The Devil You Know (2 page)

“Please, come in.” He stood back, allowing me to pass, though the doorway was so wide it wasn’t necessary.

As no one else was around for the job, I picked my trunk up. Without me inside it was light, just awkward. I took care not to bang it into anything, including my host.

“Put it anywhere,” he said.

I did that and looked around. The enormous entry hall was different. There was now carpeting on the sweeping stairs. Emily Francher had been violently pushed down those steps, the fall killing her, couldn’t blame her for wanting a change. If it’d been me I’d have moved out altogether.

The Impressionist paintings remained in the hall, but the series of huge oil paintings depicting life before the French revolution were gone. The upper landing was less lively without them. “Redecorating?” I asked, nodding at the blank walls.

“Somewhat. Donated that lot to a museum.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“I was tired of looking at them. Anyway, they were forgeries done in the 1850s. The museum knows it, which for some strange reason makes them a more interesting display.”

His speech pattern was all his own, a British accent but not quite. If I’d not gotten used to hearing Escott all the time I’d have taken Barrett for an Englishman. He’d been born on Long Island, though, sometime in the mid-seventeen hundreds.

He shut the door and set the latch. The hall got darker. The curtains were drawn, appropriate for a house in mourning. He flicked a switch, and an overhead pushed back the shadows. The artificial light made him look more haggard. His eyes were usually a clear, intense blue, like the hot part of a candle flame, but were now faded and tired. “This way, if you would.”

I followed him across the entry to a parlor or sitting room or whatever it was. Big houses rattle me; they have too many doors and not enough names for the spaces behind them. There is never a simple living room, one to a customer, but two or three scattered around, and not one with a single comfortable chair.

Barrett clicked on a table lamp. The twenty-five watt bulb was good enough lighting for my sensitive eyes, but the corners remained stubbornly gloomy. Since books crowded the shelves on two walls I decided to risk calling this place a library, though odds favored there was another, bigger one lurking elsewhere in the joint.

“Make yourself at home, I’ll get some refreshment,” he said.

I knew what that would be, but the “getting” part stumped me. He kept horses, both for riding and to provide a steady, ongoing supply of fresh blood. Was he going to bring one in the house for the convenience of his guest?

He excused himself and went off. I wanted to get some questions out of the way, but he’d been raised in a time where civilized customs were followed come hell or high water. A faint echo of such old-time courtesies remained in some homes. My mother couldn’t imagine having guests over without first making sure they each had a cup of coffee and a plate of cookies at hand.

I wandered and read book titles. A few I recognized, but the rest were well before my time. The once important issues in the nonfiction works were either stale with age or about the kind of problem that’s never resolved. I opened a few to check printing dates, finding none more recent than 1890. Barrett didn’t look it, but the man was
old
.

Was this my future? If I got to be his age would I wind up with a house full of irrelevant books gathering dust?

Against expectation I found an overstuffed chair suitable for wallowing and tried to relax in it. The silence of the house pressed down, and I listened hard for any sign of activity. Except for a distant scuffing of slipper-clad feet and the slam of a door—my host going outside—nothing. Where was everybody?

Unpleasant words like
mausoleum
and
tomb
trundled through my brain. I vowed that if I ever got Emily Francher’s kind of wealth I would never inflict such a massive house on myself. This place gave me the creeps, which was saying something.

The chair abruptly ceased to be comfortable and turned into a smothering monster, which was crazy since I don’t have to breathe regularly. I struggled free and went to the room’s one window to pull open the curtain, revealing a long stretch of shaded veranda. It would be a pleasant place to lounge in the summer, but the fair weather furniture was stacked off to the side, some of it covered by a tied down tarp. Another batch was unadorned, though lengths of cut rope from its missing tarp lay on the flagstones like dead snakes.

A few steps down from the shaded area was a swimming pool, drained for the winter. Though bleak with snow and blown-in debris, it didn’t take much to remember young Laura Francher doing laps in that pool, her long blond hair streaming gracefully behind as she swam.

I have to stop doing this to myself.

I resisted letting the curtain drop on the memory and looked beyond the pool, seeking some hint of life on the estate.

The stables and horses weren’t within view, though there was a distant slice of twinkling gray that marked the Sound. I could see myself strolling down there to look at the water when the weather was fine. Not that I didn’t have the same opportunity in Chicago, but Lake Michigan wasn’t Long Island Sound. There’s a difference, and if I put some thought to it I might figure it out, but not tonight.

I now let the curtain fall and checked the room again. No changes had taken place in the last minute; the old books stared back, lonely and bored. I recalled there being a radio in one of the other ground floor rooms, but wasn’t desperate enough to go looking.

With some relief I heard a door bang shut, followed by dish-clattering sounds. What was he doing? Or maybe it was someone else in the house . . . nope, same slippers scuffing, then a rattling and the squeak of rubber on the marble tiles, like a wheelchair. I couldn’t help but think of Maureen’s crazy sister.

This place was really getting to me.

Barrett came in, pushing an innocuous tea trolley.

I hid my relief, replacing it with brief puzzlement. A teapot, cups, and saucers were on the trolley.

At his gesture, I found a chair. He sat opposite and poured from the pot, prim as an old maid on Sunday. He offered me a teacup filled with still-warm blood.

It was the damnedest thing I’d seen in at least a week.

“Is it all right?” he asked.

“Uh . . . ”

“Sorry, I should have inquired first. I assumed you might be hungry after your trip.”

“It’s great, really. I just never thought of having it like this.”

“Never?” He poured a cup for himself. “You prefer to take it on the hoof?”

“Uh. . .lately I buy a quart or two at the butcher and keep it in beer bottles in the ice box.”

“Doesn’t it go bad rather quickly?”

“I drink it off too fast. Saves trips to the Stockyards when I get busy.” The teacup had painted-on flowers, liberal gold edging, and I felt like an over-ripe sissy sipping from it.

Barrett didn’t seem to have the same problem. The delicate porcelain looked natural in his hands, not at all awkward. He finished half his portion and gave a little sigh of satisfaction.

On that we agreed. The horse blood—I knew the taste—was very good.

“Is Haskell still here?” I asked. He’d been in charge of the horses and had helped me draw blood from them in a hasty effort to save Barrett’s life.

“Yes, but he’s away on holiday along with the other servants. It seemed best to not have them around for the time being. We’re quite on our own.”

With interest I saw the whites of his eyes flushing deep red as the blood spread through him. Mine would look the same. “Miss Francher’s gone, too?”

“Yes. Away shopping.”

There’d been a slight hesitation to that
yes
. “Shopping?”

“Off in the city. Dress fittings and such, see some movies, take in a few plays.”

I drained off my cup and managed to put it and the saucer back on the trolley without breaking either. “You’re a piss-poor liar, Barrett.”

He snapped a glare my way, shoulders and spine stiffening. “I am no liar, sir.” But he didn’t challenge me to a duel, so I was on the right track.

“You left something out, though.”

“Emily has gone to the city, as I said.”

“And?”

“None of your damn—” He cut off and shook his head, slumping a little. “Oh, bloody hell.”

The room got quiet since neither of us had a heartbeat. I waited him out.

“What does it matter?” he finally muttered. “You might as well know. She left me.”

The hell?
“You’re kidding.”

But his visible pain said it all, explaining his general scruffiness and fatigued manner. “When?”

He grunted, shaking his head.

“But you were together for so long.”

He gave a soft snort. “Not really.”

Yeah, to someone his age those years with her were an eye-blink. “Anything set her off?” Maybe the massive exhumation within sight of the house had been too much.

“This was some while in coming.”

Escott should be here. He was good at this kind of stuff and friends with the man. Barrett barely knew me and wasn’t thrilled about it. Making no comment seemed the best way to get him to talk. In this silent house one of us would have to say something.

He put his cup down, made a fist, and thumped it gently against his chair arm. “The last year has been . . . difficult. But it started before then.”

I made one of those encouraging sounds in the back of my throat.

“The first few weeks after her change to this life were not easy, but we got through it, and things were wonderful for a time. And then it began to fall to pieces so gradually we didn’t see what was happening. We had rows over nothing yet didn’t talk about the real problems. Too afraid to, I suppose. There is a great security to being in love. One does not want to face the terror of its death, so you pretend it is still there, that all is well, that you don’t have to be alone.”

“Until you can’t take it any longer?”

“Yes. Even so. There comes the point where being alone is not such an unbearable state after all. So she left.”

“That stinks, Barrett. I’m sorry.”

He gave a small shrug. “Thank you. I appreciate your listening.”

“She’s gone for good?”

“She packed for an extended trip, took both maids along to look after her during the day, and went to the city about a month ago. Last week I got a card from some place in Florida so I’d know where to forward their mail.”

“You write to Charles about this? He never said anything.”

“No, I did not. Perhaps when you return you could let him know for me. I haven’t the heart to write. Family laundry, personal business, and all that.”

“Sure. No problem.”

He leaned back in the chair, looking introspective. “Though this is hardly familial. We never married, though I asked her. Just as well that we did not.”

I couldn’t help but feel a tug of sympathy and not a little selfish concern for my own situation. I’d proposed to Bobbi until she’d told me to stop. She loved me, but wasn’t ready to take that step. Though our situation was different from Barrett’s, I couldn’t help but wonder if the same thing might someday happen to us.

That lasted about three seconds, when I came to my senses. Bobbi and I were crazy about each other and had been through too much together. We didn’t have fights, either. It helped that she was usually right about things, while I rarely bothered to form an opinion in the first place.

I tried to recall what I knew about Emily Francher. She was—with her determinedly reclusive nature and predilection for wearing layers of diamonds—eccentric, but hadn’t struck me as being very interesting. Barrett obviously cared for her, but I never saw what the fuss was about. The only spark in her that I’d noticed had come from the jewelry.

She’d been bullied into marriage by her mother, ignored by her husband, and made a young widow not long after. The experience must have soured her on matrimony. Barrett may have overlooked that.

And then what? Years later her young cousin murders her; she wakes up in a coffin, disoriented, not remembering her own death. Barrett had been overjoyed that she’d made the change from dead to undead, but Emily had a hard time taking it in; I’d seen that much in her eyes. Confusion, fear, denial, anger, and who knows what else in those earliest moments when everything you know has been flipped upside down and inside out. The memory of my own difficult resurrection still gave me the heebies.