Blood Will Have Blood (10 page)

“Come closer!” the voice beckoned, tempted, as well as commanded. Spraggue searched for the actor, His voice came from everywhere, careening off the walls.

Lucy-Emma's voice was longing, yet afraid. “Nearer the edge? I dare not.”

“Fear not, my child, my Lucy. I will protect you. You
will
come.”

Slowly, the woman descended the twisting, rocky steps.

“No!” Darien's shout broke the mood. “Look
up
, Emma. Up! Focus on your vision of the vampire.”

“I'm afraid I'll fall. I'm not used to the steps.”

“Tell her Deirdre would be happy to try, Arthur,” Greg Hudson volunteered. “That'll get her eyes off the floor.”

“Shhhhh.”

The offstage voice continued hypnotically. “Come, my Lucy, my bride. Blood of my blood, you will be. Flesh of my flesh. Years have I waited since your image first enthralled me—”

“But Arthur,” Caroline Ambrose stage-whispered, “just look at her! She should be
virginal
, don't you think? Not
panting
.”

“Shhhhh.” This time the hiss came not from Darien but from Hudson. Caroline glared over her shoulder.

On stage: a materialization. The heavy cover of a sarcophagus shifted magically. Fog billowed from within. A black shape arose, back to the audience, cloak outstretched.

Spraggue searched for the familiar stage mechanisms, fixed on the area below the sarcophagus, carefully screened from audience view, postulated the hydraulic lift, the trapdoor. The illusion was perfect.

Arthur Darien's voice interrupted Spraggue's concentration. “You better get ready for your entrance, Caroline,” he said.

“What? And miss the sexy part?” Greg intoned to his giggling camp followers.

Spraggue watched as Caroline shot him a grim look, walked briskly up the stairs, and disappeared into the wings.

The Count, John Langford, majestic in profile, held out his arms toward Emma. Helplessly drawn to him, yet somehow repulsed, she moved unwillingly down the steps, awake but entranced. The scene was more ballet than theater. The principal dancers turned, eyed each other hungrily. Their hands met. As she neared the bottom of the staircase, the Count swept her off her feet. His hand stroked her hair, fondled her throat. She fell back in his arms, accentuating the line from long neck to swelling breast. The vampire bit. She sighed, cried out. Gently the Count draped her fainting form over the sarcophagus; carefully he loosened the high collar of her imaginary gown. With a flourish of black velvet, he leaned over her—

“Damn, she's good!” Georgina breathed from the back row.

Someone grunted agreement.

Spraggue found himself caught up in the action in a way he thought he'd outgrown. They were on fire, those two. Their eyes, the way they claimed each other—some of the best theatrical moments came in silence.

The Count smoothed Emma's fiery hair. His hand slid down her cheek, lingered at her neck, caressed her breast.…

A terrified cry from offstage shattered the mood. Caroline Ambrose made her entrance.

“Hold it!” Darien shouted. “Give them more time, Caroline! When John puts her on the bench, give him a full five count, even an eight. Better still, forget the offstage yell. Too distracting. Come on in silence. Let us get used to seeing you up there. Lights! Get a baby spot on her as soon as she enters. Not too bright. Then look around, Caroline. Right! Remember the fog. Try to see
through
it. You
think
you see her, but you're not sure. Right. So the cry is more
tentative
. Lovely work, John and Emma. Take it from the bench.”

“Think the Count needs a stand-in?” Spraggue was surprised to find Greg Hudson in the seat beside him. The brides of Dracula were gone. “They've got to get ready for the next scene,” said Hudson, “in case the master decides to go right on. We have to anticipate his moods.” Hudson leaned back in his seat, eyes fastened on the set. “They do work well together, don't they?”

Spraggue nodded agreement.

“Almost as if they'd been practicing a long time. Emma's a very busy little girl.”

Spraggue said nothing.

“I don't see how Langford could have managed it,” Hudson went on speculatively, almost to himself. “Not the way Lady Caroline smothers him with affection.”

Darien interrupted the scene again. Caroline had come in too fast.

“I wonder which of them will explode first,” Greg said.

“What do you mean?”

“One of the ladies is about to throw bricks. Probably Emma. She's keyed up, you know. Scared.”

“About the role?”

“Are you kidding? Look at her. She'll steal this show away from Caroline Ambrose without dropping a bra strap.”

“Then what's she afraid of?” Spraggue kept his voice low. He didn't want to disturb Darien, who stared so attentively, so single-mindedly at the stage.

“Nothing, I suppose,” Greg said. “Some phone calls.”

“Anonymous?”

“Yeah. The breather routine. Calls in the middle of the night. Usually I get the phone. Waste of the guy's efforts.”

“It's a man?”

“Man, woman. I can't tell. But it gets on Emma's nerves. She's having trouble sleeping.”

Is this meant to tell me that Emma confines her fornicating to you? Spraggue wondered. Warning me off? Spraggue searched Greg's intent face. His eyes never left Emma … or John Langford.

“Watch her!” Greg said. “Caroline. She's going to blow the scene again.”

Caroline made her entrance in the grand manner, distracted. She was panting, flushed with exertion. Her devotion to Lucy was such that she had run all the way from the house to the cliffs. She posed, tragic in the fog.

“Lucy!” she shouted, her voice too loud, strident. It broke the mood. Spraggue's eyes stayed with Lucy and the Count. Their passion was inspirational.

In his chair, Darien rumbled like a volcano about to erupt. Greg Hudson dug his elbow into Spraggue's ribs and gave a knowing nod in Darien's direction.

“Serves him right for casting the bitch,” he whispered.

“Shit!” Darien controlled himself with effort, started over in his most reasonable tone. “Caroline, dear, what I am trying to do here—” Spraggue remembered that voice from the old times in England. Darien at his angriest.

The harangue was postponed by a commotion at stage left. A brawl, it sounded like. Accusatory voices rang out. The stage manager demanded silence. Something crashed to the floor. A small terrier puppy, yapping furiously, bounded onto the stage, Karen Snow in hot pursuit.

“Caroline!” Darien thundered. “What is that creature doing in the theater?”

“Arthur, it's not my fault. I put him in my dressing room. Well, I
couldn't
leave him in that hotel room all day, could I? Someone must have let him out.”

The dog yipped.

“Just get him off my stage!” Darien yelled.

“I'm trying,” Karen answered through clenched teeth.

Caroline began a new scene. “Did you miss me, Wolfie?” she cooed down at the frightened animal. Her eyes searched the stage. “Eddie, is that you, darling?”

“God,” Hudson groaned. “Can't she leave the undergraduates alone?”

Eddie Lafferty appeared sheepishly from the wings.

“You'll help me, Eddie, won't you?” Caroline pointedly ignored Karen's efforts to trap the animal. “You can catch him. Don't panic him now,” she admonished the seething stage manager. “Just leave him be until I come down and—”

“Stay where you are, Caroline! I want this scene finished! Karen, get that mutt off the set!” Darien stayed seated, but his voice indicated that he wouldn't remain so for long.

The small dog was now pursued by the stage manager, Eddie Lafferty, and a stagehand whose name Spraggue didn't know. Caroline shouted advice from above, like some divine being. “He won't bite you. He's really very friendly. Call him. His name is Wolf. Don't hurt him. Don't scare him like that!”

It was Karen who organized the successful maneuver. The three pursuers cornered the panicked animal. Eddie scooped him up and displayed him like a trophy. Everyone else applauded, except for Darien.

“Thank you, Eddie dear.” Caroline ignored Karen's and the stagehand's contribution to the rescue. She came down a few steps. “Now just put him in his basket—”

“Stop!” Eddie's voice, usually so deferential, gave the order. “Stay where you are. Freeze!” He pushed the dog into the arms of the gaping stagehand, and raced up the uneven steps, past the platform where John and Emma sat hand in hand. He knelt at the first riser.

“What the hell is going on?” Darien demanded, standing.

Caroline placed a hand eloquently over her heart and gasped. She collapsed elegantly on the fifth step of the long twisting flight.

Eddie straightened up slowly, holding something carefully in his hands. Emma and John stared at it wordlessly.

“Will someone tell me
what
is going on?” inquired Darien.

“It's a trip wire,” Eddie said too loudly.

Caroline burst into beautifully orchestrated tears. With a regretful glance at Emma, John Langford took the steps two at a time to comfort her.

“A trip wire?” Darien repeated.

“A thin piece of wire strung between two nails driven into the riser.”

“But—” Emma began.

“Yes?”

“But I came down those steps, Arthur. You saw me. It wasn't there.”

“I picked you up before you reached the bottom step,” John Langford corrected her.

“Just the way you always do, darling.” Caroline's voice had turned to ice. “Emma wasn't in any danger. She knew that. She knew it when she planted the damn thing—”

Langford placed a warning hand on Caroline's shoulder. “Stop it, Caroline. You don't know what you're saying. You're upset.”

“Let her talk, John. I'm fascinated,” said Emma defiantly.

“How dare you, you—”

Spraggue stood up. “Arthur,” he said, “clear the stage. Get all the lights on and break for lunch. Karen, there's a leather case in my dressing room. Could you send someone to get it? And could you stay?”

Darien gaped. Then he shrugged. “An hour for lunch,” he said. “Be back at one-thirty. Now clear the set.”

Caroline sniffed loudly. “Take me down to my dressing room, John. I'm not hungry—”

Langford escorted the weeping Caroline down the stairs, gazing helplessly at Emma. It was Caroline's best performance of the day. She gave Emma one reproachful stare, kissed Eddie gratefully on the cheek, reclaimed her puppy, and allowed Langford to half-carry her from the stage. Spraggue restrained his applause.

The theater began to empty, though some of the actors hesitated, watching Spraggue curiously as he removed a magnifying lens from the leather case a stagehand had brought up. Darien was the last to leave.

“Well,” said Karen Snow, her lips tightly pressed together, “you asked me if I thought the other actors knew why you were here. They're not
that
dumb. They're on to you now.”

“Good.”

“Why?”

“The joker's been giving us warnings. I wanted to return the favor.”

“So he's warned,” she said. “What next?”

“Either he gets more careful, he stops, or he gets caught,” Spraggue said.

“I hope he stops,” Karen said.

“Not me. I'm starting to look forward to meeting this joker of ours. I hope the bastard doesn't quit.”

“Just make sure you catch him soon.”

Chapter Twelve

There were fingerprints on the riser—too many. Eddie's, of course, and probably the prints of the stagehand who'd set up the platforms and the carpenter who'd built them. Spraggue photographed them all, feeling vaguely silly. Now he'd have to fingerprint the entire cast. And he was certain the joker had used gloves. Everyone used gloves. He inspected the nails, driven in clean and straight. Could tiny Georgina swing the necessary blow? The wire itself, Karen identified easily; right off a roll in the electrician's booth. Kept on an open shelf in an unlocked room. Available to all.

Spraggue shook his head, disgusted. “You'd better go get some lunch while there's still time,” he said to Karen.

“What about you?”

“Not hungry.”

“Did the joker leave you another note?”

“Can't find one.”

“I'll bring you back a sandwich,” she said.

Spraggue went to pay a condolence call on Caroline Ambrose. Her dressing-room door was partially open.

Caroline was alone, standing in front of her full-length mirror. She preened, testing one famous expression after another. Her smile faded and her fingers gently massaged her temples, her forehead, desperately smoothing age-wrinkled skin.

The face reflected in the glass was a classic. Caroline Ambrose had huge violet eyes under arching brows, porcelain skin, delicate bones, a cloud of dark hair, and a sweet triangular smile. Cloying, Spraggue corrected himself, not sweet. A self-conscious smile designed to evade laugh lines. Appraising eyes that constantly searched, for approval, for weakness, for gain.

Caroline mascaraed her long lashes, replenished her scarlet lipstick, patted more color into her cheeks. She made Spraggue long for the uncompromising face of Karen Snow, not beautiful, but real. He much preferred the intelligence in Karen's eyes to the fake docility in Caroline's.

Spraggue rapped at the open door. Caroline was still engrossed in her reflection.

She turned, offered him a three-quarter profile and a madonna smile. It was one of her best. She was often photographed that way.

“May I come in, Miss Ambrose?” Spraggue said with what he hoped was the right touch of deference for a request from a second lead to a star.

Her triangular smile widened speculatively. She patted a place on the bench close beside her and beamed as he sat down.