The Dracula Dossier
Page 34
“To-day? Tarnation! Destination, Stoker! Where is he headed, man?”
“New York, it would seem,” and I’d barely spoken the words before Abberline blew from the room, throwing the door back upon its hinges so hard that Ellen’s star fell to the floor. I followed him out into the hallway, meaning to call after him the last information I’d meant to impart—that Tumblety had sailed under his Townsend alias—but Abberline was already gone. So be it: Better, perhaps, that he detect that much on his own.
Two days later, Thornley, returned to Dublin, wrote that all had gone well; that, in his opinion, Mr. Penfold could be counted on to uphold his end of our bargain. Which is to say that he would not cast himself into the sea, though he was—now and for the first time—alone and free, free as he had not been since Thornley had arranged with Dr. Stewart for the patient’s removal to Richmond Hospital, in Dublin; where, said Thornley, he would be studied as a self-murderer. Of course, in Thornley’s opinion Mr. Penfold is not insane; rather, he simply wants to die. And I suppose now he means to do so, for I have here some newly-arrived copies of the New York World, dated 4th & 6th December, in which I read, with great relief, that our plan has now eventuated to its end:
CLIPPING, THE NEW YORK WORLD, 4 DECEMBER 1888
TUMBLETY IS IN THIS CITY HE ARRIVED SUNDAY
UNDER A FALSE NAME FROM FRANCE
A Big English Detective Is Watching Him Closely, and a Crowd of Curious People Gaze at the House He Lives In—Inspector
Byrnes’s Men Have Been on His Track Since He Landed.
Francis Tumblety, or Twomblety, who was sought in London for supposed complicity in the Whitechapel crimes and held under bail for other offenses, arrived in this city Sunday, and is now stopping in East Tenth Street. Two of Inspector Byrnes’s men are watching him, and so is an English detective who is making himself the laughing stock of the entire neighborhood.
When the French line steamer La Bretagne, from Havre, came to her dock at 1:30 Sunday afternoon two keen-looking men pushed through the crowd and stood on either side of the gangplank. They glanced impatiently at the passengers until a big, fine-looking man hurried across the deck and began to descend. He had a heavy, fierce-looking mustache, waxed at the ends; his face was pale and he looked hurried and excited. He wore a dark blue ulster, with belt buttoned. He carried under his arm two canes and an umbrella fastened together with a strap. He must have kept himself very quiet on the La Bretagne, for a number of passengers who were interviewed could not remember having seen any one answering his description. It will be remembered that he fled from London to Paris to escape being prosecuted under the new “Fall of Babylon” act.
He hurriedly engaged a cab, gave the directions in a low voice and was driven away. The two keen-looking men jumped into another cab and followed him. The fine-looking man was the notorious Dr. Francis Twomblety or Tumblety, and his pursuers were two of Inspector Byrnes’s best men, Crowley and Hickey.
Dr. Twomblety’s cab stopped at Fourth Avenue and Tenth Street, where the doctor got out, paid the driver and stepped briskly up the steps of No. 75 East Tenth Street, the Arnold House. He pulled the bell, and, as no-one came, he grew impatient and walked a little further down the street to No. 81. Here there was another delay in responding to his summons, and he became so impatient that he tried the next house No. 79. This time there was a prompt answer to his ring and he entered. It was just 2:20 when the door closed on Dr. Twomblety and he has not been seen since.
Many people were searching for the doctor yesterday and the bell of No. 79 was kept merrily jingling all day long. The owner of the house is Mrs. McNamara who rents out apartments to gentlemen. She is a fat, good-natured, old lady. Mrs. McNamara at first said the doctor was stopping there. He had spent the night in his room, she said, and in the morning he had gone downtown to get his baggage. He would be back at 2 o’clock. The next statement was that she had heard some of those awful stories about him, but bless his heart, he would not hurt a chicken! The revised story, to which Mrs. McNamara stuck tenaciously at last, was that she had no idea who Dr. Twomblety was. She didn’t know anything about him, didn’t want to know anything about him, and could not understand why she was bothered so much, but every body in the neighborhood seems to have heard of Dr. Twomblety’s arrival, and he is spoken of everywhere with loathing and contempt.
It was just as this story was being furnished to the press that a new character appeared on the scene, and it was not long before he completely absorbed the attention of every one.
He was a little man with enormous red side whiskers and a smoothly shaven chin. He was dressed in an English tweed suit and wore an enormous pair of boots with soles an inch thick. He could not be mistaken in his mission. Everything about him told of his business. He was a typical English detective. If he had been put on a stage just as he paraded up and down Fourth Avenue and Tenth Street yesterday he would have been called a caricature. First he would assume his heavy villain appearance. Then his hat would be pulled down over his eyes and he would walk up and down in front of No. 79 staring intently into the windows as he passed, to the intense dismay of Mrs. McNamara, who was peering out behind the blinds at him with ever-increasing alarm. Then his mood changed. His hat was pushed back in a devil-may-care way and he marched to No. 79 with a swagger, whistling gaily, convinced that his disguise was complete and that no one could possibly recognize him.
When night came the English detective became more and more enterprising. At one time he stood for fifteen minutes with his coat collar turned up and his hat pulled down, behind the lamp-post on the corner, staring fixedly at No. 79. Then he changed his base of operations to the stoop of No. 81 and looked sharply into the faces of every one who passed. He almost went into a spasm of excitement when a man went into the basement of No. 79 and when a lame servant girl limped out of No. 81 he followed her a block, regarding her most suspiciously.
His headquarters was a saloon on the corner, where he held long and mysterious conversations with the barkeeper always ending in both of them drinking together. The barkeeper epitomized the conversations by saying: “He wanted to know about a feller named Tumblety, and I sez I didn’t know nothink at all about him; and he says he wuz an English detective and he told me all about them Whitechapel murders, and how he came over to get the chap that did it.”
“Do you think he is Jack the Ripper?” Inspector Byrnes was asked. “I don’t know anything about it, and therefore I don’t care to be quoted. But I simply wanted to put a tag on him so that if they think in London that they may need him, and he turns out to be guilty, our men will probably have a good idea where he can be found. Of course, he cannot be arrested, for there is no proof of his complicity in the Whitechapel murders, and the crime for which he was under bond in London is not extraditable.”96
CLIPPING, THE NEW YORK WORLD, 6 DECEMBER 1888
DR. TUMBLETY HAS FLOWN
He Gives His Watchers the Slip and Has
Probably Gone Out of Town
It is now certain that Dr. Thomas F. Tumblety, the notorious Whitechapel suspect, who has been stopping at 79 East Tenth Street since last Sunday afternoon, is no longer an inmate of the house. It is not known exactly when the doctor eluded his watchers, but a workman named Jas. Rush, living directly opposite No. 79, says that he saw a man answering the doctor’s well-known description standing on the stoop of No. 79, early yesterday morning, and he noticed that he showed a great deal of nervousness, glancing over his shoulder constantly. He finally walked to Fourth Avenue and took an uptown car.
A WORLD reporter last night managed to elude the vigilant Mrs. McNally, the landlady, and visited the room formerly occupied by the doctor. No response being given to several knocks, the door was opened and the room was found to be empty. The bed had not been touched and there was no evidence that the room had been entered since early morning. A half-open valise on a chair near the window and a big pair of boots of the English cavalry regulation pattern were all that remained to
tell the story of Dr. Tumblety’s flight. Those who knew him best think he has left New York for some quiet country town, where he expects to live until the excitement dies down.
MEMORANDUM TO THE DOSSIER (CONTINUED)
Pray may Mr. Penfold elude life as easefully as he has these American and English detectives. I believe now that it is his right to do so.
Pray, too, may this “excitement” die down soon, and this Ripper business be forgotten for all time.
And so: It is done. And if I have not yet signed God’s name to the letter of my life, I have leastways erased from it the devil’s.
Note to The Dossier
Saturday, 25 May 1895
Seven years ago, we all of us went through the flames; and the happiness of some of us since then is, we think, well worth the pains endured. Others among us fare less well at present. And to-day of all days, that contrast is stark, so stark as to send me back to this Dossier which I long ago foreswore; for I could hardly ask any one—even did I wish to—to accept these pages as proof of so improbable, so impossible, a story. Indeed, it is only owing to Caine that I did not destroy it, but rather secreted it away; as I shall again once recent events are added; so:
Late yesterday afternoon, I received a telegram from Henry Irving asking, “Could you look in at quarter to six. Something important.” Doing so, I discovered the Guv’nor sitting in his rooms, staring quite contentedly, and alternately, at the two letters he held in his hands. The first was from the Prime Minister, the Earl of Roseberry, and informed the actor that the Queen wished to confer on him the honour of knighthood in recognition of his services to art. The second letter, from the Prince of Wales, congratulated Henry on the contents of the first. This of course pleased Henry no end, as no actor qua actor has ever been recognised so, and he asked that I join him in driving to Ellen Terry’s home in Longridge Road to convey the news personally to the Lady of the Lyceum.97 This we happily did.
Upon my late-night return to the Lyceum, I found that the news had spread: already the congratulatory cables had begun to come from the four corners of the world. One telegram of the many was, however, meant for me; and in same I discovered that the name, the dear name, of my brother, Thornley Stoker, M.D., is on the same Honours List as Irving’s.98 Henry and Thornley both are to be knighted at Windsor Castle on 18 July; and it is to be hoped that on that occasion I will know less of the sadness I suffer at present; for more news—this of the opposite sort—came to-day from the Old Bailey, where the harshest of sentences was handed down against Oscar Wilde:
He has been found guilty of gross indecency and sentenced to two years’ hard labour. Already his denigrators do their work: His name upon the posters at the theatres running his Husband and his Earnest have been papered over in black. Surely Oscar shan’t survive so harsh, so unduly harsh, a sentence.99 Neither, I fear, will his mother.100
As for another Child of Light, Thomas Henry Hall Caine gets on well at Greeba Castle in the company of his Mary and their sons, Ralph and Derwent. In her scrapbooks, Mary keeps her record of Caine’s continuing successes; for still the world hangs upon his every word.101
Me? I continue to work for Henry Irving.102 Florence and Noel get on well.103 I write.104 But I have yet to write my best. I have, though, an idea—its Grip & Go, as Caine would call it—and I am most eager to pursue it. It is the story of a man who—though not a hero, per se—finds himself suffering, nay surviving, heroic circumstances. What will become of it, I, of course, cannot say; but I do have an idea.105
AUTHOR’S NOTE
In the writing of his novel The Name of the Rose, Umberto Eco referred to the genre of fiction known as the “swashbuckler” novel: novels that not only use historical backgrounds, but also incorporate historical figures. This is sometimes done as a pretext, one intended to add authenticity to the narrative and thereby facilitate that “suspension of disbelief” so key to a reader’s enjoyment. In The Dracula Dossier, I have attempted to take the notion of “swashbuckling” fiction further, neither merely co-opting “real” history nor proposing an alternative to it, but rather writing a “shadow” history. In so doing, I have held fast to one of Eco’s tenets of swashbuckling fiction; and therefore I can assure the reader that nothing—rather, nearly nothing—in The Dracula Dossier contradicts the historical record. In other words: This could have happened as written.
In response to the reader who wonders, perhaps impatiently, what, precisely, is true, I offer the following notes, which are by no means exhaustive.
All main characters in The Dracula Dossier are historical personages, excepting Mr. Penfold (analogous to Dracula’s Renfield) and those characters who come onstage in supporting roles, such as the Lyceum’s pricking seamstress, Mrs. Pinch. Further, these historical figures did indeed know one another. Bram Stoker and Oscar Wilde were allied by their dual courtship of Florence Balcombe, which, though it ended badly for Wilde, did not see Stoker banished from the good graces—and salon—of Lady Jane Wilde. Further, Stoker did worship Walt Whitman, and their relationship was in fact closer than the present fiction allowed. Hall Caine did know Francis Tumblety, intimately, and the excerpts from Tumblety’s letters to Caine presented in the Dossier are more or less factual, as are Stoker’s to Whitman. So, too, is the balance of the fiction pertaining to Hall Caine supported by fact, from the illegality of his marriage to his relationship to Rossetti (who, yes, did hope to train an elephant to wash the windows of Tudor House). Ditto the Wildes, the first family of flamboyance, upon whom no fiction could hope to improve.
Stoker did work for Henry Irving, and though he of course knew the Lyceum’s leading lady, Ellen Terry—who did research sundry roles in London asylums, Stoker accompanying her on occasion—their visit to Stepney Latch is as fictitious as the place itself. So too is the novel-ending trip to Edinburgh imagined, though Irving & Co. did go there to research their much anticipated Macbeth.
Though some famous creatives have been synesthetes—such as Chopin—Stoker, as far as is known, was not one. (Readers wishing to read more about this neurological phenomenon can turn, as I did, to Richard E. Cytowic’s The Man Who Tasted Shapes.) Stoker did, however, lead an unhappy home life, and died mere days after the sinking of the Titanic. We can only wonder what the great ship must have heralded for the dying author as it set out from Southampton; for Stoker was always drawn to the sea and the ship’s sinking is said to have hastened his end.
Upon his death, Stoker’s papers were dispersed via auction, and though the “miscellaneous lot 128” did exist, my supposition that Stoker’s journal of 1888 was among the auctioned miscellany is just that: a supposition, for which I claim a fictioneer’s prerogative.
The Golden Dawn is represented here as truthfully as fact and fiction allowed, though the location and decoration of the Isis-Urania No. 3 temple is my own doing. Likewise, all persons mentioned as members of the Golden Dawn are either known, supposed, or reputed to have been members.
The “real” Francis J. Tumblety died in May of 1903 at age seventy-three, in St. Louis. His remains were transported to Rochester, where he was interred in the family tomb. Supposedly.
In researching The Dracula Dossier, I have turned to many sources, among which: Leonard Wolf ’s Annotated Dracula; Bram Stoker and the Man Who Was Dracula by Barbara Belford; From the Shadow of Dracula: A Life of Bram Stoker by Paul Murray; Stoker’s own Personal Reminiscences of Henry Irving; The Secret Life of Oscar Wilde by Neil McKenna; Oscar Wilde by Richard Ellmann; Mother of Oscar by Joy Melville; and Hall Caine: Portrait of a Victorian Romancer by Vivien Allen. Regarding the rites and rituals of the Golden Dawn, I am indebted, primarily, to The Golden Dawn by Israel Regardie and The Essential Golden Dawn by Chic and Sandra Tabatha Cicero.
As regards Jack the Ripper, I owe a special debt to the authors of Jack the Ripper: First American Serial Killer, Stewart Evans and Paul Gainey, as well as Philip Sugden, whose Complete History of Jack the Ripper is indeed that. And I acknowledge a debt to www.casebook
.org, which is, as of this writing, the premier online clearinghouse of Ripperana.
I thank the authors and contributors to all those sources listed above—as well as others too numerous to cite here—and ask, too, that they forgive me for any mistakes made or liberties taken in the crafting of this fiction, the former owing to ignorance, the latter imagination.
I remind the legion of Ripperologists that my aim in writing The Dracula Dossier was not to indict Francis J. Tumblety, but rather to explore the life of Bram Stoker. And though Jack the Ripper has evolved into myth, his victims have not. Time has proved them all too mortal, and so it is they and not their murderer—whoever he may have been—who are deserving of remembrance here: Mary Ann Nichols. Annie Chapman. Elizabeth Stride. Catherine Eddowes. Mary Jane Kelly.
A sincere thank-you to my editor, Sarah Durand—the same to whom the “Comte de Ville” addresses his letter at the outset of this novel—and my agent, Suzanne Gluck.
And finally, I’d like to thank my own Children of Light, whose love and support sustain me: JER, MMR, PML, MMR, AJL, and MCF.
ABOUT THE TYPE
This book was set in Janson, a typeface long thought to have been made by the Dutchman Anton Janson, who was a practicing typefounder in Leipzig during the years 1668–1687. However, it has been conclusively demonstrated that these types are actually the work of Nicholas Kis (1650–1702), a Hungarian, who most probably learned his trade from the master Dutch typefounder Dirk Voskens. The type is an excellent example of the influential and sturdy Dutch types that prevailed in England up to the time William Caslon (1692–1766) developed his own incomparable designs from them.
About the Author
JAMES REESE has held various jobs in the nonprofit sector, working on behalf of the arts and the environment. He lives in South Florida and Paris, France.