Dracula in Love by Karen Essex (10)

Dearest Mina,

How I wish you were here with me, though you will be edified to know that in the past weeks, your commonsense voice has been ringing in my ears. Unlike you, I was one of Miss Hadley’s worst students. I did not listen to her wisdom, or to yours, and now I regret what a fool I have been, though it appears that I have an opportunity to remedy the wrongs I have committed.

I am the most fortunate of women. Unlike our poor lost Lizzie Cornwall, I will not be cast out into the streets but will become Lady Godalming. We are to be married immediately. How I wish you could be present as we always dreamt, but I know that you are with Jonathan. I do not love Arthur, not yet, but my mother says that any woman can learn to love a man who is good to her, and Arthur is certainly that.

Thank you for all your wise words, Mina, and for your patience with me. Your good counsel has helped me to get on the right path. Love is a terrible, terrible thing. I still dream of Morris and long for his touch, but I know that with Arthur’s help, I can move past these feelings.

I received Lucy’s letter in Exeter, where Headmistress had forwarded it to me. Jonathan and I had settled into Mr. Hawkins’s home, and I had written to my employer that I would not be returning to my job, that Jonathan and I had hurriedly married in Graz, and that with his illness, he required my full attention and care. I apologized profusely, knowing that my absence would put Headmistress back into the classroom, which, at her age, she would not relish, but I had no choice.

I had worried over Lucy in the weeks I was away, and I was greatly relieved to know of her turnabout with Arthur. I supposed they were married by now, and perhaps even away on a honeymoon voyage. I vowed to send her a note congratulating her and relating the news of my marriage as soon as I had the time.

In the interim, I was busy caring for Jonathan, who suffered a relapse upon our arrival when he discovered that Mr. Hawkins was ill. After years of enduring painful ailments brought on by severe ulcers, the old man had been diagnosed with chronic gastric catarrh. He complained of a sour mouth and stomach that made eating most undesirable, turning away his meals and losing much of his body weight. His doctor advised me that the condition often caused neurasthenia in the patient, which only worsened the disease.

I found myself nursing both men, aided by Sadie, Mr. Hawkins’s longtime housekeeper, but she too was getting up in age and relied upon my stamina. Sadie prepared the main meals, but I visited the markets to purchase our supplies. Both Jonathan and Mr. Hawkins called for me constantly, and I rushed from sickroom to sickroom with medicines, teas, elixirs, and compresses. Mr. Hawkins required ten to fifteen drops of arsenic every two hours, accompanied by soothing conversation and a specially prepared poultice to put on his stomach. Jonathan was always hungry and asking for food, and at the same time, apologizing to me for putting me through the trouble of caring for him.

I encouraged each man to take a midday meal in the dining room, mostly so that I could sit in that lovely room and eat, rather than perch at the kitchen table with Sadie, gobbling down food between my errands. I also thought that the men might provide each other with some cheer. But Mr. Hawkins had given Jonathan the assignment in Styria with the highest intentions to advance his career and supplement his income; Jonathan’s resulting illness depressed the old man’s health and humor more than his own ailment. Jonathan too was downhearted over his uncle’s failing health, so that I was living with two melancholy people. I slept alone on a small daybed in the library. I had tried to lie next to Jonathan, but he cried out all night in his sleep, tossing and turning like some tortured thing.

I took refuge in my daily walks in the town. As soon as I walked out of the door, the crisp autumnal air, so fresh and clean, hit my face, cleansing away the heaviness that lurked inside. I strolled down the street, looking over at the red brick houses on the hills and the rolling green of the surrounding countryside. I liked to walk past the old mill with screeching seagulls circling the water below, then on to the high street, where Mr. Hawkins kept an office, in addition to the one in London. I stopped to purchase whatever goods we needed from the markets and shops, and then turned around and repeated my steps, heading for home before the patients woke from their naps, which usually coincided with the ringing of the city’s old curfew bell at five o’clock.

It was a pleasant enough daily diversion, though I could not control my sadness when passing the cathedral in which I had dreamt of marrying, reminding me of lost dreams and dashed plans. With the coming of autumn, I missed the school and the rooms full of giggling girls and the structure of the daily lessons. I had wanted relief from all that. Now I wondered if I had failed to appreciate the small and uncomplicated happiness that it had provided me for so many years.

After weeks of wretched pain, Mr. Hawkins passed away one Monday morning at dawn. Though I was very fond of him, I was not sorry to see the end of his terrible suffering. He had left his home and his business to Jonathan, dividing his money between Jonathan and his aunt, so that we found ourselves in a sudden position of affluence. At the funeral, Mr. Hawkins’s friends and clients offered condolences to us and assured Jonathan that they would continue to be represented by the firm-meaning Jonathan-in all legal matters. After the services, when we were drinking tea in the garden, he looked up at the sky. “Mina, our lives should be beginning, but there are moments when I fear that mine has already ended.”

“Darling, we have everything to look forward to,” I answered. “You are free of the fever, and with the resources that Mr. Hawkins left, we can make every dream we spoke of in Miss Hadley’s parlor come to fruition.”

“I will try to be that man for you, Mina. I owe you that. You are truly an angel of mercy and forgiveness. But sometimes I fear that the man who envisioned that life with you is no longer here. Some monster with whom I am not yet well acquainted, some rogue with a propensity for doing the unthinkable, has taken his place. Can you be patient with me? It is more than I deserve, but I am asking it anyway. I would not blame you if you refused.”

I promised Jonathan that I would stand by him. True, he had betrayed me, but he also suffered terribly for it. I wondered if he had not already been ill and beside himself with fever when he committed those acts, so unlike a man with his character. I should have asked his doctor, but I was too ashamed of the infidelity to speak of it. Besides, I loved him, and I saw enough glimpses of the uncorrupted Jonathan of the past to believe that with time and with love, he would return.

The weather turned colder. By day, Jonathan went into his office to tend to business matters, but at home, though he was affectionate, I often caught him staring into the dancing flames in the fireplace looking forlorn. One evening, about a week after we buried Mr. Hawkins, Jonathan mixed some drops of a sedative into his brandy and retired early. I stayed up late staring into that same fire, wondering if it might give me some answers, until it burned to embers. I fell asleep on the divan in the parlor, and woke early covered by a blanket that Sadie must have placed over me sometime during the night. Then news arrived that morning in two hastily written letters-one from Kate Reed and another from Headmistress-that would distract me from Jonathan’s angst and forever change the course our lives were to take.

Lucy was neither at Waverley Manor nor on her honeymoon. Both she and her mother were dead.

A light rain fell from the low ceiling of omnipresent gray outside the entrance to Highgate Cemetery, drizzling upon the parade of black umbrellas in the funeral cortege. We descended from the mourning coaches that Arthur Holmwood had hired to follow the garland-draped hearse, drawn by six onyx-coated ponies. A canopy of ostrich feathers covered the hearse, decorated with gold and brass emblems. Little page boys wearing formal livery attended the coachman. Through the glass panes, I could see Lucy’s coffin covered in rich, dark velvet. The pallbearers-John Seward and others whom I did not know-slid the casket out of the back of the hearse with careful black-gloved hands. It was completely unreal to me that my friend was inside.

“It looks like it’s carrying a princess,” said one lady who reached beneath her veil to dab her eyes with a handkerchief.

“Madam, I assure you that it is,” said Holmwood as he took his place at the head of the procession to walk Lucy to her crypt.

I opened my umbrella, though I was self-conscious that the spray of purple foxglove on the underside might peek through and interrupt the ubiquitous black, but I knew that Lucy would have loved to see that burst of color. I tripped over my hem, upsetting the somber promenade of people in front of me. My dress of coal black parramatta silk trimmed in stiff crape was borrowed from Mr. Hawkins’s sister from the wardrobe of mourning clothes she had ordered for us. The dress had arrived in that larger lady’s size, so that I had to alter it as best I could, but it was still too big and too long for me.

We followed Lucy’s coffin through a leafy, overgrown path toward her final resting place. The rest of the cortege-the procession leader with his baton and attendants, the servants from Lucy’s household, and the professional mourners and mutes who had walked in the parade from the church-fell in line behind us. Kate, leaning on Jacob’s arm, walked in front of me, wearing the intricate ebony gown she had purchased for her ruse with the Gummlers.

How nice it would be to have a man at my side today, when I felt limp with shock and grief. Jonathan had offered to come with me, but he was very busy with the work neglected by Mr. Hawkins during his illness, and, besides, I was afraid that exposure to travel and tragedy would bring about another relapse.

I had traveled in mourning clothes to London. Kate and Jacob met me at the train station, and we hired a cab to take us to the church where the service was being held. On the way, I had asked about the deaths of both Lucy and her mother.

“Mrs. Westenra died of heart failure just a few days after Lucy’s wedding. The poor girl had no chance to celebrate her marriage.”

Kate had not been in touch with Lucy but had gathered this information from people she had talked to at Lucy’s wake. “I tried to contact Lucy after I saw her mother’s obituary in the newspaper, but she did not answer my notes. The service for Mrs. Westenra was private. I thought that Lucy might even be away on her honeymoon.”

“I cannot imagine that Lucy is dead! I saw her just six weeks ago.”

“Her husband said that the cause of death was acute anemia brought on by refusal to eat and melancholia. She died in a private asylum, Mina. Apparently, her condition was advanced enough for her to be committed.”

“But she wrote me a letter dated a little over a month ago that she was about to be married. She sounded so happy. What could have happened?”

“I don’t know. The young Lord Godalming is beside himself with grief,” said Kate. By this time, we had arrived at the church and were standing outside. “You should have seen the Westenra’s house last night, Mina. Arthur had hundreds of candles burning in the rooms and wreaths of white roses and gardenias on all the doors. It was positively transcendent. I am so sorry that you did not see our girl all dressed in white tulle, with the most delicate pearls in the netting. I have never seen a sight so beautiful except-”

Kate stopped, choking on her words. “Except Lucy when she used to smile.”

She broke down, bending over in tears, and Jacob took her in his arms and rocked her gently, whispering things into her ear that I could not hear. In that moment, I knew beyond a doubt that she and Jacob were lovers. I remember how morally superior I had felt to her just a few months before, but now I envied that she had the love of a strong man who would hold and comfort her.

Arthur Holmwood, with his mother on his arm, had overheard this. He took me aside, and with frantic eyes, said, “Mina, you’ve no idea what we have been through. Lucy, my poor Lucy! I should have buried her in black. She was still in mourning for her mother, and I for my father. But I could not bear to see an angel go to Heaven in black!” He turned to his mother. “Was I wrong, Mother?”

I could not see the lady’s face beneath her heavy veil. I remembered that her husband had died not two months earlier. She clutched her son’s arm and with a very tired voice said, “Come, Arthur, help the mourners out of their carriages.”

“She should be in our family tomb,” he said. “I have done everything wrong!”

“She should be beside her parents,” said his mother. “She was theirs much longer than she was ours.”

I sat numb through the service, staring at Lucy’s coffin. I thought of Jonathan, of Lucy, of myself-of all the hopes we had harbored. How could the fabric of our lives have disintegrated so quickly? And, of course, I thought of Morris Quince, who was absent but who may have been responsible for Lucy’s demise. If she had never met him, she would have quietly married Arthur and learned to love him, as many a woman before her had done. It was Quince who had made her sick with love. It was Quince who had killed her. I sat in the pew with my fists clenched. I wanted him to pay for what he had done, but he had escaped to America unscathed and probably already had another naïve girl under his spell. After the service, I got into one of the funereal carriages as quickly as possible and was silent on the drive to the cemetery. I was too angry to participate in the predictable postfuneral lamentations.

Now we walked down the wooded path to the mournful tune of the pipes and drums that Arthur had commissioned, past ornate marble monuments topped with delicate angels, crosses, and other sculptures. Thick with chestnut and maple trees that blocked out the skies, Highgate seemed more forest than graveyard. The Westenra crypt was in the Circle of Lebanon, a cluster of tombs beneath a magnificent centuries-old cedar of Lebanon that gave it its name. We passed through the entrance, an Egyptian style arch flanked by two ancient-looking columns and two tall obelisks, where the path began to slope gently to a semicircular arrangement of tombs with Roman-style doorways.

The procession stopped, and we gathered ourselves around the entry, where the pallbearers stood with Lucy’s coffin. My hands began to shake, and I looked for someone who might help steady my nerves when John Seward’s deep-set eyes met mine. I cannot explain his look, a mixture of fear and sadness. He seemed to need even more comfort than I. Kate told me that Lucy had died in his care while he and his colleagues heroically attempted desperate measures to save her, and that she thought he felt responsible for Lucy’s demise.

The minister began to recite prayers, and everyone bowed their heads. Kate had instigated a scheme that I would read a poem that Lucy had liked in the days when the three of us had become enthralled with the poetry of Christina Rossetti. Headmistress believed that such maudlin literature would thwart the sunny temperaments natural to young ladies and diminish our enthusiasm for accomplishment. Naturally, Kate and Lucy had smuggled it into our dormitory, reading it by moonlight after everyone else had gone to sleep.

“Don’t you remember, Mina? Lucy said that she wanted the poem to be read at her gravesite,” Kate had said, thrusting a copy of it into my hands.

“She was fifteen at the time, Kate. I think she would have changed her mind.”

“Perhaps she had a premonition that she would die young,” Kate said.

“Perhaps you have spent too much time investigating mediums,” I replied. “Besides, if you feel so strongly about this, you should read the poem yourself.”

“You were Lucy’s closest friend and you are the elocution instructor. I sound like a shrill harridan in comparison.”

Objectively speaking, it was true. My voice was gentle and melodic.

Arthur Holmwood was all for the idea. “If that is what my darling would have wanted, then we must make sure that it is done,” he had said.

Now I heard his voice at the end of the minister’s prayers.

“Miss Mina Murray-oh, I am sorry, Mrs. Jonathan Harker, that is-will now read a poem that Lucy had admired when she was a student at Miss Hadley’s School for Young Ladies of Accomplishment.”

Everyone looked up, following Arthur’s eyes, to rest upon me. My heart started to pound in my chest, and I tried to smile, but not too much for the solemn occasion. Shaking, I walked forward to the casket. It was difficult to retrieve the poem from my pocket, what with my gloved, trembling hands. Arthur gave me an encouraging smile as he took my umbrella and held it over my head.

I began slowly, for there is nothing less eloquent than allowing nervousness to speed us through important moments. “When we were just girls at school, Lucy told us that she wished to have this poem read at the site of her burial. I had hoped that I would be a very old woman delivering these words, if at all, for it would have been my fondest wish to have had my companion for many more decades, and even more, that I would have passed before her. This is for Lucy.” I read:

O Earth, lie heavily upon her eyes;

Seal her sweet eyes weary of watching, Earth;

Lie close around her; leave no room for mirth

With its harsh laughter, nor for sound of sighs.

She hath no questions, she hath no replies,

Hush’d in and curtain’d with a bless’d dearth

Of all that irk’d her from the hour of birth;

With stillness that is almost Paradise.

Darkness more clear than noonday holdeth her,

Silence more musical than any song;

Even her very heart has ceased to stir:

Until the morning of Eternity

Her rest shall not begin nor end, but be;

And when she wakes she will not think it long.

I got through the delivery of the poem, even smiling at one point when I remembered Lucy, her young face bright with revelation, exclaiming, “Imagine, death is a place where all cares disappear!”

We watched the pallbearers place Lucy’s casket in the vault with her parents, whose coffins sat on the first and second shelves of the tomb. The men slid Lucy’s casket onto the third shelf, hitting the wall of the vault with such finality that it made me shudder.

John Seward came out of the vault and met my eyes. He walked to me, and we stared at each other. His ever-questioning eyes, full of sadness and longing, searched mine. The rain had stopped. “Let me take that for you,” he said. He shook out my wet umbrella.

We were both silent again. I put out my gloved hand, and he took it and kissed it. Then he cupped it, using the opportunity to link arms with me. “Shall I escort you back to the carriages?” he asked.

We walked together to the entrance of the cemetery. “I have not spoken with you since your travels,” Seward said. “Is Mr. Harker recuperated from his illness?”

I was groping for a discreet answer to his question when I saw a man standing beside a familiar gleaming black carriage with two restless black horses. He was dressed in a handsome suit of thick velour, with a dark green vest and a black shirt. A silk cravat pinned with a silver dragon covered his neck. The beast had emeralds for eyes, which seemed to be staring directly at me, as did the man from beneath his low-brimmed hat. He held open the door to the carriage.

Come, Mina. Let us be on our way.

Dr. Seward did not seem to see my savior standing there, much less that he was holding the door open for me. Seward continued to talk as we walked right past the carriage, even though my savior held my gaze.

There is nothing for you here, Mina. Come with me.

No one else seemed to notice him, which was strange, considering his formidable presence would surely command anyone’s attention. Was everyone so caught up in mourning the passing of a young life, or was I hallucinating? I wanted to run into the arms of my mysterious stranger, just to see if he was real. But Dr. Seward was already helping me into one of the carriages in the cortege.

“You seem very distraught,” he said to me. “You must tell me what is the matter.”

Dazed, I took my seat in the carriage, and he sat next to me. “What is it?” he asked. His liquid gray eyes were full of concern. The carriage began to move, and I looked out the window, where my mysterious stranger still stood, staring at me as we drove away.

I turned around, running directly into Dr. Seward’s questioning eyes. “It’s a rather difficult subject,” I began slowly.

“I am a doctor. You may confide in me,” he said.

“Thank you for inquiring about my husband. I believe that he needs help,” I said, though I knew in the back of my mind that the person who also needed help was me.

I unburdened myself to Dr. Seward as much as I dared. I did not disclose Jonathan’s infidelity, only that he had suffered a shock before contracting the fever. The doctor urged me to bring Jonathan to the asylum, where he and his colleague might observe and treat him. He assured me that Dr. Von Helsinger was a pioneer in understanding the complexities of the mind, and that if anyone could usher Jonathan out of melancholia, it was he. I did not know if Seward was looking for an excuse to spend more time with me, or if he was genuinely interested in helping Jonathan. I knew only that I had to take action. If Jonathan regained his strength, he could put behind him whatever he had done in Styria and be a husband to me. And that, dear reader, was what I believed would put an end to my own bizarre dreams, yearnings, and visions. Please do not think me naïve; I was merely-how shall we say?-uninformed. It is easy to judge the actions of another, but at the time, I completely believed my own simple logic.

I had arranged to spend the night in my old room at the school. Headmistress explained to me that it would be my last opportunity, as she had found a replacement for me who was arriving in two days. “Of course, no one will ever replace you, Wilhelmina. But I am too old to teach. Young girls these days are allowed to act just like little boys at home, and then their parents send them to us to sort them out. I do believe that if these lax and indulgent parents are not careful, girls will be entirely spoiled, and no one will want to marry them.”

Headmistress had passed her sixtieth birthday. Her hair was silver gray, swept up into a French-style knot that added to her considerable grandeur. While many private schools kept their students in mean conditions, denying them heat and well-cooked meals, Headmistress charged a high fee and warned parents that if they could not pay their daughters would be sent home immediately. She had explained to me over the years that she could either be harsh with the few whose parents tried to take advantage of her, or she could tolerate lack of payment, which would make life less luxurious for all the girls in her care.

We sat in the parlor, each with our impeccable posture and manners. I had spent much of my life imitating this woman, whose graceful hand lifted a teacup and brought it to her lips as if it were part of a ballet.

“Tell me, Wilhelmina, why did you and Mr. Harker marry so suddenly? I thought you had your heart set on an Exeter wedding.”

I told her what I had told everyone else, a condensed and sanitized version of the truth. “Jonathan contracted a fever of the brain while he was in Styria, and I went there to help him. He did not think it would be proper for us to travel together if we were not married.”

“That was very sensible,” she said, and she patted my arm.

She reached into a drawer and produced two envelopes, which she handed to me. They were addressed to me in Lucy’s handwriting. “These arrived at the time that I was searching madly for a teacher to replace you. I just found them earlier today under a stack of papers. I hope that whatever she wrote to you gives you some comfort for the loss of her.”

I held the letters tight to my bosom. Headmistress kissed my forehead and went upstairs, while I remained in the parlor. A few embers burned in the fireplace, but the room was chilly. I retrieved Headmistress’s shawl from the back of her chair and wrapped it around me. It smelled of the rosewater that she put on her neck after a bath. I breathed it in deeply, remembering all the times that the scent had given me comfort and strength and had staved off the ever-present loneliness that lurked just outside the perimeter of my life, and I started to read.

My dearest Mina,

Has there ever been a reversal of fortune as dramatic as mine? I will try to elaborate in as much detail as I have time to gather here on the page, for my devoted Hilda, whom mother and I took back to London with us, has promised to sneak this letter out and get it into the post. I am sending it to Headmistress, who I know will faithfully forward it to you wherever you are. I dream that you are fulfilling the plan that you and Jonathan had of letting one of the little Pimlico houses, and that you are there now and will come to see your Lucy as soon as you receive this missive.

Mina, I am a prisoner in my own home, and my jailer is supposed to be my protector. Just three days after Arthur and I were married at Waverley Manor, as we were packing for our honeymoon tour, we received word that my poor mother had died. After all the years that I silently mocked her, skeptical at times that her ailment was real, she had an attack of angina in the night and was found in her bed, reaching for the servants’ bell. The death of a loved one is always a shocking thing, especially to me, an only child, who has no other living relations. But the most shocking news was yet to come. After we buried my mother, Arthur and I visited the solicitor, who read us the will. I then discovered that before her death, my mother changed the terms of succession.

The considerable fortune left by my father is passing directly to Arthur rather than to me. My mother’s words, included in the document, were that I was a flighty girl of uneven temper and I required Lord Godalming’s sober mind to ensure the continuance of the trust. She added that her medical condition would undoubtedly lead to her untimely death, but she could go to her grave in peace, knowing that she had done a mother’s duty by seeing her daughter married to a man of distinction. Her final request was that if we had a daughter, we would name it after her.

Now you might not think this news to be egregious. However, in my short stay at Waverley Manor, I gathered very interesting information. Arthur inherits a title and vast lands but has no money to speak of. He requires my fortune to support us in the style to which we are both accustomed and to renovate the manor house, which, though grand, has not seen improvements this century.

“Don’t be ridiculous, Lucy,” Arthur said. But I was not assuaged. I asked the solicitor, Mr. Lymon, when had my mother made these changes. “Immediately upon returning from Whitby,” he said.

“You made changing the will a condition of marrying me, did you not?” I demanded of Arthur. He did not answer, but put his arm around me and explained to the solicitor that I had suffered an assault in Whitby, and, combined with the shock of my mother’s death, I had not yet recovered my senses. I begged Mr. Lymon, who had been a friend of my father, to help me. “My father would not want this!” I said. “My father would have wanted me to be protected.” I held on to the man’s desk, screaming these words as Arthur tried to take me away. I am certain that I did appear to be mad, but I was in such a state of shock that I could not control myself. “Please allow Lord Godalming to take care of you,” Mr. Lymon said, with a look of great pity in his eyes for me, as if I were the madwoman Arthur claimed me to be. “Lord Godalming knows what is best for you.”

I thought of Morris, of what true love had felt like, and that I would never again have that feeling. My husband had married me for my money, had successfully gotten control of it, and now may do with me as he pleased. I saw the obsequious manner with which Mr. Lymon treated Arthur, and I realized that those four all-important letters before his name, l-o-r-d, meant that no one would question his word against mine. I had to find another tactic.

I had no idea what he meant by this and I was much too afraid to ask. Behind my back, he immediately sent for John Seward, who arrived with his sinister black bag. He mixed me a sedative, which I at first refused, but I was upset and confused and in shock. Craving some semblance of peace of mind, I swallowed it and I slept.

When I awoke, Seward was still there. He has assumed total authority over me, Mina! And he has done so with a sort of self-satisfaction that I find disconcerting. I attribute it to the fact that he once confessed his feelings to me, and when I told my mother, she insulted him. She asked him how he thought a man with his lack of income and standing might woo and win a girl such as myself. He said to me later, “I am not so poor nor so poorly paid as your mother might think!” She had wounded his pride, but at the same time, she did not want to see me the wife of a man whose residence was a madhouse. I would never have been so unfeeling as she in my treatment of him, though I confess that I never had an ounce of affection for him.

The next morning, my former suitor and now physician announced that I was to have more of the dreaded medicine for my breakfast. They have taken to giving it to me all the day long. I have devised a way to make them think that I am drinking it, but as soon as I am out of their sight, I vomit it into one of the window boxes. Still, some of it gets into my body and I feel quite delirious much of the time. John Seward sits by my bedside, and, under his doctor’s guise, he asks the most intrusive personal questions, Mina, about my monthlies! When I told him, blushing and looking away from his face, that they did not arrive on the same day every month and that oftentimes, I skipped a month altogether, he acted alarmed. “I was afraid of that, Your Ladyship,” which is what he has taken to calling me with the most ironical tone in his voice. I wish I could describe it to you. The undertone is that, though I now have a title, the balance of power between us has shifted, and he has the control over me. He convinced Arthur to hire a nurse to attend me, and she examines my menstrual blood and reports back to him on its characteristics and volume. I do not know what this has to do with making me well. But the more I protest that I am healthy, the more I am told that the protestation of well-being is a symptom of hysteria.

Seward has proposed that I be taken to the asylum, Lindenwood, where I will be observed and treated by his colleague from Germany, a Dr. Von Helsinger. I have made it plain that I do not intend to comply with his wishes, but the more that I assert my will, the more he and Arthur insist that I am suffering from some sort of hysteria and require treatments only available in an asylum. I wonder if it is best to acquiesce to their demands so that I may be proven sane and left alone.

I hate to burden you with these affairs. But, Mina, I am desperate. Perhaps Mr. Harker, as he is a solicitor, will be able to suggest a course of action that will rescue me from my present situation and give me my freedom from Arthur without becoming destitute.

Your despondent and unfortunate friend,

What grief settled over me. Here was Lucy, my dearest friend, begging for help from me, and I had been caught up in my own troubles with Jonathan and unaware of her woes. Now she was in her grave and it was too late. I slowly opened the second envelope, hoping it contained better news. But how could it?

Dear Mina,

I am writing to you from inside Lindenwood, John Seward’s asylum on the river at Purfleet. Hilda has stolen some paper from Seward’s office and a pen. We patients are not supposed to have such instruments in our possession for fear of what dark uses we will make of them. I must confess that if I thought I would be successful, I would stab myself with this pen and end my life.

I must be brief, for if I am caught writing to you, my “treatments” will become ever harsher, and I will be restrained again. Yes, you have read that correctly. Your Lucy, who you know to be of sound mind, has had her wrists and ankles shackled to a bed for having a “disobedient nature.” But I must not dwell on those inconsequential details, though I believe it would give me some comfort to know that someone has knowledge of what I have been subjected to within these walls.

I was examined by Dr. Von Helsinger, who has prescribed a series of treatments that I fear is killing me. He is a most terrifying and bizarre man, though John Seward holds him in the highest esteem and believes that his unorthodox methods carry the seeds of genius and the answers to many perplexing medical problems. Arthur has now joined in this admiration, so there is no one to advocate for me against him. Von Helsinger explained to me that he has been performing experiments on women by transferring the blood of men, who he believes are stronger, more moral, healthier, and more rational, into women. Mina, you should see this man’s eyes as he talks about his work. He has the look of one of the insane who wander the streets, talking to invisible entities! John Seward and Arthur were at his side, listening to his madness as if it were the most brilliant lecture delivered by an Oxford don. They paid no attention to my look of disbelief.

Now I must relate the horrible details of what they are doing to me. Remember, Mina, this is after other treatments that I thought I would not be able to endure-freezing cold baths, force-feeding-oh, it was all too horrendous, but I mustn’t linger on all that. I must get to the point, and my mind wanders these days as a result of the sedation and from the new treatments, which have weakened and sickened me so that I am no longer the Lucy you knew but some shadow self, who only exists in those moments when I conjure up a shred of hope that I will be released from this place.

I know you will think this bizarre, but, believe me, I am not hallucinating. The two younger men take turns emptying their blood into me. I am drugged in advance so that I cannot resist. While he waits for the medicine to take effect, Von Helsinger asks me if the men do not deserve a little affection for their troubles. Too weak to resist, I say nothing. Whichever man is giving the blood-Arthur or John Seward-is encouraged to caress my body and kiss me. “There, little miss, is that not what you like?” Von Helsinger asks. “Oh yes, she likes this. Don’t you, Lucy? You liked it when Morris Quince touched your body, didn’t you?” Arthur taunts me with this, Mina. I never should have confessed my affair.

Von Helsinger watches these acts with great fascination, even directing the men how to touch me, and even though it is plain that it is humiliating and repulsive to me. “If she pines for you, her body will accept the blood!” he says. Mina, the glint in his eyes as he instructs the men to have their way with me is truly frightening. The two younger men are enthralled by his every word. When Arthur isn’t taunting me, they are completely silent as they stroke and kiss me all over my body. I can hear their heavy breaths breaking the awful silence in the room. I cannot tell you the state of self-disgust this invokes in me. When Von Helsinger feels that my body is ready, he takes my naked arm and makes an incision into which he inserts a tube with a central rubber bulb for pumping. Then he rolls up the sleeve of my donor, tying a cord around the upper arm and rubbing the rest of the arm, stroking its muscles, looking for the right vein. After much examination, when he finds his target, he makes a similar incision in the arm of the man and inserts the other side of the tube.

They have performed this operation two times. Each time, I feel weaker. I cannot take food, my sight is blurry, and I have little strength. In fact, I must close soon because this exercise has left me exhausted.

I am trapped here. Arthur is my husband and therefore my guardian, and if he can persuade a doctor that I am mad, I can be committed here indefinitely. Seward and Von Helsinger are free to keep me here as a subject of their laboratory experiments, imprisoning me to aid their strange studies and to accommodate Arthur’s wishes to have me out of the way so that he may do whatever he likes with my father’s fortune. My fortune.

Mina, time is of the essence. How I wish that I could send word to Morris. I know that you hold the lowest opinion of him, but I am also certain that there was some feeling in his heart for me, despite his having abandoned me, and that he would come to my rescue if he knew how desperate and acute my situation. Please present my letters to your dear husband and beg of him to think of a means of getting me released from this place. Oh, this horrible place! I feel it packed with the spirits of those who have died here! Sometimes I think I hear them moaning in the night. Time is crucial. I will not last long if they continue to administer the treatments. I cannot eat and I am shaking with fever.

Your desperate friend,

Kate’s ink-stained fingers gripped Lucy’s letters tightly, turning her nails and knuckles white with tension. No longer clad in black, she was back to the loose-fitting clothes she wore when working, but I could still see her chest move as she took short, audible breaths.

We sat in the Cheshire Cheese off Fleet Street, where Bohemian artists and newspaper people fought over the table at which Doctor Johnson himself had once sat and held court. Kate ate lunch here so often that, without needing to order, a waiter had placed two plates with steaming rump steaks in front of us. They sat untouched.

“What do you make of this, Kate? Did they kill Lucy? Should we go to the police?” I hadn’t been able to go to sleep after reading Lucy’s letters, and now my eyes were burning, my back ached, and my mind was a jumble of ruminations that had slammed against the walls of my brain all night long.

“And present the letters of a ‘madwoman’ against the word of Lord Godalming? That would not be wise, Mina. You must try to think like a crime investigator. These letters do not prove a thing. Many doctors are experimenting with the transfusion of blood from one patient to another, sometimes with positive results. Some use the blood of lambs and claim it has revived dying patients entirely. Lucy had a very vivid imagination. You yourself have told me the story of how she imagined that the American was in love with her.”

“She had quite a bit of help from that gentleman, who told her so.”

“Nonetheless, she had a vivid and often prurient imagination. She thought all the boys were in love with her.”

“And they were, if I recall,” I countered. I detected a little strain of the old jealousy that Kate had for the prettier and more flirtatious Lucy. “But those letters, Kate. We cannot just drop the matter. Lucy lost her life! She did not belong in an asylum and she was not sick.”

“That is not exactly true.” She picked up her utensils and began to slice the meat. “You said that she had lost weight, and that she seemed quite out of her mind over this Morris Quince, and then even more disturbed over the loss of him. Perhaps she was completely mad by the time she wrote those letters.” Kate waved her fork at no one in particular. “On the other hand, madwomen are subjected to terrible things in the name of curing them. Oh poor Lucy. She should have just married the lord and kept the lover.”

“I am afraid I may have made a pact with the devil,” I confessed. “I made arrangements with John Seward to take my husband to the asylum.”

Kate had speared a chunk of steak with her fork but stopped short of putting it in her mouth. “Did you?”

I explained to Kate that Jonathan had not been himself since he had contracted brain fever in Styria, and that when I told Seward of his condition, he offered to examine and treat him. I did not reveal the extraneous details of Jonathan’s infidelity, nor did I reveal the incidents that were leading me to believe that I too needed a doctor’s care. “Obviously, I would not want Jonathan to have the sort of treatments Lucy described. On the other hand, he does need help, solid medical help.”

Kate chewed her steak while she pondered this. She held her empty fork in the air as if it were one of the pointing sticks I used in the classroom. “Mina, an exposé on the treatments in some of these asylums would make a gripping newspaper story. Really, the mad doctors do the most barbaric things, from what I have heard. Strange, perverse things-as horrible as what Lucy described and even worse-all in the name of science and medicine. Oh, it would be a gruesome story, but the readership would eat it up, I assure you.”

“Kate Reed, you have been on Fleet Street too long!” I could not believe what my ears were hearing. Had she gone mad too? “Perhaps you could have yourself committed to do the research,” I said. “It won’t take much to convince John Seward, or any other man, that you are mad.”

“Mina, it is not like you to be sarcastic,” she said. I believe I had actually hurt her feelings. “I am a journalist. It is my duty to expose practices that may be harmful. And if it is mostly women who are being harmed-as it inevitably is-then I am especially interested and obliged.”

“I apologize if I insulted you. But we must think about Lucy and Jonathan, not some article that might be written.”

“You must keep up with me, Mina. We are thinking of them. The mad doctors in private asylums are not supervised and are free to do what they wish. Oh, some of these places are mere resorts for the wealthy who need a rest from society after the Season. That is the sort of place where someone like Mrs. Westenra would go. Remember that ridiculous woman? I know I should be saying ‘God rest her soul,’ but I cannot be a hypocrite.”

“Kate!”

“Mina, will you never tire of being nice? I hear that these asylums hold some of their patients for life and turn them into veritable slaves. I have thought to write on this before, but Jacob said that for centuries, the Church tried to stop medical men from dissecting human corpses, which delayed scientific discovery. He thinks that we should not interfere with medical experimentation, even if we find the methods gruesome.”

“I am not interested in writing a story, Kate. I am only interested in helping my husband and in getting to the bottom of how Lucy died.”

All around us people were carving, chewing, and swallowing their food while laughing and talking. Some picked up chops by the bone, tearing the meat off with their teeth. For some reason, it reminded me of the way Lucy said that her body had been handled and abused, and I had to turn my eyes away.

“On the other hand, if something terrible did happen to Lucy within those walls, and you found out about it, your story would be a great tribute to her memory.”

“You cannot expect me to subject Jonathan to these sorts of vile treatments that Lucy described?”

“Oh, they will not do those things to a man. Not against his will. And you will be there to supervise.” Kate was smiling now as the idea took hold. As we finished our meals, she continued to talk as if I had already agreed to her plan. “One of the great benefits of being a lady journalist is that no one thinks that you have a brain at all. People will reveal to you the most amazing things. It won’t take long for Dr. Seward to tell all about Lucy’s demise. Especially to you, pretty Mina with your dazzling eyes and ladylike comportment. Society women love to volunteer at the asylums. You might convince Dr. Seward that you are just another do-gooder.”

Each time Kate emphasized a word, she leaned forward with her lips like a woman about to take a bite out of her veil. “Mina, you know you want to do this. Just admit it.”

In fact, the part of myself that had always been intrigued with Kate’s journalistic activities was quickly being drawn into the plan. “I am interested in learning about the last days of Lucy’s life. I cannot promise that I will gather enough material for a newspaper story,” I said.

“Oh, but you will, Mina. I have no doubt. You always play the goody-goody with me, but that is only because you want to act as my foil.”

She wiped her mouth clean with a napkin. “Now listen carefully and I will quickly instruct you in the art of gathering information. You will find that the feminine habit of interrupting silences with meaningless chatter will not serve you. I have discovered that if I sit in silence, the subject will begin to blurt out things that would have gone unspoken if I had started chattering.”

“I have never seen you silent, Kate. You are a very aggressive interviewer.”

She considered this. “Normally, I interrogate vigorously. But it is not in your nature to do that, so you must use this other tactic, which I assure you will produce results. Pretend innocence and ignorance. Smile sweetly, as you do anyway, and let them do the talking. If talk ceases, just sit there. Out of the discomfort of silence, the most interesting information is revealed.”