The Empty Coffins Read online

  “And that’s all you can tell us?” Blair asked, puzzled.

  “I’m afraid it is, Sergeant.”

  Dr. Meadows stirred a little and locked up his bag. Then: “Do any of you people here believe in vampires?”

  There was a dead silence for a moment, one looking at the other. Sergeant Blair licked the end of his pencil and turned bovine eyes upon the doctor.

  “Yes, it sounds ridiculous,” Meadows admitted, shrugging. “But the fact does remain that these injuries of Madge’s are similar to those which a vampire might inflict. It is plain that some creature or other has tried to pierce the main veins on her neck, particularly the jugular. For­tunately the attempt failed. An ordinary attacker would not do a thing like that. She would have been hit over the head, probably.”

  “But this is preposterous!” Peter exclaimed. “A vampire doesn’t really exist! It belongs to folklore. It’s as crazy as fairies at the bottom of the garden!”

  “Is it?” Meadows gave a faint smile. “I’m not sure of that, Peter. In many small villages in England, such as this one—places rich in folk­lore and legend—apparitions have been seen from time to time. Ghosts, creatures of tiny stature, which might even be gnomes, and vampires. Look through the history of any village, this one in­cluded, and you’ll find all the details. For my own part—and I’ve studied the subject—I believe that vampires do exist. After all, why not? We have definite evidence that ghosts and presences appear amongst us. Why not vampires?”

  Sergeant Blair scratched the back of his ear. “Beggin’ your pardon, doctor, but just what is a vampire, anyway? Is it one of those bat-things?”

  “No.” Meadows shook his head. “You’re thinking of a vampire-bat—a different. thing altogether. It’s a bat belonging to Central and South America. A vampire proper is the ghost of a suicide, or some such excommunicated person, who seeks vengeance on the living by attacking them and sucking away their blood. The person attacked also becomes a vampire in turn and preys upon others as he himself was preyed upon.”

  Sergeant Blair licked his lips and Constable Hawkins’ Adam’s-apple moved grotesquely up and down as he swallowed.

  “Great heavens!” Madge Paignton shrieked, leap­ing up and holding her throat. “You don’t mean that I might—”

  “Good heavens, no, child.” Meadows gave a ser­ious smile and walked over to her, giving her shoulders a reassuring squeeze. “You’ve nothing to worry about—though you might have had if you had been genuinely bitten…. I may be wrong in my theory, of course—I sincerely hope I am—but I still think it’s worth considering.”

  “Best thing we can do,” Sergeant Blair decided, “is go to the cemetery and see what we can dis­cover. This amounts to a criminal attack on Miss Paignton and we’ve got to find out who did it—I don’t suppose you’d care to come to, doctor? Knowing about—vampires, I mean?”

  Meadows shrugged. “I will if you wish. Have you got your car with you? Mine’s—”

  “You can use mine,” Peter said. “It’s outside. I think we’d better all go and have a look.”

  He led the way to the door and the doctor and two police officials followed him. Perhaps ten minutes later Peter had drawn up outside the cemetery’s locked gates. He clambered out into the rain, Meadows and then the two policemen emerging after him.

  “No night for a job like this,” Blair growled, and he glanced up at the leaf-empty trees lashing in the screaming wind.

  “The law has to act, even if it be in the midst of an earthquake,” Meadows said. He fumbled in his pocket and brought a small torch to view in the glow of the sidelights from Peter’s car. “Here, Sergeant: this may be useful.”

  “Thanks.” Blair contemplated the gates, gleam­ing with rain. “How d’you suppose we get into this damned place? Climb the railings?”

  “Only way, I imagine.” Peter responded. “I sup­pose Madge Paignton must have done that since the gates are closed.... I’ll go first.”

  He grabbed onto the ironwork, thrust his foot into one of the ornamentations, and then clambered upwards. The policemen followed him, and they in turn gave a hand to Dr. Meadows, for whom it was no easy task. Finally, however, the quartet was on the other side of the barrier and walking along the main shale pathway leading to the little church. To either side of them, glistening with rain as the torch-beam struck them, loomed grave­stones, tablets, and pillars.

  “There must be an easier way in and out of this place,” Blair said presently. ‘That girl said she used this cemetery as a short cut. She’d hardly climb railings at both sides—and in her Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes too. We’d better look for the spot where she must have got through—the one nearest Kingsford Row.”

  They found an opening ultimately, well beyond the church itself and at the other side of the graveyard to the spot at which they had entered. Here the railings were partly collapsed and app­arently the slovenly local authority had been at no pains to put them back up again.

  “Yes, this is where she must have entered,” Blair said, flashing the torch beam around him on gravel and gravestones. “We’d better work our way across and see if we can locate the spot where she was attacked. Pity she wasn’t more specific—but I suppose she was too scared to remember.”

  The other men did not speak. They glanced about them as they walked, turning their faces as such as possible from the deluge sweeping across the dreary expanse of burial ground—then presently Dr. Meadows stopped and pointed.

  “What’s that?” he asked, and Blair swung round the torch beam. It settled on something black with rain lying at the edge of the shale pathway.

  “Madge Paignton’s overcoat,” Constable Hawkins said, picking it up. “Here’s her name stitched on the lining.”

  Meadows, Peter, and Blair moved to the spot. At this point the grass verge joined the pathway. There were obvious signs of there having been a struggle—gouges in the shale, lumps of turf kicked up, and on a nearby grave some flowers had been overturned and the topsoil was indented with footprints.

  “Apparently Miss Paignton spoke the truth,” Blair looked about him. “All the signs of it. Footprints and—”

  “Not only her footprints, either,” Meadows said, studying the grave’s soil surface. “Look at this! Shoe marks, and those of naked feet.”

  “Naked?” The Sergeant gave a start and bent to a closer examination. Constable Hawkins and Peter looked also—then all four men glanced at each other in wonder. There was no doubt of the fact that naked feet had pranced about on the topsoil.

  “What do you make of it, doctor?” Peter asked, puzzled.

  “I’m afraid it verifies my theory,” Meadows answered, frowning. “Obviously a vampire would not wear shoes. The creature is supposed to arise from the grave, through the coffin and the surr­ounding soil, to desecrate the living. The creature concerned would be bare-footed and in a shroud.”

  The howl of the wind whipped away some further words he added. Sergeant Blair licked his lips and gave a furtive glance.

  “Do you suppose we could—find this vampire?” he asked. “Granting it exists?”

  “From the look of these footprints. Sergeant, there is little doubt as to its existence. As for finding it—” Meadows gave a shrug. “That, I am afraid, is impossible. A vampire has the power to vanish as completely as a ghost, returning maybe to the grave from which it came.”

  “And which grave do you suppose that could be?” Constable Hawkins demanded.

  Meadows looked about him on the lonely tombs, the wind howling dismally past them.

  “I’ve no idea,” he said at last. “How can I have?”

  Blair cleared his throat. “I don’t like this blasted business a bit,” he admitted frankly. “I’ll tackle anything that belongs to this world—anything flesh and blood; but when it comes to crawly things that come out of a grave— I don’t want any part of it!’

  “If it’s in your line of duty you’ll have to put up with it,” Meadows told him. “We’re up ag
ainst something supernatural—judging from the evidences—and it’s your job to discover exactly what, or who, it was which attacked that girl. All the village will demand to know. It may not have been the only attack. If a vampire is loose in this cemetery nobody is safe, from the youngest to the eldest.”

  “Then what do I do?” Blair demanded. “I can’t chase something that doesn’t exist!”

  “It does exist, Sergeant—only it has the power to return to its starting point. Namely, the coffin from which it came. However, maybe there is a way of getting at it….”

  The other men waited, huddled against the buff­eting wind and streaming rain.

  “A vampire,” Meadows proceeded, “is technically a spirit, an evil presence. In its waking moments when it becomes a vampire it is visible much the same as when alive as a human being, except that it will wear a shroud. But, upon returning to the grave whence it came, it becomes invisible to mor­tal eyes because it is in a state of suspended animation. For the time being, that is, it is not pervaded by the demoniac life it possesses when on the rampage. Which means that wherever in this cemetery there is a totally empty coffin—there lies the vampire.”

  “Oh!” Blair said, and the whites of his eyes showed as he glanced at Hawkins.

  “If it’s not there,” said Hawkins, “how do we kill it?”

  “Obviously you can’t, if it’s invisible. The only thing to do is wait until it is on the ram­page—and visible— Then attack it and drive a stake through its heart. There is no other way.”

  “It—it doesn’t seem to be anywhere about to­night,” Hawkins said, with a glance around the dismal spaces. “So I suppose we’d better hold a nightly vigil here, starting tomorrow night, to see if we can locate this—thing.”

  “You can try that, of course,” Meadows agreed. “But please remember that vampires do not nec­essarily haunt the churchyard. They move far and wide over the countryside. They can strike—anywhere.”

  “But they have to start from the churchyard,” Peter pointed out. ‘It seems the best place to me.”

  “That is up to our two good friends here,” Meadows said. “For my part I’m having nothing to do with the business. I’ve read enough to know what horror a vampire can inflict on a hapless hu­man being. I don’t intend to lay myself open to possible attack.”

  “We’d better get out of here,” Blair decided. “Maybe we’d better ask somebody from the Institute of Psychic Research to come down here and look the place over. Vampires are hardly in the line of police duty.”

  “That’s up to you,” Meadows said. “I’d add, though, that psychic investigators are more con­cerned with phantoms and poltergeists than vamp­ires.”

  Nothing more was said as the journey through the cemetery continued. When presently the railings were reached a search was made to find an opening, through which Madge Paignton had presumably escaped. It was discovered finally: two railings being twist­ed apart far enough to permit of the passage of a body.

  “Well, that’s that,” Peter said, when they were back in the roadway with his car twenty yards distant. “Can I give you a lift home, doctor? You too, gentlemen?”

  They all nodded their thanks in the glow of the torch, but said nothing. The sobering effect of the churchyard and Dr. Meadows’ observations had made speech singularly difficult.

  Peter led the way back to his car and dropped the two police officers in the village; then he carried on beyond it with Dr. Meadows seated beside him.

  “All this talk about a vampire isn’t just a—a leg-pull, is it, doc?” Peter asked, after a while.

  Meadows gave him a glance. “Good heavens, Peter, you know me better than that! I’m convinced it is all too true—and that’s why I’m worried. With a vampire loose, just anything can happen until it is destroyed.”

  “I find it hard to believe in anything so hid­eous.”

  “That’s because you have never encountered it before. To you it probably seems as remote from possibility as a sea-serpent.”

  “More so, I’m afraid.”

  “Such things do exist, son,” Meadows said de­liberately. “I know they do. You see—my cousin died because of an attack by a vampire.”

  Peter nearly released the steering wheel in his amazement.

  “He—did?’

  “It wasn’t in this country,” Meadows continued soberly. “At that time I was practicing in a re­mote corner of Ireland, and if ever there was a place for manifestations it is Ireland. I was staying with my cousin at the time. He was attack­ed one night by something he could only describe as deathly white, which seemed to float through the air. On his neck were two scars. From the night of that attack he began to waste away, and finally died.

  “At first we thought he had some kind of disease—we being myself and the villagers amongst whom I was living—then it occurred to somebody that he was perhaps being attacked nightly by a vampire which was drawing the blood from his body. It was only then that he had con­sciousness enough to describe the nightly visit of the white apparition. He had thought it a dream: we knew it was fact. We killed the vampire finally by driving a stake through its heart when it came one night. My cousin died shortly afterward. Pres­umably he too became a vampire— I didn’t wait to see. I left Ireland post haste and came to England here.”

  Peter drew up the car outside the doctor’s home.

  “I think,” Meadows said, climbing out into the rain and drawing him bag after him, “we’re up against it, son. Quite a lot of unpleasant things may happen in this village of ours before we’re much older.”

  “Unless the vampire is caught.”

  “Hope for the best…. Good night, Peter, and thanks for the lift—both ways.”

  Meadows slammed the car door and went up the front door to his house. Peter sat thinking for a moment, the windscreen wiper clicking back and forth steadily; then he reversed the car and drove back through the streaming rain to his home.

  CHAPTER THREE

  THE EMPTY COFFIN

  The mysterious attack that had been made on Madge Paignton was not repeated on any other member of the village, either men or woman. For some nights, Sergeant Blair and Constable Hawkins kept a watch on the cemetery, but nothing happened. So, grad­ually, things began to drift back to their former state of torpor and there was no more talk of vam­pires or things that go bump in the night.

  Peter said nothing to Elsie of his experience. The girl was under strain enough; but inevitably, during her visits to the village, she heard of the vampire and its supposed attack on Madge Paignton. Not that she paid much heed: she seemed to consider such fantasy as not worthy of notice.

  Peter for his part went ahead with the wedding arrangements, and a month after his experience with Madge Paignton he and Elsie were married. They honeymooned in London and returned to Little Pay­ling a month afterwards. By this time the worst inclemency of winter had passed and February was passing into March.

  Upon their return they both expected to hear gossip about themselves, but instead it centred upon a totally different subject—one they had both believed had expired. Vampires! Or at least, one vampire.

  The facts, as far as they could glean them in the village, were that during their absence two more attacks had succeeded. A farmer—and a week later, a well known local builder had both been foully murdered. Apparently their bodies had been discovered almost drained of blood. The farmer had been found in a ditch, and the builder in a pond. In both cases the men had deep wounds at either side of their necks, centring exactly on the jugular veins.

  Scotland Yard had been busy, uprooting every­thing right and left and questioning nearly every­body in the village; but they had arrived at no concrete conclusion.

  “And now,” Dr. Meadows said, shrugging, “the matter seems to have lapsed.”

  He had come over for one of his routine exam­inations of Mrs. Burrows, who was still convinced her dyspeptic flutterings were connected with heart trouble.

  “You mean,�
�� Peter asked, amazed, “that the Yard have let the whole thing drop?”

  “Little else they can do,” Meadows closed up his bag as it stood on the drawing room table. “Naturally, Blair end Hawkins found the business beyond them in no time, so the Yard had to be called in. I think the reason’s pretty clear: they just don’t believe in a vampire. They prefer to look for a flesh-and-blood murderer, but what they overlook is the disappearance of blood from the victims. No ordinary murderer could do that— So, of course, the Yard hasn’t got anywhere. And won’t, as long as it relies on material foundations.”

  “Haven’t you any ideas yourself, doctor?” Elsie asked quietly.

  “One or two.” He looked at her pensively. “I’ve been wondering who in the local cemetery is a suic­ide—the first necessity for a vampire—and who hated the village people enough to wish to attack them so constantly. I can think of only one person.”

  Elsie, her mother, and Peter waited expectantly.

  “George Timperley,” Meadows said finally. “Your late husband, Elsie.”

  The girl’s expression changed. “But George wasn’t a suicide! He died of—myocarditis, or something. Or so you said on the death certificate.”

  Meadows smiled faintly. “Technically, he did die of myocarditis, which is only another name for heart-failure. But he was basically a suicide. But for his excessive drinking—my warnings about which he ignored—he would not have died. So, I class him as a suicide. As for his hatred of the village folk: we all know that he loathed them. They whispered and talked about his drinking, about the way he treated you....”

  “Are you seriously suggesting that George became a vampire?” Mrs. Burrows asked blankly.

  “I am. He was evil enough, in all conscience....” Meadows moved from the table and came over to where Peter and Elsie were seated on the divan, Mrs. Burr­ows opposite them.