Castle Rouge (55 page)

“Of course. No Latin. My chemical, medical, and legal experiments have acquainted me with the language, dead as it may be. Cleverly done.”

“We realized it wouldn’t work when Bram Stoker told us later that the man Tatyana had introduced to us as the ‘Count’ was actually the village priest.”

“Before we find your missing explorers, tell me who this Bram Stoker is.”

“You don’t know?”

“Should I? Please do me the favor, unlike Watson, of not assuming that common knowledge is
my
knowledge. I am an unabashed specialist and in a very narrow constellation of disciplines, including the telltale shapes of human hands and ears, tattoos and tobaccos, manuscripts and typescripts and other arcane matters. You may often need to explain what you consider obvious to me.”

“I believe that situation works both ways.”

He digested that. “True. So who is Bram Stoker? I don’t have my Baker Street commonplace book to consult.”

“I should think you could read the Gypsy tea leaves,” I commented, but he refused to rise to the bait, and I realized I was being childish at a time when none of us could afford it.

“Bram Stoker,” I went on, “is theatrical manager for Henry Irving of London, the world’s greatest contemporary actor.”

“I may have heard of him. Actors are not among my specialities.”

“That is odd, since you often behave like one yourself. At any rate, Bram is well-known about London. We made his acquaintance years ago. In fact, I poured at one of his wife’s teas, but of course it was in the pursuit of an early private inquiry of Irene’s involving—” I stopped abruptly, aware that I was about to reveal her pursuit of Queen Marie Antoinette’s Zone of Diamonds to the last person on earth who should know about it.

“More of Mr. Stoker and less of your friend’s escapades, although I am sure that they make for sparkling conversation.” Even by candlelight I could detect a very minor twinkle in his eye that made me wonder if he suspected more about diamonds than either Irene or I dreamed. I plunged ahead.

“As a theater manager Bram is man-about-town, a raconteur, a lecturer, and a world traveler. In fact, his idea of a holiday is a solitary tramp through the wild places of the world, even though he has a wife and child in London. He also writes a bit, but they are sensational stories.”

“How did he happen to join the hunting party?”

“He was in Paris?”

“During the killings?”

“Yes, in fact…it’s hardly relevant, because we all know who Jack the Ripper is, but Irene had pointed out once that Bram had also been in London during the Irving production of
Macbeth
all last year, and that if speculators were proposing respectable figures for the Ripper, who better than a theatrical manager who leaves work late each night and whose whereabouts are unaccounted for? That only goes to show how insane Ripper fever had become; even the royal family was tainted with suspicion.”

Sherlock Holmes had dropped the lounging Gypsy stance he still affected like a second skin and suddenly stood straight at his six feet of height or more. He towered over me like a schoolmaster.

“Irrelevant? The very opposite may be true, Miss Huxleigh. The matter of the Ripper is not settled.”

“But James Kelly…” I pointed to the bound figure still unconscious on the cellar floor.

“…is a murderer, a madman, and is certainly connected to many of these woman-slayings, but he is not Jack the Ripper. Madam Irene’s suspicions of Bram Stoker are not as unlikely as you think. I have studied the volume of case histories she unearthed in the Left Bank bookstalls of Paris and it is most scientific.”

My mouth agape, I said nothing. Had I inched along a wall over a chasm tied to Jack the Ripper?

“As instructive as this
Psychopathia Sexualis
of Krafft-Ebing’s is, however, and valid, it has little bearing on the true motivations of the one who slaughtered prostitutes in London, Prague, and Paris.”

“You are deliberately trying to give me a headache, Mr. Holmes, and I will not listen further. Next you will be saying that Godfrey or Quentin could be the Ripper!”

“Indeed, a case can be made for almost any man, more’s the pity. Quite a comment on the relations between the sexes, isn’t it? Which is no doubt why you and I so wisely refrain from such nonsense.”

Well!

“I really require nothing further of you, other than a reunion with the missing Messieurs Norton and Stoker, and that you all stay out of my way when the time comes. I am up against the most vicious gang of my career and well out of my bailiwick. If only Watson and his trusty revolver were here!”

I could have responded in kind, “If only Irene and her trusty revolver were here,” but that was the last thing on earth that I truly wanted.

45.

Trapped Like Rats

A lovely weapon indeed. The trick is that you must use an air pump to prime it. After that you have twenty shots before it fizzles. For those twenty shots you have one of the most murderous weapons on the planet
.

—
QUENTIN STANHOPE ON THE AIR RIFLE

It was with great pleasure that I assisted Sherlock Holmes in depositing James Kelly for safekeeping in one of the large wooden boxes that littered the vast empty cellars beneath the castle.

I did not assist much, merely helped lift the man’s bound legs into the box before Mr. Holmes replaced the cover.

The arrangement was satisfyingly like storing the man in a coffin as I had been when transported from Paris to this mountain keep in Transylvania. I was even pleased with my decision to appropriate Godfrey’s trousers, for I never could have bent and heaved with propriety in ladies’ garb.

The detective said nothing of my outré garb, nor my aid.

“That will keep the rest of the villains from stumbling over Kelly for some time,” he concluded, “although I believe that they would be as unhappy to see him as you were.”

“Really? Why? Is he not part of their cult?”

“Not a welcome one. Now. I suggest we retreat to the foot of the stairs and wait for the candlebearer you expected, rather than the one you were unfortunate enough to greet.”

With my candle fresh-lit we retraced our steps back to that unhappy site.

By now there was a faint hum of activity throughout the cellar, as if a huge, invisible hive of bees had taken up residence. I cannot explain it, a sound both natural and unnatural and rather elemental, like the wind of the sea rushing through many small empty caverns.

This part of the castle remained, however, eerily deserted and I actually felt a pang for mad James Kelly awakening bound in the utter dark of that vampire box.

The snakelike shuffle of shoes in the dark brought Sherlock Holmes to attention at the wall he leaned upon. I had sat on a step near the bottom and leaped to my feet.

The candle flicker that approached bobbled like a miner’s lamp.

Behind it came not one of my companions, but both!

“Nell,” Godfrey whispered, his hand moving inside his coat jacket for what I well knew was a foot-long steel hatpin. “You have reunited with your Gypsy admirer.”

“He is no admirer,” I whispered vehemently, “and no Gypsy either. This is Sherlock Holmes.”

“The devil you say!”

I refrained from agreeing that Sherlock Holmes was the devil indeed.

“Mr. Norton, I presume, and Mr. Bram Stoker,” the devil himself said blandly. “Miss Huxleigh has had a bit of a fright and needs to be escorted to more civilized spheres upstairs.”

“Nell?” Godfrey asked.

“James Kelly, the Ripper suspect, lies bound in a packing box only yards away.”

“The fiend who had a knife to your throat in Paris?”

Of course Sherlock Holmes had to put himself in a good light. “He had a knife to her throat only minutes ago here, but I happened upon them in the nick of time.”

“Good God, Miss Huxleigh,” said Bram Stoker, for once more distressed by the nearness of ordinary mayhem rather than that shrouded in supernatural trappings.

“I’m quite all right,” I tried to explain, not seeing why we should all be shuffled aside.

“We can’t go farther down,” Godfrey advised. “I was right about there being an exit from the cellar into the mountain, but what serves as an exit also serves as an entrance. A mob of people have been flooding into the great open room below.”

“What sort of people?” Mr. Holmes demanded.

Bram Stoker answered. “People from the area. Peasants, humble folk. I must say that what first drew my attention to the castle when I visited the neighborhood were murmurs among the villagers. Their young people were coming to staff the castle in great numbers. Although they had glimpsed Madame Tatyana in her carriage and knew she was in residence, she and her associates were often gone for long periods, and still the castle swallowed village lads and lassies like the whale consumed Jonah. When the older folk came to inquire, they always found a surly encampment of Gypsies in the main courtyard preventing entrance. Only the testimony of the village priest to the great renovations the castle was undergoing quieted the villagers’ unease.”

Mr. Holmes snorted in an ungentlemanly fashion at the mention of this local priest. Dressed as he was, the reaction was in character at least. “When I have time I will be most interested in discovering how and when Father Lupescu came to lead this isolated little flock.”

“You believe he is a fraud, a false priest?” I asked.

The face he turned to me was serious beneath its Gypsy insouciance. “No, I believe that he is something much worse.” He appeared to think for a moment. (In fact, Mr. Sherlock Holmes made a great show of any act of ratiocination he troubled to undertake. I believe this theatrical mannerism accounted for much of the awe in which his intellect was held.)

“I am here alone,” he went on, “and we hardly number enough to deal with the mob assembling below and what it will all too soon become. I have resources, but they are remote, for now. I suggest we consider this a rescue mission first and a hunting party second. We must steal out of the castle from above.”

“What of the Gypsies?” Bram Stoker asked. “Their numbers have grown into a small army, and it will be as hard to pass through going out of the castle as trying to come into it. And need I mention the number of enormous, fierce hounds that travel with them and treat all non-Romany like fresh bones to worry?”

“Sesostros the Mute will help gain passage,” Mr. Holmes said, bowing with true Gypsy pride. “It would be best if Miss Huxleigh would feign some injury and the men assist her. But we will worry about the method when we have achieved the opportunity.”

Sounds from below welled up for a moment, like the distant roar of a beast.

“They were assembling the wood for an enormous fire,” Mr. Stoker said, looking backwards with a curious look of longing and fear.

“No time to be lost,” Mr. Holmes declared, his very urgency of tone herding us up the stairs ahead of him before any of us could think to object. “Quickly! We must run for our lives until we reach the castle’s inhabited sections, and then we must be as subtle as serpents.”

I had seen enough of the violent doings under the Paris Exposition to sprint up the steps in my uninhibiting trousers, my cupped hand sheltering the candle flame.

When we reached a level passage, Godfrey leaped into the lead, for he had more thoroughly explored these regions than anyone present, even the vaunted Sherlock Holmes, who kept close behind him.

This level was also mostly empty except for broken shards of ancient furniture and the ubiquitous storage boxes. I wondered if anyone would find James Kelly. Then Godfrey and Mr. Holmes ran up another set of stairs, and Mr. Stoker cupped my elbow in his huge hand and pushed me after them until I was panting hard enough to endanger my precious candle flame.

The next level was close enough to the occupied portions of the castle that some dim beams of light penetrated its darkness, likely from unshuttered windows on the next level.

“Less haste and more quiet,” Mr. Holmes advised in a whisper.

The two men bracketed me like an honor guard as the Gypsy detective struck out a few paces ahead of us, our advance guard.

If only Quentin had been here! He would have been much more useful. Once we reached the level upon which the library was located, Mr. Holmes slowed his pace to a stroll.

From above came the occasional thump or bang of persons moving about. We were now trapped between two busily occupied parts of the castle, both offering exits of one sort or another.

“It’s a pity we loosened the rope from the library window,” I whispered to Godfrey.

“What rope?” asked Mr. Holmes, who seemed to possess the keen ears of a Shropshire rabbit.

“Nell fashioned an escape rope from the bed linens in our chamber, which we used to climb from our window down to the library chamber, there.”

Sesostros frowned darkly at my braided hair. “I had no idea that Miss Huxleigh’s plaiting talents could be applied to more useful tasks. What do you mean that you loosened it?”

“We made our escape on an angle from the higher window to the lower ones,” Godfrey explained. “Rather than betray our escape route should our absence be discovered, we let the rope dangle straight down. We can only reach it from Nell’s chamber, and then it will only lead us back inside the castle, as it’s too short to reach anywhere near the ground.”

“I see,” said Mr. Holmes, looking as if he wished he didn’t. “I suppose it might do as a desperate measure, but our best choice is to try to walk out unchallenged. If we are spotted or stopped, let me deal with it, or Sesostros the Mute, rather.”

With our duplicitous guide in the lead, we spiraled up a narrow staircase that led us to a place of noise and strong smells, the castle kitchens.

These rooms were fortunately deserted. Godfrey paused to snatch up a crumpled white linen towel, smash a tomato against it, and wrap my forearm with it.

In an instant I became the walking wounded, and it made sense that Godfrey and Bram supported me on either side.