Blood Will Have Blood (19 page)

“Where'd he go?”

“He grabbed Eddie's room. The kid was late. And when Eddie finally does walk in, he's not wearing his glasses. Method acting, you know. He sees there's someone else in his dressing room, so he figures he counted wrong. Goes on to the next room and blunders into Lady Caroline in the raw. Poor jerk couldn't even see!”

Spraggue chuckled. “Did she send him scurrying or attack him?”

“You should have heard the screams! I thought one of last night's rats was chomping on her toes. Karen came down and smoothed everything out. Eddie's sharing his room with Gus, poor slob.”

“Should we invite Gus in here?” Spraggue asked reluctantly. “It is bigger.”

“No way. Let the lunatics stay together. He'd just take it as an insult, Spraggue.”

“An insult?”

“Believe me. When he's like this, if you say hello to him, it's an insult.” Greg paused for breath. “That beard makes you look older. I like it.”

Spraggue changed the subject. “Time?”

“Four minutes to company call. Far as I can tell, Langford hasn't even shown up yet.”

Spraggue grunted, concentrated on lining his forehead.

“And Emma
is
here, so it's not that. She didn't happen to come with you, did she?”

Spraggue glanced up. It
had
been Greg in that car last night. “No,” he said evenly.

Footsteps echoed down the stone passageway, quick, loud, and angry. A door banged shut, swung open, and was firmly reclosed. Greg leaned out acrobatically into the hallway, turned back to Spraggue, and giggled.

“Judging,” he said, eyebrows elevated, “by the
dramatic
entrance, the
majestic
footsteps, the
lateness
of the hour, I would say that the great Langford has arrived. And it sounds like he's throwing a fit of his own!”

Emma Healey, lovely in innocent Lucy's pale blue, hurried past the doorway.

“Ah, love,” murmured Greg Hudson, “or should I say ‘Ah, lust'? Wonderful how these womenfolk do rush to their afflicted menfolk. No sooner had Grayling exited stage right in a huff, than little Georgina ran off to join him in his exile. Think I'll throw a tantrum and see who I get.… Deirdre's much too tall and grim.… Eddie, now, he's a dear, but so isolated, so lonely. And the stage manager's got a thing for him, don't you think? I don't suppose you'd come to my aid. I'm not particular. I'd take comfort from anyone, except, I think, Caroline. One has to draw the line somewhere.”

The whistling started down the corridor—low, mournful notes, no familiar tune.

“
Who
is doing that?” Caroline demanded, voice shrill through her closed dressing-room door. “Stop it at once!”

“Bad luck.” Hudson's face was grave. “Bad luck. Just what we need tonight.”

“You believe that?”

“Well, I don't whistle in my dressing room and I don't quote the goddamned Scottish play. And I wish to hell somebody'd stop that
whistling
!” He raised his voice on the last phrase and hollered it down the hallway.

The whistling ceased.

Greg took a deep breath. “See? That episode upset Caroline. But does anyone go off to soothe Our Lady? Not our boy Eddie. He finds her a predatory old hag. Not you. Not me. Now, if our great director were here, or our rotund house manager, you'd see another story entirely.
They
care: If this weren't Arthur's play, that woman wouldn't be
near
a starring role. You can see it, can't you? She's not that good. She lets them all take it away from her—Langford, Emma—hell, she just about
asks
you politely to please steal the damn scene—”

Karen Snow's clear voice interrupted Hudson's outburst. “Green room in two minutes, please! Two minutes!”

Plenty of time. Dracula didn't make his entrance until the middle of Act One. Langford could dress after the meeting. Spraggue zipped his striped medico trousers and pulled on his jacket as he strode down the hall.

Despite their paint and powder, the actors looked unnaturally pale. Deirdre's lips moved silently; she had trouble remembering lines. Georgina and Gus Grayling stood off to one side, whispering united against the world. Hudson looked even paler than he had in the dressing room. Last night's drinking bout, or a more recent affliction?-He was none too steady on his feet.

Darien arrived, to the actors' polite applause. Caroline, entrance neatly timed to follow the director's, came in and kissed Darien warmly. She squeezed his hand while he spoke.

Standard director's speech number two: thank you for your hard labor; give your all tonight.

Spraggue hardly listened. He kept his eye on his fellow actors. Emma Healey came in late. John Langford never showed.

The gathering was brief. Spraggue hurried back to his dressing room, knotted his tie, and powdered off his makeup.

The performance elapsed with all the sequenceless urgency of a nightmare. Scenes shot by, punctuated by applause. Lights dimmed, blackened, sparkled, dimmed again.

“It's not going too badly.” Standing in the wings, Spraggue felt Karen's presence before he heard her whisper and only then realized, how keyed up he was, every nerve primed for some new disaster.

“Did you notice the blooper Langford pulled?” she went on. “Must have skipped six deathless pages. Emma brought him right back, spoon-fed him the lines, while Caroline looked on with great cow eyes.”

“Wish I'd seen it,” Spraggue said.

“They'll razz him forever. The infallible British actor!”

Blackout. Karen disappeared. Spraggue flexed the tense muscles in his shoulders, took three deep breaths, walked onstage.

The curtain rose in darkness. Spraggue froze in his final scene position, stage right. Lights flared, glowing like a galaxy of sudden stars.

Greg Hudson spoke first, darting angrily around the set, searching the rocky crypt for the casket of the Vampire King.

HARKER
: The Slovaks brought the coffin in here! I swear they did!

VAN HELSING
: No exit.

HARKER
: We'll catch them! Make them talk!

SEWARD
: No time, Harker. The sun's almost down.

VAN HELSING
: Come, if the coffin was brought
in
here, it must
be
here. Perhaps a secret panel? A hidden room?

SEWARD
: A trapdoor?

HARKER
: Take that wall, Doctor. I'll try this one. Professor, tap on the floor. Mina, help me.

VAN HELSING
: She's weak, Jonathan. I doubt she can aid us.

SEWARD
: Stay with her then, Professor. Jon and I will search.

Search they did. Forty-five seconds of busy silence with all the classic elements: life-and-death conflict, good colliding with evil, and a time limit—urgency. Spraggue and Hudson pounded the set, stirring up clouds of dust, listening frantically, intensely, for a hollow sound. They strained to lift papier-mâché rocks, felt in crannies for secret levers.

HARKER
: How can we get in?

SEWARD
: There must be a way—something—to—

Caroline laughed, a low, cunning growl.

VAN HELSING
: She knows.

HARKER
: Mina.

SEWARD
: Help us, Mina.

MINA
: You poor petty fools! You think you can defeat him? Here, in his own land?

SEWARD
: Jon, take the pick. We'll break the wall down!

MINA
: Fools!

HARKER
: I felt something give! Keep working! The crack's widening!

With a snarl, Caroline threw herself on Hudson, tearing the pick from his hands. The fight was on.

All Hudson's careful choreography paid off. Caroline fought like a madwoman, shrieking abuse at the three men, determined to protect her Vampire Lord. Seward twisted the weapon from her grasp. Van Helsing caught her arms, pinned them behind her. The men carried her, kicking and screaming, downstage, away from Dracula's hidden lair.

Even the slap worked. Caroline turned with it, just at the crucial second. Great sound, no pain. She opened her eyes wide for one instant, sank to the ground sobbing.

HARKER
: Mina! Darling!

SEWARD
: She'll be all right.

VAN HELSING
: Quickly!

SEWARD
: The stake!

HARKER
: No time! The sun! The sun!

Feverishly, the three men broke down the jagged wall, exposing the secret cavern. Stage center—a platform. On it, raked so that the audience could see the ornate carving, the elaborate scrollwork—the coffin.

Spraggue and Hudson sprang on top of the dais, shifted the lid off the coffin, staggering with its supposed weight. The Vampire King lay exposed to the audience, majestic, forbidding. Spraggue noticed beads of sweat on Langford's brow and upper lip.

The Vampire King opened his eyes.

VAN HELSING
: Don't look at him!

Hudson's knife flashed in the spotlight. Spraggue drew his, pressed its blunt edge against Langford's neck. The chicken-blood pouch was in place; a crimson ribbon soaked through Langford's starched white collar.

Greg brandished his blade, grasping it in both hands. With a cry, he plunged it down into the Vampire King's chest. Blood welled up from the wound. Langford's scream changed to a moan, bubbled in his throat, and stopped abruptly. A gout of dark blood gushed from a corner of his slack mouth.

The actors froze. Spraggue's eyes met Hudson's, his hand reached for the stained knife.

The curtain fell.

Pandemonium!

Chapter Twenty-four

“Dammit, Spraggue!” Hurley shouted, pacing the corridor outside the dressing rooms. “Do you realize what you've done?”

Spraggue counted the cracks in the old stone floor.

“You were
worried
about something. Right, Spraggue? Nervous enough to get
me
here, anxious enough to have me lay free passes on off-duty cops! If I'd known we were being invited to a murder—”

“At least you're first on the scene,” Spraggue interrupted flatly.

“And headquarters'll sure wonder what the hell I was doing here, all dressed up and sitting on my fanny, while some guy gets knifed!”

“Look, I read it wrong, Hurley. I never dreamed there'd be a murder. I still can't believe—”

“Believe it!” Hurley snapped. “Langford's meat.”

“No accident? The knife didn't jam?”

Hurley lifted the weapon, carefully sheathed in plastic, from his inside breast pocket. “It's been printed and photographed. How's it look to you?”

“Normal. Except for the blood.”

“Heft it. What about the weight?”

“I only handled it once or twice,” Spraggue said slowly. Why did the knife seem so familiar?

“Try the mechanism. Carefully.”

Spraggue pressed the knife tip against the wall. It didn't give. He pushed harder.

“It's not a collapsible knife,” Hurley said. “Not anymore.”

Suddenly the memory clicked. Brass daggers, crosses etched into their handles.… “Send someone up to the director's office, Hurley. Crossed over the mantelpiece. Two knives.”

Hurley hollered upstairs, told a pair of heavy black boots to check Darien's second-floor room.

“You think the fake knife was modeled after the knives in the office?”

“Must have been. I should have realized—”

“Wouldn't a thing like this”—Hurley indicated the knife—“be checked before every performance?”

“It is. Send a guy to wherever you've stashed the crew. Have him yell ‘Props!' A woman will answer. She's the one who checks the knife.”

Hurley relayed instructions.

Spraggue dug his hands deep into his pockets.

“You okay, Spraggue?”

“No. If—
if
I'd thought someone was in danger, it wouldn't have been Langford.”

“Who, then?”

“Darien.”

“No use kicking yourself,” Hurley said grimly.

“Yeah, you'll do it for me.”

“Lieutenant?” Two pairs of black boots were ready to report.

“Foley?”

“One of the daggers over the mantel is gone. I took the other one over to Prints.”

“Okay. Smithson?”

The other pair of boots hesitated.

“Smithson?” Hurley repeated.

“She's not here. The props lady. Death in the family. Took a plane out this afternoon.”

“Who would have taken her place, Spraggue?”

Karen
.

He was saved from answering by a commotion upstairs. Several deep voices barked orders, a soprano defied them. Doors banged. Spraggue stifled a smile. Aunt Mary. He pitied any cop who got in her way.

“Uh, Lieutenant Hurley?” Black-boots peered down the stairwell. “Problem up here. Lady wants to talk to you.”

“About the case?”

Aunt Mary, pink and out of breath, pushed her way through to the bannister. “Certainly,” she said with asperity. “Now tell these men to let me in!” She caught sight of her nephew and beamed. “I found him, Michael!”

“Whoa. Slow down there, Mrs. Hillman.” Hurley took Mary's arm and guided her down the stairs, keeping her well away from Spraggue's warning glances. He propelled her into one of the empty dressing rooms and sat her down on a stool.

“I don't think my aunt knows what hap—”

“That's enough, Spraggue. Mrs. Hillman, you just told your nephew that you found him?”

“That's right, Lieutenant. I did. Just as you suspected, Michael. I came right over as soon as I—”

“
Who
did you find?”

“Arthur Levinson, Lieutenant. Associate professor of theater arts, Southern Methodist University. Have you ever tried to find a professor during summer break?”