Dracula's Ghost - Chapter 6
The Shadow of Carfax Abbey
Exeter
1893
“Pour me another glass of sherry and leave the tray by my bed.” Peter Hawkins sits upright. “I will eat later.”
“As you wish, sir.” Roger sets down the tray and closes the window. The night air, even in midsummer, is chilly.
The gout leaves him with little appetite, and the alcohol serves as an effective, if temporary, analgesic. Who would have thought that pain in a single toe could make a man wish for death? If it becomes any worse, he will have to resort to laudanum, something that he has not needed for a year. The sherry also soothes his frayed nerves, for the sale of Carfax Abbey weighs upon his mind. How could such a simple transaction have gone so wrong?
Ten years ago, before the gout became so debilitating, he would have made the trip himself. Peter Hawkins prides himself in the personal attention that he devotes to his clients, and he has carefully laid the groundwork for the sale in a series of trips to Purfleet. Ultimately, however, his health will not bear a trip to the Continent, and Jonathan Harker is tasked with the sale. I want updates on your progress and written confirmation to ensure that the contract is properly executed. The boy has complied with his instructions for the first half of the trip, but once he reaches Bistritz, Harker disregards his explicit directions. Instead of detailed updates, Peter Hawkins receives vaguely worded assurances of his safe arrival and praises for his client’s hospitality. What is that boy thinking?
And what will he tell Mina? His ward, orphaned at the age of nine and raised as his own daughter, had caught the eye of the young solicitor’s assistant, and Hawkins had given his reluctant assent to the courtship. They’re to be married in six months, yet he hasn’t written her a single word. Mina writes daily from Whitby, asking for news of Jonathan. It’s nearly enough to make one doubt the young man’s character. And yet… Peter Hawkins has written a series of letters to his client, each iteration more strongly worded, to express his concern for the well-being of his assistant. The client, a man of such eloquence in his prior correspondence, fails to acknowledge a single word. The elusive Count Dracula.
In desperation, Peter Hawkins writes to a colleague in Bistritz, explaining that Jonathan has failed to return after a journey through the Borgo Pass, and that perhaps some illness or other misfortune has befallen the young man. The colleague responds that Jonathan Harker did arrive in Bistritz, but there are no reports of a young Englishman arrested by the gendarmes, dying in the hospital, or eloping with a local girl. In fact, there are no reports of a young Englishman staying at any of the inns between Bistritz and the Borgo Pass. Then where has he gone? He writes to the colleague again - could he send someone to Castle Dracula to inquire of Jonathan’s whereabouts? The reply, which sits on his bedside table, is disturbing. There is no Castle Dracula in the vicinity of the Borgo Pass, or anywhere else in Romania. The last family that used that name, an old line of Wallachian nobles, died out two centuries ago. Jonathan traveled to a castle that does not exist, to visit a nobleman that does not exist. He dreads breaking the news to Mina.
The good news, if one could call it such, was that the property transfer for Carfax Abbey has been registered in London. Dracula, or whoever he is, is in England now. No crew of workmen has arrived to deliver furniture or to renovate the old house, but Peter Hawkins is certain that someone will eventually claim the property. He will personally make the trip to Purfleet when the gout fades, and with luck, he can discover enough to involve the local authorities.
“Sir?”
He looks up, surprised. “What is it, Roger?”
“A telegram from Miss Mina just arrived. It appears that Master Harker has been located.” Roger hands him the folded paper, and Peter Hawkins reads the telegraph.
“What the devil is he doing in Budapest?”
“I don’t know, sir, but it sounds as if he is quite ill. Miss Mina intends to travel immediately -”
“Yes, of course! Give her my blessing and make any arrangements that she needs.”
“Certainly, sir. Shall I take your tray?”
Peter Hawkins shakes his head, and Roger leaves the tray at his bedside – for the first time in weeks, he is hungry. It eases his mind to know that Jonathan is alive, but all the same, he will visit Carfax Abbey at the earliest opportunity to demand an explanation.
Something flutters against the branch outside his bedroom window. An owl, perhaps, or a nighthawk. When dinner is finished, he ask Roger to close the drapes. Night creatures peeking in his window give him the willies. Peter Hawkins finishes his dinner and rings for Roger as the bat perches outside, watching.
I.
Berlin
1933
The Tiergarten sat near the center of the city, a rectangular island of green in a sea of concrete. During the workweek, civil servants and white-collar professionals took their lunch in the park, pausing to marvel at the heritage memorialized in the statues of the Siegesallee or at the Victory Column that commemorated Prussia’s victories over Danes, Austrians, and French. Those of a less militaristic bent could view the Monument to Richard Wagner, where the stern visage of the composer stared down from his pedestal. And there was the park itself, its natural beauty a place of tranquility and a reminder of the great forest that stretched unbroken from the Rhine, where Roman legions were slaughtered, and their barbarian ancestors maintained a bloody struggle for independence from their larger neighbor to the south and west. None of these things were on the mind of Rudolf Diels as he observed the woman at the water’s edge. The path was little used, but he hung back, waiting a little longer to ensure that she had not been followed. When he was satisfied that they were alone, he walked to her side.
“I heard the ambassador’s daughter was lovely, but I assumed that the stories were exaggerated.” Diels smiled, and the dueling scars on his cheeks did not mar the broad grin. “Hello Lena.”
“Rudolf.” Lena Von Hoesch acknowledged his presence with a curt nod. “It’s good to see you again.”
“I should hope so. Our last meeting was quite lovely.”
“It was adequate, though hardly appropriate for a married man.” She gave him a sour look. “Besides, I heard that you’re making the rounds with the American girl now. How many girlfriends does a man need?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” he said. “How much money does a man need? Anyhow, I doubt that you came all the way to Berlin just to break my heart. What’s happening in London?”
“Your friends slipped the net.”
“Old news.” He looked at her with heavy-lidded eyes. “Back in Germany and on the way to their next assignment.”
“You knew already? How?”
Because I am a spy, he thought. I have eyes and ears everywhere. Diels’s contact in the Foreign Ministry had passed along the request, made at the behest of an unnamed agency in Munich, for two Belgian passports and travel visas to India. Fast learners, aren’t they? They had purchased the previous documents from some cut-rate forger and gotten themselves arrested.
“Then you know about the murder,” she said. It was Diels’s turn to be surprised, and Lena gave him a quick rundown of the details. “The embassy in Lisbon requested information about a fire in Purfleet, and the next call came a half hour later from Munich.”
“Munich?” He scoffed. “Awfully brazen of them to tip their hand.”
“Don’t joke, Rudolf. They called my father directly and demanded a full report – circumstances of the fire, any injuries or deaths, who the police had in custody – they were very insistent.”
“And you put two and two together.”
“It wasn’t difficult,” she said. “Jonathan Harker made the arrangements for Jack Seward’s funeral.”
“And you passed this along to Munich?”
“Of course not! I told them as little as possible.”
“Good. Then let’s have dinner tonight. We’ll find a nice quiet place and watch the lights of the city.”
“Such a charming boy.” She kissed him on the cheek, and her lips lingered close to his ear. “Not tonight. Go see your wife - or your American girl - instead.”
“Lena? One more question.” She paused, one eyebrow raised. “What do you know about boats?”
“They float. I’ll be in touch if I hear anything else.”
His eyes lingered on her hips as she walked up the path. A source in the Kriegsmarine says that Munich ordered an inflatable boat, complete with outboard motor. Another source in the shipping company says that a boat and motor are being shipped to India with instructions to avoid British customs. What are you planning Reinhard?
II.
London
There had been a modest amount of cash, gold, and stock certificates, but Seward’s estate consisted mostly of property – the burned-out house, the bones of the old asylum, and a few acres of land littered with rusting medical debris. As the sole beneficiary, Jonathan had distributed the liquid assets – God knows I don’t need them – and would dispose of the land in due time. Meanwhile, there was the safe deposit box to consider. It was located in the vault of a London bank, and Seward had left specific instructions, the dewy-eyed executor noted with disapproval, that the box was to be opened only by Jonathan Harker. Jonathan tucked its contents, a large envelope bound with twine, into his briefcase and returned to his office. Safe from the prying eyes of the executor, Jonathan slit the string with a penknife and opened the envelope. The jumble of birth certificates, death certificates, and grave registrations was immediately recognizable. Damn you, Jack, I told you I was finished!
In the twenty years between Arthur’s suicide and Mina’s death, the four children had been their obsession. Arthur’s final ravings about Dracula, Lucy, and a hidden tomb had awakened them to a terrible possibility, but it was Mina’s determination that compelled the search. The argument, Jonathan remembered, had been unusually bitter. If He is still alive, if there is even the possibility, then those children may be in danger. Jonathan had been equally insistent - Dracula was dead. Lucy was dead. Any curse that they carried had died with them, and the children attacked on Hampstead Heath would recover fully. Finally, his anger had boiled over, and he had placed a finger against her forehead to point out the location of the old scar. Mina had flinched at his touch and could not meet his eyes for two days. In a lifetime of bitter regret, this was the most painful.
Eventually, he had acquiesced, and they had combed through birth records, attended funerals, and dodged watchmen in an endless series of empty cemeteries. Jonathan bore it with patience. Unlike Mina and Seward, he had seen Dracula’s final dissolution, and he discounted Arthur’s ravings accordingly. Quincy would have supported me, if he had survived. Perhaps he would have belayed Arthur’s plunge into insanity, as well. Instead, Quincy Morris had been killed in Dracula’s final act of spite, and Arthur’s delusions had ensnared them all.
They closed three cases to everyone’s satisfaction. Two boys and a girl, all born between 1885 and 1890. All died between 1908 and 1922. All bitten by Lucy in the autumn of 1893. They never found the fourth child. The old newspapers were vague, but Mina believed him to be four or five years old in 1893. Jonathan had given up after Mina’s death, but the implications of Seward’s final bequest were clear enough.
He pushed the papers to one side of his desk. I’m sorry, Jack. I did all that I can, and the last child is on his own. Jonathan massaged his forehead with thumb and index finger, a soothing motion that did little to ease his aching head.
For God’s sake Arthur, why did you put us through this?
III.
Katherine Holmwood sat on the balcony. In the years following Arthur’s death, her life had been a whirlwind of social activities, investments, and charitable work. There had been a few suitors, but Lady Godalming had rebuffed them all - the old wounds were simply too deep to reopen. Still, if age and care had dampened desire, it certainly hadn’t extinguished the flame, and the memory of her visitor, the inspector from the Home Office, lingered. Somewhere in her consciousness, Mina’s shook her head in disapproval – Really, Kat, you are quite silly, the way you carry on - and Lucy answered, a carefree voice with a salacious edge. Just take him in the other room and kiss him! I think he likes you. The feeling was so strong that she turned, half-expecting to find a pair of teenage girls in summer dresses.
She went inside and down the stairs. The three of them had spent two weeks together at Whitby, during the fateful last summer of Lucy’s life. She had kept the photos, all taken with Mina’s Kodak, boxed away while Arthur was still alive. Lucy had been the prettiest by far, and the yellowing paper could not hide her vivaciousness. Dark curls draped over one shoulder, she smiled directly at the photographer. Poor Lucy, sick and dying not long after. Katherine had resented Arthur’s pining for his lost love, but her anger never colored the memory of her friend. The photo, of a beautiful girl who was already dying, made her think of the uniformed boys marching through London in 1914. Cheering and singing as they went to their deaths.
Mina’s blond hair was pulled into a tight bun, giving the impression of a schoolmarm. Beautiful like Lucy, but with a harder edge. Mina had been orphaned as a child, and her charm hid a watchful, cautious nature. The alert brown eyes and half smile reminded Katherine of Nausicaa, one hand on the dagger of her belt, eyeing the naked Odysseus as he crawled from the sea. She had disappeared from Katherine’s life after Lucy’s death, gone for a year or more, and refused forever afterward to speak of the events of that awful summer. “It makes me unwell, Kat - let’s talk of better things.”
Katherine Holmwood paused at her own portrait, a tentative and slightly fearful girl with red hair. She had been pretty, she could see that now, but the mirror of her youth had revealed only a scrawny girl with too-big teeth. Katherine had viewed her friends’ engagements with a mixture of goodwill and jealousy, resigning herself to a life of spinsterhood until Arthur began courting her in 1896. The first year, at least, had been happy. She had loved Arthur desperately and perhaps blindly, convinced that his brooding and absences resulted from some inadequacy of her own. Then he went to South Africa, and… She silenced the voice in mid-sentence, unable to continue.
The group photo, herself in the center with Mina and Lucy on either flank, was her favorite. Lucy had turned her head, whispering a joke or naughty rhyme into Katherine’s ear as the shutter opened, and she had maintained just enough composure for the shutter to close before the entire group dissolved into laughter. Lucy’s movement had left her face slightly blurred, insubstantial, as if the camera revealed a portent seen only in hindsight. Lucy would die at nineteen, too soon to enjoy her long-awaited wedding. Mina had married, only to lose a son in the War and die of tuberculosis at fifty-one. And I ended up wealthy, respected, and alone in an empty house. The gods are fickle.
“Your dinner is ready, my Lady.” Horace stood quietly at the end of the hall and waited for her to finish.
“Thank you, Horace.”
Lady Godalming dismissed her servant and left for the ornate dining room, to eat dinner alone.
IV.
RMS Southern Cross
Indian Ocean
Sarah Harker Spencer stood on the promenade deck and stared at the stars. The ship, if less ornate than the transatlantic liners of her childhood, was well-built and comfortable. And surprisingly quiet, she thought. The crash of 1929 had taken its toll on ocean voyaging.
Somewhere below her, Archie was asleep. The absence of dry land made Sarah uncomfortable, but Archie loved the ship, and they spent their days exploring the decks, peering into the empty lifeboats, and staring at the empty ocean. Sarah was glad for his excitement, for leaving India had been difficult for the boy. On their last day, he had taken her under the house to say goodbye to Nag and Nagina, and they had peered into the cobwebs for several minutes before Nagina, hood lowered, poked her head from a rat burrow. Archie talked softly to the serpent, keeping a respectful distance, until they backed away slowly, leaving the snake in peace. Archie had begun to cry.
“Mama, what if a mongoose moves under the house? Who will protect them?”
Sitting in the dusty heat, Sarah had hugged him and kissed the top of his head. To Archie, India was home, and England was the unknown – a cold, distant land of cities and strangers. Soothing words and a gentle touch were a temporary anodyne, but the burden would, in the end, simply have to be borne. On her knees, eyes facing forward, Sarah had almost missed the second snake.
The Russel’s viper, a big one, was hidden in the grass, barely two feet from her right thigh. She had seen its bite once before, on an unlucky farmer, and the sight of necrotic flesh, the sound of the victim’s dying moans, had haunted her dreams for weeks. Slowly, she had eased Archie to her left and prayed that the boy made no sudden moves. When he was safely out of the viper’s reach, she had eased her own body away. Sluggish in the midday heat, the serpent lay unmoving and regarded her with lidless, alien eyes.
And so, we left the land of heat and serpents, she thought. Time for some sleep. Soon enough, they would be in that strange land that had been her home, and life would begin anew for them all.
V.
They watched her go belowdecks, and Hans took a final drag from his cigarette. The inflatable and motor were stored in unmarked crates in the hold, and when they reached the Suez Canal, both would be moved to the promenade deck. They inspect the covers for tightness, but they never look inside the lifeboats.
“How long before we get off this crate?” Richard had been seasick almost every day.
“We’ll be near Calabria in five more days.”
“What do we do about the boy? Reinhard said to throw him over the rail.”
“Reinhard isn’t here, and I’m not going to kill a child just to please him.” Hans lit another cigarette and frowned at a passing crewman. He had observed their movements for days, and if they timed everything correctly, Hans was reasonably certain that the crew would not be an issue. If we time everything correctly, he repeated. The trench knife in his coat would be used only in an emergency.
“So now,” Richard leered, “we enjoy the fine English cuisine and wait.”
Five more days, Hans said to himself.
“Yes. Now, we wait.”