"You could start by telling us where you have secreted the money the government paid you. We found nothing when we searched your hotel room."
"I apologize for misspeaking. I will tell you almost anything, although I am sure we could come to a certain agreement," I said, and raised an eyebrow.
"Steady on, Mr. Raphael," the regrettably honest British policeman said. His French counterpart, however, was disappointed that Witherspoon was not at all open to discussing a bribe.
"How may I assist your inquiries? I work alone, as you probably know. I have no accomplices to 'finger,' as we say in America."
Inspector Witherspoon leaned forward and spoke in a whisper. "The only information you have that is of any interest to me concerns vampires. Depending on how valuable what you have to tell me is, I may be able to look the other way on this business with Sir Basil."
"Excusez-moi, Inspector Witherspoon, but the authorities of my nation are not nearly so forgiving, especially regarding foreigners who cross our borders under assumed names to indulge in criminal enterprises."
"My instructions come from the highest office in Britain, Inspector Bernard. I would be very much surprised if Her Majesty's ambassador has not already delivered a letter to your government requesting cooperation in this matter."
"But I do not understand any of this, monsieur. You are prepared to let this professional liar go free in exchange for hearing fairy tales about les vampires? Mon Dieu! I have never in all my career heard of such a thing."
"I'm afraid they are not fairy tales, Inspector Bernard," I said. "Vampires exist. A plague of the monsters has descended on London."
"Mais non! What is this madness? Does it infect you both?"
"See what you think after you hear Mr. Raphael's story," Witherspoon said. "Assuming, that is, that Mr. Raphael prefers freedom to years in a French prison cell, followed by more time in a British prison."
I smiled and showed Witherspoon my upturned palms, an expression of surrender, of candor, of complete cooperation. "It is a small enough price you ask. I assume there will be no more talk about a refund of Mr. Disraeli's funds."
"Your future discretion is worth a certain amount, I suppose," Witherspoon said with the expression of someone swallowing a bitter pill. Bernard, for his part, gaped at me in amazement for having dropped the Prime Minister's name.
"Then we have an agreement," I said.
"I warn you, Raphael—or whatever your name is: I want the truth. Sir Basil is a gentleman and perfectly content to leave this up to the police. But the Americans you cheated—they are anxious to deal somewhat more roughly with you, if you get my meaning, should you happen to fall into their hands."
"I promise to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, Inspector Witherspoon," I said, and snapped a fingernail against my empty wineglass to summon the passing waiter. "But first, I think, we must have three more glasses of the cafe's excellent Bordeaux."
* * *
30
The Greatest Challenge
AFTER BRINGING MY business in New York to a profitable conclusion," I said, "I decided the time had come for me to embark upon a grand tour of the Continent. I have always wanted to see the great treasures of art and architecture. These, you see, are my real interests."
"You are an American citizen?" Inspector Bernard asked.
"Canadian, actually. I grew up and went to college in Quebec. My father was a lawyer and my grandfather a banker. So I came by my profession naturally enough. On a lark I tried out for a part in the Hamlet my grammar school was putting on for its annual midwinter excursion into culture. I won the role, and to the surprise of all—but none more so than myself—acquitted myself quite well upon the stage. Throughout college I had leading roles in a number of productions. I learned all the actor's tricks of clothing, makeup, hair, and so forth, but those are merely the external components of taking on a character. This is the skill I learned to master—the taking on of another person's character, to become as real as that person, to become more real, regardless of the fact that the character is pure fiction. My real talent is in the theatre, although God forbid I should try to make a living at that.
"I also have a natural affinity for language. I grew up speaking not only English and French, as do many in Quebec, but also Hungarian. My mother, you see, was born in Budapest. I was surrounded by her family as a child, and they communicated with one another in the language of the old country. And so I picked that up, too. In school I learned Greek and Latin, which are a lot more useful than some might think, plus German and Italian. I can also hold my own in Spanish. After leaving the university, I worked for a time as a translator. All of that was a long time ago, and I am certain you are not interested in any more of my personal history than is necessary to provide the context to my recent experiences in London. Suffice to say that everything I had learned was put to work in my career as an illusionist.
"I arrived in London as Mr. Raphael, which you know. I checked into a good hotel, went to the theatre, visited the fashionable clubs where I'd arranged for invitations. My aim was to establish a certain veneer of respectable reality for Sir Basil by meeting and rubbing elbows with his friends. You have no idea how casual references to mutual friends can solidify one's credibility. You know the kind of thing: 'I had a drink with Lord Westmer, who asked if the African heat had improved your gout.' I did not guess at the futility of my work, that I was trying to establish a relationship of trust with a detective from Scotland Yard.
"I made several investments with Barclay's Bank and one of the older and more reputable trading houses. The accounts have since been closed."
"And the funds safely transferred to a numbered Swiss bank account," Inspector Witherspoon said.
I let that pass without comment. The money was beyond the policemen's reach, but there was no need to rub their noses in it. God bless the Swiss.
"While making the rounds in London, I began to overhear breathless horror stories about a vampire preying on the city's occupants. My mother was Hungarian, so I grew up knowing the legend of the nosferatu. One of my Hungarian uncles used to tell me the vampire would get me if I forgot to say my prayers before bed. The things people say to children! Still, I can assure you I never missed saying my prayers.
"The vampire stories I heard in London were linked to a series of grisly murders. I even saw a rather disgusting enactment purported to represent a vampire slaying a female at an upper-class brothel called the Hellfire Club."
The fact that I had been admitted there impressed Witherspoon.
"As a rational adult, I did not for one moment believe a vampire was responsible, my childish nightmares about nosferatu notwithstanding. Yet the murders were real enough, and so was the fear gripping the city. And with good reason. Is there anything more frightening than the idea of a vicious killer moving unseen among us, claiming his victims one at a time, evading the police with fiendish ease?
"Since Mr. Raphael had accomplished his bona fides in London, I decided to turn my skills in an entirely new direction. To be perfectly frank, gentlemen, I had grown tired of Mr. Raphael. He is, by nature, a supporting character, not a Hamlet or Caesar.
"As I sat in a concert hall one evening, listening to the great Hungarian pianist Franz Liszt demolish a grand piano with his pyrotechnics, the germ of an idea popped into my head. The more I thought about it, the more it grew: I would create the role of an itinerant vampire hunter from Budapest. My original assumption was that I would play the role more for pleasure than profit for a few weeks, then move on to Paris for my prearranged meeting with Sir Basil.
"The best basis for any theatrical character is a real person. I began with the memories of my uncle, who was notorious in my family of prosperous immigrants for his shabby dress. Then I appropriated the name of our kindly old family physician, Abraham Van Helsing. After a day of buying used clothing and collecting various props. Professor Van Helsing checked into the sort of down-in-the-heels lodging a wanderin
g academic from Eastern Europe could afford.
"All of London seemed to have been awaiting the arrival of Dr. Van Helsing. The commodities he had to dispense were hope and peace of mind."
"Which you sold at a tidy profit," Witherspoon sneered.
"You do me a disservice, sir. I never took more than the pittance offered me by servants and working people. When the masters and mistresses of the wealthy homes of Mayfair threw open their doors, too, I gladly accepted their invitations to drop by for tea and cucumber sandwiches. Yet the money to be had from the rich and the aristocrats was but the appetizer to the feast. I was mainly keeping my eye out for the main chance, without knowing when it would come, or if it would come, or in what form. That is the true art of my profession. Any cheap grifter can swindle the ignorant out of a few dollars, but only a true artist has the vision to recognize the outlines of an extraordinary opportunity taking shape. When opportunity knocks, gentlemen, you must be ready to answer the door.
"My supposed experiences in the Carpathian Mountains converted rather neatly into honorariums in some of London's best salons, but it occurred to me I might have the opportunity to advise some formal body—the city government, perhaps, or a club of concerned industrialists—looking to pay for the finest expertise that money could buy. And there were even bigger opportunities. Surely Lloyd's of London and other insurance concerns would suffer mightily if a vampire epidemic forced a quarantine that would shut down steamship lines and international trading and banking. Not that I thought such drastic steps would become necessary, mind you. But the merest shadow of a possibility for such an economic calamity meant that Dr. Van Helsing's expertise was very, very valuable indeed!
"I plied my trade, making new contacts, developing a clientele that was a little more wealthy and influential as the days passed. I showed my clients how to hang garlic at the windows. I advised them to wear crucifixes and place mirrors near their doors so they could see whether a stranger coining to call cast a reflection in the glass. If it made them feel more at ease, then all the better for it, I say.
"And then one day I found the mother lode, as I knew I would. One of Mr. Disraeli's secretaries turned up at my hotel with an invitation to visit Number 10 Downing Street. Politicians tend to be intelligent, shrewd, suspicious, and themselves masters of deception. If I accepted the Prime Minister's summons, it would be the greatest challenge of my career as an illusionist. It was one thing to pull the wool over a greedy banker's eyes, but to fool the entire British government—there was a challenge!
"Without the slightest hesitation, Dr. Van Helsing picked up his moth-eaten hat and bartered valise and tottered off to Downing Street.
"It was, without a doubt, the biggest mistake of my life."
* * *
31
Greed
AT DOWNING STREET, I was introduced to the Special Committee, as Mr. Disraeli called it. I knew of its members. Darwin was there, you know, with his young American proxy, Professor Cotswold, a hunter of dinosaur bones. It was obvious they both despised Van Helsing as a quack. If the nonscientists on the committee hadn't outnumbered them, I would have been quickly sent packing, saving me an infinity of grief.
"My only ally, among the professional men, was Dr. Posthumous Blackley, the prominent London society physician. Judging from his reactions to the reports about the vampire, it was obvious Blackley was a superstitious man, which seemed strange in a physician but played to my hand. He swallowed the poppycock I served like a hungry goose gobbling corn.
"On the general subject of vampires, the Prime Minister professed neutrality, but it was apparent Mr. Disraeli was sympathetic to old Dr. Van Helsing. His main concern was the threat a vampire panic posed to the social order. Mr. Disraeli feared undesirable political elements would capitalize on the mounting panic to bring about a period of anarchy and revolution.
"It was mentioned that Moore House, where poor Annie Howard had been employed, had on its staff a servant named Karol Janos from Budapest. Everyone, of course, is aware that Sir Brendan Moore and his wife were blown up by anarchists in Hungary. Throwing myself a little too entirely into the role of Van Helsing, I told the committee we needed to interview Janos as soon as possible to determine whether she had any knowledge about the vampire's activities in London. It was a perfectly logical thing to suggest, since Janos was from Hungary, native land of the nosferatu, and closely associated with the first victim. I realized my mistake almost as soon as the suggestion was out of my mouth. I was only pretending to be Hungarian, but had put myself in a position to interrogate someone who actually was. The odds were greater that she would expose me than the reverse. Our old family physician, upon whom I had based the vampire hunter's character, Dr. Abraham Van Helsing, was from Budapest. What if Janos was acquainted with the Van Helsing family?
"That mistake alone should have alerted me that luck was running against me, but my pride—and my greed—wouldn't allow it. I was determined to pull off this illusion—my greatest illusion of all.
"My subsequent interview with Janos was unpleasant enough. I suspect she guessed I was an imposter, but she did not dare call me out. I was in the company of powerful men, and that has a way of intimidating simple people. Fortunately for me, Karol Janos's only real interest was Andrew Moore, a handsome little boy who is now the ward of his half sister. Lady Moore.
"Mr. Disraeli gave me free reign to proceed with the investigation, and all the rope I needed to hang myself. I don't really know how I came up with the ghastly idea—if you have ever had a prime minister stare at you, you know that it has a way of motivating you—but I told them it was imperative we methodically open each victim's grave and pound a wooden stake through the poor woman's heart."
"You what?" Inspector Witherspoon gasped.
I outlined the legend of the nosferatu to the policemen.
There was only one way to prevent a vampire's victims from undergoing the infernal metamorphosis. To prevent them from becoming the undead, to stop them from rising from the grave to feast off the blood of the living, a stake must be driven through each corpse's heart.
"And yet you have said that you yourself did not believe in les vampires, Monsieur Raphael."
"No, at the time, I did not believe. But everything becomes fuel for the illusionist's improvisation. My nimble mind almost instantaneously found a way to turn this grim task to good advantage—two ways, in fact.
"First, that evening I sent a note to Mr. Disraeli, informing him I was unable to remain in London. A vampire epidemic was raging in St. Petersburg. If I agreed to come to Russia immediately, the Czar had offered to give me the money to endow a program to eradicate the nosferatu from my native Hungary. As expected, the Prime Minister saw the Czar's presumed bet and raised him. I agreed to stay in London, of course.
"My second improvisation was keyed to the work I had set out for us the next day, opening the graves of the vampire's victims. The weather had been cold, which I hoped would make the job less awful than it would have been otherwise. It took no small amount of brandy to get me through it. Fortunately, I hold my liquor well."
"And did you see evidence of les vampires?" Inspector Bernard wanted to know.
"No. Nor did I expect to see any such evidence. The bodies looked as expected when the coffins were opened. This in itself presented a certain problem. If there really was a coven of vampires preying on London, one would expect to open the coffins and find the bodies strangely supple and alive-looking. I realized we wouldn't see this, so I took steps so that my illusion would remain alive even if the vampires didn't. This was my second improvisation."
I took a sip of wine and steeled myself against the policemen's reaction to what I was about to tell them.
"I found a pair of gravediggers in a gin shop," I said, "and paid them to steal the body of the first victim, Annie Howard, so she would seem to have risen from the grave."
Witherspoon called me a cur. Bernard labeled me "a cold-hearted wretch."
"No,
sir, I am a professional, and a professional does what is required," I said. "Nothing more, nothing less."
Witherspoon, staring at me fiercely, demanded to know what they'd done with the body.
I told him I did not ask, that I presumed they put her in the ground with someone else.
He wanted to know the gravediggers'—the grave robbers'—names.
I said that I honestly didn't know. And I didn't. I didn't ask them their names, and I certainly didn't tell them mine.
"The girl deserves to be in her own grave," Witherspoon said to himself as much as to me. He was surprisingly bothered by the theft of Annie Howard's body.
The empty grave gave them all something to think about, I said, anxious to get past this difficult bit of road. It made believers of them all, except for Mr. Cotswold, who seemed determined to deny the existence of vampires no matter what the evidence.
But something most unexpected had already started to happen: I was beginning to wonder myself whether there might actually be a vampire in London. There had been nothing untoward about the victims' corpses, of course. But there was the odd matter of Maude Johnston, whose autopsy I was compelled to witness.
It was an ordeal to view the procedure. It is a terrible thing to see a human being dissected like a Sunday goose. But Blackley, who officiated, found something very strange indeed during the autopsy. Though I had tended to discount the previous reports, Miss Johnston had been drained of her blood, and Dr. Blackley could find no wound to explain how the blood left her body.
This was my first real inkling something truly bizarre was afoot. On the way back to my hotel, I considered whether it would be best to pack it in and leave for Paris. However, the first installment of my fee was awaiting me at the hotel. I had the money locked in the hotel vault until I could arrange to have it deposited in my Swiss account the next day.
The London Vampire Panic Page 18
