by Dacre Stoker
Lucy had looked radiant in her new Parisian garden dress. She had waited for months to show it off. Mina was fortunate enough to fit into the dress that Lucy had worn two summers before, though she found it stifling. She did not quite have Lucy’s eighteen-inch waist, and the corset made her feel as if her breasts were being pressed up to her chin. The revealing décolleté was much more Lucy’s style. Though it made Mina feel uncomfortable, she couldn’t help but enjoy the looks it was attracting from the young men as they passed by.
Lucy was trying to introduce Mina to some guests from London, most notably Arthur Fraser Walter, whose family had owned and operated the Times newspaper for the past century. As they were searching for the Walter family, Lucy had suddenly found herself swarmed upon by a bevy of dashing young suitors asking to be included on her dance card for the evening ball. With her silvery giggle and a false sincerity, Lucy certainly knew how to play the part well. If they only knew her the way Mina knew her. Mina believed God had marked Lucy with red flaming hair as a beacon warning men to beware of her insatiable nature. “Our society will perish if we do not make the necessary social improvements quickly,” said a male voice nearby. She turned to see a young man with a mop of disheveled black hair, dressed in a rumpled woolen suit, shaking a handful of loose pages in front of Lord Henry Stafford Northcote. The staunch lord, Exeter’s Member of Parliament to the House of Commons, seemed to be as wary of the energetic young man as he would a growling dog.
“Workhouses are not the answer,” the young man continued. “Many destitute children live by stealing, or worse. Something has to be done about the education system to preserve both morality and law and order.”
“Mr. Harker,” Lord Northcote sniffed, “the Education Act has made it compulsory for children between the ages of five and thirteen to attend school.”
“But it costs nine pence per week per child. Many families cannot afford such a sum.”
“There are means for the children to earn money.”
“Yes, by working in a factory, which is basically indentured slavery for eighteen-hour days, leaving precious little time for school or studies. Is it any wonder that our impoverished youth turn to thievery or prostitution?” Lord Northcote raised a shocked eyebrow at Harker, who pressed on: “They are not as fortunate as you, who have been born into wealth, and you would have them sell themselves to afford what was handed to you by God.”
“How dare you!”
“Mr. Harker is obviously a man of passion,” Mina interrupted. She squeezed young Harker’s arm to ensure he didn’t speak out of turn. “What I’m certain Mr. Harker meant to say was: Imagine if you had been unable to read or write. You would never have attended Oxford, never have been assigned to the Foreign Office, and could never have held your elected position. A free education for our children would be a great investment in the future, giving them all a chance to improve themselves and the world around them. Every parent wishes the best for his children; it is through them that we achieve immortality. Would you not agree, your lordship?”
“How could I disagree with such wisdom?” Lord Northcote said, chuckling. “But really, Miss Murray, a woman as attractive as yourself is wasting her time by filling her mind with such a weighty matter. You would do better following the fine example set by your friend Miss Westenra, and spend your time searching for a decent husband.”
Without allowing young Harker a chance to say another word, Lord Northcote offered his elbow to his demure wife and the two drifted into the crowd. Harker turned to Mina with a look of bemused awe.
“I thank you for trying. I couldn’t have said it any better myself, but these fools refuse to see the right of it. I was trying to impress upon Lord Northcote the imperative to introduce legislation in the House of Lords to follow the example that the United States of America began in 1839 with a free common education. If we fail in this challenge, our society will be left behind. We will not be able to compete in this new industrial age of scientific discovery. Mark my words.”
Mina smiled. “With your knowledge of the law, I would wager that you are either an aspiring politician or a solicitor?”
“Actually, I’m merely a clerk at Mr. Peter Hawkins’s firm. I’ve been trying to impress one of the associates, Mr. Renfield, to take the case of two thirteen-year-old girls arrested for prostitution. Pro bono, of course. Unless I can make it a bigger case, more newsworthy, perhaps backed by new legislation, I doubt I shall have much luck. And two more young souls will be lost.”
Mina was impressed by this young man’s passion. She remembered an old Jewish proverb that she had always held dear, even though she could not recall where she had come across it: He who saves one soul, saves the world entire. And here was a man trying to save two.
“Have you read the work of William Murray in the Daily Telegraph? He seems to think as you do. He could be a valuable ally in your cause.”
“Miss Murray! Is it possible that you are related to William Murray? I have been trying to reach him for some weeks now, but no one seems to know him. Any time I have stopped by his office, he is never at his copy desk. He is a bit of a mystery man. If I could meet him, I would be only too glad to shake his hand in thanks for bringing these social issues to the printed page.”
Mina extended her hand. Harker’s confused look slowly transformed into a surprised smile. “You’re William Murray?”
“Wilhelmina Murray. But my friends call me Mina.”
“Jonathan Harker.” He took Mina’s gloved hand and pumped it like a man’s, forgetting his manners in his astonishment. “It is certainly a pleasure to meet you, Miss Murray.”
“Please, call me Mina.”
He looked into her eyes, and the look of respect she found there made Mina believe that this was a man she could easily love. Years later, Jonathan told Mina that had been the moment he had fallen in love with her.
“Do you dance, Mr. Harker?”
“No,” Jonathan said quickly, “I’m afraid that I’m not much of a dancer.”
He’s shy, Mina thought. “Good. I would much rather talk about saving two young girls from the horrors of the street. Would you care to join me for a cup of tea?”
“I would be delighted.”
Most men would have refused Mina’s bold offer. Jonathan’s eagerness to join her had made her love him even more.
Mina was unable to fall back to sleep after her macabre vision of Jack Seward. She pulled on a matronly floor-length woolen dress and went to the sitting room to take an early breakfast.
The servants returned at sunrise and brought her a pot of tea. She stared at her reflection in the silver service tray. Bags of sleeplessness would not even form under her restless eyes. A philosopher Mina had once read, though she could not recall his name, said, “The shadows man casts in the morning return to haunt him in the evening.” For Mina, the past seemed to shroud her life in eternal darkness. At soirées in recent years, Mina had heard countless remarks that she must possess a portrait of herself that was aging in the attic, just like Dorian Gray in Mr. Wilde’s risqué story published in Lippincott’s Magazine. To poor Jonathan, it was no laughing matter but rather a constant reminder of her betrayal. She could see how he loathed looking at her now, though she tried to please him by dressing more maturely than she appeared. Even in the most spinsterish of clothing, her youthful appearance glowed through. Jonathan was now fifty years of age but looked ten years older. She understood how he suffered and why he drank. She could never know the true extent of the horror he’d sustained while imprisoned in that castle all those years ago. On occasion, she had heard him cry out in his sleep, but he would not share his nightmares. Could it be that he still did not trust her?
Jonathan avoided being home with her whenever possible, but this absence was worse than usual. Never had he been away for so many days without leaving word of where he had gone.
Manning placed the morning editions of the Daily Telegraph and the Times before her, and she settled in to read
. She was thankfully distracted from her horrific night as she read the headline news of a French aviator named Henri Salmet who had set a new world record by flying nonstop from London to Paris in just under three hours. Mina marveled at man’s boundless ingenuity, and wondered how long it would be before a woman’s accomplishments adorned the front page of any newspaper.
At a quarter past ten, Jonathan stumbled into the room, unshaven, nursing a hangover, and dressed in a gray tweed suit that was as wrinkled as his brow. With a great moan he collapsed into his chair.
“Good morning, Jonathan.”
With bloodshot eyes, he tried to focus on his wife. “Good morning, Wilhelmina.” He was as cordial as usual which, in its own way, was more heartbreaking than anger.
Manning returned to the room, unobtrusively placed a fresh pot of tea and a basket of fresh bread on the side table, and shut the door silently behind him. Over the years in which he’d worked for the Harkers, he’d grown accustomed to their troubled marriage, and could sense their subtle stresses.
The sound of the door closing made Jonathan wince. He tried to steady himself on the chair.
“Are you still inebriated?”
Jonathan looked up at Mina as if surprised that she was still there. He reached for the tea. “God, I hope so.”
“Where did you spend these past nights? In an alley? Or with one of your . . . companions?”
“It was not in an alley, that I can assure you,” he said, pouring unsteadily.
“Why have you become so cruel?”
Jonathan raised his cup as if in a toast. “The world is cruel, my dear. I am merely a reflection of it.”
He was mocking her and the youthful reflection she cast in a mirror.
“Then reflect upon this,” Mina said, gathering her resolve. “Our marriage may not be all we had hoped. We may even sleep in separate bedchambers. But sometimes I do still need you here!”
“You forget, Mrs. Harker, that I needed you once.”
Mina bit her bottom lip. “I had visions again.”
“Dreams of him?” He reached for the Times.
“These are not dreams. They’re different.”
“I believe you want to have these dreams, Mina, that deep inside, you still desire him. You hold for him a passion I could never fulfill.”
Passion! Reeling with rage, Mina straightened her back like a cobra ready to strike. “Now, wait a moment . . .”
“Why?” he interrupted. “Why must he always come between us, Mina, invading our marriage like a cancer?”
“It is you, Jonathan, not I, who puts him between us. I chose you.”
Jonathan slowly turned and looked at her with such longing that she thought for the first time he had actually listened to her words. “Oh, my dear, dear Mina, still as beautiful and young as the day I first met you. Is that why you still call his name in the night, because you love me so much?”
Mina’s heart sank. “How long will you continue to punish me for my mistakes? I was only a foolish young girl. I could not see the monster behind the mask.”
“What did he do to you? While I grow old, you . . .” He gestured to her youthful body, shook his head in despair, and gulped his tea.
The passion, the fire, the concern for others had all been drowned in gallons of whisky. The man she looked at now had killed her husband, the love of her life. She detested this wretch before her. There was no resemblance in him to the man she had fallen in love with.
If that was the game he would play, so be it. Locking her emotions behind a bland mask of politeness, Mina sat down and forced her attention back to her newspaper. A small headline in the Daily Telegraph’s society page caught her eye: “FORMER HEAD OF WHITBY ASYLUM DEAD IN PARIS.”
Horrified, she scanned the first paragraph. “Jack Seward is dead!”
“What are you clamoring on about now?”
“My vision last night. Jack’s death!” Mina cried. She slapped the newspaper onto the table in front of her husband. “This is no coincidence.”
A light appeared in Jonathan’s eyes as he struggled to repress his alcoholic daze. Seeming almost lucid, he said, “God rest his troubled soul.” He bent his head to read the entire article. When he looked up again, an unspoken question hung between them.
Has he returned for revenge?
Jonathan sat for a moment in silence, as if making a decision. Then his shoulders slouched, and his mind fell back into the void. He handed the paper back to Mina. “Run over by a carriage. It says right here it was an accident.” He tapped his finger on the line for emphasis.
Fury ignited Mina. “You’ve withered into a blind, drunken old fool, Jonathan!”
The moment she said it, she regretted it. She was trying to spark him to action. Her severity only wounded this fragile man.
“I envy Jack,” Jonathan whispered, tears welling in his bleary eyes. “His pain is finally at an end.” He rose and headed for the door.
Mina felt the chill again. Her visions were real. Something terrible was in their future. And this time she knew she would have to face it alone.
In a panic, Mina chased Jonathan, catching him outside. “I’m sorry, Jonathan. I love you. I always have. How many more times must I say it?”
Jonathan didn’t look back as he climbed into his car and pulled the goggles over his eyes. “I need to contact Jack’s ex-wife and daughter in New York. As far as I know, I am still executor of his estate, and there are arrangements to be seen to.”
Jonathan depressed the accelerator, let off the brake, and sped off at a roaring ten miles per hour.
Mina watched Jonathan’s motorcar disappear in the direction of the station. The finality of his departure caused tears to sting her eyes. She blinked them away, suddenly seized by the conviction that she was being watched. Someone was hiding in the nearby shrubbery.
CHAPTER X.
Inspector Colin Cotford walked along Fenchurch Street, heading toward the heart of Whitechapel. It was the most loathsome place on earth. After thirty years of service with Scotland Yard, Cotford had seen the worst of mankind. He no longer believed in the notions of heaven and hell that he had been taught as a child. He had seen hell on earth, and Whitechapel was it. One of the poorest districts in London’s East End, it attracted the dissolute to its factories in the hope of finding work, but there were more people than there were jobs, which resulted in extreme poverty and overcrowding. The whole district had a distinct odor, a mix of bodily waste, filth, and rotting flesh.
Walking along Commercial Street, Cotford tried not to breathe through his nose, in an attempt to avoid that foul stench. It was early in the morning; daylight was breaking, and vendors were starting to move their fruit, milk, and water wagons toward Covent Garden. A lock-smith’s cart clanged past him along the cobbled road. Cotford continued, pretending not to see the crawlers—old women reduced by poverty and vice to the depths of wretchedness. They no longer had the strength to beg for food. Instead, they huddled together for warmth and waited for starvation to end their miserable existence.
Cotford had received an early morning call from the chief superintendent “requesting” that, as soon as possible, he look into the death of some vagabond who had died in Paris. Cotford had spoken to Lieutenant Jourdan, the French police officer assigned to the case, though he did not see the point in this investigation. Crazed, poverty-stricken men were run over by horse and carriages at least a dozen times a day in London. He would have to assume the statistic would be similar in Paris.
But Jourdan appeared to think there was more to the case. The victim had been carrying a silver-plated sword and, according to civic records, had at one time received grants from France for scientific studies. Unlike the Metropolitan Police in London, La Sûreté Nationale in Paris was not municipally operated but rather an agency of the government of France, and they wanted to be certain that Dr. Jack Seward’s death was not the result of foul play.
Cotford had rolled his eyes as he listened to Jourdan pratt
le on in broken English. The man had seemed to be insinuating the existence of some odd conspiracy and, when Cotford had shown his contempt at such nonsense, had threatened to go over Cotford’s head.
Now Cotford stopped in front of the lodging house opposite the massive warehouse on Wentworth Street. He took a swig from his silver flask for warmth before entering the dilapidated building.
When he’d first joined Scotland Yard, he thought of himself as an Irish bloodhound. In recent years, however, he had felt more like a retriever. By this point in his career, he had expected to be a superintendent, at the very least. He had been, after all, the youngest man to be assigned to work as a detective constable, handpicked twenty-five years ago by the great Inspector Frederick Abberline himself. But Cotford was still only an inspector and still stuck in H division. Instead of sitting in a warm, spacious office in the Norman Shaw buildings of New Scotland Yard, he was fetching facts for useless, dead-end cases.
He entered the stench-filled flat on the top floor. There were no electric lights, and the windows had been boarded up from the inside. Cotford retrieved an electric torch from his coat pocket. Its beam cut through the dusty air and revealed several books scattered about the room. He checked the titles: All were about the occult. Dried garlic cloves and holly leaves were draped around each window frame and door. Artifacts and symbols of dozens of religions hung from the ceiling. Yellowing clippings taken from the London press were stuck in the edges of a mirror, their ink so faded that Cotford, without his reading spectacles, could no longer discern the stories. A rather large insect scurried to escape his torchlight.