Chapter 3
Chapter
“For the love of bleeding Jesus,” Stoker cut in, “there are no such things as vampires.”
“This coming from the man who spent months searching the forests of Bavaria for a mythical creature,” I retorted.
“It is entirely possible that wolpertingers existed,” Stoker protested coldly. “Similar creatures have been sighted in Thuringia and Austria—as far away as Sweden, in fact.”
“And so may vampires exist,” I said, neatly drawing the conversation around. “Go on, Mornaday.”
“Wait a minute,” J. J. put in. “I heard nothing about a vampire loose in Highgate. The people have a right to know if some undead creature is stalking the city. Why wasn’t the story made public?”
“For exactly that reason,” Mornaday answered. “My god, can you imagine the uproar if John Bull caught a sniff of this? There would be pandemonium, utter panic in the streets. No, the circumstances of Maurice Quincey’s death had to be kept strictly confidential.”
“Was there anything else suspicious about Quincey’s death? Besides the puncture marks?” I asked.
“Oh, yes,” Mornaday said with a grim smile. “He was—what d’ye call it when the blood has all but drained out?”
“Exsanguination,” Stoker supplied.
“That’s the one.” Mornaday gave a nod of satisfaction. “This fellow was properly exsanguinated he was. Just the bit of blood about his collar and nothing more. Natural causes, my arse!”
“But if Scotland Yard have decided to cover up the true cause of Quincey’s death, why bring it to us?” I asked.
“Because there has been another death—not a vampire,” he added with firm haste. “But suspicious just the same.”
“Suspicious in what way?”
Mornaday paused to consider his words. “Maurice Quincey’s closest friend, Jameson Harkness, died a week ago. He fell from the balcony at his home in Surrey. The verdict at the inquest was one of accidental death based upon testimony from his father, Sir Ranulph Harkness, baronet.”
Stoker began to look interested in the story. “Sir Ranulph Harkness? Where have I heard that name?”
J. J. waved an arm. “Everywhere, my dear Stoker. There is not a financial plum in London into which Sir Ranulph hasn’t stuck his thumb. He is legend.”
That much was true. Mornaday had exercised understatement in merely describing him as a baronet.
He was far more than that. As chairman of the Balfour Bank, he was one of the foremost financial minds in the City, responsible for advising the Chancellor of the Exchequer and directing the investments of his institution as well as those of the royal family.
Born to affluence, he had amassed a considerable fortune of his own, using it to build Rosewood Hall, a Gothic villa modelled after Strawberry Hill that put Walpole’s house firmly in the shade.
“How tragic for him to lose his son,” I mused. “Was Jameson his only child?”
Mornaday nodded. “He was. Jameson was not yet thirty. He leaves behind two small children of his own and a widow, Araminta Dalziel Harkness. Of the Perthshire Dalziels,” he added loftily.
“And what precisely was Sir Ranulph’s inquest testimony regarding the death of his son?” Stoker inquired.
“That Jameson fell to his death when a bit of balustrade on the balcony gave way. He said Jameson had gone out to admire the view and leant against the railing, but it had been fixed to a patch of rotting stone and gave way.”
“Rotting stone? At Rosewood Hall? The place is scarcely a quarter of a century old,” I protested.
Mornaday grinned. “My thoughts exactly. As I say, Sir Ranulph maintains that Jameson stepped out to admire the view whilst leaning against the railing. The whole affair collapsed under Jameson’s weight, dashing him to the stone terrace below—a drop of a good thirty feet.”
Stoker winced. “An unpleasant way to go.”
“You can say that again, my lad. His head was soft as a ripe melon by the time I saw him.”
“You saw him? You investigated the death?” I pressed.
Mornaday pulled a face. “I was not permitted to investigate. Sir Ranulph is bosom chums with the acting head of Special Branch.”
“Acting head? Where is Sir Hugo?” I demanded.
Special Branch was the division of Scotland Yard tasked with the most delicate of operations—largely the protection of the royal family and the investigation of sensational crimes.
Sir Hugo Montgomerie, the official head, was our sometime friend and sporadic nemesis.
We had crossed swords with him upon occasion; upon others he had proven himself a true ally.
Stoker avoided him like one of the lesser plagues—locusts, perhaps—but I preferred to think of him as a cordial adversary, one who deserved our respect if for no other reason than the fact that he had kept the secret of my parentage when it would have garnered him a fortune if he had sold the information to one of the more sensational newspapers.
(The revelation that the Prince of Wales had a semi-legitimate daughter who might reasonably make a claim to the throne would have seeded considerable unrest in the empire, particularly the Catholic bits.
Stoker maintained that Sir Hugo kept my secret in order to save his own job, but I liked to think it was because he was a true gentleman.)
Mornaday’s scowl deepened. “He is a martyr to his gout. He has gone off to Bad something or other. One of those German places where they dunk you in sulphur water and put you on a diet of boiled potatoes and vinegar. While he is away, Special Branch is being looked after by one Digby Carruthers.”
“He sounds as if he should be rowing eights for Cambridge,” Stoker said dryly.
“He sounds like a pain in my backside,” Mornaday replied with a glower.
“He charged me to come with him to Rosewood Hall when Sir Ranulph reported the death. I thought it was finally my chance, that I would enter at the sharp end and really get my teeth into this case. When we arrived, Sir Ranulph was in the process of having the body moved. Claimed it was beneath his son’s dignity to lie there in the rain. ”
“If it were raining, why would he go onto the balcony to admire the view?” I asked.
Mornaday snapped his fingers. “That is precisely what I asked! And as soon as I did, the pair of them looked at me like a spaniel that has piddled on the Axminster. Sent me away with a flea in my ear and told me to stay near the carriage until Mr. Carruthers was ready to leave.”
“Your question unsettled them,” J. J. mused.
“Bloody right it did. And I was not about to let it go at that. I know the smell of something rotting in the state of Denmark. So I nosed about the house, and in the sitting room, I found Araminta, Mrs. Jameson, the widow. Pretty little thing. On saint,” he added as an aside with a waggle of his eyebrows.
Stoker’s forehead furrowed. “On saint?”
Mornaday coloured slightly. “You know.” He sketched a gesture, arcing his arms into a wide circle in front of his belly.
“On saint? For the love of god, man, are you trying to speak French? Do you mean enceinte?”
“That is what I said,” Mornaday told him doggedly.
“On saint. Anyway, I did not much want to distress a lady in her condition, so I could only ask a question or two, couldn’t I?
And apparently, her father-in-law, Sir Ranulph, hadn’t had the chance yet to tell her to keep quiet about what really happened. ”
I leant forward in my chair. “And what did really happen?”
Mornaday’s mouth thinned to a grim line. “What really happened is that Jameson Harkness opened his morning post, rose from the breakfast table, strode directly onto that balcony, and threw himself off of it.”
J. J. gave an impression of almost perfect sobriety as she sat forward, eyes rounding in interest, scrabbling in her pocket for her notebook. “Why? What was in the post?”
“Nothing,” Mornaday said with the flourish of a practiced raconteur. He even drew out the succeeding pause to increase the dramatic tension of his narration. “Save this.” He reached into his waistcoat and produced an envelope.
J. J. put out her hand immediately, and Mornaday obligingly passed the envelope over as she urged Nut from her lap. “Careful,” he warned as she took hold of the paper. “It is fragile.”
The envelope held no letter, only a few bits of plant material. J. J. withdrew it carefully, mindful of Mornaday’s warning, for the specimens had been dried and were pale and pitiful things, desiccated ghosts of what they had once been.
J. J. held one piece up to the light, peering at the etiolated green stem, the translucent indigo petals. “What is it?”
“Wolfsbane,” I said just as Stoker replied, “Monkshood.”
We exchanged glances. “Both are common names for the same plant,” I told J.
J. When flowering, the blooms appeared on upright swords, the petals forming little purple or blue caps that looked like the head coverings of priestly men, hence the name “monkshood.” This one had been pressed flat and the color leached so that it was a subdued hue.
“The botanical appellation is Aconitum napellus. Very common and highly toxic. I would not handle it with bare hands,” I advised her.
“The poison may be absorbed through the skin.”
She gave a start and dropped the pressed flower to the floor, her eyes round with alarm. Stoker extracted one of his handkerchiefs—an enormous red affair with the traditional print of the Indian bandanna—and lifted it, studying the plant carefully.
“Is it really poisonous?” J. J. asked.
“Oh, yes,” Stoker assured her. “And well known for being so since antiquity. Persian warriors used to dip their arrows in the milk of the plant before going to war. Farmers in Italy have been known to use it to rid themselves of wild goats who are eating their crops. A particularly nasty way to die.”
“But not how Jameson Harkness died,” I pointed out. “He was not poisoned, yet he viewed the sight of this plant as a clear warning that his life was in grave peril. Why?”