The Classified Dossier: Sherlock Holmes and Count Dracula(81)

“Well anyway,” Lestrade said. “Afterwards we picked up Captain Gunn and Harweather, per your instructions, Mr Holmes, and charged them with murder, to boot.”

“Murder?” I said.

“Oh,” Holmes said languidly. “Didn’t I tell you? Harweather killed Victor Apligian. Considering the gunpowder on his clothes and the neck injury that precisely matched the very unique weapon in Maggie Oakenshot’s possession…” He trailed off and gave me a look filled with meaning to ensure the oblique reference to Mary’s fangs, a reference obscured for Lestrade’s benefit, as it would have necessitated an explanation of vampirism.

“At any rate,” Holmes went on, “Maggie did injure the boy, but that was not the cause of death. We have Morris’s confession that he found and hid the body, and no reason to doubt it, so I had Lestrade question Harweather on the matter directly.”

“There was no need,” Lestrade said with a chuckle. “Mr Holmes had already led me to detain Harweather and the crew of his ship on a smuggling charge, and also to delay the escape of your fugitive couple. After the arrest, Harweather told us everything before Mr Holmes’s message to question him even arrived. His account corresponds with Thorne’s, that is Morris’s, account in every way.”

“Harweather shot the boy for the pearl,” Holmes said, “because Apligian had shown it to him, but Morris, also looking for Apligian, stumbled onto the scene almost before the body hit the dirt and Harweather, who does not seem to have the nerves for murder, ran off.”

“What doesn’t track for me, Mr Holmes,” Lestrade said, “was why, when Thorne, or rather Morris, stumbled onto a corpse that had been clearly shot and was still warm, he should be so keen to hide the body. He could hardly think that the knife wound would land his lady in jail since it was clearly the gunshot wound that had killed the man.”

“Well,” Holmes said, “I am not entirely certain that Morris was in his right mind by that time. It seems that he has had to cover for her before and no doubt that strain took a toll on his sanity.”

“If you say so, Mr Holmes,” Lestrade said doubtfully.

“Not every criminal is a mastermind,” I said helpfully, knowing that we could not possibly explain Morris’s need to hide the evidence of a vampire wound. No more than we could explain that Maggie was actually Mary.

“Morris didn’t think to search the body,” Holmes said, “being too concerned with hiding the evidence.”

“You say,” Lestrade said, “that the Apligian boy showed Harweather the pearl as part of a negotiation to have Harweather give Apligian and Maggie Oakenshot passage out of England?”

“Just so,” Holmes said, “though whether she would have gone with Apligian or Morris in the end given the full range of options is anyone’s guess.”

“I rather think,” I said reluctantly, “that she had no intention of leaving Morris. I believe it may have been some kind of capricious game between the two of them.”

“Perhaps,” Holmes said. “Who can fathom the motives of women?”

Maggie Oakenshot, Mary’s name in her new life. A life she seemed quite taken with, it seemed to me. She was dead now, truly dead, not living a violent, murderous, soulless existence and not dead from illness as I’d been telling everyone. It had been my hand, in the end, that had brought it about, a fact which sorrowed me greatly. I could not feel the full weight of guilt, however. Maggie’s life after she left me had been one foul deed after another, culminating in her attempt to murder Holmes. Death would have come for her in any circumstance, I told myself, my actions notwithstanding.

Holmes went on without noticing my silence. “Harweather had once smoked ship’s tobacco, of course, which made Victor bringing monetary payments to Harweather inside of such a pouch the perfect cover. The fact that Victor himself carried tobacco and no pipe was, of course, the first clue. Nor did he smoke.

“It then became clear that Harweather and Apligian had been arguing. Apligian wanted to book passage for him and Maggie Oakenshot, and showed them the pearl to secure the bargain, which proved to be his undoing. Harweather murdered him for it.”

“Miss Apligian will have to eat her words,” I said without much relish. “She was certain her brother’s killer would never be found.”

“Then Morris,” Lestrade said, with satisfaction, “came on the scene immediately thereafter, possibly drawn at a run by the shot. But why would he be in the graveyard in the first place?”

“For precisely the same purpose,” Holmes said. “Morris as much as confessed to it. He’d gotten wind of Victor and Maggie’s involvement and was determined to eliminate the competition. Only Harweather beat him to it. Harweather had no time to get the pearl on account of Morris’s arrival and Morris did not take the pearl because he did not know to look for it. It is the most likely series of events. Pity we didn’t get a chance to verify it.”

“But why would Morris hide the body?” Lestrade asked. I looked at my companion.

“Maggie,” Holmes said with no trace of deception, “was a habitual poisoner. Morris had gotten used to disposing of such bodies. This, to him, was merely one more.”

“A poisoner, you say?” Lestrade said wonderingly. “Do you have any evidence for such a claim?”