Then ghastly haunt the native place,
And suck the blood of all thy race;
There from thy daughter, sister, wife,
At midnight drain the stream of life.
—From Lord Byron’s “The Giaour,” quoted by JOHN POLIDORI in “The Vampyre,” 1819, written that haunted night during which Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein was also born.
60
“What exactly did you tell her?”
Wells’s question to the inn maid, who delivered the message to Nellie, is asked in a grim, angry tone. The girl, cringing like a rabbit frozen in place as it stares at a predator, appears ready to bolt.
“Just what her friend asked me to tell her, sir.”
“How do you know he’s her friend?”
The woman is on the verge of tears and Oscar puts a restraining hand on Wells’s arm.
“You’ve done nothing wrong,” Oscar tells the girl in a soothing tone. “You did exactly as you were told. But, my dear, Nellie has disappeared and we need to find her.”
“She probably went off with her friend.”
“There is no doubt she left,” Oscar says gently, “but the man wasn’t her friend. He’s a criminal and he has taken her.”
The maid gasps and covers her face.
“It’s all right, it was not your fault, but you want to help her, don’t you?”
“You can be sure of that!”
“What did the man look like?”
“I don’t know. He looked a little like my brother Jeremy. People say Jeremy is tough, you know what I mean, with his fists. But he didn’t dress like Jeremy. His clothes are London fancy.”
“How old is Jeremy?” Oscar continues.
“He’s my older brother, I think he’s ‘bout thirty.”
“Was anyone else with the man?”
“No sir, just him alone. Told me to go tell his friend one of the ponies is sick and she must come to help him. So, I did that. I didn’t do anything wrong.”
“No, of course not, my dear. We are just trying to find out what you saw.” Oscar says in a sweet tone. The village girl had no knowledge of the murderous machinations.
“Was he wearing boots? Ones with pointed toes?” Wells asks, trying to control his frustration and anger at this maid for being so stupid as far as he’s concerned.
“Boots with pointed toes? I’ve never seen boots like that. I didn’t notice what he wears on his feet. I don’t pay attention to people’s feet.”
Wells and Oscar turn their attention to Conan Doyle who is hurrying toward them.
“There was a carriage,” he tells them, a little out of breath, “parked near the stable. An expensive rig with four horses. The innkeeper and stableman both say it doesn’t belong to anyone in the area and that they’ve never seen it before. Had some kind of emblem … a gold crest, they think, on it, but they couldn’t be sure in the dark and all.”
“No one saw Nellie?” Wells asks, his tone gripped with tension.
“No one. The maid?” Doyle gestures.
Oscar and Wells turn to see the maid darting away.
“Let her go. She knows nothing of importance,” Oscar says to Wells and then answers Doyle’s question. “Apparently a man about thirty, tough looking like her brother, said to tell Nellie a pony was sick.”
“It was a clever ploy,” Wells states bitterly. “Nellie loves animals. She rushed right into the trap without even thinking.”
“Boots?”
“She didn’t notice,” Wells answers Doyle’s question. “They must have taken her north. I don’t think they would have gone south, not in a big carriage, the road’s too rough. I’m getting my buggy and going after them.”
“Wait a moment, please.” Doyle grabs his arm. “The innkeeper tells me that it’s less than an hour to the main road to Okehampton. They probably made the road already. There’s no way our pony buggies can overtake a four-horse rig, especially on a good road.”
“I’ll get a horse—” Wells stops as Doyle shakes his head.
“I’ve asked. There are no full-sized horses in the vicinity. And not even a local constable. Okehampton has the closest police station.”
“No place to wire from here?” Oscar asks.
Doyle shakes his head again. “Okehampton is the closest. When we get there, we’ll send out a wire to every police station in the region. We can be there in less than three hours, but it will be the middle of the night and everything will be shut down and locked tight.”
“Then we shall awaken the entire town,” Oscar says. “We’ll organize search parties. Territory that would take us days to cover can be done by volunteers in Okehampton in hours.”
“We don’t even know where to begin,” Wells says. His tone is as worried as his gloomy expression. “We really don’t know if Lacroix’s laboratory is within a six-mile range of the castle. That’s an estimate based on the artist’s endurance. He could have visited the castle in a buggy, for all we know.”
Doyle turns to Wells. “The equipment for the type of experiments he conducts, does it involve any large or heavy apparatus?”
“No, I would think not. Nothing that can’t be easily lifted by a man. Why do you ask?”
“From what you’ve said, Lacroix must have known for some time that he could ultimately be traced to Dartmoor. You suspected the laboratory is in Dartmoor from the shipments you learned about. We believe the artist Weekes knew where the laboratory was because of the bog he painted. That leads to the theory that the facility is in this region, but begs the question as to whether it is still where it was when Weekes painted the bog.”
“You’re wondering whether he could have broken down the laboratory and transported it elsewhere?” Oscar looks at Doyle.
“My God, yes.” Wells throws his hands up. “It wouldn’t be that difficult. For the type of research Lacroix does, his entire laboratory could be boxed up and transported in one large wagon. Once he became aware that we were searching for it and had some idea of the location, he probably moved it. It could be anywhere.”
“Logically anywhere in this region,” Doyle offers. “Weekes was killed to prevent him from pointing the way to Okehampton, although he did so with the Lady Howard story. That and the other death implies that even if the laboratory was moved, it’s still in Dartmoor and most likely the northern part.”
“Then, my friends,” Oscar says, “if the lab is so easy to move and hide, it raises a most puzzling question.”
He didn’t have to put the question into words. All three men had analytical minds and extraordinarily fantastic imaginations. Not being a man of few words, Oscar spoke the question.
“If they can easily hide, why would they have exposed themselves to so much danger and police attention by kidnapping Nellie?”
Wells takes a turn at further stating the obvious. “They’ve had opportunities to kill her and haven’t done so.” He stares at the two men, his features a mask of dread.
“Vampires!”
“What?” Oscar and Doyle both exclaim at the same time.
“That’s what Archer kept toying Nellie and me with. He kept saying look for vampires.”
“And…?” Oscar asks.
“They want Nellie’s blood,” says Conan Doyle.
61
The dark night reveals no clue where I’m going as the carriage rumbles along. The only sign of habitation I can see out the carriage window is the occasional dim lamplight from a farmhouse.
I sit facing the countess, with Burke beside me.
The only other person on the coach is the driver, whose name I heard is Hare, a chip off the same hard-edged block as Burke. Both of the men wear cowboy boots. I haven’t gotten a good look at Hare, but I assume he is the man who killed Isaac Weekes.
An expensive coach pulled by a team of four moves surprisingly quick despite the narrowness and ruts on the road. I’m certain it’s making better time than Wells and I did with the small buggy despite the roughness of the track. From the tur
ns it makes, I know the carriage is taking me north on a route that will connect to a more traveled road that flows west from Exeter to Okehampton and beyond. The same route we were taking to get to Okehampton.
The fact we are heading for Okehampton offers, I hope, one small advantage to me—it’s the route Wells and I were on and the natural one that he and the others will follow to affect a rescue, since we concluded that the laboratory was there.
I am frightened to death but won’t satisfy them by showing fear.
No word has been spoken except when Burke, sitting next to me, starts to light a cigar and the woman in black says, “No.” He immediately extinguishes the match.
The words she spoke to me when I was forced aboard are the cause of a knot in my stomach and a lump in my throat. From my conversations with Wells about the nature of Lacroix’s research I am certain I know what she meant.
While I keep my features impassive, my innards are convulsing and I fight to keep panic from gripping and paralyzing me. I am completely helpless at the moment but if a chance to escape arises, I need to be ready to take it. Screaming is futile, there is no place to run or hide, no one to shout to for help.
I am still stunned by their simple ploy to take me, how utterly clueless I was about the situation and so foolish to mindlessly walk away from the inn without even telling my companions.
My eyes keep going back to the woman in black.
Burke calls her “Countess” and never uses anything but the title. Strange, but I don’t think of her as having a name. I wonder if she is a widow or if the clothes are a reflection of her dark spirit.
An hour has passed and I am certain by now that my friends will have discovered I am missing. They are clever men, brave and resourceful. Fortunately, Dr. Doyle is also familiar with the area. I’m sure their immediate plan will be to get to the police and organize a search for the laboratory in the Okehampton Castle area that we have estimated its location to be.
Soon it becomes a much smoother road than the goat paths Wells and I seemed to have always been traversing in the heart of the moors. We now proceed at a quicker pace. I realize that we have reached the main road and a shock hits me—we turned right onto the road.
From the map Wells and I had pored over, Okehampton is a left turn when reaching the main road.
A barely audible chuckle comes from the woman. “Yes, the laboratory is no longer in Okehampton.”
“It doesn’t matter where you are taking me. My companions are extremely capable of finding me. You will be caught. You don’t believe it because you are so desperately caught up with your desires, you are not thinking clearly. And you, sir,” I tell Burke, “we know about your gang and the killing of the artist. If you want to avoid the hangman, you’ll do no more crimes for this woman.”
Burke grins. “You really have me scared. Is that what’s gonna happen?” he asks the countess in a mocking tone. “This woman’s gonna have me meet the hangman?”
“No, that won’t happen—not that you haven’t earned a trip to the gallows many times over.” She directs her next comment to me. “We are going to a manor owned by a duke and loaned to me. No one would dare invade its grounds. And when we leave, there will be no sign we were ever there.”
She has a continental accent, Italian, I think, but there is a British edge to her English.
“Do you believe in God?” I ask, curious about how she deals with the evil inside her.
“My personal beliefs are drawn more from the East.”
“Really? Has it occurred to you that the punishment for the evil you have committed in this life is to be reborn as a worm in a cesspool?”
She leans across the carriage and slaps me, hard, across my face.
I freeze for a second and then start to move forward to swing at her when Burke blocks me with his arm and an ice pick comes up and pricks me on my neck under my ear.
“Settle down,” he says.
“If you cooperate and do what you are told, you won’t be harmed,” the woman says.
Won’t be harmed?
Does she really expect me to believe that? Murder has followed in the wake of this woman and Lacroix and she assures me that no harm will come to me if I play along? But I keep my mouth shut because the more I say, the more opportunities they will have to hurt me.
It seems we’ve traveled for more than an hour before we turn off the main road and follow a side path to tall iron gates.
The glow of a full moon breaks through the foggy haze, enough to reveal the manor house that commands the top of a hill in the distance.
The estate is almost castle looking, truly fit for a grand nobleman bearing the title of duke.
I don’t see any lights in the house.
From the distance, the house appears dark and forbidding. As we draw closer it becomes evident that the house is also made of moors granite, but the stone has been finished.
The carriage follows the curve of the road up to the main building and we continue past it to a coach house. Two large mastiffs chase the carriage, barking.
“Don’t bother trying to run,” the countess warns me. “There are no neighbors and the dogs will treat you as game to kill.”
The door to the carriage storage house that is used for foot traffic opens and a young woman comes out.
62
Hailey comes to me to give me a hug and I push her hands away.
I am not surprised a bit. The fact that she is still alive has been gnawing at me for some time, but I just didn’t want to face it. Instead, I buried the revelation deep inside me.
“I’m sorry,” Hailey says. “But everything will be all right, I know that for sure. They promised me you won’t be harmed.”
I smile sadly at her. My jaws are tight. I don’t have the urge to strike at her like I did with the countess before she slapped me. Instead, I feel like hugging and crying with her—after I grab her and shake her and scream my lungs out about how she could be so stupid.
“Please, Nellie—”
I get right into her face. “People are dead and I’m going to be joining them. Do you think that sorry might be a little inadequate right now?”
“No, that’s not going to happen, you won’t be hurt.”
“How can you say that? I’ve been kidnapped with an ice pick at my throat by murderers who have left bodies in their wake.”
The mastiffs come sniffing up to me and I let the big male smell my hand.
How could I have so misjudged her? My editor at the paper had called her a loose cannon and told me I better learn how to duck because you never know in which direction she will go off.
She is ready to cry. “Please, come inside, you must meet Anthony.”
“You make it sound like I’ve dropped in for a bit of tea. Did you happen to notice that I have been kidnapped by thugs who kill people with ice picks and a madwoman who wants my blood?”
“Get inside,” Burke snaps.
“Come, please,” Hailey begs me.
She reaches for me and I brush away her hand. With nowhere to run or hide, I reluctantly follow her into the coach house.
The main room, large enough to park two large coaches, has been made into a research laboratory. A long table in the center has microscopes, test tubes, Petri dishes, Bunsen burners, surgical instruments—the tools of the trade by researchers in the biological sciences. I suspect that Dr. Pasteur’s laboratory in Paris isn’t much different except for one thing: I see many glass containers filled with a deep red liquid that I’m certain is blood.
A chimpanzee is lying on its back, tied down to a table, with tubes to its throat.
“It’s sedated,” Hailey says.
“The whole bunch of you should be sedated. I’m sure the poor thing would rather be dead than live through the horrible things you’re doing to it.”
I wince when I see more chimps in cages. I wish I could free them.
“Anthony does research with chimpanzees because Darwin says we are descended from apes
.”
“Where is my cage?”
Tears run down her face and her features twist as she quietly sobs.
I’m not in a forgiving mood. “Those can’t be real tears for me, the people your friends have killed, or these poor creatures. You know why they call your kind of crying crocodile tears? Crocodiles shed tears when they are eating their victims. I’m just another victim to be devoured.”
“No, Nellie, you have to understand, Anthony is taking his research where no one else has ever gone before.”
“Has it occurred to you what he’s doing is criminal?”
“He’s doing work that will go down in history.”
“I’m sure he will. Right beside Jack the Ripper.”
“Nellie, I thought if anyone would understand it would be you. You have such an imagination and are so daring. You’ve seen with your own eyes what Dr. Pasteur has accomplished with research.”
“Pasteur saves lives. He doesn’t take them away to give vain women beauty treatments.”
“You’re wrong on two counts.”
The pronouncement comes from behind me and I spin around to face the man who spoke the words.
Anthony Lacroix.
He is slender, with thin blond hair combed straight back, narrow features, and emerald green eyes that focus on you, with an intense, fixed gaze that is almost an impolite stare.
His fervent features convey the impression of determination. But there is also the hint of a bad temper and a handsome fragility to him, the sort that would make him a mother’s favorite and cause her to open her purse strings for him even when he misbehaves.
Exhaustion shows on his face, as if he has been operating at a super speed for a long period and is on the edge of collapse.
“Dr. Pasteur has saved lives by developing rabies and anthrax vaccines,” he says, “but those discoveries came at the expense of others who were infected with the diseases by bad doses of the medicine before the process became a success. The same is true about smallpox and other maladies. The cures served the common good at the expense of a few.”
The Formula for Murder Page 27