Sherlock Holmes and The Case of The Bulgarian Codex

Chapter V WE CONTINUE OUR JOURNEY ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS

ON the morrow I rose early from a comfortable sleep, lulled by the sonorous puffing of the train at speed. Morning had broken bright and cloudless. Enchanted lands with their differing languages and scripts came and went, slipping behind us in quick succession as the express thundered on. I made my way to the Dining-car where I found Holmes studying a pile of papers.

He looked up at my entrance. ‘Watson, I have been reading up on our client’s genealogy. It seems the Prince claims blood with every legendary figure of Europe’s past. Do order breakfast. I recommend the omelette stuffed with shallots and chives, or I am sure they will provide you with a passable copy of Mrs. Hudson’s grilled kidneys and devilled chicken, even a plate of cold ham and galantine.’

‘And what of his wife? He made no mention of her that I recall.’

‘He was in a marriage of convenience, to Princess Marie Louise of Bourbon-Parma, the daughter of Roberto I of Parma and Princess Maria Pia, of the Bourbon Two Sicilies. She gave him four children, Boris, Kyril, Eudoxia and Nadezhda.’

‘And?’

‘She died soon after the birth of Nadezhda.’

‘So he is at present a widower?’

‘Heavens, how well you must have slept! In addition to being a widower, of which we may hear more, Ferdinand possesses remarkable gifts for the natural sciences. He is a renowned botanist and entomologist, and a host of other ‘-ists’: linguist, alchemist, philatelist, and a very considerable amateur artist. In short, he will not deny himself his own opinions on every subject under the sun - politics, music, architecture, Darwinism, spiritualism perhaps, matters of the kitchen.’

A uniformed attendant brought us a set of newspapers. Among the considerable pile lay the Journal de Genève, the newspaper which, a day ahead of the Reuters despatch, had published the first report of the death of Holmes and ex-Professor Moriarty on that fateful day nine years earlier.

The Adevarul de Cluj was the only paper which came with an English translation. ‘Holmes,’ I said with a chuckle, ‘listen to this: ‘Some Strange Happenings In Eastern Bohemia’.’

The article began, ‘A man’s skeleton discovered during excavations for a deep well in the village of Mikulovice may indicate the presence of a vampire coven. Fearing the deceased might return from the grave, he was sent on his final journey weighed down with a huge stone on his chest and another one on his head. “Only the bodies of people believed to be vampires were given such treatment,” reports a local priest.’

The story continued, ‘The site may be the world’s first burial place for the Undead, people who are believed to rise from the grave, walk once more on the Earth to prey on the living. All the skeletons showed tell-tale signs of anti-vampire rituals. Some were weighted down, others had a nail driven through their temple, or variously debilitated and their heads cut off and faced downward so they should not find their way back to the world of the living. These funerary rituals indicate the bodies were the remains of revenants in the eyes of the villagers.’

This was followed by the most chilling fact of all: ‘Some of the whole bodies were buried facing down in the hope that when the time came for the vampire to rise it would dig with claws on its hands and feet ever-deeper downward into the earth.’

The article went on to report a very recent case in the Romanian village of Marotinul-de-Sus. When a woman fell ill for no apparent cause, the inhabitants smelt the presence of a moroi (vampire). Around midnight, several relatives of a recently-deceased man dug up his corpse, fearing he had become the vampire. They split open the ribcage, and removed his heart. This was burned, and the ashes given to the sick woman to drink in water to escape the vampire.

‘Holmes, what do you think of such goings-on?’ I asked with a further chuckle.

My companion failed to answer. Instead, he stared out at the landscape rushing by.