Some people would say I’m overdoing it rather. Somebody called Constance or some such name would go further and accuse me of childish romancing, that old bad habit of mine. Well, it’s possible. I’ll see how I feel when I come back from this evening’s expedition. Nothing elaborate, hardly more than a stroll before dinner. I have a good hour to kill, it’s a clear evening and anyway I must get out and about. I’m so rested that I’m restless. (Can those two words really be connected?) Or perhaps I’m simply impatient to start my investigation. You must bear with me about this business, darling Connie. You must do more than that; I know (how well I know!) that you consider the whole thing to be the most perfect piffle imaginable, and you’re probably right, but do, like the sweetest as well as the wisest of wives, wish me luck in my search for the vampire.
This won’t go off till the morning (if then!) so I’ll leave it open and add any new information of interest before I finally post it. Meanwhile, I give you my love, I give you my thoughts, and my heart is joined with yours even though you are so far away.
II — Countess Valvazor’s Journal
31 August 1925 — The undirected uneasiness, the small vague fears I have been subjected to over these last weeks, sharpened tonight into foreboding: I sense the approach of danger. What kind or degree of danger still eludes me, but I hardly care if it should prove to be mortal. I take a long look at this statement now that I have committed it to paper and ask myself in all honesty whether it is true. Yes, I say, I believe it is. I am weary beyond all expression, and I have nothing to look forward to in my life. If only I could appeal to God to help me to endure! But everything is over between Him and my wretched self, and I am alone in perpetuity.
Again I reread what I have just written, and am struck equally by the self-pity in it and its quality of — what shall I call it? — determined hopelessness, refusal to consider any prospect of alleviation. In the impossible event that a stranger ever comes across these lines, he could think no differently. But, stranger, I would cry to him, these repulsive characteristics are part of my condition. They poison everything, they come between me and everything I once enjoyed: food and drink, literature, art. Here I am surrounded by beautiful objects, or so at least I regarded them at one time. Now, an abominable mist hangs over them, coarsening the outlines, tainting and muddying the colours. Poems I loved in the past are no longer intelligible; they are full of words that have lost their meaning for me, references to feelings I cannot remember. Come, whatever you are, whoever you are, do what you will with me, so long as you sweep the mist aside, make me see the way I used to see, help me to escape from myself.
My call has been heeded — no, impossible, for the unknown has been moving towards me since the middle of the month at latest. But all the same, now, without question, something, somebody, one or the other, is at hand. And this is no fancy — as I write these words there are sounds of movement under my window. What visitor is here?
Is it Death?
III — Stephen Hillier to Constance Hillier
Castle Valvazor,
Nuvakastra,
Dacia
Later, 31 August
Darling Connie,
A new address calls for a new salutation. Well, your brainy husband has brought off the most stunning coup, as you can see. Here’s how it came about.
Fifteen minutes’ walk from the inn brought me to the front door of the castle, which I must explain isn’t a castle as we at home think of it but a large and splendid house, in this case in a sort of Byzantine style, all domes and pillars. (Early seventeenth century, I heard later.) I’d been intending just to have a look round and sample the atmosphere, and certainly the place looked sinister enough in all conscience, with the moon not yet risen and an owl hooting in a fashion that sounded more than just dismal. There was a lighted window on an upper floor that somehow caught my attention, and though I’d had no intention of paying a call until the next day I suddenly found myself at the great front door operating an enormous wrought-iron knocker. Two minutes later I was talking to Countess Valvazor — in Dacian!
To have got inside without an appointment was a sufficient surprise; these old families aren’t usually so accessible. Then the countess herself — all I’d been able to gather from the embassy in London was that the castle was occupied by someone of that style and name, someone older, I’d rather thought, than the youngish, expensively dressed woman in front of me. Quite striking, I suppose, if you like that aquiline type. But the real shock came when she led me out of the hall, which was about the size of a church and full of tapestries and suits of armour and goodness knows what, and into a (comparatively) small parlour opening off it. There are old pictures and old chairs and so on in here too, but also a cigarette-box, a typewriter, a gramophone and records (including some of Paul Whiteman, it turned out) and among other magazines (you won’t believe this) a copy of the Tatler! I’d just about taken all this in when the countess spoke to me again. She said she agreed it made a slightly bizarre sight, but she said it in English! Perfect English, too, or rather perfect American. It shouldn’t have been as surprising as all that, after the Tatler, but it was, just the same.
Well, she went on to explain that she’d been educated in America, and she was very nice about my Dacian, and she said I’d said I was a scholar, and I said the Dacian word skolari was the nearest I knew, but really I was just an amateur, a dabbler in popular mythology, and I told her a bit about the book, and in no time… Look, my old Constance, I may as well do things in style and set this out like a proper story, so far as I can. It’ll save time in the end, because I want to keep a detailed record and this way I won’t have to make a separate set of notes. And I think even you will find parts of it mildly interesting, or at least odd. Here goes.
The countess asked, in effect, ‘What brings you to Castle Valvazor?’ I sort of jumped in with both feet and mentioned vampires, and she said, ‘Oh, so you know about us! I suppose we must be quite famous, even in England!’
What a relief — I should have told you that she spoke in a completely friendly, natural way. I said, ‘Only among the well informed.’
She said, ‘For the moment, perhaps. Of course I’ll be glad to tell you everything I know, and let you see the family documents.’
I thanked her, and offered my cigarette-case, and she took one, saying she adored State Express. Then she asked me where my luggage was. (Actually she called it ‘baggage’ in the American style.)
I said it was in the — sorry. I said, ‘In my room at the Albergu Santu Ioanni.’
Without a second’s thought she rang a hand-bell and said, ‘We always keep a guest-room ready.’
Can you imagine how I felt! I tried to protest; I said, ‘You mustn’t let me impose myself on you.’
‘I’m doing the imposing,’ she said. ‘We get so few visitors here, and most of them are boring relatives. I’m being practical, too; it’ll take you at least a whole day to get through the archives.’
I murmured my thanks (I was really quite overwhelmed), and then the maidservant or housekeeper who had answered the front door came into the room. Name of Magda, it seems; about fifty; typical Dacian peasant stock; obviously devoted to the countess. Arrangements to fetch my things were quickly made. I gave special instructions about the letter to you I had left in my room (I have it in front of me now), and handed over a ten-florin note to compensate the landlord of the albergu for his trouble. (I had already paid for a full day’s board.) And that was that. So here I am, installed as a guest in the house of the most celebrated family of vampires in the whole of Dacia!