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“For your information, old fellow, it was very inconvenient for me to come at once.” I glared at Sherlock Holmes. “I was in consultation with a patient when your telegram arrived at my practise.”
The consulting detective waved his thin white hand from his usual chair. “Watson, surely you are not satisfied as a man of science to limit yourself to the humdrum illnesses of mortal men. What stimulation of the mind can come from treating the banker or club-man who overindulges in meat, drink and tobacco who now has short breath, gout and dyspepsia? Hardly a mystery to solve.”
I laughed despite my irritation. “Yes, that was rather close to my diagnosis. But come, Holmes, if your summons was as urgent as all that, surely you have a case to discuss.”
“Indeed I do, Watson. Why would Professor Presbury’s wolfhound Roy try to bite his master?”
I blinked. “A dog. You pulled me from my consulting room to ask me about a dog’s behaviour.” Of course I recognised the name of the renowned Camford physiologist, but a client’s celebrity never factored into my friend’s attention to a case.
“A dog’s erratic behaviour, especially concerning his master, when the creature had been nothing but a devoted companion in years past.”
Before my association with a vampire and other Londoners who dwelt on the other side of the grave, I would have had but one response to such information. “I assume the Professor has ruled out hydrophobia?”
“It would be a very peculiar strain of hydrophobia that causes a faithful wolfhound to attack his master on specific occasions only, would it not?”
“Werew—” I stopped myself, but Holmes laughed and I ruefully joined him. A ridiculous thought.
“No, not a werewolf, nor a skin-changer. The Professor’s daughter Edith played with Roy when he was a puppy; he is an ordinary mortal dog.”
Of course, Holmes was right on this matter. No member of the loup-garou and no canid skin-changer could have remained hidden for so long among unknowing family.
Holmes gave me a rueful smile of his own at the chime of the downstairs doorbell. “Ah, I had wished a little longer to talk frankly, but our client is here – Mr. Trevor Bennett, the Professor’s assistant.”
The well-dressed man in his early thirties who entered our parlour was not alone; the handsome young woman with him he introduced as Miss Edith Presbury, the Professor’s only child and his fiancée; Mr. Bennett’s concern in the matter was made doubly clear at once. Both gave me apprehensive looks, which made perfect sense – this was a family matter and no doubt sensitive, and they had contracted for the detective and not his assistant – but it never failed to amuse me that mortal clients were more worried about the presence of a fellow mortal man than the unnatural blood-drinker to whom they unwittingly divulged their secrets.
Sherlock Holmes greeted the clients and gave his usual assurance that we two would treat their case as a private matter, and that they could trust me as they would himself. With that settled, Mr. Bennett and Miss Presbury began their narrative about the man they both loved – for it was clear that Trevor Bennett held almost as filial a devotion to his employer and mentor as did his actual child.
A few months ago, after a lifetime of sober and scandal-free academia, the 61-year-old widower Presbury had begun passionately courting a colleague’s daughter – Alice Morphy, a girl closer in age to Edith than to the professor. Not surprisingly, the young woman had been reticent about a man old enough to be her father seeking her hand when she had the pick of other suitors closer to her own age and circumstances. This rebuff had apparently only inflamed Presbury’s infatuation with the girl. He disappeared for a fortnight and returned without a word of where he had been. (“If I hadn’t received a letter from one of my classmates in Budapest mentioning that he’d seen him there, I wouldn’t have known where he’d been, Mr. Holmes.”) He became furtive and secretive. Certain letters marked with a cross under the postage were not to be opened by Bennett, a change from the young man having the man’s complete trust as his private secretary. The Professor had even shouted at Bennett for touching a quaint carved wooden box he’d brought back from his trip.
“That was July 2,” said Mr. Bennett. “The same day I first saw Roy attack Presbury.” The scientist in the young man had made him meticulously record the dates when he observed this aberrant behaviour. They were exactly 9 days apart. “The rest of the time Roy is as devoted a pet as any could wish.”
Nine days. I could not recall any creature of my supernatural studies whose monstrous nature manifested at such an interval. Something else was afoot.
Mr. Bennett told us about waking up the night before last and his fright at seeing a great hulking figure hanging from the door-lintel at the end of the hall before it dropped to creep away toward Presbury’s room – and to his horror, seeing that the strange and frightening figure was Professor Presbury himself.
“That is not the end of it, Mr. Holmes.” Edith Presbury told of her sleep the previous night disturbed by a thumping at her window, and to her shock saw her father clinging to the window in the moonlight “with the most horrible grin on his face” – and that her bedroom window was on the second story of the house. Yet the Professor greeted Edith as usual that morning at breakfast and seemed to have no recollection of his activities. That incident had confirmed her and her fiancée’s intention to contact Holmes.
Holmes too was caught up in the mystery of it. “Deep waters, Mr. Bennett, Miss Presbury – very deep indeed. Are there any other details you can give us?”
Mr. Bennett had not opened Presbury’s forbidden correspondence, but he had noted the date-stamps of the marked letters. All had come from a place called Cluj-Napoca, the Cyrillic nature of the letters indicating an Eastern European locale.
“Do you know if Alice Morphy is aware of any of this?” asked my friend.
“I spoke to Alice a week or so ago,” Edith replied. “She says she has not heard from nor seen my father, either in the lecture hall nor on the campus grounds. But she admits that she’s been avoiding him since turning him down. She takes notes for some of the professors – that may have been how my father first met her.”
Holmes gave the distressed couple his reassurance that he would study the matter further and keep them appraised of his progress, and saw them out the door. When we were alone once more, he gave me a mischievous smile. “Well, Watson? Which side do you wager is responsible?”
I gave him a smile of my own. “The supernatural is your department, old fellow. I may be an alienist with a very singular specialty, but all of Presbury’s behaviour can be easily explained via thoroughly mortal causes. Lumbago can make a man shuffle in a crawl, for example, or perhaps even drive him to attempt to straighten the back by hanging from an overhead support. Monomania focuses the patient wholly upon one object regardless of that object’s receptivity. Somnambulists have performed feats their waking minds would never attempt, such as climbing the creepers outside a second-story bedroom window. And the throes of passion can turn the wisest and soberest mortal man into a gibbering fool.”
“The mysterious correspondent from Transylvania? The box?”
I waved my hand. “A purveyor of snake oil. They’re a blight on the profession these days, especially the fellows peddling longevity or vitality elixirs – even a man of science like Presbury could have been lured in as an older man courting someone his daughter’s age. The locale is no doubt to add an air of arcane lore from the land of witches and demons.”
Sherlock Holmes laughed. “Ah, Watson! There are indeed enticements for confidence-men to work from other countries safely out of English jurisprudence, and to market their quackery according to their surroundings. No doubt if this medicine-man had settled in a South Seas island, he would be marketing Voodoo cures. But we must also keep in mind that not all peddlers of such false medicine are mortal, or have a strictly mortal clientele.”
“Indeed. I recall the vile Baronet Robert Norberton brokering his own dying sister’s corpus to the vampire John Clay to pay his creditors. I can easily imagine another such con-man working out of Transylvania. And even supernatural folk require money to support themselves – secure lodgings, bribery, club fees and the like.”
“Very true. But this still leaves us with the peculiarity of Roy attacking his master every nine days.”
I shook my head. “So it does. There my knowledge ends.”
“We will go see Presbury himself, Watson. Perhaps we can discover what is responsible in the aftermath of this most recent altered state – and you may be able to judge his symptoms as a medical man.”
“Camford.” I sighed. “When?” I would have to have someone see to my practise and reschedule several consultations. It was all very well and good for Holmes to go somewhere at a moment’s notice when his only wants were a few changes of clothing.
“This coming Monday should be soon enough.”
Inconvenient in the extreme, of course. All the same…
#
By midmorning that Monday we had settled in a comfortably shabby inn in the famed university town before presenting ourselves to the man in question at his Camford home well before his first lecture at eleven, completely unannounced. Nevertheless, Holmes spoke as if he’d already confirmed an appointment with the man.
There was nothing in Presbury’s outward appearance to give any hint of eccentricity; portly, large-featured, grave, tall and frock-coated, he was the very picture of a university professor. But then he stuck his thumb in his ear and wiggled it. “Did I hear you correctly? You sit here with talk of an appointment when you show me no proof of an appointment made!” His voice rose in anger. “I have no such recollection of your appointment! Bennett!”
The young protégé came in, and upon a snapped interrogation from his employer confessed that he’d had no such correspondence with us, nor a request for an appointment.
Presbury then all but flung our cards back at us. “I received no such request! Be good enough to leave while I am still in a civilised mood!”
Not long after Holmes and I were outside and leaving the grounds. Holmes laughed. “Well, Watson, we cannot fault the man’s memory for his regular routine.”
I shuddered to recall the vulgar gesture the man had made during his tirade. “He’s certainly forgotten his manners!”
“Apparently so. At least Presbury’s short temper and refusal to suffer fools are characteristic of the man, according to young Bennett – and is that the Professor coming out of the house to castigate us further?”
It was not Presbury, however, but Mr. Bennett who came running up to us from the house, to profusely apologize for his mentor’s behaviour. “You see what I have been dealing with, Mr. Holmes! Is there anything else you need see while you are here?”
“A moment.” Holmes held his hand up and looked up at the scuffling sounds in a nearby oak tree, where two squirrels chattered at each other. The detective watched one of the creatures pull its bushy tail forward and rake its paws over it before he turned back to us, a peculiar smile on his face. “Forgive my momentary distraction, Mr. Bennett. Yes, I would like you to show me Miss Edith’s room from the outside.”
Bennett led us around to the side of the house to see the balcony window in question on the second floor, positioned near a climbing trellis and a water-pipe. “Not impossible for a man to climb, true,” I said. “But not likely for a sober older academic in full control of his faculties.”
“I couldn’t climb it myself,” Bennett said. “Mr. Holmes, I was able to obtain the name of the correspondent of the secret letters.”
“Excellent.” Holmes took the slip of paper. “Hmm. ‘Dragavei’ – a Romanian surname that is also the name of a local medicinal plant. That certainly sounds like someone who wishes to be associated with the medical profession, and it connects with Presbury’s trip.”
“Thank goodness something connects with something!” I blurted out. After all the talk of dogs, and mysterious boxes, and creeping men and faces at windows, I was relieved that two of the strange threads matched.
Holmes thanked Bennett and reassured him that he and I would be on hand to witness the Professor’s next fit, should the peculiar timeline hold true, a week from now, and Bennett returned to the house.
“There is one more person of interest I wish to investigate before we return to London, Watson.” Holmes signaled the hansom driver. “We need to go to the university for this one.”
I nodded.
Upon our arrival at the academic establishment, a message sent from the dean soon produced the young woman in question. Alice Morphy was in the full loveliness of her early twenties, but she wore a simple dress with cycling bloomers and there was a frankness to her mannerisms, with no coquettishness or naivete in her direct gaze as she set down her notebag and held out a hand (which I grasped to receive a firm handshake). “Mr. Sherlock Holmes! And Dr. Watson! Has there been a murder here I haven’t heard about?” she laughed.
“No murder, Miss Morphy.” Holmes smiled; he seemed as charmed by the young lady as I was. “I only wish to ask you a few questions about a matter concerning one of the professors here.”
Alice’s face fell and she shook her head. “Professor Presbury?”
“Yes.”
“Edith talked to me about him the other day. I don’t know if I can help you.”
“We wished to confirm that he hasn’t contacted you recently.”
“I’ll tell you what I told Edith, Mr. Holmes. Professor Presbury hasn’t come near me since I drove him away three months ago.”
Far too many men would not be put off by a kind but firm rebuff from the object of their desire. I spoke. “You were explicit in your desire to be left alone, Miss Morphy?”
“I had to be brutal to him, Dr. Watson. But I had no choice!” she cried, agitated. “It had started after class, when he’d asked me about any young men I was courting, and I foolishly said I wasn’t seeing anyone. Then he talked about older men being better for younger women, and I almost fled the classroom. Two days later he came to our house and tried to act out that famous scene from Romeo and Juliet, reciting Romeo’s lines under my balcony window! It was so dreadfully embarrassing, and so unlike the man I’d admired. I had to shout at him - ordered him away or I’d have Father drive him off. I hated to do it, I’d admired him so much, but I was afraid for my safety.”
Both Holmes and I gaped at her depiction of the man we had seen just an hour previous, short-tempered but fully focused on his work and with no apparent memory of his bizarre behaviour the last few nights.
“That was the last I truly saw him. I’ve made sure to stay well away from him at the university. I take notes for other professors here sometimes, and I’d enjoyed doing the work for his lectures. He’d seemed so intelligent before that. I miss his lectures, but I daren’t come near him now.”
That was not the tone of a flighty girl dealing with an unwanted beau.
Sherlock Holmes nodded. “Miss Morphy. Do you take notes for many other professors?”
“As many as I can.” Alice gave a sad smile. “Of course I can’t attend Camford as a student, but some of the professors here don’t mind having a note-girl as long as I stay out of sight and don’t say anything so I won’t disrupt the halls full of young men trying to learn. I’ve learned quite a lot just by doing this work.”
“Ah. Have you discovered any particular interest?”
She lit up. “Oh, biology! I love learning about the ways of different animals, and how so much of their lives are very like ours. Father’s always let me read his textbooks, but Professor Presbury brought those words to life with his explanations. There’s so much to learn, and so many things we thought that were wrong. Like wolves, we’ve always thought them such vicious creatures from our old stories but they’re not, truly, there’s not one recorded case of someone getting killed by wolves.”
“Or bats.”
Alice halted her eager speech, and reddened just a little. “Wh- what about bats?”
My vampire friend smiled at her. “Why, that people often think of them as frightening beasts because of folklore in the same way as wolves. The truth is that most bats eat harmful insects like mosquitoes – and even those few species that feed on blood are more likely to prey on goats or cattle than men and certainly don’t bleed them to death. Of course, fictional bats are another story, are they not?”
That cool, assured girl was now red-faced. “I, I suppose so.”
“Well, enough of that, Miss Morphy. Can you tell me if anything unusual has happened near you in recent days? Not necessarily involving Professor Presbury?”
She blinked. “No, nothing at all.”
“Then we’ll take our leave. Thank you.” With no other words, Holmes gestured to me to return to our hansom.
I waited until we were back in our inn room before asking, “What was that bat discussion all about, Holmes?”
Holmes grimaced. “I’d looked into her open notebook-bag. Miss Alice Morphy, in addition to absorbing the cream of academia from the most educated minds of our empire, also reads Bram Stoker’s pornographic drivel.”
I made a disgusted noise and shook my head. I had grown to hate that prurient popular novel being voraciously read by so many women all over the country. By now I knew better than to question Holmes about the vampire lore in Dracula versus the actual ways of his kind. “What a pity. She’d seemed so intelligent, too.”
“That intelligence would certainly have made her more attractive to a man looking for more than mere superficial prettiness. Had Presbury learned of her reading matter, he might have halted his attentions faster; no doubt his emulation of Romeo came from assuming a young woman’s interests lay with Shakespeare’s romantic duo.”
I sighed. “And we are still left with a creeping, hanging and climbing man whose faithful dog attacks him every nine days.”
“Well, we have learned what we can, and must wait for the next attack to run its course. Back to Baker Street, at least for a few days.”
In London I resumed my practise (now minus one angry patient whose consultation had been interrupted by Holmes’ telegram) and Sherlock Holmes returned to his own studies, consulting with clients on both sides of the grave. I was not necessarily needed for such consultations if Holmes could deal with the problem without leaving his chair, so I was not always present when a distressed jewel-broker presented his card in the afternoon or a staring, bloodless creature paid a call just after midnight.
The sole exception during the interim came when Holmes laid his cold hand on my shoulder and bid me rise at 3 in the morning, not four days after our trip to Camford. “Watson, a friend of ours.”
That could be one of only a few names for visitors at such a time of night. I arose and dressed to join Holmes in the parlour. I knew the visitor at once, and smiled to see her. “Miss Winter!”
The vampiress smiled at me in return. “Good to see you, Doctor Watson!” Kitty Winter had been the mortal mistress and then the victim of Baron Gruner, a despoiler of women even before he had become an immortal and had changed his abuse from mere rapine and murder to changing the women into his fellow undead. Despite Winter’s bitter fate, she had made her peace with her new state and now occasionally assisted my friend in cases that involved the London underworld.
Kitty Winter wore a lovely blue gown trimmed in gold, fancier garb than her usual mode of dress. I touched my lips to her pale hand, which was not as icy as it normally was. She also exuded the faint scent of decay that meant she was hungry. “You’re almost as warm as if you’ve just fed, Kitty.”
“’Course I haven’t fed, Porky’s my only blood these days. Same as with you two.” Miss Winter had formed a love-bond with her skin-changer friend Shinwell Johnson, as unbreakable as the one that bound a millennium-old vampire to the blood of a mortal Army doctor. “I’ve just come from the Moth, and the gaslight made the place hot as hell. Sherlock asked me to drop by before heading home.”
“The Moth?” I asked.
Holmes laughed. “The Moth is a club strictly for women of a certain estate, Watson.”
“’Estate,’ he says,” Kitty scoffed. “He means other blood-drinking women. It was our annual ball tonight. I danced all day and half the night with everyone there. That was more fun than I’d had at any party when I was alive!” She smiled. “Porky’s the best, don’t take me wrong. But just being with other women is such a relief at times. You men can be a bit much.”
That was an understatement, given Kitty’s history with the vile Baron. “There’s enough women on both sides who’d agree with you,” said I.
“Don’t I know it! Almost sorry I had to turn down the supper but I told ‘em I preferred hunting me own. I wasn’t the only one.” Now the vampiress grinned with all her teeth showing, including the forward ratlike incisors. “We catch a good number of bastards for the feast – wife-beaters, ravagers, woman-killers – and hearing these big brutes scream and cry like babies is better than taking their blood.”
Of course, thought I numbly. I could only be relieved that the proprietresses of The Moth adhered to the same code of conduct that Sherlock Holmes had once used about selecting victims from those who were a stain on the city. “I can imagine.”
“It’s part of that keeping mum – no one’s going to go looking for some drunken Limehouse bully, the way they would a banker or such.” Kitty Winter winked at me and licked her lips. “But they never will find out what really happened to that Jack the Ripper bloke.”
I nodded. “No, they never will.” Even if I had the slightest urge to divulge the truth, what authority would believe me?
During our talk, Sherlock Holmes had been deep in thought, fingers steepled. He now looked up. “Now that your revel is done, Kitty, I was hoping that you might join Watson and me in our current case. A woman’s point of view would be invaluable.”
I looked at my friend, startled. He had divulged none of this to me.
Kitty’s face lit up. “I might.”
“It will involve travel to Camford three days from now. I will tell you all you need to know before we leave.” Holmes smiled, with just a touch of a tender look. “But not now, for you are ravenous. Go to your young man.”
“You’re not wrong! All that dancing wears one out, dead or alive.” Kitty sniffed and made a face. “And forgive me, Doctor, but you smell like spoiled goods.”
“Spoiled for one man, yes,” I replied serenely, and Sherlock Holmes threw his head back with a silent laugh. It was love that made my blood undrinkable for any other undead save my friend, just as it was love that meant Holmes could feed from no other but me from now on.
“In a day, then.” The she-vampire took her leave out the window – the same way she’d no doubt entered 221 Baker Street – and was gone without a sound.
“You asked her here to join our case?” I asked.
“Yes. I’ll wire our clients that I’m bringing a consultant so we don’t surprise them with her appearance. Watson, I know a few things about jewels, but for expertise I go to a jeweler. In the same way I cannot reconcile Miss Morphy’s obvious intelligence and scientific mind with her base taste in popular literature; my knowledge of modern women is sorely lacking. Kitty Winter was a mortal woman longer than she has been of my kind; she may be able to help me understand the distaff side of the Presbury business.”
I nodded, then yawned. “Perhaps she will. Now if that’s all, I need to go back to bed if I am to be helpful at all in Camford.”
The following Monday the three of us were aboard a train returning to the university town. Holmes filled Kitty in on the Presbury case, and her disgusted expression told me her own thoughts on the matter. When told of Presbury’s secret letters and box, she nodded. “Sounds like the kind of mad stuff a man would do to try to relight the basement furnace.”
“I agree. It’s a pity that a man so renowned for his precise scientific brain may have succumbed to quackery. A serum or elixir that can rejuvenate mortal men’s youth and vitality is scientifically ridiculous,” my vampire companion said to his fellow undead; I manfully suppressed my coughing fit and buried my face in my newspaper.
We resumed our stay at Chequers (Holmes and I; Kitty found a bivouac within earshot of our window at the inn – “Must say, Doctor, it’s a relief to go about at night with no fear at all”). I made sure to have a hearty supper featuring the establishment’s excellent port afterward before returning to our room and offering my ravenous friend a vein; Sherlock Holmes no longer pursued his cases without stopping to feed or repose. Only when my wrist was bandaged did we hire a trap for the three of us to drive out to meet Mr. Bennett at the Presbury household.
But we were met at the door by Bennett and Miss Presbury, agitated. The Professor had attended his classes as usual that day, but he had not returned in the evening. It was full dark now.
“Alice,” Kitty said, her vampire-white skin making the realisation all the more frightening. The mortals were nearly as pale. “He’s gone to her at last.”
Without hesitation Edith Presbury gave Holmes the address for the Morphy home. “We’ll take the car, and bring Roy – if Father’s too much for us his own dog will stop him!” That dread look on her face had nothing to do with filial duty and everything to do with the terror that lived in every woman.
Away we went, Kitty and Holmes almost talking over each other as the pieces fell into place, our trap following the Presburys’ motorcar.
“That thumb in his ear, Watson –“
“You said she read Dracula, but do you know why women are reading it so much – and no it’s not because of all that blood pornography – “
“Charlatan or true believer, the apothecary knew what animal was associated with Transylvania – “
“We read that book at the Moth, it’s good for a laugh, but it makes us so sad too – “
“He’s been taking that extract because of that book, Watson, not in spite of it – “
“But he’s doing it because he didn’t understand why she was reading it – “
The Morphy home was a handsome two-story estate befitting a university professor, much like Presbury’s. The young couple were out of the car, holding the lead on a lunging, baying wolfhound. Just as we alit from the trap, Roy slipped his lead.
“Kitty!” Holmes shouted and practically flew after the dog with Kitty behind him, leaving me with the other mortals.
“The house!” I cried to the stricken pair, and ran – not following the others but to the front door, pounding on it. “Professor Morphy! Mrs. Morphy!”
A dishevelled older man in a dressing-gown opened the door, but his angry expression vanished when he saw who was outside. “Edith?”
“Yes, and I’m a friend of Edith’s, it’s your daughter’s safety,” and with no other words I shouldered past the protesting man and dashed up the stairs. I could hear Roy baying outside, but far more frightening was the soft scraping against the wall and window outside. Bedroom door – I flung it open.
Alice sat bolt upright in her bed, screaming – and on the balcony outside, windows flung open, was a shadowy figure holding up the trailing ends of his frock-coat out like bat’s wings. Professor Presbury’s features were contorted in a horrible grin like a jack o’ lantern as he advanced on the girl.
Then the Professor’s false vampire wings were seized at either end by Sherlock Holmes and Kitty Winter, holding him in the unbreakable iron grip of the true vampire.
“Professor!” I shouted, walking past the terrified young woman still in her bed and approaching her assailant. Roy barked and howled below. “You are ill! That drug you’re taking is a poison!”
Gone was the dignified scientist. Presbury shrieked and lunged at me, eyes wide with rage, but unable to move with his arms pinioned. “She is mine! Mine!” he snarled. “Come with me and live forever, my Alice!”
Shaking my head in disgust, I dealt one surgical blow to the madman’s jaw. The would-be Count Dracula sagged in his captors’ grip.
“It’s all over, Miss Morphy,” I said without turning around to look at the woman who’d cried out at the attack, now being comforted by her distressed parents. I raised my voice to those I could hear behind me on the stairway. “Mr. Bennett, Miss Presbury, please stay with the Morphys. Mr. Holmes and I will take Presbury back to the car. He requires a doctor’s care. We will be back shortly to explain all.”
Between the two of us, we were able to lug the insensate Presbury down the stairs to his own motorcar, where I cuffed his wrists behind his back and administered a sedative. The scuffs and abrasions on the Professor’s hands, matching the rough bark of the sturdy creepers around Alice’s window, let me know how he’d accessed her balcony.
Kitty Winter glared into the car at the unconscious man. “One of these days you men will actually believe us when we say no to you the first time.”
Fortunately, the only witnesses to this bout of madness were ourselves and the stricken Morphys, shocked to see their colleague in this state. “He took a drug he should not have,” I said truthfully to Alice’s parents. “We’ll take him home so that Edith and Mr. Bennett can tend to him.”
When we were back at the house and Professor Presbury was sound asleep in his locked bedroom, the five of us ransacked his study, which now featured books in Romanian and Magyar languages as well as more conventional science tomes in French and English. In one locked drawer we found the letters from Dragavei, all marked with a large cross beneath the stamp (that made several of us smile at the ineffective precaution); these were all invoices for doses of his Chiroptera Extracts. The small carved box, also in the drawer, yielded phials of some yellowish liquid, a few empty ones, a syringe, and a shallow pot of a musky-smelling ointment “To Be Administered to the Arms and Shoulders Every Nine Days for Maximum Effect.”
“Chiroptera.” Sherlock Holmes shook his head. “Just as squirrels groom themselves by combing their tails, bats clean themselves by licking a claw and using it to clean their sensitive ears for their night-hunts. That uncouth mannerism of the Professor’s had struck me too, Watson. Bats not only hang upside-down, but they crawl on the ground the way the Professor crept through the house and startled you, Mr. Bennett. They are also dexterous climbers that can use their webbed hands to climb, as Presbury did tonight. Either the drug affected his mannerisms, or he deliberately began mimicking the traits of a bat to emulate his desired outcome. The ointment is likely the reason that a faithful wolfhound turned on what his nose told him was an animal instead of his human master.”
“No wonder poor Roy attacked Father,” Edith said. When we’d returned to the Presbury home, before joining us in the study Edith had locked the distressed canine in his kennel with a good number of pats and a slice of buttered bread to reassure him that he was not in disgrace anymore.
“Hold,” Holmes said when Edith and Bennett were about to throw the vials and ointment into the study’s fireplace. “I wish to take these back to Baker Street and hold on to them as evidence. I will write a letter to Dragavei to let him know that I hold him personally responsible for peddling a poison as a drug, and that will be the end of the Transylvanian end of this affair. Now there only remains the matter of deciding Presbury’s fate.”
“Please, oh please keep this a secret, Mr. Holmes!” Bennett cried to us. “We will keep him in his room until he is quite himself again. The scandal that would fall upon this university, upon Camford itself, if this disgraceful conduct came to light! Edith would suffer as well!”
“Oh yes, by all means think of the poor man’s reputation and not Miss Morphy’s ordeal!” snapped Kitty. “It’s a damned good thing most women are more forgiving than men like him deserve. Tell her all – let her see what a ridiculous jape he pulled thinking he’d be her dashing Dracula and only made himself sick on bat serum instead. If you’re very lucky, all she’ll do is laugh in your faces.”
Trevor and Edith were both almost as beet-red as Alice had been. “She…she admires the Professor, Miss Winter,” Bennett finally said.
Kitty Winter scoffed. “Well, that may salvage your precious university’s reputation. But you should offer the girl something better than promises. Let her attend classes, and not just to take notes.”
All of us stared at Kitty. “That’s brilliant,” I said.
“Imposs—” Bennett began, but stared down at the nostrums from a madman’s laboratory. He had spent the night dealing with the impossible.
“Agreed, Miss Winter,” said Sherlock Holmes. “Mr. Bennett, Miss Presbury, I am sure such an endowment is not beyond the abilities of both households. Make up whatever story will suffice – an eccentric waiver in an endowment or the like. Talk to her father about this, and the dean, and find whatever rules need to be bent. Let Alice Morphy know that this is reparation from the university for her imperilment by their faculty. And be sure that all parties know that her silence about this assault is conditional upon Presbury staying away from her from now on.”
“Yes. That means he isn’t to come near her, ever, not even to apologise.” Kitty’s white face was nearly as fierce-looking as when she showed her demonic vampire features. “A word from him, a note, a glance that lasts longer than an eyeblink – anything that makes her uncomfortable, and we will find out about it – and we notify the most horrible papers in London.”
“There wouldn’t be a university with a reputation to protect, once they were done,” I added grimly.
The young couple’s pale faces told me that this exchange would be honored.
Holmes took up the carved wooden box and two of the Dragavei letters. “I think our work here is done. There is just time for a cup of tea at Chequers before we return to London. Watson, Miss Winter.”
It was the inn’s port I needed, not the tea, and I was soon fortifying myself in our inn room.
Kitty had let herself in via the outside window and would return to her cover until we all left tomorrow morning. “Bat serum,” sniffed the vampiress. “He got sold a bill of goods all right.”
“This Dragavei is either a disciple of Lowenstein or Lowenstein himself under a nom de plume,” added Holmes, stowing the drugs and letters in his satchel. I shook my head in disgust at the name of the notorious charlatan who swore that various animal glands held the secret to longevity and restored youth. “His usual traffic is in glands from the more ferocious creatures – lions, gorillas, wolves – but perhaps he has added bats to his repertoire with the popularity of that foul novel, promising men a transformation into an irresistible night-roaming Casanova.”
“That’s not the reason women are reading Dracula.” Kitty shook her head. “Not the real reason.”
“It’s not the, er…” I blushed to speak of the erotic depictions of blood-feeding between the Count and his female victims – this, despite Holmes and I sharing feedings that had often felt like passionate coupling in all but name. Holmes smiled and touched a forefinger to his lips just over his own blood-teeth, which made me blush more.
“Oh there’s that, certainly. All dressed up as a ghost story so it don’t get banned for public morals.” Kitty winked at me. “But it’s the same reason we read the book and talk about it at The Moth, when the lot of us are past all that mortal business – that’s when we’re not laughing ourselves silly at all the idiot notions Mr. Stoker has about us, of course. It’s the women in the story. They’re not just there to be good little lambs for the slaughter. Lucy Westenra and Mina Harker live wild lives, defend their loved ones from monsters, and do great and terrible things. They’re heroes. And villains, yes. There’s a freedom in them that you don’t get in good books about pious maids and devoted wives and saintly mothers. I’ll wager that’s what drew Alice to that book, the way it speaks to a lot of mortal women like Alice trying to find more for themselves than the humdrum of courtship and marriage and children.
“That’s what Professor Presbury didn’t understand, Doctor, Sherlock. He thought it was Dracula offering her passion, when it was Lucy and Mina offering her freedom.”
“Brilliant deduction, Miss Winter,” said I.
“I believe you are correct, Kitty,” said Holmes. “I concede to your superior knowledge of the ways of your sex.”
I finished my port and retired. As I settled into bed, I mused on how enthused Alice had been about her scientific interests when she had spoken to us. It was pleasant to think that soon she would be taking notes for her own use and reading any textbook in the university she chose and not merely the ones in her father’s private library.
When I felt icy limbs wrap around me in the dark, I turned to pull Holmes into my embrace so that he could enjoy my mortal warmth.
“Love makes men do mad things, Watson,” my vampire whispered. “Such as taking snake-oil cures to turn into animals. Or trading immortality for a few decades of perfect happiness.”
I held him closer and kissed his forehead, my own heart full. “Poor Presbury.”