There were plenty of Ruthven web pages, many of them devoted to the occult and vampires.
There was also historical information on the murder of David Rizzio, secretary to and possible lover of Mary Queen of Scots, in which, apparently, the Ruthvens had played a starring role.
According to one account the mortally ill Lord Patrick Ruthven had held a sword to the pregnant belly of the young queen while her “Seigneur Davie” was stabbed before her eyes by her husband and his noble coconspirators.
“Lovely people,” murmured Grace.
However, there was not a single reference to a producer or director by the name of Ruthven. Not one. If Bob was experiencing a career slump it was a drastic one.
Since Ruthven did not have a theatrical pedigree, did that mean Derek had lied about working with him? But it was such a stupid lie, why bother?
Even more puzzling, why bother to stage a play if you were not a theatrical producer or director?
Perhaps it was something silly and sad like Bob Ruthven wanted to be a director and had faked his background in order to…stage an obscure provincial production that no one of consequence would ever see?
But that would require Catriona’s cooperation, and Catriona did not seem like a woman with patience for foolish dreams.
In fact, Grace was willing to bet that Catriona was the one behind it all. Behind everything, from Grace’s involvement in The Vampyre to Theresa’s murder. But how? Why?
“What are you looking for?”
Grace started out of her reverie. Roy Blade, hair pulled back in a highwayman’s ponytail, good eye agleam with curiosity, stood over her.
Her fingers twitched toward the close button, but she stopped herself.
“I was trying to settle a bet with myself.”
“Yeah? What’s the bet?”
“I was betting that Lady Vee brought me into The Vampyre production.”
Blade laughed. “You lose. Now you want to tell me what you’re surfing the Net for?”
“Who did bring me in?”
“I did. Remember?”
She did sort of, now that he mentioned it. Maybe her paranoia was beginning to run away with her. “But why? Was it all your own idea?”
“I do have ideas of my own once in a while.” He was enjoying making her work for it. “I thought it would be a laugh watching you and Lady Be Damned square off.”
His revelation did not fit at all with the theory that was nebulously taking shape in Grace’s mind. Seeing her disappointment, Blade laughed, and said, “And Catriona kept asking about you, kept hinting that she thought you’d be an asset.”
“She can’t stand me.”
“I thought that was interesting myself,” Blade agreed.
Her phone was ringing as Grace let herself into the cottage. She picked the receiver up, but before she could speak a voice so low she could barely make out the words whispered, “Can you meet me at the theater in ten minutes?”
“Very funny, Chaz.”
“It’s Bob.” Lord Ruthven spoke more loudly, though not much. “I must see you. I haven’t much time. They’re watching me.”
“I see we were raised on the same movies,” Grace returned. “Bob, you must realize that nothing on earth would convince me to go to a secret assignation in a deserted theater, especially when I know you’ve been lying about your…well, pretty much everything!”
“It’s broad daylight,” Lord Ruthven protested. “What do you imagine could happen to you? As for the rest, well…that’s what I want to explain.”
Funny that the heroines of movies and novels never had to debate the wisdom of secluded meetings with the strangers who summoned them by phone. It made it all seem less sinister and more annoying.
“I’m not coming alone. I’ll call—”
“We don’t have that kind of time! Look, you’ve got questions, I’ve got answers.” Lord Ruthven concluded, “Park in the back and come through the side door.”
“You have got to be ki—”
The receiver clicked, and the line went dead before she could respond.
The wind was blowing a misty silvery rain when Grace parked behind the Innisdale Playhouse. The lot was deserted. A lone cat, scrounging in the trash bin, cast her a baleful look and went back to foraging.
Grace got out and went round to the side of the building, pushing open the heavy door and slipping inside.
Rows of empty chairs sat at attention in the gloom. The stage was lit but empty.
“Hello?” Grace called. “Lord Ruthven? Bob?”
The theater creaked in the wind like a sinking ship.
This is not only dumb, it’s clichéd, Grace told herself disgustedly. She knew full well what she would say to one of her girls who walked into this kind of setup. She considered backing out—literally.
“Is anyone—?” She broke off, hand tightening on the push bar as she heard…what? A groan? A muffled sound of human origin.
The curtains rippled at the far end of the stage, and a hand reached out to grab the folds of material. Lord Ruthven stood swaying, one hand on the wall jamb, one clutching the curtain.
Grace left her place of safety, starting down the aisle to go to his aid. As she drew near the stage she began to notice details, like the bright red blood on Ruthven’s hands. Her eyes focused on the thing that seemed out of place, the thing protruding from Lord Ruthven’s chest.
She froze, hands going to stop the scream welling up. Lord Ruthven’s eyes, ghastly in his cavernous face, focused on her. His mouth worked, then languidly, almost in slow motion, he crumpled to the stage floor.
The instinct to aid another human warred with the need for self-preservation. She had been lured to this theater, there were no cars outside, Lord Ruthven had been wounded and that wound was not self-inflicted.
There was a stake through his heart.
Well, no. Not through his heart, horrified common sense asserted. He couldn’t be walking, he couldn’t be alive…But he definitely had something protruding out of him where nothing should protrude…
With a terrible reluctance she approached the stage, watching all around herself for any movement in the shadows. But as she started up the steps, Lord Ruthven’s eyes opened.
“Run,” he whispered.
Grace backed down the steps and ran, banging out the side door. She heard it slam shut with great finality behind her.
She ran all the way to her car. Driving down to the pub, she asked them to call the police, then drove straight back to the theater.
She debated with herself whether to go back in or not, but caution prevailed. Bright rain billowed, the gusts of wind shook her car while she waited.
The police arrived within five minutes, pulling up in a marked car, lights flashing. Two uniformed constables, a man and a woman, got out and approached Grace.
“Inside,” she said, and led the way across the empty lot.
The outside theater door was locked.
“It wasn’t locked,” Grace protested, looking from one constable to the other. She rummaged in her purse and found the keys. The door unlocked, they crowded inside. The theater was dark and silent.
The constables were also silent. Ominously silent. Grace felt around for the light switch. Rows and rows of faded chairs sat empty. Grace found another switch and the stage was illuminated.
And empty.
One of the constables sighed. She was a middle-aged woman, Asian, with a slightly pinched look around her mouth as though her feet hurt.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Grace said, “but this is not a prank. Do I look like the kind of person who plays pranks on the police?”
The other constable, this one chubby and bewhiskered like Bob Cratchit in a Christmas pantomime, eyed her gravely. “Perhaps someone is playing a prank on you, miss.”
It wasn’t inconceivable with all the weird things that had been happening, but Grace remembered the appalling look in Ruthven’s eyes. She shook her head.
�
�At least look around,” she pleaded. “Maybe he crawled backstage.” And turned off the lights and locked the doors? The officers didn’t point this out, but she knew if this had occurred to her it had certainly occurred to them.
“His murderer could still—”
She broke off at their skeptical expressions.
They trooped up to the stage and looked behind the props. They looked inside the wooden coffin. The woman PC knelt to examine the scratched stage boards. She shook her head.
“I’ll check backstage,” Bob Cratchit said. “There must be dressing rooms.” He pawed his way through the first row of curtains.
Grace grabbed the edge of curtain drifting in his wake. “Look!”
The dried imprint of blood on the silken material could be seen in the tired overhead light.
“There have been threats. Vague threats, but…threats. Perhaps someone believed that Lord Ruthven really is—was—is a vampire, and attacked him.” Grace rubbed her aching temples.
The constables exchanged looks. They had been doing a lot of that for the past few minutes, ever since they determined that there was no one else in the building. They were inclined to believe the bloody handprint was fake. They were inclined to believe the whole incident was a prank. Grace had been trying to convince them, but the more she theorized, the less convinced they seemed. Clearly the crime scene team was not going to be summoned anytime soon.
“Were there any cars in the lot when you arrived, ma’am?” The Bob Cratchit constable pronounced it like “Mom,” which was disconcerting, since Grace was only a bit older than he. “Any indication that someone was present besides the—er—victim.”
They kept saying that: “The—er—victim.”
“I think there was a car out front on the street,” Grace said slowly. She remembered starting for the pub and the glimpse of a parked car in her rearview mirror. Black, medium-sized…nothing distinct.
“Did you recognize the car?”
“Not really. It wasn’t that kind of car, and I barely registered it.”
“You didn’t see any part of the registration plate?”
Grace shook her head regretfully.
They asked a few more questions, routine questions, then they departed, ostensibly to call upon the Ruthvens, but Grace feared more like to break for dinner.
“You will let me know what happens?” she called after their departing backs.
“You’ll be hearing from us, ma’am,” the female PC said, without turning back.
The lights shone cheerily in the upstairs level of Craddock House. The tang of a wood fire seasoned the dank evening air. Staring up at the windows Grace had never felt more alone, more out in the cold. She rang the bell.
She sensed rather than saw draperies move in the windows above.
It was only a minute or two before Peter let her in, his expression wary. “You’re very formal this evening.”
She wasted no time on preliminaries. “Did you know she was going to kill him?”
“This is obviously a trick question.”
Grace cried, “How can you joke about this? She murdered him. She probably murdered Theresa. How can you be okay with this?”
“Would it help if I tell you I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about?” He was very still, his voice quiet in contrast to hers. His eyes held hers levelly.
“Bob—Lord Ruthven called me this afternoon and asked me to meet him at the theater. He said he had something to tell me.”
“And you went?” Peter stared at her in disbelief. “That’s the oldest trick in the world.” The Chinese opera masks formed a mute and scowling chorus on the wall behind him, pale faces frozen in expressions of terrifying disapproval.
“I thought he was going to say we had to cancel the play. I thought…I don’t know what I thought. Anyway, it wasn’t a trick. He did have something to tell me, but he never got the chance because your girlfriend murdered him.”
“Ruthven is dead? Have the police made an arrest?”
“The police don’t believe me because when they got there she had taken his body.”
“Huh?” It was a very un-Peter-like utterance. His black brows drew together.
“He was dying when I found him. He had a stake through his—”
Peter put a hand to his forehead. “Wait,” he said. “Is this some macabre joke? I know you’re angry—”
“No.”
He stared narrowly as though she had suddenly transformed into some dangerous and unpredictable animal.
“If it’s not a joke on you, it’s a joke on me,” he said at last.
“It’s no joke. He was dying. He had a—he had been stabbed. Sort of. I went to get help, and when the police arrived, he was gone.”
“Grace.” He put his arms around her. She told herself she should resist, but the familiar feel of his strong arms, the warmth of his body against her own was a comfort she could not deny herself. “Don’t you see? That performance was staged for your benefit. When you brought the coppers, Ruthven rang down the curtain.”
Curtains, she thought dully. Curtains for Lord Ruthven, certainly.
“It was more theatrics for your benefit. Fake blood, stage makeup. I’m guessing you didn’t get close enough to examine his wound.”
“He wasn’t faking.” She could hear his heart pounding, her head pressed against his chest. A steady, untroubled beat.
“You didn’t touch him.”
She lifted her head, trying to read his expression. “He couldn’t have faked the look in his eyes.”
His lean cheek creased in sardonic humor. “It’s called acting, darling. People make a living at faking that very kind of thing, Lord Ruthven being one of them. They can create believable monsters from outer space, let alone fake some blood. Ruthven’s an actor.”
She pulled back from him. “A director. It’s not the same thing. Besides, why would he fake his death?”
“Who the hell knows? Why would he call you in the first place?”
“Because he must have known something about Theresa’s murder.”
“That’s a stretch. Why didn’t he go to the police? Why drag you into it? You’re not involved.”
“Maybe I am.”
“No, you’re not.” He had not turned on the downstairs lamp so it was increasingly difficult to read his expression in the dying light, but he spoke with a certain finality.
“Okay, then say Ruthven did lure me there solely to scare the wits out of me. Why? What possible good could scaring me do anyone?”
He didn’t have an answer, and they both knew it.
14
Chief Constable Heron waited for Grace as she made her way through the soggy garden to her cottage, his black umbrella standing out like some ominous bloom amidst the wet shrubs.
“A few words, Grace.”
She could not read his expression in the dying light, but she was still “Grace” and not “Miss Hollister,” so at least she wasn’t in complete disgrace.
She let him into the cottage and felt for the light switch. The rain peppered against the windows. Tea, she thought. Tea was just the thing she needed. But she said dispiritedly, because she was depressed that Peter had not made any move to keep her—and because she would not have trusted herself to stay even if he had, “I suppose you’re going to tell me my imagination is working overtime, too?”
“No.” Heron was busy with his umbrella, but something in the way he spoke that single word alerted her.
“Why? Has something happened?” She paused, midway to the kitchen. “Have you found Lord Ruthven?”
“No.”
Again, something in the single syllable prompted Grace to press. “But something has happened? What did Lady Ruthven say?”
“Lady Ruthven was not available for comment,” the chief constable stated. He added grimly, “They’ve gone.”
“Gone?”
“Packed up and left. The house is closed.” Heron’s weathered face was chagrined.
“Did they leave a forwarding address?”
His black eyes seemed to snap with some lively emotion she couldn’t read. “Apparently the plan is to stay with friends in Romania.”
“Romania?”
Heron’s tone was sour. “To be precise, Transylvania.”
The window scraped open. Grace pulled herself up, balanced on the sill, and dropped down into the dark room.
Tensely she waited for some noise, for lights to go on, for some sign that her first try at B & E was going to end in Chief Constable Heron’s office.
But nothing happened.
She stood in the silence and shadows, surrounded only by a ghostly assemblage of furniture in dust sheets.
Grace switched on her flashlight.
She wasn’t sure what she hoped to find—other than reassurance that the Ruthvens really were gone.
And gone they did appear to be, departing with a blitzkrieg speed and efficiency. Grace walked through room after room, footsteps echoing down the corridors.
She knew a bit about the history of the Monkton estate, tales of tragedy and betrayal during the final days of World War II. The house was still owned by the Monkton family, though it had been more than a generation since any had lived there. In fact, the house had not been leased for years, not until the Ruthvens had briefly taken it.
As she entered a long room of bay windows, drapes drawn against any ray of sun, Grace’s flashlight beam picked up two eyes and she sucked in her breath. The next moment she expelled it. The eyes were painted. She knew the painting, recognized it from both Gothic and Haunted Summer. Was this a stage prop or the original of Romantic painter Henry Fuseli’s The Nightmare?
A floorboard creaked as she approached the fireplace and the painting hanging above it. An incubus squatted on a sleeping woman’s stomach. The incubus seemed to be staring straight at Grace.
She was reminded of a line by Victor Hugo, The malicious have a dark happiness. It seemed strangely apt in this house that had sheltered Catriona and her companion.
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