Verse of the Vampyre (16 page)

The outside theater door was locked.

“It wasn’t locked,” Grace protested, looking from one constable to the other. She rummaged in her purse and found the keys. The door unlocked, they crowded inside. The theater was dark and silent.

The constables were also silent. Ominously silent. Grace felt around for the light switch. Rows and rows of faded chairs sat empty. Grace found another switch and the stage was illuminated.

And empty.

One of the constables sighed. She was a middle-aged woman, Asian, with a slightly pinched look around her mouth as though her feet hurt.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Grace said, “but this is not a prank. Do I look like the kind of person who plays pranks on the police?”

The other constable, this one chubby and bewhiskered like Bob Cratchit in a Christmas pantomime, eyed her gravely. “Perhaps someone is playing a prank on you, miss.”

It wasn’t inconceivable with all the weird things that had been happening, but Grace remembered the appalling look in Ruthven’s eyes. She shook her head.

“At least look around,” she pleaded. “Maybe he crawled backstage.” And turned off the lights and locked the doors? The officers didn’t point this out, but she knew if this had occurred to her it had certainly occurred to them.

“His murderer could still—”

She broke off at their skeptical expressions.

They trooped up to the stage and looked behind the props. They looked inside the wooden coffin. The woman PC knelt to examine the scratched stage boards. She shook her head.

“I’ll check backstage,” Bob Cratchit said. “There must be dressing rooms.” He pawed his way through the first row of curtains.

Grace grabbed the edge of curtain drifting in his wake.
“Look!”

The dried imprint of blood on the silken material could be seen in the tired overhead light.

“There have been threats. Vague threats, but…threats. Perhaps someone believed that Lord Ruthven really is—was—is a vampire, and attacked him.” Grace rubbed her aching temples.

The constables exchanged looks. They had been doing a lot of that for the past few minutes, ever since they determined that there was no one else in the building. They were inclined to believe the bloody handprint was fake. They were inclined to believe the whole incident was a prank. Grace had been trying to convince them, but the more she theorized, the less convinced they seemed. Clearly the crime scene team was not going to be summoned anytime soon.

“Were there any cars in the lot when you arrived, ma’am?” The Bob Cratchit constable pronounced it like “Mom,” which was disconcerting, since Grace was only a bit older than he. “Any indication that someone was present besides the—er—victim.”

They kept saying that: “The—er—victim.”

“I think there was a car out front on the street,” Grace said slowly. She remembered starting for the pub and the glimpse of a parked car in her rearview mirror. Black, medium-sized…nothing distinct.

“Did you recognize the car?”

“Not really. It wasn’t that kind of car, and I barely registered it.”

“You didn’t see any part of the registration plate?”

Grace shook her head regretfully.

They asked a few more questions, routine questions, then they departed, ostensibly to call upon the Ruthvens, but Grace feared more like to break for dinner.

“You will let me know what happens?” she called after their departing backs.

“You’ll be hearing from us, ma’am,” the female PC said, without turning back.

The lights shone cheerily in the upstairs level of Craddock House. The tang of a wood fire seasoned the dank evening air. Staring up at the windows Grace had never felt more alone, more out in the cold. She rang the bell.

She sensed rather than saw draperies move in the windows above.

It was only a minute or two before Peter let her in, his expression wary. “You’re very formal this evening.”

She wasted no time on preliminaries. “Did you know she was going to kill him?”

“This is obviously a trick question.”

Grace cried, “How can you joke about this? She
murdered
him. She probably murdered Theresa. How can you be okay with this?”

“Would it help if I tell you I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about?” He was very still, his voice quiet in contrast to hers. His eyes held hers levelly.

“Bob—Lord Ruthven called me this afternoon and asked me to meet him at the theater. He said he had something to tell me.”

“And you went?” Peter stared at her in disbelief. “That’s the oldest trick in the world.” The Chinese opera masks formed a mute and scowling chorus on the wall behind him, pale faces frozen in expressions of terrifying disapproval.

“I thought he was going to say we had to cancel the play. I thought…I don’t know what I thought. Anyway, it wasn’t a trick. He did have something to tell me, but he never got the chance because your girlfriend murdered him.”

“Ruthven is dead? Have the police made an arrest?”

“The police don’t believe me because when they got there she had taken his body.”

“Huh?” It was a very un-Peter-like utterance. His black brows drew together.

“He was dying when I found him. He had a stake through his—”

Peter put a hand to his forehead. “Wait,” he said. “Is this some macabre joke? I know you’re angry—”

“No.”

He stared narrowly as though she had suddenly transformed into some dangerous and unpredictable animal.

“If it’s not a joke on you, it’s a joke on me,” he said at last.

“It’s no joke. He was dying. He had a—he had been stabbed. Sort of. I went to get help, and when the police arrived, he was gone.”

“Grace.” He put his arms around her. She told herself she should resist, but the familiar feel of his strong arms, the warmth of his body against her own was a comfort she could not deny herself. “Don’t you see? That performance was staged for your benefit. When you brought the coppers, Ruthven rang down the curtain.”

Curtains, she thought dully. Curtains for Lord Ruthven, certainly.

“It was more theatrics for your benefit. Fake blood, stage makeup. I’m guessing you didn’t get close enough to examine his wound.”

“He wasn’t faking.” She could hear his heart pounding, her head pressed against his chest. A steady, untroubled beat.

“You didn’t touch him.”

She lifted her head, trying to read his expression. “He couldn’t have faked the look in his eyes.”

His lean cheek creased in sardonic humor. “It’s called acting, darling. People make a living at faking that very kind of thing, Lord Ruthven being one of them. They can create believable monsters from outer space, let alone fake some blood. Ruthven’s an actor.”

She pulled back from him. “A director. It’s not the same thing. Besides, why would he fake his death?”

“Who the hell knows? Why would he call you in the first place?”

“Because he must have known something about Theresa’s murder.”

“That’s a stretch. Why didn’t he go to the police? Why drag you into it? You’re not involved.”

“Maybe I am.”

“No, you’re not.” He had not turned on the downstairs lamp so it was increasingly difficult to read his expression in the dying light, but he spoke with a certain finality.

“Okay, then say Ruthven did lure me there solely to scare the wits out of me. Why? What possible good could scaring me do anyone?”

He didn’t have an answer, and they both knew it.

C
hief Constable Heron waited for Grace as she made her way through the soggy garden to her cottage, his black umbrella standing out like some ominous bloom amidst the wet shrubs.

“A few words, Grace.”

She could not read his expression in the dying light, but she was still “Grace” and not “Miss Hollister,” so at least she wasn’t in complete disgrace.

She let him into the cottage and felt for the light switch. The rain peppered against the windows. Tea, she thought. Tea was just the thing she needed. But she said dispiritedly, because she was depressed that Peter had not made any move to keep her—and because she would not have trusted herself to stay even if he had, “I suppose you’re going to tell me my imagination is working overtime, too?”

“No.” Heron was busy with his umbrella, but something in the way he spoke that single word alerted her.

“Why? Has something happened?” She paused, midway to the kitchen. “Have you found Lord Ruthven?”

“No.”

Again, something in the single syllable prompted Grace to press. “But something
has
happened? What did Lady Ruthven say?”

“Lady Ruthven was not available for comment,” the chief constable stated. He added grimly, “They’ve gone.”

“Gone?”

“Packed up and left. The house is closed.” Heron’s weathered face was chagrined.

“Did they leave a forwarding address?”

His black eyes seemed to snap with some lively emotion she couldn’t read. “Apparently the plan is to stay with friends in Romania.”

“Romania?”

Heron’s tone was sour. “To be precise, Transylvania.”

The window scraped open. Grace pulled herself up, balanced on the sill, and dropped down into the dark room.

Tensely she waited for some noise, for lights to go on, for some sign that her first try at B & E was going to end in Chief Constable Heron’s office.

But nothing happened.

She stood in the silence and shadows, surrounded only by a ghostly assemblage of furniture in dust sheets.

Grace switched on her flashlight.

She wasn’t sure what she hoped to find—other than reassurance that the Ruthvens really were gone.

And gone they did appear to be, departing with a blitzkrieg speed and efficiency. Grace walked through room after room, footsteps echoing down the corridors.

She knew a bit about the history of the Monkton estate, tales of tragedy and betrayal during the final days of World War II. The house was still owned by the Monkton family, though it had been more than a generation since any had lived there. In fact, the house had not been leased for years, not until the Ruthvens had briefly taken it.

As she entered a long room of bay windows, drapes drawn against any ray of sun, Grace’s flashlight beam picked up two eyes and she sucked in her breath. The next moment she expelled it. The eyes were painted. She knew the painting, recognized it from both
Gothic
and
Haunted Summer
. Was this a stage prop or the original of Romantic painter Henry Fuseli’s
The Nightmare?

A floorboard creaked as she approached the fireplace and the painting hanging above it. An incubus squatted on a sleeping woman’s stomach. The incubus seemed to be staring straight at Grace.

She was reminded of a line by Victor Hugo,
The malicious have a dark happiness.
It seemed strangely apt in this house that had sheltered Catriona and her companion.

Was this painting a clue? Surely it was not part of the original furnishings? So what was its significance?

Grace examined the fireplace grate. It looked like some papers had recently been burned. She sifted through the gray ashes and brown curls of paper. A newspaper? She lined the largest pieces up on the floor and studied them in the circle of her flashlight beam.

…ossachs. Rang. LY RECORD.

It might as well be hieroglyphs. Grace sighed heavily, and her carefully accumulated clues blew across the floor. She scrambled to retrieve them, and put the crumbs of paper in her pocket to be examined later. She left the room, starting upstairs.

How could they vanish without a trace? They must have started packing the night of Theresa’s murder.

Which meant what?

Obviously, Catriona was involved in the murder. That had to be what Ruthven had wanted to tell Grace, but Catriona had stopped him.

Except…there was a logistical problem or two with that. Catriona was strong and agile, but was it probable that she could carry an unconscious man out of a theater and clean up all traces of blood and escape without a trace within fifteen minutes?

In fact, it would take a fair amount of upper body strength to impale someone with a piece of wood. Would a woman have that kind of strength? Assuming that Peter was wrong, and this wasn’t an elaborate hoax, Catriona must have had an accomplice.

Clearly
not
Lord Ruthven.

Some unknown henchman?

Or someone else? Someone she’d known and trusted for years. The kind of man who kept his head under pressure, who lied as naturally as he breathed, whose stomach wasn’t turned by violence, who didn’t shrink from the idea of doing something illegal.

A man like Peter.

Downstairs the phone began to ring, shrilling through the vacant hush. Grace ran downstairs and picked it up. She did not speak.

A man’s voice said something she did not understand. Because he did not speak clearly or because she didn’t recognize the words?

If she spoke, she would give herself away. She compromised on a toneless grunt.

“Dé?”
The sharp tone was one of interrogation. The word was foreign. Romanian? She had no idea, and she did not dare reply again.

Silence stretched on both ends of the line—then it was cut by the dial tone.

She was coming out of the library the next morning—having spent a fruitful couple of hours comparing typography and newspaper mastheads—when she spotted Peter leaving the bakery a few doors down.

How anyone could be thinking of baked goods at a time like this was beyond Grace. It was even more vexing that Peter should look so relaxed and at ease with the world.

As he opened the door to his Land Rover she considered him rather critically, from the gleam of his fair hair to the dull sheen of his leather boots. He did wear Levi’s well, she had to admit. Slim hips and long legs, that was the key.

As though feeling himself watched, Peter glanced around and caught her eye.

Just for a moment he looked pleased to see her. His expression changed almost instantly to wariness.

“What’s up?”

“I’ve just been doing a little research.”

His mouth thinned, but he said lightly, “Improving your mind, or are you snooping for something in particular?”

She ignored this, nodding at the white sack he held.

“Grocery shopping?” It was a silly question, but she wanted to keep him standing there, talking to her. She missed him. She hated being on opposite sides. She would have liked to call a truce—and not just to share what she suspected he carried in that paper bag.

“No, I was robbing the bakery. I’ve got a bag of hot croissants.”

He was joking, but there was a bite to it.

Grace couldn’t seem to help herself. She said, “They’re gone, you know.”

“Who?” She had his full attention now.

“Mary Queen of Plots and her minions. Supposedly they’ve gone to visit friends in Transylvania. That’s what the note they left said.”

Out of the corner of her eye she saw his hand tighten on the door frame. Then he relaxed. “I’ve heard it’s lovely this time of year.”

“Lord Ruthven vanished with them. But I spoke to the chief constable this morning. The police did check on that smeared handprint on the theater curtains—and it was real blood.”

He was so still she couldn’t see him breathe. Then he swallowed.

“I see.”

She had never seen his face look like that. He was a stranger again. It was a stranger who glanced at his watch as though recollecting himself, smiled a cool, contained smile, and said, “Fascinating. Forgive me, love, but I’ve got to run.”

He threw the sack inside the Land Rover and slid in, slamming shut the door. Just for an instant, as he started the engine, his eyes met hers through the windshield.

Then he gave her a curt nod and put the car in reverse.

Grace watched him swing in an efficient arc and speed off down the road. And she knew that he had told her the absolute truth: he was going to run.

She made her decision there and then, and went to get her car.

Speeding south along the A65, Grace kept Peter’s Land Rover just in sight with one car between them.

She feared the robin’s-egg blue of the Aston Martin stood out like a hot-air balloon in the gray morning, but Peter was driving fast, and Grace was willing to bet his mind was preoccupied with whatever had sent him shooting back to Craddock House and then out once more into the drizzling morning—Gladstone bag in hand.

Even preoccupied as she was, Grace could not help but notice the dramatic beauty of the rainswept countryside. Copper and gold leaves glinted against the dramatic sky, and in the distance the mountains were a pastel haze of blue and purple and mauve. The white thunderheads ahead seemed to form nebulous grimacing faces. As she drove through the lush, verdant landscape, it was easy to see why nineteenth-century painter John Constable had described the Lakes as “the finest scenery that ever was.” And eighteen million annual visitors seemed to concur with this assessment.

The Land Rover was disappearing into the rolling green distance. Grace accelerated. Woods flashed by in scarlet, yellow and brown.

The tune of “John Peel” kept running through Grace’s mind.

Chase the fox from his lair in the morning…

As they neared Oxenholme, Peter slowed and pulled into the car park. Grace shot past and a mile up pulled a U-turn, and drove back.

Peter had parked. She spotted his tall figure heading for the gray building of the station before a bus pulled out, blocking her view. It didn’t take a detective to deduce he was taking the train. But which train?

She hurried across the forecourt, skirting rain puddles, and positioned herself near a kiosk where a driver in a yellow shirt and goose bumps held high a sign in Japanese.

In a few minutes Peter strode out of the station and started for a platform where a train sat idling.

Grace didn’t have time to waste on subtlety. “I want to go where the man in the khaki trench coat is going.”

Perhaps this was a popular route with secret agents, for the clerk said, as though hers were a routine request, “Eleven forty-three to Euston Station.”

Euston Station? Then they were going to London?

Gulping over the cost, Grace bought her ticket. Because of recent deprivatization of the railway system, extensive improvements were now under way. Modern trains were slowly replacing the old rattlers; but, compared to other countries, railway travel was shockingly expensive in the UK.

Leaving the ticket counter, she looked around for a decent hiding place where she could watch Peter without being noticed until it was time to board. The bank of phones looked promising.

A young woman with a baby carriage had engaged Peter in smiling conversation. The baby, clearly a girl, was cooing at him and offering her pacifier.

There was no cash machine at the station. She would have to hope she didn’t have some kind of financial emergency before she reached London. She looked at her watch. Half past eleven. It was nearly a four-hour train ride to London. Grace’s stomach was already growling.

The minutes passed; then passengers began to board. Peter assisted the woman with the baby carriage.

Ticket in hand, Grace filed toward the steps of the train. A hand clamped down on her shoulder. She turned, startled.

Chaz, looking unreasonably outraged, stood there.

“What are you doing?” Grace demanded.

“What are
you
doing?”

Belatedly she lowered her voice. “Catching a train.” She turned and spotted Peter’s back disappearing inside the train. “Look, I’ve got to go.”

“You’re following him!” Chaz was not bothering to keep his voice down, and they were drawing curious glances.

“And you’re following me.” Despite her ire, she couldn’t help seeing the irony in the situation.

Chaz was attempting to draw her away. Grace freed herself. “Not now!”

“Are you crazy? You can’t go running after him. Even if he’s not a crook, you can’t chase him all over the country.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.” The train whistle blew. Desperately, Grace said, “I’ve got to go.”

“We’ve got to discuss—”