The Delicate Dependency: A Novel of the Vampire Life (22 page)

“You handle this one,” Lady Dunaway said as we stepped down from the carriage.

I gingerly lifted the knocker, a large ring in the mouth of a brass Ming lion, and waited.

Nothing.

I knocked again and finally a short, plump maid with rosy cheeks answered the door. Her eyes were brown and her dark brown hair was drawn back in a chignon. She was in uniform and wore a fine ivory comb in her hair and a white silk scarf around her neck.

“
Monsieur?
” she said, looking quite shocked and surprised.

“Is Madame Villehardouin at home?” I asked.

“No,
monsieur.
May I ask who calls?”

“My name is Gladstone, Dr. Gladstone. Could you tell me when you are expecting your mistress home?”

“Later this evening,
monsieur.
Do you have business with Madame Villehardouin?”

“Yes, you might say that. I’m looking for my daughter, a little blind girl named Camille. You might have seen her yourself. She plays piano?”

“You would have to ask Madame,
monsieur.
”

“Ahh, yes... would it be possible to come in and wait?”

“I’m afraid not. I’m just on my way out to do the dinner shopping.”

“Very well. Perhaps we’ll wait a while out here then.”

“As you wish,
monsieur
,” she said, closing the door “Well, what do you think?” I asked Lady Dunaway as we walked down the steps.

“I don’t know,” she said, biting her lip nervously and staring at the house.

“She
is
going shopping for dinner.”

“
She’s
obviously mortal. The servants must eat, you know.”

“Well, the maid seemed very cool and collected, but I have to admit, something about her bothered me.”

“I agree,” Lady Dunaway said. “Shall we wait in the carriage a little bit?”

I looked at her inquisitively.

“She told us she’s about to go shopping. Let’s call her bluff,” she said.

We had sat in the cab for about fifteen minutes when the young woman, wrapped in a light black shawl, came out of the door carrying a wire vegetable basket. She completely ignored our presence as she strolled briskly down the avenue. “Let’s follow,” Lady Dunaway suggested as we paid the cab driver.

We walked a safe distance behind her, trying to keep enough people between us so that she wouldn’t notice we were trailing her. She strolled from vegetable stand to vegetable stand, casually examining the produce.

“What is this telling us?” I asked Lady Dunaway as we stood behind a vendor.

“Sshhh,” she hushed quietly. She looked around until she spotted several young boys playing in the street. As we watched one of them, a boy with short black hair and an oversized sweater sneaked up to one of the vendors and slipped a pear in his pocket. The old shopkeeper never saw a thing.

Lady Dunaway stole up behind the boy and placed a gloved hand firmly on his shoulder. He jerked and tried to run, but she held on. “My little
monsieur
,” she said, “would you like to make ten francs?”

He looked at her with wide and amazed eyes. “
Oui, madame
.”

She withdrew several coins from her pocket. “Then you see that young woman over there in the black shawl and wearing a white silk scarf around her neck?”

“
Oui
.”

“Do you think you could steal her scarf?”

He looked at the scarf. “It is fastened with a stickpin?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, it would be easy,
madame
.” He clutched greedily at the coins.

“No, no,” Lady Dunaway returned. “You get half now and half after you have succeeded.”

The boy slipped five of the francs into his pocket and nodded excitedly as he melted into the crowd. He moved with the swiftness of a cat, past the shopkeepers and old women, and finally up behind the maid. His hand darted out, the scarf flashed through the air, and he was gone. The woman gave a slight cry, but then quickly composed herself.

The young boy slipped up behind Lady Dunaway and exchanged the scarf for his coins. “Here,” she said, holding the cloth out. “Now go be a gentleman and return that young woman’s scarf.”

I accepted the square of silk and made my way through the crowd. I tapped the young woman on the shoulder and she turned around. As she stood there I noticed she was breathing heavily and looked a little anxious, even frightened. And then I noticed the discoloration on her neck. The smooth white flesh was bruised and a little swollen, not unlike the touch of an overly passionate lover. On either side of the elongated swelling were two festered holes, very red and scabbed with darkened blood.

The young woman glared at me as she snatched her scarf back and quickly strode off.

I excitedly returned to Lady Dunaway. “Did you see? Did you see her neck?”

“Yes, I saw,” she said, happily clenching my hands in hers. “We have found the vampire.”

“So what do we do now?”

“I think the first thing we should do is watch our Madame Villehardouin’s home tonight and see if she goes anywhere.”

“You think that’s better than insisting she see us?”

“Yes, we should see if she leads us to other households of vampire before we scare her away. It increases our chances.”

I agreed and that evening we passed the night sitting in a little square a safe distance down the street, watching the gray and pink stone house through opera glasses. It was a Friday night and the Avenue Victor Hugo was crowded with many hansoms and one-horse cabriolets. Occasionally I was eyed suspiciously by ladies of the evening, who wondered if I were a prospective client Lady Dunaway regarded them coldly. From a little bistro down the street came the smell of
café noir,
and every once in a while a waft of cheap perfume and black cigarettes.

The lights in the gray and pink atone house were put on at sunset and continued to burn brightly all the while we watched. At one o’clock in the morning the thoroughfare was still going strong. It wasn’t until three o’clock that the crowd began to fade. I was yawning a great deal by then, and getting very tired of sitting on park benches, pacing, and holding the tiny hard lenses of the opera glasses against my eyes.

“Look!” Lady Dunaway whispered at last as a young man in livery brought a black hansom drawn by two gray horses out of the mews beside the house. He tied them loosely to the herma and then stood at the side of the door, waiting.

The door opened.

For a moment it was impossible to see who the driver was talking to. He nodded several times, and returned to the mews, and at last the figure of a woman came into sight. Even though she was standing several hundred feet from us I could see her features clearly through the opera glasses. To my slight surprise she was an Oriental, of medium height, and wearing a long black pelerine or hooded cape. My first impression was that she was a mature woman, in her late forties. Her delicate, rounded face was starkly white; her lips, small but full, were quiescent, like the lips of a porcelain mask. Her petal eyes were scarcely more than slits. Two cherry wood combs kept her hair drawn tightly from her temples, allowing a few locks to fall about her ears in a manner that suggested erotic disarray.

I
say
she was mature because her visage possessed the linear definition and stunning dignity that can only be wrought by advancing years. However, as I gazed at her, her face changed, seemed to flicker in my mind, and I began to perceive another face. It was a youthful face, the countenance of a young girl scarcely more than a child. None of the woman’s features actually seemed to have changed. All the dignity and linear definition were still there. But the youthful presence faded in like a ghost, exuded a glow, a sensuality, silent but heaving, like the breath of lovers. It was an injustice to say she was beautiful, for she was a caliber above most beautiful women. A sublimity of human perfection born only once every hundred years. Standing in the surreal snow of the lime trees she seemed unreal—ink-brushed, like an ancient watercolor, a Lady of the Willow World.

She stood very motionless on the steps, listening.

“Do you think she’s a vampire?” I blurted out half under my breath. Lady Dunaway tried to hush me, but it was too late. The Oriental woman turned and looked in our direction. I felt a chill—it was too uncanny for her to hear at such a great distance. Her gaze cut quickly through the sparse crowd and came to rest on the opera glasses in my hand. She squinted, scrutinizing my face, and then Lady Dunaway’s, before the woman stepped up into the driver’s seat and cracked the whip at the horses.

Lady Dunaway turned about madly to hail a cab and we were off. Our adversary had gotten quite a lead on us, and it wasn’t until we reached the square, and paused before the Arc de Triomphe that we spotted the black hansom with the gray horses in the distance. “Catch her and I’ll double the fare!” I screamed at the squat little driver.

“
Pardon, mes amis
,” he said apologetically to his horses as he snapped them soundly and we ripped through the city.

We chased the carriage down avenue after avenue. In the dim glow of the paraffin lamps it was miraculous that we were able to keep an eye on her at all. It was the sound that usually tipped us off—down narrow streets and busy boulevards—the clatter of frenzied carriage wheels upon the cobbles. We lost sight of her for several minutes as we rode by the river. Then
we
saw her, crossing one of the most beautiful bridges in Paris, the Pont Alexandre, with its gold-plated ornaments and stylish lanterns. The hood of her carriage had snapped down and the black cape swept out in a flurry behind her. The wheels screamed against the stone as she crossed the summit of the hill beyond the bridge. Then there was silence.

We crossed the bridge, but it was too late. She was gone. In desperation we rolled slowly down the quai. It was to no avail. It was as if she had been swallowed up magically by the night. There was no sound. No movement. Nothing but the bridges of Paris and the Seine shimmering darkly in the moonlight.

“No!” Lady Dunaway cried as she clenched her hands together. “Don’t stop. Continue on to the Île Saint-Louis.” When we reached the little island we once again took up our slow and anxious search. After about twenty minutes we spotted a hansom with its hood down in front of one of the grand old homes on the Rue de l’Île. There were, however, no gray horses.

“Do you think this is it?” I gasped.

“I don’t know,” Lady Dunaway returned. “It looks like the carriage, but how can one be sure?”

The house itself was a sprawling gray stone giant with high-peaked, blue-tiled roofs. Its numerous wings were set at right angles to one another and seemingly enclosed the tops of archways and small courtyards. The windows of the rambling edifice were long, narrow, and heavily grated. A rusting system of rain gutters snaked over the entire structure, and I noticed there were gargoyles lining the cornices, strange gargoyles that looked like large squirrels or rodents, only possessing the beaks of birds or puffins, sitting on their haunches. Only the little round window above the door was lit. A small alley next to the house revealed a possible entrance to stables.

“The horses might be in there,” Lady Dunaway said, pointing at the alley.

We stepped down from the cab and bid the driver good night. We approached the house. Beneath the knocker on the large oak door was a brass placard. On it and illuminated by the glow from the streetlamps was the name of the house’s proprietor—one des Esseintes.

“No wonder it is not on our list,” Lady Dunaway murmured. “Only the entrance light is burning.”

I could scarcely contain my excitement.

“Don’t you see?” I continued. “It isn’t
Daysa’s son,
or
Desat’s son.
It’s
des Esseintes
.”

At last she saw the name as well, and an electricity swept through us. “Well, what do we do now?” I asked. “Can’t you guess?”

“No more waiting. I can’t take it.”

“I don’t think we’ll have to wait long.”

“Surely they’ve seen us arrive.”

“Nonsense. Our Madame Villehardouin is certain she lost us over the bridge. The residents of this house do not know that we found the postmark from the Île Saint-Louis. They have no reason to suspect we would search this tiny island for her black hansom.”

“What makes you so certain they’ll be leaving?”

“A feeling. An intuition. And besides, we’ve frightened them. We’ve discovered Madame Villehardouin, and I don’t think they’ll just sit still about it.”

Anxious and reluctant, I once again agreed to hide like a common criminal in a dark alcove of a building down the street. To my delight we had been there only a few minutes when the large and imposing door of the house opened and out came the Oriental young woman. Behind her followed another figure, also a woman, and then a man. In the darkness it was impossible to make out any of their features. I was determined not to make a sound this time and I held my breath.

The man vanished into the mews and brought out the Oriental woman’s two gray horses and hooked them up to her hansom. She got back in the driver’s seat. Then he brought out another carriage, and the two remaining figures got in. Both carriages drove off.

“Where do you think they’re going?” I asked.

“lb escort Mademoiselle Villehardouin home?” Lady Dunaway offered.

“How long do you think that will take?”

“At least forty minutes. That should give us plenty of time to go into the house.” She stared at my undisturbed face in the moonlight I said nothing.

“Aren’t you going to argue with me?” she asked.

“Our children might be in there,” I returned. “Now that they know we are on to them we must move fast before it is too late.”

We walked up to the immense oak door. Much to my amazement, Lady Dunaway removed an L-shaped tool from her ulster and inserted it in the keyhole. The lock began to rattle. As I shifted my weight nervously I marveled once again at my companion. I imagined her sitting on the rocky promontories of Cornwall and thinking of her child. The mere possession of the felonious little pick indicated she had thought long and hard about what she might have to do to recover her little Ambrose. I wondered how many locks she had practiced upon in her own home. I did not know. One thing I did know was that Lady Dunaway would not have ceased in her impressive studies until she was certain no common lock would stand between her and her son. I looked at the little pick glinting in the streetlight. The lock opened. She cast me one final anticipatory glance as she pushed the door open.