by Jill Downie
Elodie got up, took Hugo’s plate back to the stove for another helping of lamb. His back was to her and, above his head, she threw a glance at Liz and grimaced. “Sorry, Hugo, if I’m being a bit slow here, but does this book have anything to do with vampires?” She brought the plate back to the table and placed it in front of him, then reached out for Liz’s plate.
“It’s okay, El. I’ll get my own, thanks. This is just delicious.”
Cutting into her remark, Hugo went on. “Not directly, but the man who first translated it from the Latin was indeed a vampirologist. His name was Montague Summers. A much misunderstood man, in my opinion. I became interested in him, and thus interested in vampires.”
“Hence the subject matter of the play.”
“Oh yes! The perfect topic to bring in a younger audience, and to recruit new talent to the group. A dramatic theme.” Hugo wiped a piece of bread around the last juices on his plate.
“A melodramatic theme.”
Standing behind him, Liz could not see the expression on Hugo Shawcross’s face at her observation, but she saw Elodie’s eyes widen. She picked up her plate and walked back to her seat. As she passed him, he grasped her arm, nearly knocking the plate out of her hands.
“Wrong, little lady, wrong. Serious theatre. I will not allow it to be played any other way.”
Looking down into his eyes, Liz saw malevolence — or was she now being melodramatic? She pulled her arm away.
“Sorry I spoke.” She resumed her seat and her meal as if nothing much had happened.
“But there is the chance nothing will come of this, because of Mrs. Maxwell’s opposition.” Elodie poured herself the last of the wine from the bottle on the table. She could hear the wind getting up and starting a gentle moaning in the chimney, the defruited elderberry tap-tapping against the kitchen door. They were usually familiar, soothing sounds, but the conversation around the kitchen table gave them a disturbing quality.
“Exactly. I think I played my cards wrong there. Any advice as to how I can appease the lady?”
“Yes.” Elodie got up and started clearing the dishes. “Write a part for her she cannot bear to refuse. There are always more women than men in community theatre, and more competition for roles. Is there a good role for her in the play?”
She laughed, and removed the empty wine bottle from the table. Hugo had demolished most of it, also the first, and was now at the stage where his tongue was having difficulties shaping itself around his words. He was looking thoughtful.
“Not yet, but I haven’t started Act Two. “ His face lit up. “But I have the perfect role for her daughter!”
Liz, who was beginning to wonder when she could take her departure, but also whether she should leave her aunt with this weirdo who clearly wanted nothing more than to be left on his own with her, started to pay attention.
“Marla Maxwell?” Elodie asked. “Stunning girl, and quite a handful, from what I hear. Marie Maxwell might be very happy to have her occupied where she can keep an eye on her. Coffee?”
Liz settled back in her chair.
“Wonderful!” Hugo Shawcross slumped back in his seat, rocking his chair perilously as he stretched his arms over his head. “Mama can be good, and the daughter can be ba-a-ad!” It came out as a bleating noise, sheeplike rather than sexy, which from the glance he gave Elodie was what was intended.
“And what is this perfect role?” Elodie began loading the dishwasher as the coffee brewed. Her guest swivelled his chair around to face her.
“Lilith,” he said, with some difficulty. “Lilith, the greatest demoness of them all. Lilith!”
“Ah, Lilith.” Liz’s clear, resonant singer’s voice floated over the heads of Elodie and Hugo Shawcross. “Just about the oldest-known demon in folklore.”
Always nice to turn heads, thought Liz, and both Elodie and Hugo were now staring at her in surprise. She had her audience, so the little lady decided to hold forth.
“Of course, that is how men want to see her, as the betrayer of Adam left on his ownsome in the Garden of Eden, the baby-blood-sucking killer, seducer of men with her voracious sexual appetite, draining them dry. I think she got fed up with Adam pushing her around and got out from under. If you’ll pardon the expression. I think she’s great. In the gym change room I just chatted with Marla, fresh from the shower and in the altogether, and she’ll fit the bill perfectly.”
Liz smiled serenely and waited for a response. It came.
“Feminist claptrap.” Hugo Shawcross got up from his chair with some difficulty. His voice was shaking, with anger or red wine, or both. “In Sumerian mythology —”
“I thought that was now disputed.” Liz got up and went across to where Elodie was standing, holding the cafetière in stunned silence. She poured herself a cup of coffee, handed the pot back to Elodie and returned to her seat. “And after you’ve had great sex with an archangel, I doubt you’d want to go back to a mere mortal. I wouldn’t.”
“Coffee, Hugo?” The banality of Elodie’s query landed on deaf ears. Hugo was weaving his way to the back door, stopping en route to pick up his play-script.
Liz got up and followed him. Given Mrs. Maxwell’s enquiry and her recent conversation with Marla, it might be as well to make her peace with Hugo Shawcross. “I think a play about vampires will be a huge hit for the Island Players. Sorry I went on like that, but in my job you tend to question things all the time.”
“You are an academic?” Hugo looked as if, suddenly, this explained everything.
“No, far from it.” Liz laughed. “I’m a detective sergeant — I’m in the police force.”
At her words, Hugo Shawcross seemed to sober up instantly. “The police force,” he repeated. He mumbled a few words of thanks at Elodie, who rushed to open the door for him as he fumbled with the latch. On the threshold, he turned and said, “Not all about sex, vampirism, not all about sex.” He pointed a quivering finger past her in Liz’s direction. “In the end, in the beginning, it’s always about the blood.”
Behind him, an owl hooted with melodramatic timing.
“Was it something I said?” Liz was laughing.
“Where in the name of — Lucifer? — did all that come from?” Elodie sat down on the sofa in her little sitting-room, and surveyed her niece.
Liz held out the bottle of cognac Elodie had been planning to offer with the coffee. “Gandalf drank most of the wine, so I think I can risk a little of this in my coffee. Can I pour you some, El?”
“Please. No coffee for me. Are you taking some sort of university correspondence course in demonology?”
“God, no! I’m as ignorant as I ever was. Have you heard of Lilith Fair?”
“Can’t say as I have. Enlighten me.”
Liz poured them both cognac, came and sat down opposite Elodie. “It happened in the nineties, an all-female concert series, started by a singer I like — a Canadian called Sarah McLachlan. There’s a song of hers I came across when I was getting over — someone — so I looked it up, and got interested. But it was really about the music, nothing else. Shawcross said ‘it’s always about the blood,’ didn’t he. Outside of my job, for me it’s always about the music.”
“Apart from your — what did he call it? — your feminist claptrap, he seemed just as disturbed by that job of yours,” said Elodie.
“Didn’t he, though? Did he say anything before I came that might be useful?”
“It’s more what he didn’t say. He told me about his claim to be a vampire, but he didn’t mention his threat. Other than that, there was just the fact that he quizzed Marie Maxwell about the Gastineau family history and she clammed up. Or so he said.”
“Could just be he’s nosy, and Mrs. Maxwell pushed him away. Wasn’t there an old saying? The Brocks speak to the De Saumarez, the De Saumarez speak to the Careys, the Careys speak to the Gastineaus, but the Gastineaus speak only to God? That certainly doesn’t include the undead.”
“Speaking of the Gastineaus and G
od,” said Elodie, “I did just that earlier this evening.”
“You spoke to God?” Liz looked inquiringly at her godmother, whose religious scepticism was a source of some discomfort among certain family members.
“Almost. I spoke to a Gastineau, Marie actually, and put the cat among the theatrical pigeons. I’ll let you know what happens.”
“I’ll look forward to hearing about it, but I should make a move now.” Liz uncurled her legs from under her and started to get up.
“Stay and let that brandy go down a bit longer,” said Elodie. “Let’s talk of other things, anything else but vampires and demons. And blood. What was the song you liked? That had you researching Lilith?”
“It’s called ‘I will remember you.’” Liz grinned. “And you know what? I didn’t.”
After Liz had gone, Elodie went to her office and switched on her computer. “I don’t remember,” she said out loud at the screen. “I don’t remember.” She typed in “Lilith,” and sat there into the small hours. When she finally went to bed, it was the reproduction of a painting that stayed in her head, of Lilith naked, tossing her long mane of hair, a snake wound around her legs, one of its massive coils hiding her pudenda.
Sex and blood. Sex and blood. The three words drummed over and over in her head until, finally, sleep came.
Chapter Three
The police station in St. Peter Port had at one time been the workhouse, “La Maison de Charité,” a fine eighteenth-century building on Hospital Lane. Hospital Lane was formerly the Rue des Frères, which had led to the ancient friary, now Elizabeth College, the private boys’ school on the island. Ed Moretti had been at school there, thanks to a scholarship. Certainly, his Italian father, who had survived slave-labour on the island during the occupation, and had come back to find and marry the girl who had saved him from starvation, could not have afforded the fees.
Class, he thought, as he got into his vintage Triumph roadster and looked back at his family home. Like the poor, it is always with us, whatever they may say. His own ancestral pile was a cottage, a two-storey building of island granite, that at one time had been the stable and coachman’s quarters for a long-gone grand home. It was now worth more than any workingman could possibly afford. A coral-coloured climbing rose framed the curved stone archway of the traditional Guernsey cottage, with a window on each side and three above. From time to time, Moretti cut the rose back, but the fuchsia, honeysuckle and ivy on the old walls on each side of the property he left alone.
He turned the Triumph around in the cobbled courtyard and exited between the stone pillars of what had once been a gateway, and was now just a gap in the old walls, and made his way down the Grange, the road that led into the town past the old Regency and Victorian homes that had been built on the wealth acquired from privateering and smuggling. Some were divided into flats, one or two were hotels, and some were now in the hands of the new privateers, brought to the island by the billions created by the offshore business.
As he turned into the quadrangle outside the police station, he saw his partner, Liz Falla, getting out of a pretty little Figaro from the driver’s side. Looked like Falla had transformed her Poirets and Delaunays and vintage feather boas into a pale aqua chariot. Not practical, perhaps, but who was he to criticize.
“Nice. Hope it doesn’t turn back into a Paris-designed pumpkin at midnight!” Moretti called out of his car window.
“Hasn’t so far. Hi, Guv. Hope all went well in London with the spooks.”
Moretti watched Detective Sergeant Liz Falla walking towards him in her neat, conservative, dark blue suit, a white shirt open at the neck, her short dark hair feathered around a face once described to him as “Audrey Hepburnish,” and smiled. He was remembering the first time he saw her, when he had wondered what on earth Chief Officer Hanley was playing at, partnering him with this inexperienced young woman with her easy, outgoing manner, so unlike his own approach to his profession. And to life in general, come to that.
“As well as could be expected — but I’m not allowed to tell you anything, of course.”
“Of course.”
Her grin showed the tiny gap between her two front teeth that made her look to his eyes even younger than she was. But, as she had shown on their two earlier cases, her intelligence and her perception outstripped her years and, whatever Hanley had been playing at, the partnership had worked out. He could only hope being saddled with Aloisio Brown was as smart a move by Hanley, because there were others who could have taken on the role quite as well.
As if she had read his mind, Falla said, “I hear you’re babysitting some APSG brainiac. Right, Guv?” He could hear the laughter in her voice above the sound of her heels click-clacking on the stones.
“Watch it, Falla. I was one of those, once. You haven’t met him yet?”
“He’s arriving this morning. I hope that gives me time to fill you in on a couple of things.”
“The death of the hermit? I saw the report in the paper this morning. Suicide, wasn’t it?”
“That’s what it looks like. Dr. Edwards says she’ll get a report to us today.”
“She?”
Moretti stood back and let Falla go through the doors first, and she grinned at him, as she always did at his gesture. “Would you rather I didn’t?” he had once asked her, defensively, and her reply, “No. I quite like it, but don’t tell anyone,” had amused him, defusing the moment and turning it into a shared joke.
“Yes. Irene Edwards, just joined the staff at Princess Elizabeth Hospital. She was on duty when the call came in. Seemed to know what she was doing. I liked her.”
“Good. A couple of things, you said? A rash of burglaries? An outbreak of graffiti? Someone important with ruffled feathers?”
Liz waited until they had signed in at the desk, and Moretti had exchanged a few words with the desk sergeant about his new Centaur. As they moved away she said, “Got it in three, Guv. Ruffled feathers.”
Moretti groaned. “What now? Some constable not tugging his forelock when asking one of the messux or the moneymen to move an illegally parked car? What?”
They were now in Moretti’s office. Liz Falla waited until he sat down and started to check his messages, the familiar pattern when they were not in the middle of an investigation and had anything immediate to discuss. She would have no problem guessing when he got to Chief Officer Hanley’s message, so she pulled out a chair on the other side of the desk and watched his face.
Her Guvnor was looking rested, with a light tan, his usually sombre features more relaxed. The dark hair inherited from his Italian father was touched with grey, and there were lines around his eyes that showed even when he was not laughing. No longer laugh-lines, she thought, but he wasn’t much given to idle banter, which was probably why she hadn’t noticed them before. Gorgeous, Elodie had called him. Not her type, which was just as well. Too much going on beneath the surface. At one point he looked across the table at her and nodded.
“Dr. Edwards. Competent, like you said.”
Then his expression changed. A series of emotions flitted across his face in rapid succession, moving from disbelief to laughter. Moretti switched off the machine and looked across the desk at Liz.
“Has Hanley developed a misplaced sense of humour, or has he lost his marbles?”
Liz replied, taking her voice down an octave. “This is serious stuff, Guv. We have been asked to investigate a report of a threat from a vampire, from the mouth of the undead himself.”
“Who is this vampire? Does he exist? Or can you even say that about vampires?”
“Oh, he exists. I met him last night, as a matter of fact. I’ll get us both a coffee and fill you in, shall I?”
“Let’s start with the vampire and get him out of the way. You met him last night, Falla?”
“Hugo Shawcross. Bit of a coincidence here — I know you’re not fond of coincidences — but he’s rented a place near my godmother, and I dropped over to see if she’d met hi
m, knew anything about him.”
Swiftly, succinctly, Liz filled Moretti in on the details she considered relevant to Marie Gastineau’s complaint: the play, the Island Players, the threat. Moretti listened without interrupting her, but his expression made his feelings quite clear.
“… and I feel myself, Guv, it’s all a storm in a theatrical teacup. Volatile lot, these theatre people.”
“Worse than musicians? Okay, don’t answer that. I’ll tell Hanley that we’ve looked into it, and — well, what you just said.” Moretti finished his coffee with his usual grimace. “Terrible as ever, and yet I go on drinking it. Anything else before we move on to the hermit?”
“Only this.” Falla told him about her conversation with Marla Gastineau in the Beau Sejour change room.
“So the girl is getting poison-pen letters — or the twenty-first century equivalent? You tell me she’s a looker? Par for the course, surely. Lot of that going on in the social media, right?”
“Right.”
“Tell me about the hermit.”
“What did Dr. Edwards say?”
“You first. Not the gist, like your account about Hugo the undead. Everything, Falla. Everything.”
“Poor old bugger! Just as I was bringing him one of his magazines, one of his favourites. Archaeology Today. I was expecting our usual little joke about the title. ‘Boring,’ I’d say and he’d say, ‘Not a seller. I’m their only subscriber.’ Which, of course, he wasn’t. Then we’d laugh. Poor old bugger!”
“You’re Gordon Martel, aren’t you?”
“Gord, yes. I know your dad.”
Liz Falla and the shaken postman stood outside the hermit’s house, watching the SOC people going about their business, shrouded in their white overalls. Jimmy Le Poidevin, head of SOCO, shouted out from inside the police tapes in her direction.