Quincey Harker was immensely fond of David Morris, who had a streak of independence inside him that bordered on the aggressive: he refused to see anyone as his better, regardless of background or education, and it was this characteristic that had made it easy for him and Albert Holmwood, a man to whom rebellion and lack of respect for convention and authority had always come naturally, to become first friends, and then brothers in all but blood.
“Gentlemen,” he said. “A happy new year to you both.”
“And to you, Quincey,” said Albert Holmwood. “I suspect it is going to be an extremely interesting one. For all three of us.”
Harker frowned. “What do you mean, Albert? I’ve had enough interesting to last me a lifetime, believe me.”
“Wait and see, my friend,” smiled Albert Holmwood. “Just you wait and see.”
Quincey told his father what Albert had said during the journey back to Hampstead on New Year’s Day, but Jonathan Harker was frustratingly disinterested in the subject. Quincey held his tongue; it was consistent with what seemed to be a trend in his father’s behaviour, in his mother’s as well, to be honest.
It was clear they were both overjoyed to have him home, but they appeared to have no desire to discuss the things he had seen, or even to listen to him as he talked about them. He had told his father what he had witnessed in the church in Passchendaele, on the terrible night that Andrew Thorpe had been killed, and in Rome after the war ended, when he and his men had chased a man who could fly above the ground halfway across the Italian capital, but his father had given little more than a shrug in response. It hadn’t seemed as if he didn’t believe him, more that he just had no desire to talk about it.
A sharp knock on the door to the study roused Quincey from his thoughts.
“Come in,” he called.
The door opened and Jonathan Harker stepped into the room. He was a tall, thin man, dressed in a smart black suit, with ever-widening streaks of grey in hair that was swept back from his forehead and temples.
“Are you busy?” he asked.
Quincey shook his head. “No, Father,” he said. “What can I do for you?”
“If you have no plans,” said Jonathan, “I would like you to come to Piccadilly with me. There is a proposal I wish you to hear.”
Quincey frowned. “At the Foundation?”
Jonathan nodded. “Can you be ready in ten minutes?”
“Of course,” said Quincey. “Shall I see you downstairs?”
“Yes,” said Jonathan. “Ten minutes.”
He left the study and closed the door behind him, leaving his son in a state of some confusion.
Is he going to offer me a position at the Foundation?
wondered Quincey.
Surely he doesn’t believe I would give up the Army for a seat behind a desk?
Jonathan Harker had been an estate agent in his youth, a man who had arranged leases and purchases of some of the grandest properties in London, to a dazzling array of clients. In the early 1890s, after a particularly arduous deal involving a foreign nobleman, he had withdrawn from the business and become one of the trustees of the charitable foundation that had been established in the aftermath of the death of Lord Godalming, the father of Arthur Holmwood.
John Seward, who had worked in London’s asylums treating their poorest and most desperate patients, had also agreed to join the board, as had Abraham Van Helsing, the Dutch professor who had closed his practice and withdrawn from public life several months earlier. Quincey smiled at the memory of Van Helsing, who had now been dead for almost a decade; the fierce, remarkably intelligent professor had terrified him as a child, showing him broken skulls and jars full of shrunken heads and disembodied organs with a mischievous grin on his lined, weathered face.
The Holmwood Foundation administered a significant sum of funds bequeathed by Lord Godalming to a number of charitable projects, which dealt largely with abandoned and orphaned children. It was admirable work, and Quincey was extremely proud of his father and his friends for the difference they had managed to make in such a large number of lives, but it was not for him; not yet, at least. He did not know exactly what his future held, but he knew that he was not ready to don a suit and tie every morning and spend his days moving numbers around the pages of a ledger.
I’ll go, though, and hear the proposal. It would disappoint him if I refused.
Twenty minutes later he was sitting beside his father in the back of the Ford as their driver pointed the beautiful black car down the hill towards the centre of the capital. Quincey had a smile on his face; it was good to be out of the house, to feel the wind against his skin as it fluttered through the window. It was a cold January morning; frost coated the branches of the trees that became less numerous as they descended the hill, and the men and women of the capital were wrapped up as tightly as they were able, with scarves covering their mouths and noses and hats perched on their heads. But the wind felt like a summer breeze to Quincey, who had spent long nights lying in the freezing mud of Belgium wondering if he would ever be warm again.
On Piccadilly, their driver brought the car to a halt and Quincey followed his father up the steps to the townhouse that had belonged to the Holmwood family since it had been built. Jonathan Harker held the door open and he stepped through it, savouring the familiar scents of old paper and wax candles, and glancing up at the portrait that hung on the wall inside the door; the rugged, handsome face of Quincey Morris stared down at him from beneath the brim of his cowboy hat. The American’s memory loomed large over his father and his friends; he had been an integral part of the sad series of circumstances that had brought the men together.
Quincey had heard the story many times growing up: how Quincey Morris, John Seward and Arthur Holmwood had all proposed marriage to Lucy Westenra, his mother’s closest friend, how she had eventually accepted Arthur’s proposal, but had tragically died before the marriage could take place. A rare form of blood poisoning had taken her, and it was Van Helsing’s brave efforts to save her that had brought him into contact with the men who would become his friends. Morris himself had died abroad, in circumstances that Quincey Harker had never been able to persuade anyone to expand upon.
The events of the summer of 1891, so rich with scandal and romance and untimely death, had been turned into a novel that Quincey had been raised to regard with nothing short of contempt, a shameless attempt to turn the pain of his family and friends into entertainment, full of bats and wolves and ghostly ships. He had been forced, time and time again, to refute Bram Stoker’s version when schoolfriends and Army colleagues had approached him with the thick yellow hardback in their hands.
“Could nothing legally be done?” he had once asked his father, after his housemaster at Eton had quizzed him on the subject. “He didn’t even bother to change your names, Father.”
“Such a thing would serve only to dishonour the memories of Quincey and Lucy,” Jonathan Harker had replied. “And that is something I would never do, not for anything.”
Quincey was proud of the stance his father and his friends had taken, and always defended them with great vigour when questioned about
Dracula
. But if he was entirely honest with himself, Stoker’s story had crept into the corners of his mind on several occasions recently, given the creatures he had confronted in Passchendaele and Rome.
His father closed the door of the townhouse, placed a hand on his shoulder and led him up the stairs. Quincey could hear voices and laughter emerging from the rooms on the first floor, and felt his smile, which had momentarily disappeared as he stared at the portrait of the long-lost American, return to his face. The voices were familiar and carried with them a sense of easy comfort, a rapport honed and polished by decades of friendship. His heels thudded on the carpeted stairs, before his father led him across the landing and into the large room at the front of the building that looked out towards the Ritz.
Quincey frowned as he stepped through the door. Standing by the window, smiling and chatting to one another, were Arthur Holmwood and John Seward, while Henry Carpenter, the man who had been Van Helsing’s valet until he was invited to join the board of the Foundation, smiled up at them from a leather armchair. Standing by the fireplace, broad grins on their faces, were Albert Holmwood and David Morris; they were regarding him with expressions of great excitement.
Jonathan Harker walked across the room and stood beside his friends.
“My son,” he said, smiling widely. “We have much to tell you. It might perhaps be best if you were to sit down.”
“I’ll stand, thank you,” said Quincey. “What is this all about, Father?”
“As you wish, son,” said Jonathan. “It’s difficult to know exactly where to start, so I will attempt to tell you the facts, then explain how they came to our attention. Thankfully, given what you have seen, it is unlikely that you will find what I am about to tell you hard to believe.”
“Easier than it was for me, I’m sure,” said David Morris.
“And me,” said Albert Holmwood.
“Indeed,” said Jonathan, glancing over at the two young men. “Anyway, to business. What you see around you is not what you understand it to be. The Holmwood Foundation is real, and disperses funds as you have always known it to. It is not, however, administered from here in this building. It is based in an office on Jermyn Street and staffed by a group of men in Arthur’s employ.”
“So what is this place?” asked Quincey. He could feel curiosity beginning to bubble up inside him; this oblique, guarded manner was most unlike his father. “What is it that you do here every day?”
“My dear son,” said Jonathan Harker. “It gives me great pleasure to welcome you to the headquarters of the Department of Supernatural Investigation. The men in this room, all of whom you know, make up its ranks, and they are very much hoping that you will agree to join us. I am too.”
Quincey’s mind reeled, as though he had been struck on the head. “Say again, Father,” he managed. “The Department of what?”
“Of Supernatural Investigation,” repeated Jonathan Harker. “The simple truth is that there are things in this world that are not human, Quincey: godless monsters that take human form, but are something other. They are commonly referred to in literature and legend as vampires, and it is our understanding that you have encountered two of these creatures yourself in recent months.”
“Vampires,” said Quincey, rolling the word round his mouth. “I thought you didn’t believe what I told you, Father. You gave no indication of doing so.”
“And for that I sincerely apologise,” said Jonathan. “I could not discuss such matters with you outside this room. Your mother is all too aware of the existence of these creatures, but there are still protocols that must be followed. As far as the world beyond these walls is concerned, vampires do not exist, and it is vital that the public continues to believe that to be the case.”
“Why?” asked Quincey. He felt as if the floor beneath his feet was no longer solid, as though his feet were resting on unsteady foundations.
“Because such knowledge would cause panic,” said his father. “For many centuries, it appears that the number of these creatures could be counted on the fingers of two hands. Unfortunately, that is no longer the case. But I am getting ahead of myself. Let me tell you what I must, and we will endeavour to answer any remaining questions you have.”
Quincey nodded, and lowered himself into one of the leather armchairs as his father continued to talk.
“The incident that brought us together, first as acquaintances, then as friends, then made us as close as any brothers, is described with great accuracy by Bram Stoker in
Dracula
, which I apologise for having misled you about. He was told the story by my late friend Abraham Van Helsing, the year after we returned to London from Transylvania. The Prime Minister asked Abraham to investigate the disappearance of a chorus girl who performed at the Lyceum Theatre, where Stoker worked as manager. She was dead, along with several others, having been murdered by the former conductor of the theatre’s orchestra, who was afflicted with the same curse that had possessed Count Dracula.
“It was this incident that gave terrible confirmation to our worst fears: that the creature who killed poor Lucy Westenra, whom we chased across half of Europe and who met his end at the points of Quincey Morris’s and my blades, had not been the only member of his species, and that the plague was now beginning to spread. This dreadful revelation led Prime Minister Gladstone to ask Abraham to found this Department, giving him the legal authority to police the supernatural and protect the public from it. He agreed, on the condition that we would be allowed to join him, if we agreed to do so.”
“And all of you did?” asked Quincey. “You just gave up your lives and careers to do this work instead?”
“Without hesitation,” said Arthur Holmwood. “I could not permit what happened to Lucy to happen to anyone else.”
“Nor I,” said John Seward. “The decision was an easy one.”
“Arthur was kind enough to utilise a charitable bequest in his father’s will to allow the five of us to begin work without being entirely reliant on the government purse,” said Jonathan. “The Holmwood Foundation was quickly established; we moved into this building, and began our work.”
“What work?” asked Quincey. “This is a sitting room, father. This does not look like the kind of place where secret agents conduct business.”
His mind was racing, trying to process what he was being told. If
Dracula
was the truth, as opposed to the malicious fiction he had always understood it to be, then what he had seen in the final months of the war was beginning to make an awful sort of sense.
Vampires,
he thought.
Out there in the real world, taking lives.
Jonathan Harker smiled at his son. “I imagine it does not. But if you accept our offer, you are going to have to become accustomed to things that are not what they appear to be.”