Miss Blaine's Prefect and the Vampire Menace

by Olga Wojtas

  His Sans-Soleil pallor was darkened by a blush. “Oh no. We don’t get involved with that sort of thing round here. We know that poetry is decadent.”

  “A lot of your nineteenth-century French stuff is, admittedly, but Robert Louis Stevenson wasn’t French. Despite his middle name. People pronounce it in the French manner, but that’s entirely incorrect,” I said. “He was christened Lewis after his grandfather, but the spelling was subsequently changed. Returning to his poem, the point is, while it’s perfectly proper to interrogate the text for meaning, you can’t ask questions about things that aren’t in it, like people’s names, or how the king’s troops happened to find two very small Picts under a stone.”

  “But I haven’t got the text,” he objected. “I don’t know what’s in it. That’s why I’m asking.”

  “If there’s anything you need to know, rest assured, I will tell you, so there’s no need for you to ask any questions at all. In fact, I’m just reaching the relevant bit, which I thought you would appreciate, given the disappearance of the Unknown Abbot’s brandy recipe.”

  The mayor looked down at the ground, and kicked a pebble with the toe of his shoe. I wondered if he was sulking.

  “To recap,” I said. “One bad-tempered king, two small Picts. The king says he’ll spare their lives if they give him the secret recipe. The father asks for a private word, tells the king that he’s happy to pass on the information, but that since he’s promised never to tell anybody, he thinks his son will be cross with him.”

  I paused, but no questions were forthcoming. The mayor had now grasped how to approach the critical discussion of poetry.

  “So, the father tells the king to tie the son up and throw him over a cliff into the sea. You may think these are extreme lengths to go to in order to avoid a family row, but in fact the father has an ulterior motive. Have you worked out what it is?”

  The mayor shook his head.

  “I’ll keep going, then. Nearly finished. The son is duly thrown off the cliff to his doom. And then the father turns round and says he was actually worried about his son blabbing about the recipe, so that’s why he had him done away with. The father knows that no matter what they do to him, he’ll never tell, so the secret of heather ale is about to die with him. The end.”

  The mayor gave a kind of strangled cry and raced off down one of the narrow lanes between chalets. His reaction proved the power of poetry to move its hearers – and he had only heard my precis of it. He would probably have been in floods of tears if I had actually recited it.

  With a final glance at the statue of the Unknown Abbot, I left the square and made my way to Madeleine’s chalet.

  She didn’t seem overjoyed to see me. “I wasn’t expecting you,” she said. “You were jailed for a week.”

  “The mayor kindly got me out,” I said.

  “Ha!” she said. It wasn’t a laugh. “Of course. How foolish of me not to think of that. And when did he get you out?”

  “Some time this morning.”

  “This morning? Not yesterday?”

  If she thought I had been released yesterday, where did she think I had spent the night? I was quite offended.

  “This morning,” I repeated.

  “So, you have no idea what I got up to last night?” Madeleine asked.

  “What you get up to at night is none of my concern,” I said.

  “Is it not?”

  A conversation with Madeleine was rather like a strenuous game of ping-pong. It kept shooting off in unexpected directions and my opponent spent all her time lobbing and blocking.

  “It most certainly is not,” I said. “And while what I get up to at night is similarly none of your concern, I don’t care for your insinuations about myself and the mayor. I admit, he’s attractive. In a louche sort of way. But we continue to be nothing more than acquaintances, and I’m not here to help him.”

  “Of course not.” There was a definite sneer in her voice. “You’re here to help the poor widow.”

  I wasn’t, but I couldn’t exactly say that – it would sound both rude and hurtful. But I could retaliate with a ping-pong counterhit stroke. “I thought you weren’t a widow.”

  She didn’t respond directly. “You were right, the vegetable tian was delicious the day after it was made,” she said, and I realised I hadn’t eaten anything substantial since my veggie burgers. Right on cue, my stomach rumbled.

  “Anywhere in the village you recommend for a quick snack?” I asked. “Does Maman do food?”

  “I thought it wouldn’t be long before you called in at Chez Maman,” said Madeleine, still in sneering mode. I didn’t care for that. It suggested she thought I was a dipsomaniac.

  “I believe I told you, I’m on a mission and therefore avoiding alcohol,” I said. “Although right now, I wouldn’t mind a glass of water if that’s not too much trouble.”

  The next thing I knew, a glass of water thudded down on the table in front of me, closely followed by a plate of vegetable tian.

  “I saved you some,” she muttered. “It’s probably gone off by now.”

  It was actually delicious, not that I was going to tell her that.

  Once I’d finished, I asked if I could sit at the kitchen table to do some painting. I didn’t mention the mayor in case that fuelled Madeleine’s belief that there was something going on between us. I fetched the tin box of watercolours and opened it. It had its own brush in a groove inside, and the lid was sectioned into mixing palettes.

  I flattened out the first sheet of paper and began. I couldn’t have had a better subject than Mary Garden. The photographs I had seen of her highlighted her flair for the dramatic. She was elegantly sinuous, with elaborate headdresses, long flowing hair and exotic costumes. And in her cross-dressing role as Cherubino, she displayed a fine leg for stockings and satin breeches.

  Taking my artistic inspiration from Toulouse-Lautrec’s images of the bohemian stars of Montmartre, I was away. I based the first poster on his picture of Loïe Fuller at the Folies Bergère, prancing along with her head thrown back and her dress swirling round her. The second had Mary Garden as La Goulue at the Moulin Rouge, teetering on one leg, the other in the air. And in the third, I painted her as Jane Avril doing the can-can at the Jardin de Paris.

  I suspected an undercurrent of xenophobia in Sans-Soleil, so I decided to stick with the name the mayor thought she had, to ensure that the punters actually attended. Using Toulouse-Lautrec’s style of lettering, I added:

  ALL the WAY from PARIS

  MARIE JARDIN

  TOWN HALL of SANS-SOLEIL

  JULY 14 at 19.30

  (with piano accompaniment)

  The mayor hadn’t turned up, so I decided to take the posters to him, chez Maman. I didn’t want them to get squashed en route, and once they were rolled up, Madeleine’s wooden sewing box seemed the perfect container. She grumped a bit about having to take out all the needles, thread, buttons, scissors, ribbons, pins and thimbles, but then, she grumped about most things. I set off, the box under my arm.

  As I approached the howff, I could hear a raised voice, the muscular, moustachioed schoolmaster. He shouldn’t even be in the howff, since it wasn’t yet the end of the school day.

  “I tell you, she wants in on our action!”

  “You mean she wants to buy in?” That was the chubby, florid young judge.

  “No, she wants to take over our workforce.”

  “What? I hope you set her straight.” Yet another voice, the tall, bewhiskered police officer.

  “Not exactly.”

  “Why not, you fool?” The young judge again. “We’ve worked hard to set everything up. There’s no place for a woman.”

  I bristled. I didn’t know who this woman was, but I didn’t see why she should be excluded on the grounds of gender.

  “I’m scared of her,” said the teacher, a slight shake in his voice. “She’s dangerous. The police know all about her. You should have heard her when she told me – she was pro
ud of it. It was a threat, pure and simple. We have to be careful.”

  Wanted by the police. I had a sudden terrible suspicion. They were talking about Madeleine. It wasn’t clear what work the judge, teacher and policeman were involved in, but I imagined it was some charitable venture, perhaps a precursor of the Rotary Club, which would be established in Chicago in 1905.

  Had Madeleine seen an opportunity to skim off the proceeds of their fundraising? By all accounts, Sylvain was a good, honest police officer. What if he had discovered that his wife was going around intimidating people? What if he had tried to remonstrate with her and she was having none of it? What if he had reluctantly concluded he would have to arrest her, and she had murdered him? And what better way for her to deflect suspicion away from herself than to keep insisting he wasn’t dead? That way, she presented herself as a devoted wife, and the villagers would shy away from discussing the topic with her for fear of upsetting her. And if they thought she was deranged with grief, that would allow her the leeway to do pretty much what she wanted.

  She had made some very odd remarks suggesting that she thought I was watching her. Perhaps she was beginning to crack up as a result of her evil deeds, like Lady Macbeth. Being locked up in the police station last night was probably a lot safer than being at Madeleine’s. I would have to jam the chair under the door handle when I went to bed tonight.

  It now seemed entirely possible that I was here to save the village from Madeleine. The slight tingling that I had felt with her and with the mayor – perhaps I was here to save the village from the pair of them. The mayor obviously had a tendresse for Madeleine and had been very relieved when he remembered that Sylvain was dead.

  I was getting there, but I did feel it could have been a lot clearer. It had been simplicity itself to identify the subject of my first mission, but something seemed to be going wrong this time round. Perhaps the system had changed, and Miss Blaine had forgotten to tell me about it. She might easily be getting absent-minded – while she looked as though she was in her prime, she was in fact a very elderly lady.

  There it was again, the sudden shooting pain in my big toe, bad enough to make me yelp.

  “There’s someone outside!” cried the teacher, and the next moment he was peering through the grimy window.

  He was staring straight at me, his face chalk-white in comparison with the dark interior, so there was no opportunity to go into unobtrusive mode. I gave him a cheery wave, and walked into the howff.

  It was important that they didn’t think I had overheard them. Success on a mission depends on assimilating information without everyone knowing what you know.

  “Hello,” I said. “I’m just popping in to–”

  I was about to say, “– hand these posters over to the mayor.” But there was no sign of him. Only the teacher, the judge and the policeman were inside, clutching mugs of beer, with Maman muttering to herself in the background. It sounded impolite to imply I wasn’t interested in talking to any of them.

  I hastily amended my explanation to, “– agree the time when I come in to teach the children new skills.” The word “skills” was deliberately chosen, given the teacher’s obsession with vocational education.

  He gave a gasp and looked round at the others. He had obviously forgotten all about it. This wasn’t impressive. Most responsible teachers would be delighted to bring in an external educator so long as they knew the person had been properly vetted. But perhaps he had forgotten about that as well. I would have to explain again.

  “There’s a special scheme in my country, Protecting Vulnerable Groups,” I said. “The police don’t let you work with children if you’re a convicted criminal. I don’t mean minor stuff, obviously, but serious offences. I’m on their list. So, you can understand that I’m more than happy to work with the children here.”

  The teacher looked terribly uncomfortable at failing to remember all of this, as well he might. We needed to sort out a definite time here and now, or my mission would be over and I would be back in Edinburgh without having taught the pupils anything. It was important that they had a proper academic lesson for once. Given that it wasn’t yet the end of the school day, and the teacher was drinking beer in the howff, the kids were obviously back out on work experience.

  Using my prefect’s voice that was friendly but firm, I said, “Let’s make it tomorrow. Ten thirty.”

  “No, that’s … no … that is to say, the pupils have a practical class tomorrow morning,” he stuttered.

  “My class will be practical too, in its own way,” I said. “And the school day starts at eight thirty, does it not? Plenty of time for them to complete whatever task you’ve set them. So, we’re agreed then, I’ll come in at ten thirty.”

  “I don’t … I don’t know whether …”

  “Whether that time’s good for me? It’s fine, or I wouldn’t have suggested it. An hour’s all I need, so I’m sure you can accommodate that within your plans for the day. Good, I’m glad we’ve got that sorted. I’ll see you tomorrow morning.”

  While I was speaking, Maman had left her usual post at the back of the howff and sidled towards me, the manky dish cloth in her hand. She spoke now, in her ancient cracked voice. “You’re supposed to be in jail.”

  She was apparently addressing me, but she was looking at the bushily side-whiskered police officer. He was an intimidating figure at the best of times, but right now he seemed to diminish before my eyes.

  “No, I’m not,” I said. “The mayor got me out.”

  She nodded thoughtfully. “Ah yes, the mayor. Our leading citizen. The learned judge may have sentenced you to imprisonment, but of course the mayor is in charge of the police.”

  “That’s it,” said the policeman eagerly. “The mayor insisted that I release her. I didn’t have any choice in the matter.”

  He was making out that he had been under orders, concealing the fact that he was a bent copper. I was about to explain that money had changed hands when I realised that might get me put back in jail, especially as the chubby, florid young judge was paying keen attention to the conversation.

  “Yes, the mayor, the main man,” I said. “Whatever he says goes.”

  Maman’s dish cloth must have been sodden, since she was tugging it tight and winding it round and round until it was practically a rope.

  “How kind of the mayor to intervene,” she said.

  “It wasn’t really kind, it was in his own interests,” I joked. “After all, a hardened criminal like myself, I wouldn’t have been too happy after a week in the clink, and who knows what I might have done?”

  “What might you have done?” asked the judge in a perturbed sort of way. Judges aren’t known for their sense of humour. Everyone has to laugh at their jokes, which aren’t even funny, but they never understand anyone else’s. It was safest to back off before he decided I could be rearrested for thought crimes.

  “I wasn’t being serious,” I reassured him. “Honestly, I’m just glad I’m out of prison so that I can focus on the schoolchildren. By the way, do you know where I might find the mayor? I’ve got a spot of business to sort out with him.” I flourished the wooden sewing box.

  There was a sudden tearing noise, and Maman was left with the bulk of the twisted dish cloth in one hand, and a ripped-off dish cloth hem in the other. Muttering, she hobbled back to her customary place behind the bar where she produced a needle and thread and started repairing it.

  “I’m not being rude, not offering you some of mine,” I said, holding up the wooden container. “This might look like a sewing box, but it’s not got any sewing stuff in it. It’s to do with my business with the mayor. Speaking of whom, did you say where he was?”

  “He’s–” began the judge.

  “He’s not here,” interposed the policeman.

  “I gathered that,” I said drily. “Which is why I asked where I might find him.”

  “You might find him in a field. You might find him in the river. You might find him dow
n the mountainside. You might find him in the forest,” said Maman.

  “Thank you,” I said, even more drily. “That’s most helpful.”

  As I headed for the door, a thought crossed my mind. “Just one thing more, gentlemen – I don’t like to ask Madeleine because she gets so disturbed at any mention of her husband being dead. But could you possibly tell me how he died?”

  You could have cut the atmosphere with a sgian-dubh. The teacher, the judge and the policeman almost seemed to have stopped breathing. Perhaps it was just a preparation for sighing.

  Maman piped up again. “He was torn to death by wild animals.” A curious turn of phrase, but expressive. “In the forest,” she added.

  She had just said the mayor might be in the forest. The foolhardy fool, I thought, succumbing to the tautology that was rife in the village. If anyone qualified as authorised personnel, that must be the mayor, but his civic title wouldn’t save him if he came up against an angry wild boar.

  Heedless of my own safety, I ran out of the howff and in the direction of the impenetrable forest. I didn’t as yet have a plan, but I hoped the adrenaline rush would help me determine an appropriate strategy. At least I had a wooden sewing box, which I was sure would stand me in good stead.

  As I sprinted round a corner, I cannoned straight into the mayor, the wooden box crashing into his chest and knocking him to the ground. It was a huge relief to see he hadn’t been torn to death by wild animals.

  “I’m so glad you’re all right,” I said.

  “But I’m not,” he groaned. “You’ve broken my ribs.”

  “Nonsense,” I said. “I’m sure they’re just bruised. And if they’re broken, there’s nothing you can do about it. You’ll feel better in a month. Come on, up you get.”

  I put down the box and tried to pull him upright, but he just yelped. In the end, I let him stay where he was, and sat down beside him.

  “It’s a pity we missed each other,” I said.

  “The pity is that you didn’t miss me,” he said, massaging his chest and wincing.