"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 Num-ber Six, indistinguishable from the other houses of the terrace, its glow-ing windows casting soft spangles of light on the trees of the narrow square across the street, "Now that we've spoken, I have every inten-tion 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
an- swer.
"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 conversa-tion 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."
Five
"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 pro-duced a notebook in which he made a brief entry. The blue eyes fol-lowed 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 pur-chased 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 Mademoi-selle 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 Iam 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 seam-stresses and beaders during the off season when fashionable society de-serted the West End for Brighton or the country-by August, Minette would probably have agreed to do fittings at midnight just to stay work-ing.
"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 drunk-ard 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 petti-coat. 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."