“‘But, goddammit, what did they find?’ I pounded my fist on the arm of my chair. ‘What had the priests there reported? And why were they terrified?’
“‘Exactly my perplexity,’ Turgut assured me. ‘If Vlad Dracula was resting peacefully there, why were they worried about him hundreds of kilometers away, in Istanbul? And if Vlad’s tomb is indeed in Snagov and always was, why do the maps not match that region?’
“I could only respect the precision of his questions. ‘There is another thing,’ I said. ‘Do you think there is indeed the possibility that Dracula was buried here in Istanbul? Would that explain Mehmed’s worry about him after his death, and the presence of vampirism here from that era on?’
“Turgut clasped his hands in front of him and put one large finger on his chin. ‘That is an important question. We will need help with it, and perhaps my friend Selim is the person to help us.’
“For a moment we sat looking silently at each other in the dim hall of the pension, with the smell of coffee drifting across us, new friends united by an old cause. Then Turgut roused himself. ‘Clearly we must search more, further. Selim says he will lead us to the archive as soon as you can be ready. He knows sources there from fifteenth-century Istanbul that I have not much looked at myself because they lie far afield of my own interests in Dracula. We shall look at them together. No doubt Mr. Erozan will be happy to bring out all these materials for us before the public hours if I call him. He lives close to the archive and can open it for us before Selim must go to work himself. But where is Miss Rossi? Has she risen from her chambers yet?’
“This speech prompted a confused rush of thought in my brain, so that I didn’t know which problem to address first. The mention of Turgut’s librarian friend reminded me suddenly again of my librarian enemy, whom I had nearly forgotten in my excitement about the letter. Now I faced the peculiar task of straining Turgut’s credulity by reporting the visitation of a dead man, although surely his belief in historical vampires might be extended to contemporary ones. But his question about Helen reminded me that I had left her alone for an unpardonably long time. I’d wanted to give her privacy as she awoke, and had fully expected her to follow me downstairs as soon as possible. Why hadn’t she reappeared by now? Turgut was still talking. ‘So Selim-he never sleeps, you know-went for his morning coffee, because he did not wish to surprise you right away-ah, here he is!’
“The bell at the pension door rang and a slender man stepped in, pulling the door shut behind him. I think I had expected an august presence, an aging man in a business suit, but Selim Aksoy was young and slight, dressed in loose-fitting and rather shabby dark trousers and a white shirt. He hurried toward us with an eager, intense look on his face that was not quite a smile. It wasn’t until I was shaking his bony hand that I recognized the green eyes and long thin nose. I had seen his face before, and up close. It took me another second to place him, until I had the sudden memory of a slender hand passing me a volume of Shakespeare. He was the bookseller from the little shop in the bazaar.
“‘But we’ve already met!’ I exclaimed, and he was exclaiming something similar at the same moment, in what I took to be an amalgamation of Turkish and English. Turgut looked from one to the other of us, clearly perplexed, and when I explained, he laughed, then shook his head as if in wonder. ‘Coincidences’ was all he said.
“‘Are you ready to go?’ Mr. Aksoy waved aside Turgut’s offer of a seat in the parlor.
“‘Not quite,’ I said. ‘If you don’t mind, I will see where Miss Rossi is and when she can join us.’
“Turgut nodded a little too guilelessly.
“I ran into Helen on the stairs-literally, for I suddenly found myself taking the steps three at a time. She grabbed the railing to keep herself from toppling down the staircase. ‘Ouch!’ she said crossly. ‘What in the name of heaven are you doing?’ She was rubbing her elbow, and I was trying not to keep feeling the brush of her black suit and firm shoulder against my arm.
“‘Looking for you,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry-are you hurt? I just got a little worried because I’d left you alone up there so long.’
“‘I’m fine,’ she told me more mildly. ‘I’ve had some ideas. How long before Professor Bora arrives?’
“‘He’s here already,’ I reported, ‘and he brought a friend.’
“Helen recognized the young bookseller, too, and they talked, haltingly, while Turgut dialed up Mr. Erozan and shouted into the receiver. ‘There has been a rainstorm,’ he explained when he returned to us. ‘The lines get a little furry in this part of town when it rains. My friend can meet us at once at the archive. He sounded sick, actually, maybe with a cold, but he said he’d come right away. Do you want coffee, madam? And I will buy you some sesame rolls on the way.’ He kissed Helen’s hand, to my displeasure, and we all hurried out.
“I was hoping to keep Turgut back as we walked so that I could tell him privately about the appearance of the vicious librarian from home; I didn’t think I could explain this in front of a stranger, particularly one Turgut had described as having little real sympathy for vampire hunts. Turgut was deep in conversation with Helen before we’d walked a block, however, and I had the double misery of watching her bestow her rare smile on him and of knowing I was keeping back information I ought to give him at once. Mr. Aksoy walked next to me, casting a glance at me now and then, but for the most part he seemed so lost in his own thoughts that I didn’t feel I should interrupt him with observations on the beauty of the morning streets.
“We found the outer door to the library unlocked-Turgut said with a smile that he’d known his friend would be prompt-and went quietly in, Turgut ushering Helen gallantly before him. The little entrance hall, with its fine mosaics and the registration book lying open and ready for the day’s visitors, was deserted. Turgut held the inner door for Helen, and she had gone well into the hushed, dim hall of the library before I heard her intake of breath and saw her stop so suddenly that our friend almost tripped behind her. Something made the hair on the back of my neck rise even before I could tell what was happening, and then something quite different made me push rudely past the professor to Helen’s side.
“The librarian waiting for us stood motionless in the middle of the room, his face turned, as if eagerly, toward our arrival. He was not, however, the friendly figure we’d expected, nor was he already bringing out the box we’d hoped to examine again, or some pile of dusty manuscripts on Istanbul ’s history. His face was pale, as if drained of life-exactly as if drained of life. This was not Turgut’s librarian friend but ours, alert and bright-eyed, his lips unnaturally red and his hungry gaze burning in our direction. At the moment his eyes lit on me, my hand gave a throb where he had bent it back so hard in the library stacks. He was famished for something. Even if I’d had the tranquillity of mind in which to conjecture about that hunger-whether it was a thirst for knowledge or for something else-I would not have had time to form the thought. Before I could so much as step between Helen and the ghoulish figure, she pulled a pistol from her jacket pocket and shot him.”
Chapter 35
“Later, I knew Helen in a great range of situations, including those we call ordinary life, and she never stopped surprising me. Often what astonished me in her were the quick associations her mind made between one fact and another, associations that usually resulted in an insight I would have been slow to reach myself. She dazzled me, too, with the wonderful breadth of her learning. Helen was full of these surprises, and I grew to consider them my daily fare, a pleasant addiction I developed to her ability to catch me off guard. But she never startled me more than at that moment in Istanbul, when she suddenly shot the librarian.