Blood Will Out. Jill Downie
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I think I played my cards wrong there. Any advice as to how I can appease the lady?”
“Yes.” Elodie got up and started clearing the dishes. “Write a part for her she cannot bear to refuse. There are always more women than men in community theatre, and more competition for roles. Is there a good role for her in the play?”
She laughed, and removed the empty wine bottle from the table. Hugo had demolished most of it, also the first, and was now at the stage where his tongue was having difficulties shaping itself around his words. He was looking thoughtful.
“Not yet, but I haven’t started Act Two. “ His face lit up. “But I have the perfect role for her daughter!”
Liz, who was beginning to wonder when she could take her departure, but also whether she should leave her aunt with this weirdo who clearly wanted nothing more than to be left on his own with her, started to pay attention.
“Marla Maxwell?” Elodie asked. “Stunning girl, and quite a handful, from what I hear. Marie Maxwell might be very happy to have her occupied where she can keep an eye on her. Coffee?”
Liz settled back in her chair.
“Wonderful!” Hugo Shawcross slumped back in his seat, rocking his chair perilously as he stretched his arms over his head. “Mama can be good, and the daughter can be ba-a-ad!” It came out as a bleating noise, sheeplike rather than sexy, which from the glance he gave Elodie was what was intended.
“And what is this perfect role?” Elodie began loading the dishwasher as the coffee brewed. Her guest swivelled his chair around to face her.
“Lilith,” he said, with some difficulty. “Lilith, the greatest demoness of them all. Lilith!”
“Ah, Lilith.” Liz’s clear, resonant singer’s voice floated over the heads of Elodie and Hugo Shawcross. “Just about the oldest-known demon in folklore.”
Always nice to turn heads, thought Liz, and both Elodie and Hugo were now staring at her in surprise. She had her audience, so the little lady decided to hold forth.
“Of course, that is how men want to see her, as the betrayer of Adam left on his ownsome in the Garden of Eden, the baby-blood-sucking killer, seducer of men with her voracious sexual appetite, draining them dry. I think she got fed up with Adam pushing her around and got out from under. If you’ll pardon the expression. I think she’s great. In the gym change room I just chatted with Marla, fresh from the shower and in the altogether, and she’ll fit the bill perfectly.”
Liz smiled serenely and waited for a response. It came.
“Feminist claptrap.” Hugo Shawcross got up from his chair with some difficulty. His voice was shaking, with anger or red wine, or both. “In Sumerian mythology —”
“I thought that was now disputed.” Liz got up and went across to where Elodie was standing, holding the cafetière in stunned silence. She poured herself a cup of coffee, handed the pot back to Elodie and returned to her seat. “And after you’ve had great sex with an archangel, I doubt you’d want to go back to a mere mortal. I wouldn’t.”
“Coffee, Hugo?” The banality of Elodie’s query landed on deaf ears. Hugo was weaving his way to the back door, stopping en route to pick up his play-script.
Liz got up and followed him. Given Mrs. Maxwell’s enquiry and her recent conversation with Marla, it might be as well to make her peace with Hugo Shawcross. “I think a play about vampires will be a huge hit for the Island Players. Sorry I went on like that, but in my job you tend to question things all the time.”
“You are an academic?” Hugo looked as if, suddenly, this explained everything.
“No, far from it.” Liz laughed. “I’m a detective sergeant — I’m in the police force.”
At her words, Hugo Shawcross seemed to sober up instantly. “The police force,” he repeated. He mumbled a few words of thanks at Elodie, who rushed to open the door for him as he fumbled with the latch. On the threshold, he turned and said, “Not all about sex, vampirism, not all about sex.” He pointed a quivering finger past her in Liz’s direction. “In the end, in the beginning, it’s always about the blood.”
Behind him, an owl hooted with melodramatic timing.
“Was it something I said?” Liz was laughing.
“Where in the name of — Lucifer? — did all that come from?” Elodie sat down on the sofa in her little sitting-room, and surveyed her niece.
Liz held out the bottle of cognac Elodie had been planning to offer with the coffee. “Gandalf drank most of the wine, so I think I can risk a little of this in my coffee. Can I pour you some, El?”
“Please. No coffee for me. Are you taking some sort of university correspondence course in demonology?”
“God, no! I’m as ignorant as I ever was. Have you heard of Lilith Fair?”
“Can’t say as I have. Enlighten me.”
Liz poured them both cognac, came and sat down opposite Elodie. “It happened in the nineties, an all-female concert series, started by a singer I like — a Canadian called Sarah McLachlan. There’s a song of hers I came across when I was getting over — someone — so I looked it up, and got interested. But it was really about the music, nothing else. Shawcross said ‘it’s always about the blood,’ didn’t he. Outside of my job, for me it’s always about the music.”
“Apart from your — what did he call it? — your feminist claptrap, he seemed just as disturbed by that job of yours,” said Elodie.
“Didn’t he, though? Did he say anything before I came that might be useful?”
“It’s more what he didn’t say. He told me about his claim to be a vampire, but he didn’t mention his threat. Other than that, there was just the fact that he quizzed Marie Maxwell about the Gastineau family history and she clammed up. Or so he said.”
“Could just be he’s nosy, and Mrs. Maxwell pushed him away. Wasn’t there an old saying? The Brocks speak to the De Saumarez, the De Saumarez speak to the Careys, the Careys speak to the Gastineaus, but the Gastineaus speak only to God? That certainly doesn’t include the undead.”
“Speaking of the Gastineaus and God,” said Elodie, “I did just that earlier this evening.”
“You spoke to God?” Liz looked inquiringly at her godmother, whose religious scepticism was a source of some discomfort among certain family members.
“Almost. I spoke to a Gastineau, Marie actually, and put the cat among the theatrical pigeons. I’ll let you know what happens.”
“I’ll look forward to hearing about it, but I should make a move now.” Liz uncurled her legs from under her and started to get up.
“Stay and let that brandy go down a bit longer,” said Elodie. “Let’s talk of other things, anything else but vampires and demons. And blood. What was the song you liked? That had you researching Lilith?”
“It’s called ‘I will remember you.’” Liz grinned. “And you know what? I didn’t.”
After Liz had gone, Elodie went to her office and switched on her computer. “I don’t remember,” she said out loud at the screen. “I don’t remember.” She typed in “Lilith,” and sat there into the small hours. When she finally went to bed, it was the reproduction of a painting that stayed in her head, of Lilith naked, tossing her long mane of hair, a snake wound around her legs, one of its massive coils hiding her pudenda.
Sex and blood. Sex and blood. The three words drummed over and over in her head until, finally, sleep came.
Chapter Three
The police station in St. Peter Port had at one time been the workhouse, “La Maison de Charité,” a fine eighteenth-century building on Hospital Lane. Hospital