Verse of the Vampyre

by Diana Killian

  Lady Vee made a sound like “Paugh!” Grace covered her champagne glass.

  “They’re so secretive,” twittered one old dame. “They’ve insisted on controlling every aspect of the production themselves. No one knows for certain how many seats we’ve sold.”

  Another blue-haired dowager leaned forward, then straightened as though she’d been stung. “They’re here!” she whispered hoarsely.

  Naturally everyone in a three-mile radius turned to look.

  Lord and Lady Ruthven had entered the ballroom. He looked more cadaverous than ever in formal wear.

  “Why, he looks like—like Varney the Vampire,” gasped the blue-haired lady.

  “That’s what he wishes you to think,” Lady Vee said tartly. Grace and Peter exchanged looks.

  “Who?” he murmured.

  “Sir Francis Varney, the antihero of Thomas Prest’s 1840s penny-dreadful Feast of Blood.”

  Peter grinned.

  “She’s quite something, isn’t she?” another of Lady Vee’s cronies ventured.

  There was no doubt to whom she referred. Catriona was breathtaking in a gown that consisted mostly of sheer black lace. Her hair was elegantly piled on her head.

  “No better than she should be,” Lady Vee sniffed.

  Grace had been waiting all her life to hear someone say that in exactly that tone.

  “Scottish nobility,” another murmured.

  “Says who?”

  The ladies began fluttering and flapping at this, but to Grace’s disappointment they were interrupted. She wondered if Lady Vee’s bias was based on anything or if it was simply evidence of old age and bad temper.

  She and Peter moved off to make more social small talk and sip more champagne.

  “So you wish to see old John Peel’s hunting horn, eh?” Sir Gerald’s voice blasted in Grace’s ear like the hunting horn in question.

  “Oh! Er—yes.” Lord and Lady Ruthven stood behind the baronet. Catriona was smirking.

  “Hoick together,” Sir Gerald said, leading the way.

  Lord Ruthven muttered something under his breath.

  They traveled down a long red hallway adorned with gold-framed landscapes, passing a room where a game of billiards seemed to be in quiet but ferocious progress, passing several other white-lacquered doors, coming at last to a closed door, which Sir Gerald unlocked.

  They crowded inside and Sir Gerald turned on a glass-shaded lamp that illumined a hunting dog scaring up ducks. It was a man’s room. Leather furniture, prints of horses and hounds, and a beautiful cabinet filled with hunting rifles. Over the marble fireplace was a giant panorama of a foxhunt.

  In the center of the room was a glass case. They gathered round.

  The bugle sat on blue velvet. It looked very old, the delicate chased work at odds with the old leather straps. Next to the bugle was a small portrait of an elderly man with long white hair, dressed in hunting livery and blowing a silver horn.

  “John Peel?” Grace guessed.

  “That’s right. He was a Cumberland farmer and huntsman. Buried at Caldbeck Church, you know.”

  “Why is he so famous?” Grace inquired.

  “The folksong, I suppose.” Sir Gerald didn’t sound like he’d ever given it much thought.

  “Do ye ken John Peel with his coat so gay?” murmured Lord Ruthven.

  “Gray, not gay,” Sir Gerald corrected. “He wore the Hodden gray, like your own countryman, Rabbie Burns.” Sir Gerald rolled his “Rs” with painful abandon.

  “And in those days the Lake District hunting was all on foot?”

  “Still is mostly. We’re the exception that proves the rule.”

  “How much is it worth?” Lord Ruthven asked, his eyes on the glinting curve of silver.

  “Don’t know. I’ll never sell it.” Sir Gerald snapped out the lamp. Before the room went dark Grace caught Peter’s expression. He was watching Catriona.

  Derek was dancing with Theresa as they reentered the ballroom. She was laughing—too much and too loudly. He whispered in her ear. She missed a step and nearly fell. Derek steadied her. They both laughed.

  Peter said softly for Grace’s ears only, “She’s a fool.”

  Grace silently agreed.

  They joined the dancers on the floor. Grace had never danced with Peter before, but they quickly matched their steps to each other.

  They danced the next two dances as well. It was as though she were drifting through the evening in a champagne bubble, fragile and perfect.

  She caught her reflection in the ballroom mirrors, and for a moment she thought she was looking at a stranger, her gown gracefully sweeping the floor, her cheeks flushed and her eyes like stars amidst the gleam of crystal and silver, the flicker of candles on flowers.

  And then the bubble burst. The music ended, and Grace found herself facing Catriona from across the room.

  Catriona stood by the French windows, a cape draped over her arm. She was staring at Peter, a long, compelling gaze.

  “Excuse me,” Peter said, and crossed the room, leaving Grace, who watched him drape the black folds of the cape around Catriona’s shoulders. They went through the French doors and moved out of view on the veranda.

  Sir Gerald appeared in the center of the room, clapping his hands.

  “Time for some quadrilles!” he announced.

  This was not met with the universal joy the squire seemed to expect, but reluctantly people fell into formation. Grace escaped to the dining room and heaped a plate with food. She helped herself to another champagne.

  She tried not to watch the doors through which Peter and Catriona had disappeared, but it wasn’t easy. People went in and out, but there was no sign of Catriona or Peter. It seemed to her that they had been gone a long time.

  A woman next to her was going on and on to an earnest-looking girl in a brave but foolhardy yellow tartan gown.

  “They’re vermin, my dear. Like ferocious rats. The farmers want us to hunt. They need us to hunt.”

  “But to turn it into a sport…”

  “Foxes kill for sport, my dear. Have you ever seen what a fox will do to a henhouse?”

  Grace’s inadvertent eavesdropping was interrupted when a small, trim woman of uncertain age dropped into the seat across from her.

  Gray streaked her dark hair, but she had the loveliest violet eyes Grace had ever seen. The woman smiled warmly. “You’re Miss Hollister, aren’t you. I’m amazed we’ve never met. I’m Constance Heron.”

  The chief constable joined them a moment later. The three of them chatted amiably, and when they finished their supper and returned to the ballroom, the chief constable asked Grace to dance.

  The orchestra was playing an old-fashioned waltz. After a few bars she recognized the tune—“John Peel.”

  Chief Constable Heron knew his way around the floor, and the comfortable scent of pipe tobacco and spicy aftershave reminded Grace of dancing with her father. She wished, not for the first time, that she was not always being forced into an adversarial role with the chief constable.

  She heard herself thinking aloud, “After all, Peter can’t be the only suspect in the entire Lake District. There must be other people with criminal records?”

  Heron answered her as naturally as though they had been discussing it all evening. “It’s the nature of these crimes, Miss Hollister,” he said. “These aren’t smash and grabs. This thief is showing off, grand-standing. We don’t have that kind of local talent.”

  “That you know of.”

  Heron’s smile was tolerant. “That kind of talent is rare anywhere, Miss Hollister. It’s more than resource, more than nerve. More than audaciousness. These people are pros. Security systems, guard dogs, locks and safes: they walk through them like they didn’t exist.”

  “Maybe because for them they don’t exist.”

  Heron’s currant black eyes met hers. “Exactly.”

  Because the thief was one of them, an accepted member of Innisdale “society.”
r />   “The man who was killed…I’ve heard some strange rumors.”

  Heron’s smile faded. “We’ll get the villains. I can promise you that.”

  “Is it true that he was—that his body was drained of blood?”

  Heron looked startled. “It’s true that he’d lost a great deal of blood, but…what are you suggesting, Miss Hollister?”

  “Were there bite marks on his neck?”

  The chief constable actually missed a step. “Good heavens!” he exclaimed. “Where the devil did you hear such a farradiddle?”

  Farradiddle. Now there was a word you didn’t hear every day.

  “A number of people have mentioned it. I don’t know who started the rumor, but I heard it from a girl whose boyfriend works at The Clarion.” Had someone hoped to foster the notion that a vampire was running amuck in Innisdale by starting such a rumor? “So it’s not true?”

  “It is most certainly not true.”

  “Was it an accident? The security guard, Bill Jones that is, was his death an accident?”

  “When someone is killed in the commission of a crime, it’s murder. Maybe not according to the courts, but it’s murder all the same.”

  That didn’t sound like Jones had been in on the burglary. “Was Bill Jones involved in the robbery? Was he an accomplice?” Heron admonished, “You must know I can’t discuss the details of this case with you, Miss Hollister.”

  How come it always worked in books? She abandoned her interrogation, muttering, “You may as well call me Grace since we’re dancing together.”

  When the music ended they rejoined Constance. She was frowning, and it wasn’t hard to track the source of her disapproval. Sir Gerald was getting louder and drunker. As they watched he pounded one of his fellows on the back, and the man nearly staggered beneath the blow. The circle of gentlemen shouted with good humor and waylaid one of the footmen passing with a tray of champagne glasses.

  Grace wondered where Theresa was. Even more, she wondered where Peter was. He had been gone for nearly an hour.

  The Herons made their way onto the crowded dance floor. Grace was navigating toward the veranda when the double doors blew open. Leaves skittered in, blowing across the tables and floors.

  There were tiny screams, and the orchestra died off with trailing notes. The dancers slowed and stopped.

  Allegra stood framed in the French doors. Her black hair blew around her white face; the wind gusted her red gown. Red with a darker patch of red at the knees.

  “There’s been an accident,” she said into the shocked silence.

  The shadow spilling down the stairs to the lower garden was not a shadow. It was a woman in a black cape.

  One shoe stood empty on the step above her.

  The crowd that had followed Grace from the house seemed to draw back at this ominous sight. Then Sir Gerald pulled back the hood of the cape and recoiled. Lady Theresa’s blue eye stared up in profile. Blood welled from two puncture marks on her neck.

  Theresa? Grace felt numb. She could not seem to take it in. Theresa was dead. But Catriona was the one with all the near misses…

  Sir Gerald sat down on the steps as though his legs had given out. “Ge—” His voice cracked. He wiped a hand across his face, and croaked, “Get Heron.”

  Allegra knelt beside him, hand on one broad shoulder. She said something for his ears only. He nodded and wiped his eyes again.

  “Lift her up, bring her inside,” Lady Vee commanded.

  No, wrong, Grace thought. That would be contaminating a crime scene or tampering with evidence. “Wait,” she said, as a man in a tuxedo and another man in a scarlet jacket bent over Theresa’s body. “I don’t think we should move her. The police—”

  “Police!” exclaimed Lady Vee.

  “Of course the police,” Grace said. “She’s been murdered.”

  People turned faces shocked and stupid in the flickering shadows of the Chinese lanterns. What did they think, wondered Grace? Did they believe a vampire had killed Theresa?

  “Miss Hollister is perfectly correct,” Heron said sternly from the top of the terrace steps. “I must ask you all to return to the house.”

  “We can’t leave her out here,” Sir Gerald protested.

  “No harm will come to her out here, Gerry,” Heron said gruffly. “Come inside, man.”

  They filed back into the brightly lit room. Peter stood in the doorway watching. Grace avoided his gaze as she moved past.

  “Connie, call Sergeant Stebbins,” Heron ordered, and Mrs. Heron went to locate a phone.

  The rest of the evening was more like the hangover than the champagne bubble. The police came and the grim process of crime scene investigation began. The guests were cordoned off in the ballroom, and Heron questioned them one by one in the billiards room.

  Grace was brought in quite early.

  “Tell me about this play you’re involved in,” the chief constable asked. “About vampires, is it?”

  Grace nodded. “It’s a play based on a play based on a short story that was published in 1819. It’s about a man named Aubrey who befriends a mysterious nobleman who turns out to be a vampire. Theresa played Miss Aubrey, the hero’s sister. The story ends with her becoming the vampire’s final victim.”

  “And the name of the vampire?”

  Reluctantly, Grace answered, “Lord Ruthven.”

  “Ruthven? That’s quite a coincidence.”

  “I suppose so.”

  “This is a very famous play?”

  “No. Rather, yes—to people familiar with the Gothic genre or into the vampire thing. To the average theatergoer, no.”

  “I understand there have been a number of incidents at the Playhouse. Tell me about those.”

  Grace related an account of the graffiti on the theater wall and the trapdoor that had given way.

  “And you know about the rumor concerning Bill Jones,” she finished.

  Heron changed tack again. “How did Lady Ives get on with the rest of the cast?”

  “Fine.”

  “No arguments with anyone?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “You don’t seem quite sure.”

  Grace said slowly, “Theresa got on with everyone.”

  Heron’s dark eyes were canny. “There’s something on your mind, Grace. Suppose you tell me what it is.”

  Grace gave him a troubled look. “It’s not that easy,” she tried to explain.

  “Suppose I make it easier. Someone has suggested to me that Lady Ives was especially close to one cast member. Would you agree with that statement?”

  “I hate this.”

  “We don’t ask these questions for our own amusement. It’s difficult to know what will prove to be important in an investigation. Would you agree that Lady Ives appeared to be on close terms with one cast member?”

  “Derek Derrick is extremely flirtatious,” Grace said. “He spent a lot of time flirting with Theresa. That doesn’t necessarily mean anything.”

  “Very true.”

  He asked her a few more questions, but they were clearly routine. It wasn’t long before the chief constable told Grace he would have an officer drive her home.

  Something about the offhand way he said this alerted Grace to trouble. “That’s all right,” she said quickly. “I’ll wait for Peter.”

  “It could be a long wait,” Heron said grimly. “We’ve more than a few questions for Mr. Fox.”

  “Chief Constable, you can’t think Peter had anything to do with…this. What possible reason would he have?”

  “Lady Ives may not have been the target. Indeed, she may simply have been in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  “That doesn’t make sense,” Grace protested.

  “Ah, but there’s something you don’t know, Miss—Grace,” Heron said somberly. “At some point this evening the silver bugle of John Peel went missing.”

  Moisture beaded the glistening grass. Moths batted at the light above the cottage door.
The moon drifted in a smoky haze beyond the treetops.

  Grace’s thoughts also drifted in a smoky haze. Too much had happened during that long evening. She felt numb. Her muscles were in knots of tension. She had to clench her jaw to keep her teeth from chattering as she found her keys in her handbag.

  Out of the corner of her eye she saw something move by the cottage stoop. She sucked in an alarmed breath, but the lantern illuminated the features of the man waiting for her.

  “Ch-Chaz?” Grace managed.

  10

  “Hello, Grace.” Chaz smiled uncertainly.

  The amber light gave his lean face a bronzed cast, but it was illusory. He was tall and very thin, with curly dark hair, soulful brown eyes and a meticulously groomed mustache and beard. He looked like an artist rather than a math instructor, which, according to Grace’s friend Monica, was false advertising.

  “What are you doing here?” Grace’s hand closed on the collar of her coat as though she needed fresh air.

  “I came to see you, obviously.”

  Her mind couldn’t seem to wrap around this. After everything that had happened that evening, the sudden materialization of her ex-boyfriend seemed surreal.

  “Can it wait?”

  “Wait? I’ve been waiting for nearly a year.”

  She took in the suitcases at his feet, the dampness of his coat. “I’m sorry. It’s not been a good night. I was at a party and my hostess was—there was an accident.” It seemed too unreal to say the word “murder.”

  At a loss, she unlocked and opened the door. She turned on the lights as Chaz dropped his bags inside, looking around himself curiously.

  “Let me change out of this dress.”

  “You look…amazing,” Chaz said. “I almost didn’t recognize you. Where’ve you been?”

  “The Hunt Ball.” Somehow it came out sounding like “Tea at Buckingham Palace.”

  “The Hunt Ball?” Chaz’s Adam’s apple was prominent. She had forgotten its tendency to swell when he was shocked. She had forgotten he was easily shocked.

  Grace shut herself in the bathroom, wriggling out of the gown and pulling on jeans, a white shirt and a shaker knit cardigan in oatmeal.

  She rejoined Chaz in the living room. He was studying the photos of Grace and her family.