Those Who Hunt the Night(12)

Perhaps that was one reason why, out of all the men—mostly younger than he, and all a good deal wealthier than he—who had been captivated by her waiflike charm, it was he who lived with her now, and would, he hoped, for the next forty years.

Ysidro would be sorry, he thought grimly, that he had dragged Lydia into this.

He squeezed the throttle lever, startling a dozen larks into swift, slanting flight; turning the ’bike, he began to make his way down the long slopes toward Beaconsfield and Wycombe and, eventually, toward the distant smear of gray-yellow smoke that was London.

His journeys through the back blocks of Europe in quest of Latin roots or stranger things had given Asher a good deal of practice in finding lodgings quickly. He settled on two lodging houses in Bloomsbury, not far from the Museum, facing onto different streets, but backing on the same alley; the rear window of the small suite of rooms he engaged for Lydia at 109 Bruton Place could be seen from his own solitary chamber at 6 Prince of Wales Colonnade. They weren’t as close as he would have liked, and there would be a good deal of shinning up and down drain pipes and climbing fences in the event of a real emergency, but it was as good as he could get in the time. Even so, it was getting perilously close to dark when he stumbled once more onto the Oxford train.

He slept all the way up. As he had feared, his dreams were troubled by the image of the coffin full of ashes in Highgate Cemetery and by the dim sense of dread that, if he went there and listened, those ashes might whisper to him in a voice that he could understand.

Lydia was waiting for him, simply but beautifully dressed and carefully veiled to hide the fact that she was far less wan and pale than he. On the train down, fortified by yet more of the black coffee that had latterly kept his body and soul together, Asher explained the message-drop system he’d worked out at the cloakroom of the Museum’s reading room, and the signals between Bruton Place and Prince of Wales Colonnade: one curtain open, one shut, if ameeting was necessary, and a telegram to follow; a lamp in the window in case of an emergency.

“I’d suggest you start at Somerset House,” he said as the leaden dusk flashed by the windows. Coming over the hills that afternoon had been pleasant; but, as the cold of the night closed in, he admitted there was a great deal to be said for the cozy stuffiness of a train after all. “You can match information from the Wills Office and Registry with the old Property Rolls in the Public Records Office—it’s my guess that at least some of the vampires own property. I can’t see Ysidro entrusting his Bond Street suits, let alone his coffin, to the care of a ten-bob-a-month landlady. Get me records of places where the leasehold hasn’t changed ownership for—oh, seventy years or longer. Reader’s Passes are easy enough to get. All the records of the original estate ground-landlords should be available. You might also see what you can get me on death certificates for which there was no body. We’re eventually going to have to check back issues of newspapers as well for deaths which could be attributed to vampires, but, from the sound of it, those may be concealed. God knows how many cases of malnutrition or typhus were really Ysidro and his friends. I suspect that, during epidemics of jail fever at Newgate and Fleet, a vampire could feed for weeks without anyone being the wiser or caring. Poor devils,” he added and studied in silence that clear-cut white profile against the compartment’s sepia gloom.

More quietly, he asked, “Will you mind learning what you can about Albert Westmoreland’s death? I’ll look into that, if you’d rather not.”

She shook her head, a tiny gesture, understanding that she was affected, not because she had particularly cared about the man, but simply because it brought the reality of her own danger closer. Without her spectacles, her brown eyes seemed softer, more dreamy. “No. You’re going toneed your time to follow the main trail. Besides, I knew him and his friends. I don’t suppose I could look up Dennis Blaydon again without him pouting and fretting because I married you instead of him, but I could talk to Frank Ellis—Viscount Haverford he is now—or to the Equally Honorable Evelyn—Bertie’s brother. He was a freshman, I think, the year Bertie … died.”

“I don’t like it,” Asher said slowly. “Having you do research in London is one thing; when I send a letter to my leftover Foreign Office connections on the Daily Mail, it won’t introduce you under your own name. Ysidro spoke of vampires knowing when a human—a friend or relative of a recent victim—is on their trail; they go about interviewing people or loitering in churchyards, and the vampires eventually see them at it. I don’t want them to see you, Lydia. That would surely be the death of us both.”

Her back stiffened. “I don’t see how…”

“Nor do I,” he cut her off. “But for the moment, I’m going to have to assume that it’s true. They have powers we do not; until we know more about them, I’m not disposed to take chances.”

“Maybe,” she said. “But they also have weaknesses, and the more we learn about them—the more we can talk to people who have actually dealt with a vampire—the more we may be able to put together a means of dealing with them if … if worse comes to worst. As long ago as Bertie’s death was, it isn’t likely there’s a connection, but at least we’ll have another view of them.”

“I still don’t like it,” he said again, knowing she was probably right. “I’d rather you didn’t, but if you do, please be careful. Take every precaution, no matter how foolish it seems. As for what you may learn … Have you ever tried to piece together an account of an accident from witnesses, even ten minutes after it happened? And Bertie’s death was … when?”

“Nineteen hundred.” Her mouth twitched in an ironic smile. “Turn of the new century.”

“That was seven years ago.” He’d been in Africa then, riding across tawny velvet distances by the light of the swollen and honey-colored moon. He sometimes found it difficult to believe it was any longer ago than seven weeks. He leaned across and kissed her, her hat veils tickling the bridge of his nose; it was odd to remind himself once again that she was, in fact, his wife. He went on, “Even had Lotta been the first victim instead of the fourth, that’s a long time between. But we need any background, any leads we can get. Can you look up all that?”

“Certainly, Professor Asher.” She folded her gloved hands primly in her rose twill lap and widened her eyes at him sweetly. “And what would you like me to look up in the afternoon?”

He laughed ruefully. “Gas company records for private residences that show abnormally high consumption? I’d like to get at banking records, but that means pulling F.O. or Yard credentials, and that might get back to Ysidro. Leave whatever notes you make in the message-drop at the Museum—I’ll keep them in a locker at Euston rather than at my rooms overnight. At the moment, I’d rather Ysidro and his friends have no idea the way my research is tending. And, Lydia—let me know if you run across any evidence that someone else is following the same trails.”

“The killer, you mean.” By her voice she’d already thought of it; he nodded. “Will you kill them, then?”

Something in her tone brought his eyes back to her face; its look of regret surprised him. She shook her head, dismissing her reservations. “It’s just that I’d like the chance to examine one of them medically.”

The concern was so typical of Lydia that Asher nearly laughed. “Yes,” he said, and then the lightness faded from his face and his soul. “I’ll have to for a number of reasons,not the least of which is that if I don’t catch the killer, sooner or later they’re going to suspect me of killing them anyway, and using the original murders to mask whatever I may do. They have to be destroyed, Lydia,” he went on quietly. “But if—and when—it comes to that, I’d better get them all, because God help both of us if even one survives.”

Asher got off the train at Reading, taking a slow local to Baling and then the Underground the long way round, through Victoria and the City, and thence back to Euston Station, to avoid being anywhere near Paddington when Lydia debarked. It was now fully dark. Staring through the rattling windows at the high brick walls and the occasional flickering reflection of gaslight where the Underground ran through cuts rather than tunnels, he wondered whether the vampires ever took the Underground, ever hunted its third-class carriages. Could they use its passages as boltholes, emergency hiding places safe from the sun? How much sun was fatal to that white, fragile flesh?

Not a great deal, he thought, crossing the platform and ascending the steps that led upward to the open square of night outside. Even with its door open, the crypt in Highgate wouldn’t be brightly lighted, looking as it did into the gloom of the narrow avenue of tombs.

As he reached the flagway, he felt a pang of uneasiness for Lydia, disembarking by herself at Paddington. Not that she wasn’t perfectly capable of looking out for herself in the crowd of a railway station, where she would undoubtedly have six or seven handsome young men fighting to carry her luggage, but his brush with Ysidro had frightened him.