‘Well, Holmes,’ I said, standing up. ‘I’m afraid she’s very much dead. There’s no need to sniff her lips for poison. Facial petechiæ erythema around the neck and involuntary defecation all indicate strangulation, but the cause of death was exsanguination. There isn’t a drop of blood left in her. There are two fang-like punctures on the left side of her neck just below the chin but the one slash which divided the carotid artery would have sufficed.’
I threw Holmes a troubled look. ‘I have heard that vampires first strangle their victims before they suck out their blood. This poor woman was certainly strangled, but it was not a pair of fangs which punctured the artery. Her murderer used a sharp blade.’
Holmes remarked, ‘He must have been strong to have overpowered her so quickly - there is no sign of a paralysing blow - and he would have been well-known to her.’
‘How do you deduce that, Holmes?’
‘It has long been an axiom of mine that the little things are infinitely the most important. Great issues may hang from a boot-lace.’ He gestured towards the corpse’s lower trunk. ‘Impoverished forest-dwellers might pillage riding-boots or a hunting habit and sandwich box, but I doubt if they would take away soiled underwear. Why was someone so anxious to get possession of it? There must be some strong reason behind the removal, that even that one piece of clothing could disclose the victim’s identity and point us towards her killer. However, he has left us a clue. He is at least six feet tall, to judge by the marks of his boot-toes in the soil - they are several inches below the furrows made by the dead woman’s heels, and she is about five feet six inches in height.’
‘I can offer you a further clue, Holmes,’ I intervened.
‘Which is?’
‘The face which pressed hard against hers during the struggle was ill-shaven or bearded. Her cheeks have been considerably abraded.’
‘Excellent, Watson,’ Holmes returned. ‘And what of her missing hair?’
‘Quite clearly the villain was a fetishist, Holmes. Many people become aroused by human hair. This would be even more likely if it was raining at the time and the hair was soaking wet.’
‘Perhaps,’ Holmes replied. ‘Trichophilia is a possibility but why not one strand or tuft of hair on the ground - not even in the halo of congealed blood around her head? As we are in the Balkans we must follow Mrs. Barrington’s excellent counsel, which you recall was - ?’
‘A “prudent incredulity” is very requisite,’ I replied.
‘The body must return with us, even if we pay with the Prince’s gold leva for the privilege - otherwise - ’ He gestured in silent eloquence towards the waiting men.
‘What of motive, Holmes?’ I asked, beckoning the housekeeper over. ‘I see no signs of injury elsewhere upon the body to indicate indecent assault. Apart from the theft of her clothes - and hair - there is not a ghost of a motive anyone can suggest.’
My companion made no response to my query. He pointed to a small patch of flattened grass. In a curiously distrait tone he said, ‘Her murderer sat watching while she bled to death. Few killers in our lexicon of crime have displayed such cruelty and calculation as this.’ He threw me a determined look. ‘Watson, I swear he shall face the hangman’s noose.’
Chapter XVII
A SHOCKING SPECTACLE
THE following day the Capital’s newspapers were filled with villagers’ wildly exaggerated accounts of the bizarre murder, replete with wood-cuts of vampires and a painting by Burne-Jones. In an attempt to prevent the vampire moving across the Danube, the Patriarch of Rumania intended to offer a special Divine Liturgy in the Archiepiscopal Cathedral of Galati to invoke St. Andrew, patron of wolves and donor of garlic. In Sofia the three men at the glade gave evidence at a quickly convened deposition. They affirmed on oath that when they arrived at the glade a crescent moon above them grew full in seconds and turned blood red. They swore that before the two strangers came and took the dead body away it had twice jumped eight feet off the ground and flown at their throats in a desperate effort to replace its lost blood. In flight little points of light floated in the air around it. Its eyes had emitted a yellow glow.
Bulgaria’s high society was agog. The custom among the wealthy of riding for pleasure in the Mount Vitosh foot-hills in the cool of the morning fell dramatically from favour. Mass hysteria infected the countryside. Mustard seed was sprinkled on every roof-top. Sales of apotropaics, traditionally high, soared even higher. Merchants ran out of garlic by mid-day. As during previous vampire outbreaks, villagers fled their houses and slept clumped together in one building, rubbing garlic on every door and window. Even though a post-mortem had quickly concluded she was still a virgin, there was lurid speculation on whether the vampire had inseminated the corpse which might then - even after burial - give birth to a dzhadadzhiya, the child of a vampire and human mother.
Fearing the woman’s death heralded the return of a vampire epidemic, regional groups were forming, prepared to fight a long-running battle against further undead who, galvanised by the events in the Mount Vitosh forest, even now would be sharpening their teeth and twisting and turning and stretching in their graves like fledging corvids.
In an effort to reassure and calm the public, the Prince ordered a coffin decked in silk crape. The corpse was to await identification under twenty-four-hour armed guard in the Coburg family mausoleum in Sofia. If no one came forward it would be taken to a crematorium and burnt to cinders over a cleansing bonfire of wild rose and hawthorn plants. At the Prince’s suggestion, the ashes would be taken to Philippopolis, the city founded by the father of Alexander the Great, and provided with a final resting place in the Church of St. Louis, thus held captive for ever in holy ground.
In the late afternoon a smart landau and pair of greys sent by the British Legation arrived at the Panachoff to take us to the Royal Command performance of Salomé. As we clambered aboard, Holmes cocked a quizzical eye at me. ‘Doctor,’ he said, ‘What’s the matter? You’re not looking quite yourself. The woman’s murder has upset you?’
‘To tell the truth, it has,’ I confirmed. ‘It reminds me of the dark incidents in A Study In Scarlet and makes me just as uneasy. I ought to be more case-hardened after my Afghan experiences with so many stinking dead. I saw my own comrades hacked to pieces at Maiwand. I felt no touch of fear upon those occasions.
‘I can understand,’ came the sympathetic reply. ‘There is a mystery about this case which stimulates the imagination; where there is no imagination there is no horror.’
When the carriage pulled away I asked, ‘Holmes, more to the point, what do you think has happened to Captain Barrington? Not a hint of his whereabouts has been reported. With your wonderful capacity to reason, I am confident you will soon arrive at the truth.’
‘I am coming to the conclusion,’ Holmes replied soberly, ‘that some unforeseen catastrophe has occurred to him. As to the truth - I wonder. We must always consider that the purpose of human reason may not be to find truth but simply to persuade other people that we’re right.’
Sir Penderel was waiting for us at the theatre, a Moorish style edifice with lavish fenestration, two towers and a dome, of a solemnity and luxury already going from fashion in the rest of Europe. He led us up wide stairs to the Legation box immediately adjacent to one packed to the gunnels with the Prince’s camarilla, including Colonel Kalchoff and two or three young Army officers. At their side sat several women aglitter with necklaces, brooches, bracelets and trinkets, crowned by the curls and loops in which they dressed their hair. The provocative smell of carnation perfume drifted across to our seats. Soldiers like flying ants combed the ceiling and proscenium for explosives. A small orchestra was tuning up, consisting mainly of the Gypsy musicians from the Sherlock Holmes competition.