Verse of the Vampyre (6 page)

I don’t believe in coincidence
. Wasn’t that what Peter had said? And not so long ago.

Grace had to be satisfied with the knowledge that the equally inscrutable Lord Ruthven had said he would stop by later for a pint, and she joined the others at the Cock’s Crow.

The pub had a low open-beamed ceiling and sixteenth-century dark paneling. The old-fashioned fixtures gleamed in the mellow light. There were candle sconces on the wall and vintage signs from the 1940s.

“Where is everybody?” Grace asked, glancing around. Almost none of the cast or crew was present. One of the stagehands glanced over his shoulder.

“It’s this talk of vampires.”

Grace laughed, then realized the man was serious.

“You’ve heard about Bill Jones?” The stagehand was an ordinary-looking man, middle-aged and clean-cut. His expression was perfectly sincere.

Grace shook her head. “Who?”

“The Crosbys’ security man. His body was drained of every drop of blood. And there were strange marks on his neck. Marks—” The other man nudged him, and the stagehand broke off.

“That can’t be true,” Grace protested.

The stagehand shrugged, not looking at her. He turned back to the bar. Grace found herself sharing a table with Roy Blade. They ordered a round and some cheese and apple tartlets.

“I’m afraid the old bat was right.
Manfred
would have been the stronger work,” Blade said, pushing a pint of beer toward Grace. “Somehow this version simply isn’t living up to the promise of Polidori’s vision.”

“It is challenging,” she said tactfully, redirecting her attention to the play.

Though Grace secretly agreed with Lady Vee, she focused on the bright side. According to Roy, who possessed all kinds of strange and arcane knowledge, there was a German opera based on Polidori’s tragedy called
Der Vampyr,
which had been updated by the BBC in the early 1990s and retitled
The Vampyr: A Soap Opera
. So Grace counted her blessings. Maybe they weren’t doing
Manfred,
but at least there weren’t any singing vampires in her immediate future.

“The old witch pushes my buttons with that
Upstairs, Downstairs
stuff,” he grumbled.

No question of which old witch he was referring to, although Grace suddenly remembered the poppet that she was still carrying in her purse. She had intended to show it to Peter but had never had the chance.

She noticed that the stagehands excused themselves after one round and departed. “I guess like all of us she’s a product of her generation,” she offered vaguely, her thoughts circling back to Bill Jones’s mysterious end.

Blade snorted, blowing foam from his brew. “What generation is that? Crustacean? She’s the reason people have revolutions.”

Absently, Grace sipped from the mug.

The beer was locally brewed, one of those golden bitters with a hint of citrus. Before her stay in Innisdale, Grace hadn’t known a lager from a malt liquor, but Cumbria was home to many famous breweries, like Jennings, which had been around since the 1800s, or Barngates, which named its beers for the dogs that had lived at the Drunken Duck Inn.

Microbrewing was a thriving cottage industry in the Lakes. In fact, every June there was an enormous beer festival in Keswick, attracting nearly four thousand partiers.

She said, a little tentatively, “You haven’t heard anything about there being something strange about the security guard’s death, have you?”

“What security guard?” Blade looked blank.

“Bill Jones. The man who worked for the Crosbys. The one who was injured during the robbery.”

“No. Well, just that they may have tried to run him down deliberately. Why?”

“I don’t know. I’ve heard a couple of rumors.”

“That what you were researching downstairs this afternoon?”

“Oh
that
. No.” She changed the subject quickly. “Anyway, Lady Vee seems to have bailed.” Lady Vee had not been in the theater that evening, so it appeared she was making good on her threat to abandon the project if she couldn’t control it.

“Don’t get your hopes up. Lady Be Damned isn’t happy unless she’s got everyone chasing their tails. Look at the summer before last.”

Grace knew to what Blade referred, but thought it tactful to ignore this. “At least Allegra hasn’t deserted us,” she said.

The Honorable Allegra Clairmont-Brougham, Lady Vee’s niece, had played a large and somewhat unpleasant role in Grace’s adventures the previous year. But her relations with the Hon. Al, who was the art director for the play, had improved fractionally since Grace had joined the production. Grace put this down to the social principle of Misery Loves Company.

Blade wiped the foam from his beard with the back of a tattooed hand. “I’ve known the Honorable Al since we were kids. My dad used to work in her ladyship’s stables.”

“Oh. Right.” The biker and the aristo? She couldn’t really picture Blade and the Hon. Al together, but there were people who probably couldn’t see the schoolteacher and the ex–jewel thief as a couple.

“What the hell,” Blade said. “I know I don’t have a chance with her. It’s a miracle she never married some git like Gerald Ives.”

She would have liked to reassure Blade that the feudal system was a thing of the past, but he knew as well as she did that for old families like the Broughams, the ruling class was alive and well. And Allegra was very much a creature of her upbringing. Besides which, Grace suspected she still had a thing for Peter. But then Grace was beginning to suspect every woman had a thing for Peter.

She had another ale to be polite. The conversation returned inevitably to the play and literature.

“You’re quite a fan of Dr. Polidori,” Grace remarked.

Blade’s lips twisted. “I admit he’s not in the same class as Byron or Shelley—let alone Keats—but I think he deserves kudos for providing us with our modern conception of the vampire.”

“I beheld the wretch, the miserable monster whom I had created.”

“
Frankenstein,
Chapter Five,” Blade said automatically. “Born the same night as Polidori’s vampire.”

Blade was referring to the ghost story “competition” between Byron and the Shelleys at their Lake Geneva villa one rainy summer night in 1816. Mary Shelley had concocted Frankenstein’s monster, Byron a vampire, Polidori a skull-faced woman. Percy Shelley, demonstrating artistic restraint, had abstained.

“Yes, that was some slumber party at the Villa Diodati.”

Blade seemed to find this funny, or perhaps it was the effects of the third round of ale. “Yeah, they sure don’t write them like they used to. Murder, monsters, revenge, lust—”

“I don’t know. Sex and violence are staples of contemporary drama,” Grace objected.

“Right, but it’s not the same. Modern drama lacks the blood and guts of the true Gothic melodrama. Byron, Shelley—even Polidori—their fiction reflected their lives. They were larger than life. Byron’s death in the Greek War for Independence, Shelley’s drowning, Polidori’s suicide. Even their ends embodied the dark romance of their lives.”

Grace swallowed ale thoughtfully. It was true that the biographies of the great Romantics read like fiction, mirroring the dark elements of Gothic literature.

“Passion,” Blade said. “They lived and died with passion. Nobody feels that kind of passion nowadays. It’s inconvenient, embarrassing, politically incorrect.”

“And dangerous,” Grace added.

They left the pub together. A giant low-hanging moon made a silhouette of the chimney pots and rooftops of Innisdale.

As the theater was just a short distance, Grace declined Blade’s offer of a lift back to her car.

His bike roared off into the night as she crossed the street, walking briskly past the park. The preparations for the coming fete were under way. Gaily striped tents puffed and sank in the night breeze as though they were breathing. A merry-go-round with berib-boned lions, camels and other exotic animals, mouths open in soundless roars, stood in the moonlight. Play-bills tugged against hastily hammered nails promising fortune-telling, fireworks and all manner of earthly and unearthly delights.

It was strange, Grace reflected, to think that these lighthearted celebrations were based primarily on the ancient pagan festival of
Samhain,
honoring Amhain, Celtic Lord of the Dead. The ancient Druid bonfires and animal sacrifices heralded the season of cold, darkness and decay. Celtic tradition held that on this single eve the Lord of the Dead allowed departed souls to return to their earthly homes. On
Samhain,
the border between the dead and living faded, and creatures of the night were at their most powerful.

A little knowledge, Grace thought ruefully.

The streets were quiet; cheerful lights shone behind curtains and blinds, and the scent of wood fires spiced the autumn night.

Grace was just reflecting how she would never have dreamed of walking alone at night in Los Angeles, when she caught the sound of footsteps behind her.

She glanced back. There was no one there.

Mindful of her numerous self-defense classes, Grace cut across the road, keeping her pace quick and her posture confident. Her ears were attuned to any sounds. All she could hear was the echo of her own footsteps down the empty streets.

But then there was a faint furtive noise a yard or two behind her. Without bothering to check, she crossed the street again. As she reached the opposite pavement she threw a look over her shoulder. This time she caught a glimpse of something and felt her scalp prickle.

It had to be a trick of the light, but she could have sworn that her follower wore a cape.

Lord Ruthven on his way to the pub? No. He would say something, call out to her. And, although it was hard to tell, she didn’t think the figure was tall enough. If she could get a better look…but actually this was as much of a look as she wanted.

Suddenly the familiar streets seemed dull with shadows, and menacing. There were no homes along this stretch of road, and the shops were closed and dark. The police kiosk was on the other side of the village. She hated to think what she would say to one of her girls who let herself get into a situation like this.

And had she really believed it was worth the savings not to carry a cell phone here? For a smart woman, Grace, she told herself, you really can be an idiot.

Still walking, she felt around in her purse, pulled out her compact and held it up, half-turning. “Look, if you don’t clear off, I’m calling the cops!” She hoped her voice sounded more confident than she felt. She hoped that from this distance and concealed by her hand her compact might be mistaken for a cell phone. She hoped she didn’t fall over something while walking backward.

Eyes probing the gloom, Grace weighed her options. She didn’t have many.

There. Something moved by the corner of a building. She glimpsed white. A face? No, too white, too stiff. A mask? She faced forward again.

She could see the theater marquee in the distance, featuring nothing and starring no one. The theater lights were dark, the parking lot empty. She began to jog. She heard footsteps behind her break into a run.

This time she didn’t stop to look. Grace ran, too, purse clutched against her side and feet pounding the pavement. Puddles shimmered in moonlight. She saw the blur of her reflection as she raced past. And the reflection of something right on her heels. She ran faster. She ran for her life; adrenaline gave her wings.

The Aston Martin sat by itself in the empty parking lot.

Her keys were already clenched between her knuckles, blades out, as a last-resort weapon. Now she fumbled with them, jamming the car key into the lock.

It didn’t fit. Was it upside down? The wrong key? She turned it this way, that way, for agonizing seconds before the car door opened. Jumping in, she slammed the door shut behind her and banged down the lock.

She scrabbled to fit the key into the ignition. Again it seemed too big for the lock. She poked blindly. Her eyes raked the car park for her pursuer.

Nothing. The shadows shifted with the moonlight, but there was no one there.

The Aston Martin roared into life, and Grace peeled out of the lot.

She was as angry as she was scared. Her heart banged against her ribs in that fight-or-flight reaction, or perhaps from her mad dash. Her hands gripped the steering wheel too tightly. Slowly, she drove down the narrow street, the car’s headlights spotlighting the corners and alleys of the road. There was no sign of her pursuer.

G
race woke to a morning as dark as night. Needles of rain glittered in the gloom outside the front window. For the first time she realized that all this rain could get on her nerves. From the chesterfield, which made into a bed, she spotted Miss Coke’s poppet lying on her dresser and was filled with uncharacteristic depression. She was homesick. She missed teaching. She missed her family. Witches were casting spells on her.

She sat up, her feet touching cold floor, and shivered. Winter was coming. She caught a glimpse of herself in the dresser mirror. She needed a haircut.

“Anything else wrong?” Grace asked her reflection.

Well, there was the fact that someone had deliberately tried to scare the heck out of her the night before. Grace debated whether she had made the right choice in not going immediately to the police station. But what would have been the end result? She had been followed but not assaulted. She did not have a description; she was not positive that her follower had been in costume. And if she did reveal her suspicion to the police, they would surely dismiss it as a Halloween prank. For all Grace knew, it
was
a Halloween prank. She hadn’t been harmed; she hadn’t even really been threatened.

She should still file a complaint; that was common sense, but she didn’t want to bring any more police attention to herself than she could help, because of Peter.

Peter.

There was another problem. She really did not feel up to facing Peter this morning.

After several minutes of pacing she decided to call him.

For a split second she believed she was going to get away with talking to the answering machine, but Peter picked up on the second ring. She could picture him, hair damp from the shower, bare skin smelling of soap and shaving lather. He would be barefoot, bare-chested, a white towel draped around his shoulders. The kitchen would smell of coffee and bacon as he moved through his comfortable morning routine.

His voice, a bit huskier in the mornings, answered.

“Hi, it’s me,” she started in. “I’ve been thinking about yesterday, and um…I think it would be a good idea to…um, give each other some space.”

She could imagine what he thought of that euphemism. There was a pause during which the line seemed to crackle with things unsaid; then Peter was crisp and to the point. “I’m leaving on a buying trip this morning, so you’ll have all the space you require.”

She was both relieved and disappointed. “How long will you be gone?” she asked after a moment.

“I’m not sure. A few days perhaps.” Before the previous day it would have been natural to question him; now it was like talking to a stranger.

“All right,” Grace said, equally crisp and to the point. “In that case I’ll cover for you. At the shop I mean.” Of course she meant at the shop; she hardly needed to clarify that she wasn’t covering for his involvement in a crime—she knew he wasn’t involved in any crime!

“Thanks.” His tone was dry. There was another pause. Grace waited. Her heart was pounding hard. Love or an anxiety attack? It was beginning to feel like the same thing.

Peter severed the connection.

He was gone for a week, and there were no robberies. That was the good news. It might also be the bad news. She didn’t know how the police might interpret it. She only knew that she missed him. Peter had gone on buying trips before, but then his absence had been eased by phone calls and even a postcard or two. This time there was nothing. He might have dropped off the face of the earth.

Grace tried not to miss him or even think about him. There was plenty to do between rehearsals, her book and minding the store. Of the three, working at Rogue’s Gallery was the least demanding. Peter had everything organized so that the shop practically ran itself. But Peter’s absence was most noticeable at Rogue’s Gallery. The littlest things reminded Grace of him: his coffee mug sitting on his desk, his olive waxed jacket hanging on the coatrack, the silver fountain pen he always used. Reminders of his presence were everywhere.

Everything in the shop had been handpicked by him, from the vintage movie poster for the 1925
Raffles
to the red lacquer Japanese screen embellished with a terrifying dragon—and a terrifying price tag. Peter catered to clients of imagination and exquisite taste—and fat pocketbooks.

“Have you heard anything more about the robberies, Mrs. Mac?” Grace asked the charwoman one morning early into Peter’s absence.

“Like?” Mrs. Mac wasn’t nearly as chatty without Peter around, Grace had noticed.

“I don’t know. I heard a couple of weird stories about the security guard. Did you go to his funeral yesterday?”

“And why should I? Did I know the man?”

Grace shrugged. “A lot of people went, I understand.”

No response. Grace studied the formidable broadside of Mrs. Mac.

“Have you lived in Innisdale long, Mrs. Mac?” She was suddenly curious.

“Two years this spring.”

“I don’t know why I thought you had known Peter longer.” Grace scrambled to shift chairs and rugs out of the path of Mrs. Mac’s mop.

Mrs. Mac grunted and jabbed the mop into an alcove as though something dangerous lurked there. “That’s right. Knew him before.”

“Knew him before what?”

Mrs. Mac’s colorless eyes flicked to Grace’s face. “Before he moved to Cumbria.”

Here was a wealth of information on Peter, Grace recognized, but it would not be easy to crack the safe of Mrs. Mac’s reticence.

“Was it hard getting used to the country life?” she asked casually, returning to the counter.

“Makes a change, it does,” Mrs. Mac said indifferently. “You should know, dearie.”

“I guess you have to go where there’s work.”

“That’s right. When I got—er—when I was looking for work, Mr. Fox offered me a job, and I took it. He was always looking out for the re—” She cut herself off.

Looking out for the re…st? Rest…of us?
And what would the rest of them be? What was Peter Fox? An ex–jewel thief. A former criminal. Was this what he held in common with Mrs. Mac? Yes, Grace could believe that Mrs. Mac might have a criminal record. There was an edge to her that was more than hardness.
When I got—er—When I got…out?

Grace made a stab in the dark. “But he never went to prison. He was never caught—in this country.”

Mrs. Mac shoved the mop so hard it nearly flew out of her grasp. She straightened up. “He told you about that? About the Turkish job? He’s never talked to anyone, not so’s—” She caught herself. Her mouth compressed.

“I don’t think he told me everything,” Grace admitted, which was the understatement of the year.

Mrs. Mac’s laugh was as harsh as a crow’s. “No, I imagine not, ducks.”

She turned away, jabbing at corners with her mop in a way that probably indicated as much irritation with herself as with Grace. Grace considered her plump and unrelenting back.

What did it mean? Had she really learned anything new? Apparently Peter’s internment in Turkey had been the result of a botched caper. She had pretty well worked that much out for herself, but the caper had been big enough that his former confederates (if they
were
former!) knew of it—although not the details.

To Grace, Turkey meant Lord Byron. The notorious rake and poet had died fighting the Turks in the Greek War for Independence, and many of his Eastern-influenced works showed familiarity with and interest in Islam.

In fact, Byron’s own fragment of a vampire novel had been set in Turkey.

But it was unlikely that a notorious jewel thief had been hunting antiquities in that “wild and tenant-less tract.” From the little he let slip, Grace gathered Peter had approached his former profession with a pragmatic and cynical attitude. Jewels had equaled cold cash; he found nothing magical or romantic about them. They were easy to grab and easy to liquidate. Antiquities, on the other hand, were a much riskier proposition.

Had Mrs. Mac revealed anything else? Was Peter fostering his own thieves’ den in Innisdale? Or perhaps by hiring Mrs. Mac he had simply been giving an old colleague a break. Loyalty wasn’t a bad trait in a man. Nor compassion.

When Mrs. Mac glanced her way, Grace quickly looked down at her book. After a few moments she began to read in earnest.

She had recently started Tom Holland’s
Lord of the Dead,
a diverting blend of fact and fantasy that worked from the premise that Lord Byron, going by the name of Lord Ruthven, was in fact a vampire.

The Ruthven name had certainly gotten a work-out in connection with Lord Byron. In her melodramatic novel
Glenarvon
, Lady Caroline Lamb had named the villain (a thinly disguised caricature of Byron) Lord Ruthven. Then Dr. Polidori had continued the nasty in-joke by naming his vampire villain (also a thinly disguised caricature of Byron) Lord Ruthven. Now Holland had taken it to the next logical step: a vampire named Lord Ruthven was, in fact, Lord Byron.

It made Grace wonder again about the uncanny coincidence of Innisdale’s own Lord Ruthven. True, Lord Ruthven had appeared before the season’s play had been selected; but, thinking back, Grace couldn’t recall who had actually suggested doing Polidori’s story. Had Ruthven himself suggested it or had someone else, perhaps unconsciously influenced by Ruthven’s name, proposed the idea?

If Ruthven had manipulated the Innisdale Players to perform
The Vampyre
, what could be his purpose?

For that matter, was Ruthven even the producer’s real name?

Am I becoming completely paranoid? Grace wondered.

But, since she was indulging her paranoia, why
had
Grace been brought in? Granted, when she had been invited to take part, the theater committee was still discussing doing a work by Byron; but even so, with Roy Blade and Lady Venetia present, there were more than enough experts on the plays and poetry of the Romantic Age—jokes about being the “tiebreaker” aside.

It was all very odd. Now they had some nut running around in a Halloween cape and spooky mask. It could be a coincidence. It was the kind of prank an adolescent might think up.

It could be someone’s idea of a publicity stunt.

Or someone could be seriously disturbed.

On Tuesday the Innisdale Players arrived at the theater to find the front of the building spray painted. THE BLOOD IS THE LIFE, proclaimed three-foot red letters.

A small crowd gathered outside.

“I know that quote. Why do I know that quote?” Grace caught Blade’s out-loud thought over the others’ exclamations and expressions of dismay.

“It’s from the Bible
,
” she answered.

His black brows shot up as he recognized the source.

“It’s also from
Dracula
,” Grace added.

“
Dracula?
” Lady Theresa laughed uneasily. “Tell him to get his own show.”

“Look on the bright side,” Derek said cheerfully. “Free publicity never hurt anyone.”

Catriona said to Grace, “You seem awfully well versed on your vampire lore.”

“I’ve been reading up. That’s my job, right?”

“Right.” With one skeptical word Catriona managed to suggest that Grace was not above vandalizing public property. Grace told herself it was beneath her to respond to Catriona’s baiting.

Not for the first time she wondered at Catriona’s antagonism. Surely this undercurrent as much as anything confirmed there was something between Catriona and Peter—something that made the other woman resent Grace. And if Catriona resented Grace, that was a good sign, right? That meant she wasn’t having it all her own way.

Lord Ruthven turned from the defaced building. Grace didn’t know what to make of his expression. Anger? Fear? Low blood sugar?

“Perhaps we should get the police,” Catriona said to him. There was a challenge in her tone.

Ruthven stared at her with his dark hollow eyes and said nothing.

If the police were called in, Grace saw no sign of them. After a day or two the front of the theater was scrubbed down and repainted.

Rehearsals continued remorselessly, for all the good they did.

It wasn’t until Wednesday that Grace noticed she was being followed.

The woman was standing by the gate when Grace pulled out of the drive of Renfrew Hall. She noticed her in the rearview: a tall thin figure in black standing motionless among the trees.