The Classified Dossier: Sherlock Holmes and Count Dracula(45)
“If this is the tiara worn by the priest in his story,” I said, “at least that much of it must be true.”
Holmes gave a soft cry and pulled the object closer, employing his magnifying glass and tape measure. He turned the tiara around in his hands, examining it from every possible vantage.
“Singular,” he said. “I see no marks of moulding or etching, or any of the tell-tale signs that a British craftsman would leave.”
An inexplicable thing happened to me then, one I should not like to recall. I had the most overwhelming urge to dash the evil-looking thing from Holmes’s hands, as if some ill fate waited for the man who dwelled too long on it. My hands fluttered on the table.
“A most curious shape,” he said, and I reached out, too slowly, as he placed the tainted circlet on his head.
“Holmes, no!”
“I should hate to meet the person for whom this crown fit,” he said, ignoring my outburst. He indicated where the front and rear portions curved out well past the limits of his own head, while the sides were far too narrow. “Only the grossest and most misshapen head would accommodate this rim, yet I can find no stress marks to indicate where it might have been bent.”
A dark gloom lifted from me when he removed the tiara and covered it again with my coat, but even then a trace of that foul mood clung to me still.
Holmes, for his part, fell into an uncommunicative mood, giving every sign that he would be pondering all this new information for a considerable time. He merely shook his head when I hazarded a few questions, so I left him smoking and staring into space.
I retired to my room.
*
It was still raining when I awoke, having slept most of the day, and Holmes was still in his armchair and lost deeply in thought, so I busied myself with refreshment and the paper while I waited. We were both startled from our reverie at the sound of horses in the street, then the sound of Gregson’s voice downstairs. It was almost midnight.
He burst into the room in a highly agitated state. “We had her, Mr Holmes,” he said. “We had her and… well, you must come and see. Hurry!”
“The Nowak woman?” Holmes said.
“Yes, the Nowak woman!”
“Come, Gregson. You must really get a better hold of yourself and tell us what brings you at such an hour.”
“They were at the Yard just this evening!” Gregson said, “the murderess and the little girl both, the woman ranting and raving like a lunatic.”
“On what charge?” Holmes said. “Surely you didn’t bring her in on the scanty evidence from the hotel?”
“Well, Mr Holmes,” Gregson said, “I feel the evidence is a bit stronger than you do, which has turned out to be the correct theory, as proven by the fact that she turned herself in. Walked in and confessed the murder to the night watchmen before he could so much as question her. They sent for me at once, and I tried to wring an explanation from her, but other than confessing to the crime, she could give me no particulars. This is more a case for the asylum than for the police. Only now she’s gone again!”
“Gone?” Holmes said. “You let her go?”
“I did nothing of the kind,” Gregson said hotly. “A jailbreak, it was! And the cell they took her from is all a shambles. You must come see for yourself!”
*
Bradstreet met us at the entrance, and he led the three of us past the offices and regular jail cells and descended down a winding and narrow stone staircase. I found no great difficulty with the darkness, but Bradstreet stopped on the next landing to acquire a lantern from a steel cabinet there.
“Surely you didn’t put a woman and little girl down here?” I said, amazed.
“She insisted,” Bradstreet said. “Screamed and hollered to beat the band until we really had no choice. She said it was the only place they might be safe, which makes little sense to me.”
“Deeper and deeper,” Holmes murmured, and though I knew he referred to the case itself, I couldn’t help but reflect how accurately it also resembled the dim whitewashed staircase we now descended.
At the bottom of the stairs, a charcoal stove cast a lurid red glow onto the long stretch of cell doors.
“We housed her here,” Bradstreet said. “I assure you, gentlemen, it sank my heart to leave a young woman and girl in this dark place. Still, that was as nothing to how I felt when I discovered them gone, and the cell in this condition. Never have I experienced the like.”
Bradstreet produced an iron key and opened the nearest door, which let a nauseating odour roll out into the hallway. If something had crawled up from the darkest corner of the ocean and died on the spot, a few weeks later it would smell like this. I felt the gorge rise up in my throat, and from both Bradstreet and Gregson’s faces, I could see they experienced the same.
Since my change, I’d often felt bludgeoned with London’s overwhelming attack on my olfactory senses, but never before had I felt it so keenly as standing outside that darkened cell. Atavistic urges to run, to flee this enclosed space, crawled through the hindmost regions of my brain and it was all I could do to keep my feet planted in place. I’d thought, up until now, that the discovery of vampires living in our midst, and then getting transformed into one, had shaken my faith to the core, but something about this place, this stench, hinted at something far more unnatural and sinister.