4 April 1898
Success! If not complete yet, then so close I can taste its nectar . . .
Collins brought the woman to the house tonight, taking care to bring her in the back entrance, suitably blindfolded so that she cannot recognize the house again. She was an Irish wench, with dark hair and brilliant blue eyes, though past her first prime and with many of her teeth missing. The scent of smoke and alcohol clung to her shabby clothes. Collins settled her into the chair and took off her blindfold. She blinked a few times and seemed to squint about her. I had kept the fire deliberately low and lit no candles, but if she were afflicted with poor eyesight it would be so much the better.
“Here’s the gentleman I was mentioning to you, Maud,” Collins said, then turned to me. “This is Maud.” He was careful not to use my name.
“It is good of you to come, Maud,” I said, to put her at her ease, for this would go better if she were relaxed and unresisting.
“’Tis my pleasure, sir, and your coin,” she replied. “Your man here said you wanted some information and no more.”
“Very true. You have been visited by a certain client whose identity interests me.”
“They don’t hardly give me their names, sir. Not their true ones.”
“Nonetheless, there may be details about him that are of use to me. So tell your tale and I will ask you questions after.”
Her story was nothing I had not heard from Collins before; a middle-aged man with a European accent who came to her rooms, paid her the agreed fee and then seemed to require the usual service from her. “But I don’t rightly remember it, if you catch my meaning, sir. I remember him undoing my dress then things get a bit muzzy and I must have gone to sleep. When I woke up he was gone. I thought he must be some kind of thief, one of those low scum that prey on hard-working women such as I, but there weren’t nothing missing from my room. And he left me a little extra, a coin or two, on the table.”
She could recall no details about him beyond his accent and his grey hair. A “middling man” she called him—middling height, middling weight, middling appearance. His clothes she described as “gentleman’s things, but not flash.”
When I brought out the subject of mesmerizing her, she protested, citing her fear of being made to act like a chicken, as she had seen some stage magician do at a town fair. But money is the great persuader and at the prospect of leaving the house with no coin to show for her time, she submitted. Despite her initial resistance, she was an easy subject and soon her eyes drooped and her will submerged. I sent Collins out to wait for me in the drawing room beside the study.
“Now Maud,” I said quietly, moving into the light for the first time. “It is the night the stranger came to your rooms. You have just closed the door. Tell me what happens.”
“He takes off his hat and puts it on the chair. I see his face clear for the first time.” Her voice was slow and clear but I confess I crouched closer in anticipation.
“Describe it to me.”
“Oh, but he’s a fine-looking one, finer than I had thought. His hair is grey but he’s younger than I had thought as well. His face is all sharp and fine and clean. His eyes . . .” she frowns, concentrating, “his eyes are grey too.”
“What happens next?”
“He takes the money from his pocket. ‘In advance is the usual arrangement, I understand,’ he says and I nod and he puts the money on the table. I go and sit on the bed to take off my hat and gloves. He watches me with them grey eyes.” Her voice falters for a moment and I urge her on. “When I starts to unhook my dress he comes to sit beside me. ‘Let me,’ he says and I laugh and shake out my hair so it falls over his hands when he touches me. When my dress is undone, he pulls it down to my waist. Then he looks at me. I . . . I . . . I start to say something but . . .”
“But what. What happens, girl?” My voice is sharper than I intend and she winces, shrinks in her chair.
“His eyes . . . My head is spinning around, like I’ve had too much to drink. There is a voice in my head, telling me . . . telling me to go to sleep. So I do . . . but I’m still sitting there with my eyes open. But I can’t see anything or hear anything so I must be asleep. He takes my hair in his hand, gathers it all up, and pulls my head to one side, not hard, not so that it hurts. Then he leans over and kisses me on my neck.” In the firelight, her eyes are wide and staring, her mouth works as she talks. She takes a sharp, in-drawn breath. “Aah, that hurts. It hurts. But then . . . then it doesn’t anymore.”
“What is he doing to you?” She shakes her head.
“Don’t know, can’t tell. Then the voice is back in my head, only it’s like a dream to me now, like I can feel something happening to me but it ain’t.”
“What are you dreaming?”
“That he is taking off my dress and having me, just like all of them do. Then the voice is telling me to go to sleep, shut my eyes, go to sleep. . . .” Her voice trailed off as her body slumped, as if hypnotized by the memory of mesmerism, for I am sure that is what was done to her. It took a sharp slap to bring her back to even the level of consciousness I had left her.
“Then what happened?”
“I went to sleep. He went away.” I can get no more from her so I lay my own instructions in her mind, to prevent her loose tongue from wagging my business, wake her, pay her off, and send her back to town with Collins. I cannot have them gone quickly enough, so that I can sit here in the quiet and record this.
There is no doubt in me now. There is a vampire here. The whore has given me some clues to his appearance and bearing and I will find more, if I must mesmerize every trollop in the stews. I will find him.