Anno Dracula - Kim Newman [34]
‘A cab will take you to Cheyne Walk,’ the Celestial explained. ‘This meeting is at an end. Serve our purpose, and you will be rewarded. Fail us, and the consequences will be... not so pleasant.’
With a wave, Beauregard was dismissed.
‘Our regards to your Miss Churchward,’ said Moran, leering nastily. Beauregard fancied he detected a moue of distaste on the Chinaman’s proverbially inscrutable face.
As the sportsman took him back up through the passages, Beauregard wondered how many Devils he would have to ally himself with to discharge his duty. He resisted the urge to demonstrate bravado by forging ahead and leading his guide to the entrance. He could have pulled off the stunt, but it might be as well to remain in the underestimation of the ring.
When they reached the surface, it was near dawn. The first streaks of blue-grey crept upwards from the East, and the seagulls drawn inland by the Thames squawked for breakfast.
The cab still stood in the yard, the driver perched on the box, swaddled in black blankets. Beauregard’s hat, cloak and cane were waiting for him inside.
‘Toodle-oo,’ said the cricketer, red eyes shining. ‘See you at Lords.’
11
MATTERS OF NO IMPORTANCE
‘Why so quiet, Penny?’
‘What?’ she blurted, shocked out of her angry reverie. The noise of the reception was momentarily overwhelming, seeming to resolve itself to a stage buzz of background chatter.
With sham outrage, Art rebuked her. ‘Penelope, I believe you were dreaming. I have been expending my meagre wit upon you for minutes, yet you’ve not taken in a word. When I try to be amusing you murmur “oh, how true” with a palpable sigh, and when I endeavour to add a sombre note in an attempt to secure your sympathies, you politely laugh behind your fan.’
The outing was wasted. It was to have been her first public appearance with Charles, her first showing as an engaged woman. She had planned for weeks, selecting exactly the right dress, the correct corsage, the proper event, the suitable company. Thanks to Charles’s mysterious masters, it was a ruin. She had been out of sorts all evening, trying not to revert to her old habit of wrinkling her forehead. Her governess, Madame de la Rougierre, had often warned her if the wind changed her face would set that way; now, if she examined herself in the glass for even the trace of a line, she knew the old biddy had not been wrong.
‘You are right, Art,’ she admitted, quelling the interior fury that always came to her when things were not just so. ‘I was gone.’
‘That hardly says much for my powers of vampire fascination.’
When he tried to look comically offended, the tips of his teeth stuck out like grains of rice stuck to his lower lip.
Across the hotel restaurant, Florence was engaged in conversation with a tiddly gentleman whom Penelope understood to be the critic from the Telegraph. Florence was supposed to be the leader of this tiny expedition into hostile territory – their sympathies were naturally with the Lyceum, and this was the Criterion – but she had abandoned her supporters to each other’s company. That was typical of Florence. She was flighty, and, even at the advanced age of thirty, a flirt. No wonder her husband disappeared. As Charles had disappeared this evening.
‘You were thinking of Charles?’
She nodded, wondering if there were anything in the stories about vampire mind-reading abilities. Her mind, she admitted, must just now be written in large print. She would concentrate on keeping her forehead smooth or she would end up like poor silly Kate, only twenty-two and her face already pulled out of shape by laughing and crying.
‘Even when I have you all to myself for an evening, Charles is between us. Curse the fellow.’
Charles, due to accompany the first-night party, had sent his man with a message, pleading off and entrusting Penelope to Florence’s care for the evening. He was off on some government business she could not be expected to bother with. It was most vexing. After the wedding, unless she underestimated her own powers of persuasion,