Countess Dracula (16 page)

‘So will I. Now help me off with the rest of my clothes, would you? Then I’ll get in the bath and you can shower me off.’

Nayland got up and did as she’d asked, albeit with rather fumbling fingers, the drink having robbed him of his usual dexterity. She made no complaint, happy to have him in his correct position: the agreeable servant.

Elizabeth climbed into the bathtub and knelt down. ‘Now spray me, darling. Let’s see if it’s done its job.’

He took the extendable hose and slowly sluiced the blood away, rubbing softly at her skin like a mother bathing a child.

In a few minutes she was clean and the blood had worked its magic. It was perhaps even more baffling when seen on only half the canvas. Her upper body looked so different from what lay below her waist, though Nayland realised he didn’t love either half more than the other – he was far too hopelessly devoted for that. He adored every corrupt inch of her.

‘It worked,’ he said. ‘Worked perfectly.’

Elizabeth got up and moved to the mirror, smiling to see herself restored once more. ‘There I am,’ she said.

‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘There you are.’

‘Wonderful. That means you won’t have to go every single day. Every other day should be fine.’

‘Wonderful,’ Nayland echoed, his voice as dead as the women who were to come.

‘Don’t worry, Frank,’ she said, cupping his head with her wet, perfect hand. ‘Everything will carry on just as it should.’

[MONTAGE]

The soundtrack swells and the screen goes dreamy as we cross-fade from Elizabeth’s bathroom to Nayland behind the wheel of his car. He is once more wearing his disguise.

We see a succession of prostitutes getting into his car, one cross-fading into another and into another again …

Nayland smiles but his heart is not in it. The camera lingers on the cold, dead look in his eyes.

Still he drives, still he does as he’s told.

We see the barn, so innocent-looking from the outside, sheltered by its orchard of orange trees.

BANG! We jump-cut to Elizabeth, her face looking older than ever as she moves in towards the camera, a straight razor in her hand. We see the blade in close-up: it glints in the light. SWISH! It cuts down towards the screen in a shower of blood.

Elizabeth laughs and her old face fades into an image of her drenched in blood, which then fades again as we see her laughing, beautiful once more.

The camera pulls back and we see that she is at yet another party, surrounded by those who adore her. She is looking off-screen and the camera follows her, focusing on the handsome face of Henry, standing back a little to give her space.

Another cut, this time to the wall of Henry’s hotel room. His face and Elizabeth’s come into shot from either side of the frame, kiss, then topple backwards as they fall onto the bed in a lovers’ clinch.

We cross-fade to the car once more, Nayland taking a swig from a hip flask as he cruises the sleazier areas of Los Angeles.

P.O.V. We are looking through an innocent victim’s eyes as she moves towards the car and leans in through the window. Nayland smiles at us: it is the watery smile of a drunk.

BANG! The razor again: another victim of Elizabeth’s beauty.

A newspaper spins into frame, its headline screaming at us as it fills the screen:

HOLLYWOOD DIVORCE! BEAUTY AND THE BEAST SEPARATED!

Another:

‘I AM SO GLAD TO BE FREE!’ SAYS ELIZABETH SASDY, BOX-OFFICE QUEEN

Another:

‘I NEED TIME TO SORT MYSELF OUT.’ FRANK NAYLAND ADMITS HIS ADDICTION

Finally we see Fabio, looking on as Elizabeth once more dances the night away at one of the hottest spots in town. The camera closes in on him, ending with an extreme close-up. This is a man who is ill at ease. He knows that all is not well …

FADE TO BLACK

‘So,’ said Henry, his mouth full of scrambled eggs, ‘you going to this party tonight?’

‘Of course I’m going,’ Fabio replied, staring suspiciously into the depths of his muddy coffee. ‘My groin hasn’t been this excited for years.’

‘An image that I could have done without, thanks.’

‘Then avert your eyes this evening, kid. Elizabeth’s parties are not for the faint-hearted, the prudish or those lacking in stamina.’

‘Sounds wonderful and terrifying, all at the same time.’

‘Just as all great things in life should.’

‘How are things going with them? You know, the divorce and stuff.’

‘Not that you have a vested interest.’

Henry smiled. ‘Just asking.’

‘Yeah, and don’t think I haven’t noticed how much time you’ve been spending with her.’

A worrying, dreamy look came into Henry’s eyes. ‘She’s one hell of a woman.’

‘An appropriate description for sure. Just you watch yourself.’

‘I thought you were all for it?’

Fabio sighed and took a sip of his coffee. As a businessman he certainly was all for it – in fact, it was perfect. What better way of shooting his new protégé to stardom than by putting him on Elizabeth’s arm? After all, it had worked before. Still, he would be lying if he didn’t admit to feeling a bit guilty about it: Henry was a good kid and didn’t have the first idea what he was getting into. Or maybe he was patronising him, maybe he could hold his own. He had the years on Elizabeth, that was for sure. His shelf life would be longer, however good she was looking. Nature had to take its course sooner or later, didn’t it?

‘I am,’ he said eventually. ‘My two brightest stars shining together – what could be better?’

‘So how long do you think it will take?’

‘I don’t know. We’re pushing Nayland’s behaviour as justifiable cause and there’s more than one judge that owes me a favour. What’s the rush?’

‘I thought you wanted to cash in, you know, you’re the one that’s always saying you should strike while the iron’s hot.’

‘You listen to everything I say, huh?’

‘Of course. Doesn’t mean I pay it any mind.’ Henry laughed and Fabio took the opportunity to change the subject, returning to pipe dreams of ideal roles for Henry. If there was one thing Fabio had learned in his years as a manager it was that there was no subject actors liked discussing more than themselves.

They finished breakfast and he sent Henry on his way, choosing to ignore the spring in the young man’s step. He was a dramatic contrast to the car crash that was Frank Nayland. It was the law of nature, Fabio told himself, survival of the fittest: one alpha male fell by the wayside to be replaced by the next.

Except nature didn’t seem to be playing entirely fair with the queen of the pack, did it?

And that was something he simply had to get his head around before things developed any further.

Whatever he had said to Elizabeth he had no intention of letting her keep her secret. On the one hand, if there was a way for ageing actresses to tap into the fountain of youth he wanted to know how it worked because the knowledge would be worth a fortune. On the other, and this was by far his greatest compulsion, secrets were certainly his business, as Elizabeth herself had said – but only when he knew the details of them. You got nowhere through ignorance in this life – half his business dealings hinged on that fact. Knowledge was a currency and he needed to have as much of it as he could.

Already Fabio had been paying close attention to Elizabeth’s movements, not just at night when she was now a mainstay of the party scene but also when she thought nobody was looking. That was where he would find out what he really needed to know: when she thought she was safe.

He had met up with Patience. In fact, that had been his first step.

‘How does she do it?’ he had asked her bluntly, seeing no mileage in small talk.

‘I couldn’t say, I’m sure.’

‘Can’t or won’t? Because let’s have no confusion over loyalty here: she may be your mistress but I’m the one that got you the job. You work for me as well as her.’

Patience hadn’t responded favourably to that, no doubt because she knew it to be true. Fabio had recruited the entire household staff that supported Elizabeth and Nayland. He had selected them from the agencies, he still paid their wages, they were an expense that went through his books. He owned them as surely as he did the two stars whom they served.

‘I just don’t know,’ Patience had insisted. ‘I barely see her these days. She’s always either in her room, partying or driving around.’

‘Driving?’ Elizabeth was not, as far as Fabio could recall, a woman who had ever taken much pleasure in getting anywhere under her own steam. She was a woman who liked to be driven.

‘She goes out most days, I couldn’t say where. Heads out after lunch, then comes back a few hours later.’

‘You think she’s going to a clinic or something?’

Patience had shrugged. ‘Maybe. To be honest, I assumed she was seeing her young man.’

‘Her young man?’

‘I read the papers same as everyone else, I know what she gets up to.’

Except you don’t
, Fabio had thought,
or I wouldn’t have to be digging this out of you piece by damned piece
. ‘Why did you think that?’

‘She dresses up, you know, hiding herself with big sunglasses and the like. She looks like she doesn’t want to be recognised – isn’t that how people behave when they’re going to see their secret lovers?’

‘Except he’s hardly secret, is he?’ And Elizabeth was not the sort of woman to hide her face either, Fabio thought. She was not a woman who covered herself, however illicit her business. So what was she hiding?

‘I don’t know about any of it,’ Patience had said with finality. ‘I just do my job and that’s all I think about.’

‘Which is why you’re such good value,’ Fabio admitted. ‘Forget I asked.’

And she probably would. She was the most discreet woman he had ever met in this country, the perfect servant. But Fabio wouldn’t let the matter drop as easily as she seemed able to. He would chase this thing down to the end.

Which was why he decided to hire a car and follow Elizabeth himself. It was better that way because then only he would know whatever it was that he found out. Knowledge was a currency indeed, he reminded himself, and the fewer the people who possessed it the more valuable it was.

Fabio drove over to Elizabeth’s house, resigned to a possible wait. The odds of catching her in the act were good, though, he decided. Patience had said that Elizabeth tended to go out after lunch and if what she was up to had something to do with her appearance (and for the life of him he couldn’t think of an alternative explanation) then she would certainly be about her business today. If there was a time when she would want to look at her very best it would be at the party.

He parked off the road, a short way up from Elizabeth and Nayland’s main drive, and settled down with a handful of scripts that he had been sent by various studios. Most of them were unworkably shoddy, he decided as he flicked through their pages. More monster madness from Universal, some wild nonsense about werewolves in London (who gave two shits about London? Werewolves in Los Angeles, yes, he could have got behind that as an idea) and a melodrama about a homeless woman who got embroiled with a criminal gang, the sort of thing that would once have had Mary Pickford written all over it. He could certainly do better and there was no harm in holding out for juicier roles for his clients. The studios respected a man who said no – up to a point, at least.

Fabio was threatening to doze off, the midday heat hitting the roof of the car and sending him into a sweaty stupor, when he heard a car approaching. He shrunk down in his seat, looking for all the world like a low-rent private detective in a B-movie. It wasn’t Elizabeth, it was Nayland, though he seemed to be going to some considerable effort to disguise the fact. It was all Fabio could do not to laugh – the guy was wearing a false beard! And he thought
he
’d been ridiculous burrowing into the collar of his coat to avoid detection. At least he’d left the kiddies’ dress-up kit at home. What the hell could Nayland be doing in that get-up?

Fabio made a split decision, turned on the ignition and pulled his car out onto the road. He hadn’t intended to take any interest in Nayland’s movements but this was too good to ignore. He was up to something for sure and Fabio couldn’t have lived with himself if he’d passed up the opportunity to find out what. According to Patience, Elizabeth went out most days so it wasn’t as if he wouldn’t get his chance to follow her again.

He kept his distance, though the way Nayland had been the last couple of weeks he was pretty sure he could have ridden the guy’s bumper and he wouldn’t have noticed. The man was not at his peak right now.

They cut down through the hills and towards the city. Fabio hoped Nayland wasn’t planning on driving for hours – he’d be furious if this whole thing turned out to be a wild-goose chase. Still, that beard drew him on: what could Nayland be doing that needed a disguise? It occurred to him that Patience’s assumption that Elizabeth was meeting up with a lover could turn out to be accurate about her husband. Was Nayland meeting someone on the side? Hell, not even on the side any more … Surely not. It wasn’t as though he had to worry about being caught: if he was bedding some gal he’d have been full of it the last time they’d talked. Why would he hide it? Unless it wasn’t a gal …? Oh Christ, Fabio knew these English guys, they were all a bit weird when it came to sex. Might Nayland be seeing another
man
? If so he would hardly be the first Hollywood star to stray in that direction but it would be one hell of a bigger mess to cover up if that was what he was up to. Audiences didn’t like their leading men to be nancies. Fabio could have believed it of Nayland but for one thing: his devotion to Elizabeth – the wet schmuck adored the poisonous bitch. He couldn’t imagine him screwing anyone else, man or woman, given the way he felt for her.