Anno Dracula Dracula Cha Cha Cha (9 page)

On Malta, he was approached by an English subaltern who originally mistook him, because of his clothes, for Dickie, with whom he had been flogged at school. The young officer had a package, brought out from England to pay off a favour. It was to be taken to an exile in Rome. Tom was offered the use of an already-booked room at the Rinascimento in Campo de’ Fiori if he would deliver the package. Tom had planned to go on to Rome anyway, and this was as painless a way of arriving as any.

He was tempted to peek, of course. The parcel was small enough to contain a fountain pen or a hypodermic syringe. He assumed from the roundabout method of delivery that it was an artifact on its way to a new owner, perhaps without the consent of the last one.

The addressee was Penelope Churchward. They met at his hotel and he handed over the package, which she said was a wedding present. Afterward, she extended an invitation which, a few days later, he was pleased to take up. He knew from the first that she was interested in bleeding him. This was a comparatively new experience for him, but he was picking up on it. Was he one of those fellows who was attractive to the dead?

Penny found Tom useful for more than his blood. Her position in
il principe’s
household was undefined. She ran things, as much a housekeeper as a mistress. There were always chores Tom could do, like driving that dead cow Malenka through adoring hordes, or fetching goods from the city in broad daylight. He didn’t even mind. There were advantages to being part of
il principe
’s entourage and yet a living man.

When she was bleeding him, she was as helpless as Dickie, as much addled by the taste of his blood. But she was more demanding, thirstier. Her red kisses drained him. He wondered how long she could last. At times, she was quite fun. She’d known Whistler and Wilde in her warm days, though not much understood their work.

His bites itched. He rearranged his dressing gown over them. Tom wasn’t yet sure what to do with Penny. Something would come to mind.

It must be past noon. The sun had passed overhead. Shadows gathered like curtains in the Crystal Room.

Dead hands slipped around his neck.

Tom didn’t have to guess who.

Penelope was in a mood, he realised. Working too hard on devil-may-care brittleness, she draped herself over an armchair as if it were a patron’s lap, dangling one leg like a flirty fourteen-year-old. Her foot swung like a metronome. He guessed she’d like to kick someone.

She wore slacks, cut halfway up the calves to show off her pretty ankles, and ballet pumps. Her Nehru jacket was a sombre blue shade with frivolous filaments of something shiny mixed into the weave. Her hair was pinned up under an oversize sailor’s cap with a red pom-pom.

Sunglasses dangled from her mouth. She had a habit of chewing the arms, sometimes snapping them off. He saw a tiny fang biting down.

‘You must amuse me, Tom,’ she decreed. ‘I need to be amused. Desperately.’

It was because the elder from last night and his bovine ‘niece’ had run into the local murderer. Penelope could have cheerfully killed them herself, but resented the fuss made about this colourful atrocity.

The Roman morning papers were full of pictures. Malenka was everywhere, her luminously smiling face and ridiculous pout contrasted with grainier, less glamorous shots of the cops at the scene of the crime.

‘Malenka came to Rome to be a star,’ Tom observed. ‘And has got her wish.’

Penelope snorted rather than laughed.

‘You don’t think the little witch will turn up unhurt, do you?’ she said. ‘That it’s a publicity stunt? There isn’t much identifiable in the way of a body, according to the papers. Even that blessed dress has waltzed off.’

‘Count Kernassy is definitely identified,’ he pointed out.

‘She’d have killed for headlines. That one would kill for lunch.’

Penelope sat cross-legged on the seat, winding her legs together in a yoga pose, and lifted herself up on her arms, swaying slightly like one of those nodding dog automobile ornaments prized by vulgar people.

‘Your English pal was a witness,’ Tom said.

‘Irish. Katie’s Irish.’

‘She gave a full description of their deaths. And of their murderer, this Crimson Executioner. Of course, she might have her reasons for being a liar.’

Penelope smiled nastily at the thought of her friend being in on murder.

‘She can’t be mixed up with it. She met Kernassy on the plane.’

‘So she says.’

Tom did not believe for a moment what he was suggesting. He was spinning out a story to distract Penelope, to amuse her. She liked to think the worst of people. Except of him, oddly enough.

‘It’s not Katie Reed, Tom,’ she said, having thought it through. ‘You don’t know her.’

‘How well do we ever really know anyone?’

‘I’m a vampire, you American clod. I can see into men’s minds and hearts, and suck them dry.’

She flipped out of the chair and was close to him, faster than his eye could register. A cheap dead trick. It was supposed to unnerve and overwhelm.

Her hands rested on his shoulders and she leaned forward, glasses still dangling from her mouth, for a quick, bloodless kiss.

Tom felt a thrill of revulsion at the nearness of the dead woman. He let her peck his lips.

She was gone again, at the other side of the Crystal Room, leaning against a fireplace. Then she was back in her chair, sitting properly, knees together.

‘I don’t know what we’re going to tell Princess Asa,’ she said. ‘She’ll probably go spare.’

However irritated Penelope might be with Count Kernassy and Malenka, her real goat was Princess Asa Vajda, the Royal Fiancée. It was too obvious to think her simply jealous, for Tom knew she didn’t dare imagine herself as even a consort for
il principe.
Though she’d taken on the organising of the household, she was clearly not one of Dracula’s sluts. Tom had seen them about, mindless dead women in shrouds, and a damn nuisance to any warm man within reach.

Sometimes Tom thought Penelope hated everyone but was too well brought-up to mention it.

She had a history, but it was too dull to delve into. It was as if he had walked into a movie theatre during the last reel of a complicated but not very interesting melodrama. His best policy was to ignore it, cluck the occasional agreeable or amusing comment and let the dead sort themselves out.

‘Think of it this way, Penny,’ he began. ‘You’ve two free spaces in the chapel for the ceremony. You can bump up some of the poor relations.’

One of Penelope’s chores was to assemble as many of Dracula’s get as possible for the wedding.
Il principe
had been profligate for centuries, turning his mistresses and officers, disseminating his bloodline like a dog wetting trees.

‘You’ve no idea how superstitious all those Middle European barbarians are,’ she said. ‘Reluctant to plonk their bottoms on a truly dead man’s chair. Some still light black candles for the Devil on Walpurgis Night.’

By the time of the wedding, Tom wanted to be done with the dead. The ceremony was to be in the palace chapel, probably because the Pope wouldn’t let Dracula use St Peter’s. Otranto would be thronged with dead things.

The doors of the Crystal Room were flung open. Princess Asa made an entrance.

She wore six-inch high heels and a black bikini swimsuit, not an atypical ensemble for her. Transparent layers of floor-length shroud were draped over her head, fixed by a wide floppy black hat. Her waist-length hair was as dark as the proverbial raven’s wing. Through all the grey lace, her huge round eyes glowed like red neons. Her cheekbones were sculptured ice, her lower lip was reckoned the lushest in Europe, and her tummy was tight as a drum skin.

On leashes, she had two mastiffs the size of ponies.

‘Signorina Churchward,’ she shouted. ‘Can you not be entrusted with even the simplest task? Can you not fetch a valued friend from the airport without losing him to the mob?’

Penelope stood, affecting unconcern.

‘Are we all to be found in our coffins and destroyed, as in the old times? You moderns remember nothing of the persecutions. Why were precautions not taken? Why was this atrocity allowed to happen?’

As she spoke, with a hollowly venomous voice, the Princess’s shrouds fluttered around her like anemone fronds. She stalked the room, heels putting penny-sized holes in the old carpet, lace drifting behind in an angry froth, thin white thighs scything.

Penelope knew better than to shrug.

‘Il principe
will be distressed,’ shouted Asa.

Tom wasn’t sure the Princess had ever met her Prince. Theirs was more an alliance than a marriage, with everything negotiated beforehand. She seemed able to speak for him at all times, though. It would be interesting to see how much authority she might actually have.

One of the dogs snarled at Tom. Animals didn’t like him much, which was a shame.

Princess Asa wheeled to look at him.

Her eyes burned through lace. Her eyelids curled like snarling lips. She flashed white teeth.

‘I should take him from you, your toy,’ she said, to Penelope. ‘As punishment.’

Her dead face loomed close, eyes the size of saucers. Tom caught a whiff of grave-breath.

‘But such treatment would be wasted on you,’ the Princess said, wafting across the room, fluttering toward Penelope. ‘You are a stupid, unfeeling woman. You care for nothing and no one.’

‘As you say, Princess.’

Princess Asa picked up a Chinese plant pot older than she was, and smashed it on the floor, skewering earthy roots with a heel.

‘Kneel, Englishwoman!’

Penelope’s face tightened.

The Princess drew herself up, shrouds gathered, and towered over Penelope. A mediaeval tyrant in a snit, a Victorian lady with steel in her spine.

Princess Asa lifted a taloned hand in command. Her fingernails raised points in her shrouds.

Penelope went down on one knee but didn’t lower her head.

‘Kneel as if you meant it, woman.’

‘As you say.’

Penelope looked briefly at the carpet, then got up, brushing dirt from her knees.

‘Satisfied?’ she asked Princess Asa.

‘Eminently.’

‘Good. If you’ll excuse me, I have errands to run.’ She looked at the shards of china and the trampled plant. ‘I’ll find a servant to clear up this mess. That was Tang Dynasty, by the way. Ninth century. A gift to Prince Dracula from Kah of Ping Kuei Temple. The High Priest probably didn’t expect his tribute to be used as a flowerpot. Ugly object, I always thought. But apparently quite valuable.’

Penelope withdrew with strange dignity. Tom was proud of the old girl.

He was left alone with the Royal Fiancée.

She growled at him, like one of her dogs. He relaxed a little. She might make great display of her wrath, but Princess Asa was far less dangerous a creature than Penelope Churchward. For Tom, the Royal Fiancée was easy, almost disappointing.

He adjusted his collar, touching always-open bitemarks. He got his fingertips a little bloody and rolled them together.

Princess Asa, struck by red thirst, forgot his face, and looked at his sticky fingers. Pretending to have noticed her interest only now, Tom apologised and searched for a handkerchief. Then, shyly, as if it were an afterthought, he held out his hand, fingers dangling.

The Princess hesitated, looking around to see if they were observed. She gathered her shrouds and threw them up over her hat, tidying them behind her white shoulders. Her skin was like polished bone.

She moved as fast as Penelope, darting close to Tom, dipping her head, licking his fingers clean, then retreating, cleaning her mouth on gauze.

He saw how his taste affected her. Her skinny ribs rose and fell, like the legs of a contented centipede. She was shuddering with delight.

She would never give him a thought again.

5

GELATI

S
he looked Geneviève’s Vespa over with some trepidation. The little motor-scooter was white with red trim, aerodynamically styled like an American wireless set. A great devotee of the bicycle in her younger days, Kate hadn’t had much luck with motorised vehicles. In her experience, wonderful new contraptions had a habit of trying to kill her.

‘It’s the only way to get about,’ Geneviève declared. ‘I can nip in and out between stalled cars.’

‘I’ll bet you get honked at a lot.’

‘Well, yes.’

Geneviève smiled as if Kate happened to be in town to sample the nightlife and look at the ruins.

They hadn’t talked, really. About Charles.

Geneviève sat forward on the long seat, telling Kate to climb up behind and hang on. The ride was swift and thrilling, affording the welcome comfort of a breeze and a few routine brushes with death. Geneviève knew her way about the narrow streets and through hidden courtyards and piazzas. She handled her trusty steed with practised expertise. Whizzing past stalled motorists, she waved cheerfully at a chorus of rude horns.

Clinging to Geneviève’s back, with blonde hair blowing at her face, Kate realised she was at the point of being seduced. When she returned to London, she’d consider buying a scooter. She might cut a tidy figure going around Highbury Corner on a little dream machine like this. She’d draw appreciative sighs outside the coffee bars along Old Compton Street. And she could cut through the knot of Teds who liked to block her way to the launderette.