The Classified Dossier: Sherlock Holmes and Count Dracula(52)
“Not the Mariner Priest?”
“The same, dear Watson,” Holmes said. “There is a malicious subtlety at work that I am beginning to find familiar. Since I am also trying to keep watch on any possible activity he may be part of in London, he would have a vested interest in distracting me, and he has feelers and tendrils across most of Europe, make no mistake.”
“But,” I said, “America?”
“Well,” Holmes admitted, “that is a stretch and thanks to a lack of data, I have precious little evidence to support such a theory. But I shall be on my guard, Watson. I recommend you do the same.”
*
In an effort to unearth more of his precious data, Holmes developed a long correspondence with the authorities of Newburyport and Arkham, the two neighbouring towns to Innsmouth, and though the data coming back from America was always murky, it was enough to show that Holmes’s conclusions were right at least about the foredoomed fate of that shrouded town.
Despite the police reports, another ship carrying the name Bountiful Harvest was reported sighted around reefs off the American Atlantic coast, though no ship with that name ever again entered any official registry.
Holmes’s research also uncovered the dismissal of Marshal Eliot from the law enforcement service, two years after he was presumed by English authorities to have perished at sea. The names of many of the families in Innsmouth overlapped a great deal, however, and no substantial description was available, so this was far from conclusive.
Less than six months later, a man matching Eliot’s description was killed in a bar fight in Newburyport. A claim ticket in his pocket led the Newburyport authorities to the discovery of a golden tiara at a local pawnshop, though if this was the very same as the one I had flung into the Thames, I could not guess. Last we heard, this now resides in a small museum in that same town, despite several well-funded attempts from well-to-do families in Innsmouth to purchase it.
Many months later, a Newburyport official responded to Holmes’s continued telegrams by sending over a backdated marriage certificate between Brother Zachariah Eliot and one Lucja Nowak. A similarly backdated birth certificate for one Yosef Eliot, born of Zachariah and Lucja Eliot, came over a month after that. The actual date of birth was an estimate, but if taken at face value, suggested that the Lucja we had known – if this were the same woman – would have been at least two months pregnant on her arrival in England.
I think back to that evil-looking man, Eliot, shouting in the hall. She thinks she can keep us from what’s ours. She’d left the tiara, and still they pursued her. It hadn’t been the tiara that they’d been after at all. Holmes explained later that she must have known her own condition, and that this must have been the cause for her sudden and resolute sacrifice that prevented Holmes from rescuing her. The idea chills me as weather never could.
Certainly, as Holmes explained to me, Lucja Nowak knew something of what followed her, which explained the desperation of her theft. In addition to the tiara, Holmes’s inquiries to the authorities at the American harbour of New Bedford found that she had sold several other, smaller gold items of similar quality to pay for her passage to England. Also, the nature of her pursuers was Holmes’s only explanation for her bizarre demands for a deeper and more secure cell at the police station, though it did her little good.
Something else has preyed on my mind, as well, but I have dared not explain my fears to Holmes, and so engage his mathematical mind in my calculations. For even the numbers that revealed themselves to me does not entirely account for the four-day trip that the sailor, Carson, had described. I find myself thinking of the sacrifices to Dagon, and the chains to the depths, which leads my thoughts to something deeper than anything yet revealed. Something… larger, perhaps, out of man’s sight. Lurking in the periphery of man’s logic and reason.
I had requested that Holmes burn the fouled deerstalker’s hat, but Holmes refused. He keeps it now in an oilskin bag, locked in a chest. He treats this artefact in much the same way as the picture of Irene Adler, and only during his blackest depression does he pull out this ill-stained token and refer to the Adventure of the Innsmouth Whaler.
Dear Dr Watson,
Thank you for your kind letter detailing ongoing events in London. I absolutely agree that it behoves both our causes to be as well informed on our enemy’s movements as we can.
Vlad continues to increase our informational network, trading both information and supplies with the vampire clans in the surrounding countries to foster goodwill. It is a change in policy from the hostile one he has engendered for centuries, but one, I believe, that suits him better, though he is sometimes reluctant to admit it.
No definite news of the Mariner Priest’s activities, but while we once believed that his activity was strongest in Switzerland or Germany, the focus of his attention, and possibly his physical location, seems to have moved further west, towards England. This cannot bode well for you and we recommend you keep on your strongest guard. Please pass our best wishes on to Mr Holmes.
Fondest wishes,
Mina
Chapter 11
THE PEARL
The following summer was an active time for London’s only consulting detective, Mr Sherlock Holmes. In addition to the strange Adventure of the Blanched Soldier and the Tarlington Jewel Case, he also continued to delve into both the true identity and the activities of the Mariner Priest, but found little to satisfy him. Equally barren were his researches into Van Helsing, Lord Holmwood, or Quincey Morris, still missing in Australia. Dr John Seward and Jonathan Harker were, of course, dead, as well as Mina’s friend, Lucy Westenra. Holmes had made a detailed study of the past lives of all the persons involved, including Mina’s, but could find nothing illuminating there. Of the Mariner Priest, we heard nothing but rumours.