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In looking over my case-notes recording the long years of my association with Mr. Sherlock Holmes, I find a startling number of them with the recurring theme of missing women. Some are the usual vulgar kidnappings for ransom of some family member of a peer or nouveau-riche industrialist. And of course women disappeared all the time in London, as did men – sadly, many of them amid the wretched poor or newly-immigrated populations in the slums and docks, unnoticed and ignored by the solid citizens and politicians (and all but a few heartsore, decent police).
Some disappearances were only discovered after the fact, as happened in more than one of our cases. Some cases haunted long after their denouement.
And a number of those disappearances were no coincidence.
I wrote them down as separate cases alongside the usual fare, for the true story is not to be read let alone believed by the families who buy and read The Strand every month. But just as I keep a separate medical bag to treat the unnatural injuries acquired by my unnatural friend, I keep a separate journal to record the truth of my association with the world’s only consulting detective and vampire, Mr. Sherlock Holmes.
***
One case of a woman’s kidnapping enraged me in no small part because the vile culprits had gotten clean away. The missing woman had been found but I was in no mood to listen to Holmes’ airy explanation of his deductions. Rage and terror gripped me together, mingled with the memory of the heavy odour of chloroform and my primal terror at Lady Frances Carfax’s fate. I was so beside myself that I quite forgot my language.
“The monsters, Holmes! The utter villainy of it all! To capture a woman, hold her prisoner for weeks and then bury her alive – all for a paltry handful of jewelry!”
“Monsters.” Sherlock Holmes pursed his lips in icy amusement. “Unfortunately, my dear heart, there are enough on both sides of the grave who’d do all that to the unfortunate Lady Frances merely for sport, let alone for her few baubles.”
I nodded, feeling my cheeks heat with shame. “Forgive me for that term, old fellow.”
Holmes waved a thin white hand through which my blood flowed. "It’s only the truth, Watson. If it’s any consolation, your chagrin does lovely things to your face.”
I laughed at that impudent comment, and his pleased smile showed that that was exactly what he’d wished.
That word did literally describe my beloved friend. And he was right; cruelty and inhumane treatment was a mortal’s lot as much as an immortal’s. I’d seen enough horrors in war, and had encountered enough vile supernatural creatures who’d been no better as living men. I was clearly still shaken by the memory of that handsome woman, eyes still unfocused and drugged under her tumble of russet hair, being pulled out of a coffin.
“However,” Holmes continued, his long white hands now pressed together in thought, “it is a great deal of effort for such a small return. They were cowards, not sadists, Watson; they chloroformed Lady Frances and stuffed her in a coffin because they could not bring themselves to strike a killing blow. A clumsy and inept kidnapping. If her goods were the sole objective.” He contemplated his folded hands. “Watson, I would ask you to refrain from publishing this case, for now. But be sure to write down all that you can recollect. I may want to reference your notes in future.”
I was too incensed to argue with Holmes over publishing or not. But the very act of venting my ire into ink and paper eased my heart away from the dread that had gripped me at the very end of the business. Perhaps I would not, after all, suffer nightmares of being buried alive myself.
Alas, that was not to be; my sleep did indeed take me to a pitch-black and suffocating pine box under 6 feet of dead earth. But in my dream, my muffled cries were met with the sound of swift digging, and a familiar icy hand seized my wrist and pulled me to air and blessed light just as I awoke.
***
One case involved a missing man, but therein lay another woman out of sight behind it all.
Pompey was no Toby, but the little chap certainly knew his own patch well enough. Holmes’ acute hearing was above that of mortals, but the beagle mix’s cold wet nose was the master of this environment beyond that of natural or unnatural man. (Wryly, as with Toby, I wrote off another fallacy about the supernatural; neither dog reacted with fear or mistrust at the presence of a vampire, but happily licked Holmes’ cold cheeks and wagged their tails under his patting hands. Holmes laughed at my confusion: “They are brave, sturdy souls like yourself, Watson: further, they know who is kind to them.”)
When we reached the cottage where we found Staunton at last, and saw his grief-stricken vigil beside the wasted form of a young woman in bed, all was made clear. I had too often seen that sunken-eyed pallour in a dead body. Sherlock Holmes stepped forward quickly and quietly, so still that the weeping young widower never noticed his presence, and looked down at the body with his sharp gaze upon the faded blue eyes and gaunt features under a mass of golden hair. Only after a long stretch of time did he give a small nod and retreat as soundlessly as he’d advanced. With a look to me we departed the house of grief.
But when we were a good length away from the cottage, well past earshot or sight, Holmes stopped and faced me. "It is death, Watson, true death. She cannot join my society now. Godfrey Staunton will be spared that particular devastation, at least.”
A chill went through me that was not caused by the winter day. “There was a possibility that that poor woman might?”
Holmes bent down to pat Pompey. “My ears were as hard at work as this fellow’s nose. I heard no signs of any others like me near here. Some weaklings can only take their meals from those near death already, and make fledglings in the same manner.” Sherlock Holmes smiled – a genuine smile of relief. “But any lurking blood-drinkers are too late. She belongs only to the earth that will hold her. If they tried to draw her blood now it would kill them.”
I nodded where I was crouched down beside my friend, patting the dog as well; I needed the comfort after the sad ending of this case. I had learned that tidbit from Holmes; a creature of his type might feed off a dying human, but the blood of a stone-dead human was as fatal to their kind as was holy water or three silver-caused wounds. “What if some… someone had been nearby?”
Holmes smiled and his eyes were pure inhuman steel. “I would have stopped them.”
“No wonder your brother despises you for a traitor,” I blurted out, and his laugh was quite terrifying; I joined him.
***
Sherlock Holmes had reluctantly given Miss Violet Hunter a fatherlike permission to shear her stunning coppery-red hair for an unusual governess position, but Violet’s telegram had sent us here at once. The full story of Mr. Rucastle’s terrifying behavior is not fit for modern readers, but herein lies the true account of what we found at The Copper Beeches.
Violet Hunter had been made not only to cut her hair but don clothing of a certain type to masquerade as another, all in a futile attempt to gull her fiancé. “She may be lost to us, Watson.” Holmes dashed up the stairs to the attic. “What a fool I have been!”
The young man who joined us had the same terrified look to his face as Violet. Alice, he’d said. Alice.
Rucastle roared from the floor below us as we battered down the attic door.
Alice lay on the bed as still as Lady Frances Carfax. Two bleeding puncture wounds on her neck, nearly as red as the gorgeous coppery sheen of her shorn hair and a vivid contrast to her white skin, told us the story.
I bent over the young woman while Holmes and her fiancée spun and headed down to confront the prisoner’s father and Carlo.
Alas for the man who’d imprisoned his own daughter, so full of conceit at his mastery of the situation that he had released the penned and starved skinchanger with the full belief that the abused brute of a servant would still do his bidding – instead of what Carlo did, which was to savage Rucastle himself still in his animal form. Violet’s description of the “mastiff” had so alerted Holmes to his true nature that he’d come properly armed against the beast – and it was he, not I, who impaled Carlo on the sharpened dog-bone he had carried with him, killing the brute instantly.
All that was left was to tend to both patients. My own experience in doctoring wounded people on both sides of the grave stood me in good stead. I was relieved, though angered, to see that Miss Alice Rucastle was very much alive though faint from bloodloss and much abused by the monster or monsters her father had permitted to feed on her little by little, in his attempts to coerce her into signing over her money. More importantly, she had not partaken of her own vampire-tainted blood from any of her terrible “suitors,” and would not join their damned ranks; she would recover fully, safe in the custody of her young man and the house’s faithful retainers.
As for the unspeakable Rucastle, he would live – but he’d been so badly mauled by Carlo that he would be bedbound for the foreseeable future and get about only in a Bath chair when he did recover. He could no longer lay hand on his wife nor children – not if he wished to eat that day. I am sorry to say that the thought of that vile man at the mercy of his former victims had me smiling as coldly as Holmes as we returned to Baker Street.
***
After these horrific cases, how relieved I was the morning I entered the parlour to find Sherlock Holmes perusing a newspaper advertisement beside a heavyset, florid-faced man with a great shaggy mane of crimson-red hair. Holmes showed me the notice of the Red-Headed League and introduced me to the pawnbroker Mr. Jabez Wilson.
Together Holmes and I sat and heroically refrained from laughter as our woebegone visitor told the story of the bizarre hiring agency that provided princely sums for nominal work, provided the worker was a red-headed man. With the aid of his assistant Wilson had applied to the position in a veritable sea of red-headed men, but was quickly selected above all the others by a Mr. Duncan Ross, whose hair was even redder than Wilson’s own. The work commenced – four hours daily of copying the Encyclopedia Britannica under the watchful eye of Mr. Ross.
But the expression on my friend’s face changed to rapt attention when Jabez Wilson described his new assistant, a fellow named Vincent Spaulding; small, stout-built, very quick in his ways, clean-shaven, with a white splash of acid upon his forehead. Was willing to work half-wages and perpetually disappearing into the basement to develop his photographs when not assisting Wilson with the shop’s business. Had worked as the pawnbroker’s assistant for a month before notifying his rufous employer of the Red-Headed League’s advertisement.
Holmes reassured Wilson that we would take his case and look into the matter, and sent him on his way. Only when the red-haired man was gone did he turn to me.
“Watson. What do you make of it all?”
I shook my head. “That ridiculous tale? A confidence scheme, surely. Yet Mr. Wilson was paid over 30 pounds for his work, and nothing was stolen from his pawnshop while he was away. I cannot fathom the motivation behind it all.”
“Yes, it is a peculiar little problem, is it not? I need to think. This is quite a three-pipette problem, Watson, and I pray you don’t speak to me for the next fifty minutes.”
I nodded and arose to get my medical bag. By the time I returned Sherlock Holmes was seated in his chair folded up as if attempting to fit into a crate. Without a word I pulled my chair over to sit next to him. A deft prick with a sterilised needle, and I stuck my forefinger into the corner of Holmes’ mouth. Holmes continued to stare into the fireplace with no change of expression, but his cold tongue licked at the welling bead of blood from my fingertip as automatically as a mortal man might smoke a pipe or suck on a peppermint. Having accustomed myself to Holmes’ ways of pondering the evidence, I busied myself with a medical journal in the interim.
Less than an hour later Sherlock Holmes sat up straight, my finger popping out of his mouth. The light of a bloodhound on the case was in his eyes. “I have a few theories now that I wish to test, Watson, that a walk through the City should clear up for me. After that, we can stop for lunch and take in a little music; Sarasate is playing at St. James Hall this afternoon. Would you care to join me?”
I went to fetch my hat and coat.
We took the Underground to Aldersgate and walked toward Saxe-Coburg Square, the shabby little collection of houses where Jabez Wilson resided. As we approached Holmes halted just around a corner and well away from the three gilt balls that announced the location of the pawnshop. “Watson, I wish you to do something for me.”
I had stopped with him. I nodded.
“I have my suspicions about Mr. Vincent Spaulding. I should like you to head down the street to the door of Mr. Wilson’s shop. Be sure to use your walking stick heavily as if your wound is aching in this October weather. When you get to the pawnshop, knock; it is Saturday and Jabez Wilson is still away, which means Spaulding will come to the door. Ask him for street directions; the Strand will serve as your desired locale. But that is the excuse to use for observing him. Examine his hands, the knees of his trousers, and his forehead. Surreptitiously of course. Head down the street toward the far corner, still using your stick; I will meet you there.”
I laughed a little. “Good heavens, old man, you sound like we’re behind enemy lines.”
“We are.” Deadly serious. “You are a respectable, dull middle-class fellow who is not worth remembering by that man.”
That was my assignment, not Holmes’ assessment of me. With a nod I set off, not looking at him. My leg ached enough that I did not need to exaggerate my gait, and my walking-stick thumped along the sidewalk. I knocked at the brown board that said JABEZ WILSON.
A short stout clean-shaven young man answered the door, shading his eyes with his hand from the low autumn sun. He bore a dead-white patch of skin on his forehead. “May I help you, sir?”
I asked for directions to the Strand and thanked him when he gave them and closed the door. I headed in the direction he’d indicated, my stick tapping over the stones – a lighter, hollower sound than the solid thump I’d gotten approaching the shop, as if I walked over the top of a vault. My heart was ice and terror filled me, but I feigned a stumble and caught myself to account for my rapid heartbeat. I continued my stroll as if I was indeed a dull, respectable fellow with business elsewhere. That block seemed to stretch for a mile; but finally I’d reached the far corner and turned down the third right from the shop as per Vincent Spaulding’s directions.
Holmes was there waiting for me. “My brave heart.”
Now I shook; now my heart pounded. “He’s a vampire.”
“Then it is the fellow I feared.”
That white patch on Spaulding’s forehead had been made with holy water, not acid; God knows I’d seen that unnatural wound before in Holmes’ kin. So that was why my friend had stayed well away from where his unliving state would have given away his nature.
“Hands?”
“Dirty under the nails.”
“And his trouser knees?”
“Stained and wrinkled.”
“Splendid work. Your stick?”
I told him about the change in sound. He nodded, grim-faced. “Come, Watson. We are still not safe here.” With a wave of his hand Holmes bade me follow him on his walk, crossing streets and passing other businesses. We were a full street away from the pawnshop when Holmes thumped his own walking stick on the sidewalk again, and nodded at me.
“That particular gentleman of the night is John Clay, the fourth cleverest creature in London. He augments a vampire’s usual pursuit with a little safe-cracking and outright murder to alleviate the boredom.”
I thought of the holy-water stain on his forehead, his hand shading sun-sensitive eyes. “He’s run into hunters before.” We stood in front of a small shabby church a block away from the pawnshop, but I felt no safer; I knew too much about the supernatural now.
“Oh, that was an accident when he was robbing a cathedral some time ago.”
I gave a terrified laugh at the brazen recklessness of the damned fellow.
Holmes gave a flicker of his own icy smile before continuing his musing. “He’s here for something big. I’d have thought a gold shipment in the nearby bank – even a blood-drinker has bills to pay, and survival is always easier with money – but that is not what the pavement tells me.” He tapped the ground again, then walked past the church and tapped again. He looked at me and without a word I tapped too – and felt the solid thump once again and not the echo of a vault.
This time I was the one who gave Holmes a speaking look. He nodded, still smiling, and stayed where he was as I turned and walked over to the church.
Another tap gave me the hollow thump beneath as I returned to the church site. My senses alert (and my hand on the silver knife in my pocket), I entered holy ground. But it was only a dull little church with unremarkable art and trappings, and one sexton gathering up wilted flowers from a recently-concluded service. The old man gave me a sympathetic look over his armload of white, heavily-perfumed blossoms. “I’m sorry, sir, but there’s no service this evening.”
Not a wedding – too late in the day, and certainly not with that sickeningly-sweet flower smell. “Of course,” said I. “My condolences to the deceased’s family.”
The old man’s face lit with astonishment. “How ever did you know we’ve just concluded a funeral?”
I waved my hand like Holmes. "It’s no matter. I was merely interested in admiring this lovely little church.”
“Well, you couldn’t have come at a more auspicious time,” the sexton said with a smile of pride. “What with the new addition and all.”
“Addition?” I did not need to feign interest.
“In the churchyard. Come see!” Happy to play tour guide rather than attend to his tedious chores, the sexton led me to the door at the transept that led to the churchyard that bristled full of headstones. But one large square structure stuck out among the mossy and mouldering stonework, built of crisp grey freshly-cut granite.
“That departed soul was the very first to be interred in there.” The sexton nodded and smiled with more pride than sorrow.
“What a revelation.” I sincerely meant it. “Thank you for showing me.”
Holmes’ face lit up when I reported back from my excursion. “Watson, I do believe you’ve hit upon it. I shall explain further, once we are well away from this site. In the meantime, Doctor, it is you who need to feed; you look nearly as wan as I. I have one little errand in that nearby post-office. And then it’s off to violin-land!”
Holmes regaled me with talk on a number of subjects while I devoured a ham sandwich and a cup of coffee in a nearby café, and less than an hour after that we were in the stalls at St. James. Here, I once again marveled at seeing my cold and inhuman friend transform into a blissful music lover, gently waving his long white fingers to the music, eyes closed in rapture at Sarasate’s brilliance. I enjoyed the music very much, but it did not stir my blood; Holmes would not indulge in passionate feeding after this concert, a wickedness in which we both indulged at special times (once we had both discovered that my response to powerful music did something to my blood that acted as an intoxicant for my vampiric friend). For now Sherlock Holmes simply enjoyed the music for its own sake, possibly in the closest state of reaching Heaven that a damned creature could attain.
But in the hansom on the way home, Holmes’ face became stern and he faced me. “Watson. I am going out tonight to deal with this matter. You will not join me.”
I knew in my innermost that he was right and yet my entire being cried out against it.
His long cold hand cupped my cheek. “Can you still your brave, beating heart altogether so that you cannot be heard a block away by the unholy? This is bad business, Watson, very bad. This is no daring bank-robbery but a night for the dead, natural and unnatural. They would not only hear your heart but smell your silver and garlic and flee, but only after attempting to kill you. Yes, they – John Clay is not alone in this. Tonight is strictly a traitor’s errand.”
Even in my stricken mood, I was ridiculously grateful that Holmes implied that I would hold my own in a fight with Clay’s compatriots. “Surely there is something I can do.”
“Perhaps. Let us return to Baker Street before I give a definitive answer.”
When we entered the door at 221, Billy the page-boy said “There’s a lady to see you, sir.”
“Ha!” Holmes turned to me, his eyes twinkling. “There is my answer already, Watson. Come.” He headed upstairs.
Puzzled, I followed close on his heels, but when I saw our visitor on our sofa – lovely and white-faced under flame-coloured hair – I exhaled in relief.
“What’s the game tonight, Sherlock?” Kitty Winter asked, standing to greet us.
“Miss Winter.” I kissed her still, icy hand as much out of relief as gallantry; my friend would not have his back unguarded.
The vampiress, created by Baron Gruner when he’d wearied of his human mistress, gave a bark of laughter. “No man did that when I was living!”
“You’ll not train Watson away from being a gentleman, Kitty,” Holmes laughed. “Now, this is the way of things.” He laid out the story of Wilson and the Red-Headed League, and John Clay, and what I had discovered a block away.
“Mmm.” Miss Winter reached a hand to stroke her own flame-red hair. “A pattern, innit?”
“Very much a pattern.” Holmes turned to me. “Watson. There is more than one case that will be finally, truly solved tonight. If you would oblige me by bringing me your notes on our last dozen or so cases, I would appreciate it.”
I looked at Kitty, who smiled a little and gave a little toss to her head. I felt my own face grow cold as I realised the full truth. I knew exactly which cases he wanted, and brought him my notebooks.
***
A quiet, shabby neighbourhood, sealed over with night. A shabby little pawnshop in which dark figures can be seen entering via the unlocked door, by ones and twos, indiscernible in the feeble lamplight. Some pairs of them carry long heavy boxes inside and depart empty-handed. No one disturbs them.
On another street near this little shop are other shops, restaurants, a church or two, all still and silent in the night. Beyond the feeble street-lights only a few people go about their business this late; a policeman walking a beat, a thief in the shadows waiting for him to go past, a painted woman plying her trade in the alley.
One unremarkable little church, in one un-noteworthy churchyard, has as its sole feature of interest a newly-built crypt. All is as still and silent as the rest of that street.
Within the crypt, which though brand-new contains four coffins, all is not still and silent as the grave. The door and lock, splashed with holy water as part of the funeral that afternoon, are untouched. The floor inside the vault has a gaping hole, large enough to pull a simple coffin through.
“Another, I think,” an elegant gentleman says; the lovely red-haired woman beside him only nods and smiles. “A single fledgling is no flock at all.” The two other gentlemen nearby laugh and nod; one has his own red-haired female companion with him, a staring silent creature.
The small, stout broker bows to his clients. “No whore for your graces; see this lovely creature, an aristocrat from Berkshire acquired only today.” He opens the casket lid.
The soulless men bend over the barely-breathing woman inside as the broker holds a lamp over her head. Her eyes are sunken with approaching death; her face is puffy with dropsy; her hair is a pale spill of gold-red floss.
“An aristocrat?” one asks, voice sharp. “What of her family?”
“There will be no trouble,” the little broker says immediately. “Her brother is her sole relative, and debt-ridden; he was happy to receive my payment. He will not pursue the matter further.” In a swift movement he closes the coffin lid. “She will die tonight. You must bid quickly if you are to have them, gentlemen. Opening bid is five hundred pounds.”
“Five hundred.’
“Six hundred.”
“Eight.”
In seconds the bidding is in the mid thousands. The broker is silent, his eyes glinting in the yellow light of the lantern.
The first one, the man with a red-haired woman on his arm, is the winner at ten thousand. The other vampires sulk and eye the other casketed goods on the shelves.
The man hands a pouch that clinks with gold to the broker, who reaches both hands out.
The bag bursts and shiny gold coins spill over the coffin lid as well as the broker’s hands.
The gentlemen are ruled by more than one greed; the other two pounce on and seize the gold coins.
The beat policeman whips his head around at high-pitched shriek coming from the churchyard, even through granite walls. The thief blanches, crosses himself and runs for a quieter corner. The whore and her customer shout in terror and disengage, fleeing in opposite directions as they hitch clothing back into place.
Inside the vault is a scene of chaos. Hands scorched and burnt, two bidders flee for the earthen hole and vanish, still howling in pain. His own hands now white skeletal claws, the broker’s own dash for the hole is halted by the bidder’s grip at his neck and a clink of iron cuffs on his destroyed wrists. A voice no less iron. "It’s no good, John Clay. Your little smuggling operation is broken.”
“Get your filthy hands off me,” snarls the broker, a shriek of pain behind his harsh voice.
(The policeman heads to the site of the cry, but finds a completely undisturbed churchyard and crypt and no further noise discernible. He moves on, not without giving a few looks over his shoulder.)
The staring silent red-haired vampiress stares at the coins and at the other woman; they two are the only others left standing in that vault. The other redhead smiles sadly at her compatriot, and indicates the scattered coins. “Washed in holy water.”
Without hesitation the vampire girl seizes a coin and swallows it, and with a wavering cry – her first and last sound as a fledgling – she falls to the ground.
For just a moment the other woman looks at the coins, but turns away from both them and the already-mouldering body to focus on her companion and the broker with the destroyed hands.
"It seems that your filthy hands are no longer an issue at all.” The man smiles as he loops the handcuffs’ linking chain over a flower-sconce and turns to the caskets – one of which, when taking a mortal breath through his nose, reeks of chloroform. “I really must congratulate you on that Red-Headed League scheme.” He turns to his companion. “Kitty?”
“No harm done.”
Together, the man and woman pull the lids off the three newly-delivered coffins. Three red-headed women. One gaunt woman, dead; her tuberculosis has taken her before the gentlemen could. One, heavily chloroformed but otherwise well enough to return to her street work. One (when both had cautiously tipped the lid over so as not to touch the toxic coins) too far gone to save. “Lady Beatrice Falder,” the man says, looking into the face of looming death. “Of Shoscombe Old Place. Your brother will answer for this, I swear.” He looks over at the pinioned John Clay. “Monsters do business with monsters.”
“You.” Clay’s face contorts in pure inhuman rage. “I know who you are now. You’re Sherlock Holmes. Mycroft’s ensouled brother, poisoned by that mortal bloodbag of yours!” He laughs in rage. “You may have me but the others got away.”
Sherlock Holmes – for it is he – shrugs; Kitty Winter grins. “Perhaps.”
***
Once I’d seen that there was no more activity at Wilson’s door, I made my way to the pawnshop, avoiding the few feeble street-lights. It seemed utterly deserted when I let myself in through the unlocked door, but I went down to the basement via dark-lantern and there saw the tunnel John Clay had dug to the crypt while his employer had copied the Encyclopedia Britannica. Having been thoroughly informed by Holmes of what was to transpire, I prepared accordingly. I grinned rather like a fiend myself when I heard the shriek of pain echo down through the tunnel.
When vampires crawled out of the hole like great rats (one, two, this was hardly a fair fight) I dispatched them as they emerged from pained, panicked flight, just as they sensed my heartbeat and the stink of silver on my person. Three little silver pins each, and I was alone in the basement, cautiously awaiting the results of the denouement I could not attend myself. The silence was worse than the shriek.
But finally I heard voices – familiar and not. “You will regret this, Holmes. Sir will be very angry that you interfered in this operation,” the unfamiliar voice snarled – accompanied by the clinking sound of handcuffs.
“As I speculated, a master behind you. And a mortal to boot. Mycroft will be very pleased indeed at your activities, as they interfere with his credo of secrecy. I will be sure to tell Sir should I ever meet him,” Sherlock Holmes responded, crawling out of the hole a little dusty but unharmed to my great relief, and dragging the handcuffed and maimed John Clay out like an angler landing a great swordfish on the deck.
Clay looked around at the undisturbed basement, and alit on the two piles of rotted clothing. The look he gave me was rage mingled with fear.
Kitty pulled herself out of the hole. “Well, well. Seems ‘that mortal bloodbag’ had no trouble dealing with your chums, Mr. Clay.”
Holmes laughed. “Well done, Watson. You’re needed at once – a woman may still be saved with your help back there. I will tell you everything afterward.”
The inside of that crypt was the stuff of mortal nightmares. A little hartshorn and clean air soon revived the poor street-girl; I could do nothing for Lady Beatrice, but I held her cold little hand and recited the Paternoster as the last of her life fluttered away, well beyond the reach of John Clay or his clients, before folding her hands on her breast and closing her coffin lid. I gathered up the poisonous coins I had prepared for this night’s work, and led the half-stupefied survivor out of that hellish spot.
Kitty Winter was still in the basement, though Holmes and Clay were gone. “He’ll wish he was in reg’lar prison facing a mortal judge,” Kitty said. “Mr. Holmes the elder don’t like troublemakers that attract attention.”
The damned Diogenes Club. I didn’t envy Clay.
“Let’s get you fixed, luv,” Winter said to the red-haired girl, noting her state. “Barefoot? I’m sure this shop’s got something that’ll fit you. Maybe a nice coat too, it’s cold out.”
I gave her a handful of the gold sovereigns, along with a handful of silver shillings. “And you’ll need some money, if your last customer cheated you.” (In the tunnel Mary Ann had complained vociferously about “that bastard” not paying her first before wanting to play his “game.”)
Blinking but looking much more cheerful (and carrying silver and sanctified gold in her pocket that would prevent a recapture), Mary Ann went with Kitty to look for a pair of boots before we were to take her home, blissfully unaware that she’d been buried alive and was now shoe-shopping with a vampire. I collected my pins from my victims and took a last look at the great earthen hole before ascending to the street.
###
“Clay’s genius was in adding just a drop of truth to his gull of Wilson. There truly is a Red-Headed League – but a far different one than advertised.”
It was the following evening and we were back in Baker Street before the hearth. It was just after supper and both of us were full-fed; I’d had beef stew and rich red port for two men, and Holmes had satiated himself at my vein afterward till he was rosy-cheeked and his hands were warm. I needed the comfort after our escapade, for Holmes’ cool recitation of his and Kitty’s share of that dreadful night had been difficult for me to write down – even though I’d deduced much of what was transpiring even before Holmes explained it during our planning session the day before.
Kitty Winter was gone, back to her usual haunts. She was a different creature indeed from the bitter victim of the vile Baron I’d first known, now that she too had found the love and homecoming with Shinwell Johnson that Holmes had discovered with me, a source of nourishment in more ways than one. It was good to have an ally on the other side of the grave.
“Mortals are not the only ones who have fads and fashions. Red-haired women are in much demand these past two years among men of our kind. Many believe red-haired women are direct descendents from Lillith and make superior fledglings; yes, Watson, we can believe our own folklore. Hence Alice Rucastle’s visitors who paid her father for the temporary privilege – and no doubt Mr. Rucastle was ready to hand Miss Hunter to them as well for the same reason. Clay reasoned that he could provide supply for the demand.”
Again a chill went through me that the fire and food could not quell. What a simple, elegant business plan: find red-haired women who were dying, or those that wouldn’t be missed like Mary Ann and that workhouse case with consumption who had mercifully passed before her soul could be endangered. Keep them drugged and stored in a crypt where none would go to look for living people. At night, usher in the vampire customers and sell the rights to turn the women to the highest bidder. Even a death or two among his livestock would make little change in his profit margin.
The notes of the ending of another sad case made sense now too. “Was that why Godfrey Staunton’s wife died unmolested?” His ill but blessedly flax-haired wife.
“Undoubtedly. The Lady Frances case also had niggled at me for quite another reason than yours, my dear Watson. Why so much fuss over a little unremarkable jewelry? Thanks to your meticulous notes, it helped consolidate my theory about what was going on. It was her hair that was the prize and not her jewelry. The two mortal confidence artists were acting as agents for a higher authority; that was not one of Clay’s. They likely had planned to dig her up immediately after the funeral party had departed, to hand her off to a local client.”
A higher authority. I nodded. “Another one of Sir’s operations?” I referred to Holmes deducing a master criminal behind several larger crimes involving mortal and immortal alike, who ran his operation with the vocabulary of a headmaster running a university.
“Very likely. We will keep a weather eye out for similar disappearances. I fear this will not be the last.”
“Oh splendid. More nightmares.” I stared into my snifter. “From now on we will at least know what to look for when a case involves a missing woman.”
“If it is any comfort to you, dear heart, I do not need you to hold your Lady Frances notes in abeyance, and you may publish the case now if you wish.”
“And what of poor Lady Beatrice?”
My friend’s eyes turned the colour of steel. “Bob Norbertson has an iron spine, if he can broker his sister so freely to the undead for the sake of a few miserable mortal debts. Fortunately, the scandal that will arise at the discovery of her body so far from home should open up an investigation into his financial troubles that should break him well before his colt is ready for the race he thinks will save his estate.”
I grinned at the thought of London journalists treating that story like the red meat they thrived on; we would not need any supernatural means to bring vengeance on Norbertson. “That’s a story all by itself.”
“Indeed. However, I strongly recommend that you re-write that one – and this latest case – as thoroughly as you did the one with the Greek interpreter.”
“Agreed.” I smiled at my blood-brother. “In fact, I can tell this story twice. One greatly-altered version will be merely an amusing crime about a mortal man’s attempted bank-burglary foiled by the master sleuth Sherlock Holmes. The other, under a pseudonym of course, as a horror story set in another land that ends with my sword impaling the master vampire after a desperate pitched battle.”
Holmes laughed heartily. “You need to embellish that part as well? Would horror readers object if you truthfully quelled the foe with three little pin-pricks without endangering yourself for a moment?”
“That ending would get the story jeered out of the publishing office!”
But even as we both laughed over that, I could feel relief beginning in me. Yes. A good long writing session tonight would dispel much of my anguish and ease my heart.
And perhaps… just perhaps… I could write in a coded warning to red-headed women to cover or change their adornments in such a dangerous world, at least for the time being, and save a few more from joining the League.
