I woke next morning later than I would have liked, mouth dry and head fuzzy from one too many glasses of Tokay—the only acceptable tipple available in the bar of the Angel Hotel. I had ignored Holmes’s advice to moderate my drinking, too obstinate and cross with him was I over his patronising nature earlier, and too heartsick with the memories of my late wife, which had come tumbling back into my mind following our visit to Mina Harker. Now, it was after nine o’clock, and Holmes was nowhere to be found. He had clearly been up long before me; our portmanteaus were gone, though Holmes had left a few essential items in the sitting room, including my revolver and my medical bag. I placed my gun in my overcoat pocket, and went down to breakfast alone. Almost an hour later, and at a loose end, I left the hotel, only to have Holmes bump into me on the street. He had a copy of the Whitby Gazette tucked under his arm, and a cheerful look about him.
“Excellent, you are up!” he said. “While you slumbered, I have been busy indeed. You recall I mentioned those fair-haired men following us yesterday? Well, they had this place under watch last night.”
“They are here?”
“Not now. I struck out early, and made a feint of not noticing them. I led them a merry dance back towards Mrs Harker’s residence, and ensured that I lost them. They would have to be well trained indeed to keep up with me. Since then I have sent a telegram to my old informant Langdale Pike, and should hope to find a reply waiting when we get home.”
“How long have you been up?”
“Since before dawn. I was watching those men as they watched us… they were not terribly circumspect about it. Perhaps they underestimate us, or perhaps they are rank amateurs. Best keep our wits about us today in any case.”
“I thought we were returning to London?”
“Not immediately, although I had our bags sent ahead so that we would not have to return here under observation—the more mobile we can remain, the less chance there is of our enemies catching up with us. Before we depart, we need to pay a visit to the docks. Come now, a walk along the harbour may do you good.”
Holmes was right—the walk down to the West Pier did certainly blow away the grogginess from my head to some degree. Indeed, it was such a bright, fine morning, with a brisk, salt-spray breeze blowing in across the Esk, that it now seemed ridiculous to me that I held such fear over a supposed apparition the previous night. That fear, and the dreadful longing for that which was lost, now drifted away from me like the last snatches of a dream.
Holmes was in fine fettle—too much so considering he had not had a wink of sleep. Any suggestion that he should rest would be met, as always, with derision. I could only observe, therefore, and offer my services as a doctor should he require them.
As we strolled along the harbour wall, we pieced together from memory the mysterious events surrounding the stricken ship, Demeter. The vessel had sailed from Varna on 6 July the previous year; it was, according to the Dracula Papers, carrying boxes of earth from Dracula’s homeland, without which the vampire was unable to rest. During a long and perilous voyage, the crew were slowly wiped out. At first, the captain believed the murderer to be a Roumanian crewman, but soon there came reports of a mysterious stranger aboard, believed to have stowed away. One by one the crew perished, until only the captain remained. Lashing himself to the ship’s wheel, the captain steered the course alone to Whitby, where he had the great misfortune to perish in one of the worst storms to hit the town in many a year. Eye-witnesses saw an enormous dog leap from the ship as it was wrecked—Van Helsing later explained that this was Dracula himself, in the form of a wolf. The captain’s log was found tucked in a bottle, and was translated for an unnamed newspaperman by the Russian consul.
“There are so many irregularities in this affair that it is hard to know where to begin,” Holmes said. “Take, for instance, Count Dracula’s motives. Van Helsing would have us believe that Dracula was behind every misfortune to befall the Demeter. He conjures a fog to throw it off course; he slays its crew; finally, he summons a great tempest to wreck the ship. This leaves the Count the onerous task of recovering his earth-boxes from the wreckage, and transporting them to London. The Dracula Papers tell us that the Count left instruction with a local solicitor to take charge of fifty boxes of earth from the wreck, an instruction that was carried out in defiance of all salvage laws and in advance of both the official inquest and the intervention of the Admiralty Board. I also put to you that Dracula is not normally described as utterly insatiable—indeed, the Count is generally depicted as a masterful tactician, with considerable control over his bloodlust. We know that Dracula does not even need to kill his victims—he could slip from his hiding place each night, drink from a victim, hypnotise him so that the man remembers nothing, and then slip away. He demonstrated this ability with poor Lucy Westenra, after all. So why endanger his only means of transport? If he can control the winds, why not assist the ship in reaching his destination swiftly and safely, rather than jeopardise his whole plan?”
“When you put it like that, Holmes, it does sound rather far-fetched.”
“More so when you consider that, eventually, Dracula was forced to flee England on board another ship, the Czarina Catherine. Somehow, upon the return voyage, he managed to abstain from killing the crew. Are we to believe that the Count simply wished to make the most dramatic arrival possible? For whose benefit? Consider, too, the events in the Dracula Papers, the section where the ‘Crew of Light’ pursue Dracula from Varna to his home in the Carpathians. That journey, conducted at great speed, takes considerably longer than six days. According to Harker’s journal, however, that is precisely how long the Count took between leaving his castle and boarding the Demeter at Varna. I put it to you that Count Dracula was never aboard the Demeter at all, and that some other misfortune befell the crew.”
I confessed that these things had not occurred to me, so engrossing had the tale been, and told from the point of view of a neutral reporter.
“Neutral?” Holmes scoffed. “A sensationalist, perhaps. An agent of Van Helsing more likely. I was at the offices of the Whitby Gazette this morning.” He waved the newspaper at me to illustrate his point. “This is a copy of the paper printed the day after the storm, 9 August. The fate of the Demeter is mentioned only as a footnote, and yet it was a lengthy story in the ‘Dailygraph’. I presume this is meant to be the Daily Telegraph, a London paper. That is logical, as the ‘Russian consul’ that translated the Demeter’s log is in London. Verifying this fact will be devilishly hard—not only is the newspaper article retyped by Mrs Harker, but so too are the excerpts from the Demeter’s log reproduced therein. There are far too many possibilities for error within these transcriptions, and thus too much opportunity for plausible denial of any conclusions we may draw from them.”
“So what do you propose, Holmes? That Van Helsing was the mysterious stranger, slaying the crew for who knows what awful purpose?”
“Unlikely. I certainly believe that Van Helsing was present in London much earlier than we are led to believe by the Dracula Papers, although it would be a stretch to place him on a ship sailing from Varna to Whitby. No, the Demeter was stricken by some mysterious misfortune at sea that we may never fully understand; one of those vagaries of naval misadventure that old sailors tell tales of for generations. However, I would guess that the story of the Demeter was so evocative that Van Helsing seized upon it, twisting the facts to make his story appear even more plausible. However, it is a fiction too far.”
There was no time to press Holmes for his precise theories, for we at last reached the harbourmaster’s office, and were forced to join a queue of new arrivals to the docks, all of whom had to be registered and have their goods accounted for by a despairingly small staff. My own huffs at the interminable wait were drowned out by the more colourful opinions of visiting seamen, who were only too willing to give loud voice to their complaints.
When at last we found someone to attend us, Holmes used all of his powers of persuasion and haughty manner to speak to the harbourmaster himself, and eventually we were admitted to the records office, whilst being told every step of the way that it was “most irreg’lar”. In a dingy, windowless room crammed with thick ledgers, we were left to our own devices for some time. It was all I could do not to nod off more than once as, poring over crinkled pages by the light of a paraffin lamp, we searched diligently for the log entries of the Demeter.
“Aha!” Holmes exclaimed after our interminable search had taken us well into the afternoon. “I have the very transcript here, of which some small fragments made their way to the Dracula Papers. The original pages, written in Russian, are enclosed also, although they are barely legible.”
“Looks like there are large portions missing,” I said. “Indeed, there are. Even if the log is complete, it appears that almost a quarter of the entries are smudged beyond recognition, or torn to pieces. They were recovered amongst the wreckage.”
“If the papers were in such a state when the transcript was made…”
“Then we have no way of knowing what was a factual recording, and what was a complete fabrication,” Holmes finished.
“And the transcript in English—it concurs with the Dracula Papers?” I asked.
“Remember that the Dracula Papers contain a reporter’s rescript of these very notes. They are the same, though they omit many of the mundanities found here in this ledger. Weather readings, soundings, supply rationing, watch rotations and so on. The boring minutiae that have been included purely to throw an investigator off the trail.”
“How can you be sure?”
“Without an expert witness to assist me, I cannot. I would need someone with a great deal of sailing knowledge to verify all of this technical information. However, that probably will not be necessary. I have ascertained all I really need from the study of the handwriting in this ledger.”
Graphology was something of a specialty for Holmes, but here in the gloomy conditions, with a ledger so scruffily presented, I could not see how it could help us, and said as much.
“While much effort has been taken to disguise the style of writing,” Holmes replied, “such copious amounts of text—undoubtedly written from dictation—could not have been quickly produced without some errors; that is, without incorporating just a few of the natural flourishes of the writer’s true hand. See here,” Holmes pointed to a line of sloped text that barely fit upon the lines of the page. “Note the capital ‘S’, and all of the lower-case ‘d’s. They are much more rounded than those found in the first paragraph on the page—the writer was evidently becoming tired. But the hand is confident, the control of the nib elegant. This is a woman, of strong will, and aged between twenty and thirty, in my humble opinion.”
“Mina Harker?”
Holmes produced a letter from his pocket, unfolded the paper, and placed it next to the ledger. He took out his magnifier and studied the two pieces of writing, side by side.
“There can be no doubt, Watson,” he said. “This is the letter from Mina Harker given to us by Miss Reed. The penmanship is identical in those places where she allowed her concentration to slip. And of course, this tells us something else about Mina Harker that ought to be invaluable in this case.”
“Oh?”
“She is a skilled forger. Much of this work has been meticulously written in the same hand as the previous entries, probably that of a clerk of this office. It is only the tedious length of this ship’s log that gives the true author away. On shorter texts—letters, signatures, and diary entries, for instance—I imagine Mrs Harker’s skill would make her hand undetectable. With this log, however, we have our first piece of real evidence against her. I could have a world expert in the forensic science of handwriting testify on this sample in our favour, of that I am certain.”
This was a true success, and I allowed myself a chuckle. I had not, until last night, truly considered Mrs Harker as our enemy; now I most certainly viewed her as such, and a devious one at that. Finally, however, we had an advantage.
Holmes put away the letter, took up the heavy ledger, and marched at once out into the adjoining corridor. There, the harbourmaster, who had apparently been about to join us, attempted to stop us from removing the log, quoting chapter and verse all manner of procedures and by-laws regarding the official status of the document. Holmes fixed the man with his most imperious glare, and said, “If you wish to protect the reputation of this office, you will explain to me at once why this ledger contains a forged ship’s log, which falsifies the accounts of several mysterious deaths at sea. I assure you, sir, that charges of conspiracy will be brought upon every man in this office unless you cooperate.”
There was a brief spell of defiance from the aging harbourmaster, who was clearly not used to being browbeaten by civilians; yet ultimately he was a public servant, and understood only too well the seriousness of the matter being put before him. All the bureaucracy in the world would not protect him should Holmes’s accusations prove true. He explained that the head of the Harbour Board was one Robert Browning, who was responsible for all logs regarding wrecks and disasters at sea. He would have signed the documentation regarding the Demeter’s log personally.
With a tip of his hat, Holmes marched out, with me in his wake, and soon we were heading up the lane to the Harbour Board offices.
* * *
“I am a very busy man, Mr Holmes, can’t we do this some other time?” Mr Browning was an uncommonly brusque gentleman, who did his best to give Holmes and me short shrift, but he had not counted on Holmes’s tenacity.
“I am afraid not,” Holmes replied. “We must return to London today, and this matter is one of utmost urgency. Now, will you talk to us, or should I take this to Scotland Yard and have them pay you a visit?”
Holmes dropped the ledger upon Browning’s desk. The man had been glancing nervously at it for the whole time we had been arguing, and now he became very quiet. Browning’s clerk had been standing behind us in the door of the office, trying to get us to leave; now, Browning waved him away, and the clerk removed himself from the room, closing the door behind him.
“Now then, Mr Holmes, what’s all this about?” Browning offered an innocent smile, but beads of sweat had already formed upon his balding brow. Here was a man who carried great guilt.
“I think you know very well,” Holmes said. “This ledger contains the supposed translation of a ship’s log—the Demeter, a schooner wrecked off the coast of Whitby last year. The log, as added to the official archives by you, sir, is a work of fiction; a forgery, provided by a third party to obfuscate some terrible crime.”
“Wh… where is your evidence?” Browning stammered.
“I can prove beyond doubt that the log is a forgery. I can prove who wrote it, for I am already investigating her part in another crime entirely.”
“Her? Then you know—”
“Indeed I do. What I do not know is why you, a respected public servant—an elected official, no less—would allow this travesty to occur unchallenged.”
“It… I… Look here, Mr Holmes, I took that record on good faith. It was translated from the ship’s log by the Russian consul, and—”
“Translated,” Holmes snapped. “From this?” He took out the pages of the original log and placed them on the desk beside the book. “Eight pages survive, and more than half their content smeared and illegible. And yet miraculously the ledger contains sixteen pages of precise, uninterrupted accounts of the Demeter’s fateful last voyage. Did you fail to notice this oversight when you received the pages ‘in good faith’?”
“Pages… must be missing,” Browning said, panic in his voice. “Misplaced. Yes, that’s it, misplaced. There must have been more.”
“I think not, Mr Browning. I think that when I take these scraps to the Russian embassy myself, I shall find little in common between the truth and the official account. Why would you do such a thing to those poor sailors?”
“As I said, I received those pages in—”
“So you claim incompetence? Or perhaps negligence? Both preferable, I suppose, to criminal conspiracy, although I am not sure how a judge will see it.”
“Look, Mr Holmes, the Demeter is long gone. Her crew is gone. There was no funny business on the part of any man or woman in Whitby that contributed the wrecking of that schooner. No crime has been committed, beyond the alleged falsification of records. No harm has been done.”
“No harm?” Holmes raised his voice now, and drew himself up to his full height. His aquiline nose and angular features took on the aspect of a buzzard ready to strike down at the gizzard of a startled rabbit. The effect was not lost on Browning. “All hands died aboard that ship. Families mourn the loss of brothers, sons and friends, with only lies and fairy stories to console them. And yet you say no harm was done? For shame, sir! Perhaps I should give your regards to the Russian embassy while I am there—perhaps they will share your sentiment.”
“Enough, enough!” Browning held his palms out in a gesture of surrender. “What can I do to make amends, Mr Holmes? Please, I cannot let this thing come to light. I would be ruined.”
“Then why strike a bargain with such a villainess? This Wilhelmina Harker—yes, I know her name, do not look so surprised. You can begin with an explanation as to why a Harbour Board official would become a partner in crime to such a woman.”
Browning’s head sank into his hands, and finally he explained himself.
During the investigation into the mysterious wreck of the Demeter, Browning was approached by a young woman whom he had never seen before, and was suddenly and passionately thrust into a romantic affair with her. Browning described how he quite lost his head upon receiving the attentions of such a pretty, eloquent and confident woman, and in the heat of the moment reneged on his marriage vows to forsake all others. The very next day, however, Browning received a visit from the woman, who showed to him several photographs, taken by an accomplice, and threatened to show these photographs to his wife unless he helped her.
Under these conditions of blackmail, the log of the Demeter was handed to the woman—who he now knew to be Wilhelmina Harker—and later returned to the Harbour Board office by a London reporter, with a signed statement supposedly from the Russian consul regarding the log’s translation. Browning, already too far embroiled in a plot he could not understand, presented this information as fact at the inquest, and no more was heard on the matter. The unnamed newspaper correspondent made sure to be indiscreet in his local enquiries, causing gossip to spread like wildfire amongst the fishwives, fortifying Mina Harker’s version of events in the popular imagination.
“What do you suppose really happened to the Demeter?” I asked.
Browning shook his head. “I do not know for certain, and I doubt we will ever know the truth, for the original log is in too poor a condition to read. Perhaps one of the sailors carried some horrid disease, or perhaps the first mate really was a murderer as the captain first suspected. And then there was the dog…”
Holmes’s eyes lit up. “Yes, the dog. It was later described in the Dracula Papers as a wolf, but the original statement makes no such claim. I would guess that the hound carried some foreign illness that beset the crew, and then itself escaped in the wreck. Several witnesses saw it run along the shore.”
“I daresay you are right, Mr Holmes, although no dog was ever found.”
“Back to these photographs, Mr Browning—are they still held over you?”
“They are, which is why I would not testify to anything I have told you unless my life depended on it. For the sake of my poor wife…”
Browning broke down in a fit of trembling, his eyes full of such remorse that it was hard not to feel for him, for all his foolishness. He asked Holmes to swear that his name would not be dragged into the case unnecessarily, so that he might at least attempt to make it up with his wife and, of course, keep his position on the Harbour Board, for which he had worked all his life.
“I can make no guarantee,” Holmes said. “I will do what I can, on that you have my word, but your actions have allowed more than one murder to go undetected and unchallenged. Though I am sure you would have behaved differently had you known, the fact remains that the consequences were severe indeed.”
At these words, Browning almost wept, and expressed his gratitude to Holmes. Here was a man of great seniority within his little world of sailors, fishermen, clerks, records and cargoes. And yet before Holmes he had become timid and humbled. I could only be glad that I was Holmes’s friend, and not an enemy.