Sherlock Holmes and Mr Hyde by Christian Klaver

Author:Christian Klaver [Klaver, Christian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
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Publisher: Titan Books

Chapter 09

THE ESOTERIC ORDER OF DAGON

I awoke just before dusk and had just started stretching out the kinks in my back that everyone, vampire or not, acquired from sleeping on a couch when I saw a note from Holmes stating that he would be returning shortly and requesting that I check on Fleete at the police station.

Our nocturnal household was just rising and Mrs Hudson had arranged ample sustenance for our little band of mostly blood-drinking investigators. In this short period while Dracula recovered and Holmes firmed up his campaign of war, that same campaign was nearly brought to ruin when Mrs Hudson revolted, ready to have us all thrown out on our ears. It seemed that blood from the butcher’s shop was a macabre and grotesque regularity that she was willing to suffer in small quantities for my own person, but when it became necessary to quadruple our supply, she was quite at her wit’s end. In addition, having strangers sleeping in the bedrooms at night while her lodgers sprawled on couches was the last straw. Her first obstreperous objection came from Dracula and Mina in my room, but this was smoothed over by Dracula himself, who thanked Mrs Hudson for her accommodations in such a charming manner that he quite won our landlady’s heart and soul. A day later there was another near row on account of the fact that Miss Winter, Holmes, Jekyll or Hyde were all taking turns sleeping in Holmes’s bed during the night.

“Highly disgraceful!” Mrs Hudson railed. “Like the hot swapping berths on a dirty ship and that’s not the kind of establishment that I run, gentlemen!”

Of the two affronts to decency, I believe the sleeping arrangements far outweighed our macabre diet, by Mrs Hudson’s reckoning. Particularly when a woman was involved. Mrs Hudson sniffed her disdain and disapproval at Miss Winter constantly when she thought Miss Winter could not hear her. Mostly Miss Winter ignored this, but occasionally the passive tirade would become tiresome to her and she would fix Mrs Hudson with a glare that sent our landlady scurrying from the room.

The first two days, Mrs Hudson showed a clear admiration for the smooth-faced, handsome Dr Jekyll, but he spent one morning regaling her with the fascinating properties of a particularly corrosive chemical compound that he had created, and how he’d sold it to the government as a useful tool in both warfare and interrogation to fund his other work. Mrs Hudson had been appalled and had since refused to speak to him, referring to him once after that as a ‘dried-up shell of a man’. She would have nothing further to do with him. Hyde she loathed on sight and he did little to discourage this, often badgering her with leers and off-colour jests to amuse himself. I do not believe Holmes shared Jekyll and Hyde’s secret with our good landlady and their constant appearance and disappearances, unexplained to her, added a great deal to her distaste for both persons. It made for a rather trying time for all of us.

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