"Where
for the few days of her performance the elevators were less interesting than
the show," Emory Beason added dryly,
commenting on the latest
exotic addition to the Savoy's lobby. "I should have recognized the face
if not the name, Miss Lewis."
The woman smiled and bent over his chair to kiss his cheek, making
certain to hold it long enough to give him a glimpse of her cleavage. "We
must go," she said possessively to Arthur. "I have to return to
London tomorrow. Mr. Sullivan is staging a heavy round of rehearsals. We open
in two weeks with
The Mikado.
Do come."
At the door, she hugged Mina and
Jonathan as if they were old friends and kissed Emory Beason one more time.
With Arthur on one arm and a scowling Jack Seward on the other, she led the
men to Arthur's motorcar. Then they were off, with Rose Lewis driving and
beeping the horn.
"The
little tart!" Winnie whispered to Mina with mock disapproval.
Millicent,
who had heard the comment, added coldly, "I wouldn't be so polite."
When Mina and Jonathan were alone in their bedroom, Jonathan
expected Mina to show some elation. Everything had gone so well, even better
than expected thanks to Arthur's amusing friend! Instead, Mina sat at her
dressing table, cleaning her face, saying little until she blurted, "I
can't see how Arthur can bear to be near that woman when she looks so much like
Lucy. How could he not think of Lucy constantly?"
"Perhaps
because he isn't thinking at all, darling. Under the circumstances, that may be
just as well," Jonathan commented dryly.
Mina
laughed. "Jonathan, you sound as wicked as Lord Gance!"
"And so
you smile. I should be wicked more often." He brushed the back of her
neck. "It was a wonderful dinner and a perfect
gift."
She faced
him, kissing his lips, then moving to sit on his lap. She was so light, so
delicate.
"I have
to go to London next week," he said. "I can arrange the meetings for
Friday and we could stay the weekend. Seward
would put us up."
"Please,
Jonathan, not there!"
He kissed
her hands. "I'm sorry. Let's stay at a hotel, perhaps in Covent Garden so
we can walk to the theaters at night. Would
you like that?"
For a moment her expression became
remote. Then she beamed with delight and nodded. It occurred to Jonathan that
he had been too preoccupied with work lately. The firm was important to them
but so was her happiness. He vowed to be more attentive then realized ruefully
that he had made the same vow two weeks before then made no real effort to keep
it.
The house
was quiet when Millicent stole downstairs and lit a lamp in the dining room. As
quietly as she was able, she moved a
chair to the hearth so she
could lower her portrait and be certain that what she had glimpsed earlier was
indeed there.
Pasted to
the back of the frame was the artist's name and his address. No, her eyes had
not been wrong. The artist lived here in
Exeter.
And Mina had
gone to London twice.
Millicent
had too little imagination. She could only think of the obvious reason.
Should she speak to Jonathan? Years
ago, someone had told her the truth about the man she loved. The deceit had
ended all chance for a husband and family for her. She should have been
grateful, but over the years she had grown to hate the bearer of that news,
long after she forgave the man who deceived her. She might tell Jonathan what
she had learned, but only if the need arose, certainly not yet.
Mina sat in their corner room of the Adelphi Hotel in Covent
Garden, drinking a cup of coffee and impatiently drumming her nails on her
writing desk. This was her second full day in London. After yesterday's useless
search, she had given up on ever finding Ion Sebescue and decided to
concentrate instead on discovering someone else who could help her.
"What would Detective Holmes
do?" she said aloud, looking down at the most recent issue of
Lippincott's Monthly
. Thinking
of her search as a challenge rather than an obsession made the work more
interesting. By the time she had finished breakfast, Mina had jotted down six
possibilities. She began with the most obvious one, the Hungarian Embassy.
"I'm sorry that we cannot help
you," one of the employees said. "We come here because of our
knowledge of English not Rumanian. But when I want to read something from
home, I go to a bookstore in Chelsea. Perhaps they can recommend someone."
"The
store's name, please."
"Becks,"
the man replied. "On Cromwell Road. I'm sorry that I don't know the exact
number, but it's near Thurloe Square. If you
would like to leave the copy
of the writing with me, I could pass it on to the owner next time I go there
and he could contact you."
It was
nearly eleven. A trip to Chelsea would take most of her precious afternoon.
"Please," she replied and wrote Winnie's name
and address on the back of
the sample.
"You might also try the British Museum," the man
suggested. "They have excellent translators on staff." "I was
just going there," Mina replied happily. Things seemed to be falling in
place so much better today.
Since it was a weekday, the museum
was nearly empty. Surrounded by all the magnificently restored antiquities,
Mina could not help but think of the crumbling ruins of the ancient castle,
the ancient creature that had inhabited it. Had he visited this place when he
came to London? She was certain of it, could almost see his pale face still
hovering on the other side of the glass cases with their Grecian urns and
Roman swords and ancient Egyptian jewelry.
At another
time, she might have spent hours studying all the exotic wonders, reading the
description of each magnificent piece.
Not today.
Instead, she purchased a catalog and noted a few things Jonathan might find of
interest then walked quickly to the curators' offices. As she did, her
leather-soled shoes beat against the polished marble, setting up echoes in the
empty halls like footsteps following after her.
She went to the receptionist and
asked if the museum had a specialist in Eastern European documents. Mina was
led to a more secluded section of the museum where documents and paintings
were cleaned and restored. There, surrounded by shadows and dusty framed
pictures, she met a young man with intense, almost black eyes and prematurely
gray hair that, in the shadows, seemed nothing more than an extension of his
likewise pale skin. When they were introduced, Anton Ujvari's handshake was
limp, leading her to wonder if the young man was ill.
Mina waited
until they were alone, then explained. "I have a document that I need
translated. I brought a sample of the writing."
She handed the sheet to him.
He angled
his work light for reading. As he scanned it, Mina saw his back stiffen, his
hands grip it more tightly. Why had she been
so foolish? Mina asked herself. Van Helsing had not been wrong
about the vampires' nature. Why had she expected him to be wrong about those
who hunted them? "Are you able to read it?" she asked as evenly as
she was able, praying he would say no.
He studied it a moment longer.
"I have been in ... this terrible place for nearly a . . . a century? How
unusual!" he exclaimed. His accent, no more than a slight inflection when
they were introduced, thickened as he went on, more quickly, his voice
reflecting all his excitement. "I do not know if I am a ... slave or
captive, perhaps, or . . . a word for `mistress,' I believe, of this
place." He looked at her intently, his eyes glittering in the shadows of
their deep sockets. "What does this mean?"
It occurred
to her that to lie about the nature of the journal would not work with its
translator. "I don't know," she said. "I
purchased a journal in Bucharest. I was told that it was valuable
and quite old. One of the pages was loose. I brought it with me." She
took a magazine from her handbag and flipped through it until she found the
single page from the end of the book.
Ujvari studied the quality of the
paper, the shade of the ink. "Not so old," he said. "At least
not as old as its author claims to be." For the first time, he smiled,
and some of her uneasiness about confiding in this stranger vanished. Fanatics,
she thought, did not smile.
"I would like the entire journal translated. Could I hire you
to do that?" "Gladly. Did you bring it with you? It will be very hard
to agree on a price otherwise." "I have it in London but not with me.
It has about fifty handwritten pages. I can bring it to you tomorrow morning,
and we can
discuss the terms then."
"I'm
sorry, I won't be working tomorrow. We could meet somewhere else, if you
wish."
She
suggested the cafe next door to the Adelphi Hotel. They agreed on ten the next
morning. On the way out, she stopped in the
main offices once more.
"Could you tell me how long Mr. Ujvari has worked here?" she asked
the secretary.
"Five
years," the man replied.
Long enough
to be reliable, Mina decided. And long enough that she would always know where
to find him.
Mina arrived at the café early, ate breakfast and finished her
detective story while waiting for her translator. When he arrived, Ujvari
seemed even more intense than yesterday, and she decided, with a pang of pity,
that as one so enamored with novelty, his job must bore him terribly.
"I
finished reading the page you gave me," Ujvari told her as soon as he sat
down. "The narrator identifies herself as Countess
Karina Aliczni. If you have
purchased copy of a journal kept by her, it may solve a very old mystery."
"Why
wouldn't it be an original?" Mina asked.
"Because the writing is no more than a few decades old, at
most, and the countess disappeared over a hundred years ago." Mina feigned
confusion, not certain that she had done it very well. "Was she that
famous?" she asked.
"Her
father was wealthy. He assured that her legend would live on. I show you."
He pulled a kerchief from his jacket and
unwrapped a gold coin. "Many people wrote of the beauty of
the young countess. This is a likeness of her. The coins were stamped in the
year 1772, just after she disappeared from the Romanian town of Sibiu. Her
father ordered the coins circulated in the hopes that someone would recognize
her and lead him to her. He promised a thousand more coins like this to the one
who would do it."
Mina looked
down at the stamped likeness. Even in this, she could see the girl's delicate
beauty and the similarity to the fair
creature in Dracula’s castle,
the one who reminded her of Lucy. "Did her father ever get news of
her?" Mina asked.
Ujvari shook his head. "But she lives through this coin and
the legend that surrounds it." He took the coin from her hand and abruptly
kissed Mina's palm. "I am romantic," he said. "I like to think
that she found a happier life, perhaps with a lover in some distant land. You
have given me a chance to solve the mystery. For that I am so very
thankful."
Mina already
knew that the truth was far less beautiful. She pulled the book from her bag.
"I will need proof that I have given you
this," she said.
"I've brought it." He handed her a letter describing the
work he would undertake to use as a receipt. They agreed on a price then exchanged
home addresses. Mina gave him Winnie Beason's, then, in case it was necessary,
the address of the Exeter Hospital as well. Just before Ujvari left, he took a
pencil and made rubbing of the coin. He left it with the letter as they parted.
He'll think
it's fiction, she decided, as she watched him go with the wrapped book under
one arm. The more fantastic the
woman's account becomes, the more he will be certain that it's
fiction. And if he should believe it, well, he doesn't know my real name.
Now that she
had parted with the book, she felt a lightening of her spirits. She had found a
translator, had given him the book.
There was no use worrying about an outcome she could no longer
change, nor any use waiting impatiently for something that would take weeks to
finish, and there was even less use in anxiety about what the journal might
contain.
She wandered the streets around the
hotel, buying trinkets for Winnie and Millicent, some charming carved and
painted wooden birds with outstretched wings to hang in the children's
hospital. She had tea in the Savoy Hotel, tried on bracelets and rings at a jewelers
nearby, fingered lace scarves and bonnets, bought a feather fan to take to the
theater that night. So many beautiful things. Exotic things. Expensive things.
Things to adorn the body and the home. Things to show taste when manners would
do. Things to show affection when a word would do.
All the
sunshine of the day faded within her as she saw the world as Dracula must have
seen it, the glorious press of humanity—
unaware, defenseless-all
around him.
It seemed
that she had never seen England as clearly as she did on the walk from the
Savoy back to her quiet hotel on Floral
Street. Near the entrance to it, a flower vendor thrust a small
bouquet into her hand, the miniature yellow roses and daisies wilting in the
damp winter cold. She paid for them gladly and went inside. When Jonathan was
dressed for the theater and dinner, there would be a flower for his lapel,
roses for her bonnet, something honest and fresh amid all the gilt of London.
She held the bouquet up to her face, inhaling the scent as she went inside.