Were they still talking about mysterious happenings, or had they moved on to their own relationship? She wasn’t sure. Catriona would be direct, although Grace had no idea how honest she was; but for most of the women Peter knew, for most of the women he had romanced, love was a game, and Peter was first prize.
The tone of his voice, the expression in his eyes gave her the courage to ask, “What is Catriona Ruthven to you?”
From beside Grace the phone rang.
“You’ve got to be kidding!” said Grace.
Peter’s smile was wry. He picked up the phone and replaced it on the cradle. Then he removed it, listened, and set the receiver on the desk.
“I don’t like to lie to you, so we’ll leave it at this. Nothing between Cat and myself has anything to do with what happens between you and me.”
Cat. The casual intimacy of the diminutive smarted.
She had hoped for a denial; so this admission that there was something between them hurt. She was surprised that the sound that came out was a laugh. Well, sort of a laugh. “That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only answer I can give you.”
Do you love her? she wanted to ask, but she was afraid to hear the answer. She looked down at her hands, her slim bare fingers, then up into his face. “Okay, well then, what is between you and me?”
His smile was twisted, and there was a darkness in his eyes that was almost sadness. His expression said more than his words, and the message frightened Grace in some indefinable way.
He said huskily, “Everything and nothing. How’s that for an answer?”
It felt like time stopped. Or maybe it was her heart. But Grace being Grace was analyzing his words before he’d finished speaking them, and after the initial emotional recoil, common sense reasserted itself.
“Uh, well, actually…am I grading by points or on a curve? Come on, Peter, how am I supposed to respond to that? As you pointed out yourself, my sabbatical is nearly over.”
Peter, who had been half-sitting on the desk, straightened. He wasn’t looking at her, as he said unemotionally, “I’m not in a position to make promises.”
She knew he wasn’t married, but there were other kinds of commitment. Grace sighed. “Swell. Okay, has it occurred to you that you’re being set up by Cat Woman?”
That got his attention although he didn’t say anything.
“I’m not stupid, Peter. Well, not most of the time. Obviously you know her from the bad old days. She’s the girl with hair like a fox and the temper to match.”
His mouth opened, but nothing came out. Which made a nice change. Usually Grace was the one left speechless. “You told me about her ages ago,” she said with a blasé air that took a fair amount of work. “At Penwith Hall, remember?”
“No.”
“Well, you did. And, unless I miss my guess, besides being your paramour, she was your partner in crime.”
“My what?”
“Partner in—”
“No, the other.” He was laughing at her now.
“Your lover.”
He was still laughing, but she knew him well enough to know that, behind the teasing, his brain was calculating how much she knew and how much was guesswork.
“You can laugh all you like, but I’ve watched her. Granted, it’s not hard evidence, but Catriona has some of your mannerisms and expressions. The same turn of phrase. And she does that thing with her eyebrow.”
On cue his own eyebrow raised.
“You must have known each other a long time.” Sister? Cousin? Wicked Stepmother? Grace wished she could convince herself of any of those.
Peter was no longer laughing; his expression was guarded.
“She’s the only person I’ve ever seen with reflexes like yours. When that trapdoor gave way, any normal person would have fallen through. She has terrific upper body strength and amazing balance.”
“Perhaps she escaped from a circus,” Peter quipped.
Grace thought, but did not say, And like you she’s living by her own rules, her own code. She’s larger than life and probably believes herself outside the law.
“And things started to change between us from almost the moment she arrived here. That’s also when the robberies began—or just about then.”
“Grace, this is unwise.” He was moving away from her, heading toward the door, ending the conversation.
“You can say that again. Do you think it’s a coincidence that she arranged a rendezvous on the night of a robbery, leaving you without any alibi?”
His laugh was without humor.
“She tried to set you up. It almost worked.”
“Let it go.”
“Fine. I’ll let it go. But there’s something else you should probably be aware of. I think someone’s trying to kill her.”
If she was expecting some dramatic reaction, she didn’t get it. True, he went still and thoughtful for a moment before saying, as he disappeared through the door, “It wouldn’t be the first time.”
After Peter went upstairs, Grace could hear him moving about, hear the restless beat of music. The Waterboys. Peter’s first choice when he was, as the poets put it, “unquiet of soul.”
She felt unquiet of soul herself; you couldn’t force someone’s trust—and for the first time it hit her squarely that Peter did not entirely trust her. She was so used to questioning whether she really did—or should—trust him that it came as a little bit of a shock to realize that he might feel the same.
Lost in her thoughts, only gradually she became aware that the seductive scent of cooking was wafting down the staircase and that Peter was calling her to close the shop and come up.
Grace found him in the kitchen braising pieces of chicken in butter and shallots. Hot water boiled on the stove top.
“Chicken with Riesling over noodles,” Peter informed her.
“Smells delicious.” She went to the glass-fronted cupboard and took down plates.
As she set the table, Peter asked her about the play. He seemed to zero in on how they had selected their material. “Why not Dracula?” he pressed. “Who originally came up with the idea of doing Polidori?”
“That’s something I’ve tried to pin down, too,” Grace said. “Do you think it’s important?”
He did not answer this directly. “You wouldn’t be involved in this production if it hadn’t started out as a work by Byron. If early on the material had been switched—for example—to Dracula, you probably would have withdrawn.”
“Maybe. That’s true of Lady Vee, too.”
“Yes.” She thought she detected a “but” in there though Grace couldn’t guess what it was.
He seemed to change the subject. “Polidori killed himself, didn’t he?”
“Yes. He drank prussic acid. To spare the feelings of his family the coroner pronounced death by ‘visitation of God.’ ”
“Any reason for suicide?”
“Mental instability?” Grace hazarded. “He wasn’t the most wholesome character. He had tried to kill himself at least once before during his stay with Byron at the Villa Diodati.”
“What a delightful houseguest.”
“Byron had fired him. They had fallen out by then, and although Byron saved his life, apparently that was the last straw.” She fell silent as Peter ignited the cognac with a long match. When the flames subsided he poured in the white wine and covered the pan. Grace enjoyed watching him cook. The contradiction of a virile man capably performing tasks traditionally regarded as feminine was just plain…sexy.
“I take it they were more than friends?” he asked, disrupting her reflections.
“Friendship seems to have had little to do with it. Polidori envied and emulated Byron, who was never the most patient of men, let alone lovers. He, Polidori I mean, fancied himself one of the unrecognized literary giants of his era. I guess Byron thought he needed cutting down to size. He was pretty savage.”
“The Chinese have a saying, ‘Better make a weak man your enemy
than your friend.’ ”
“Byron would have agreed with that. He hadn’t much tolerance for human frailty. Including his own. And poor Polidori did seem to bring out the worst in people.”
The kitchen was redolent with the luscious scent of chicken simmering in wine and butter. Her mouth was starting to water.
“Did Polidori write anything besides The Vampyre?”
“Yes. The problem was that when The Vampyre was published it was attributed to Byron. Byron disassociated himself from it, but for some reason people were slow to accept his word. And when Polidori laid claim to the work, saying that only the original concept was Byron’s, he was accused of plagiarism. The charge stuck, and nothing else that he wrote was taken seriously.”
“Should it have been?”
“It’s hard to say. Byron and Shelley dismissed his efforts, but it is possible their criticism wasn’t objective.”
“Do me a favor and open the wine.”
Grace took wineglasses out of the Italian cabinet painted with ivy and tiny purple flowers. She found the corkscrew and uncorked the bottle of Riesling.
While she poured the wine, Peter drained the boiling noodles in the sink. They finished preparing the meal in a companionable silence and sat down to eat.
“How’s the book coming?”
She smiled across the table at him. Peter smiled, too, and she knew he was also remembering the adventures they had shared not so very long ago: the mad race to find the stolen “gewgaws” that Grace had believed would lead them to a lost work by Lord Byron. For a moment it was as though the doubt and misunderstandings of the past month had never happened.
“You may close your eyes to the truth, my dearest Aubrey, but there are things in this world that no mere mortal can comprehend until his fate is upon him. Swear upon the love we bear each other that you will return this night before the power of these fiends walks abroad.”
To say that rehearsals were progressing would be an exaggeration, but they did continue—thus giving new meaning to “horror genre.” Grace wasn’t sure why her presence was still required, but when she suggested to Lord Ruthven that her role was complete, he seemed so distressed, she continued to attend.
Grace didn’t mind the opportunity to observe Catriona. She still hoped to find some clue as to what was between the woman and Peter. Evening after evening she sat watching the Innisdale Players run through their lines, trying to decipher the riddle that was Catriona.
Rehearsal recommenced, with Blade as Aubrey reassuring Ianthe that he would return from vampire hunting before nightfall. Grace’s mind wandered while Ruthven blocked out the next scene with his cast.
There were a number of set changes once the play’s action moved to Greece, and Grace had to admit that Allegra, who was in charge of art direction (which meant she designed and painted most of the backdrops herself), had done a super job. The painted wasteland could have been Byron’s own Turkish cemetery. Perhaps her great-aunt had influenced Allegra’s artistic vision.
Speaking of Lady Vee—Grace half turned in her seat. The old Gorgon still had not put in an appearance.
Grace came back to awareness of her surroundings for Blade’s big scene when “the airy form of his fair conductress was brought in as a corpse.”
Here there was a bit of comedic relief while Allegra and one of the stagehands tried to figure out a graceful way to lug Catriona across the stage. Derrick guffawed and offered several facetious suggestions. At last, the journey from stage left to right was accomplished.
“A vampyre, a vampyre,” Allegra intoned in her role of superstitious peasant.
“Do try to get more inflection in that, my dear,” Lord Ruthven muttered, making another note on his ever-present clipboard. A scowl marked Allegra’s patrician features.
“Ianthe,” Blade whispered brokenly, kneeling beside Catriona. Leave it to Catriona to look poised even as a corpse.
Grace had to admit Roy Blade was much better in the leading role of the tragic Aubrey than she had expected. True, he didn’t fit her mental picture of Aubrey—at least not before Aubrey went stark raving mad. She pictured Aubrey as slim and slight and fair—more like Derek Derrick. But Derrick, as the only professional actor, had been given his pick of roles and had oddly enough chosen the much smaller (though title) role of the vampyre. Which confirmed Grace’s belief that Derrick wasn’t overly weighed down in the smarts department.
“We must flee, my lord,” Allegra said stoically, reading from her script. “We must leave this place of doom.”
“That’s the second peasant’s line,” Lord Ruthven pointed out.
“We don’t have a second peasant,” Allegra said testily. “The second peasant quit after the first peasant quit, citing ‘queer ’appenings,’ if I remember correctly. I’m reading them both.”
Arm comfortably propped behind her head, Catriona (wearing a T-shirt that read I AM THE BAD THING THAT HAPPENS TO GOOD PEOPLE) drawled, “And very nicely too, but try to get some Gallic fervor into it, old girl.” She waved one graceful arm. “We musta leave dis place of doom, ma lord!”
Everyone laughed. Even Lord Ruthven had to purse his lips to keep from smiling.
As she watched Catriona, Grace’s laugh died, and her heart seemed to turn to stone. She recognized with an illogical but utter conviction that Catriona and Peter were indeed lovers.
The next moment Catriona scrambled to her feet and pointed at the maze of catwalks above them.
“There’s someone up there!”
8
Roy Blade broke off his lines and craned his neck ceilingward. “Where?” Proof of how on edge everyone had grown over the passing weeks was the speed with which the cast and crew dispersed into confused alarm. People called out, staring toward the scaffolding.
“I don’t see it! Where is he? What is it?” chorused voices.
“Up there!” Catriona pointed into a shadowy recess far above.
Lord Ruthven clapped his hands, trying to regain control. “People! People!”
“I don’t see anyone,” Derek said.
“There!” Catriona’s outstretched arm seemed to track an unseen figure’s journey. “He’s wearing a cape!”
“A cape?”
Theresa gasped and clutched at Derek, who freed himself impatiently, walking beneath the catwalk.
“Hello, you up there!” he yelled.
There was no response.
“I’ll go up and check,” one of the stagehands said.
“Wait! The catwalk isn’t safe,” Ruthven warned him.
Roy Blade said, “I don’t see a damned thing.” He added, “I don’t hear anything either.”
“Possibly if everyone would shut up!” Catriona snapped. Her face was set. Was she really scared? That seemed out of character to Grace.
The silence that followed Catriona’s words was deafening.
“You’re just nervy, Catriona,” Ruthven said, when several moments had passed.
The tension that gripped them all was released. Derek chuckled.
Theresa let out a bloodcurdling scream. “A bat!”
Something swooped down from the ceiling and flew straight at Grace sitting in the front row of seats.
Grace dived to the floor and heard the dull thud as the projectile hit the chair back. She sat up as the others jumped down from the stage.
Something fluttered and flopped on the floor beside her.
“A pigeon!” Allegra exclaimed. There was uneasy laughter all around.
“I know what I saw. It was not a pigeon, it was not a bat,” Catriona said flatly, still standing on the stage. “It was a man in a cape.”
“This is ridiculous!” Lord Ruthven said.
Grace wondered.
“The Lord of the Dead picked a good night for it,” Peter remarked, locking the gallery entrance. The door shuddered beneath a gust of wind.
All Hallows’ Eve was straight out of a Tom Holland novel. A spectral moon sepulchered in darkness sailed along the sky, p
ropelled by eldritch winds. A good night for ghoulies and ghosties, as the Scots put it.
“Do you think they’ll cancel the fete?” Grace asked.
“For this little bit of weather? I shouldn’t think so. Why, were you planning to go?”
“I’d thought about it.” She had been hoping all day he might invite her, finally resigning herself to the idea of going alone or tagging along with Sally and the kids. In the old days she wouldn’t have thought twice about asking for Peter’s company.
“Candy floss and Catherine wheels? Not really your kind of thing is it?”
“Why not? It sounds like fun. Anyway, I can skip a night’s rehearsal. I’m not sure why they need me there at this point anyway.”
“Validation?”
“Ha. I’m beginning to wonder if they just want me where they can keep an eye on me.”
“ ‘They’? Feeling a little paranoid, are we?” He was smiling, but she had the feeling his mind was on something else. “And how goes the Theater of the Absurd these days?”
She buttoned her coat. “I guess we’re on schedule. Ruthven keeps saying we are. The sets are complete. Allegra is a really gifted artist. I had no idea.”
“She attended some posh art school for a few years,” Peter said. He stared out the window at the weird flickering lights in the sky.
“Is it true she and Sir Gerald used to be an item?”
“Before my time.”
“She does seem more like the perfect squire’s lady than poor Theresa.”
“It’s what she was bred for,” Peter agreed. “But Gerald had a different idea.” He looked at the clock. “I’ll pick you up at seven, shall I?”
As Grace walked across the garden on her way from the garage she couldn’t help watching the shadows for signs of Miss Coke’s presence. She wasn’t sure what those might be. Muddy footprints? Ectoplasm?
Verse of the Vampyre Page 9
