fate. Can you come with me tonight?”
“Of course–wherever you wish!”
“Am I to be excluded?” demanded the young woman.
“By no means.” but then Holmes turned to face Armstrong fully, and my friend’s expression was grim. “In return, Mr. Armstrong, I require complete candor on your part. Will you now tell us the full story of how the rowboat was capsized?” Holmes’s expression had grown still more ominous. “I am convinced that in your earlier account of the matter to us, you omitted certain details of great importance.”
At this key point, our conversation was interrupted by the arrival of Inspector Merivale. Presently Armstrong, in the presence of Scotland Yard, admitted there was something he had not told.
While Rebecca Altamont, her face suddenly pale, sat back in her chair, the inspector demanded: “Why did you say nothing about this until now?”
Armstrong looked pleadingly from one of us to another. “Gentlemen, it was so strange a thing that I couldn’t bring myself to mention it. but now–now that we know Louisa’s still alive–why, it’s plain that whatever is going on must be very strange indeed. And this odd piece will fit in with the rest somehow.” He turned an appealing look in my direction. “Do you see what I mean, Doctor?”
“If you will tell us everything you know,” I advised him, “your meaning may be easier to grasp.”
“Of course.” Martin Armstrong drew a full breath and seemed to pull himself together. “Gentlemen–becky–I now confess that at the time– just as I turned in the moment of the boat’s capsizing–I thought I did catch just a glimpse of something very strange.
“As we began to go over, I twisted my head around, looking over my right shoulder... and I retain the distinct impression of a pale hand, or at least of human fingers, grasping the gunwale on that side. Then a few moments later, when I was under water, I felt the sense of some stranger’s body near me there. but, I hope you will understand, so brief and fragmentary were these impressions, so unsupported by either logic or common sense, that ever since, I have discounted them as the result of nerves, or actual hallucinations.”
Holmes demanded: “And you have never mentioned to anyone–to Miss Altamont here, for example–what you thought you saw?”
Armstrong shook his head violently. “How could I? Rebecca would have believed me mad.”
“Perhaps not,” the lady herself said, shaking her head.
The young man went on to explain that the sense of some mysterious presence had not appeared to him to offer any genuine explanation of the upset. At the moment of crisis, of course he had given little thought to causes, but expected it would be relatively easy to make sure that both girls were safe.
We all urged him to tell the whole story again, this time as truthfully as possible, and he agreed. When he had come up, gasping, to the surface after his initial plunge, Armstrong had immediately seen becky struggling to stay afloat; he swam to her, and guided her to shore, which was the work of less than a minute.
“Then Becky and I looked at each other. And both of us said the same thing at the same moment:’Where’s Louisa?’
“There was the rowboat, now floating almost placidly, drifting upside down. There were the two oars. I seem to recall seeing a floating banjo and a picnic basket. but no sign at all of Louisa. I wondered, was she on the other side of the boat, or had she come up underneath it?”
In a strained voice, Martin went on to tell us that he had stripped off his light summer coat, which was already sodden, and then his shoes, and in light summer trousers and shirtsleeves, plunged back into the stream. Quickly, he made sure that no one was trapped under the boat. He came out from under it and dived again, thinking that surely, surely, his fiancee’s head must appear above the water at any moment...
“I did find her hat–did I mention that before, gentlemen? Yes, her hat, in the water... but that was all.”
Time dragged on, the horrible minutes following the capsizing of the boat lengthening into a full hour, and extending themselves endlessly after that...
Rebecca, of course, had summoned aid as quickly as possible. but dusk, which was gathering at the time the boat tipped, had deepened almost totally into night before there were answering shouts and lights coming through the trees.
“We searched on, of course, through the night. Men and boys from the neighboring houses and farms, as well as from Norberton House, looking along the shore and in the water. Gradually, we all lost hope. No one found... found her... until broad daylight. by then, the girl, whoever she was, had been dead for hours. Her... her body lay on the bank, nearly a mile downstream.” briefly overcome by emotion, the young man had to pause. “Oh God! Oh, God, when I thought that was Louisa–”
In the morning, as we already knew, there had been the limp, white, unbreathing body to be taken up, carried home and mourned over. Drowning was the obvious cause of death. As we had earlier learned, there had been no visible injuries–certainly no more than a few scratches, including the two small marks upon the white, still throat.
Within a day or so, an inquest had been held upon “the poor girl, in the full belief that she was Louisa,” and her body had been duly interred.
When Armstrong had concluded his story, Rebecca Altamont took his hand and did her best to comfort him; and I remember that at the time, it crossed my mind that when grief and terror had been surmounted, there might be the chance of a more tender attachment growing between them.
Presently the young American, recovering himself a little, proposed a plan in which several of we men would return in the same rowboat to the scene of the catastrophe, and one or more might strip and jump into the water to try the experiment of tipping the craft over, just to see how difficult it was, even where the river was shallow enough to allow more or less solid footing on the muddy bottom.
“If it proves really impossible to capsize the boat that way,” he concluded, “then perhaps I was hallucinating after all.”
No one answered that directly. I could see Dracula smile faintly, no doubt at the thought of himself going for a bathe in the bright morning daylight. In a moment, the prince murmured that he would decline to take part in such an exercise. “Running water and I are not always on the best of terms,” he added. “Not to mention my tendency to sunburn.” I could see that this refusal and comment both rather puzzled the young American.
Holmes commended Armstrong’s plan of re-enactment as worthy, possibly useful. “but unfortunately there is no time for it now; there are other matters which much more urgently require our attention.”
Armstrong blinked at him. “Of course. And I still insist that the first of them is finding Louisa, wherever she may be, and thereby putting an end to this nightmare.”
At this juncture Holmes suddenly brought the name of Count Kulakov into the conversation. both of the young people could immediately confirm that there was, or had been, a foreigner of that name living in the neighborhood and attending a few social events, though neither Armstrong or Miss Altamont had ever met the man, or even seen him.
But Rebecca then went on to recall hearing Louisa say that she had met him, and did not like him.
“I remember she told me that on one occasion–months ago, before you were engaged, Martin–he had paid her attentions that were not entirely welcome.”
Armstrong frowned. He harked back to his stay in St. Petersburg and tried to recall anything he might have learned about Count Kulakov during that time. “I do think I might have heard the name somewhere–but where? Is there a possibility that he is somehow involved in this business?”
“A distinct possibility.” Then, changing the subject again, Holmes asked if the Altamonts had any plans for another seance.
Armstrong and Rebecca, during their brief stop at Norberton House before coming to see us, had already been apprised of the intentions of the family there. Louisa’s parents were naturally expecting them to keep those plans secret from any investigators who might interfere.
But Armstrong had his own agenda regarding seances. “If these scoundrels think they can somehow smuggle Louisa into the house again, and then whisk her away as they did last time, they’re in for a surprise. The police are watching too.”
Holmes’s continued questioning of Armstrong and Miss Altamont elicited the information that Sarah Kirkaldy was refusing even to talk about the possibility of another sitting. With her brother’s body in a coffin in the parlor, that struck me as hardly to be wondered at.
The young couple also had information for us regarding the time of Abraham’s funeral, which they were
