The Classified Dossier: Sherlock Holmes and Count Dracula(86)
“Excellent!” Holmes said. “Your ears are getting keener all the time. Soon enough I shall just instruct the Yarders to shout messages out of their window; what it lacks in secrecy it will more than make up in convenience.” He shot up from his chair and was at the door the very instant it was opened. No sooner had Mrs Hudson taken her first step into the room than Holmes had snatched the telegram out of her hand.
“Thank you, Mrs Hudson,” he sang, as he steered her gently but inexorably back out of the room. “You are quite correct that messages from the Yard are worth our immediate attention!”
Poor Mrs Hudson, long-suffering personage that she was, was still taken aback by this strange and abrupt behaviour. “Mr Holmes! You and your deduct—” But the door slamming behind her quite drowned out the rest of her words.
“My deductions indeed,” Holmes said. “Soon I shall be riding on your coat tails, Doctor, instead of Scotland Yard riding on ours! Ah, Lestrade has an unusual body in the morgue that he would like us to look at, just the kind of thing I have asked him to keep watch for. Excellent! How quickly can you be ready to depart, Doctor?”
*
“Smell the night air, Doctor!” Holmes said in the cab. His face was animated and flushed with excitement. “Can you not sense the imminent possibilities?”
The night air was very strong in my nostrils already, as London always was now. I shook my head at Holmes’s excitement, knowing full well the source. It never ceased to amaze me how contrary to all human experience my comrade could be. Having just discovered that imminent death was rushing across the world towards us and London, another man would have certainly felt fear or anguish, but not Holmes. He was truly at his happiest when grappling with a dangerous problem that was too much for the talents of others. Moriarty’s return might have been a curse for England and the world at large, but there was no hiding the fact that it was a pure gift to Sherlock Holmes.
Even the cold night air and then the grey and even colder tunnels of the morgue did not diminish my friend’s whetted appetite. He eagerly rubbed his hands together as Lestrade led us to the body and removed the covering sheet. The deceased was a smallish man, Caucasian, perhaps twenty to thirty years of age.
“Washed up to the shore near Brighton,” the sallow-faced little detective said. “Which wouldn’t have caused the local authorities to send it so far up to us, except for the wound. I’d like to know what makes that kind of wound in a man. Sickens my stomach, I don’t mind telling you.”
There could be no question as to the cause of death, for the wound in the centre of the man’s chest was terrible to look upon. Nor was it caused by any conventional weapon, but rather a horrific burn of some sort, causing the skin to char and flake all around the chest.
“How long ago did this happen?” Holmes asked.
“They discovered the body yesterday morning and brought it to us last night,” Lestrade said. “We have no information from Brighton about how long it lay in the water for they do not know, but they suspect body was dead at least two days before it was found. Hardly any rigor left, see?” He seized the hand and wiggled it back and forth, showing how loose the muscles of the arm were. “I know that water can alter the conditions, but there’s hardly any bloat to this man at all.”
“Thank you, Lestrade,” Holmes said without looking up from the body. “We shall meet you back upstairs after we’ve finished the examination.”
Lestrade rolled his eyes at me, but left without further demur. He was far too familiar with Holmes’s often icy demeanour when on a case to take too much umbrage now, and well aware that my friend routinely made discoveries that Lestrade could hope to get nowhere else.
Holmes looked the body over in that quick but minute way he had, checking the hands, feet, and clothing in addition to the wound.
“Watson,” he said. “Come give me your opinion, if you would be so kind.”
Lestrade had been right on one account, for the man’s body was certainly not showing any signs of the decay or rigor mortis that one would expect from a corpse so long at sea, and very little sign of being attacked by fish or other marine life. There was some of the bloat, but again, Lestrade had also been perfectly correct in saying that it was far less than expected if the story were accurate.
I would have normally expected a great deal of blood for a wound like this, but the water had washed it all away. Still, little blood was not quite the same as no blood at all, and I examined the curiously vicious droplets I found near the edges of the wound, rubbing them along the tips of my rubber gloves.
“Holmes!” I whispered urgently. “The man’s blood, it is not normal. I think our victim may have been a vampire!”
“So I surmised as well,” Holmes said. He had retrieved a scalpel while I was examining the body and handed it to me now. “If you will probe the centre of the wound I think you may find a confirmation of our hypothesis as well as some clarification as to the nature of the wound. It is just as well that you are wearing gloves.”
I had followed his deductions to have a fair idea of what he meant by that part. Thinking of the horrible and violent reaction that silver had caused to Boucher, the likeliest cause of this particular wound became obvious. So, it was with some newly learned revulsion, if not surprise, that I cut into the centre of the wound and found the glint of silver waiting for me.