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

rebirth, heard her out. Then he had a question of his own. He whispered it in English:’Where are the jewels? They are not here.’

“‘Are you not listen to me? I tell you where the treasure is, I swear, when you have help me find the soil I need. The jewels are not here. but they are all safe, in place you know, where you can get them!’

“‘I know.’ The pirate looked down at the red mess on the floor. ‘He gave them to his brother, who has them at his country estate, somewhere out of town. His brother, who helped him to betray me.’

“In near despair the woman clutched his arm, her long nails digging in, a grip that might well have crushed the bones of any breathing man. Once more she spoke in her own language.’Will you not listen to me, Kulakov? I need my earth! By all the gods of my homeland–by whatever gods you pray to in your Muscovy–I swear that if you help me find the earth that I must have, the treasure shall all be yours!’

“Indeed,” continued Holmes, “Doll told the truth in saying that she knew where the jewels were hidden–because she had put them there herself!”

There was a sensation among the listeners.

Holmes went on. “Let us try to put ourselves in this woman’s place. She had been in England for only a few days, and was still almost totally unfamiliar with the metropolis in which she found herself. When Kulakov, seeking vengeance, entered the room at the Angel Inn, she did not wish to oppose him directly in his murderous rage.

“Seeing that her patron and lover, Altamont, was doomed, Doll prudently gathered up the treasure that he had secreted in the next room and carried it to a certain place she had seen and remembered. It was a place from which she could easily retrieve the jewels, at any time between sunset and dawn, while they remained secure from accidental discovery by any of London’s swarming, breathing folk.

“It was even possible to theorize that Kulakov in a daze might have put the treasure in that place himself, and then have forgotten the act. but if we accept the scene in the Angel Inn as factual, then the correct explanation must be something else.

“Let us consider carefully what the doomed woman actually said to Kulakov when she was pleading for his assistance. According to the recent testimony of Kulakov himself, while hypnotized, her words were these:

“‘The jewels are not here. but they are all safe in a place you know, where you can get them.’

“On hearing this, Kulakov, who was already convinced that Peter Altamont had the treasure, assumed that Doll meant the family estate in the country–Norberton House. but there are several reasons why that could not have been her meaning, assuming she spoke the truth.

“To begin with, Norberton House was hardly a place known to Kulakov–he had heard it mentioned, but that was all. Nor had Doll ever been there. Again, if Doll spoke the truth, all the pieces of treasure, her own bracelet included, must be together–but we know now that her bracelet had been on her arm, in London, only minutes before she began to plead with Kulakov for help.

“Norberton House is hours distant from London by modern train. Not even the speed of vampire flight would have allowed Doll to carry the jewels there and return to the Angel Inn in the time allowed.

“If any further proof is needed, consider: Had Peter Altamont ever come into possession of the jewels, he would certainly have kept them. A sudden increase in his family’s wealth, dating from that time, would now be discoverable by a thorough search of the historical records–which it is not.”

There was a murmur of agreement round our little circle.

Holmes went on. “We are faced with the inescapable conclusion that Peter Altamont never had the treasure; that Ambrose, who betrayed Kulakov, had given Doll one trinket and kept the others with him in London, until he was killed. And that immediately after his death, Doll, who must have discovered where the things were hidden, spirited them away to what she must have considered a safe hiding place, within a mile or so at most of the Angel Inn.”

There was a murmur of comment around our circle.

Holmes resumed: “Remember, she told Kulakov:’It is a place you know.’ but at that time the Russian pirate had even less familiarity with England than she did. What places did she know in London, of which she could be certain that they were known to the Russian as well?”

“Execution Dock,” I suggested.

“Bravo! That thought had crossed my mind. but the dock, and the ground in its vicinity, was daily washed by tides, and trampled by hundreds or thousands of people engaged in the common commerce of the waterfront. What other–”

To my surprise, it was Sarah Kirkaldy, fists clenched and eyes flashing, who interrupted sharply. “Newgate! by God, Newgate Prison!”

Holmes’s eye twinkled. “Exactly! but then it seemed to me that we could probably be a little more precise. Doll’s last rendezvous with Kulakov before his transformation took place, we are informed, was in one of the condemned cells. We have learned from other contemporary sources that some of the old prison’s walls were actually crumbling at the time. None of the jeweled ornaments were large–they could be dropped into a hole or crack too small to accommodate a man’s arm.

“It requires no great stretch of the imagination to picture a crevice of convenient dimensions in the massive masonry–perhaps just outside the barred window through which Doll drifted on her visit–a recess large enough to hold the jewels, and practically inaccessible to breathing folk, but easy enough for any vampire to reach, particularly by night.”

We all applauded Holmes’s masterstroke of deduction, and he, pleased as a child, acknowledged our praise.

The treasure already having been retrieved by Mycroft from the ruins of the recently demolished prison, the question of who really owned it in 1903 remained