The Classified Dossier: Sherlock Holmes and Count Dracula(51)
“I don’t doubt it. In any event, we must accept the existence of something like your altered humanoids, creatures of some intelligence, who are both excellent swimmers and possessed of extreme strength. Even if not corroborated by your description, their presence was suggested by both the destruction of the jail cell and the lifted anchor.
“However, like your own medical condition, science is well capable of explaining all manner of inhuman creatures without accepting the tenets of some barbaric religion. An experimental extract, perhaps, may be the cause of such deformations. Or rampant inbreeding. Man carries enough darkness inside him to account for all the evils of the world. There is no need to attribute the phenomenon to the supernatural.”
Though Holmes’s logical approach was certainly the correct one, I did not feel the matter entirely accounted for in my own heart. His casual dismissal appeared to settle the matter entirely in his own mind, and I could not debate him. Certainly I had no tangible evidence to support my fears.
“I gather,” I said, “that the Nowaks were to meet this Konrad Pawlitz in order find some place to live far away from America, and Innsmouth, but you have not told me the cause of his unusual condition. Also, what was the purpose of leaving his body in the hotel room?”
“Surely the motive is clear?” Holmes said. “Eliot needed to retrieve his two escapees, but he wanted even more to terrify them and put an end to their rebellion. So, when his visit wasn’t enough, he went to great lengths to show them how totally in his power they were. They had placed their hopes on this distant relative, Pawlitz, who was supposed to meet them. You remember how Gregson had heard about the U.S. marshal visiting them in the morning, found the body with the badge, and was completely taken in. But it was actually Eliot that forced his way in, then threatened them, left, and then managed to present them with Pawlitz’s body in as frightening and dramatic a manner as possible, thrown in through the window by, no doubt, the aquatic creatures you describe so colourfully, who are clearly at Eliot’s beck and call. No doubt their involvement accounts for the salt water we discovered on the body. Probably he was drowned at sea and brought inland by way of the Thames. Eliot also must have returned, after the Nowaks’ flight, in order to pin the marshal’s badge, his own, on the body so as to delay the police from easily identifying him. A ruse too clever by half, and one easily penetrated, since the dead man’s shirt had no marks from the pin and Eliot himself, when we met him, had several.
I shuddered to think of the spectacle that Holmes referred to so casually, the bloated corpse of their dead relative flung in through the window. It chilled my heart. Certainly it must have had no small effect on the Nowaks, for all their courage.
“What of the Bountiful Harvest?” I asked.
“We must wait,” Holmes said, clearly not looking forward to the prospect.
But it was only after a full day of waiting that the telegram that Holmes had been waiting for finally came. He pounced on the unfortunate Mrs Hudson when she came in with it. He tore it open with febrile eagerness while she fled our rooms with her hands thrown up.
“Ah,” Holmes said. “There I’m afraid is more bad news. A telegram came a short time ago with a report forwarded to us by Bradstreet. Police boats followed the Bountiful Harvest clear out to the estuary. The storm had left London, as you know, but still raged to the east. The Innsmouth ship was seen to founder as they hit the North Sea and go down with all hands. A dark ending to a murky and unsatisfactory case.”
“Lucja Nowak, Eliot, all the men… drowned?” The shock hit me as if I, too, was gripped in the frigid sea waters.
“Drowned,” Holmes said testily, “depriving me of all data by which I might have completed this case.”
“Holmes,” I said, shocked at his coldness. “Such a statement is unworthy of you.”
He flashed me a rueful smile. “Forgive me, Doctor. You are quite right. It is just the nature of this case has allowed me very little opportunity to exercise the powers which I might have brought to bear. With more information, I might have shed some light on the matter, and therefore the cult, and finally on that shadowed town of Innsmouth. Certainly there were more than just these two innocents and a handful of cultists at stake. I’ve sent telegrams to America, and the local authorities are willing to do very little for Innsmouth. The Esoteric Order of Dagon’s hold is too firm, and I feel now that hundreds of residents shall suffer under their evil taint for many years before it is cleared up. I had hoped for better.”
“It is a tragedy all around,” I agreed.
“There is something else the woman said to me, Watson, that I have been pondering.”
“What is that?”
“She said, before she forced me to take the child and leave her, that her original destination had been Australia and she cursed the luck that delayed her original ship, forcing her to take this one if she were to attempt an escape. She had not meant to come to England, but had had her destination chosen for her by circumstance.”
“Ships do get delayed, from time to time.”
“They do,” he agreed, “and I did not think much of it at first, but now that I have had time to think it over, I wonder. I have been very busy as of late, what with vampires and sea monsters and golden tiaras, and I begin to suspect that some of these cases may have a single name behind them.”