John Henry could not help but agree. He realized that Ragoczy was not only generous but more knowledgeable than he had suspected. “All right. A distant relative could be invented. An uncle. In the north.”
“You would do well to mention that you have heard the fellow is ailing, and dismiss any suggestion that you might benefit from his death,” Ragoczy recommended. “That way when you express your amazement at the legacy, none of clerks will link your good fortune to the assistance you have given me.”
As he slapped his hand on his thigh, John Henry burst out, “By all that’s famous! You’ve hit on the very means to make this happen.” He laughed aloud. “You are a canny man, Count, a complete hand; a ‘peevy cove,’ as the lower orders would say.”
“A peevy cove. What a delightful expression,” said Ragoczy sardonically, his fine brows lifting. “Still, I have been called worse.” For an instant a bleakness came over him; seeing it, John Henry was chilled.
He started to speak, coughed, and tried again. “I suppose you’ve learned, over the years, to guard yourself. That’s why you’re so quick to make the suggestions you have.”
“There is some truth to that, yes,” said Ragoczy, his dark, enigmatic eyes haunted. With a gesture he dismissed the gloom that threatened to overcome him. “But you will think you’ve been caught in one of Mrs. Radcliffe’s dismal romances if I say much more, or that farrago of Maturin’s.”
“Melmoth the Wanderer?” asked John Henry, a little taken aback that Ragoczy should know the work.
Ragoczy did not answer. He glanced at the ledger one last time. “Tomorrow a clerk from my solicitor will visit Mr. Tubbs. He will say that I have asked to have my business here reviewed. Oh, never fear. I will demand the same of the other merchants with whom I have done business. I will not single this firm out for the solicitors’ attention.” He took a rapid turn around the room; the lamplight danced and sparkled in the jewels on his Order. “I will do everything I can to make it appear that this is not an unusual request. Since I am a foreigner, I am certain that Mr. Tubbs will be willing to think the worst of me for that.”
John Henry colored. “He is one of those who thinks Jesus Christ spoke in English.”
“He has that look to him,” Ragoczy agreed. He halted in front of John Henry and held out his hand. “It’s settled then.”
“Yes, all right,” said John Henry as his large hand closed over Ragoczy’s small one. “It’s settled.”
In the private parlor of the pub, the company of actors were still exhilarated by the great success they had had with their new production of Romeo and Juliet. At the head of the long table, the young man who had paid for the Royal Soho Theatre production and for the privilege of playing Romeo, was still holding court, flushed with a heady combination of port and applause.
“You were quite wonderful, Henry,” said the woman beside him, a cozy matron who had played Lady Capulet. “You’ll go far, you mark my words.”
Henry was willing to be convinced. “Ah, Meg, Meg. It’s such a good play, that’s what makes the difference.” He frowned a little, wishing his family had been willing to come, but they were such strict Christians that they rarely ventured out to public entertainments of any sort.
The director, who had also played Mercutio, was more than half-drunk, and he swung around to face Henry, lifting his glass.
“So you think you’ll … take the London stage by storm, do you?”
“One day I hope to,” said Henry, already hungry for the time it would happen.
“That’s what they all do,” the director muttered, sounding bitter.
“You leave off baiting him,” Meg ordered the director. “Just because he’s a better player than you—”
“Better player!” scoffed the director, taking another long draught of dark ale. “Why, he’s as green as … as …” He lost the direction of his thought.
“Yes, he’s green,” said Meg with some heat. “But he’s got it in him. You can tell by what he does. He’s got the touch.” She beamed at Henry, her smile not as motherly as it had been. “You’ll all see. I know Henry’s going to go far.”
Henry basked in her approval and watched as the rest of the company caroused themselves into fatigue, and then began to drift off into the night. Henry was one of the last to leave, pausing to tip the landlord for allowing them to hire the private parlor for the later hours.
As he stepped into the street, he paused, realizing it was very late; the windows were dark in the buildings that faced the road. No traffic moved over the cobbles. Only the skitter of rats attracted his attention as he pulled his coat about him and started toward his home.
Then he heard a soft, crisp footfall, and with a cry of alarm he turned, expecting to see one of the desperate street thieves who preyed upon the unwary. He brought up his arm. “I have a pistol,” he warned.
The answer out of the dense shadows was amused. “Do you really, Mr. Brodribb.” A moment later, Ferenc Ragoczy stepped out of the darkness. He was wearing his hooded cloak, as he had been the first time John Henry had seen him. As he walked up to the young actor, he said, “Congratulations. That was a very impressive debut.”
“You saw it?” asked John Henry.
“Yes.” Ragoczy smiled, the pallid light from the distant streetlamp casting a sharply angled shadow over his features. “I am pleased your … inheritance was so well spent.”
John Henry felt suddenly very callow. “I should have thanked you, I know, but with the trial and all, I didn’t think it would—”
“What reason do you have to thank me? The legacy was from our uncle, wasn’t it?” He started to walk toward the main road, motioning to John Henry to walk with him. “If anything I should thank you for the six thousand pounds my solicitors recovered from Mr. Tubbs and Mr. Lamkin.”
“Everyone believed it,” said John Henry, still marveling at how easily the clerks had been convinced that so distant and unknown an uncle would leave a sizable amount to his nephew. “I never thought they would.”
“People believe things they want to think happen. What clerk would not like a distant relative to make them a beneficiary of his estate? So they are willing to think it has happened to you.” He went a few steps in silence. “Tell me, was there some specific reason for taking the name Irving?”
“Yes,” said John Henry. “There was. My mother used to read me the sermons of Edward Irving. He was a Scottish evangelist, and a powerful orator. And I admire the American author Washington Irving.”
“And why Henry instead of John?” asked Ragoczy. They were nearing Charing Cross Road and could see a few heavily laden wagons making their way along the almost deserted thoroughfare, and one or two cabs out to pick up what few shillings they might from late-night stragglers.
“It sounds more distinguished,” said John Henry at once; he had given the matter much thought and was prepared to defend his choice if questioned.
But Ragoczy, it seemed, was satisfied. “Then the best of good fortune to you, Henry Irving.” He nodded to an elegant coach waiting at the corner. “This is where we part company, I think.”
John Henry accepted this with a surge of embarrassment. “You should have come into the pub. We could have had a drink. They have decent port at the pub.” He hated to see Ragoczy walk away. “I want to thank you. To drink your health.”
Ragoczy paused, and bowed, and said in a voice John Henry would never forget, “You are very kind, Mr. Irving, but I do not drink wine.”
HISAKO SAN
Ingrid Pitt
Polish-born actress and author Ingrid Pitt (Ingoushka Petrov, 1937–2010) was best known to film fans as Hammer Film’s Queen of Horror. In the early 1970s she became a horror icon when the British studio starred her in The Vampire Lovers (based on J. Sheridan Le Fanu’s “Carmilla”) and Countess Dracula.
Her other film credits include the Spanish Sound of Horror, The Omegans, The House That Dripped Blood (in a segment based on Robert Bloch’s story “The Cloak”
), The Wicker Man (1973), Artemis 81, The House, Underworld (aka Transmutations, based on a story by Clive Barker), The Asylum, the short Green Fingers, Minotaur, Hammer’s Beyond the Rave, and Sea of Dust. She also appeared on TV in episodes of the BBC’s Doctor Who (“The Time Monster” and “Warriors of the Deep”), Brian Clemens’s Thriller (“Ilse”), and Urban Gothic (“Vampirology”).
The actress wrote the nonfiction studies The Ingrid Pitt Bedside Companion for Vampire Lovers, The Ingrid Pitt Bedside Companion for Ghosthunters, and The Ingrid Pitt Book of Murder, Torture & Depravity, as well as contributing regular columns to such magazines as Shivers, Femme Fatales, Bite Me, It’s Alive, and The Cricketer.
Her 1999 autobiography, entitled Life’s a Scream, detailed the harrowing experiences of her early life in a Nazi Concentration camp, her search throughout the European Red Cross Refugee Camps for her father, and her escape from East Berlin one step ahead of the Volkpolitzei.
About her various appearances as an undead femme fatale, the actress once revealed: “They are always roles you can get your teeth into.”
DETECTIVE SERGEANT JANET Cooper picked up a photograph from the Shinto altar and studied it. It was black and white and slightly faded, but it gave a good likeness of the man and woman dressed in traditional Japanese kimonos and proudly holding a newborn baby. Janet carefully put the picture back and fingered the other mementos on the small makeshift altar. A couple of spent candles in saucers, a battered watch with Japanese characters on the dial, and a string of beads. She looked around the room but found nothing else of interest.
She went back into the sitting room. It was sparely but expensively furnished. The door was open, and the caretaker of the block stood just inside the door watching them suspiciously. Detective Inspector Tom Brasher turned away from the window and raised an inquisitive eyebrow. Janet shook her head.
“Nothing there,” she reported.
Brasher took a colorful folder off the table and handed it to her.
“What d’you think of that?” he asked.
The folder was from a Japanese shipping line. Inside were a number of newspaper clippings. They were all from London papers and the subject was the same in each. Senator Osram Manhelm. Janet skimmed through a couple of articles and learned that the Senator was in London with a trade mission. He was due to meet his Japanese counterparts and sign a Nippon/US agreement that evening. But first there was some socializing to do. Janet handed the folder back to Brasher.
“What does that tell us?”
Brasher shrugged. “For one thing this Hisako woman seems to have a special interest in the Senator,” he said and turned to the caretaker.
“When did Miss Hisako arrive?”
The caretaker was determined to be unhelpful. “It’s in the book,” he said coldly.
Brasher smiled brightly. “Right. How about you fetch the book and we go down to the station and my sergeant gives it a nice long once-over?”
The smile unsettled the caretaker.
“Three days ago,” he mumbled.
“Where from?” Janet encouraged.
The caretaker shrugged. “It’s a private booking. Try the estate agents.”
Brasher and Janet walked back to their car parked outside the flats. Brasher leaned on the bonnet.
“You go round to the estate agents, see what you can pick up there. I’ll take a taxi back to the station and check on immigration,” he said as he pushed away from the car and opened the door for Janet in one smooth move.
Janet got in behind the wheel and wound down the window.
“What d’you think this Hisako woman’s got to do with those blokes falling to pieces in the hospital?” she queried.
Brasher gave her a bland, humorless smile. “Nothing probably, but she is interesting,” he told her.
Brasher stood and watched the car disappear into the traffic. Janet was right of course. Twelve young, fit men cut down in their prime took a lot of swallowing. And just because the Japanese woman had been seen to kiss them shortly before they became walking cesspits didn’t necessarily mean that she had anything to do with it. Brasher wasn’t keen on coincidences. He couldn’t see how the two disparate facts knitted together, but visceral prompting told him the connection was there. He was lucky with a taxi and was back at the station within ten minutes.
A DC called to him as he opened his office door. “Hi, Guv. You’re on this rowing club thing, aren’t you?” he asked.
Brasher nodded.
“Two more,” the DC said cryptically.
“Two more?” Brasher echoed.
“Two more … er … suspicious deaths.”
He placed a couple of sheets of paper in front of the Inspector. Brasher scanned them and looked up in surprise.
“Why wasn’t I told about this before?” he asked, a note of threat in his voice.
“They were just separate incidents. No follow-up for us.” The DC shrugged off responsibility adroitly.
“Okay. Get onto the Japanese Embassy. Ask them what they know about a woman called Hisako. Probably just arrived in London. Maybe with the Japanese trade delegation.”
The DC nodded and left. Brasher thought for a moment and was about to follow when the phone rang.
“Brasher.” He listened, nodded. “Fine. Meet me at St. George’s Dock. We’ve got two more … nothing to do with the rowing club as far as I can see.”
The large wooden crate stood isolated by a cordon of POLICE KEEP OUT tape. Brasher walked slowly around the box. The front of the crate was slightly open. He pulled the lid wider and examined the interior. There wasn’t much to examine. Just a crudely padded plank at sitting height and straps screwed to the wall. Janet was talking to one of the security men. Brasher called her over.
“See if you can get in there,” he said.
Janet couldn’t come near to wedging her five-foot, nine-inch frame into the space provided.
“I’d need to shed two stone and saw my legs off at the knees,” she volunteered.
Brasher helped her out of the case.
“What did you get from the guard?” he asked.
“Doesn’t know anything,” she said as she straightened up. “Jim Bailey has worked here for about twenty years. Retiring at the end of the year.” She thought and carefully corrected herself. “Was.”
“And the seaman?”
Janet took out her notebook.
“Taki Takamura, twenty-eight-years old, from Soma. Taken ill yesterday evening and died this morning,” she read.
“Anything else?” he asked in a negative tone.
Janet shook her head. Brasher’s cell rang and he hooked it out of his pocket.
“Brasher.” He listened intently without interrupting. “You’re sure of this …? Right, put out a bulletin and let me know if we get a break.” Brasher pocketed his telephone.
“We’ve had feedback from the Japanese Embassy,” he said. “Hisako is not a member of the trade delegation and there is no report of anyone with her name or fitting her description entering the country in the last ten days.” He thought through his next words carefully before continuing.
“There is, however, a report about a Hisako who went missing from a military hospital in Soma. Her description fits and it could be her—except for one thing. She has a rare lymphatic disease and has been living in an isolation bubble since shortly after she was born. The doctors insist that she would be dead by now. And you know what caused the disease?”
Brasher sucked in his breath and answered his own question. “Fallout from the hydrogen bomb the Yanks dropped on Nagasaki.”
Janet frowned and walked to the edge of the jetty and stared out over the gently heaving water.
“She can’t be that old,” she said slowly.
Brasher nodded agreement.
“She’s not. It was her parents who were affected. They showed no ill-effects but passed on the disorder to their daughter.”
He thought for a minute. “Any ideas?” he asked.
<
br /> Janet turned to face him. “Those clippings in the folder. There was one that gave some background on Senator Manhelm. He was a part of the team that dropped the bomb.”
The party at the American embassy in Grosvenor Square was in full swing when Brasher and Janet arrived. The embassy staff had flatly refused to give them security status and insisted that they were there only as guests.
The invitation had said 8:00 p.m. to 10:30 p.m. It was 9:45 p.m. and Brasher was beginning to think they had overreacted, seen too many Arnie Schwarzenegger films. When you thought it through rationally, in a detached manner, the whole theory was ridiculous. How could a young woman with a deadly disease come all the way to London, leave a trail of hideous death behind her and still move around with every appearance of good health?
He was about to suggest to Janet that they picked up their coats and left when there was a ripple of comment that cut across the hubbub of sound. Brasher glanced around. Everyone was looking toward the main entrance.
Nothing had prepared Brasher for the sheer beauty of the exquisite woman who stood in the doorway. She was small but beautifully proportioned. Her midnight-black hair was piled high on her head and secured with brightly-lacquered combs. The light blue silk kimono she was wearing covered her from throat to toe, but the thin material did nothing to disguise the body beneath.
“That’s got to be her,” Janet stated unnecessarily.
The Senator was the first to snap out of it. He put on a wide Texas grin and bore down on the diminutive woman like an avalanche in early spring.
Janet tapped Brasher on the arm and claimed his attention. “What now?” she asked simply but to the point.
Brasher physically shook himself and refocussed on the job in hand. “Just keep an eye on her.”
The Senator was busy introducing Hisako to the other guests. He was obviously smitten and he was oblivious to the venomous looks his wife shot at him as he pranced around in a flawed attempt to shed fifty years. Half an hour later the guests were beginning to drift away. Brasher beckoned to Janet and stationed himself by the door. Janet joined him.
The Mammoth Book of Vampire Stories by Women Page 30