Incubus

by L. J. Greene

  I’d kill for a drink, I thought, and let out a burst of wild laughter. Mancini started. He clumsily took out his cigarette case, and lit a Gauloise. Only then did he answer. “I went to see what became of the last of your manuscript. I thought he might have left something behind.”

  The gun twitched like it had a life of its own. “Did he?” I hated myself for asking, for caring.

  “Why, yes, as a matter of fact,” he said, and set his cigarette in the ashtray. “Yes. I found the last part of it scattered on the floor where he’d thrown it. I gathered it up and set it back on your desk. It’s waiting there for you now. You should—”

  “You’re lying.”

  “I’m not.” His cigarette burned on where he’d set it down, and he blinked behind the smoke. “I promise you. Let’s go up together, and you can see. You can hold the gun on me if you like. Jam it into my back and hustle me up the stairs like they do in the movies.”

  “I don’t believe you anymore, Mancini. About anything. You’re a liar through and through, and worse. A murderer. You called Fred King, didn’t you? Didn’t you? Sent him out tonight to tie up your loose end at the Chateau. My God, I should’ve listened to Alice right from the start.”

  “What songs has the lovely little Alice been singing about me?” he asked, and rose to walk closer to me, closer, closer. The moonlight turned him into an angel, melting over his inky hair and igniting his skin with a bright white glow.

  “She warned me about you, but I was too…”

  “Too what?”

  Too in love, was the answer, but I’d be damned if I was going to admit that to him ever again. “Too eager to bed you,” I said. Close, but not too close to the truth. “Too eager to believe all your lies.”

  “But dear heart, I told you—”

  “No more!” I shouted, and he held his breath for a moment, as I waved the gun around. “I can’t take it anymore. And how you could think to take Betts’ war story for your own! As if someone like you would ever…would ever…”

  “Would ever have the foolish notion to fight for my country?” he said icily. “Do you really think so little of me that I’d lie about my war record? Even after you found the medal they gave me?”

  “Medal?” I spluttered. “What goddamn medal?”

  “This goddamn medal.” He held up one hand as though to forestall me shooting him and slowly slipped the other into his pocket, coming out with something small and flat in his fingers. “I don’t know what poison Betts’ been dripping in your ear, but this should be proof enough for you. Reggie took it off me years ago. I thought he’d destroyed it…but you found it for me.” He flicked it with his thumb, like a coin, and it spun through the air to land at my feet. It was the worn gold star I’d pilfered from Cresswickham’s drawer.

  “Don’t you know the Medal of Honor when you see it?” he asked.

  I gave the same crazy laugh I had earlier. “Medal of Honor? Just how dumb do you think I am, Mancini? You admitted it! You admitted you lied about ever going to war!”

  “I told you what you wanted to hear; you wouldn’t have accepted anything else that night. But yes, I did go to war, and Reggie did save me, and I saved him—after a fashion. I’m not proud of my life, and I’m not proud of what I’ve done to you, because I love—”

  “Don’t!” I spat.

  His eyes went watchful, and he put his hands up as though to soothe me. “Alright, I won’t say it. But it’s true. Yes, I’ve done despicable things in my life, and perhaps accepting the Medal of Honor was one of them. Reggie always felt he deserved a medal for that day more than I did.”

  His face twisted. I could almost believe his regret. I wanted to sneer at him, but my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth, and he went on before I could work it loose.

  “Going to war was the only selfless thing I ever did, and even then I couldn’t follow through. Couldn’t go back again when I was fit and ready, not after those hours lying in the Tunisian sun with Reggie’s death rattle playing in my ear. Do you know what I swore that day? I swore I would never put anyone or anything in front of my own good again. That I’d always make sure I had the best in life. Always have a soft bed to fall into at night. Always be safe and untouchable, no matter what it took. And I always was, from the time I woke up in that military hospital, until...until I met you.”

  That got my tongue moving at last. “Don’t put this mess on me, you son of a bitch.”

  His face softened. “Sweetheart. I’ll take full responsibility for it all between us, if that’s really what you want. For the first time in my life, I’d rather see someone else safe before me. But I don't think we’re safe yet, not in this house.”

  I swiped the back of my hand across my brow. I felt woozy. My wet hands were slipping on the gun. “But I am,” I said. “Now. Unless you…”

  “Love of my life, you are not,” he murmured. “Please trust me. You may have killed Reggie, but—”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Alright,” he said impatiently, and rolled his eyes. “Someone unknown killed Reggie, but—”

  “Don’t you try to put your sin on me, not when it’s just the two of us. You killed him. You killed him.”

  He gave me a sharp look. “The police agreed it was an accident, you know. You don’t have to set me up, unless you really want to see me hang.”

  “It’s the gas chamber in California,” I said stupidly, and I dropped the arm holding the gun on him. I was trying to understand what he meant, what he was really saying. “And I don’t get you.”

  He stepped a pace towards me. “Are you denying that you gave Reggie a helping hand down the stairs?”

  “How could I?” I demanded. “You drugged me. I was knocked out downstairs.”

  “I didn’t drug you.”

  “Yes, you did. In the whisky—”

  “Listen to me,” he said, and his urgency was compelling. “I did not drug you.”

  “And yet I was drugged.”

  “And yet you were drugged,” he agreed grimly, and it began to occur to me that perhaps he wasn’t just fobbing me off this time. “You aren’t safe here. We aren’t safe. We have to…” But he trailed off as he glanced behind me to the screening room door, and his face fell. “Too late,” he muttered.

  “Awfully sorry, chaps,” said a voice behind me. “But I’m afraid neither of you will be going anywhere. Gun down, thanks, Coleridge.”

  Chapter 48

  It was Betts.

  It was Betts, and he was aiming a gun at me. A .38, pointed right at my heart, and his hands were steady and calm. But I couldn’t fear for my life, not with Betts holding the gun. I knew him, or thought I did. So I took a step towards him.

  He let off a shot, quick as a blink, and a side table splintered an inch away from my knee. Leo let out a yelp like a dog whose tail has been stood on, and I stumbled sideways and sat down heavily in an armchair.

  “I’ll thank you to do as I say,” Betts said civilly. “I’d rather not spill your blood just yet, but I will if I have to.”

  Leo was clutching at my shoulder so hard I whimpered. His grip was too close to the brand. “Are you alright?” he asked urgently.

  “Quit crushing my arm and I will be!” I growled, and he released me. I’d dropped my own gun in the confusion, and I saw Mancini glance down at it. It was half under the chair, and hidden from Betts by the angle of the chair leg. Mancini gave me a look full of meaning, but I only stared back, confused and afraid.

  Leo jerked his head around to Betts. “What will it take to let us live?” he asked. “Name it.”

  His jump to murder was as much of a shock to me as the bullet Betts had released. “He’s not going to kill us,” I said, because I still couldn’t believe it.

  We all heard it then, a brisk click-clack, click-clack. I was the first to see her, turning in my chair, because Leo wouldn’t take his eyes off Betts. She swam towards us out of the darkness of the foyer until her blonde hair shone like a lant
ern in the doorway.

  It was seeing Alice that convinced me Leo and I were in real danger. She was a different woman, dressed in cyanide-blue: a slim-fitted skirt and jacket smooth over her hips—hips that swayed as she made her way across to Betts. Her ivory blouse was cut low enough that I could see the swell of her breasts. I was so used to her frills and lace and soft pastels that I gaped at her, and I could see by Betts’ glower that it displeased him.

  “I’m afraid there is nothing in this world that can save you now, Leo,” she said. Even her voice had changed, lower than her usual lilt and—if possible—more English than ever.

  “But you have what you want,” he said, and gave an affable smile. “And bravura performance, by the way. Truly excellent.”

  She gazed at him for a long moment. “I have never been fond of that mask you like to put on.”

  “Nor I of yours, darling,” he said, and his tone, though still amiable, had a savage current running through it.

  “Let’s get on, shall we?” Betts said briskly, and aimed his gun at Leo’s head.

  He ducked; I shouted. When I glanced back, Alice had her hand on Betts’ shoulder, and he had lowered the weapon. “Not yet,” she said. “No execution without a fair trial, after all.”

  “Is that how you see it?” Leo asked, jovial again. I noticed his hands shaking, though, as he lowered them from a defensive position. “You must have a spotless soul, Alice, to be so ready to throw the first stone.”

  She stepped around Betts, her heels click-clacking again. “Cleaner than yours, I’d wager,” she said. “But it’s not you in whom I’m interested.” She shifted her gaze very deliberately from Leo to me. “Coleridge. Tell me you weren’t involved. Make me believe you, please. I’d rather think my first impressions of you were the right ones.”

  Sweat broke out in the small of my back, and I was sure my voice had deserted me. “I—I didn’t,” I said hoarsely. “I didn’t kill your brother.”

  She laughed.

  “I didn’t!” I insisted, and she stopped laughing.

  “I know,” she said. “You poor, silly thing. I know that. What I want to know is: what exactly was your involvement with the Incubus business? And don’t lie to me. We have the whole collection of films downstairs, after all.”

  I could feel the familiar tremors in my hand, and the thumping ache at the base of my skull. If only I hadn’t dropped the gun. It was so close, just next to the clawed foot of the armchair, but if I reached to get it, they would see. They would know.

  They would shoot me.

  I didn’t know what I should say to Alice, whether it was better to come clean or lie, or what coming clean even meant, and my addled brain wasn’t going to be fast enough to figure it out. And that was going to get me killed.

  “Please,” I said. “I need a drink.”

  Leo moved to the right, toward the decanters on the side table, and Betts snapped, “Oi! Stay where you are.”

  “Good God,” he said impatiently. “Alice, you know how he gets. Let him have a drink, for pity’s sake, before he starts the French fits.”

  She gave a small shrug. “Alright. It may be his last, after all. But no sudden movements. Betts doesn’t like it.”

  “Then keep your dog under control,” Leo replied, and I wished I could tell him to stop antagonizing them, especially the man with the gun, but my mouth was already watering at the thought of a drink and all I could concentrate on was the clink of glass on glass and the slow sloshing sound.

  “Wait,” Alice said suddenly. “Why are you giving him scotch?”

  “What does it matter?”

  “Give him bourbon.”

  Leo turned to face her, swirling the drink around in the glass and sniffing at it with a small smile. Around and around it washed in the tumbler until I broke, and: “For Christ’s sake, give it to me,” I begged.

  “You see?” Leo said to Alice. “He doesn’t mind scotch.”

  One word fell from her lips: “Betts,” and with that, the whole decanter of whisky exploded. I shielded my face, hands flying of their own accord. Leo dropped the tumbler in his hand and jumped away from the flying glass, ducking down to the floor next to my chair.

  “Give him bourbon,” Alice said again, when the shards had settled.

  I was shaking uncontrollably now, a mixture of my tremors and my nerves. “What does it matter?” I squeaked. “What in the hell does it matter?”

  Leo stood warily and stepped back to the side table, where he set down the glass. I could see his jacket pocket swinging with something heavy—the gun. He’d managed to pick it up in the confusion. He took a fresh tumbler and held it up to the light, turning it one way and the other, before lifting up the bourbon decanter gingerly. “I’m rather afraid to pour this one,” he said, “in case it explodes in my hand. Alice, won’t you tell Cole why it matters?”

  I looked between them.

  “No?” Leo continued, and dropped three ice cubes into the bourbon. “Then I’ll tell him, shall I? It was Alice who drugged you last night. And she drugged Reggie, that night you watched him watching films, and he collapsed. You were an accident, though. I rather think she went around doping all the scotch bottles in the house. Didn’t you, Alice?”

  She did not reply. Leo handed me my drink and I gulped it down gratefully. My teeth clattered on the glass as I drank, but the fire of it calmed my gut. I wiped my sticky face down after I drained the tumbler, and sucked on my lips for a last taste.

  It was as though they were all waiting for me to join the dots. “But,” I said slowly at last, “why would she do that?”

  “I presume it was her first—and rather amateurish, might I add—attempt at killing Reggie,” Leo said flatly. “Your second try took, though, didn’t it? I hope at least he didn’t know it was yours, Alice, that hand in his back. Or did you send Betts to do it for you? Poor Reggie.”

  Alice finally spoke. “Poor Reggie? Don’t pretend to care for him, not now.”

  “We both did what we had to,” Leo snarled, and I flinched away from him. “And you weren’t fond of him either, my sweet. Don't rewrite history.”

  “I’m alive,” I said, and they both looked at me. “I’m alive, and I drank the scotch.”

  “You? You barely wet your whistle,” Leo said. “Don’t you remember?” I did, now that he’d mentioned it. I remembered the way Alice whisked my glass away like a brusque hospital nurse, too.

  Leo kept talking, chatting like this was any other night with the four of us gathered in the drawing room after dinner. “Admit it, won’t you, Alice? You tried it that way first, to make it look like an overdose. An accident, perhaps, or suicide. So don’t put that on me.”

  She put a hand on one slim hip. “But it is on you,” she said. “If you hadn’t been doping him regularly, he could have peacefully gone to sleep, drifted off into the afterlife. But as it turned out…”

  I finished for her. “As it turned out, he’d already built up tolerance and it only knocked him out. Alright, I see that.” I was catching up, freight-train slow, but I was getting there. “But why now? And why murder, for Christ’s sake? Why not just leave?”

  “Because Reggie was the Incubus," she said simply.

  Chapter 49

  Leo made a scoffing noise and shook his head.

  "Bella told me," Alice said over the top of him, and Leo went quiet again. "That night at the jazz club. Reggie had stormed off and you two were at the bar, so she leaned in and told me, swore on her life, that one of you was the Incubus. She told me a convoluted story—I couldn't follow it all, and I didn't think it could possibly be true. In fact, I thought she was quite mad, though very entertaining."

  I could imagine it: my Magnolia Girl whispering in Alice's ear over the crash of cymbals and screaming horns, her breath warm and sweet against Alice's cold skin. I'd bet whatever Bella’d said would've seemed drenched in paranoia. She could hide that obsessive edge, but never for long. I wondered what it was made her so sure. Her so
urces were myriad but I'd never been privy to 'em. No, she’s solved this case all on her lonesome, just as she’d set out to do. I hoped she was well away from the city, soaring away from all this muck and murder.

  Alice continued: "I didn't believe her, not entirely. But she’d planted a seed. And when we came home, the three of you came into in my room—" She broke off, and Betts’ mouth twisted like a mean dog's snarl. "Well, I knew then that she was right. Knew it through and through, though I couldn't prove it in a court of law. The only thing I wasn't sure of was how much each of you was involved. But Reggie was deep in; I could see that. I'd known it for some time, only I didn't want to face up to it. And I knew I was next. I knew he meant to do me harm, or have his pet demon attend to me."

  She was right, was the thing. I could see that. It would only have been a matter of time before Lord Reginald Cresswickham worked up his courage to do to Alice what he really wanted to do to her. And yet…Alice had only begun to care about his behavior more deeply once she believed herself to be in danger.

  Was it really just that, I wondered? It sounded downright altruistic

  "Reggie wasn’t always like that, you know," she continued, "but he was never the same after he came back from the war, and for a long time I thought it was just shellshock. But I realized, finally, that it wasn’t the war at all. It was the slow dribble of poison fed into his soul by an American fiend.”

  “She means me, I think,” Leo said, his tone light enough that it made me want to slap him. “Might want to skip over the metaphors, Alice. Coleridge is in no state to untangle cryptic messages.”

  “This is crazy,” I said. “All of it. We tried to stop Reggie that night, Alice. Leo tried. And I tried...” By my side, Leo was fidgeting behind his back. I didn’t want to draw attention to him, so I kept my eyes fixed hard on Alice, on Betts, on the gun in his hand. “And Leo would never do anything like that to you. Why, he couldn't. You—you know why.”