key all along, then you’re right—his story about the robber-woman is unbelievable. Why, it is all smoke and mirrors, Mr Holmes. You are saying that Van Helsing staged a performance in order to bring the other men into his confidence.”

  “There you have it, Inspector. Seward was already a sycophant when it came to Van Helsing, and would believe anything the professor told him. But Arthur Holmwood and Quincey P. Morris? No, they had to see the Un-Dead with their own eyes to believe it, and with this great illusion, playing upon the hearts of men who loved Lucy Westenra, Van Helsing bought himself a confederacy of useful idiots, who would die for whatever cause the professor set them upon.”

  “And what exactly was his cause?” I asked.

  “To hound Count Dracula unto death,” Holmes replied. “I believe Van Helsing had some great reason for doing so, and was unlikely to have been working entirely on his own initiative—I rather suspect we are stumbling headlong into a greater plot of intrigue. However, the elaborate manner of Dracula’s demise, and the subsequent demonising of the man… that suggests a more personal vendetta.”

  “Such as what?”

  “That, my dear Watson, remains to be seen. Suffice it to say for now that I have my theories. One thing at a time, however. Shall we see how the great trick of bringing Lucy Westenra back to life was done?”

  We came at last to the Westenra vault. The gravestones and undergrowth were mere black smudges in the quickly dropping fog, and Holmes led us about the immediate surrounds of the tomb as he painted a picture of events of the previous September.

  “The first of our suspects to see the bloofer lady was Jack Seward. Let us assume, just for a moment, that he had no idea of what he was about to see—he was tricked by Van Helsing, quite masterfully.

  “Having convinced Seward that Lucy’s immortal soul was in danger, Van Helsing led the doctor down here in the middle of the night, and entered her tomb, just as we have done. He reminded Seward of his love for the girl, heightening his suggestibility to fever-pitch. By the time the professor opened the coffin, Seward was a bag of nerves. You may not recall it, but Seward was wary of any noxious gases emitting from the coffin as the seals were broken and the lid thrown back; Van Helsing did not flinch. Seward puts this down to the professor’s absolute certainty that Lucy was walking abroad as one of the Un-Dead. I think the professor knew the coffin would be empty for a different reason.”

  “He had already moved the body,” I said.

  Holmes nodded. “Once Seward had seen the empty coffin for himself, Van Helsing led him outside to show him the Un-Dead in action. This cemetery is vast, and yet Van Helsing directed Seward to one spot in particular, whilst he himself stood elsewhere, and between them they happened to sight ‘Lucy’ walking through the graveyard. Fortunate timing indeed. From the very spot that Seward stood—a spot that Van Helsing had directed him to, remember—he allegedly saw Lucy vanish through the locked door of the tomb—a feat that she would repeat in identical circumstances later, when Morris and Holmwood were also present. Of course, this is a simple trick. Van Helsing was careful to position his witnesses exactly where required so that a fractional opening of the door would not be noticed. He was also careful to position himself in their eye line, to partially block their view. Van Helsing had a key, and it is therefore safe to assume that Miss Kidd had a copy. She is a slight woman, and could slip through the door stealthily enough.”

  “And what then?” Bradstreet asked. “Did not Van Helsing, and several witnesses, follow her into the tomb? How did the woman escape?”

  “They did not follow her, Inspector, that’s just it. Twice was this trick repeated, and on each occasion Van Helsing stepped first to the door of the tomb, ‘sealed’ it with crumbled communion wafers, and persuaded all present—first Seward alone and then Holmwood and Morris—that they should leave the scene and return later. The alleged vampire was powerless to act against Van Helsing on each occasion, so why not simply destroy her on that second occasion? The other men present, although appalled, were ready to do so.

  “I put it to you that, on the first occasion when Van Helsing brought Seward to the tomb, he had simply moved the body, so that Dr Seward would find an empty coffin. We already know from the papers that Van Helsing had spent much of the preceding day at the cemetery ‘on watch’; thus he had ample time to perform the act, and indeed to learn the comings and goings of the watchman. After seeing the coffin empty, Van Helsing led his shocked guests outside, where they saw Miss Kidd appear as I have described. The men all then fled the scene. When they next returned, they found a body in the coffin, looking strangely alive and with the teeth of a vampire—again, Van Helsing had sufficient time to tamper with the body, and I expect Miss Kidd’s expertise in theatrical make-up came into play.”

  “Would Lady Godalming—I mean, Miss Kidd—do such a gruesome thing?” I asked, recalling the slip of a young woman I had met only recently.

  “I imagine the rewards for her services would have been ample, Watson. An actress, particularly one whose star has faded quickly, does not have the best of prospects, after all.

  “Now, gentlemen, there is something that perturbs me about the events of those fateful nights—even more so than all of these other points. On each of those two occasions, a child was recovered. A victim of the bloofer lady. And on both occasions, Van Helsing persuaded the other men to leave the chil
d on Hampstead Heath, where a policeman might walk by and find him. A child supposedly weak from loss of blood, disorientated, and perhaps—by the professor’s own shaky logic—at risk of becoming a vampire themselves. Tell me, Inspector, what would you say to that, had you heard it at the time?”

  “I… I would have been outraged, Mr Holmes, to tell the truth. It seems a callous act, for police patrols are not frequent. If the child was unconscious, and an officer failed to notice it, then what else may have befallen the unfortunate soul? If the men had nothing to hide, then they should also have nothing to fear from taking the child to the nearest police station.”

  “Aha! So you see they did have something to hide. Many things, in fact. Van Helsing would undoubtedly argue that drawing attention to his plans would jeopardise the destruction of the vampire Lucy, for the authorities would have put a watch on the tomb, and arrest anyone entering or leaving it. But surely a little white lie to the police would have served just as well? A midnight stroll across the heath perhaps? The word of Lord Godalming to assuage the questions of the constabulary. Or they could simply have deposited the child on the steps of the police station incognito, and been away in secret. No, leaving the child as they did suggests callousness indeed, and that detail alone would make me question the intentions of such men.

  “Now, all that remains is to see if we can find some physical evidence to support these hypotheses, or else we have nothing more concrete than the Dracula Papers themselves. Inspector, if you would be so kind, it is time to see in what state the body has been left.”

  Bradstreet and I exchanged nervous glances; disturbing the dead was not a cheerful prospect at the best of times. Now, however, I could not help but wonder what the consequences might be if Holmes was wrong. What if some satanic, Un-Dead really had lain in the tomb beneath us, and we were about to disturb it again?

  When finally the door creaked open, Holmes struck up a lantern and led the way inside. He stopped just inside the door, at the top of a flight of steps, and illuminated the lock. “As Seward kindly observed for us in his journal, there is the falling lock, allowing the door to be opened from the inside if necessary. An interesting feature, don’t you think? One I suspect Van Helsing stipulated—he was, after all, present during the funeral arrangements, and doubtless had a hand in them knowing he would have to enter the tomb to cut off the head of the corpse.”

  The tomb itself was not large—three steps dropped to a simple, rough chamber, with only enough room for perhaps six people to gather around the coffin, which sat in the centre of the space upon a carved plinth. Dead flowers hung in great clumps all around us. Upon the lid of the coffin sat a bunch of dry garlic flowers and a handful of holy wafers. I shuddered at the thought of the evil that those items were supposed to hold back.

  Holmes set the lantern into a small niche in the brickwork and set about brushing aside the flowers and wafers.

  “Holmes,” I said, despite myself. My friend paused only to look up and smirk at me incredulously.

  “Really, Watson. Do you suppose a vampire will burst forth from the coffin? Even if Lucy Westenra was one of the living dead, she is supposed to be at rest now, her head struck from her body.”

  Holmes felt about the lid of the coffin, and eventually his fingers found purchase. The coffin lid wobbled slightly as he pulled at it.

  “Excellent,” Holmes said, “the seal was not restored after Van Helsing’s last foray down here. But the lid is heavy—won’t one of you help me?”

  Bradstreet made no effort to move, and I saw him swallow hard. I stepped forth and took hold of the other end of the lid.

  “Wait, Holmes,” I said. “What are we about to find?”

  “That’s the beauty of it, Watson,” he replied with facetious cheerfulness. “For once I have absolutely no idea.”

  I braced myself for a horrible sight, and heaved away at the lid of the coffin with Holmes. I tried not to look inside the casket as we lowered the lid to the ground. The underlying, sickly sweet smell of the undertaker’s unguents could not mask the noxious fume of decomposition, aided as it was by the stale air that had penetrated the coffin’s broken seal.

  “Well, I half expected it to be empty,” Holmes said, nonchalant in the face of the grotesque.

  I first looked across at Bradstreet, whose face had turned so pale that it was luminous in the lantern-light. I followed the inspector’s gaze to the casket, and to the corpse within.

  The body itself, that of a young woman, was clothed in white funerary robes. A tangle of golden hair framed a skull-like face, the flesh grey and shrunken. The head sat a couple of inches from the body, and at the neck was a terrible black wound. We could just see the very top of the stake that, as the Dracula Papers described, had been sawn off. The point of it was buried somewhere deep inside the corpse’s breast, beneath a blackened stain. It was truly a sight to chill the blood, even for one who has treated soldiers upon the field of battle.

  “We are in luck,” Holmes said.

  “Luck?” Bradstreet said, hoarsely.

  “Everything is just as Van Helsing left it. The screws are still loose, and the seal is still broken. He could have sent someone to remove any evidence left behind. In his arrogance, I expect he thought no one would ever be brave enough to make a thorough inspection.”

  “What do you expect to find?”

  “Hush now, let me work.”

  Holmes set about tapping at the stone pedestal, and pushing at the coffin, though it would not budge. He nodded to himself, deep in thought.

  “Holmes,” I said. “Did not the men describe how Lucy’s face transformed in the moment they transfixed her with the stake? From monster to beauty.”

  “Wishful thinking and the power of suggestion make a heady mix. Or… perhaps not.”

  Holmes took out his magnifier, and began to make thorough scrutiny of the casket, outside and in, sweeping it slowly and meticulously along every inch of wood, stone, brass and, grotesquely, the corpse itself.

  He stopped at the head of the casket, and ran his hand along the wood and satin within, his lips upturning into a smile as he did so.

  “Hand me a turnscrew, would you, Inspector? The longest blade you have.”

  Bradstreet handed Holmes the tool; I saw that the inspector’s hand was shaking slightly.

  Holmes slid the end of the screwdriver between the wooden panels near the decapitated head with some relish. At first his workings appeared fruitless, until at last the base of the coffin wobbled, shaking some of the dust from the corpse’s cerements. Both Bradstreet and I stepped back involuntarily.

  “One of you, bring a jemmy and help me.”

  Bradstreet swallowed hard and stepped forward. Directed by Holmes, he placed the bar in the gap between the sides of the coffin and its base, and pulled. Lucy’s head rolled away from him, wedging against her shoulder.

  Holmes fished around beneath the base of the coffin, which lifted far too easily, I realised, bending upwards at the end as it was staked down in the centre. Holmes at last pulled out his dirt-encrusted hands, which held two items. In his left hand was a broad, flat coil of metal; in his right, something tiny and dirty, which he rubbed between his fingers before holding it up to the lamplight.

  “A tooth!” I said.

  “Indeed. Inspector, you may rest easy now, we are done.”

  Bradstreet looked relieved, and withdrew the jemmy, with but one last look of disgust as the head wobbled once more.

  “So, Mr Holmes,” Bradstreet said, “will you now reveal the trick of it?”

  “I shall indeed. Take this.” Holmes handed the coil to Bradstreet.

  “What is it?”

  “A metal spring. One of several that I felt under the coffin’s false base. The only reason I can imagine for it being there is to cause the base to wobble when the stake was plunged through Miss Westenra’s heart, thus lending the impression that the body moved one last time in its death throes. Having ensured that Holmwood witnessed thi
s trick, Van Helsing then stepped forward to say a few words. What he actually did was remove this, and its twin of course, from Lucy’s mouth, and secrete them down the side of the false panel, never to be found.”

  Holmes held out the tooth once more.

  “A vampire’s fang…” I said.

  “No, the fang of an animal, perhaps a cat. When Van Helsing prepared the body for his charade, he—or possibly Miss Kidd had she the stomach for it—would have affixed these to Lucy’s own teeth with stage glue. Like so.”

  To my dismay, Holmes pulled back Miss Westenra’s blue lips, with no small difficulty, and held the tooth in place. It fitted almost perfectly, proving his point that someone had gone to great lengths to alter the appearance of the corpse.

  “May we speak outside, Mr Holmes?” said Bradstreet impatiently, throwing a furtive glance at the headless corpse. “The air in here is… rather close.”

  Soon we were back outside in the cold air, though it offered us little relief, for the fog had thickened in the graveyard, clinging thick to trees and tombstones, yellowing in colour and taking on a tar-like quality. It seemed a London particular was coming upon us, which would make our investigations in the city a miserable affair if it did not pass quickly.

  “Mr Holmes, it’s a bad business that we have embarked upon tonight,” Bradstreet said. “You have convinced me that some evil plot is at hand, and that I owe my old friend Frank Cotford an apology for doubting him.”

  “Do not reproach yourself, Inspector,” Holmes said. “Cotford did himself no favours. We may, however, find some use for him yet.”

  “Oh?”

  “You said yourself that you are not here tonight in any official capacity. Given the way the assistant commissioner dismissed Cotford, I assume also that he would give you short shrift should you try to reopen the investigation.”

  Bradstreet looked uncomfortable—I guessed that he did not like to be reminded that his authority had limitations.

  “You are right, Mr Holmes, although the evidence we have uncovered might be enough.”