The Classified Dossier: Sherlock Holmes and Count Dracula(54)
“Meaning we have an elder vampire on our hands,” I said, horrified. “Dracula said that only elder vampires are capable of that kind of strategy and planning.”
“Well,” Holmes said, “an older vampire, at least. Between you and me, I find Dracula’s nomenclature a trifle imprecise. He is intelligent, but not, perhaps, scientific. I find some of the reasoning spurious. We know from experience that there is a period of nearly incoherent savagery at the very beginning. We have Dracula’s assertion that this lasts only a few days, possibly weeks, but typically causes some destruction of the psyche and personality. But not the memory. I find that suggestive. I suggest the transformation, mentally, as a kind of brain fever. We also know that the Mariner Priest has found a way to alleviate or prevent that condition entirely.”
“Van Helsing, you mean,” I said.
“I am not yet convinced of that,” Holmes said. “While it is certainly a possibility, we have not proved it. So, we have the feral fledglings that crawl out of the grave, hungry for blood and mindless in their pursuit of it. Miss Winter, Johnson, and the Midnight Watch deal exclusively with this sort.”
I shuddered, remembering the timeless period when I’d been such a mindless beast, a fledgling vampire, mindless and savage.
“We have two exceptions to this rule,” Holmes went on, following, as he so often did, my train of thought. “Yourself and Mina: transformed, but mentally intact. Then we have those that have recovered from this brain fever and have regained their reason, if not their personality or morals, such as Mary. Sorry, Doctor.”
I had flinched at this casual mention of Mary, but nodded and waved for him to continue.
“Perhaps we should refer to these as mature?” He looked at me and frowned. “Not very scientific or poetic, is it? Well, I don’t insist on this terminology, but clearly something is needed. Finally, we have Dracula himself, who boasts considerable powers that neither you nor any other vampire we know of share. The quintessential elder vampire, I should say.”
“Yes,” I said. I thought of how Dracula had paralysed me with his gaze the night we’d first met, though Holmes had not fallen under that same spell. Also, Dracula’s control over the horse on that wild ride.
“Our Mariner Priest, of course, doesn’t fall very neatly into any of these categories. If Dracula is correct and it is Van Helsing, either Dracula met him and did not realize the man was a vampire – which is unlikely – or Van Helsing has not been a vampire that many years. Also, we have yet to reconcile his hatred of vampires with the Mariner Priest’s use of them. Yet, whoever our Mariner Priest is, he seems to have an understanding of vampires that far surpasses Dracula’s, especially in the nature of their transformation. How he has come by this knowledge is, I feel, at the very heart of the mystery. Dracula’s other theory, that this must be the work of a mature vampire, one capable of reasoning and planning, has merit, too, but also some difficulties. Certainly whoever we face has no moral compunctions, such as you do, about feeding off their fellow man.”
“Clearly this is of a most serious magnitude,” I said. “You should have woken me. You say this body has lain all day?”
“It has,” Holmes said, “but only because there is an even more pressing part of this case that required my attention before the body. This pearl came with the note.” He handed over the pearl he’d been studying. “Does this strike you as remarkable?”
“Yes,” I said, “quite. It is certainly one of the largest and most lustrous pearls I’ve ever seen.”
“The very same description you gave it the last time,” Holmes said grimly, “during the Sign of the Four.”
“Surely you can’t mean that?” I said, feeling suddenly very cold and hollow inside. “This is one of Mary’s pearls?”
“Ah, we come immediately to the heart of the matter,” Holmes said. “She never sold them, then?”
I shook my head. “No. We both agreed that such a memento of our first meeting should always be kept and we never had a serious need to part with them. They were more precious to us than our wedding rings. We kept them in the same box Mary had always used, but they disappeared when Mary…” I stopped, turning the pearl over and over again in my fingers. “That is… when she left.” An ocean of darkness churned above me, pressing down with a crushing and destructive pressure I could hardly bear. Mary’s laugh when I’d seen her last, just before she’d been party to murder, was like an icicle of blackest pitch. Dark and terrible in a way that was entirely unlike my own dear Mary.
Holmes’s face was serious. “I am sorry, dear friend. I did not wish to bring up an unpleasant memory until I was sure.”
“How can you be sure?” I said hoarsely. “One pearl looks much like another! Perhaps it is just a lookalike?”
“So I hoped,” Holmes said. “Which is why this portentous sphere of calcium carbonate has been such an intense study for the past few hours. Jewellers categorize pearls into eight distinct shapes: round, semi-round, button, drop, pear, oval, baroque, and circled. Often, they will be crafted into pins and necklaces and the like to disguise the fact that they are not round. Perfectly round pearls of this lustre and size are exceedingly rare. In truth, I was half-convinced this was one of the same pearls at the start, but I needed to be sure. There are several other indicators, but that is the largest.”