Verse of the Vampyre (21 page)

The dog went on barking but didn’t seem to be coming any closer. After a moment or two, Grace expelled a long breath and abandoned the shelter of the passageway.

A few yards away stood a small tower. The tower stood separate from the main castle. It looked about two stories high, with slits for archers and an impenetrable-seeming door. Grace snooped around for a second more accessible entrance without luck. One door and no windows. A cheery place. This then would have been the prison of Lady Menteith.

She circled back to the door and jiggled the rusted padlock. Whatever was in there was worth locking up; so maybe it was worth investigating.

She pulled out Calum’s lock picks but found it difficult to keep the flashlight beam propped high enough to see the lock. It had looked pretty simple when Calum demonstrated how to burgle a practice lock, but the real thing proved to be more challenging. She picked and wiggled and prodded and jiggled.

Nothing doing.

Professional pride gave way to desperation. She found a rock and banged the padlock with all her might. After two blows its hasp gave, and it fell to the ground.

Grace pushed the door wide. Hinges screeched hideously, not a bad makeshift alarm. She waited, expecting noise of discovery or pursuit.

Only night sounds met her ears. Crickets chirped and frogs croaked in unperturbed chorus. Somewhere an owl hooted.

Gathering her courage, she stepped into the tower and pulled the heavy door shut.

She switched the flashlight on, then nearly dropped it. The beam illumed a veritable treasure trove of furniture and paintings. The chamber was stacked floor to ceiling with artwork and valuables.

So this was where the loot from the Innisdale robberies had vanished. When they had filled their larcenous quota, they simply loaded up the moving van and drove straight to Scotland. Then what? A private boat ride across the loch? That would explain the modern and businesslike dock in the cove.

Keep it simple, stupid, thought Grace. And this was so simple it was almost foolproof.

She stepped around a fragile Louis XVI painted vanity chair and snapped a few photos with her Instamatic, hoping the flash would provide enough illumination in the pitchy darkness. She did not expect to find the jewels there. They might have already pawned those, although it would be pretty fast work. More likely Cat would keep that stuff inside under lock and key. She didn’t seem like the trusting type.

In any case Grace wasn’t interested in the jewels.

She began to look for the Peeler.

Finding the bugle did not necessarily prove the Ruthvens had murdered Theresa Ives, but it would link the Ives theft with the other robberies. And that would be a starting point.

Since Peter had an alibi for the Thwaite robbery, he would be off the hook for the Ives job. That was a reasonable conclusion, surely?

At least, it would be perfectly reasonable if Peter weren’t hanging out with the villains at
A’ Mheirlich Saobhaidh
.

Grace refused to consider the significance of that, making as thorough a search as haste permitted. She looked inside vases, opened an assortment of trunks and caskets, shifted furniture.

The Peeler did not appear to be there.

But maybe that was to be expected. The Peeler would incriminate its possessor in murder. It would be wise to hide it—even to dispose of it.

Grace straightened up, playing the flashlight beam over the walls. At the far end of the circular room was a staircase. One set of stairs ran up. The second disappeared through a square opening in the floor.

Grace shined her flashlight down the stairwell, steps glimmering palely and vanishing into the inky void. She swung the flashlight beam up. Stairs disappeared into nothingness.

Grace started down the narrow steps.

She counted fifty steps before she reached the floor of the underground chamber. There was not a flicker of light there, and she could hear what sounded like water.

The room would have been where the Menteith women were held. Grace shuddered. It was like a tomb, cold and lightless. Briefly she wondered whether Lady Menteith had regretted her defiance in the end; she could not imagine watching your friends and family slowly starve to death.

Her flashlight beam picked out a large square tarp in the center of the floor.

Something appeared to lie under it.

Grace picked up the bottom edge of the tarp and tugged. It slid down to reveal dark hair, a high white forehead, and the staring dead eyes of Lord Ruthven.

She dropped the tarp.

It wasn’t the first time she had seen violent death, but familiarity did not improve the experience.

He couldn’t be three days dead, that much was obvious from the fact that he hadn’t begun to, well…decompose. He must have died recently.

She steeled herself, picked up the tarp and gave it another yank.

Death, the sable smoke where vanishes the flame.

All that intensity, all that prickly cleverness…turned to cold wax. Hadn’t she known all along that Ruthven must be dead? Why was she so…shocked to find him so?

The corpse wore no shirt. His waist was heavily bandaged in white. White splotched with red.

“But how?” she whispered. Which was foolish:
why
was the real question. Grace felt sick. The injury had been to Ruthven’s stomach, not his chest, and he’d died of that wound. They—his confederates—had apparently tried to save him. But in that case, why hadn’t they taken him to a doctor? It didn’t make sense. Why conceal the fact that Ruthven had been injured?

Grace dropped wearily down on the bottom step and reconsidered.

Who had attacked Ruthven?

The villagers?

I’m getting punchy, she thought, rubbing her forehead. Ruthven’s injury couldn’t really be the result of someone attempting to drive a stake through his heart.

From far above she heard the screech of hinges as the door to the tower opened—then banged shut.

G
race switched off the flashlight.

Would the beam have been visible from upstairs? There was no place to hide; the cell was empty except for the thing beneath the tarp—and nothing would convince her to crawl in with it.

If she could reach the upper chamber, there were plenty of hiding spaces provided by the crowd of furniture and art.

Staying motionless, Grace listened tensely but was unable to hear anything from above.

Had the intruder simply looked in and left? Maybe they thought they had left it unlocked?
They?
That’s right; it could be more than one person. But two people would surely converse—even if in whispers.

She listened so hard she thought her eardrums would pop.

Nothing.

Sweat trickled down her back. It was hard to hear over the rush of blood throbbing in her temples. What was he waiting for? Why didn’t he come down here?

The darkness was thick and smothering against her face. It was like being deprived of all sight or sound or senses. Suddenly she understood Peter’s aversion to small, enclosed spaces. She had to get out of the cell.

Feeling her way blindly, she moved up to the next step. She took the stairs one at a time, moving in a kind of crawl, balancing on fingertips and toes.

Step.

Pause.

Step.

Pause.

She reached up into air and knew she was at the top of the stairs. The darkness seemed thinner, the air cooler.

She crawled into the upper chamber, the whisper of her knees on stone vibrating like a shriek in her consciousness.

Was she alone? Had he gone?

Scooting quietly onto the floor, she reached unseeing and felt for the wall. Carefully she stood, using the clammy stone to orient herself. She hoped she didn’t step back into the stairwell.

Grace took another step forward. All at once she knew for certain with a kind of atavistic sense that he was still there.

She was not alone.

Motionless, she tried to control her breathing. She willed herself to be invisible, but she knew the other must be as aware of her as she was of him.

A voice spoke, dulcet tones as loud as a shot in the fraught silence. “Thou art unseen—but yet I hear thy shrill delight,” quoted Peter.

Which explained why he had not followed her into the lower chamber. Peter was claustrophobic.

Grace stepped back, her foot gritting the surface of the stones. She took another step, then nearly shrieked as a hand closed on her arm. The sound, smothered by the other hand that clamped over her mouth, came out as a squawk.

Peter shushed her softly, his breath warm against her ear.

Grace stopped struggling. She stood quietly, feeling his body down the length of her own. Then, to her surprise—and possibly his own—his lips found the curve of her throat. He kissed her, his mouth like hot velvet on her sensitive skin.

Grace shivered. She tried to think of something to say. Nothing very intelligent came to mind—and his hand was still over her mouth in any case.

She was sorry when he raised his head.

“What are you doing here?” His voice was so soft she wondered if she imagined it.

“I had to know…”

“And now you know.”

She shook her head, stubbornly refuting the obvious.

The door to the chamber swung open. A flashlight beam struck Grace in the face. She flinched. Peter’s hold had changed, grown impersonal and imprisoning.

“And what is it you are doing in here?” The figure bristling in the moonlight was short and burly, his bald bullet head giving the impression of a bad-tempered genie. His tone changed almost instantly. “What the—?”

“Look what I found,” Peter said smoothly, giving Grace a little push forward.

Donnie Hood swore.

“Is she alone? She canna be. How the hell did she get in here?”

“I hate to say I told you so,” Peter said, “but—”

“Shut up, you!” Donnie grabbed Grace by the arm and hauled her out of the tower.

With Peter bringing up the rear, he half dragged, half marched Grace through a maze of broken buildings and overgrown gardens toward the main keep.

Grace did her best to map their journey in her mind. To the west was the dim outline of what had to be the old gun battery, which meant that this long uneven stretch of lawn must be the bowling green.

A single light burned in the tower window. It looked like the cover of those Gothic romances she had read as a girl. I should have worn my negligee, Grace reflected.

They cut through the ruins of another long building and went up some stairs, bypassing what appeared to be a sunken garden. Grace was totally lost. She glanced skyward to try and figure out where she was in relation to the stars.

“The lion’s den,” Peter informed her. “Like so many of their contemporaries, the Ruthven lairds kept exotic wild animals.”

At Grace’s quick look, he added, “The last lion died back in the twenties.”

Grace’s captor growled something about bloody
sassunachs
and bloody tours.

Out of the corner of her eye Grace saw something. She turned her head in time to watch a shooting star slide down the sky.

“A lucky omen,” Peter murmured.

The other man grunted.

“The chapel,” Peter said, as they reached what appeared to be one of the L-branches of the main keep.

Grace’s companion swung around like a bull ready to charge, his massive fist still clamped around Grace’s arm.

“You shut your face! I know what you’re about!”

Grace wished she did.

“Whatever you say, old boy.” Peter sounded unruffled.

They made the rest of the trip in silence broken only by the scrape of their feet on rock.

Catriona was in the safari room. She was not alone. In fact there appeared to be a council of war in progress. Or perhaps just a war—albeit a small one.

“I don’t give a damn what you think, Donnie Mac,” Catriona’s voice carried down the hallway, “nor Little Donnie either. I still call the shots here.”

“I don’t trust him!” This was a shaggy red-haired giant who reminded Grace of one of those Highland cattle—minus the horns.

They had been arguing at the top of their voices. The deerhound lay by the fireplace growling softly, but they all broke off when Grace and her companions appeared in the doorway.

Catriona went very still at the sight of Grace. Her eyes seemed to turn yellow. She pronounced a word in Gaelic that sounded extremely unladylike.

“She knows. She was in the tower.” Donnie Hood, the one who looked like one of Mr. Clean’s ne’er-do-well relations, grabbed Grace’s bag from Peter and threw it to Catriona. “He was in there, too.”

Catriona cocked her head Peter’s way.

“Don’t exaggerate,” Peter told Little Donnie, who began to splutter.

Catriona ignored their exchange, dumping the contents of Grace’s bag on the sofa. She examined the camera, raised an eyebrow, and tossed it to the table. She unpeeled the paper around the dog bone.

“How thoughtful.”

The deerhound investigated. Catriona moved the bone away from his nose. She made short shrift of the remaining items. Studying the picklocks, she laughed.

“You’re a bad influence,” she informed Peter.

He shrugged.

Her gaze returned to Grace. She seemed to consider her for a long moment. Grace felt the hair at the nape of her neck rise.

But all Catriona said was, “Lock her up.”

The kitchen was on the basement level of the keep. It was a long primitive hall amidst a rabbit warren of supply rooms, vaults and chambers. There was a giant central hearth with a black cauldron big enough to take a bath in, which looked as though it had not been used for some time, either for cooking or bathing. There was also a modern-looking stove and refrigerator.

Donnie Hood opened a door and thrust Grace into a small room. He locked the door behind her.

She listened to his footsteps walking away. Now what? For a moment or two Grace stood there, then common sense asserted itself, and she felt around till she found a light switch.

She was in a pantry. The deep storage shelves were stocked with linens, china, assorted household goods. She opened a drawer and there were piles of silverware. Not stainless, not silver plate: solid silver.

The door banged open just as Grace was palming a butter knife.

“Where is it?” This was the red-haired Donnie, the piper; and he had the lungs for it, given the way he bellowed at her.

“Where’s what?” Grace was guiltily conscious of the knife up her sleeve.

“The bloody bugle. The Peeler.”

“I don’t know.”

That appeared to be the wrong answer. He pulled her out of the pantry. In the main kitchen stood Little Donnie. They escorted her back upstairs.

Catriona was pacing back and forth before the fireplace. Peter leaned against the wall watching her.

Another man sat on the sofa.

Even before he turned her way she recognized the back of his blond head and the set of his broad shoulders. He faced her, and she stared at his handsome, chiseled features.

Derek Derrick?

Her first and foremost thought was that he was a better actor than she had given him credit for. Or she was a worse sleuth.

Now he smiled, but there was no warmth in his eyes.

“Hallo, Grace.”

“Looks like the gang’s all here,” Peter remarked.

Was he trying to tell her something? Grace’s brain felt sluggish. Two and two seemed unreasonably complex.

A slide show seemed to play across the blank screen of her memory: Derek diving to Catriona’s rescue when the trapdoor gave way; Derek staying behind when Catriona’s saddle broke; Derek everywhere Catriona was, despite his professed antipathy.

Derek who had provided the equivalent of a letter of introduction for the Ruthvens.

He rose, coming toward her, and Grace instinctively stepped back.

“Where is it, Grace?”

“I don’t know.”

“We need that horn. We’re going to get it from you, whatever it takes.”

Donnie MacDhomnuil shoved her forward. She stumbled, and Catriona caught her by the arm, saying flatly, “I’m going to count to three, and if you don’t tell me where it is, I’ll break your little finger.”

Instinctively, Grace made her hands into fists, trying to protect her fingers. “I don’t have it! You searched my bag.”

Like a playground bully, Catriona pushed her back toward Derek. “Search her.”

“I think it would be rather difficult to conceal on one’s person,” Peter pointed out lazily. “Those unsightly bulges. Or bugles.”

“Search her,” Catriona repeated.

Grace struggled. It was instinctive. She knew she wasn’t going anywhere.

When she risked a peek his way, Peter’s face was impassive. His own position seemed to be precarious, unless she misunderstood some of the crooks’ comments to each other; even so it was hard not to look to him for help.

Derek’s hands slid over her breasts, her hips. It was humiliating, which was no doubt the point. He patted her down roughly and the butter knife fell out of Grace’s sleeve, clattering on the flagstones. Peter laughed.

“Brilliant!” Catriona exclaimed. She glared at her henchman, who stared at his feet.

“Where the hell did you hide it?” Derek demanded.

“I couldn’t find it!”

She wrested her arm away as Derek tried to grab her. “So help me God, I’ll do more than break your finger,” he threatened.

Peter moved between them. “No fair. Two against one.”

Derek halted. “What about him?” He jabbed his thumb at Peter. “He could have taken it.”

There was an interesting silence.

“He’s in this as deep as we are,” Catriona said with a glance at Grace.

“Not quite,” Derek said. “There’s a crucial difference, and let’s not forget it.” There was a note in his voice…Anger? Desperation? Grace struggled to classify the emotion underlying his words and was startled by her own conclusion.

“You killed Lord Ruthven!”

It was a guess, but Derek recoiled.

“Of course.” She gained conviction. “It had to be someone familiar with the theater, and someone strong enough to carry a body out. Someone strong enough to impale—”

“It was an accident,” Derek exclaimed. “It was self-defense.”

Peter sounded interested. “Which was it, an accident or self-defense?”

Derek cast him a baleful look. “Both.”

“You do seem to have your share of accidents.” Peter sighed. “Not like the good old days, is it?”

“Shut up, Derry,” Catriona warned the other man as his face darkened. “Let’s stick to finding the Peeler.”