Verse of the Vampyre

by Diana Killian

  Grace felt sick, which was probably nothing to the way Derek must have felt. He swayed, crumpled, and rolled down the stairs to the bottom. Peter dropped his sword and bounded up the staircase, panting and white-faced.

  “Go!”

  A shot rang out behind them, and the wall splintered.

  Catriona, her hair Medusa-like, appeared in the hall below. She shrieked like a Banshee in Gaelic.

  Racing up another flight, they fled down an unlit hall. At the end of the hall was a door. Peter tried it. It was locked. Apparently there was no time to waste on picking locks; he delivered a swift hard kick to the door. It gave with a splintering crash. Too much of a crash. Grace looked down and in the paling darkness she saw that there was no floor behind the threshold.

  There was…nothing. The ceiling of the great hall was beneath them—a story or so down.

  She looked up. A large portion of the roof was gone, too. An icy moon shone hazily through the skeleton of broken beams and sky.

  “We’re trapped!”

  “No.” He pointed across the nonexistent floor to a trefoil recess. “See that? Make for it.”

  “You’ve got to be joking! Am I supposed to fly?” From down the hall she could hear slow, deliberate footsteps.

  “The ledge goes all the way around.” Peter’s voice was calm, but she could feel his urgency.

  “It’s only about a foot wide!”

  “It’s wide enough. For God’s sake, go.”

  She went—even more afraid of Catriona than of falling to her death.

  Glued to the rough stone, Grace inched her way along the edge toward the alcove. She tried to reassure herself that if the structure had lasted this long, it would probably hold up for one more night.

  “That’s it,” Peter encouraged. “That’s the girl, Esmerelda.”

  Ah, yes. The old Esmerelda routine. Wasn’t Esmerelda the girl Quasimodo carried off to the bell tower of Notre Dame Cathedral? Or was that Esmeralda with an “A”? Grace tried to focus her thoughts on anything but the fact that she was about a hundred feet up in the air on a ledge about the width of a balance beam.

  “Don’t look down,” Peter warned.

  But it was impossible not to look down.

  She had an amazing view of the entire island. The sparkling black water stretched out for miles. She could see the roof of Lady Menteith’s Tower powdered white with frost several feet below them; and to the south, the harbor, which seemed to be lit up. The rumble of a motorboat engine drifted on the breeze cooling her sweating face.

  The Donnies were preparing for escape in the launch.

  A rusted nail snagged in her sweater and for a second she was off-balance. She caught herself, pressing back against the grainy wall, her heart tripping and skipping.

  “Steady,” Peter said.

  Great, she thought dizzily. If I don’t die in the fall, I’ll probably get tetanus.

  Soaked in perspiration and trembling, Grace made the last few sliding steps, and crawled into the recess.

  Her fingers brushed something cool and metallic. She heard the silvery whisper of metal on rock. The Peeler!

  Peter’s decision made more sense, but they were still trapped up in the rooftop.

  Catriona appeared in the empty doorway.

  She said conversationally, “I wondered if you’d forgotten this place.”

  “I like what you’ve done with it,” Peter remarked, equally offhand. He was midway across the ledge. There was only room for one in the trefoil recess, and apparently he thought it better to keep Catriona focused on him.

  “So glad you approve,” Catriona replied, “since you’ll be spending eternity here.”

  Grace screamed as Catrina fired.

  She waited for Peter to sway and fall.

  Peter jerked as a chip of stone grazed his cheek, but his footing never wavered. Catriona had missed. But there was nowhere for him to go. He was like a pop-up in a shooting gallery.

  There must be something I can do, Grace thought desperately. I can’t just sit here and let this happen. But what could she do? She had no weapon. There was no room to move on the ledge, and beneath her was a dizzying view of the tower and, beyond, the loch.

  Catriona took aim again.

  “I am thinking it would be wise, mo leannan, to be looking to the immediate future,” Peter said, imitating the Gaelic phrasing.

  Catriona didn’t lower the gun, but she looked around, as did Grace.

  There were too many lights in the cove, Grace realized. Too many people moving around the docks for it to be simply the Donnies.

  “It’s the coppers,” Peter said evenly.

  Catriona stared across at him for a long moment.

  Grace was afraid to breathe. Then, as lightly as a cat, Catriona dropped the gun and ran out along the opposite ledge. She stared for a long moment down at the tower.

  It’s impossible, Grace thought. It must be nine feet across…

  Catriona circled back again, raced at the ledge and leapt.

  For a moment she seemed suspended in thin air, legs outstretched in a perfect grand jete like some supernatural element of the sky.

  “She won’t make it,” Grace whispered, leaning dangerously out of the alcove to see.

  “She will,” Peter said quietly.

  Catriona landed on the opposite roof and rolled.

  Sounds from below caught Grace’s attention. A mob of men with high-powered lights pounded at the entrance of the keep. The entrance bell rang, the chime rolling through the castle.

  Farther out in the harbor, the launch had been stopped. Men were boarding from another, larger boat. She could hear the dog barking from here.

  She looked back to the tower in time to see Catriona crossing the roof, running lightly, keeping low.

  “She’ll take the skiff,” Grace realized aloud.

  “Yes.”

  Peter had moved along the ledge to the recess. He rested on the edge, half-in and half-out of shadow. She wondered if his legs felt as weak as hers. Not likely. Staring at him, she stated, “You want her to get away?”

  His profile seemed carved of moonlight. “It’s simpler that way.”

  Simpler for whom?

  “She would have killed you,” Grace said.

  His mouth twisted.

  When she looked back, the tower roof was bare of anything but moonlight.

  “I knew Chaz would have to have the last word,” Grace remarked, smothering a yawn.

  The last rays of sunset filtered through the lace curtains and threw snowflake shapes against the walls. It was twilight—the gloaming—and they were back at her room in the inn after spending the remainder of the night and most of the day with the Edinburgh police, who had been tipped off about the activities at A’ Mheirlich Saobhaidh by Charles Honeyburn III during a last-minute phone call from Waverley Station.

  Peter, lost in study of the twin beds, glanced up. “What’s that?”

  “Chaz. Not that I’m not forever grateful, but calling the police was so…so…like him.”

  Peter’s cheek creased. “But not like you?”

  “Oh, well, maybe a little…once.” She swallowed the rest of it in another jaw-breaking yawn. “Perhaps you are a bad influence.”

  “Mmm.”

  There was a fine-drawn tautness to his skin and little lines of weariness around his eyes that she didn’t remember seeing before. She would have liked to reach out to him, to comfort him, although the idea that Peter would need or accept anyone’s comfort was probably ridiculous. She said prosaically, “Do you think the police will really let us leave tomorrow?”

  “If I’m correctly interpreting the official noises, it sounds that way. They’ve got their hands full—literally. That haul from the tower must be worth several million dollars.”

  “Do you think they’ll catch her?”

  She couldn’t read his expression.

  He said unemotionally, “They know who she is now. She’ll be on the run for the rest of
her life.”

  Grace just couldn’t get too broken up over it.

  She mused, “I wonder why they didn’t destroy the Peeler? Since it incriminated them—” She paused at the quick look her threw her from beneath his lashes. “What? What?”

  Reluctantly, he said, “You’ve got that part wrong. The bugle was their alibi. That’s why they were so desperate to get it back.”

  “That can’t be right.” Grace was frowning. To her surprise, Peter reached over and gently rubbed the frown line with the edge of his thumb. They were so close she could smell the smooth texture of his skin, the warmth of his breath.

  His mouth was a kiss away from hers. “It doesn’t matter,” he said quietly.

  Grace’s eyes opened. “Yes, it does!”

  He drew back. “Right then. Think back to that evening. How long was Theresa gone from the ballroom?”

  “I don’t remember. I wasn’t watching her. I assumed she was with Derek.”

  “Derek was with Ruthven, breaking into Sir Gerald’s study.”

  “You mean there wasn’t time to steal the Peeler and kill Theresa?”

  “It would be cutting it fine.”

  “What about Catriona?”

  “I was with Catriona.”

  Grace preferred not to pursue this line of investigation. She wondered if Peter had been tempted even for a moment to throw aside his law-abiding existence for the lure of the old life.

  “Even with the Peeler that will be pretty hard to prove. Ruthven’s dead and can’t corroborate. And from the way the police sounded I don’t think that Derek’s story about finding Theresa dead and puncturing her neck with his picklock is going to fly.”

  Peter’s mouth twisted ruefully. “It’s such a stupid story. It’s probably true.”

  “But why try to confuse the issue with fake vampire bites?”

  “I think he was inspired by the wild rumors following the security guard’s death. He must have imagined it was a way to divert suspicion from himself. His affair with her wasn’t much of a secret; he had to know the police would suspect him. And as half the village believed Ruthven was running around playing vampire…” He lifted a dismissing shoulder. “Or perhaps it was sheer malice. By then Derek and Cat suspected Ruthven was behind her ’accidents.’ ”

  “But Ruthven couldn’t have killed Theresa because he was stealing the Peeler?”

  “Apparently.”

  “While you were busy with Catriona.”

  He shot her a sideways look. “While I was with Catriona.”

  “Talking.”

  “We had a lot to talk about.”

  “Gosh, I could sleep for a thousand years.” She flopped back on the other twin. “The bed is spinning.”

  The room was nearly dark.

  Grace’s eyes flew open as Peter’s weight settled on the bed beside her.

  “Oh, hi.”

  “Hello.” He traced the outline of her lips with a light finger. “Why don’t I trust this sudden lack of curiosity on your part?”

  “I don’t know. After all, we each have our little secrets.”

  His fingers stilled.

  Grace smiled. His head bent, but before he could kiss her, Grace sat up, narrowly missing denting his rather haughty nose. She turned on the bedside lamp.

  “Speaking of secrets, if Derek didn’t kill Theresa, and you didn’t, and Catriona says she didn’t, and Lord Ruthven didn’t…who did?”

  The chief constable was studying a report and sucking meditatively on his pipe when Grace was shown into his office.

  “Glad to see you safe and sound after your adventures, Grace,” he said once she was seated on the other side of the desk. “You took a great chance.”

  “Sometimes you have to,” Grace said.

  Heron shook his head, and to head off the dire prophecy she suspected was coming, Grace said, “I believe I know who killed Theresa Ives.”

  “Indeed.” He knocked the bowl of the pipe against the ashtray.

  “I think it might even have been an accident.”

  Something in Heron’s shoe-button eyes told her she was on the right track.

  “He had been drinking heavily that night, and I think he knew that she was having an affair. I think it wasn’t the first time for her.”

  “Nor for him,” Chief Constable Heron said grimly.

  Startled, Grace met his eyes. “Then…it’s true?”

  He nodded curtly. “Oddly enough, it was your suspicion of Miss Coke that put us on the right track.”

  Momentarily sidetracked, Grace asked, “What’s happening with Miss Coke? Did she shoot at the hunt?”

  “We believe one of the Shog—Mr. Okada’s former caretaker fired in the air to scare the hunt. The man has since returned to Japan, and there’s no way of verifying whether he intended real harm, but it seems unlikely.”

  “And Miss Coke?”

  “Miss Coke has received official warning about her antihunt activities.”

  “That’s it?”

  Heron’s eyes narrowed a little.

  “I’m not suggesting we burn her at the stake,” Grace said defensively. “I just don’t think she’s quite as harmless as you seem to.”

  Heron shook his head a little, as though Grace was demonstrating some uniquely American paranoia.

  Through the closed door she could hear someone typing. Typing? Did people still use typewriters? She gave it up, returning to the thread of their original conversation.

  “You looked into the death of Sam Jeffries?” she guessed.

  “That’s right. Jeffries was always one for the ladies, and Lady Theresa, well, she was a bit younger than her husband, and had time on her hands. He blamed it the first time on Jeffries, I suppose, but when it happened again…”

  “He decided to solve the problem once and for all.” Grace was thinking aloud. She could almost see it from the murderer’s standpoint: humiliated and betrayed by his younger wife, a wife unsuited to the role she had been granted—so unlike Allegra Clairmont-Brougham, who was everything a squire’s lady should be…and still available after all these years.

  Perhaps it had seemed like Fate.

  Jeffries death had most likely been an impulse, and he had gotten away with it; so when he found his wife alone in the garden fresh from making a spectacle of herself all evening with Derek, perhaps he had struck out in jealous rage. Perhaps he had simply seized another opportunity.

  The door to Heron’s office opened. A PC stood there with crisply typed sheets. “We’ve got the warrant, sir.”

  Heron rose slowly and wearily from behind his desk. Grace preceded him out, watching as he got in the black car and drove off to arrest Sir Gerald Ives for the murder of his wife.

  Epilogue

  The parcel arrived with the first official snowfall, an ordinary brown package addressed to Peter.

  The postmark read Paris. Grace did not recognize the handwriting. She was sure she had never seen that precise black script before, but she recognized Peter’s reaction to it.

  He slit the brown mailer open and slid out the book.

  Opening it, he smoothed his hand down the frontispiece. Grace watched his face, caught the tightening of his jaw, the way his lashes lowered, veiling his eyes, keeping his thoughts.

  Then to her surprise he handed the book to her and went to the bow window, staring out at the white feathers pouring out of the leaden skies, blanketing the world in mysterious white.

  Curiously, Grace examined the book. It was a leather-bound volume of Byron’s poems. She read the inscription. It was a fragment of a poem first published in 1812.

  And Thou Art Dead…

  Yet did I love thee to the last

  As fervently as thou,

  Who didst not change through all the past,

  And canst not alter now.

  She felt a pricking beneath her eyelids, without understanding quite why, and closed the cover, setting the book aside and joining Peter at the window.

  The sno
w was falling more heavily, shrouding the woods in a white hush.

  Peter put his arm around her shoulders, drawing her near and kissing the top of her head. They stayed so for some time.

  Then Grace said, “You know, that gypsy fortune-teller was wrong.”

  Peter smiled wryly. “I can be trusted?”

  “Not that.” Grace brushed this aside. “There was no hidden room, there was no lost treasure of an ancient king, there was no lost manuscript.”

  His eyes were the blue of shade on new-fallen snow. His head bent, his mouth seeking hers. “But you know,” he said softly, “the story’s not over.”

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Peter caught Grace’s wrist as she moved past him. “What’s up?”

  Praise

  Also by Diana Killian

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Prologue

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  Epilogue