The Adventure of the St Bartholomew Vampire
"A vampire?" Sherlock scoffed. He cast a glance toward Watson, fully expecting the doctor to be as incredulous as he. Instead, Watson seemed titillated by Inspector Lestrade's suggestion. Sherlock grimaced. "You honestly expect me to believe there is a vampire lose in London."
"I don't expect anything of the sort," Lestrade assured him, although Sherlock noted the way the other man's eyes shifted uneasily to the side.
"But others do." The consulting detective didn't bother couching it as a question.
Lestrade grimaced and gave a sharp nod. "No one at the Yard, mind. Or, at least, no one that anyone with a grain of common sense would take seriously. But the press . . ."
"Sensationalism sells papers," Watson offered. Lestrade nodded again.
Sherlock huffed and quickly crossed the sitting room to his office, the hem of his dressing gown fluttered dramatically around his legs. He snatched a book off one of his shelves and waved it in the general direction of the other two men. "Since this piece of dreck appeared in the shops in May, I've had to deal with tedious, time-wasting potential clients who see bloodthirsty ghouls in every shadow."
He tossed the book to Lestrade—who caught it on reflex—and perched on the edge of his desk. "Just last week I turned away an imbecile who was convinced his neighbour was a creature of the night simply because the man had an aversion to garlic and an unfortunate moustache." Sherlock cast a pointed sidelong look toward Watson. "This Bram Stoker chap did us no favours with his Dracula, Inspector."
"I'm surprised you've read it, Holmes." Watson fairly smirked at him. "I would have thought such fanciful tale beneath you."
The memory of Hooper tucking a copy of the novel into her jacket pocket one late night as he and Inspector Dimmock had arrived to inspect a corpse flitted through Sherlock's mind.
He shook his head and tutted at Watson. "I thought it best to familiarize myself with the source behind the mild hysteria sweeping across the simpler minds of the city."
Sherlock turned his attention to Lestrade. The other man was busy thumbing through the book, pausing to glance at a page before moving on. "I would offer to let you borrow that, but you've already read it. Have you not, Inspector?"
Lestrade quickly closed the book and dropped it on the table next to Sherlock's chair, narrowly missing the slipper full of pipe tobacco kept there. "As you said, it seemed a good idea."
Watson leaned forward to take the novel, then settled back into his chair with it. "I haven't had the pleasure. If you don't mind my borrowing it?" He titled the book in Sherlock's direction.
"Please, help yourself." Sherlock waited until Watson had deposited the book with the rest of his things to continue questioning Lestrade. "Tell me everything. From the beginning."
The Inspector sat upon the chair they reserved for clients and pulled out his notebook. "Two weeks ago a tart stopped off to do a bit of trade in an alley off Smithfield Park. She and her associate had just begun to negotiate the terms when there was the sound of breaking glass and a man plummeted to his death from a second story window at their feet. Her screams summoned a constable, who maintained the scene until more help could arrive."
"I assume her 'associate' was long gone at that point?" Sherlock asked.
"Vanished before her first scream had faded into the night air." Lestrade flipped a page in his notebook. "The victim was an unknown male. Approximately twenty-five to thirty years of age. Average height, slightly below average weight. Nothing found on the body to help with identification."
Nothing found by the constables, more precisely. Sherlock was certain he would have better luck once he had a chance to exam the body and its belongings. "His clothes?"
Another page in the notebook. "Trousers were old but well kept. Shoes were dirty, reshod at least once. Socks repeatedly darned. No shirt."
"No shirt." Sherlock frowned as he considered what that could mean. "Anything else?"
"His pockets were empty, picked clean. There was an indication that he'd been wearing a ring prior to his death, an impression on his right index finger."
"And how," Watson interrupted, "does any of that lead to rumours of a vampire in London?"
"I'm getting to that, Doctor." Lestrade took a moment to look over his notes. "The cause of death—officially—is injuries sustained from the fall; but Doctor Hooper found something interesting in his examination of the body. The victim had lost a lot of blood, far more than could be accounted for on the ground or in the room he'd fallen from. Even stranger, Hooper found a rough puncture wound on the man's neck."
"Odd." Watson tapped his fingers against the arm of his chair. "But not impossible to explain without relying on the supernatural."
Sherlock agreed with his friend, but he wasn't ready to offer an alternative yet. Not until Lestrade had finished relaying all of the details of the case.
"As the corpse had been stripped of anything of value, it appeared to be a cut and dried case of robbery turned fatal."
"Appeared?" Sherlock asked.
"The body was to be stored in the morgue at St Bartholomew's until an identification could be made, but it disappeared at some point during that second night."
"Body snatchers?" Watson appeared almost eager at the possibility.
"That would be better than the popular theory. We've had no leads on the original victim's identity or the whereabouts of his missing body in the last two weeks."
The corner of Sherlock's lips titled upward as he listened. "Original victim? How many more are there?" Could it be a serial killer? Those were always entertaining.
"Three more." If Lestrade found Sherlock's apparent enthusiasm at the idea of multiple murders off-putting, he didn't say. "Four days after the initial corpse vanished, another body was pulled out of the Thames. It hadn't been in the water too long, two or three days at most. She'd been caught in some rocks, probably hadn't been dumped too far from where she was found."
"Puncture wound on the neck?" That seemed to be the most likely detail that would tie the two crimes together, Sherlock thought.
Lestrade nodded. "No one noticed it at first because there had been extensive soft tissue damage, probably an animal of some kind. Between that and her time in the water . . . It's a miracle Hooper found it at all. This time the body was almost completely drained of blood. Hooper thinks the blood loss happened prior to our victim going into the Thames."
Both men turned to Watson to see if he had an objection to the pathologist's theory. "Without seeing the body I couldn't begin to offer an opinion."
"That won't be possible, I'm afraid." Lestrade grimaced. "She vanished hours after Hooper notified me of a possible connection. Five days later a worker at the Abbey Mills pumping station was investigating a sewer blockage and discovered victim number three. Dead nearly a week, drained of blood, wound found on the forearm this time."
Sherlock stood and began to dig through the piles of books and papers on strewn across his desk for his copy of Anatomy: Descriptive and Surgical by Henry Gray. "And when did this one disappear?"
"That night. But not before we were able to get an identification for him. Burton Saunders, delivery boy who worked out of the Meat Market. His mum reported him missing eight days ago."
"Number four," Sherlock prompted. His copy of Gray's Anatomy wasn't where he'd left it and he silently cursed Mrs Hudson's insistence on tidying up his rooms. He wasn't as familiar with the intricacies of the human body as Watson and Hooper, but he was fairly certain there were blood vessels in the forearm that would be large enough to tempt their ghoulish killer.
"Discovered just before dawn this morning, sitting pretty as you please leaning against the back door of a cobbler's shop."
The book search was abandoned in favour of peppering Lestrade with questions. "Was the body taken to St Bartholomew's? Has Hooper had a chance to exam it? The corpse thefts happen after dark, do they not? Which means we've still a few hours before the thieves should make their move. Why aren't you putting on your coats? To the morgue, gentleman."