Sherlock Holmes and The Case of The Bulgarian Codex

Chapter XVI THE VICTIM OF A VAMPIRE?

WITH the application of volatile salts Mrs. Barrington opened her eyes. She looked up at me beseechingly.

‘Dr. Watson, you are a medical man. You must go at once with my housekeeper to Mount Vitosh. You can make enquiry of the villagers. Perhaps the woman is not quite dead. As to the peasants, for some weeks they have been insisting a voracious vampire has recently been driven into the forests of Mount Vitosh from the region of Istria, but a prudent incredulity is very requisite.’

‘Madam, may I ask what is an obrok?’ I enquired.

‘A shrine. The villagers offer sacrificial rituals to their patron saint against evil spirits who live in the forest. An ancient tree over an obrok is considered sacred. The hollows and cracks become resting places for the black stork and bats. But hurry, please hurry, in case she is still alive!’

The housekeeper rushed away. She returned ready for the forest in a dolman cape and elastic-sided boots. At Holmes’s prompting, I scribbled a hurried note for our driver to deliver to the Legate and we sent the phaeton back. We followed the housekeeper towards a conveyance belonging to the Estate. A post-boy hurried from the stables and mounted one of the three drawing horses.

Along our route little groups of aproned women huddled at their doorways. Frightened villagers urged us onward along steeper and steeper trails blazed through the forest. Mount Vitosh loomed before us like a menacing cloud of episcopal violet against the golden sky. We were entering a world of un-things: mist, ghosts, shrouds, gossamer, smoke. I felt a creeping of the flesh, and a presentiment of coming horror. My nerves, which were steady enough on the field of battle, tingled. The horses, nostrils flaring like the great horses of the Parthenon, drove us onward through sharp, dead limbs between which there was hardly room to pass, into the gloom of a dense, ancient forest otherwise silent except for the horses’ shrill breath and the snap of decaying timber. Suddenly we broke into a lovely glade of greensward.

There are sights such as meet the eye which etch lines on the mind so deep that our memory stays dominated by them until we move to the Great Beyond. The lapse of eighteen years has hardly served to weaken the effect. The dead woman lay on her back, seeming to spring from the roots of a great pedunculate oak. Her naked body gave the appearance of being hewn from the finest alabaster, the hands stretched half away from her body as though ready to fly. The clothing was nowhere to be seen. Frighteningly, the bifurcation gave her the appearance of the human-shaped root of the Chinese fleece-flower so familiar in the East.

Three men with flintlock rifles stood at the edge of the clearing, ill-at-ease, their horses tethered nearby. The housekeeper offered them an explanation for our presence and translated their response. The older of the three called across, ‘Tell the doctor to hurry with his business, then we can stake her through the heart and hip.’ Another nodded in agreement, adding, ‘Approach the undead with care - she may return to life at any second.’

My comrade acknowledged their concern with a wave of a hand. He set about inspecting the ground around the corpse. ‘She put up a struggle,’ he said quietly, pointing to the disturbances around the body. Her missing footwear had repeatedly dug and twisted into the soil in a desperate effort to throw off a heavy weight. Deeper, sharper furrows interspersed her heel marks.

After a few minutes Holmes beckoned me to examine her. I kneeled by the corpse and stared at her face. The features were contorted. A thick layer of cosmetic had run between her eyebrows and her eyes, staining the sclera yellow. A small mirror held to her mouth and nostrils showed no sign of breath. I lifted her chin to examine her throat.

‘Well, Holmes,’ I said, standing up. ‘I’m afraid she’s very much dead. There’s no need to sniff her lips for poison. Facial petechiæ erythema around the neck and involuntary defecation all indicate strangulation, but the cause of death was exsanguination. There isn’t a drop of blood left in her. There are two fang-like punctures on the left side of her neck just below the chin but the one slash which divided the carotid artery would have sufficed.’

I threw Holmes a troubled look. ‘I have heard that vampires first strangle their victims before they suck out their blood. This poor woman was certainly strangled, but it was not a pair of fangs which punctured the artery. Her murderer used a sharp blade.’

Holmes remarked, ‘He must have been strong to have overpowered her so quickly - there is no sign of a paralysing blow - and he would have been well-known to her.’

‘How do you deduce that, Holmes?’

‘It has long been an axiom of mine that the little things are infinitely the most important. Great issues may hang from a boot-lace.’ He gestured towards the corpse’s lower trunk. ‘Impoverished forest-dwellers might pillage riding-boots or a hunting habit and sandwich box, but I doubt if they would take away soiled underwear. Why was someone so anxious to get possession of it? There must be some strong reason behind the removal, that even that one piece of clothing could disclose the victim’s identity and point us towards her killer. However, he has left us a clue. He is at least six feet tall, to judge by the marks of his boot-toes in the soil - they are several inches below the furrows made by the dead woman’s heels, and she is about five feet six inches in height.’

‘I can offer you a further clue, Holmes,’ I intervened.

‘Which is?’

‘The face which pressed hard against hers during the struggle was ill-shaven or bearded. Her cheeks have been considerably abraded.’

‘Excellent, Watson,’ Holmes returned. ‘And what of her missing hair?’

‘Quite clearly the villain was a fetishist, Holmes. Many people become aroused by human hair. This would be even more likely if it was raining at the time and the hair was soaking wet.’

‘Perhaps,’ Holmes replied. ‘Trichophilia is a possibility but why not one strand or tuft of hair on the ground - not even in the halo of congealed blood around her head? As we are in the Balkans we must follow Mrs. Barrington’s excellent counsel, which you recall was - ?’

‘A “prudent incredulity” is very requisite,’ I replied.

‘The body must return with us, even if we pay with the Prince’s gold leva for the privilege - otherwise - ’ He gestured in silent eloquence towards the waiting men.

‘What of motive, Holmes?’ I asked, beckoning the housekeeper over. ‘I see no signs of injury elsewhere upon the body to indicate indecent assault. Apart from the theft of her clothes - and hair - there is not a ghost of a motive anyone can suggest.’

My companion made no response to my query. He pointed to a small patch of flattened grass. In a curiously distrait tone he said, ‘Her murderer sat watching while she bled to death. Few killers in our lexicon of crime have displayed such cruelty and calculation as this.’ He threw me a determined look. ‘Watson, I swear he shall face the hangman’s noose.’