We searched all the downstairs rooms and found nothing. No sign anyone had been inside GravelStone Cottage in months. We went upstairs. Jeeves wanted to go first, because he had the gun, but I took the lead anyway, because I knew for a fact I was a lot harder to kill. I kept sniffing the air, but I couldn’t smell blood or decay. Just dust and damp.
We searched all the upper rooms, kicking in doors and checking every nook and cranny with malice aforethought. I even opened all the cupboards and overturned the beds, just in case there might be a monster hiding under them. By the time we’d checked all the rooms and gone back out on to the landing again, we were both so tense from unrelieved anticipation that we were exhausted. All my muscles ached, from not being allowed to relax.
‘There’s no one home,’ Jeeves said heavily. ‘Let’s get out of here.’
‘After you,’ I said.
I let him lead the way back down the noisy wooden stairs, mostly so he wouldn’t see me scowling as I struggled to think things through. I couldn’t help feeling I was missing something. Learn to think like the prey, the Colonel always said, So you can out-think them. But the prey I went after was usually alive, in some form or another. My cases usually tended more to the super-scientific than the supernatural. I knew such stuff existed; you couldn’t operate in my world and not know. But the Colonel had other agents for that. So why had he called for me, specifically, to come and help him? If he suspected Sylvia was a vampire, why not call on a more suitable agent? Could it be that he didn’t trust them like he trusted me? I would have liked to think so.
I felt a little easier once we were back in the entrance hall with the open door in front of us. All the way down the stairs, I’d had the horrible suspicion that when we got to the bottom we’d find Sylvia there, waiting for us. Smiling her awful smile. But she wasn’t. Jeeves and I hauled furniture out of the living rooms and into the hall, and piled it up. Then we took turns dousing it with bottles of wine we’d found, until the whole hall stank of alcohol. Jeeves and I slipped out the front door, while I left a careful trail of booze behind us, and then Jeeves got to do the business with his Zippo again. The furniture went up in a moment, and a great blast of heat shot out the open doorway. If we hadn’t been so thoroughly wrapped up, the intense heat might well have taken our eyebrows off. The entire frontage of GravelStone Cottage was soon wildly ablaze. Jeeves took his gloves off and happily warmed his bare hands against the fierce heat. He pulled down his scarf, so he could grin at me.
‘First time I’ve felt warm since we left the Manor! Look at the place go … And you’re not even sweating!’
‘I don’t,’ I said. ‘Mostly.’
We turned our attention to the long row of terraced cottages. Stretching away for as far as we could see, with the furthest end disappearing into the fog. Everywhere we looked, the doors all stood properly shut, with not a light showing anywhere. Sylvia could have been hiding behind any of the darkened windows, watching and waiting, and we would never have known.
‘It’s going to take far too long to search each cottage individually,’ I said. ‘And it’ll give Sylvia far too many chances to launch an ambush. I say … we don’t go inside at all. Just light them up. You set fire at the far end, I’ll take this one; we’ll let the fires spread from cottage to cottage till they meet in the middle.’
‘And then?’ said Jeeves.
‘And then we wait for the fires to drive Sylvia out, knock her down, stake her … and then cut her head off, just to be sure.’
‘You really think it’s going to be that easy?’ said Jeeves.
‘Well, no,’ I said. ‘I was just trying to sound positive.’
‘You haven’t even got a wooden stake!’
‘I will acquire one, before the need arises,’ I said.
‘You really don’t inspire confidence, you know that?’ said Jeeves. He looked down the long row of cottages. ‘You think it’s a good idea for us to split up and go off on our own?’
‘I don’t see that we have a choice,’ I said. ‘If we both start at the same end, she could just make a run for it. So … stay in sight as much as you can, and don’t let yourself get distracted. Set the fire, and get the hell back here. Call me if you even think you see anything.’
‘Same to you,’ said Jeeves.
We nodded briefly to each other. There wasn’t anything else to say. Jeeves went stomping off into the snow, while I looked over my end of the cottages. I did look after him once, but Jeeves had already disappeared into the grey walls of fog and falling snow.
It didn’t take me long to set fire to my end of the terrace. Kick in the first door, pile up the furniture, soak them with anything incendiary that came to hand, and then light it up. I stopped to sniff the air, now and again, but there was never any trace of blood or decay. Never a sound of anything moving, or even a feeling I wasn’t alone. That bothered me. Sylvia had to be here, somewhere. There was nowhere else she could be hiding. I used my own lighter to set the fires. I don’t smoke, never have, but a lighter is still a useful thing to have about you. Never know when a sudden inferno will come in useful.
My end cottage went up quickly, and the flames jumped swiftly on to the next. The whole terrace was really just one big fire trap. The first two cottages burned quickly, filling the cold night air with blasting heat and thick black smoke. But when I looked down to the far end of the cottages, there was no sign of Jeeves and no trace of any fire. Something had gone wrong.
I ran past the middle cottages, slamming through the snow, and the far houses slowly appeared out of the mists. No fire, no broken-in doors, not even a shattered window. And no sign of Jeeves, anywhere. I considered calling out to him, and then thought better of it. I sniffed hard at the air, but all I could smell was smoke.
I heard a sound and looked up. And there they were, Jeeves chasing Sylvia across the slanting snow-covered roofs. She still looked like a rotting corpse, dressed in filthy old clothes as she danced lightly along the cottages, laughing easily. Jeeves had to struggle to keep up with her. He had his gun in his hand, but he hadn’t fired it yet. I could hear his footsteps, slamming and sliding across treacherous snowy slates, but I couldn’t hear Sylvia’s. No wonder I couldn’t smell her, all the way up there. I could hear her laughing, hear Jeeves cursing breathlessly. He stopped where he was, took careful aim, and opened fire, but if his bullets did hit Sylvia, they didn’t even slow her down.
I don’t know how they got up there. Whether Sylvia lured Jeeves from one floor to another, then up through an attic opening up on to the roof … Something like that, no doubt. And then one last chase, with her beckoning him on, just for the fun of it.
Jeeves went after her again. I called up to him, yelling for him to stop and come down so we could take her the way we’d planned. But either he couldn’t hear me, or he didn’t want to, caught up in the heat of the chase. He slipped and slid on the treacherous snowy roofs, but somehow still drove himself on, with sheer strength and stubbornness. He almost fell several times, but somehow saved himself at the last moment. Sylvia seemed to float along, supernaturally sure-footed, never losing her balance for a moment. And then she stopped abruptly and spun around, to face Jeeves. He couldn’t stop so quickly, stumbling forward, and while he was distracted she launched herself at him. She flashed forward across the snowy roof, so fast she was just a blur, crossing the intervening distance in just a few seconds.
And there was nothing I could do to help him.
She slammed into Jeeves, driving him back several steps. She grabbed his shoulders with both hands, and Jeeves cried out at the horrid strength in her undead grasp. I heard his shoulder-bones break, one after the other. Jeeves struggled anyway, fighting back with everything he had, but he couldn’t break free. He tried to bring up his gun, but there was no strength left in his arms.