James Asher 1 - Those Who Hunt The Night (9 page)

He descended two flights of curving stairs at a silent run, and another to the basement. His landlady looked up, startled, as he passed the kitchen door, but he was already out in the tiny, sunken well of the areaway, standing on the narrow twist of moss-flecked stone steps to raise his eye level just above that of the pavement of the alley behind the house.

Evidently taken in by his feigned exit, the dark shape in the alley was still watching his lighted window. It stood motionless, nearly invisible in the dense gloom between the tall rows of houses; even so, he could make out the almost luminous whiteness of an unhuman face raised toward the light above. For a moment he kept his eyes on that dark form, scarcely daring to breathe, remembering the quickness of vampire hearing. Then, as if he had blinked, the figure was gone.

Thirty minutes later he had unpacked and put away the last of his things, changed clothes, and shaved. Though this refreshed him slightly, he still ached for sleep, feeling half-tempted to leave Ysidro to wait in his damp alley, if that was what he wanted to do, while he went to bed. But in that case, he was certain, the vampire would simply break in, Don Simon having apparently never heard that vampires could not enter any new place save at the bidding of one of its inhabitants.

On the other hand, Asher thought as he stepped from the lighted doorway of Number Six and strolled slowly up the pavement through the foggy darkness, what place in London could be called new? Six Prince of Wales Colonnade had obviously been standing since the latter days of George IV's reign; his own house in Oxford since Anne's, Don Simon Ysidro had been quietly killing in the streets of London since long before either place was built.

It crossed his mind to wonder about that ancient London—a thick gaggle of half-timbered houses, tiny churches, old stone monasteries near the river, and a dozen conflicting legal jurisdictions whose officers could not cross the street to apprehend criminals—a London whose jammed houses spilled across the bridge onto Southwark, with its cheap theaters where Shakespeare was learning his trade as an actor and cobbler-up of plays, and taverns where men who sailed with Francis Drake could be found drinking to the health of the red-haired queen . . .

“We cannot continue to meet this way,” purred a soft, familiar voice beside him. “People will begin to talk.”

Asher swung quickly around, cursing his momentary abstraction of mind. He was tired, true, but ordinarily he was more aware of someone that close to him.

Ysidro had fed; his face, though still pale, had lost the cold gleam that had caught Asher's attention in the gloom of the alley. His black cloak half concealed sable evening dress; his stiff white shirt front was of silk, and several shades paler, now, than the skin tailored so delicately over his cheekbones. As always, he was bare-headed, the high horns of his forehead gleaming faintly as they passed beneath the lamps of the houses round the square. Pearl-gray gloves clasped the crystal head of a slender ebony stick.

“I had a good mind to let you wait in that alley,” Asher retorted. “You should know for yourself I'll have nothing to report except that, as you've seen, I've taken rooms here.” He nodded back toward Number Six, indistinguishable from the other houses of the terrace, its glowing windows casting soft spangles of light on the trees of the narrow square across the street, “Now that we've spoken, I have every intention of going back to them and getting some sleep.”

“Alley?” The vampire tilted his head a little, a gesture somehow reminiscent of a mantis.

“You didn't follow me as soon as it grew dark? Watch me from the alley while I was unpacking?”

Ysidro hesitated for a long moment, sifting through possible replies, picking and choosing what it was best to admit. Exasperated, Asher stopped upon the pavement and turned to face him. “Look. You don't trust me, I know, and I'd certainly be a fool to trust you. But it's you who's in danger, not me, and unless you give me more information— unless you stop this endless game of 'Animal, Vegetable, Mineral' with anything I want to know—I won't be able to help you.”

“Is helping us your object?” The vampire tipped his head to one side, looking up the handspan of difference in their heights. There was no hint of sarcasm in his tone—he asked as if truly interested in the answer.

“No,” said Asher bluntly. “But neither is killing you—not at the moment. You've made the stake pretty high for me. So be it. I've taken what precautions I can to keep Lydia safe, as you've probably guessed, and, believe me, it wasn't easy to come up with answers to her questions about why she had to leave Oxford. But I can't do anything until you're willing to answer some questions so I'll have something to work on.” “Very well.” The vampire studied him for the count of several breaths, leisurely as if this quiet Bloomsbury square were a private room and entirely at his convenience. “I will meet you here tomorrow at this time, and we shall visit, as you say, the scene of the crime. As for what you saw in the alley . . .” His small silence lay in the conversation like a floating spot of light upon water, too deliberate to be called a hesitation; nothing in his face changed to indicate the flow of his thoughts. “That was not me.”

“Oh, Lord, yes,” said the woman whom the shop sign identified as Minette as clearly as her accent indicated that the name had probably originally been Minnie. “That hair! A truer blonde could never have worn that vivid a gold—turn her yellow as cheese, it would. But it just picked up the green in her eyes. My gran used to tell me folk with that dark rim 'round the iris had the second sight.”

She regarded Asher with eyes that were enormous, the most delicate shade of clear crystal blue and, though without any evidence of second sight whatsoever, clearly sharp with business acumen. Though he had shut the shop door behind him, Asher could still hear the din of traffic in Great Marlborough Street—the clatter of hooves, the rattle of iron tires on granite paving blocks, and the yelling of a costermonger on the corner—striving against the rhythmic clatter of sewing machines from upstairs.

He tugged down the very slightly tinted spectacles he wore balanced on the end of his nose—spectacles whose glass was virtually plain but which he kept as a prop to indicate harmless ineffectuality—and looked at her over their tops. “And did she tell you she was an actress?”

Minette, perched on a stool behind the white-painted counter, cocked her head a little, black curls falling in a tempting bunch, like grapes, on the ruffled ecru of her collar lace. “Wasn't she, then?” There was no surprise in her voice—rather, the curiosity of one whose suspicions are about to be confirmed.

Asher made his mouth smaller under his thick brown mustache and sighed audibly. But he held off committing himself until the dressmaker added, “You know, I thought there was something a bit rum about it. I know actresses at the Empire don't get up and about 'til evening and are on 'til all hours, but they do get days off, you know. I always figured she spent them with one of her fancy men, and that was why she always insisted on coming in the evenings—between houses, she said. I will say for her she always did make it worth my while, which comes in handy in the off season when all the nobs are out of town.”

“Fancy men,” Asher reiterated, with another small sigh, and produced a notebook in which he made a brief entry. The blue eyes followed the movement, then nicked back to his face. “You a 'tec?”

“Certainly not,” he replied primly. “I am, in fact, a solicitor for a Mr. Gobey, whose son was—or is—a—er—friend of Miss Harshaw's—or Miss Branhame's, as she called herself to you. Did Mr. Gobey—Mr. Thomas Gobey—at any time buy Miss Lotta Harshaw anything here? Or pay her bills for her?”

Thomas Gobey's had been among the freshest-looking of the cards of invitation found in Lotta's reticule; it was better than even odds that, even if he were dead by now, the dressmaker hadn't heard of it. As it transpired, Gobey had, two years ago, paid seventy-five pounds to Minette La Tour for a gown of russet silk mull with a fur-trimmed jacket to match, ordered and fitted, like everything else Lotta had purchased there, in the evening.

Discreetly peering down over Mde. Minette's shoulder as she turned the ledger pages, Asher noted the names of other men who had paid Lotta's bills, on those frequent occasions on which she did not pay them herself. Most were familiar, names found on cards and stationery in her rooms; poor Bertie Westmoreland had disbursed, at a quick estimate, several hundred pounds to buy his murderess frocks and hats and an opera cloak of amber cut velvet beaded with jet.

Six months ago, he was interested to note, Lotta had purchased an Alice-blue “sailor hat”—Lydia had one, and it was nothing Asher had ever seen any sailor wear in his life—with ostrich plumes, which had been paid for by Valentin Calvaire, at an address in the Bayswater Road.

He shut his notebook with a snap. “The problem, my dear Mademoiselle La Tour, is this. Young Mr. Gobey has been missing since the beginning of the week. Upon making inquiries, his family learned that Miss Harshaw—who is not, in fact, an actress—has also disappeared. At the moment we are simply making routine inquiries to get in touch with them—searching out possible friends or people who might know where they have gone. Did Miss Harshaw ever come here with female friends?”

“Oh, Lor' bless you, sir, they all do, don't they? It's half the fun of fittings. She came in once or twice with Mrs. Wren—the lady who introduced her to us, and a customer of long standing, poor woman. In fact it was because I am willing to oblige and do fittings at night by gaslight—for a bit extra, which she was always willing to pay up, like the true lady she is . . .”

“Do you have an address for Mrs. Wren?” Asher inquired, flipping open his notebook again.

The dressmaker shook her head, her black curls bouncing. She was a young woman—just under thirty, Asher guessed—and still building her clientele. The shop, though narrow and in a not quite fashionable street, was brightly painted in white and primrose, which went a long way toward relieving the dinginess of its solitary window. It took a wealthy and established modiste indeed to live comfortably and pay seamstresses and beaders during the off season when fashionable society deserted the West End for Brighton or the country—by August, Minette would probably have agreed to do fittings at midnight just to stay working.

“Now, that I don't, for she'll pay up in cash. In any case, I doubt they're really friends. Goodness knows how they met in the first place, for a blind man could see Mrs. Wren wasn't her sort of woman at all— not that it's Mrs. Wren's real name, I'll wager, either. She has a drunkard of a husband, who won't let her out of the house—she has to slip out when he's gone to his club to buy herself so much as a new petticoat. I suggest you look up her other friend, Miss Celestine du Bois, though if you was to ask me . . .” She gave him a saucy wink. “. . . Miss du Bois is about as French as I am.”

Though thoroughly tickled and amused, Asher managed to look frostily disapproving of the whole sordid business as he stalked out of Mile. La Tour's.

The address given by Celestine du Bois on those occasions when bills were sent to her and not to gentlemen admirers—one of whom, Asher had been interested to note, was also Valentin Calvaire—was an accommodation address, a tobacconist's near Victoria Station and reachable from any corner of London by Underground. Calvaire's address in the Bayswater Road was also an accommodation address, a pub—both vampires had picked up their letters personally.

“Does Miss du Bois pick up letters here for anyone else?” Asher inquired, casually sliding a half-crown piece across the polished mahogany of the counter. The young clerk cast a nervous glance toward the back of the shop, where his master was mixing packets of Gentlemen's Special Sort.

“For a Miss Chloe Watermeade, and a Miss Chloe Winterdon,” the young man replied in a hushed voice and wiped his pointy nose. “She comes in—oh, once, twice a week sometimes, usually just before we puts the shutters up.”

“Pretty?” Asher hazarded.

“Right stunner. Short little thing—your pocket Venus. Blond as a Swede, brown eyes I think—always dressed to the nines. Not a loafer'll speak to her, though, with the big toff what comes in with her half the time— Cor, there's a hard boy for you, and never mind the boiled shirt!”

“Name?” Asher slid another half crown across the counter.

The boy threw another quick look at the back shop as the owner's bulky form darkened the door; he whispered, “Never heard it,” and shoved the half crown back.

“Keep it,” Asher whispered, picked up the packet of Russian cigarettes which had been his ostensible errand, and stepped back into the street to the accompaniment of the tinkling shop bell.

Further investigation of Lotta's grave in Highgate yielded little. It was a discouragingly easy matter to enter the cemetery by daylight— the narrow avenue of tombs behind the Egyptian gate and the dark groves and buildings around it were absolutely deserted, silent in the dripping gloom. Anyone could have entered and completely dismembered every corpse in the place uninterrupted, not just planted a stake through the heart and cut off the head.

With the door left wide, a thin greenish light suffused the crypt, but Asher still had to have recourse to the uncertain light of a dry-cell electric torch, whose bulky length he'd smuggled in under his ulster, as he examined every inch of the coffin and its niche. He found what might have been remains of a stake among the charred bones, though it was difficult to distinguish it from the fragments of rib or tell whether it was wood or bone—he wrapped it in tissue and pocketed it for later investigation. It told him nothing he did not already know. In a far corner of the tomb, he found a nasty huddle of bones, hair, and corset stays rolled in a rotting purple dress: the former occupant, he guessed, of the coffin Lotta had commandeered.

What remained of the afternoon he spent in a back office at the Daily Mail, studying obituaries, police reports, and the Society page, matching names with those on the list he'd assembled from the debris in Lotta's rooms and from Mile. La Tour's daybooks. Poor Thomas Gobey, he saw, had in fact succumbed to a “wasting sickness” only months after the purchase of the russet silk dress. Asher noted the address—the Albany, which told him everything he needed to know about that unfortunate young man—and the names of surviving brothers, sister, parents, fiancee.