The Classified Dossier: Sherlock Holmes and Count Dracula(100)

Holmes had gotten up on one knee and when our attacker bore down on him, caught each of his hands in his own. They hovered there, immobile, poised in opposition, the vampire towering over the crouching Holmes, applying all of his supernatural force and power into overwhelming Holmes and depriving him of life.

But Holmes was no weakling, and while he abhorred exercise for its own sake, somehow managed to keep himself fighting fit regardless. An act, I’m sure, of pure will. The vampire gave a guttural, wordless grunt of surprise as his intended victim stood and forced him back.

Then a darkness reared up behind the vampire and a blow hard enough to fell a rhinoceros landed with bone-crushing force on the man’s neck. He crumpled into a lifeless heap on the floor.

“I was starting to wonder,” Holmes said, “if you’d been detained.”

“It seemed best to let your intruder reveal himself before taking action,” Dracula said imperturbably. I looked at Holmes’s bedroom window, which overlooked the rear yard and now stood open a bit more than it had previously. Somehow, Dracula – and Mina, too, I now observed standing next to the Count – had entered unheard, unseen, and very rapidly, which must have involved some serious athletics as there is no terrace outside that window. I found myself actually somewhat relieved that the window had moved at all so that I could, at least, discount the wild stories the penny dreadfuls had told of vampires dissolving into a night’s fog or turning into a flying bat. Dracula’s powers, while formidable, at least could be explained by science, if only just barely in my mind.

“The Doctor may come and confirm my opinion,” Holmes said, “but I believe this man is… rather dead.” He made a distasteful face and lifted the man’s shoulders so that the head lolled about sickeningly, then cavalierly let shoulders and head fall with a thump. There could be no doubt that the man’s neck had been broken by Dracula’s single, terrible blow.

“Mr Holmes? Dr Watson?” Mrs Hudson’s voice called from the hallway, clearly responding to the noises from our brief but ferocious battle. The door handle that Holmes had locked rattled in place. “Mr Holmes? Dr Watson?”

Dracula had, quite surprisingly, gone to the door to answer her. He unlocked it and opened it a small crack.

“All is well,” he said curtly. “Mr Holmes and Dr Watson are both well and have no need of your services at the moment.” He went to close the door in her face but the stout woman stopped him by putting her hand on the door.

“I’ll hear that from Mr Holmes or the Doctor themselves, I think,” she said firmly, not at all daunted by the glowering countenance of Count Dracula.

I rushed to the door. “It’s quite all right, Mrs Hudson, everything’s fine.”

“Hmm,” she said, still glaring up at Dracula, who towered over her. “If you say so, Doctor. But if you need me… or the constabulary…” Here she redoubled her glare. “Remember we’re but a shout away.”

“It’s quite all right, Mrs Hudson,” I repeated.

She finally tore her gaze away from Count Dracula’s. “Be careful, Doctor,” she whispered. “I don’t like the look of that one!”

“I quite agree, Mrs Hudson,” I said, with more heartfelt feeling than was strictly diplomatic.

She favoured the Count with one more glare before allowing me to close the door.

The Count gave me a considering look before he turned to return to the room with the man he had just killed, but, as always, his face was unreadable.

Holmes and Mina were carrying the unfortunate man back into the sitting room, that being a presumably more appropriate place to examine the body. I wondered at the things we had become used to. Mina looked very unconcerned with their charge, and let it fall onto the carpet with another thump that had me wondering if we’d get Mrs Hudson back at the door again.

“Careful, Countess,” Holmes said, catching my eye with a macabre flash of a smile, “or Mrs Hudson will come and run us all in.”

“Mina, please,” she reminded him. “The other names, as I’ve explained to you, simply do not suit.”

“As you wish,” Holmes said. “We will, of course, have to summon the police eventually, but it would be beneficial for all involved, including Scotland Yard, if they were a little bit further behind on this case. Further than they usually are, that is.”

Holmes started inspecting the body, rifling pockets and examining the face and limbs, then the shoes. The dead man had been a large customer, with rough-cut black hair and a hard, weathered face, even now.

“I need hardly tell you,” Holmes said as he worked, “that this man is not Professor Moriarty.”

“He is not?” Mina said.

“We assumed,” Dracula said, “incorrectly, it seems. We have never actually seen him before.”

“Me either,” I admitted.

“Oh,” Mina said. “That’s right. You won’t have seen him clearly at Reichenbach.”

“Quite right,” I said, still a little disconcerted by the idea that Mina, and the Count himself, if I were to believe his words, had both read my accounts of our adventures.

“Look at the hands!” Holmes said with impatience. “The man bears a lifetime of scars from handling rope at sea. Moriarty may have been at sea recently, but it would take far more time to develop this much scarring. Ah…” So saying, he pulled a ticket out of the man’s coat pocket, but he took one glance at it and then flicked it away as if it were something distasteful, then took a long snuffle at the man’s coat for all the world as if he were an eager bloodhound.