Séance for a Vampire, Fred Saberhagen [win 10 ebook reader txt] 📗

coroner has put that question to me in so many words. To hear it actually comes as something of a relief.” With a swift movement he bent, picked up a pebble from the muddy margin of the stream, and hurled it violently into the water.

“Well?”

Armstrong faced us and spoke calmly. “The only answer I can give you is that I am as puzzled as everyone else. I was rowing–quite gently, I assure you–sitting in the middle of the center seat and facing the girls, who were both sitting in the stern. None of us were trying, either playfully or in earnest, to capsize our vessel. No one was leaning over the side. One moment we were cruising along as smooth as you please– and the next we were tipping violently, and a moment after that we were all three in the water.”

“‘Tipping violently,’ you say?”

“Very much so. The only way I can describe it, gentlemen, is that it was as if something–something on the order of a giant seamonster perhaps–had seized the boat and shaken it. Rebecca agrees. but of course that makes no sense at all.” The young man shrugged. It was as if, with the passage of time, his attitude had become hardened and fatalistic.

“Had you been out in the rowboat long?”

“Something less than an hour.” Armstrong paused to sigh, then proceeded, in the tone of a witness repeating a story already told a hundred times. “It was getting late, and soon it would be dusk, and we decided to go back. We had come upstream some distance, between half a mile and a mile I’d say, from the little dock at Norberton House.

“I had just turned the boat around and had rowed a few more strokes–gently, as I say, because we were now starting to go downstream. I was preparing to ship one oar and let the current carry us back–keeping one oar in the water as a paddle, to steer with and fend off the bank as necessary, you understand?”

“Of course. Go on.”

Armstrong hesitated momentarily. “Then there was...”

Holmes waited a moment before prodding. “There was what?”

“Nothing, nothing at all. I mean there was only the violent shaking, from some invisible cause, and we capsized. For which I have no explanation, reasonable or otherwise.”

My friend shot me a glance. “Could Louisa swim?”

“Not at all.”

“How can you be certain?”

“Well, that’s not a skill possessed by many women, particularly in this country, or so I’m told. but I’m certain in her case, because when we were setting out in the boat she even joked a little about it. She said something, in a light-hearted way, about having to rely on me to... rescue her, if there was trouble. And then when it actually happened...”

The young man’s mask of near-indifference cracked, and he found it necessary to pause for a moment.

Presently he continued: “When the thing happened, the idea even passed through my mind–while I was diving, again and again, trying to find her–it even occurred to me that there ought to have been some chance that the big skirts and petticoats, you know, the things women wear, that those garments might have trapped air, and could keep a girl afloat for a time. but nothing–” Again our witness was compelled to halt.

“But nothing of the kind happened,” I concluded for him.

Armstrong nodded, his face once more downcast.

“I take it,” Holmes remarked after a moment, “that the boat was not visibly damaged in the accident? And that it was later returned to the family dock? Just so. I should like to see it.”

Armstrong blinked at him. “I’m sure there will be no difficulty about that.”

“When you first swam or waded ashore: did you come to this bank or the opposite?”

“This one.”

“And in helping Rebecca ashore?”

“This one again. That only needed a moment or two. Then I went back into the water, looking for Louisa. I dove, and dove again...”

Holmes raised a hand; for the moment, no more need be said. One look at the muddy shoreline was enough to convince him that no trace could still endure of the events of three weeks ago.

Presently we began in silence to retrace our steps along the path, and soon regained our motor. Armstrong had no difficulty in cranking the machine to life. Only a short drive remained to bring us to our destination.

The manor called Norberton House stood on what Armstrong told us were approximately twenty acres of partially wooded, parklike grounds. Judging from the design of the house, which was constructed of mellow red brick, I thought it had been built in the late eighteenth century, or at least remodeled and enlarged at about that time. Two wings, each two stories high, extended west and east of a central hall.

“The family has a private burial ground?” Holmes inquired, as our machine swung in from the public road to the gravel drive.

“Sir?” Young Armstrong, turning his head, seemed to doubt that he had heard the question accurately above the roar of the motor.

“I am asking about Louisa’s interment–was it nearby?”

“Yes–the cemetery is no more than about half a mile away.” The driver, both hands momentarily busy with controls, indicated a direction with a nod.

“Below ground, or above? Pray forgive what must sound like great impertinence; I have my reasons.”

“In the old family mausoleum,” replied young Armstrong wonderingly, and favored my friend with a strange look indeed.

Holmes expressed a wish to see the cemetery as well as the boat. “before dark this evening would be best, but if that proves inconvenient the matter can wait until the morning.”

“If you wish, I am sure there will be no objection.” but the young man was frowning; plainly he did not understand.

Upon our arrival at Norberton House...

Three

And at this point, dear reader, l–Dracula–believe that the proper flow of narrative requires us to interrupt the estimable Watson.

The good doctor would have been much startled had he been able to observe what was happening in the cemetery, even as he and Sherlock Holmes