The Kindred of Darkness (22 page)

‘From what I recall of the prologue to the 1702 Antwerp text,' Sophister went on after a time, ‘Johanot – or John – of Valladolid returned to Spain from Prague around the year 1370, and became a canon of the cathedral in his home city. He perished of the plague before his thirtieth year. But the text of the prologue is very corrupt.' He shook his head disapprovingly, ‘And in a Latin completely different from the main text – absolutely peppered with nominative absolutes. The earliest edition – the one printed in Burgos in 1490 – describes him as an Arab, and the Spanish printing done in Toledo four years later has nothing to say about him at all. So you pays your money, as they say at the fairgrounds, and you takes your choice.'

‘And have you heard further –' Asher gently turned more pages – ‘from this Count Bessenyei in Florence?'

‘Nary a word, but it's early days yet.
Fugaces labuntur anni
… I only sent the letter off last week. Mind you, I've dunned the man twice for payments …'

As Death's shadow changes all things, so the vampire is no longer man or woman. Blood he seeks, and without the kill he loses that facility which he has, to cast a glamour on human sight and human dreams. Yet even when he has fasted only a short while, still he hungers for the kill with the lust of starvation. No other thing is to him so important as this: not the love of family nor honor, neither learning nor art. Having given up his soul for the promise of more life, he finds that without the soul, all that remains is appetite. All which colored life takes on the single hue of blood
.

Asher thought,
Ysidro told me this, and it was new to me
.
I would know it, if I had read this passage before.

Whoever wrote this has spoken with vampires
.

‘And what is your connection –' Sophister drew a long breath of nicotine – ‘with Titus Armistead?'

‘What makes you think I have one?'

The bookseller nodded toward the front of the shop, where a man was just turning from the window. ‘Because the fellow who's been hanging about the street since you walked in was with him when he and Colwich came last week to buy the book.'

I
n Lydia's experience, maids – her own, her family's, and those of her friends – could mostly be bribed.

Since the time that Valentina Maninghurst had married Lydia's father, Lydia had heard her exclaim repeatedly on how loyal her maid, Cubitt, was. ‘She's like one of those Biblical servants, faithful unto death …' and, ‘There's nothing Cubitt wouldn't do for me …' Despite the fact that Cubitt was accepting a regular stipend from Aunt Lavinnia, to keep Lavinnia informed about Valentina's behavior, finances, lovers and movements, this was a view of personal maids widely held among Lydia's acquaintances.

Aunt Louise, before she'd moved to Paris, had paid the servants of a number of her social rivals (and of her own sisters and sister-in-law) a few shillings a month, just to keep them on her side. (
Heaven only knows what she's doing along those lines in Paris society!
) Valentina had one of Aunt Harriet's housemaids in her pay, only Lydia was aware that Aunt Lavinnia had ‘turned' the woman – in Jamie's expression – with a small rise in salary, and so could feed Valentina misinformation as necessary.

Across the table from Lydia, Hellice Spills gave her a dazzling smile as she slipped the two guineas Lydia had handed her into her bag. ‘Don't you worry, ma'am, I know exactly where Clagg keeps the account books and I'll have what you need to know 'bout those houses his Lordship's bought by the end of the week.' Evidently Ysidro had been correct – Hellice Spills either did not recall meeting Lydia in the upstairs hall of Wycliffe House on Monday night at all, or didn't recognize her. Or, just possibly, didn't care. She clearly no more needed to know the reason for the request than Messrs Teazle and McClennan did, and there wasn't the least necessity of mentioning Lord Mulcaster's footman.

And why not?
Lydia reflected. She knew for a fact that the faithful-unto-death Cubitt was paid, per year, about half what Valentina spent on a pair of shoes. Why shouldn't she steal a feather here and there to render her own nest fluffy and warm against cold nights to come?

‘Is this something the servants all know about?' she asked, in the voice of one fascinated by the facts of below-stairs life. ‘About Lord Colwich buying property for – well – his
friend
.'

‘Lordy, ma'am, servants know everything.' The girl looked wise, and took a sip of the coffee Lydia had bought her – surprisingly good, despite the unprepossessing air of Lady Sydenham's Parlour on Finsbury Circus. ‘Back when we went down to South America with Mr Armistead to see his wife's family, I remember thinking everything would be different in a different country. But it's pretty much the same. If somebody finds something out, it's all over the Room before dark.'

‘Even if it's about someone else's family?'

‘
Especially
if it's about the family Miss Cece's going to marry into. I hear tell from Mr Gervase – that's Lord Colwich's man – that His Lordship the Earl was fit to be tied when he heard about his son buying these places for gentlemen he'd met in Europe. He never bought more than a cigarette case for his other boyfriend, Mr Gervase says – even if it was solid gold. A house, that's different. You want to know what he paid for all these places?'

‘If you would, yes, please.' With the air of doing so almost accidentally, Lydia slipped a gold half-crown from her handbag and laid it on the table.

The girl picked it up unselfconsciously, and Lydia guessed that this was the sort of information that a matchmaking parent could easily use to break up an engagement so as to hitch her own candidate to one or the other party.

‘Why would he do such a thing?' she wondered aloud. ‘It seems an extraordinary thing to do, particularly as I know the Crossfords aren't wealthy.'

‘Well, ma'am,' observed the girl, with a nod of her head – carefully coiffed, Lydia was fascinated to note, in a manner she had never seen before, her nappy red-brown hair straightened (
chemically?
) and arranged in elaborate whorls flat to her shapely skull, shining with a glaze of some kind – ‘that all depends on what you call “wealthy”.' Despite far more vital matters demanding her attention, Lydia was dying to ask her about what she used. ‘They look plenty rich to me. But pretty much anybody can take advantage of that man, ma'am, 'cause of the dope he smokes.'

‘Does he, still?' Seeing him conducting Cece's friends through the paint-smelling salons of Dallaby House, she wouldn't have said so.

‘You smell it on his clothes. Mr Gervase says he smokes it all the time these days, even when he gets up first thing in the mornin', but I think he says that, just to cover up that he don't keep his lordship's shirts as fresh as he might. My brother Jim back in Washington smokes it like that, startin' in the mornin'.'

‘Every day?' Lydia recalled what Ned Seabury had said, how changeable his friend had become:
He isn't the man I knew
…

‘Not every day, no. But more an' more often. He'll be bright and friendly up till maybe ten o'clock, and then he'll disappear, go back to that house Miss Cece's Daddy bought for 'em, where Mr Gervase tells me he's got a “meditation chamber” he's havin' the decorators fix up. I'm bettin' that's where he keeps his dope. Then I'm guessin' he'll sniff cocaine in the evenin's, to be bright and friendly again. You don't think Miss Cece knows?'

She cocked a rather protuberant brown eye at Lydia.

‘And she's willing to marry him anyway?' Lydia tried to sound more shocked than she actually was.

‘Course she is.' Hellice helped herself to the last biscuit on the plate. ‘Miss Cece's been slippin' out to that garden maze to meet this
friend
of his Lordship. Her daddy wants her to marry his Lordship and be Countess of Crossford one day, so I'm thinkin' this way, she gets to be a widow 'fore she's thirty. A man livin' that way generally don't live long.'

‘Damn it.' From the doorway of the bookshop's inner room, Asher could see through the front window of the shop. Though the small, leaded panes were old enough to warp the image he could tell by the color of the clothing, the height and stance of the burly little man who loitered inconspicuously on the other side of Dean Street, that this was the man who'd followed him from Claridge's Hotel the previous day.

It was well after five. Asher had hoped to delve into the bookseller's stock of newspapers – Sophister took, in addition to
The
Times
, the
Standard
, and
Le Figaro
, assorted German and Italian weeklies and never threw out a thing – in the hopes of finding mention of killings in Paris last December, but it might take him time to shed his ‘friend'. Sunset wouldn't be for another four hours, and then light would linger in the sky till almost ten.

There were vampires – Ysidro was one – who could remain conscious for short periods before and after the rising and setting of the sun, provided they were protected from its rays. If Zahorec slept in any of his London lairs, it behooved him to have a look at Thamesmire this afternoon.

‘Damn it is right.' Sophister leaned a bony shoulder on the other jamb of the door. ‘Armistead isn't a chap one wants to run afoul of. I understand from the newspapers that at least two men who've tried to unionize his mines met with convenient “accidents”. You've done something to interest him.'

Have I?
Asher wondered.
Or did he follow Lydia for some reason, to see who she met
…?

The thought made the hair stand up on his nape.

If Armistead had noticed Lydia, for whatever reason, it wouldn't take more than a chance remark about her for one of her aunts – or her egregious hag of a stepmother – to mention that their niece (or stepdaughter) had disgraced the family by marrying a folklorist. Of the Armistead girl he knew almost nothing beyond that she was sufficiently romantic and sufficiently gullible to fall into the emotional trap set for her by a vampire. But all it would need to arouse Zahorec's suspicions was the mention that Lydia, rather than being a naive acquaintance of no account, was married to someone who could be expected to know jolly damn well the signs of involvement with the Undead.

‘Will you do me a favor? Three favors,' he amended, and Sophister grinned.

‘I take it one of them's show you the back door out of here?'

‘Got it in one.'

‘Right this way. Would you like me to get a cab for you?' Behind the half-inch slabs of glass, the huge, pale-blue eyes narrowed for the first time. ‘You're looking a bit seedy.'

‘A touch of the Black Plague. I'll be fine.'

‘Have it your way, old man. There's a cab stand in Red Lion Square, if you can make it that far. What else can I get you?' He opened a small door between the bookshelves, ushered the way into a kitchen unbelievably cluttered, soiled, jammed with old books and reeking of cat mess and tobacco fumes.

‘I should like to come back tomorrow, if I may. I'd like to have a longer look at the
Liber Gente
.'

‘Be my guest. You can have the upstairs, if you don't mind a little mess.'

Asher shuddered at the thought of any chamber the bookseller would describe as
messy
, but only said, ‘Thank you. What time do you open?'

‘Usually by ten, but come round the back any time.'

‘Thank you,' he said again. And because he knew his man, he added, ‘How many other copies of the
Liber Gente
do you know about? How many other printings? You say they're all different …'

‘Well, there are similarities. I haven't made a study of the book or anything – that sort of thing really isn't in my line. Shall I make a list for you for tomorrow?'

‘Would you do that?' Asher found himself leaning against the door jamb, as dizziness swept over him again.
Let's get this over with. You can rest in the train on the way to Woolwich
. Even the hundred feet or so to Red Lion Square seemed like miles.

In any case, it was not the state one wanted to be in when confronting a private detective in the employ of an American robber-baron.

Sophister walked him across the yard and handed him through a narrow passageway that debouched on to Eagle Street. From there it was a walk of moments to the mellow brown-brick respectability of Red Lion Square. Changing cabs twice and taking a short journey from Russell Square to Piccadilly Circus on the Underground to make sure he actually was unaccompanied caused him to miss the six-oh-five train to Woolwich. Thus, it was after eight before the cab he finally found at Arsenal station brought him to Thamesmire, an aptly named villa some five miles beyond the Arsenal, set in weedy grounds much overgrown with shrubs and trees.
And if I were Undead
, Asher reflected wearily –
which would certainly be an improvement on how I feel at the moment – this is exactly the sort of place I'd pick to hide in
. The property bordered the marshes, and the gate in the eight-foot brick wall which surrounded it was backed with sheet iron – newly installed, he guessed, climbing from the cab. He said, ‘Wait here,' to the driver and began to work his way along the wall, which was in ill repair and would, he guessed, have a low or damaged place in it somewhere.

There were several. The worst damage was on the marsh side, where peach trees in the unkempt garden had run wild and were in the process of buckling the brickwork outward and caving sections of it from the wall's top. His breath laboring and swoony grayness lapping at the edges of his mind, Asher scrambled to the top of the wall, and down into the garden beyond. The house was a rambling pseudo-Gothic Victorian, with a free-standing chapel built to one side of it, though Asher guessed that this close to the marshes, it wouldn't have much in the way of an underground crypt. Every window was shuttered, but when he went close – walking carefully now, aware that he was already in the twilight zone where a vampire within the house might well be awake – and tilted one of the louvers, he saw that the windows had been bricked up inside.