He replaced the lid and turned back. "Were the padlocks on the windows open, then, when you found
Danny's body?"
Ernchester glanced quickly at the barred shutters of the windows, then back at the empty coffin. For a moment he seemed to be trying to figure out how much he should tell a human; then, with a tired gesture, he gave it up. "Yes. The key was on the sill."
Asher walked over to the window, stretched his long arm up to touch the tips of his fingers to the lock. He looked back at the vampire. "But the bars were undisturbed?"
"Yes. Had someone-a tramp, or a vagabond-entered this cellar and been looking about, it would be natural for him to open the shutters to obtain light, you see."
"Was there any sign of a tramp elsewhere in the building? Cupboards open, drawers ajar? Or in the rest of the house? Any sign that the place had been searched?"
"No," Ernchester admitted. "That is-I don't think so. I really don't know. Anthea would." Another man-a living man-might have sighed and shaken his head, but, as with Anthea and Ysidro, such gestures seemed to have been drained from him by the passing weari-ness of centuries. There was only a slight relaxing of that straight, stocky body, a loosening of the tired lines of the face. "Anthea-does such things these days. I know it's the portion of the man to manage affairs, but... it seems as if all the world is changing. I used to keep up better than I do now. I dare say it's only the effect of the factory soot in the air or the noise in the streets... it usen't to be like this, you know. I sometimes think the living suffer from it as much as we. Folk are different now from what they were."
Keyed and alert for the silent approach of some new peril, Asher saw the girl Chloe enter the cellar again, his own jacket and greatcoat and Ernchester's seedy velvet coat over her arm. She was dressed, he saw now, in an expensive and beautiful gown of dark green velvet, beaded thickly with jet; her soft white hands and pale face seemed like flowers against the opulent fabric. Here was one, he thought, who would have no trouble winning kisses from strangers in alleyways. As he took the coat from her arm he said, "Thank you," and the brown eyes flicked up to his, startled at being thanked. "Did you hunt with Lotta Harshaw?"
She smiled again, but this time the mockery did not quite hide the frightened flinch of her lips. "Still the nosy-parker, then? You saw what it'll buy you." She reached up to touch his throat, then drew back as the silver of his neck chain caught the lamplight. "You know what they said curiosity did to the cat."
"Then it's a good thing cats have nine lives," he replied quietly. "Did you hunt with Lotta?" She shrugged, an elaborately coquettish gesture with her bare white shoulders, and looked away.
"I know you went for dress fittings with her. Probably other shop-ping as well. I imagine the pair of you looked very fetching together. Personally I find it a bore to have dinner alone-do you?"
The conversational tone of his voice brought her eyes back to his, flirtatious and amused. "Sometimes. But y'see, we don't ever have din-ner quite alone." She smiled, showing the glint of teeth against a lip like ruby silk.
"Did you like Lotta?"
The long lashes veiled her brown eyes once more. "She showed me the ropes, like," she said, after a long moment, and he remembered Bully Joe Davies' frantic cry: I dunno how the others do it... To achieve the vampire state, the vampire powers, was evidently far from enough. "And we-birds, I
mean- hunt differently from gents. And that..." She stopped her next words on her lips and threw a quick, wary glance at Ernchester, silent beside the lamp. After a long pause for rewording, she continued, "Lotta and me, we got along. There's some things a lady needs from another lady, see."
And that... That what? How would this beautiful, over-dressed porcelain doll of a girl see the quiet antique lady Anthea? As a stiff-necked and uncongenial bitch, Asher thought, beyond a doubt. Mde. La Tour had known at a glance that Lotta and Chloe were two of a kind and that Anthea-for undoubtedly it was she who went by the name of Mrs. Wren-was far other than they.
"Did you know her rich young men?" he asked. "Albert Westmoreland? Tom Gobey? Paul Farrington?"
She smiled again, playing hard to get. "Oh, I met most of 'em," she said, toying with one of her thick blonde curls. "Lambs, they were-even Bertie Westmorland, so stiff and proper, like it killed him to admit he wanted her, but following her wherever she went with his eyes. We'd go to theatre panics together-Bertie's brother, me and Lotta, and some girls Bertie's friends might have along... It was all I could do sometimes not to drink one of 'em right there in the shadow of the back of the box. Like smelling sausages frying when you're hun-gry... It would have been so easy..."
"It's a trick you could only have done once," Asher remarked, and got a sullen glance from under those long lashes.
"That's what Lionel said. Not when others are around, no matter how bad I want it-not where anyone will know." She moved closer to him, her head no higher than the top button of his waistcoat; he could smell the patchouli of her perfume, and the faint reek of blood on her words as she spoke. "But no others are around now-and no one will know."
Her tongue slipped out, to touch the protruding tips of her teeth; her fingers slid around his hand, warm with the evening's earlier kill. He could see her eyes on his throat and on the heavy silver links of the chain. Though he dared not look away from her to check, he had no impression of Ernchester being in the room. Perhaps it was only that the vampire Earl would not have cared whether she killed him or not.
"Ysidro will know," he reminded her.
She dropped his hand and looked away. A shiver went through her, "Cold dago bugger."
"Are you afraid of him?"
"Aren't you?" Her glance slid back to his, brown eyes that should have been angelic, but had never been so, he thought, even in life. Her red mouth twisted. "You think he'll protect you from Lionel? That'll last just as long as he needs you. You'd better not be so quick about findin' the answers to your questions."
"And I have already told him he had best not be slow," the soft, drawling voice of Ysidro murmured. Turning, Asher saw the Spanish vampire at his elbow, as Grippen had appeared earlier that evening; his glance cut quickly back in tune to see Chloe start. She hadn't seen him either.
"So perhaps," Don Simon continued, "we had best stick simply to things as they are and not attempt to mold them to what we think they ought to be. You should not have come here, James."
"On the contrary," Asher said, "I've learned a great deal."
"That is what I meant. But as the horses are well and truly gone, permit me to open the barn door for
you. Calvaire's rooms are upstairs-or one set of Calvaire's rooms. I know of at least two others that he had. There may have been more."
"Hence all the secrecy," Asher said, as he preceded the vampire into the dark stair outside. "Any in Lambeth?"
"Lambeth? Not that I knew of," He was aware of those cold yellow eyes piercing his back.
They ascended the neck-breaking twist of steps to the stuffy back room again; though he listened closely, Asher could hear no footfall behind him from either Ysidro or Chloe and only the faintest of rustles from the girl's petticoats. He thought Ernchester must have left at the same time Ysidro had entered, for the Earl had been nowhere in the cellar as they departed. And, in fact, Charles and Anthea were both waiting for them in the parlor of a small flat which had been fitted up on the second floor, with its Tiffany-glass lamps all lighted, giving their strange, white faces the rosy illusion of humanity, save for their gleam-ing eyes.
"I trust you're not still sleeping in the building, Chloe?" Ysidro in-quired, as they entered and the girl set her lamp on the table.