Lady Killer (41 page)

He kissed her one last time on the lips, then disappeared down the stairs, pausing twice to wave good-bye. “Do not go alone to any mysterious meetings in dank old churches,” he ordered when he turned the last time, and Clio nodded.

Then she sat down in the middle of the terrace, hugged her knees to her chest, and sobbed.

She had hoped all the sadness had drained from her then, but as she sat behind her desk at Which House four hours later with Toast curled comfortingly on top of her head, she felt a tear steal down her cheek. The monkey reached out to dry it with his little hand, letting it rest tenderly on her face for a moment. The gesture restored Clio to herself and she looked at the clock, saw that it was well after noon and therefore much past the nine-to-nine-thirty slot she had allotted days earlier for sobbing over the Viscount Dearbourn. She would have to discipline herself.

But before she could undertake any rigorous punishment, Inigo entered and slid a picture onto her desk. It was almost identical to the drawing Mr. Pearl and Mr. Hakesly had delivered to her the previous day, the same face, rendered from a slightly different perspective. Inigo stood in front of the desk and jabbed a finger at it.

“Yes, I see, but I do not recognize him.”

Inigo sighed and rolled his eyes, then began jabbing his finger anew.

“Should I recognize him?”

He nodded vigorously, and jabbed his fingers a third time, now toward his throat.

“He knows the vampire?”

Inigo shook his head and stomped his foot, and had just embarked on the finger-jabbing pantomime again when Mr. Williams burst into the room.

“Messenger from across the sea,” he proclaimed, then stepped aside and let a small woman scurry in.

“Are you Clio Thornton?” the woman asked, marching straight up to the desk, leaning across it, and eyeing Clio at close range.

Clio drew back slightly. “Yes. Can I help you.”

The woman then squinted around the room. “Who’s he?” she demanded, waving her arm dramatically toward the bust of King Henry the Eighth that stood behind Clio’s desk.

“No one,” Clio assured her. “I can guarantee that he will not repeat a word you say.”

“Not me saying a word,” the woman replied, returning her squint to Clio. “It’s me tenant, Miss Kimberley. Wants to see you. Think it’s a bad idea, I do, but no one ever asks old Annie for her opinion.”

“Is Miss Kimberley outside?” Clio coaxed.

“An how would that be, seeing as how she’s sick in bed? Wants you to come to her, she do. And right away.” The woman leaned closer and Clio could see the pores in her nose. “Twixt you and me and that gen’lman over there,” she motioned toward Henry the Eighth again, “she’s not fitting to live another three hours.”

A client who only had three hours to live was not an ideal client, Clio thought, but at least going to see Miss Kimberley would be a diversion from sobbing, wondering if Doctor LaForge had been found, and watching Inigo jab himself in the throat. Grabbing Toast’s leash, she followed Annie to Miss Kimberley’s bedside.

Annie’s estimate turned out to be slightly pessimistic, although Clio could see the basis for it when she walked into the sick woman’s room half an hour later. It was a small room in the middle floor of an old and dilapidated looking boardinghouse. A smartly dressed young man was lounging against the door outside as they approached the house, but slipped away as they neared.

“That’s Bad Harvey,” Annie told Clio in a loud whisper. “Thinks I can’t see him hanging about like that, but I know.”

“Bad Harvey?” Clio inquired. At the beginning of a case, it was important to get as many facts as possible.

“That’s what I said, isn’t it? He’s got a fancy for our Kimberley, but she’ll have none to do with him. He’s a bad’un.”

“Hence the name,” Clio said, more to herself than to Annie.

“Exactly,” the other replied, seriously. “Not that he’ll be able to give her much trouble, where she is going, if you know what I mean.”

Clio did, especially when she glimpsed Miss Kimberley’s room. Heavy blankets had been tacked up over the windows, and the air was thick with the smell of an invalid. Toast, strangely subdued, dashed into a corner and curled up there. At first Clio did not see anyone lying on the narrow bed, but then Annie bent toward the pile of blankets and shouted, “I brought her like you asked, Miss Kimberley.”

Delicate fingers pushed the blankets aside, revealing a thin, pale face with heavy lids and dark circles under the eyes. Clio could see that Kimberley was young, younger than herself, perhaps not even twenty. “Thank you so much for coming,” the girl whispered with an accent far more refined than her setting.

“Of course,” Clio replied, moving toward the bed and seating herself on the edge. “Can I help you?”

The fingers groped for something in the space between the bed and the wall, and brought up a rumpled piece of news sheet. As Kimberley extended it toward Clio, she saw a circle of bruises on the girl’s wrist. Instinctively, her eyes went to the girl’s neck, and she saw it was wrapped in a bandage.

“The vampire,” Clio breathed, her voice almost as throaty as the girl’s. “You were attacked by the vampire and lived.”

Kimberley nodded, crumpling the news sheet in her hand. “Yes. Barely. I awoke yesterday, but only today was I strong enough to speak. I remembered your advertisement and sent for you.” She coughed slightly, and Clio saw her lips were cracked and dry.

“Can I get you some ale? Or some food? You must eat. Has a doctor seen you?”

Kimberley shook her head and reached her hand out for Clio’s arm. “I must speak to you first,” she rasped. “You must find him.” Her eyes, glassy, burned into Clio’s, and Clio nodded. Her heart was pounding.

“Can you tell me what happened?”

Kimberley reached toward a cracked glass filled with something that smelled faintly of mint. The girl took a sip, gagged slightly, then swallowed. “I was coming home from work,” she began. “I was humming to myself, a song from home.” Her expression changed. “I just came from home two months ago, you see, and I still miss it.”

“You are from Devonshire,” Clio stated rather than asked.

Kimberley nodded. “I work for a dressmaker, a famous one. She sent me to drop off some dresses at a big fancy house, and the manservant there gave me a fine tip for promising not to tell anyone where I dropped off the dresses. So I was feeling happy, and I was singing. But all along I have this idea that there is someone following me. I turned to check but there was no one there. Finally I got home and closed my door and went to see if there was anyone waiting in the street, but there was not.”

“And then, that night, the vampire came,” Clio said.

“No,” Kimberley shook her head. “It was the next night. The night your advertisement appeared in the news sheet. I always like to read the news sheets, when I can, to see what all the fancy folk are doing,” Kimberley confided, and Clio saw a touch of color on her cheeks. “So, since that man had given me such a good tip, I decided to buy myself one. This one,” she held up the sheet, which she was still gripping in her hand. “I looked at every word on it, and then I blew out my candle and went to bed. The next thing I know, I wake up with the feeling that there is someone in my room. I looked over there,” she pointed toward the door, “and saw there was a man coming toward me.”

Clio’s stomach tightened. “What did he do?”

“He put a hand over my mouth so I couldn’t scream and he used the other one to hold my arms over my head like this,” she said, crossing her wrists. “And then—” she broke off, gulping hard. “Then he starts whispering to me.”

“What did he whisper?” Clio heard herself ask. She felt as though she were listening from a great distance.

“He told me that I was going to help him. That through him I was going to play a role in history. That he was going to make me a great lady. I was terrified, I tell you. I thought he was going to rob me of my virtue.”

“Did he?” Clio forced herself to inquire.

Kimberley shook her head miserably. “He told me to sing. To sing the song I had been singing the day before. The one from home. And so I did. I sang it to him, just like my mother used to sing it to me.
‘The first time I did see you dear,’ ”
Kimberly began to sing in a terrible, throaty soprano.

“I know the song,” Clio assured her, interrupting. Willing her to stop.

“Then, just when I got to the last verse, he smiled at me. And that was when I saw them.”

Clio waited for Kimberley to go on, but the girl said nothing. “Saw what?” Clio asked softly.

“His tears. He was crying. He kissed me on the cheek and said everything would be fine. He put his hand on my neck and told me that my blood was pumping so hard, I must be scared, and I told him I was and he said I was a good girl. And then I felt something sharp on me and I tried to scream but I must have fainted. When I woke up, he was still leaning over me, sucking on my neck, and I opened my mouth to call out, but there was fabric in it and I couldn’t. And when he saw that I was awake, he looked almost scared, different than he had before, and he said, ‘Be a good girl.’ I tried to scream again, then, but I think he struck me because I cannot remember any more. When I woke up it was days later and he wasn’t here. But this was.” She pulled the bandage around her neck down slightly, and Clio saw the two familiar pricks.

“What did he look like?” Clio asked.

Kimberley bit her lip. “My mind is so jumbled. I do not really know.”

“Did he have light hair or dark hair?”

“Light. Light-ish dark hair. Or darkish light hair. I am not sure. I cannot really recall.” Kimberley made an effort to sit up, imploringly. “I was so afraid.”

“Of course,” Clio said, soothingly, pressing her back into the pillows. “Do you recollect if he was tall or short?”

“He seemed tall when he was coming toward me, but when he was leaning over me he seemed shorter.”

“How did he smell?”

Kimberley shuddered. “When he opened his mouth and smiled at me, it smelled horrible, like the smell of death. But after that it went away.”

Clio nodded. It all made sense. “Can you tell me anything else about him?”

Kimberley was quiet for a long time, lying still with her eyes closed, and Clio thought she might have gone to sleep, or worse, but then her lips parted. “He was wearing a mask over his eyes,” she said, finally. “But I could tell that it made him glad to see me scared.” She turned her head toward Clio and said. “I am so tired. But I had to tell you. You will find him? You will fi…” her voice trailed off.

Clio rose and crossed silently to the door, startling the eavesdropping Annie when she opened it.

“She dead?” Annie demanded as Toast gleefully dragged Clio from the room.

“No.” Clio motioned the woman down the stairs. “But she needs a doctor.”

“What that girl needs is a priest,” Annie corrected. “She doesn’t have a cent to pay a doctor. And I already give her those new linens for free.”

“That was kind of you,” Clio assured her.

“Kind, nothing. Them flies were all over the other ones. Never seen so much blood in my life.”

“Her blankets were covered in blood?” Clio asked, shaking her head. She felt as if she were coming out of a fog.

“Soaked through they were.”

“Here,” Clio said, handing Annie her entire purse. It was one of the reasons she never had any money. “Repay yourself for the linens and pay the doctor I will send to her. Do you understand?”

Annie poured the contents of the purse into her hand, held them very close to her eyes, then put all but one gold piece back. “I don’t need that much,” she told Clio, returning the purse. “You keep it, miss. Give it to someone else. This one coin’ll do Annie and the doctor right enough.”

Despite the story she had just heard, despite everything, Clio smiled. “You’ll take good care of her, won’t you?”

“Do my best.” Then Annie looked around and sniffed the air. “Bad Harvey is ’round here somewhere. I can smell him.”

Clio left the old woman on her doorstep, checking the air for Scent of Bad Harvey, and let Toast lead her toward home. It was Saturday, after midday, and the street was crowded with people gossiping and buying and selling. There was one fellow selling meat pies, next to whom Toast danced dangerously close, but Clio hardly noticed. She was going over Kimberley’s story, word by word, to be sure she had it completely. Everything about it confirmed what they suspected about Doctor LaForge’s methods. Except that Kimberley had lived.

The image of him leaning over the girl, his lips, his teeth on her neck, was so clear in her head, so
real,
that it chilled Clio clear through. And what was worse, she knew it was supposed to. The vampire thrived on the fear of his victims. Even Kimberley had sensed that. He might not have needed their blood, but he needed their terror.

Clio pushed this disturbing thought from her mind. The girl said the vampire had come the night Clio’s advertisement appeared in the news sheet. Clio knew exactly when that was. It had appeared on her birthday. The day there were fireworks. The day she and Miles had—

“Lady Thornton,” a voice called to her from across the street. Clio looked up and saw that it came from a coach with the Dearbourn arms on it. Waving to her from beside the coach was Jocelyn, Mariana’s maid. “Lady Thornton,” Jocelyn cried again, and, scooping Toast up so he would not be run over, Clio crossed toward her.