The Classified Dossier: Sherlock Holmes and Count Dracula(59)

“Watson, could it be that you don’t see the significance of the lip rouge?”

“I’m sure that I am very slow.”

He turned away from the window to face me. “It’s the most suggestive detail we’ve yet encountered in this case.”

“I see that it identifies the vampire as a woman, and one likely to have returned to an outwardly civilized, if risqué, appearance, if she wears lip rouge. That’s how you knew it was a… what did you call it… mature vampire?”

“Precisely,” Holmes said.

“I see. And also because of the repeated bites over time. A newly born vampire would have drained him dry in one feeding. The rareness of mature vampires and the pearl are what make you think it’s my Mary.”

“It pains me to say this, Watson, but she is hardly ‘your Mary’ anymore. But it’s possible she’s no longer the Mariner Priest’s creature, either. We still know precious little about how he manages to create vampires in secret and accelerate them through the bestial stage, or what repercussions that process may have. There are many indications that he also has some method of controlling them that we don’t understand, but that is mere conjecture now. I am getting ahead of myself. My first step shall be the docks. We’ve long known that the greatest part of the vampire population took ship with the Mariner Priest when Dracula started hunting them here. That, compounded with the presence of a tobacco smoked predominantly by sailors strikes me as rather too much to be a coincidence.”

“Holmes,” I said suddenly, “there was no pipe! What does he smoke the tobacco in?”

“I never get your limits, Watson. Yes, that struck me, as well. The missing pipe is one question. The other is why there is only one pearl. If we suppose that the pearl is some sort of payment…”

“Payment?”

“Why else part with just one pearl, when we know Mary had six? It seems unlikely that it could have been stolen, or it would be more likely that all six would be together. Also, Mary is now a quite formidable person, making theft even more unlikely. It was six originally?”

“Yes, the original six Mary showed us. There were six others in Sholto’s story, still affixed to a chaplet, but that chaplet never resurfaced.”

“Quite so. No, I read the single pearl as payment on Mary’s part, either for services rendered, or perhaps services to be rendered.”

“If she could coerce him to let her feed, why would she need to buy anything? He would be putty in her hands.”

“Yes,” Holmes said thoughtfully, “the vaunted coercion of the vampire’s bite. More addictive than opium and twice as deadly. We really do need more data on those particulars. Are you sure you wouldn’t care to participate in a small experiment along those lines?”

“Holmes!”

“Well, perhaps not,” Holmes said, waving a long, thin hand in dismissal. “But there is something I need you to do while I am gone.”

“What is that?”

“I should like you to contact Apligian’s family.”

“What information am I to get?”

“The usual,” Holmes said. “Everything you can. Perhaps when we know as much as there is to know of Victor Apligian, there will be something informative in it for us.”

“You wish me to be the one to break the news to the family?”

“I will bow to your judgement and discretion on that score. What I wish is for you to get data. There is too much that is cloudy about this matter, and Victor Apligian is at the heart of it.”

“We should notify the police, as well, Holmes.”

“And have Scotland Yard tramping all over everything?”

“This is not just one risen corpse that we can make disappear without explanation or consideration,” I said. “They have their duties, same as we do. They should know about the body, at least.”

“Very well, Doctor,” he said. “I bow to your conscience. Send them a note, if you wish.”

We stared for a moment into the fire while Holmes worked his pipe. I lit a cigarette. Like so many other things, my transformation had changed the nature of smoking, since I barely needed to breathe. (I had also discovered that the idea of vampires not needing to breathe, like so much other vampire lore, was slightly mistaken. I’d done a little experimentation after our discovery that vampires could be forced into a catatonic state by submersion. The truth is that a vampire barely needs to breathe. I’d discovered that I was capable of holding my breath for nearly ten minutes at a time, which accounted for vampires being able to sleep whole nights in enclosed spaces, such as coffins. But I couldn’t hold it indefinitely.) However, the thoughts swam so disturbingly in my head that I found after some minutes that my cigarette, unattended to, had burned out completely.

“Holmes,” I said suddenly as a new thought occurred to me. “I don’t suppose it could have been Kitty Winter herself?”

“I think it highly unlikely,” Holmes said at last.

“It’s Mary,” I said, feeling a weight of misery settling more firmly upon me. “At the blasted Mariner Priest’s direction, no doubt!” I hit the dining room table hard enough rattle all the china dangerously, and even prompt an outraged and perfectly audible “My word!” from Mrs Hudson downstairs.