AFTER THIS VISIT WITH THE TATARS, LUCIA’S CONDITION worsened more and more; she lost her interest in other people and mainly kept to herself. She then travelled to London and began preparations for her wedding. Baron Székely had also arrived in London and visited her often for conversation.302
She couldn’t sleep at night and became paler with each passing day. When Arthur came to visit her he was shocked at her appearance. He sent for Dr. Seward, but the physician found himself unable to help her. And so Dr. Seward wrote to a professor in Amsterdam, named Van Helsing, who was world-renowned for his research on nervous diseases. The Dutch specialist gave Lucia medical advice, and for a while her health indeed seemed to improve. But it wasn’t long before it deteriorated again, and the professor was called on once more.303 He said that Lucia must be suffering from anemia and that she wouldn’t recover unless they could transfuse blood from a healthy person into her veins.
The doctors did so, and with this treatment Lucia recuperated somewhat. Unfortunately, the Dutch professor then had to return home. The following day Dr. Seward drove to Lucia’s house and found both the front and back doors shut tightly—even though it was past midday. Suddenly, he heard someone running from the garden side of the house. It was the gardener and one of his workmen. They were breathless with terror and hardly able to utter a word. Finally, the doctor could make out from their stammering that the housemaid had been killed and that her blood-soaked body lay outside, in the garden.304 Upon further investigation, he saw that the window to Lucia’s bedroom had been broken, and he assumed something terrible awaited him. He looked through the window and saw that everything looked as it had before—except for the bed, where he saw Lucia and her mother, both seemingly lifeless. He reached his hand through the broken window, opened it, and wriggled in, but he told the men to wait for him outside. When he came to the bed he saw that Lucia’s mother was deceased—she seemed to have died from sheer terror—and Lucia lay motionless over her; he couldn’t tell whether or not she was alive. He didn’t know what to do, but just then he heard a carriage pull up to the house. He asked the men outside to welcome their visitor: Professor Van Helsing had arrived.
Both doctors examined Lucia and discovered she was still alive. The professor ordered that she be given a warm bath, so they went looking for a maidservant, but all of them were fast asleep and couldn’t be wakened, no matter what the men tried. They then sent for the gardener’s wife and daughter, who came to prepare a bath for Lucia. After several attempts, the physicians finally managed to resuscitate her. They wanted to give her another transfusion but were faced with a new dilemma: from whom should they draw the blood? Both Seward and Van Helsing had been subject to massive blood loss during the previous procedures.
Just then, Quincey Morris, the young American who had asked for Lucia’s hand, happened to arrive. He brought greetings from Arthur and happily volunteered his blood for Lucia’s sake.
At last they succeeded in fully reviving Lucia. Her heart and lungs began working again.305 When the doctors thought it safe to leave the patient alone for a moment, they tended to the other people in the house.
The police had started to look for the murderer. The servant girls had just woken up, reporting that they had gone to bed around the same time as usual but didn’t understand why they had slept so long. They knew nothing about the murder of the housemaid but said she was used to going her own way and liked to take evening walks.306
The detectives suspected that the murder had been planned and that the housemaid may have colluded with the trespassers, giving the other maids a sleeping draught. Afterward, the criminals had murdered their accomplice, so that no one was left to give away their secrets. What surprised them most, however, was the fact that nothing had been stolen. The band of Tatars had been in the neighborhood for the past few days, and the police thought it likely they’d played a part in this depravity, especially as they had decamped the day after the murder.307
The doctors carefully examined the housemaid’s body but could only conclude that she’d been bitten in the throat.
Eventually they came across a slip of paper on which Lucia had written what had happened to her that night. It had seemed to her as though someone were knocking on the window repeatedly, finally beating so hard that the window pane broke. After this she could’ve sworn she saw malicious human faces in the window, whereupon both she and her mother fell unconscious.308 When Lucia woke up again she saw that her mother was dead. She’d then barely managed to scribble these words on the piece of paper, along with a farewell to her friends and acquaintances, saying that she expected her own death as well.
The following night, past midnight, Dr. Seward also noticed a slow knocking at the window, but he couldn’t see anybody there.
The next morning Lucia was so weak that the doctors lost all hope for her. She died that same day, in the presence of the physicians and her love, Arthur. Her final words were to the professor, saying, “Protect him, and give me peace.”
Preparations for the funeral were made. The night before the burial, Dr. Seward and Arthur entered the room where the bodies of both mother and daughter lay. Flowers and tall candelabras with burning candles were placed around the bed. The doctor lifted the shroud covering Lucia’s body, and immediately both men were bewildered—it was as if Lucia were alive! She appeared even younger than she had in her last moments of life, and no signs of death or decay could be seen on her body!
That night Arthur slept in Lucia’s room, and the doctor slept in the room next door. During the night the doctor was awakened by a strange sound. He jumped to his feet and fetched a light. He saw that Arthur’s room was dark, and that the door to the room where the bodies lay stood half open. He went in and saw that the lid to Lucia’s coffin had been opened, her face visible, and that the flowers were in a pile on the floor. Arthur was lying unconscious next to the casket. The doctor took him in his arms and carried him to his bed, and when he regained consciousness, Arthur insisted that Lucia was alive and that she had risen from her coffin, smiling. He said that he’d been awake in bed, but then he longed to see her so intensely that he’d got to his feet.
He repeated his story so stubbornly that the doctors did everything they could to revive her—but in vain. But for Arthur this wasn’t enough and he refused to let the lid be screwed onto the coffin, so the casket was left open in the crypt, where enough air could get to it. Blankets and food for the body were placed nearby, in case Lucia were to awaken.