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-- OR -- Inspector Lestrade, the hero of Scotland Yard, can also be seen in these previous issues of Electro-Graphic Monthly courtesy of his literary agent Frank Coffman: Inspector
Lestrade's
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A
Letter From Inspector Lestrade From: Inspector G. Lestrade Fellow Members of I take this opportunity to write with the assurance from Count Dmitriu Florescu that this missive will find its way post haste through the wilds of this region and thence across Europe and to the London and the land that I yearn to see again in the near future, following as I will this letter by only the few more days that I believe will be necessary for me to finish my investigations and my duties here. I have been on the trail of a murderer -- a fiend the extent of whose evil cannot be fathomed by the normal human sensibilities. This man kills for the sake of killing it seems, and not since the Ripper atrocities back in '88 has the Yard been confronted by anything like such a series of cases of murder most foul -- as, to quote the Bard, in the best it is. But these crimes have been the worst encountered in my long experience. The victims, first in London (three) and then in Kent (five) and lastly along the South Coast near Beachy Head (two more before the fiend's escape by small yacht over to Normandy), have been mostly young women. But there have been several victims who have been men of various ages and stations and one matron of middle age. Unlike the Ripper crimes, the young ladies in most of the cases have been anything but the sort who have "fallen upon bad fortune" in the East End. Rather, they have been young women for the most part of either high station or of comfortable means. The trail of this stranger to our shores, was fairly early discovered to be a foreigner, but -- alas! -- far too late discovered to be a Romanian with a vast enough fortune to pay for elusive escapes and the race across the Channel in small sailing vessels and angry sea that nearly cost your humble correspondent his own life. I trailed him to Paris (two more deaths are almost certainly linked to him there) and then across the continent eastward and south, ending my journey and investigations as I have back in the murderer's own land. I may confide in the membership some of the details of these horrid crimes, in that there is a common factor which cannot be overlooked or passed off as coincidence. The victims have been discovered not only bereft of life, but nearly or completely bloodless -- but with no quantity of blood to be found anywhere about the corpses. In addition to the cases of murder, there are no fewer than four people who are missing who have been in the path of this villain, and I fear that there is little hope that they still live. I have come to the final stages of my searches here, for I find the local population so backward that they cannot assist in any genuine way and will only keep mumbling folk superstitions and legends of monstrous forces. I wish that Holmes and Watson might be here for consultation, and I have sent telegrams to Sherlock, but he is busy with other matters and his firm belief all things preternatural can be explained away rationally would no doubt meet with the same poor or even no communication with the natives of this region. Even Count Florescu, educated at Oxford and in all other respects a civilized and sophisticated man of obvious high intellect seems ready enough to discourage my further investigations and, without saying so directly, offers no contention or counter-argument to the ramblings of some of the villagers in the town below. I have met a Dutch physician who is also a guest of Florescu and who has been in the area for some time doing research. His theories are so extraordinary that I shall not trouble the members of the group with their excesses of fancy. But I will say that they bear directly upon the fiend that I've been stalking -- preposterous though they are. I am truly beginning to weary of this place. There is a sublime beauty to the vast forested and mist shrouded hills of this region, but at night the darkness is palpable and the chill seems an order of magnitude colder than the worst icy fogs of a London winter. I shall be glad to be returning home soon. The local constabulary have been of no help, and -- as I've said -- the general population less. I am afraid that my chase is at its end, for the trail has grown cold. Perhaps the most we can hope for is that the murderer might return some day to England and that he may be recognized and apprehended, as his features and form have been described in great detail by those few who knew him in his various aliases as he worked his evil in our land. All that I can write for now. It is a damp and chill evening and the sun is setting. A wolf is howling out in the forest and that sound is a fitting echo or accompaniment to the temper of my weary soul. I shall give a much fuller report when I'm back with friends and fellow members around the hearth at the Club. Yours by
the Light of the Dark Lantern, |
