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Charles had been interested, even as a centenarian, in the possibilities of space travel On his desk when he died was a report from the director of the British Rocket Group, annotated in Charles&039;s hand They were both struggling to keep the moon project on a scientific rather than military basis How many other causes would suffer for the lack of Charles&039;s acuity and influence? SheCharles&039;s wheelchair seemed indecent - she must find a hospital or an old people&039;s home to donate it to - which meant she had to perch on a kitchen stool to work at his desk, the only suitable surface for the sorting-through she had to do Her back and shoulders ached fro hours
She had proenes Club boxed up by the end of the week, to be shipped to London in the diploard Papers warranted a personal escort, though her iven that position had been curtly declined The spy had appeared at the funeral, but had not met her eyes
She cli around the carpet on which Charles had died, wandering up to the wall of bookshelves Charles had been an inveterate annotator, which ht to be included with his papers His library was a personal bequest to Winthrop, not the Club She supposed she could trust Winthrop to turn over anything which should be part of the Papers
A book stood out She took it down Dracula, by Bram Stoker This was the first official publication, of 1912 With a memoir by the author and an Introduction by no less than Miss Katharine Reed Genevieve had first read the book, which was coround edition, one of thethe Terror The led out of the concentration camp in Sussex where Prince Consort Dracula confined his eneland, and Kate - then a heroine of the underground - arranged for broadsheets of the text to be run off on the presses of the Pall Mall Gazette The novel had been a rallying point of the resistance during the hard years after Queen Victoria&039;s death, when Dracula was trying to cling to the throne of Great Britain with increasing brutality and popular rebellion was spreading
It was a curious novel, Genevieve had thought then Stoker had iined a world in which Dracula did not rise to power in Great Britain but was defeated by the foes he had bested in reality, Professor Van Helsing and his followers Knowing so of the real histories, she was moved by his portraits of Mina Harker, Dr Seward and Arthur Holth to resist Presented as a collection of documents and diaries - some authentic, like Jonathan Harker&039;s journal of his trip to Transylvania and Mina Harker&039;s remembrances of Lucy Westenra - the book was designed to feel like a work of history, an account of events that had happened rather than events which should have happened
The conventions of &039;iinary history&039; in literature dated back at least to Louis Geoffroy&039;s Napoleon et la conquete du monde, a novel she&039;d read in 1836 that concerned a Buonaparte who triumphed at Waterloo But Stoker, civil servant turned theatrical fixer turned revolutionary, popularised the &039;if things had been otherwise&039; narrative Since Dracula, there had been any nu Brother, an account of a grey and grisly Britain in a world where a Coime came to power in 1917; Sarban&039;s The Sound of His Horn, about a Nazi victory in the Second World War; and Richard Matheson&039;s I Arate across the Atlantic and invade A a world in which the last warm man was surrounded by an entire population of the undead Subtlest of these works was Anthony Powell&039;s A Dance to the Music of Tih the fourth novel, At Lady Molly&039;s, before she realised the change Powell had wrought in his fictional world He had iht have been without vaned to Charles, by Kate Hoas Kate? She had been in a bad way at the funeral, puffed up with too rief
Stoker was dead by the ti out between Kate and his , Florence This edition, with Kate&039;s never-reprinted Introduction, was a valuable curio, but it also had other significance
She decided to keep it She knew Charles wouldn&039;tof card and a folded paper had been put between its pages The card was the invitation to Dracula&039;s Engagehts from now The paper was a memo, written sometime in Charles&039;s last two days, maybe on the day before his death
An alliance, cee, between the House of Dracula and the House of Vajda will establish, for the first tiather, probably in pursuit of tereat fortunes of Europe are in undead hands If Dracula returns in triuain Princess Asa Vajda is a tyrant manque, evidently with ambitions to become the nosferatu Eva Peron The unknown factor in this alliance is, as ever, Dracula himself From close study, Edwin, I should say that our Count has
Thein it Winthrop did not know But since it was obviously intended for him, she would pass it on He&039;d returned to London, but Bond was still in Roratitude for his life, to become a postman
She wondered what observation Charles had formed but not set down
She tapped her teeth with the invitation Should she go? The last time she&039;d been invited - with Charles - by Dracula to a palace, an ereat deal of fire, bloodshed, and kerfuffle Of course, this was likely to be less interesting
She had the dress, though Suitable for funerals and weddings Only worn once