Verse of the Vampyre (15 page)

“Did they just show up one night, or did someone invite them?” Grace pressed.

Allegra shook her head. “I suppose they turned up one evening, but we all knew about them. The entire village knew about them.”

Grace tried to examine it from another angle. The Ruthvens’ servants would talk, of course, but the servants would only know what they were told. They might even be in on the scam, whatever the scam was. The majority of people would take the Ruthvens at their word—why not? Everyone would assume someone else had firsthand knowledge of their background. They would really need only one local person to vouch for them, and they’d be home free.

An innocuous memory slid into her mind as suddenly as a spinout on a rain-slick road. “Has anyone besides the Ruthvens recently moved into or out of the village?”

The other two women exchanged glances. “I don’t think so,” Allegra said. “Why?”

“Because the night after the Thwaite robbery I remember seeing a moving van that had gone off the road in Innisdale Wood.”

“And this is leading us where?” Lady Vee queried.

“I’m not sure myself, but I’m wondering what a big moving van would be doing in this neck of the woods when nobody has moved lately. We’re a bit off the beaten track.”

“There could be any explanation.” Allegra dismissed Grace’s half-formed suspicions. “It doesn’t mean they were transporting stolen loot, if that’s what you’re getting at.”

“Well, a lot of things were taken,” Grace pointed out. “Furniture, rugs, paintings. A moving van would be a conspicuously inconspicuous way of transporting stolen merchandise, if you understand my meaning. I never gave that van another thought. Most people don’t. Moving vans aren’t unusual—except here, where people tend to root in for generations.”

“What does this have to do with the Ruthvens?” Allegra asked impatiently.

“Nothing. It just reminded me—” It was obvious that neither woman thought she was making any sense. Grace changed the subject. “Getting back to the Ruthvens, did anyone know them from before?”

“Before what? I don’t see what you’re getting at,” Allegra said.

“Just…did anyone actually know them in London, or did everyone assume they were theater big shots because everyone else seemed to?”

In the tone of one hoping to settle an argument once and for all, Allegra said, “Derek knew them. Derek worked with Lord Ruthven years ago.”

Derek Derrick lived in a small cottage with a peacock blue door and a weather vane in the shape of a running fox. The window boxes were barren, and the house had an unlived-in air, although Derek answered the door on the third ring of the doorbell.

“Grace!” He studied her with open surprise. “Come in. I was wishing for a bit of company.” He was wearing a blue-and-gold smoking jacket over a pair of trousers and slippers. His fair hair was mussed, and he needed a shave, but he was still strikingly good-looking.

“How are you holding up?” Grace inquired, following him into the front room. The room was casually furnished. There was dust an inch thick on the tables and mantel. Newspapers and movie magazines littered the floor by the sofa. Mrs. Mac clearly did not “do” for Derek Derrick.

“How sweet of you to ask,” he said, heading for the drinks cabinet. “One day at a time, you know. It’s a beastly situation with the police sticking their oar in.” He did look tired. Or (with recollection of how some of the young ladies at St. Anne’s used to drag in on Monday mornings) possibly hungover. Grace wondered if the police were “hounding” him, too, or if everyone simply felt hounded.

“Allegra says the police are giving Sir Gerald a rough time as well.”

“Not bloody likely, is it?” Derek jabbed in the ice bucket with tongs. “Although he is the main suspect in my opinion. But he’s one of
them
. Makes all the difference. See if it doesn’t.”

“It must be terrible for you,” Grace sympathized.

Derek shrugged. “No more me than everyone else. I mean, Theresa was a lovely girl, and we had our bit of fun; but it’s not like I was her first and only, is it? It’s not like we were planning to run off together or anything daft. Even the plods can see that it wouldn’t make sense for me to touch a hair on the poor girl’s head.”

He seemed to be trying to convince himself as well as Grace.

“I think they merely have to investigate every possibility,” Grace said. “When I talked to the chief constable he seemed convinced the murder was connected to the theft of the Peeler.”

“Now
that
makes sense,” he said, pouring a liberal dose of gin into his glass. “Although why anyone would bother stealing that old tin can beats me. It can’t be worth that much. Mostly sentimental value, I’d say.” He reached for the tonic bottle.

“The papers say it’s valued at over a hundred thousand pounds.”

“Chicken feed,” Derek scoffed. “When you think of the sorts of things those villains have been liberating, I can’t see why they’d bother with that old trinket. Drink?”

“Thanks.” Derek had a point. The other robberies had been meticulously planned. The Hunt Ball had been unreasonably risky—and Theresa’s death was a disaster.

Derek brought her a gin and tonic and flopped down in the chair near the stereo. “They say old Gerry is talking about having Scotland Yard brought in.”

“Do the Metropolitan police help out in local matters?”

“They can do. Depends on the circumstances.” He took a long swallow of his drink.

Grace remembered her own drink and sipped the gin and tonic. It was very strong. “I actually wanted to ask you about the Ruthvens,” she said, finally getting up her nerve.

Derek reached over and turned on the stereo. Frank Sinatra, sounding a long way from home, crooned into Grace’s ear.

“He’s a genius, she’s a bitch,” Derek said, his smile crooked. “What else would you like to know?”

Raising her voice to be heard over Frank, Grace said, “So you’d worked with him before?”

Derek noticed his glass was empty. He rose, sloshed more gin in. She had to strain to hear him answer, “Years ago. Before he made a name for himself. Before he married
her
.”

“You don’t care for Catriona?”

His smile was acrid. “Does anyone?”

Old Blue Eyes was waxing earnest about “Strangers in the Night.” You have no idea, thought Grace. Out loud she said, “Can I ask you something? Who suggested that I be invited in as technical advisor?”

Derek studied her curiously. “I don’t know. I don’t think I paid much attention to those discussions. Why?”

Grace shrugged and put down her drink. “Just curious.”

Derek smiled very whitely. “You know what they say about curiosity and cats, old thing.”

As female sleuths went, Grace reflected as she undressed for bed that evening, she was afraid she was more the Hildegard Withers and less the Kinsey Millhone type. Grace had a built-in lie detector after years of teaching guileful adolescents; but while she was pretty sure no one was telling her the complete truth, it was difficult to pin down the actual lies. She knew, again from years of teaching, that people sometimes fibbed about the silliest and most unimportant things—and for reasons that made little sense to anyone else.

As her head sank into the flannel softness of her pillow, Grace hazily tried to find the pattern in all she had heard that day. After a full day of sleuthing, did she really know anything for sure, or was everything simply another person’s flawed perception?

She was still counting riddles when she fell asleep…

In Grace’s dream someone was pounding on her door. She opened her eyes and it was still nighttime. Behind the closed draperies lances of moonlight sliced the dark.

Lying there, she listened to the apple tree scratching against the walls of the Gardener’s Cottage. Listened, listened…

An apple dropped on the roof of the cottage, making a bumping sound. Grace’s heart skipped and slowed.

She had slept deeply, but was now restless with the questions that had subtly infiltrated her dreams.

Why had someone tried to make it look like Theresa had been bitten by a vampire?

Why steal the Peeler the night of the Hunt Ball?

Was Sam Jeffries’ death an accident?

What was Peter hiding from her?

The moon seemed to be exerting the same effect it had on tides. Grace rose and went to the window, pulling back the drapes.

Miss Coke stood framed in the picture window.

T
he woman in black stood motionless like some ghostly apparition, pallid-faced in the moonlight, her features shadowed but somehow malevolent.

Grace sucked in her breath to scream and at the same time yanked shut the drapes. She couldn’t quite explain the instinct of shutting out the picture of Miss Coke by moonlight; but as the curtain closed, Miss Coke’s spell was broken.

Grace went to the phone and dialed the police station.

“Oh my gosh!” she said out loud, as the phone rang and rang on the other end. The sound of her own exasperated voice steadied her.

At last a sleepy-sounding male answered. She explained her situation. The PC, having ascertained that Miss Coke could not get into the cottage—and did not appear to be making any attempt to get into the cottage—seemed inclined to finish investigating in the morning.

Grace yanked back the drapes again. Moonlight gilded tree and flower, but there was no sign of the witch of Innisdale Wood. Miss Coke had vanished—or possibly retreated behind a bush.

“There, you see!” The PC was triumphant.

Grace sympathized, she really did. It was a cold night. Her bare feet shrank from the stone floor, and there had been frost on the garden grass; but she felt compelled to point out that one woman had recently been murdered, and Miss Coke was a possible suspect.

The PC did not seem to agree, but he reluctantly said he’d send someone around to her cottage. Grace sat down on the edge of her bed to wait.

She was so tired. She decided to lie down and rest for a few minutes before the constable showed up. He would surely be there in a minute or two. She would consider the situation carefully. Sometimes it was easier to think with one’s eyes closed…

“Are you avoiding me?” Chaz demanded.

“If I were avoiding you, would I be asking you out to lunch?” Grace inquired reasonably.

Despite her interrupted night’s rest she was feeling much more herself this morning. She had treated herself to a long lazy bubble bath and several cups of jasmine tea while she made detailed notes of everything she had heard and learned the day before.

She had dried and dressed leisurely in her favorite garnet red chenille sweater and most comfortable faded jeans. She had filed a complaint against Miss Coke and another against the PC who had been on duty the night before and brushed off her midnight phone call for help. She had made another appointment to see the chief constable later that afternoon. She felt productive. She felt positive. She felt like being nice to Chaz.

“Where did you want to meet?” Chaz asked suspiciously. “Not that pub again. God, I’m sick of English food. And not that Indian place. I didn’t like the way that guy was staring at me.”

“Who?”

“Hamid or whatever his name was. The owner.”

“Ahmed.”

“Whatever.”

“If you don’t mind a short drive, we can have lunch in Kendal,” Grace said, seized by inspiration. It would be good to be away from Innisdale for a short time.

Chaz professed himself agreeable, and an hour later they were on their way to one of Grace’s favorite towns in the Lake District.

Kendal possessed (according to one survey) the highest quality of life in all England. Its historical coaching inns and quaint pubs, museums and galleries and myriad shops made the twelfth-century town a bustling tourist center, but this time of year its narrow streets and alleys were comparatively quiet.

After doing a little window shopping they lunched at the Kings Arms Hotel, Grace ordering the Lake Windermere char served with nut brown butter and Chaz playing it safe with T-bone steak.

“Have you given any more thought to coming back to work?” he asked, carving his steak with a fixity that suggested this was a grudge match.

“Of course.”

“And?”

“I don’t know. The book isn’t finished.”

“Book! I haven’t seen you write one page since I got here. You never even mention the thing. You aren’t staying here for that book, and you know it.”

“I could finish the book at home, that’s true.”

“
Home
.” Chaz pounced on this. “See, you still think of home as home. Grace, face it, your future is there. You’ve got people who love you, respect you,
want
you. What do you have here but a lot of inbred snobs trying to kill each other off?”

Grace sipped her wine to give herself time.

Earnestly, Chaz said, “You’ve got to make your mind up soon, Grace. Ms. Winters won’t be patient forever. She thinks the world of you, but other people have her ear now. Luckily the only misstep you ever made was showing that R movie to your senior lit class.”

Grace swallowed the wrong way. It took a minute to get her breath back; at last she demanded hoarsely, “Are you telling me that someone brought
that
up?”

“Andrea.”

The single blemish on Grace’s record was a mistake early in her teaching career. She had shown the film
Haunted Summer
to her senior romantic lit class. The film detailed the summer Byron, the Shelleys, Clair Clairmont and Dr. Polidori spent at the Villa Diodati on Lake Geneva. It was a beautiful scenic film; unfortunately a lot of the beautiful scenery was of
les
literary
enfants terrible
cavorting in R-rated adventures. Grace had learned to pay greater attention to film ratings.

“That was over five years ago!”

“I know, but it could be interpreted as a warning sign, a tendency toward…flightiness.”

“Flightiness?”

“Well, it’s not so far off, is it?” Chaz looked pointedly around them.

She hated to think he might have a point.

Grace tried to conceal her preoccupation from Chaz on the drive back to Innisdale, but when she could politely escape, she did so, heading straight for the library computer to see what she could find on the amazing theatrical career of Robert Ruthven. What she discovered was indeed amazing—mostly because there was no theatrical career.

There were plenty of Ruthven web pages, many of them devoted to the occult and vampires.

There was also historical information on the murder of David Rizzio, secretary to and possible lover of Mary Queen of Scots, in which, apparently, the Ruthvens had played a starring role.

According to one account the mortally ill Lord Patrick Ruthven had held a sword to the pregnant belly of the young queen while her “Seigneur Davie” was stabbed before her eyes by her husband and his noble coconspirators.

“Lovely people,” murmured Grace.

However, there was not a single reference to a producer or director by the name of Ruthven. Not one. If Bob was experiencing a career slump it was a drastic one.

Since Ruthven did not have a theatrical pedigree, did that mean Derek had lied about working with him? But it was such a stupid lie, why bother?

Even more puzzling, why bother to stage a play if you were not a theatrical producer or director?

Perhaps it was something silly and sad like Bob Ruthven wanted to be a director and had faked his background in order to…stage an obscure provincial production that no one of consequence would ever see?

But that would require Catriona’s cooperation, and Catriona did not seem like a woman with patience for foolish dreams.

In fact, Grace was willing to bet that Catriona was the one behind it all. Behind everything, from Grace’s involvement in
The Vampyre
to Theresa’s murder. But how? Why?

“What are you looking for?”

Grace started out of her reverie. Roy Blade, hair pulled back in a highwayman’s ponytail, good eye agleam with curiosity, stood over her.

Her fingers twitched toward the close button, but she stopped herself.

“I was trying to settle a bet with myself.”

“Yeah? What’s the bet?”

“I was betting that Lady Vee brought me into
The Vampyre
production.”

Blade laughed. “You lose. Now you want to tell me what you’re surfing the Net for?”

“Who did bring me in?”

“I did. Remember?”

She did sort of, now that he mentioned it. Maybe her paranoia was beginning to run away with her. “But why? Was it all your own idea?”

“I do have ideas of my own once in a while.” He was enjoying making her work for it. “I thought it would be a laugh watching you and Lady Be Damned square off.”

His revelation did not fit at all with the theory that was nebulously taking shape in Grace’s mind. Seeing her disappointment, Blade laughed, and said, “And Catriona kept asking about you, kept hinting that she thought you’d be an asset.”

“She can’t stand me.”

“I thought that was interesting myself,” Blade agreed.

Her phone was ringing as Grace let herself into the cottage. She picked the receiver up, but before she could speak a voice so low she could barely make out the words whispered, “Can you meet me at the theater in ten minutes?”

“Very funny, Chaz.”

“It’s Bob.” Lord Ruthven spoke more loudly, though not much. “I must see you. I haven’t much time. They’re watching me.”

“I see we were raised on the same movies,” Grace returned. “Bob, you must realize that nothing on earth would convince me to go to a secret assignation in a deserted theater, especially when I know you’ve been lying about your…well, pretty much everything!”

“It’s broad daylight,” Lord Ruthven protested. “What do you imagine could happen to you? As for the rest, well…that’s what I want to explain.”

Funny that the heroines of movies and novels never had to debate the wisdom of secluded meetings with the strangers who summoned them by phone. It made it all seem less sinister and more annoying.

“I’m not coming alone. I’ll call—”

“We don’t have that kind of time! Look, you’ve got questions, I’ve got answers.” Lord Ruthven concluded, “Park in the back and come through the side door.”

“You have
got
to be ki—”

The receiver clicked, and the line went dead before she could respond.

The wind was blowing a misty silvery rain when Grace parked behind the Innisdale Playhouse. The lot was deserted. A lone cat, scrounging in the trash bin, cast her a baleful look and went back to foraging.

Grace got out and went round to the side of the building, pushing open the heavy door and slipping inside.

Rows of empty chairs sat at attention in the gloom. The stage was lit but empty.

“Hello?” Grace called. “Lord Ruthven? Bob?”

The theater creaked in the wind like a sinking ship.

This is not only dumb, it’s clichéd, Grace told herself disgustedly. She knew full well what she would say to one of her girls who walked into this kind of setup. She considered backing out—literally.

“Is anyone—?” She broke off, hand tightening on the push bar as she heard…what? A groan? A muffled sound of human origin.

The curtains rippled at the far end of the stage, and a hand reached out to grab the folds of material. Lord Ruthven stood swaying, one hand on the wall jamb, one clutching the curtain.

Grace left her place of safety, starting down the aisle to go to his aid. As she drew near the stage she began to notice details, like the bright red blood on Ruthven’s hands. Her eyes focused on the thing that seemed out of place, the thing protruding from Lord Ruthven’s chest.

She froze, hands going to stop the scream welling up. Lord Ruthven’s eyes, ghastly in his cavernous face, focused on her. His mouth worked, then languidly, almost in slow motion, he crumpled to the stage floor.

The instinct to aid another human warred with the need for self-preservation. She had been lured to this theater, there were no cars outside, Lord Ruthven had been wounded and that wound was not self-inflicted.

There was a stake through his heart.

Well, no. Not through his heart, horrified common sense asserted. He couldn’t be walking, he couldn’t be
alive
…But he definitely had something protruding out of him where nothing should protrude…

With a terrible reluctance she approached the stage, watching all around herself for any movement in the shadows. But as she started up the steps, Lord Ruthven’s eyes opened.

“Run,” he whispered.

Grace backed down the steps and ran, banging out the side door. She heard it slam shut with great finality behind her.

She ran all the way to her car. Driving down to the pub, she asked them to call the police, then drove straight back to the theater.

She debated with herself whether to go back in or not, but caution prevailed. Bright rain billowed, the gusts of wind shook her car while she waited.

The police arrived within five minutes, pulling up in a marked car, lights flashing. Two uniformed constables, a man and a woman, got out and approached Grace.

“Inside,” she said, and led the way across the empty lot.