by Dacre Stoker
Within minutes, Sergeant Lee and two constables arrived to help pack everything up to send to La Sûreté Nationale, France’s equivalent of Scotland Yard.
“Bloody hell,” Lee said when he got his first look at the room. Cotford wasn’t sure if the remark was in reference to the state of the room or the daunting task at hand. As a result of his extraordinary height, Lee kept hitting his head on the various artifacts hanging from the ceiling, causing them to sway like a ghastly parody of Christmas tinsel.
Sergeant Lee looked up to Cotford with a sort of hero worship because the old inspector had at one time worked on the most notorious case in Scotland Yard’s history. The publicity surrounding the case had given Cotford some notoriety. Unfortunately, since the case was never solved, it was also Cotford’s biggest failure and had tarnished his reputation within his profession as well as in the public’s eye. He felt that Lee’s admiration of him was unwarranted. He could see great promise in the sergeant, and hoped Lee would achieve the success that had eluded him. Unlike himself, Lee was a family man. Other than that, the inspector knew very little of Lee’s personal life, and Cotford preferred it that way.
The beam from Cotford’s torch illuminated walls that were wallpa pered with torn pages of the Bible. The light caught a hint of red on the far wall. Cotford stepped closer. Scrawled in what appeared to be blood were the words Vivus est.
“Mad as a March hare,” Lee said, shaking his head in disbelief. “What does it mean?”
“I’m not sure, lad,” Cotford replied. “I think it’s Latin.”
Cotford picked up a leather-bound book, blew the dust off, and opened it. A photograph fell from beneath its cover. Lee picked it up as Cotford flipped through the hand-scrawled pages. Turning the picture over, Lee showed the inscription to Cotford: Lucy Westenra, my love, June 1887. Cotford shook his head. Nothing of interest. Lee tossed the picture into a box that one of the constables had started to pack for shipment to Paris.
Cotford closed the book and was about to follow suit, but something struck a familiar nerve. He couldn’t believe what he had glanced at within the book ’s pages. He wondered if being back in Whitechapel was causing his mind to play tricks on him.
“What is it, sir?” Lee asked.
Cotford reopened the book, found the page again, and reread the passage. There it was in black and white. Could it be true? He tapped his finger on the page and, without looking down, recited the words already etched in his memory, “It was the professor who lifted his surgical saw and began severing Lucy’s limbs from her body.”
Cotford dashed back to the box and scooped out the picture of Lucy Westenra. He paused for a moment, mourning a girl he did not even know. Even after all this time, he still blamed himself and thought, as Karl Marx once said, The past lies like a nightmare upon the present.
A second more and he was racing for the door. “Finish packing the rest of those diaries and follow me with that crate straightaway, Sergeant Lee.”
Within the hour, Cotford and Lee were back on the Victoria Embankment. They arrived at the Gothic red-and-white-bricked building of New Scotland Yard. Without saying a word, they made their way down to the Records Room, also known as “the other morgue,” to search the files.
Hours later, they were losing steam.
“Where the blazes are those files?” Cotford swore.
“Some seem to be missing, sir.”
“I can see that! Why are they missing? The entire case should be displayed in the lobby to remind us all of our folly.”
“Begging your pardon, sir. But that case was at the Whitehall office.”
“I know it was at the Whitehall office. I worked on the damned case.”
“Well, when we moved from Scotland Yard to this building, the files . . . not all the files were moved. Some are unaccounted for.”
Cotford growled, “That case was a blemish on this institution, and it’s haunted me like the plague. If anyone hears we’ve misplaced the files, we’ll never live it down.”
“Here’s something, sir.” Lee pulled out a tall black cardboard file box. The edges were frayed, and the box itself was held together with a red ribbon. Cotford recognized it immediately. He took the box from Lee as if it were a priceless antique. The label, now yellowed with age, was still firmly gummed on. In typed lettering, it read, WHITECHAPEL MURDERS, 1888. Beneath, in Cotford’s own handwriting, the file number: 57825.
Under that: JACK THE RIPPER.
From August 31, 1888, to November 9, 1888, London had been in the grip of terror as five women were brutally murdered in the Whitechapel district by an unknown assailant. The killer had never been caught. He would strike in the night and disappear without a trace. This was the infamous case on which Abberline, the lead investigator, promoted the promising young Constable Cotford so he might join the investigation. Cotford’s beat was the H division—Whitechapel—and, with his many commendations, Cotford was the obvious choice. It was the greatest regret in Cotford’s life that on one fateful night he had failed to apprehend the killer by mere inches. On September 30, Cotford had happened upon the scene in Dutfield’s Yard where the third victim, Elizabeth Stride, was murdered. Cotford had seen a dark figure fleeing the scene, leaving a trail of blood for him to follow. He had blown his whistle to summon the other police officers and gave chase. But when he’d neared the fleeing suspect, Cotford had tripped on a curb he hadn’t seen in the fog that rolled in each night off the river. When Cotford picked himself up, he had lost sight of his suspect and was unable to see anything past his nose. He had even found himself lost in the streets, unable to find his way back to the scene of Stride’s death.
The night ended with another murder. The fourth victim was discovered in Mitre Square, a mere stone’s throw from where Cotford had tripped. When he fell, so had his career. If only he had been more careful, he could have been known as the man who apprehended Jack the Ripper. How different his life would have been! He would never admit to Abberline that he had fallen. Cotford idolized the great detective and was afraid of losing his respect. Something told him that Abberline knew, or at the very least suspected, that he was hiding something, but it didn’t stop him from standing by Cotford and the rest of the investigating officers when the public wanted to lynch them all for their seeming incompetence. This selfless act by Abberline meant nothing to the public and probably even hastened the great man’s fall within the Yard, but it meant the world to his men.
Cotford felt as if he were going back in time as he pulled out the file folders containing the transcripts of suspect interviews. Dr. Alexander Pedachenko, a Russian doctor, also used the alias Count Luiskovo. At the time of the murder of the fifth victim, Mary Jane Kelly, Dr. Pedachenko had been a patient in the Whitby Asylum, so Abberline had ruled him out as a suspect.
Cotford opened another file, marked CONFIDENTIAL. Upon opening it, he remembered why it was marked as such; the suspect was Dr. William Gull.
“Dr. Gull? The Queen’s personal physician?” Lee asked, reading over his shoulder.
“The very same,” Cotford said. “We were secretly investigating a lead that went dead. In 1888, Dr. Gull was seventy years old and had suffered a stroke. He was mostly paralyzed on the left side. Definitely not the one I was chasing that night.”
“What night?”
Cotford ignored the question. He pulled out another file. This is it! His chance at redemption. Fate had dealt him a new hand. He was so thrilled that he started to laugh.
Lee was cautious of Cotford’s uncharacteristically ebullient behavior. “I don’t understand, sir.”
Cotford didn’t need Lee to understand. The dream of exposing the identity of Jack the Ripper and bringing him to justice was at last within his grasp. The professor Seward wrote of in his journal was indeed the same man who was one of Abberline’s prime suspects. Though he had never discovered any evidence to place this suspect at any of the crime scenes, his gruesome biography did not allow for a complete dismissal of suspici
on. The suspect in question was a disgraced professor and doctor. He possessed great surgical skills and had lost both his medical license and his university tenure due to performing experimental medical procedures on his patients and stealing university cadavers for heinous, ritual-inspired mutilations.
Cotford triumphantly handed this deranged suspect’s folder to his second. “Mark my words. Every dog has his day.”
Sergeant Lee looked at Cotford with confusion before reading aloud the name on the suspect’s file folder: DR. ABRAHAM VAN HELSING.
CHAPTER XI.
“How long did you plan to hide in those ridiculous shrubberies, my love?” Mina said. She stared right at him, as if she could see through the thicket.
Trying not to catch himself on a thorn, Quincey slowly emerged from the hedges. “I saw father’s motorcar. I was waiting for him to leave,” he replied, brushing dirt off his coat. “How did you know I was here?”
“I am your mother, foolish boy,” Mina said, laughing. She gave him a warm embrace, then pulled away to take another look at him. “It’s been so long. Let me have a proper look at you. I’ve missed you.”
“I’ve missed you, too, Mother. . . .” Quincey paused. He saw that she had been crying. “What’s wrong? What happened?”
“You needn’t trouble yourself about me.” She plucked leaves out of his hair.
“Is it Father? Has he been drinking again?”
“Please, Quincey, that is very disrespectful.”
“Sorry, Mum.”
“Come inside. It is good to see you, my handsome young man. You look as if you haven’t had a decent meal in weeks.”
In the three years in which Quincey had been away, he had gone all over the United Kingdom and Ireland with the traveling show, and then in the last year, he had been trapped in Paris. He had experienced completely opposite worlds.
Entering the home in which he had grown up was a surreal experience. The familiar foyer made him feel as if time had stood still. There was the banister on the grand staircase that he used to love to slide down as a child, against his father’s warnings that he would be hurt. Quincey peered into the drawing room. Everything was exactly as he had last seen it, almost as if he had never left. There was his mother’s favorite tea set, with the morning newspapers stacked close by. Quincey recognized his father’s crystal decanter half filled with his preferred Scotch whisky. Quincey remembered the harsh scolding he had received when, as a child, he broke the original decanter. He wondered if his father was more upset about the loss of an expensive crystal or of the whisky it held.
While he was staring at the room, Mina crossed to the table and picked up one of the newspapers that lay open. Quincey thought he saw her hand tremble as she folded the newspaper and tucked it under her arm.
“Mother, are you sure you’re all right?”
“I’m fine, Quincey,” Mina said, offering a meek smile. “Now, why don’t you clean yourself up, and I’ll have the cook make a plate for you.”
After the rigors of traveling nonstop from Paris, Quincey felt renewed as he dressed in clean clothes. He glanced around his old room. It was the bedroom of a young boy. He now felt out of place within it.
He passed the study and saw his mother lost in thought, staring again at that old photograph of herself and her childhood friend Lucy, who had passed away from disease at about the same age he was now. How awful it must be to lose one’s life just as it was beginning. He always knew when his mother was troubled, for she always turned to that photograph. It was as if she were still turning to her dead friend for guidance.
As he stared at his mother, Quincey was struck by the realization that, just as this house had hardly changed at all, his mother looked exactly the same as she had three years earlier. He doubted the years would have been as kind to his sour, pickled father. He recalled a day a few years back when he had discovered that some of the blokes from school had made inappropriate remarks regarding his mother’s youthful appearance and how he had been so outraged that he had taken on all three boys at once and given them all a beating. Despite earning himself a temporary suspension from school, Quincey was proud of his chivalry. He remembered how he and his mother used to trick strangers into believing they were brother and sister. He supposed one day she would grow old like his father but was glad that day was not yet. After being away for so long, if he had returned to find his mother aged and sickly, the guilt would have been far too great to bear, and the rage toward his father for chasing him away these last years would have been volcanic.
Quincey didn’t realize how hungry he was until he started eating. He had not had a good kipper since leaving home. As soon as he polished off the plateful, Mary, the housemaid, appeared to clear away the dishes.
“Now that you’ve have had a proper meal,” said Mina, “would you be good enough to explain why, after being away all this time, you choose to come now in the midst of a university term?”
“Promise you will not be angry?”
“You know I would never make such a promise.”
“All too well. I suppose there is no easy way to say this.” He took a deep breath and blurted out, “I have met someone. Someone wonderful.”
Mina opened her mouth to speak, but seemed dumbfounded. Quincey was about to continue when Mary returned with freshly brewed tea and Garibaldi biscuits, Quincey’s favorite.
The instant Mary left, Mina said, “So tell me, who is the fortunate young lady?”
“Young lady?”
“You said you met ‘someone wonderful’?”
“I did, but . . . ,” he said. “Mother, prepare yourself. I had a meeting with Basarab.”
“Who?”
“Have you not heard of him? He is a brilliant man, Mother. The toast of all Paris. The greatest Shakespearean actor in the world.”
“Oh, Quincey, not this again.”
“Basarab advised me to stop following my father’s broken dreams and to follow my own before I grow old.”
“A tad presumptuous to assume he would know better than your parents what’s best for you.”
“I believe he saw potential in me.”
“So do your father and I. What about your law degree?”
“Basarab’s encouragement has convinced me to leave the Sorbonne and seek an acting apprenticeship at the Lyceum.”
“I do not know what to say, Quincey. You made an agreement with your father. As you would have learned if you stayed at the Sorbonne, a verbal agreement is certainly as binding as a written contract.”
“Please, Mother, that agreement was made under duress. I had saved no money. He paid off that theatre manager to fire me on the spot and toss me out into the street. It was either accept Father’s agreement or be homeless and starve.”
“I intervened on your behalf. I gave my word. Your father wanted you to go to Cambridge, and I, with the promise that you would graduate and take the bar, convinced him to allow you to go to Paris—”
“So I could at least be around the art world, I know,” he interrupted. “I would have been better off in Cambridge. Do you have any idea what it’s like to want something so badly, to see it all around you every day, and know that it is forbidden fruit? It’s enough to drive one mad.”
“I understand how you feel more than you know, but none of that changes the fact that you promised to finish your degree. A promise is a promise.”
“If I am as talented as Basarab believes I am,” Quincey proclaimed, “I will be hired for this apprenticeship. Then I will have my own means and the old fool can go to hell.”
Mina leapt forward and slapped Quincey across his cheek. It was a shock to both of them. Never before had either of his parents raised a hand to him.
“Quincey Arthur John Abraham Harker!” Mina did her best to control her raging emotions. “Jonathan is still your father and he loves you very much.”
“Then why does he not show it?”
“You are still too young and naïve to understand, but he show
s it every day. I know his true heart, and there is purpose in all he does. There is more at stake here than your selfish desires. I cannot give you my blessing on this, Quincey. You must trust us that we know what’s best for you.”
Quincey was brokenhearted. He and his mother had always been close. She was the one who would listen to his hopes and dreams and encourage him. Now she was trying to stifle those same dreams, just as his father had. It would seem that some things had indeed changed here, after all. He had always known that his parents had many secrets that they chose not to share with him. Whatever they were, it no longer mattered. “Ego sum qui sum. ‘I am what I am,’ and it’s time for me to be.”
Tears welled in Mina’s eyes, her face distorted with what Quincey could see only as irrational fear. She implored her son one last time, “Please, Quincey, do not do this.”
The clock rang eleven. He coldly said, “I have a train to catch. I’ll be taking lodgings in London. I shan’t trouble you any further.”
Not wanting to look her in the eye, Quincey turned and, for the first time in his life, left without kissing his mother good-bye.
CHAPTER XII.
The tall figure of Count Dracula, wearing a well-worn dinner jacket and a black cape lined with red, filled the dusty English drawing room menacingly. His dark eyes stared out from under a furrowed brow. This grim expression slowly gave place to an ominous smile as he asked with a thick continental accent, “Would you repeat what you just said, professor?”
The older man sighed. “I said, ‘Count, do you wish to know what I prescribed for our ailing Miss Westenra?’ ”
“Anything you do concerning my dear Lucy is of the utmost interest to me, professor.”
Professor Van Helsing produced a massive wooden cross and spun to face the Count. Dracula hissed and recoiled, snapping his cape. Stepping on a corner of it, he tripped into the furniture, knocking over a lamp table. An explosion of smoke startled both men.