Anno Dracula Dracula Cha Cha Cha (34 page)

‘Mr Welles, we want to ask you about the ball at Palazzo Otranto,’ said Kate. About the murder.’

Welles rubbed his magician’s hands together.

‘You seek me out in my capacity as a detective. I was Sherlock Holmes once, and the Shadow.’

He wasn’t very wraith-like now.

Kate had met the real Sherlock Holmes, during the Terror. She’d even run into a flier in the First World War who might well have gone on to be the vigilante they called the Shadow. If there was any role in the tangle of crime and detection fit for Welles it was Sherlock’s brother, the much-missed Mycroft. Welles might well be able to fill the broad seat set aside in the smoking room of the Diogenes Club for that worthy gentleman.

‘Actually, we seek you out more in your capacity as a witness,’ Geneviève said.

‘I’m here in my capacity as a suspect,’ Kate put in. Making a joke of it did not prevent her heart cooling.

Welles’s brows knit. A thin line appeared between his eyes as the top of his nose came loose.

‘Oh,’ he said, disappointed. ‘In that case, I’m afraid I’ve little to add to what I told the police.’

Geneviève had played him wrongly. Kate realised her friend’s directness and honesty were pre-Renaissance. Welles was a genius, a prince, a magician. He needed to be courted, flattered and cajoled. For him, a thing must be complicated or it was not worth bothering with.

‘As a master of Holmesian method, Mr Welles, what impression did you form of the author of the atrocity at the Palazzo Otranto?’

The pettish genius raised an eyebrow at Kate and decided he liked her. She caught this at once and threw in a little simper that would have made Penelope proud.

Welles puffed up as he drew in a breath, cogitating visibly. A spectator in the rear circle would have seen the lines thought drew on his face. His nose was alarmingly loose, flaking away from the grooves in his cheeks.

‘My first deduction was that the murderer must be a fellow of mine.’

An American?’ Geneviève queried.

‘No, my dear,’ Welles flapped a huge paw. ‘A
showman.
You must concede it was a stroke of genius to arrange Dracula’s head just so, with the cloak propped up around him, the lighting effects. It was a moment of revelation. In which you played a fine part, by the way. It seemed designed less as a crime than as a
coup de théâtre.’

‘It is the sort of spectacle you are famous for,’ Kate said.

‘Indeed, indeed. I had expected the police to make more of that, to think me a suspect. It is my belief that the murderer or murderess intended that. I was supposed to be the fall guy. I have already directed
Dracula
in my head. I might have staged his death similarly. I intended to film Stoker’s book once, in 1940. Before
Kane.
The studio became nervous. I wanted the camera to be Jonathan Harker. I did it on the radio, with the Mercury Theatre, playing Harker and the Count.’

‘Others at the palazzo that night might be called theatrical,’ Geneviève said. ‘John Huston, Cagliostro, Elvis Presley, Samuel Beckett.’

Welles waved away all the names. ‘In that crowd, it’d be hard to find someone who wasn’t addicted to the big gesture. Dracula himself was first of all a master showman. Consider his predilection for public mass executions. His sudden, cloaked entrances from nowhere, popping up through the vampire trap. His many marriages, all for publicity or political gain. No wonder he and Hitler couldn’t stand to share a continent. They were too much alike.’

‘You said this was your first deduction,’ Kate said. ‘That suggests you have had a second, or a third?’

Welles laughed, enormously. ‘You’re a fine one, Miss Reed. A rare thing indeed. Have you ever acted? You’d do for Mistress Quickly…’

Thank you very much, she thought.

‘. no, I’m wrong. You should be Prince Hal. I’m serious. My Falstaff has never found a partner. You have it in you to play the boy, and become the man. A reversal of the traditions of Shakespeare’s day. Women can play men. Bernhardt was a one-legged Hamlet. I hope to start filming next year or the year after, when the money comes together. All my great co-stars are Irish.’

‘Your second thought?’ Geneviève prompted.

Welles was dragged back to the moment. ‘As I said, the greatest showman present, myself excluded, was the victim not the murderer. Dracula staged it all himself.’

‘It was suicide?’ Kate asked, wondering.

‘I doubt that. No, it was fortuitous. Our murderer intervened in a spectacle already set in motion, and changed the script. Only the star’s head was allowed to make an entrance. It was a calculated act of despoilment. In its own way, a moment of comedy. The intent was to ruin Dracula’s entrance, to kill his reputation as much as his person, to break the spell he has held over the world for a century. I think our killer is not a showman, but rather a critic.’

He sat back, chair creaking, and expected applause.

A critic was a kind of journalist. Kate had written theatre and book reviews. And she’d certainly worked hard to ring down the curtain on Prince Dracula.

‘Any names spring to mind?’ Geneviève asked.

‘Details bore me,’ Welles declared. ‘It should be a simple matter to fill them in, to ink over the sketch. I’m afraid I’ve passed on to other concerns. You may do what you wish with my insights.’

An assistant director hovered.

‘Dear ladies,’ said Welles, taking note of the man, ‘if you will excuse me? I should be in sight of Colchis.’

He kissed both their hands and left them. Most fat men waddled, but he strode. The assistant director had to trot to keep up with him. He pestered Welles about his detaching nose.

Geneviève looked at Kate. She plainly thought this a waste of time. Kate wasn’t so sure. Welles had made her think, and not about playing Henry
V.
In that buzz, ideas lodged. Some from him, and some he had stirred in her.

‘We’re not following a thread,’ she said, ‘we’re being hauled in, like fish. People keep telling us things, as if they’ve been given messages to pass on. And we have these warnings, like the bird-thing in the library, to keep away from some areas and concentrate on others. He’s right. It’s as if we’re being
directed.’

‘Service in this café is terrible,’ Geneviève said.

The table was strewn with half-empty cups and glasses. No one had come to clean away or ask them if they wanted anything.

Kate picked up a glass of blood. She sniffed it.

‘You aren’t going to drink that?’ Geneviève said, aghast.

‘It’s cold tea, dyed red.’

They looked around. None of the people at the nearby tables were actually eating or drinking, just raising glasses and sloshing liquid against their lips. They were laughing and talking, but the chatter was literally meaningless. The minotaur was real, but his head was plastered with swatches of painted newspaper to make him look fake.

The frontage of the café, which seemed to be contained within the studio, was actually just a front, propped up by poles. A few miles away from the real thing, the Via Veneto was recreated to the last detail. Kate wondered why anyone would go to the bother.

A camera on a rail advanced slowly through the tables and extras. A camera operator and an intent Italian director rode the mechanism, creeping up on a couple at one of the tables. The couple were brighter than everyone else, perhaps because there was a subtle spotlight on them.

The man wore dark glasses and shrugged as he smoked. The woman, redheaded and with an unflattering hairstyle, leaned over and complained at him, jabbing with an accusing finger. Kate’s mind turned over. She could have been watching herself and Marcello. The man looked a lot like Marcello, and the woman might be an unfair caricature of her.

The camera glided past their table, ever closer.

‘Don’t look now,’ Geneviève said. ‘I think we’re in the movies.’

31

PENELOPE PULLS IT OFF

I
t was time to depart in prosperity. The household was packing up, for disposal. The host was truly dead and the other guests had fled. Tom considered the Van Goghs, but they were too large and well-known to be practical souvenirs of his happy summer at the Palazzo Otranto.

Over the months, he’d built up a collection. The dead strewed their treasures any which way. Working by day, when elders were in their caskets and new-borns lulled with last night’s blood, he’d harvested select, portable items. A bird of prey statuette, ugly but valuable; an Egyptian ruby scarab, with seven pinpoint flaws in the pattern of the big dipper; a tiny, withered brown hand which might be a child’s or a chimp’s; a model of the Eiffel Tower in pure gold; a dear little Corot no bigger than an icon. An enormous fellow Tom knew in Amsterdam might be able to do something with the loot; he was a collector and a dealer in rare, unprovenanced artifacts.

He did not, of course, hide his haul in his room where it might count as evidence. He’d found a loose floorboard in a forgotten attic and made himself a hidey-hole. If the cache were discovered, servants would be blamed. In his time, a butler and two maids had been dismissed for pilferage. Princess Asa insisted they be branded on their foreheads. Did a facial scar that read ‘thief’ in Moldavian hamper chances of future employment in Europe?

Presently, Asa was mad. She’d always been mad, he supposed, but the quality of her madness had changed. She was no longer the imperious monster. Penelope called her ‘Princess Havisham’ behind her back. She wore her ragged wedding dress and aged years every day she refrained from drinking blood. At the end of the month, she’d have to find a new house to haunt.

It was about midday. He was on a last look around. Some of the recently flown dead had carelessly left behind items of value. In General Iorga’s crypt-like cell, he found a silver dagger. An old weapon, not like the bland scalpel they’d found in Dracula’s heart. The workmanship was fine, the edge keen. This was an assassin’s knife.

It struck him again how odd it was that so many of the dead owned silver knick-knacks. The metal was poison to them. It was either an ostentatious defiance of mortality or a need to have weapons for use against their own kind. With Dracula gone, there’d be secret wars of succession. Penelope had lectured him about it, suggesting with not a little relish that half the surviving elders would perish in the internecine squabbles. And a good job too, she said; it was time the mediaeval barbarians made way for rising generations. He pocketed the dagger, wondering if he should keep the thing. More and more dead were about. And Penelope Churchward might have long arms.

He made his way to the attic, carrying an empty suitcase he had found in one of the guest rooms. It was just the right size. He carefully packed his souvenirs, wrapping them in scarves. It was vulgar to set a price on such things, but he estimated he had enough to set him up for a good few years. He thought about France. It was time to make a home.

Whistling, he hauled the case — heavy, but not impossible — downstairs. He’d take the Ferrari, but only as far as the Stazione Centrale. It was too flashy, too easy to trace.

The case became heavier on the second staircase. He switched to his left hand and dropped it. Tom realised how weak he’d become. His neck-wounds, ragged and swollen, throbbed like mosquito bites. He made fists and flexed his arms, fighting the tingling in his depleted veins. His elbows and knees didn’t quite work.

The suitcase slithered down to the next landing. Tom stumbled after it. There was only the main staircase to the hallway, then the front door. He took hold of the case’s handle, but couldn’t lift it. He considered jettisoning one of the heavier items — the falcon, perhaps? — but rejected the idea as absurd. This was his nest egg.

He hugged the suitcase to his chest like a sack of potatoes and stood. It was like lifting an anchor. The weight pulled him to the lip of the stairs. His vision blurred. A dizzy spell struck. He wanted to pitch himself down the stairs and break his own silly neck.

His hip struck the balustrade and the case balanced on the long marble sweep. Tom smiled. It could slide the case down this last staircase, letting the bannisters take the weight.

He deserved this loot. He deserved the life it’d buy him.

Concentrating to make his feet and ankles do their work without interfering with each other, he went down step by step, case sliding easily beside him.

When he was through the front door, he’d never look back. And he’d never let a dead woman near him again.

‘Where do you think you’re going, Mr American?’

Penelope’s voice wasn’t raised, but it rang in his head.

He turned, mind not catching up. The case got free and slithered down the bannisters like a prankish small child, then ski-jumped across the hallway and made a bad landing, bursting open. Treasures glittered.

Tom sank to his knees, gripping the balustrade himself.

He couldn’t raise his eyes to Penelope’s face. He felt her looking down at him.

‘You were not given permission,’ she said.

His chin hit the stairs and he lost his grip. He rolled over, breathing heavily, and looked up at a fuzzy, distant ceiling. He exposed his throat to the dead woman.