A Christmas Homecoming - Anne Perry [37]
“Of course you didn’t,” she said, surprised at how calm she sounded. “It’s probably to do with Netheridge, not us, but we must be prepared to deal with whatever happens.” She smiled bleakly. “You know, I’m really very angry. We had finally made a decent play of it, and now we can hardly perform it, given the circumstances. Added to which, I very much liked Mr. Ballin, odd as he was.”
hey were all present at breakfast, which was a silent and unhappy meal. It was clear that no one had slept well. When it was completed, Mr. Netheridge announced that it was time to move Ballin’s body. There was an appropriately cold room on the outside wall of the house, he said, that was often used for storing meat, at times when the icehouse would have been too cold.
Obediently they rose and followed him across the hall to the corridor door. He turned the lock, swung the door open, and then—after taking a deep breath—set off at a brisk pace. They followed obediently, Mercy and Lydia a step or two behind the rest. For the first time that Caroline had observed it, they seemed to cling to each other as if they were the friends that Mina and Lucy were in the play.
They rounded the last corner and saw the stretch of linoleum floor ahead of them; the pool of dark blood on the floor; the long shaft of the broom handle, sharp, scarlet-ended; but no corpse.
Netheridge stopped abruptly.
Douglas Paterson swore.
Mercy screamed, loud and piercingly sharp.
Lydia quietly slid to the floor in an awkward heap.
Douglas swiveled around, saw her, and went to her anxiously, calling her name and trying to raise her in his arms.
James went to Mercy, catching her hands, which she was waving around. “Stop it!” he said loudly. “It’s all right! He’s not here. There’s no danger at all.”
“No danger?” she shrieked. “He was dead, someone murdered him, with a stake through the heart, and now he’s not there anymore, and you say there’s no danger? Are you mad, or stupid? I told you there was something wrong with him, terribly wrong. He came here out of the night and during a storm just like the one that brought Dracula’s coffin ashore.” Her voice was getting louder and more high-pitched. “He knew everything about vampires, more than we did, more than Bram Stoker did. He was dead and locked in, and still he escaped. He wasn’t dead, you fool! You can’t kill him, he is the ‘undead.’ ”
White-faced, Eliza turned to Caroline.
Caroline stepped forward. “Mercy!” she said abruptly. “You are not helping anyone by being hysterical. If you really want to step out of reality into Mr. Stoker’s book, then for goodness sake live up to the character you chose to play. Mina Harker would never have been so peevish and cowardly, and she was faced by a real vampire who was determined to kill her. Mr. Ballin, poor man, is dead and can do you no possible harm, even if he wanted to. Take hold of your emotions and stop making such an exhibition of yourself. We need to think very clearly what to do if we are to defeat whatever evil is lurking here.”
“Evil!” Mercy repeated the word with a loud wail.
“Stop shrieking!” Caroline commanded. “I would be delighted to have an excuse to slap your face. If you insist on giving it to me, I shall take it, I warn you.”
Mercy fell instantly silent.
“Thank you.” Caroline’s voice was tart. She turned to Netheridge. “There is no point in our standing here. Clearly the body has been moved. Since there is no one in the house except us and the servants, you had better find out if one or two of them came here and found him and, perhaps out of decency, felt obliged to move him somewhere else. One thing is absolutely certain: He did not remove himself, either as a man, or as a bat or a wolf, or anything else supernatural. If you don’t want all the maids in hysterics, and possibly the footmen as well—or, worst of all, the cook—then you had better be very circumspect as to how you do it.”
“Yes,” he agreed, as if he had thought of