‘Why, Holmes,’ I exclaimed, outraged, ‘the utter cad!’ I shook my head angrily.
‘I am beginning to think that if something unpleasant has happened to this fellow, he deserves it. I suggest we return immediately to Mrs. Barrington and reveal his damnable trickery to her. What do you say?’
Holmes shook his head.
‘Patience, Watson, is what I say. One hardly likes to throw suspicion where there are no proofs. This promises to be one of the more curious cases in our long career together. It certainly presents more features of interest and more possibility of development than I had originally thought. I see some light in the darkness, but it may possibly flicker out. When I compared Captain Barrington’s face in the wedding photograph with Captain Barrington’s face in the Sargent painting I noted something singular. The facts are, to the best of my belief, even more unusual than the matter you described in your overblown way in The Red-Headed League.’
Chapter XV
IN WHICH A BODY IS DISCOVERED
OUTSIDE the Barringtons’ villa, Holmes was about to step into our conveyance when matters took a further unexpected twist. Footfalls of someone in a great hurry came to our ears. The sound was accompanied by loud sobs. A woman was rushing towards the villa entrance. Without hesitation I leapt down from the carriage and fell in with Holmes at a jog behind her.
As she entered the villa she cried out, ‘Madam, Madam - a body has been found!’
Mrs. Barrington hurried from the sitting-room in alarm.
‘A body!’ she repeated. ‘Gentlemen,’ she added, catching sight of us, ‘this is my housekeeper. We have taught her English for my husband’s sake.’
‘A body, Madam,’ the housekeeper confirmed.
‘Found where?’ Mrs. Barrington demanded.
‘In the Mount Vitosh forest. Near an obrok.’
For several seconds Mrs. Barrington stared in silence at the bearer of the terrible news.
‘Has it been identified?’ she asked finally. ‘Is it - my husband?’
‘No, Madam, it cannot be Captain Barrington.’
‘Why so?’
‘It is not a man - ’
‘Then a boy?’
‘Not a man nor a boy.’
The three of us stared, waiting while the housekeeper drew in another agonised breath.
The woman continued, ‘She has been stripped of all her clothing!’
Our hostess gasped. ‘She?’
‘Yes, Madam. It is the body of a woman, a young woman hardly older than yourself! How she came there or how she met her fate are questions which are still involved in mystery. And the most terrible thing of all - ’
The housekeeper gulped for breath. She brought her hands up to her ears with a shiver of horror as though to shut out the words she was about to utter.
‘What terrible thing?’ Mrs. Barrington demanded, her hands also beginning to rise. ‘Tell me quickly!’
‘The charcoal burners say that unlucky birds have been seen flocking to that part of the forest. They say the killing is the work of a vampire recently arrived. The old women have sent for the relics of Saint Ivan Rilski to exorcise the evil creature which did this dreadful thing.’
‘Why should they think it was a vampire?’ our hostess cried out, a quiver in her voice.
The housekeeper crooked her middle- and fore-finger and darted them at her throat.
‘Her body was completely drained of blood.’
The voice portrayed the housekeeper’s mind-shattering terror. She managed to gasp, ‘They say her eyes still glow with a baleful light. And - ’
‘And what? Tell us at once!’ our hostess demanded.
‘The vampire cut off all her hair,’ the woman replied hoarsely. ‘The woman was shorn just like a sheep.’
Our hostess turned white to her very lips. She stood petrified for a moment. Before I could take three short paces to her side she fell to the floor in a deep faint.
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.