The Classified Dossier: Sherlock Holmes and Count Dracula(83)
Holmes wordlessly set down the violin. Put his hand companionably on my shoulder again as he passed, then went to the table. Mrs Hudson had laid out the service most completely, but Holmes found some trifles to correct and then poured out a portion first for myself, from the red-ribboned teapot, and then actual tea for himself from the other pot.
I sat and took up my cup. “Miss Winter is recovering from her ordeal?” I asked. “That was quite a fright, I’m sure.”
“Yes,” Holmes said. “She may be of sterner stuff than you give her credit for.”
“And Somersby?”
“Also healing admirably,” he said. “Miss Winter is taking exceptional care of him, I should think. She was quite distraught after watching Morris shoot him and being so sure he was dead. If help hadn’t come to them so swiftly, or if the bullet had not ricocheted off the ribcage, or if Morris hadn’t been in so much of a hurry, Somersby might well have died. It was a near miracle he survived as it is. I think it’s given both of them a new perspective.”
There was a long stretch of silence while we both drank before Holmes said, “What did prompt you to put Mary’s painting back up?”
“I simply feel,” I said, trying to dredge up the tangle of my hollowed emotions, “that I can grieve now. I couldn’t before, you know.” Strangely, thoughts of her were painful, but not quite as much as they had been before. Something else that was healing.
“Ah…” Holmes said. “The bliss of matrimony. You miss it, I gather. Certainly this last case is not a very strong recommendation for the institution. I cannot say that I have ever understood its appeal.”
“Likely not, Holmes,” I said. “Likely not.”
I finished the sustenance in my cup, took care to wipe my mouth carefully, and lit a cigarette while Holmes filled his pipe. It was still a strange sensation to work my lungs, but the change had, if anything, increased the pleasure of smoking. The same was true of brandy, and so I poured us each a small glass. Outside, the city of London boiled and bubbled with human activity while we sat in comfortable silence.
“So,” I said, taking a deep breath. “This implacable and cunning new enemy of ours isn’t a new enemy after all, but an old one. Moriarty.”
“Yes,” Holmes said. “I’m afraid so.”
“How long have you known?”
“I have suspected from the start,” Holmes admitted. “But there has always been an incompatibility between my suspicions and the Mariner Priest’s methods such that I doubted myself. Nothing I could always put my finger on, you understand. The Moriarty of old always played a careful and cunning game, ever trying to improve his position. While the Mariner Priest, his new persona, if you will, is reckless and destructive. Moriarty extended his control carefully, like a spider extending his web, while the Mariner Priest’s methods are anything but careful. How can one preside over a criminal empire in England, or anywhere else, if you burn the city to the ground? Similarly, where is the secrecy that characterized Moriarty’s every move before this? Now, our opponent holds the secret of the vampire and suddenly he abandons all secrecy? He produces vampires with careless abandon, and how can that fit his agenda, for if the world at large understands the nature of vampirism, his own existence is in just as much jeopardy as anyone else’s. Also, we had Dracula’s opinion that Van Helsing was a likely culprit or the entirely contradictory theory that an elder vampire had to be the answer. While it seems our good doctor Van Helsing has taken some curious actions, I find no reason to believe it is connected to our current danger. Also, I think we must discard Dracula’s elder vampire theory. Clearly Moriarty has brought a level of experimentation and discovery to the condition that Dracula cannot match.”
“His tactic of staying out at sea seems shrewd enough,” I observed.
“Yes,” Holmes admitted, “but he could be drifting in relative obscurity and isolation, but is instead engaging in gambits aimed at us that require his interaction with shore when he might lie entirely in wait and succeed that way.”
“Perhaps,” I said, “you have underestimated the personality change that the transformation brought about? Perhaps it pushed Moriarty over the edge of reason?”
“Yes,” Holmes said. “It may be as simple as that. With your sterling example sitting in the chair across from me, as your staunch personality has remained intact, perhaps I can be forgiven an error in judgement for not understanding how it has changed him.”
Holmes had put a peculiar emphasis on the word ‘forgiven’ and I saw a flicker of uncertainty in his masterful expression. His brown eyes watched me carefully and with, I thought, a nearly imperceptible question in them.
“Yes, Holmes,” I said, with a small smile. “I think you can be forgiven a small error in judgement.”
“Capital!” Holmes said. His tone was light, but I could see that his burden had been lightened.
“But what of Moriarty?” I asked. “Do you believe Mary? Has he abandoned his tactic of staying safely out to sea? Is he coming to England?”
“I do believe her,” Holmes said. “In fact, I’d guessed as much and have written to Count Dracula to call in our favour, as it were.”
“They are coming here?”
“I cannot tell,” Holmes said. “They have not responded and I fear the worst. But one thing is certain: Moriarty is coming and we had best be prepared.”