The Classified Dossier: Sherlock Holmes and Count Dracula(96)
“No,” I said, “I’ve seen worse than this in Afghanistan on soldiers that were walking cheerfully around just days later.” I tried to put all the hope I could into my voice, but it sounded false and flat, even to my own ears.
“Where are my glasses?” Somersby asked.
“Here,” Holmes said, handing them to me so that I could put them carefully on Somersby’s face. Miss Winter had Somersby’s hand gripped in her own, though I noticed his fingers didn’t grip her back. He seemed immobile from the neck down.
“You are an honest man, Dr Watson,” Somersby said softly. “You mean… well, I’m sure… but falsehood ill becomes you. I can tell when I feel my life… slipping away.”
“The vampire’s bite!” Miss Winter said. “Vampires heal marvellously! Why, I had a vicious cut from a broken glass on my hand here and see!” She held up her palm. “Nothing! No sign of it! Healed as good as new! We’ll have you up and walking in…” She brushed her hair back in preparation to lean over him.
“No,” Somersby said. “I don’t… I don’t want that. Besides, what kind of life would it be? Are you… are you happy… as a vampire?”
Miss Winter shook her head in defeat. Her hat had come loose at the beginning of the fight and her long red hair hung down, covering her face. “No.” Her voice throbbed with emotion and was so low that I had to strain even my hearing to make out the words.
“No,” she said again. “I ain’t happy. It’s a living torment. Better than death, I imagine, but only just barely.”
“And that’s,” Somersby said, “if I can heal a spinal injury. Otherwise, I might have eternity lying on my back, sipping blood through tubes, if I’m lucky. Correct, Doctor? It’s my spine, isn’t it?”
“It’s possible,” I admitted, “but not a certainty.”
Somersby shook his head, the only part of his body he could still move. “It doesn’t matter. I’d make the same decision without… the spinal injury. I don’t want to go on…” His gaze flickered over at the bald-headed vampire corpse. “…as one of them.”
“Oh, Nigel,” Miss Winter said. “Nigel… we can beat this. Perhaps being a vampire doesn’t have to be a living torment, if we did it together! Or Dr Watson can save you without turning you into a vampire! He saved Mr Holmes when he got shot, didn’t he, in conditions no worse than this, I’m sure! Didn’t you, Dr Watson?”
“I’m sorry, Miss Winter,” I said.
Somersby had been struck by prescience in his last minutes and had known better than we that his life was slipping away, and I could see without a doubt that he was gone. He’d sagged slightly and the silver pince-nez slipped from his nose, revealing that his eyes were now vacant. There could be no mistaking that his breathing had stopped.
“Hellfire and damnation,” Holmes said. I rarely, in our many years of acquaintance, even in the most stressful and gruelling of cases, remember seeing him so distraught. His top hat had been lost long ago in the struggle and his hair was out of place with one long lock dangling over his forehead. His face was dirty and damp with sweat.
Holmes stumbled back to the stairs and fell to a sitting position on the bottom step. He, almost absently, reached into his jacket pocket and withdrew the piece of paper there. I remembered now, he’d snatched it off the nail on the beam nearest the stairs in order to hang the lantern. Now, his gaze drifted down to the paper and I heard him mutter the same “Hellfire and damnation” again.
“What is it, Holmes?” I asked.
“A note,” Holmes said. “From Moriarty.” He thrust the letter at me. “Read it aloud, Watson. I haven’t the strength or the eyesight just now.”
Dear Mr Holmes,
Please take it as the highest compliment that I can bestow when I tell you that I write this letter having absolutely no doubt that you will show both the insight and the perseverance to follow my trail of breadcrumbs and come upon this little hideaway, and so, this letter. I will also pay you the compliment of assuming that you both braved the dangers that lie buried here and have also survived, for it would give me a pang of regret, I assure you, to hear of your death, however much it might simplify matters.
May I also offer my deepest sympathies, for the balance of probability is that not everyone you have brought into the basement with you has survived the experience.
You may wonder at my return to England, and well you might, but really, you should have deduced most of the reasons by now. If not, I shall elucidate.
You are already aware that the transformation from human to vampire is not an easy one. (How is Dr Watson, by the way?) While the memories remain intact, it also releases such animalistic urges in a man’s interior self such that he is hardly human anymore. If a man is the sum total of all his experiences then I suggest that a few weeks or more living as an animal, exsanguinating any creature unlucky enough to stumble into your path, is quite enough to unmake your previous personality. The sanctity of life becomes meaningless when everyone around you is reduced to ‘food’ and the morals of society become an altogether different, and more laughable series of meaningless restrictions. (Again, pass my regards to both Dr Watson and, of course, his loving wife, of dearest memory.)