Page 77 of Lucy Undying

Putting a pin in Doctor Seward’s activities, we move on to Arthur’s courtship. According to Lucy’s journals, she never meets his father or visits Arthur’s home. Because Arthur introduced himself, rather than being introduced through other members of society who might have warned her, Lucy had no idea that the Goldaming estate was completely bankrupt. They were so deeply in debt that the family manor had been rented out. Fallis and Co. conveniently kept the rental documents, as well as Lord Goldaming’s death certificate, which revealed he was living in a cheap boardinghouse.

So, we have two longtime friends descending on a wealthy heiress’s life at the same time: a doctor who triggered a steep decline in Lucy’s mother’s health, and a bankrupt future lord presenting himself as a viable marriage candidate while keeping Lucy from discovering his dire financial straits.

Still circumstantial. Fortunately, Fallis and Co. is nothing if not fastidious about keeping documents. At the time of Lucy’s engagement and subsequent death, they were a newly licensed solicitor’s office with only two original clients: a penniless lord…and a governess from the lower classes, one Mina Murray. Why would Mina employ a solicitor at all, much less the same solicitor as a man she claimed not to know? More on Mina’s use of the solicitor after we go through the Westenra documents.

Here, the original Westenra will. It leaves everything to Lucy, with the exception of a few pieces of land going to distant male cousins due to antiquated inheritance laws. But here, documented and signed by Fallis and Co., a new will naming Arthur Fucking Holmwood the sole beneficiary of the entire Westenra fortune.

Lucy died before they could wed. Engagements weren’t legally binding. He had no relation to the Westenras, no claim, however tenuous, on their fortune. But Mrs. Westenra signed the new will, leaving everything to him before the wedding.

Notice how Mrs. Westenra’s signature changes from the original will to the new will, drafted mere days before her death. What had been a fussy and elegant signature becomes practically illegible. The sad attempt of a dying woman…or a deeply drugged one.

Such a will was doubtless grounds for a legal fight, though. Who would believe Mrs. Westenra had consented to it? Contained within the safe as insurance were several written testimonies. Arthur Holmwood, John Seward, and Abraham Van Helsing all note in clear, precise detail that it was Mrs. Westenra’s dying wish that Arthur inherit everything so he could take care of Lucy. Nowhere in the safe is Mrs. Westenra’s written testimony to this same fact, nor Lucy’s.

According to both Lucy’s journals, when the new will was signed, she was in and out of consciousness. The men record that they were sedating her and performing transfusions and other procedures without her consent or knowledge in an effort to keep her alive.

Where was Lucy’s best friend and dearest companion, Mina, when all this was happening? She was hard at work.

While her fiancé, Jonathan Harker, was in Transylvania on a business trip, Mina was negotiating her own business. She convinced his employer, the much older, extremely wealthy Mister Hawkins, to let them move into his house upon her marriage to Jonathan. The understanding was that Mina would care for him and manage the household.

Mina found and wed Jonathan in Europe. They returned, moved in with Mister Hawkins, and not two weeks later, Mister Hawkins died.

One week before his death, he, too, signed a new will. Though Mina and Jonathan had no relation to him or claim on his fortune, he left everything to the Harkers and their heirs. And even though Mister Hawkins himself was a well-respected solicitor with an entire office of solicitors to help him, the will was executed by…Fallis and Co.

We haven’t forgotten about Doctor Seward, the sanitarium director so fond of making house calls to non-patients. Arthur and Doctor Seward both encouraged Lucy not to seek a second opinion on her mother’s health issues. When Mrs. Westenra visited Whitby and was therefore removed from Doctor Seward’s care, she improved dramatically. Only to slide back down as soon as Doctor Seward once again had access to her.

In Lucy’s journal, her mother’s special medicinal brandy is mentioned twice. On Doctor Seward’s recommendation, Lucy takes a little to calm herself after two proposals and instead finds herself spinning and scarcely able to stand—and extremely pliable to Arthur’s proposal.

Then, the night Mrs. Westenra dies, Lucy notes that the maids had gotten into the brandy. All three maids were unconscious on the floor, having consumed only a small amount of the liquid.

Whether Mrs. Westenra died of heart failure is impossible to determine. No one examined her other than Doctor Seward. This is something she had in common with several others, as indicated by this collection of death certificates declaring death by natural causes for her, the elder Lord Holmwood, Mister Hawkins, and Lucy herself. All signed by Doctor John Seward.

A collection of bodies tended to by Doctor Seward, a collection of inheritances legalized by Fallis and Co., and two clever con artists sitting atop both the bodies and the riches: Arthur and Mina.

They were quite the team. But they ran into an unexpected complication. While Mister Hawkins, the elder Lord Goldaming, and Mrs. Westenra were always going to die, Lucy wasn’t supposed to. Arthur and Mina had successfully pressured her into a short engagement and quick wedding because she was crucial to their plot. With Lucy on Arthur’s arm, no one would look twice at his taking charge of his young wife’s finances.

They can’t be blamed for not anticipating what happened next, all because Mina’s fiancé Jonathan had attracted the attention of a vampire.

67

London, October 8, 2024

Iris

“Iris,” Elle interrupts, her voice trembling.

I knew this was where I would lose her. Her eyes are so wide I can see the whites all around the stormy blue centers. She’s crouched on the floor, searching through the various documents: the letters kept for no reason other than to provide alibis, the fake journal of Lucy’s that unfortunately only praised her predators, the accounts of the men, meticulous in their details of trying desperately to save Lucy and yet somehow failing to prevent identical attack after identical attack.

There’s even a letter in a careful imitation of Lucy’s own hand, detailing the events of the night a “wolf” scared her mother to death, absolving anyone of guilt.

There was no wolf. There was never any wolf. Someone drugged the maids and killed her mother, and someone else—perhaps a clever governess who had so many loving letters from Lucy and a whole journal as handwriting references—forged a letter and broke a window to take advantage of the rumor of an escaped zoo animal.

“Look at this part,” I say, pointing to Lucy’s real journal, then to several of the men’s accounts. “They knew she was being attacked. They scrambled to save her, even bringing in a doctor from Europe. They couldn’t let Lucy die before everything was in order, and Mrs.Westenra hadn’t signed the new will yet. Here, see, Lucy can’t understand why she wakes up feeling so strange. Here, where she describes her blood feeling like shards of glass in her veins? Says it feels like everything inside her is on fire? Those fuckwits were giving her blood transfusions without her consent! They didn’t even know what her blood type was. It was actually lucky that someone else was removing the blood before Lucy’s body could destroy itself. It was probably too late for her anyway, but once they had the new will, Lucy’s survival wasn’t essential. Over and over, the same shit happened, and they let it. They ‘fell asleep’ or ‘forgot to spend the night’ or ‘left her mother in charge.’ Bullshit. They knew her mother was incompetent, because they were the ones drugging her!”

I’m ranting now, I can’t help it. I’m so angry and sad. “Van Helsing saw immediately that they were dealing with a vampire, not some wasting sickness. They could have taken Lucy and run. Hidden her. Actually protected her. But they never did. When every legal document was in order, Lucy’s inheritance secured, they let her die. They let the vampire have her, because they didn’t need her for anything else.”

“No, this is—this isn’t right.” Elle picks up various letters and documents, looking at them and then throwing them down. She doesn’t touch the journals, doesn’t even look at them. “This makes no sense.”

“That letter, there. Van Helsing. He describes the vampire. I’m not making it up, I’m not crazy.”

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