‘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-f
oot 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.
Circling the house, he found the remains the bricklayers had left: clots of mortar near the kitchen door, boards smeared with its grayish residue, a huge area near the stables of broken bricks and scattered fragments and dust.
About a third of the house, it looked like, had been sealed. Something to tell Grippen, though Heaven knew how many other places Colwich had purchased for his ‘friend’.
And though the last sunlight still gilded the house’s absurd pinnacles and roof crests, shadow filled the garden, like the dark waters of a deadly pool. It’s time to get out of here NOW.
He stood leaning against the newel post of the kitchen steps, trying to get his breath. Damn Grippen …
The peach tree and the broken spot in the wall seemed miles away. The cab around by the gate seemed unthinkably distant. Get away from here. If he’s here he’ll be awake, waiting in the darkness of the house. Waiting until it’s dark enough to emerge …
If I try to walk now I’ll fall.
For a long time he stood, gathering his strength and watching color fade from the sky.
He made it to the back of the garden. Saw the peach trees – there were four of them – beyond the snarl of overgrown rose bushes and waist-high weeds. With evening, mist was rising from the marshes, and the damp chilled him to the bone. Another minute before I try the wall …
A man stood beneath the peach tree as Asher emerged from the overgrown hedges, raised a pistol as Asher made a move to plunge back into cover. ‘Don’t try it.’
It was Mr Three-and-Ninepenny Bowler. His voice had the flat accent of the American West.
Damn blast bugger …
‘Your cab’s gone anyway,’ Bowler Hat added. ‘If we make a deal, I’ll drive you back to town. If not …’ He shrugged. ‘My name’s Wirt. You’ll be John Grant, that’s staying at Porton’s Hotel? I want a word with you.’
SEVENTEEN
‘Not here.’ Asher lifted his hand in a gesture of peace, started toward the wall, and Wirt stepped in front of him again, pistol raised.
‘I think here is fine.’
‘Trust me,’ said Asher. ‘It’s not. We need to get back to town—’
‘Where you got friends? I don’t think so. And I’m not a hundred per cent sure one of the other boys isn’t on your trail as well. Five hundred dollars is a lot of dough.’
‘Five hundred dollars for what?’
‘For a vampire.’ Wirt spoke as if the answer was written on a sandwich board across his chest and Asher had neglected to read it. ‘That’s your racket, ain’t it?’ He nodded in the direction of the house. ‘They really real?’
‘If we remain here,’ replied Asher grimly, ‘we run the risk of finding that out.’ I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, he was fairly certain, would only prolong a discussion that needed to be concluded – or moved to another venue – without delay.
‘Good.’ Wirt grinned, and shifted to block Asher as he took a step toward the wall again. ‘He’s the man I really want to talk to – or are there lady vampires as well?’
‘There are. And I promise you, you don’t.’
‘Oh, I think he’ll listen to what I’ve got to say.’ Keeping his pistol trained on Asher, Wirt glanced around him at the darkening garden, as if expecting Count Dracula to emerge from the house at any moment in a silk-lined cloak. ‘It’s a straight business proposition, and if Mr Armistead’s willing to pay five hundred dollars just for an introduction, you can bet the salary’s gonna be worth it.’
‘Salary?’
Asher knew he should be shocked, but he wasn’t. What he chiefly felt – besides growing fear of what he was nearly certain whispered in the night around them – was disgust.
‘Sure. Say, can they really turn into bats? Though how turning into a bat’s going to help ’em deal with strikers in the mines is more than I can figure, unless Mr Armistead plans to use him as a spy. You know personally, I thought he’d read too many of those books he buys – you know he’s got about four copies of that one about the ten gents?’
‘The Liber Gente Tenebrarum?’
‘That’s the one,’ said Wirt. ‘But the old man didn’t get that rich bein’ crazy. He’ll sit up all night in that strongroom of his, with this book in front of him and a pile of dictionaries on the desk, French and Latin and Spanish and what-all. Crazy. But he tells me – and I’m pretty sure he told a couple of the other boys – five hundred dollars if I can bring him a vampire to talk to. And if he’s gonna feed him on those socialist bastards from the WFM, more power to him. I’m sick of dealin’ with those whinin’ rats.’
WFM, thought Asher. Western Federation of Miners.
At least two men who’ve tried to unionize his mines have met with convenient ‘accidents’, Sophister had told him.
‘Good,’ he said. ‘Fine. You go right up that driveway and knock on the front door—’
‘Not so fast.’ The detective stepped in front of him again, gun trained, and Asher could see he was both able and willing to use it. ‘You’re comin’ with me. That pretty-boy kid of Millward’s – he hire you to do his legwork? You and the red-haired dame? Old Millward showed me the door pretty fast, but I knew if I followed his boy he’d lead me someplace.’
‘Where he’ll lead you is an early grave. These are not people you want to meet.’
‘Bub, anybody in Denver’ll tell you that for five hundred dollars, Blackie Wirt’ll kiss the Devil’s ass. There’s a lantern down by the foot of that tree.’ He dug with one hand in his pocket and tossed Asher a box of matches. ‘How about you light it up and the two of us walk up and knock on the front door together? Then if nobody’s home, you can come along with me and talk to Mr Armistead yourself.’
Asher gauged the gathering dusk and wondered if he had the speed to make it to the wall. He had little concern that Titus Armistead would actually succeed in hiring a vampire to kill off strikers in his mines. Even Damien Zahorec, standing like a shadow within the man’s very gates, wasn’t about to declare himself, and having seen in Peking what could come of working alliances between the living and the Undead, Asher didn’t blame him in the slightest. But once he, James Asher, stood revealed as a vampire hunter – and as Lydia’s husband – there was little chance that Lydia could get clear of the situation before Zahorec killed her.
The American flicked his pistol barrel toward Asher, nodded at the lantern. ‘Light it. And don’t think I wouldn’t shoot you over it because there ain’t a soul for a mile around and I’m betting nobody knows you’re here. I took down the addresses of those places you went this afternoon so there’s not a reason in the world you’re worth keeping alive.’
He’s seen Lydia, too. Asher knelt beside the lantern. Whether he kills me or just leaves me lying with a hole in me for Zahorec to find, the next person he’ll look for is Seabury’s ‘red-haired dame’. It won’t be half a day before word that she’s hunting him will get to Zahorec …
With a sidelong
slash of his foot he sent the lantern spinning away and dove for the nearest dark cloud of laurels. The pistol crashed, Asher stumbled, dizzy, scrambled to his feet again …
Behind him, Wirt yelled in shock and terror, and in the same instant icy and powerful hands closed around Asher’s arms. Reflective eyes glimmered in the darkness and a cultured voice said, ‘Well, well, well. What have we here?’
‘You’ll catch your death, sitting out here, ma’am.’ Ellen handed Lydia the coat she’d asked for – a quilted silk cocoon-style with a collar of trailing monkey fur – and a heavy woolen shawl to wrap on over it, her square face lined with concern in the reflected glow of the kitchen windows.
‘I’m all right.’
‘No, you’re not,’ retorted the servant. ‘You didn’t have hardly a thing for tea and there’s a fog coming up.’ And, when Lydia neither replied, nor moved on the white-painted bench beneath the garden arbor, she added more gently, ‘I know it’s hard for you, ma’am, being in the house. It’s hard for me, too. And for Cook and Mrs Brock and us all, walking past the door of the nursery a dozen times a day—’
‘It’s all right.’ Lydia held up her hand to silence the reminder, but of course Ellen would never be silenced.
‘But you worrying yourself into your sickbed isn’t going to help anything. Mr James will take care of it. You know he will.’
I know he will …
If he survives himself.
The chalk-white pallor, the sunken look of his eyes, tore her like broken glass twisting in a cut. This is war … I took a wound.
We parted at four-thirty. How long would it take him to see those places, and come here?
For the past hour, sitting here in the garden, every passing footfall in Holywell Street had brought her heart up leaping.
The Kindred of Darkness Page 17
