Verse of the Vampyre (10 page)

The tent flap was pulled up, indicating that Madame Mignon was open for business. “Going in?” Grace asked.

“I don’t believe in Fate,” Peter said.

“What do you believe in?”

“Myself.”

“Well, I’m going in. Wish me luck.”

“That’s what it’s all about.”

Inside the tent, the close darkness smelled of sandalwood and candle smoke. Grace could barely make out a table in the center covered with silver gauze. A globe sat on the table. An electrical current rippled through it like strikes of lightning. The modern age of mysticism, Grace thought.

She took a chair across from Madame Mignon, who was an indistinct figure beneath the layers of spangled veils. Grace got the uncertain impression of dark hair, dark eyes and dark lipstick.

“What brings you to Madame Mignon?” inquired a deep, accented voice.

Sense of humor? Curiosity? But Grace was having fun. She threw herself into her role of seeker. “I wish to know the future.”

Madame Mignon was silent. Maybe she thought Grace was making fun of her.

“Really,” Grace added.

“Ten bob,” Madame said. She held a red-taloned hand out.

Grace paid her. The money disappeared under the table. Madame Mignon held her hand out again.

Hesitantly Grace rested her hand atop the fortune-teller’s. Madame Mignon’s paw was warm and soft, with fleshy strong fingers. Her hand closed around Grace’s. She covered their linked hands and began to massage Grace’s.

That seemed weird, but Grace made herself relax. Actually, it felt kind of good, the strong thumbs working her pressure points.

“Ah, I see, I see,” Madame crooned as though the TV reception were clearing up. “I see it all.” She smoothed Grace’s hand out and stared hard at her palm in the glow of the electrified crystal ball.

“You are a smart girl, a girl who knows her own mind. Ah, but a choice lies before you. I see two men, two very different men. One man holds the key to your heart, but he is dangerous to you, this man. You cannot trust him. You cannot trust anyone connected with this man. You cannot trust yourself.”

That narrowed it down. “Oh dear,” murmured Grace.

Madame Mignon rattled on. “I see great temptation. I see lies and deceit. I see a journey. A long and dangerous journey that will lead you into great danger…” She trailed off as though the routineness of this prophecy was boring even her.

After a long moment of guttering candles, she seemed to squint at Grace through the veils. She spoke more slowly, even reluctantly. “I see a room. A hidden room. A treasure lies in this room. The treasure of an ancient king. The treasures of ancient Egypt. And a…what do you call it? A manuscript?”

“Say what?” Grace sat bolt upright.

Madame Mignon seemed to have lost the train of thought. Through the mosquito netting her eyes appeared to be closed. Had she nodded off?

“True love stories have no ending,” she said abruptly, and let go of Grace’s hand.

“What’s the verdict?” Peter asked when Grace joined him outside the tent.

Grace ticked off on her fingers. “There are two men in my life. I am going to take a trip soon.”

“No mention of tall dark strangers or coming into sudden money?”

“Just the usual.”

A familiar dwarf and ballerina ran past shrieking hello, waving red sparklers.

“Friends of yours?”

Grace found herself wondering what kind of parent Peter would make. It was difficult to imagine him in that role. Grace had always assumed she would have children, but many of her assumptions had been challenged in the past year.

Two men and a choice to make?

She shook off the crawly feeling she’d had in the fortune-teller’s tent, asking briskly, “What do you suppose they have to eat?”

Peter arched one brow. “You are a brave soul.”

“I didn’t have time for dinner.”

“All right. Don’t run off with the gypsies, Esmerelda. I shall return.”

Esmerelda
. When was the last time he had used that pet name? Months. Did tonight’s date mean they were recovering their lost footing, or was he simply treating her to some of that routine charm he served up to the customers?

Peter hadn’t been gone more than a minute when a hand closed around her wrist. Even without looking Grace knew those dry stick fingers did not belong to Peter. She turned and found herself face-to-face with the woman in black.

Starting, Grace stepped back.

“Do I know you?”

The claw fingers kept their grip on her wrist, but the woman said nothing.

“What do you want?” Grace tried to pull free. “Let go of me.” She didn’t want to cause a scene. She had the polite person’s dread of public fracas. Miss Coke was not as elderly as Grace had first thought, and she was much stronger than she looked.

“What gives you the right to threaten and harass people?” she said indignantly.

Miss Coke thrust her face in Grace’s and hissed…something. Grace couldn’t make out the actual words between the moist sibilants that flecked her face.

“Now, now, girls.” To Grace’s grateful relief, Peter was there, moving between her and the older woman. She didn’t see what happened but all at once her wrist was free and Miss Coke was yowling like a scalded cat. People turned to stare.

“My word,” Peter said. “I turn my back for three minutes, and you’re brawling in the streets.” He guided Grace through the crowd, which seemed to engulf the motionless Miss Coke.

“That was her. The woman in black. The one I told you about. She’s crazy.” Grace found that she was shaking. Peter’s arm felt strong and supportive around her. “I think she cursed me.”

“Darling, I imagine adolescent girls have been cursing you for years. It hasn’t had much effect on you, has it?”

She laughed, but the sudden whistle and explosion of a firecracker overhead caused her to jump. Golden embers drifted in the breeze like pollen.

Peter chuckled, his breath warm against her ear. “She won’t get you, my pretty.”

More rockets streamed off into the sky. Giant phosphorus blooms of purple, green, and blue burst wide in the night sky, following a distant crack. Glittering cosmic rain showered down on the tents and trees.

C
hinese lanterns lit the courtyard and threw the ivy’s shadow into patterns of hearts and butterflies against the stone walls. Music drifted from inside the house.

It was the night of the Hunt Ball, and everyone who was anyone in Innisdale was in attendance. Cars lined the circular drive of Ives Manor, the nineteenth-century home of Sir Gerald and Lady Ives. Every window in the manor seemed ablaze with life and color. Squares of light lit the dark lawn.

As they started up the front stairs Peter caught her hand, and as Grace turned he kissed her lightly, as lightly as the mist from the fountain. “Beautiful Esmerelda,” he whispered. His fingers brushed the delicate pearl-and-filigree antique earrings she wore. The earrings matched her necklace, a gift from Peter that very evening; a lovely variation on the traditional corsage.

“Thank you again,” she said, referring to more than the compliment.

“My pleasure.”

A butler (or maybe it was a footman) announced them.

Sir Gerald, dashing in a scarlet evening coat, greeted them like old friends. Grace caught a whiff of his unique scent: top note, fruity aftershave, bottom note, blended whisky.

“Lovely to see you!” Lady Theresa said. Her blond hair was coiled elegantly. She wore a startlingly low-cut gown of iridescent blue.

“It could be interesting if she drops a contact lens,” Grace remarked, as she and Peter strolled away from their host and hostess.

“It could be the best party of the year.”

Peter rounded up champagne glasses, and they repaired to the ballroom.

Grace felt as though she had stepped into a painting she had once seen on a visit to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
The Hunt Ball
by Jules L. Stewart.

Men in tuxedo and white tie or scarlet evening jackets and women in formal gowns circled the room to the sweep of a full orchestra. Jewels flashed and sparkled on bare arms and throats and in elaborately dressed hair. Velvet, silk and satin shone richly in light from the chandelier. Candles and flowers were multiplied by the mirrored panels between Palladian windows.

It was like a Merchant Ivory production.

“Did you want to dance?” he asked.

Grace held up her champagne glass. “I’m working on it.”

His expression grew quizzical. “This is a first. Don’t tell me you’re feeling shy.”

“A little.”

Peter seemed to know everyone, moving with smiling confidence through the crush; you would have thought he was to the manor born, Grace reflected. The truth was, she had no idea to what he was born, but she had never seen anyone better suited to white tie and tails, with his tanned skin and his fair hair shining in the illumination from the chandeliers.

She glimpsed many familiar faces—and not just from the hunt. Apparently the Hunt Ball really was the social event of the season.

She recognized Allegra in slinky scarlet dancing with Derek Derrick. Sir Gerald, his receiving line duties done, was with a crowd of gentlemen not dancing.

She spotted Lady Vee in black taffeta, her hands encrusted with jewels, sitting with several other elderly women clustered like birds of prey as they watched the dancers.

“I should say hello,” Grace said

“You are a glutton for punishment.” But he steered her over to the flock.

“
Petah dahling,
” Lady Vee greeted him. “Have you a line on that Egyptian mummy I’m interested in?”

Peter smiled his charming smile. “Lady Vee, you know perfectly well trading in Egyptian antiquities is illegal.”

The other ladies tittered.

“My
deah,
I am confident you will find a way.” She nodded graciously to Grace. “I understand from my niece that that dramatic travesty opens next week.”

That answered one question. If Lady Vee was no longer financing the project, the Ruthvens must be putting up the capital—eliminating one motive for the play. It was not a scam to get money from unwary financiers.

“That’s what they tell me,” Grace said.

Lady Vee made a sound like “Paugh!” Grace covered her champagne glass.

“They’re so secretive,” twittered one old dame. “They’ve insisted on controlling every aspect of the production themselves. No one knows for certain how many seats we’ve sold.”

Another blue-haired dowager leaned forward, then straightened as though she’d been stung. “They’re here!” she whispered hoarsely.

Naturally everyone in a three-mile radius turned to look.

Lord and Lady Ruthven had entered the ballroom. He looked more cadaverous than ever in formal wear.

“Why, he looks like—like Varney the Vampire,” gasped the blue-haired lady.

“That’s what he wishes you to think,” Lady Vee said tartly. Grace and Peter exchanged looks.

“Who?” he murmured.

“Sir Francis Varney, the antihero of Thomas Prest’s 1840s penny-dreadful
Feast of Blood
.”

Peter grinned.

“
She’s
quite something, isn’t she?” another of Lady Vee’s cronies ventured.

There was no doubt to whom she referred. Catriona was breathtaking in a gown that consisted mostly of sheer black lace. Her hair was elegantly piled on her head.

“No better than she should be,” Lady Vee sniffed.

Grace had been waiting all her life to hear someone say that in exactly that tone.

“Scottish nobility,” another murmured.

“Says
who?”

The ladies began fluttering and flapping at this, but to Grace’s disappointment they were interrupted. She wondered if Lady Vee’s bias was based on anything or if it was simply evidence of old age and bad temper.

She and Peter moved off to make more social small talk and sip more champagne.

“So you wish to see old John Peel’s hunting horn, eh?” Sir Gerald’s voice blasted in Grace’s ear like the hunting horn in question.

“Oh! Er—yes.” Lord and Lady Ruthven stood behind the baronet. Catriona was smirking.

“Hoick together,” Sir Gerald said, leading the way.

Lord Ruthven muttered something under his breath.

They traveled down a long red hallway adorned with gold-framed landscapes, passing a room where a game of billiards seemed to be in quiet but ferocious progress, passing several other white-lacquered doors, coming at last to a closed door, which Sir Gerald unlocked.

They crowded inside and Sir Gerald turned on a glass-shaded lamp that illumined a hunting dog scaring up ducks. It was a man’s room. Leather furniture, prints of horses and hounds, and a beautiful cabinet filled with hunting rifles. Over the marble fireplace was a giant panorama of a foxhunt.

In the center of the room was a glass case. They gathered round.

The bugle sat on blue velvet. It looked very old, the delicate chased work at odds with the old leather straps. Next to the bugle was a small portrait of an elderly man with long white hair, dressed in hunting livery and blowing a silver horn.

“John Peel?” Grace guessed.

“That’s right. He was a Cumberland farmer and huntsman. Buried at Caldbeck Church, you know.”

“Why is he so famous?” Grace inquired.

“The folksong, I suppose.” Sir Gerald didn’t sound like he’d ever given it much thought.

“Do ye ken John Peel with his coat so gay?” murmured Lord Ruthven.

“Gray, not gay,” Sir Gerald corrected. “He wore the Hodden gray, like your own countryman, Rabbie Burns.” Sir Gerald rolled his “Rs” with painful abandon.

“And in those days the Lake District hunting was all on foot?”

“Still is mostly. We’re the exception that proves the rule.”

“How much is it worth?” Lord Ruthven asked, his eyes on the glinting curve of silver.

“Don’t know. I’ll never sell it.” Sir Gerald snapped out the lamp. Before the room went dark Grace caught Peter’s expression. He was watching Catriona.

Derek was dancing with Theresa as they reentered the ballroom. She was laughing—too much and too loudly. He whispered in her ear. She missed a step and nearly fell. Derek steadied her. They both laughed.

Peter said softly for Grace’s ears only, “She’s a fool.”

Grace silently agreed.

They joined the dancers on the floor. Grace had never danced with Peter before, but they quickly matched their steps to each other.

They danced the next two dances as well. It was as though she were drifting through the evening in a champagne bubble, fragile and perfect.

She caught her reflection in the ballroom mirrors, and for a moment she thought she was looking at a stranger, her gown gracefully sweeping the floor, her cheeks flushed and her eyes like stars amidst the gleam of crystal and silver, the flicker of candles on flowers.

And then the bubble burst. The music ended, and Grace found herself facing Catriona from across the room.

Catriona stood by the French windows, a cape draped over her arm. She was staring at Peter, a long, compelling gaze.

“Excuse me,” Peter said, and crossed the room, leaving Grace, who watched him drape the black folds of the cape around Catriona’s shoulders. They went through the French doors and moved out of view on the veranda.

Sir Gerald appeared in the center of the room, clapping his hands.

“Time for some quadrilles!” he announced.

This was not met with the universal joy the squire seemed to expect, but reluctantly people fell into formation. Grace escaped to the dining room and heaped a plate with food. She helped herself to another champagne.

She tried not to watch the doors through which Peter and Catriona had disappeared, but it wasn’t easy. People went in and out, but there was no sign of Catriona or Peter. It seemed to her that they had been gone a long time.

A woman next to her was going on and on to an earnest-looking girl in a brave but foolhardy yellow tartan gown.

“They’re vermin, my dear. Like ferocious rats. The farmers
want
us to hunt. They
need
us to hunt.”

“But to turn it into a sport…”

“
Foxes
kill for sport, my dear. Have you ever seen what a fox will do to a henhouse?”

Grace’s inadvertent eavesdropping was interrupted when a small, trim woman of uncertain age dropped into the seat across from her.

Gray streaked her dark hair, but she had the loveliest violet eyes Grace had ever seen. The woman smiled warmly. “You’re Miss Hollister, aren’t you. I’m amazed we’ve never met. I’m Constance Heron.”

The chief constable joined them a moment later. The three of them chatted amiably, and when they finished their supper and returned to the ballroom, the chief constable asked Grace to dance.

The orchestra was playing an old-fashioned waltz. After a few bars she recognized the tune—“John Peel.”

Chief Constable Heron knew his way around the floor, and the comfortable scent of pipe tobacco and spicy aftershave reminded Grace of dancing with her father. She wished, not for the first time, that she was not always being forced into an adversarial role with the chief constable.

She heard herself thinking aloud, “After all, Peter can’t be the only suspect in the entire Lake District. There must be other people with criminal records?”

Heron answered her as naturally as though they had been discussing it all evening. “It’s the nature of these crimes, Miss Hollister,” he said. “These aren’t smash and grabs. This thief is showing off, grand-standing. We don’t have that kind of local talent.”

“That you know of.”

Heron’s smile was tolerant. “That kind of talent is rare anywhere, Miss Hollister. It’s more than resource, more than nerve. More than audaciousness. These people are pros. Security systems, guard dogs, locks and safes: they walk through them like they didn’t exist.”

“Maybe because for them they don’t exist.”

Heron’s currant black eyes met hers. “Exactly.”

Because the thief was one of them, an accepted member of Innisdale “society.”

“The man who was killed…I’ve heard some strange rumors.”

Heron’s smile faded. “We’ll get the villains. I can promise you that.”

“Is it true that he was—that his body was drained of blood?”

Heron looked startled. “It’s true that he’d lost a great deal of blood, but…what are you suggesting, Miss Hollister?”

“Were there bite marks on his neck?”

The chief constable actually missed a step. “Good heavens!” he exclaimed. “Where the devil did you hear such a farradiddle?”

Farradiddle. Now there was a word you didn’t hear every day.

“A number of people have mentioned it. I don’t know who started the rumor, but I heard it from a girl whose boyfriend works at
The Clarion
.” Had someone hoped to foster the notion that a vampire was running amuck in Innisdale by starting such a rumor? “So it’s not true?”