The Vampire Files, Volume One

by P. N. Elrod

  “Why did you think she was rich?” asked Escott.

  “You think the Franchers would know anyone poor?” he reasoned logically.

  “Where in Port Jefferson did you take her?”

  “Now that’s the funny part. She wanted to be dropped at the ferry.”

  “Ferry?”

  “Port Jefferson has a ferry running across the sound to Bridgeport. It was full night by then and the ferry was closed down and I told her so. She just had me untie her trunk and leave it there with her on the side of the road. She paid the fare, gave me a five-dollar tip, and I drove off feeling pretty good.”

  “You seem to have a very clear memory of all this.”

  “I guess I do. I mean, besides this being the only person I ever picked up from the Francher place, she was the only person who ever gave me a tip that big. I ain’t gonna forget something like that so soon.”

  Escott turned to me. “What would she want in Bridgeport?”

  I shrugged. Why would she want to be crossing water by boat? It was difficult enough for me to bear going over on a bridge.

  He went back to John Henry Banks. “You are absolutely certain of this sequence of events?”

  “That’s the truth, mister. Take it or leave it.”

  He took it, but neither of us liked it.

  Banks drove us back to the inn. It was my turn, so I paid off the meter and gave him a tip equal to Maureen’s, which put him into an excellent mood. He grinned and thanked us along with instructions to call him anytime if we ever needed another drive.

  Escott strode purposefully up the stone-bordered walk. I caught up with him in the small lobby just as he was accepting a thin phone book from the desk clerk. I craned over his shoulder to see the pages.

  He stopped at cab companies in the area—a very short listing—and Banks was at the top of the column, a fact Escott noted aloud to me.

  “If she needed a taxi, she would consult a directory and the first listing might be her first choice, as it evidently turned out. How do you feel about a long drive tonight?”

  “To Port Jefferson?”

  “And possibly to Bridgeport.”

  On a boat. Across all that water. Damn.

  “Or perhaps not,” he added, noting my expression.

  “I’m no Popeye the Sailor, but if Maureen could take it, so can I. I guess.”

  “Brave heart,” he said, and signaled to the clerk to start checking us out.

  While he was busy with that I went upstairs to bring down his bag and my trunk. I opened our door and stopped cold. Jonathan Barrett was standing by the window, hands clasped behind him and looking at me as though I, and not he, were the unwelcome intruder.

  6

  HE was back in twentieth-century clothing again, though a vestige of the past still clung to him with his ramrod posture and wind-combed hair. The five-second stare he gave me served as his only preamble. His eyes were cold, matching his tone of voice. “Last night I was made to understand that you were leaving for the city.”

  “We did.” I quietly shut the door behind me. “And then we came back.”

  “Obviously. Why?”

  “We had a little more checking to do.”

  “Yes, you’ve the dirty job of sifting through someone else’s laundry. This is yet a dull village with gossip as the chief source of entertainment. It didn’t take long for the story of your friend’s pub crawling to filter back to our own servants’ hall.” He looked ready to belt me again and shoved down the impulse with a visible effort. “When are you planning to leave?”

  “We’re checking out now.”

  “For good?”

  “Why are you so anxious about it?”

  “I’m only protecting my—Miss Francher and her family. Having the two of you intruding into her private business is entirely abhorrent—”

  “You mean about the fire?”

  “Of course I do. What has it to do with your trying to find Maureen?”

  “I thought maybe you could tell me.”

  “Tell you what? There’s nothing to tell. The fire was over and done with long before Maureen ever came to see me.”

  “And you figure there’s no connection?”

  “How can there be?” He raised a hand. “No, don’t bother answering that with another damned question. I can see you haven’t the heart to care about the kind of damage you’re doing.”

  “What damage?”

  He started to shake his head in exasperation at my apparent stupidity, then caught on that I’d been trying to goad him.

  “What damage, Barrett?” I pursued.

  He said nothing and only glared.

  “What are you afraid of?”

  His face was hard now, nearly ugly from the emotions rumbling under the surface. He looked taller and I could almost feel the anger pulsing from him.

  “If you were in my place, what would you be doing to find her?”

  That one struck a chord. He paced the length of the small room once with slow steps, subsiding into himself. He stopped next to me, trying to bore a hole through my brain with his gaze. “You said you were checking out. Are you going for good?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Why is that?”

  “I can’t really say.”

  “Because you lack knowledge or because you don’t trust me?”

  “You’re sharp, Barrett.”

  “Yes, and I’ve had as much of you as I can stomach. Do what you must to find Maureen, but leave the Franchers out of it. Leave them alone and stay out of my way.”

  Or what? I asked him as much with my expression.

  There was murder in his return look, and he took a step toward me to carry it out, or so I thought. The color abruptly faded from his dark clothes and his pale skin drained to the lifeless white of the truly dead. His outline wavered and swam in on itself, melting and merging into a shapeless, gray, man-sized thing.

  Impossibly hanging in midair, it twisted like a slow cyclone and tore by me. The wake of its brushing passage pierced me to the bone with a rush of arctic cold. The gray mass slammed silently against the window panes, fell through them as though they weren’t really there, and whirled away into the night wind. I rushed forward just in time to see it hurtle across the yard below to vanish into the cover of some intervening trees. A few moments later I heard the innocuous, ordinary roar of a car gunning to life. Its tires spun and screamed against the pavement, an audible expression of Barrett’s anger.

  Escott often complained that my disappearing act unnerved him. His limited human eyes missed most of the show, though. He didn’t know about this, about what it looked like to me. I’d witnessed it once before myself, but not in the close, calm normality of a well-lighted room.

  I was still shaking when he came upstairs to help with the luggage.

  Sixty miles of bucolic country broken up by quaint towns and picturesque villages chock-full of historical significance can get to you after a while. An hour of it left me longing for the comfort of concrete, streetlights, and traffic signs. Barrett’s visit had left a bad taste in my mind.

  I’d told Escott all about it, of course. He listened but was inclined to shrug it off for the moment.

  “The man has a point—” he started to say.

  “But only if he’s telling the truth about protecting the Franchers. It’s more likely he’s trying to protect himself. What I want to know is, what’s he trying to hide?”

  “Any number of things which we have discussed at length: his job, his regard for Miss Francher . . . and very possibly his condition.”

  “Condition? You mean—”

  “Yes, the one you both share. That’s a detail about yourself that you are wisely reluctant to reveal to people. I should imagine he feels the same way. An investigation such as ours could quickly place him in an untenable position. Would you not also be a bit nervous if someone started looking into your past and present?”

  “Jeez, yes. But you said Violet Francher already
tried to do that and it didn’t faze him. So what’s the difference now?”

  “You, old man. You’re the only one stopping him from fixing me with a basilisk gaze and instructing me to mind my own business. Perhaps he did do just that with Mrs. Francher’s own agent. This time Barrett is denied the luxury and is no doubt suffering from the frustration of it all.”

  He was right, but I was still uneasy and promised myself to keep both eyes wide open if we went back to Glenbriar. I was safe enough, but if Barrett lost his temper, he could snap Escott like a twig—body or mind, take your pick.

  Escott helped to make the rest of the trip bearable by reporting on his day and the other details he’d discovered about the Francher household.

  “The maid, cook, housekeeper, and gardener are all employees of long standing with Miss Emily. When Barrett arrived, some horses were acquired, along with a groom to care for them. Barrett is the only employee to actually sleep in the house now. When the maid and cook were moved out to live over the garage, the natural conclusion was that they were not meant to see certain things, hence the gossip.”

  “Which has some truth behind it, from what I saw the other night,” I put in.

  He acknowledged with a nod. “Yes, though I may also add that there is a general sympathy for their employer because of the way her mother died. Few people seem ready to condemn the woman for keeping a handsome young man on the payroll.”

  “What do these people think of Barrett?”

  “I can only report that hardly anyone outside the immediate household has ever seen him; which has also garnered the general approval of the locals. If there is something ‘going on,’ he has the good manners to confine himself to the Francher estate and is not attempting to spread his wicked ways among his neighbors.”

  “Does that include any society people?”

  “Miss Francher has willfully cut herself off from her social and financial peers, so they are relieved of the unpleasant duty of making any public judgment of her private life. That Miss Francher is excluded from their tea parties and other events of import matters not one whit to the lady.”

  “And her family?”

  “That is something I plan to check into—but discreetly,” he added, catching my look. “I have no wish to call the wrath of Mr. Barrett down upon my head.”

  “Amen.”

  “As for the inhabitants of Glenbriar, Emily Francher may do whatever she pleases in private, as long as it stays that way. If she were anyone else, she’d find life a bit more hostile.”

  “The old Hester Prynne bit?”

  Not having the benefit of an American education, he didn’t understand the reference. I gave him a brief summary of Hawthorne’s book until he did.

  He agreed with the general idea, but added one of his own. “Perhaps it is closer to the point to say that her money makes the difference here. If a poor man does something out of the norm, he’s condemned for a lunatic. When a rich man indulges in kind, he is affectionately tolerated as an eccentric. Thus we have it that no one thinks anything strange about the very late hours kept by the principals of the household.”

  “They’re a pretty understanding bunch around here.”

  “The Francher bills are always paid on time. That counts for much in terms of tolerance and goodwill these days.”

  “These days more than most.”

  Conversation lagged for a quarter hour and I watched the woods on either side blur past.

  “Sixty miles is a long way to be quiet,” Escott quoted, breaking the silence by doing a perfect mimic of Banks. It jolted me, kicking a vagueness into a certainty.

  “It’s too much.”

  “What is?”

  “The tip. Banks said he got a five-dollar tip from Maureen. It’s too much.”

  “Perhaps she thought it to be a necessary compensation after such a long trip.”

  “No, think about her past, about the time she grew up in. In those days you tipped in pennies.”

  “Some women eschew the practice altogether.”

  “She wasn’t one of them. I mean, she did all right for herself, but she was never one to throw her money around. In an extravagant mood she might have tipped him a buck, but never five, not unless she pulled the wrong bill out by mistake.”

  “That could well have been the case.”

  “Yeah.” But I still had some doubt souring my mind and he knew it.

  “What alternative do you suggest?” he asked.

  “Like maybe five years ago Barrett called Banks out to the house and put it into his head he was taking Maureen to Port Jefferson. He gave him the fare and a five-dollar tip to help him remember it all the way he’s supposed to.”

  “Complicated. Why should he do that?”

  “So it looks on the level with Mayfair or anyone else who might have seen her arrive at the estate.”

  “Such as Emily Francher?”

  “Well, figure it. Barrett’s got a soft spot for himself with her, and then Maureen shows up. She doesn’t like what he’s doing and could queer it for him but good if she drops the wrong word in Emily’s ear.”

  “Would she have done so?”

  “That doesn’t matter. What does is that Barrett thought she would.”

  “And you think Barrett—”

  “Might have done something. Yeah.”

  “That he might have killed Maureen?”

  After a long time I said, “Yeah,” and I hated saying it.

  Port Jefferson had a shipyard, some gravel pits, and the ferry, all dark now. Compared to Glenbriar it was a bustling metropolis, which wasn’t saying much, but then some places aren’t at their best at night. Escott and I split up. I took the hotels and he went to inflict more damage on his liver at the taverns. I advised him to find a diner first and line his stomach with the biggest, greasiest butter-fried hamburger he could handle. He didn’t look thrilled at the prospect, but nodded agreement and walked off with a grim set to his jaw.

  Maureen’s stopover—if she had stopped—had taken place at the height of the tourist season. No one remembered a lone woman with a trunk arriving at night five years ago. I talked my way into examining hotel-registration books and learned a lot about kindness from various clerks and managers offering what help they could.

  After running out of hotels, I checked out all the boardinghouses I could find, even knowing that Maureen would have avoided them as a matter of course. Like me, she would have preferred the relative privacy and anonymity of a hotel to spend her vulnerable daylight time. But I had to be certain. I covered everything.

  Hours later, options exhausted, I climbed back into the car to wait for Escott. We had no set time to meet, though. When the first faint pangs of hunger started up I went in search of a meal.

  No stockyards and no stables; it looked like the locals only ate fish, and duck—at least in the business district. I widened my hunting radius to less urbanized areas and soon caught the unmistakable scent of cow manure on a random puff of wind.

  There were more stops than starts involved following it, but my nose eventually led me to an open field populated by several bovines clustered under a tree. I climbed through the fence, watched where my feet were going, and strolled up.

  They seemed to know I wasn’t there for an old-fashioned milking. As a cow, they all moved away. Picking one out, I optimistically followed. She proved to be quite agile for her size and energetic after spending the whole day eating her head off. Though country bred myself, I’d forgotten how fast cattle can move when they want to, and my dinner got away.

  I picked out another, waited until it stopped, and calculated the distance. It bawled unhappily as though reading my mind. Disappearing, I rushed forward, felt its bulk loom close, and went solid with my arms reaching out to wrap around its neck.

  The cow had other ideas and bawled again, tossing herself (and me) around like a rodeo trainee. She dragged me over half the field, deaf to my urgent pleas for quiet and oblivious to that special influence I
usually have over animals. It only belatedly occurred to me that all the other animals had been in small pens with no place to run. I let go, managed to stay on my soggy feet, and old Bossy galloped off to be with the rest of the girls.

  It was ridiculous. I had an easier job finding cooperative livestock in the heart of the city. After a few feet of weary trudging, I noticed the disgusting state of my shoes and opted to go transparent the rest of the way. The wind was in the right direction; I let it take me toward a group of buildings at the far end of the field.

  By now I had trouble telling the difference between the yard manure and the supply I had with me. Each shed had to be examined by sight, not smell. Unfortunately, it is also almost impossible to take a casual walk through a working farm. You not only have to contend with uneven and odorous ground clutter and mud, but the local tenants as well. Never mind Farmer Jones and his shotgun, it’s his animals that are dangerous.

  Chickens are fairly brainless and confined to coops, but ducks are usually allowed to roam free to scavenge and play in their pond. It was just my bad luck that I blundered right into a flock and sent them on a panicky flight to safety. Mixed in with them were a few geese who made more commotion than all the rest together. In turn, they alerted a small pack of large dogs who charged in helter-skelter, baying in full voice. Their owner coming out of the house packing a gun with a double load of buckshot was a mere afterthought. I didn’t stick around to see how the show came out, but vanished and shot up in the general direction of the main barn.

  My amorphous form bounced unexpectedly against the vertical wall of wood, nearly sending me solid with the shock. I clung there against the wind and frantically felt around for an opening into the hayloft. It was just above me; I thankfully dribbled over the edge to re-form—and nearly rolled right off my perch. Instead of the loft, I’d shot too high and was hanging onto the roof, and oh, God, I hate heights.

  Far, far below, Old MacDonald was circling the yard stirring up the geese and giving a lot of unexpected fun to his pack of semi-tame, lop-eared wolves. They were tearing all over the place, heads down and tails happily fanning, eager to show master how good they were at their job. So what if they never found a thing and only ended up anointing every likely projection turn in turn? It was a great break in the routine.