Chapter 32 #2
She gave another sharp bark of laughter.
“Oh, my dear! It was the easiest part I ever played. A bit of kohl around the eyes and a few dramatic gestures with a trick teapot. Suddenly, there I am, a four-hundred-year-old witch helping to keep a vampire alive. And they lapped it up, every last one of them! Not a speck of common sense amongst them.” She put her head back against the cushion of the chair, her expression thoughtful.
“It was Johnson’s idea to go after Harkness and Quincey—they’d bullied him terribly at school.
They thought it was all great fun, of course.
Their sort always think casual cruelty is just a very good joke and that schoolboy japes do not matter in the real world.
Johnson saw a chance to get his own back at them.
He pretended all was forgiven and forgot, and they lapped it like cream.
” She gave me a jaded smile. “You know why they were so susceptible to our little machinations? They were second sons and ripe for being singled out, told they were special. It was Johnson who spotted that. He was one himself. He said he’d never got past the resentment of everything going to his elder brother, and Miles saw the sense in it.
Second sons who were already aggrieved were an easy target, ripe as plums for the picking, they were.
We played upon the sense of injury, that somehow fate had been unkind in not putting them first in the queue.
I never failed to be astonished at how entitled they were, thinking that somehow, because they were gently born and male, the world owed them even more.
Not one of them understood they had already struck gold compared to the rest of us.
” She paused and her eyes met mine. “You have felt that sting, have you not? The lash of the whip because we are female and therefore lesser? Most women do not. They carry on, content to be silent accomplices in their own subjugation.”
“You played second fiddle to Miles Hegarty willingly enough,” I pointed out.
Her smile was mirthless. “Oh, and I will regret it until I die, believe me. I allowed myself to be a pawn in his games instead of setting the rules myself. Of course, I did not know it at the time. That was his true gift, Miss Speedwell. Many people are manipulative enough to coax you into doing what they want—how many can convince you that it is your idea? It is only now that I have thought back that I understand it was Miles who created the character of Asphodel. He conjured and cajoled until she was precisely what he wanted her to be. My hair is not even black,” she said with a brittle laugh.
“I played the part he wanted, and I thought myself lucky because he loved me. There is no fool so great as one who connives at her own destruction.”
I said nothing and her gaze sharpened. “I suppose you think I have received my just deserts.”
“I think you have been betrayed,” I told her honestly.
Her eyes shimmered, but no tears fell. She cleared her throat. “Thank you for that. Most women in your position would no doubt succumb to the temptation to gloat, even if only a little.”
“I am not most women.”
“Well, you have possibly too high an opinion of yourself, and that would be tiresome after a while, but I think under different circumstances, we might have been something a little less than enemies.”
“But never quite friends,” I added.
“Never,” she agreed. But she smiled when she said it. After a moment, the smile faded. “Perhaps if I had had a friend, she might have counselled me to abandon Miles when I had the chance.”
“Would you have listened?”
“Of course not. What woman wants to look in the mirror being held up to her and see a fool? But I knew. I refused to think about it. I would not acknowledge it, not even to myself, but I knew what was happening.”
“Miles and Seward Johnson?” I asked gently.
She nodded. “They were always shutting themselves away, having whispered conversations that broke off as soon as I appeared. I wanted to believe it was business, but I saw the way they looked at one another, and—” She broke off, pressing her lips together until they went white.
“I thought it was a passing fancy, some sickness in the blood, a fever that would break if only I could hold my ground. So I stayed. And I shut my eyes, and I pretended none of it was happening. Perhaps I was right. Perhaps he would have come back to me in the end, broken things off.” I said nothing to this, but it occurred to me that a woman who thought she could be content with castoff emotions was a woman who was not entirely honest with herself.
I realised then that she had left before Hegarty’s final, desperate act, and I steeled myself to tell her.
“Would you have had him back?” I asked gently.
“No!” The word was spat like a curse. “He does not deserve my love. I have left him, and I wish never to see him again so long as I walk upon this earth.”
“Then you will not,” I told her simply. I put another question to her. “It was Quincey, was it not? When he found them together, that must have set everything in motion.”
She nodded again. “Yes. He threatened to tell the rest of the society, to expose them as—well, you know the word. I do not have to say it.”
“But surely they did not tell you this at the time. You seemed truly astonished at the revelation of their affection,” I said.
“It was never acknowledged,” she said fiercely.
“That is how I was able to pretend it did not happen, was not happening. They told me Quincey had discovered some financial irregularities and was threatening to go to the authorities about it. I chose to believe them, and of course they were cautious enough never to let me speak to Quincey alone. They explained that he demanded money for his silence, but there was precious little to give him. It was Johnson’s idea to steal the Mortlake Jewel from his employer. ”
“A pointless thing if Quincey could not sell it,” I remarked.
She shrugged. “Quincey was greedy and stupid. The jewel would have fobbed him off, at least long enough for us to get away.”
“But you did not get away,” I reminded her. “You chose to kill Quincey instead.”
“Not me!” she protested. Vespertine stirred at her shrillness, and it was a long moment before Asphodel collected herself.
“Not me,” she repeated with stubborn calm.
“At least, it was not my idea. Miles and Johnson came to me and said they had had an idea for a sort of ritual to persuade the society of Miles’s powers. ”
“And yours?” I suggested.
“And mine. They noted that the moon would be dark, a perfect time to enact a ceremony, one that would bind the society in a way we had never dared attempt before.”
“Had you performed rituals before this?”
“A few times. Mostly on All Hallows’ Eve or a full moon.
We did them at Highgate so as to set the right atmosphere.
It was very effective,” she added with the fleeting smile of a showman.
“And the society members wanted to believe. All it took was a few black candles and a bit of mangled Latin, and they were seeing spirits behind every gravestone. Then I would give them a cupful of tea with my special herbs. The rest of the night would be oblivion. They would wake in various places with fractured memories of what they had seen and done. It was a simple thing to make them believe whatever we wanted.” She paused.
“Those nights also gave us the opportunity to suggest that they had done things—unforgivable things.”
“And were thus open to a bit of gentle blackmail,” I finished.
She bristled. “Nothing as crude as that, I assure you. We never asked directly for money to keep our silence. But we conjured shame in them, and shame is a powerful motivation. It bound them to us as the keepers of their secrets. And once they had tasted true deviltry, they were so much easier to manage. We had only to hint at something we needed, some bit of information or little favour, and they were only too happy to oblige.”
A sudden thought struck me. “And by involving them in Quincey’s murder, you made accomplices of them all. How exactly did you do it? Drug him with your accursed teapot? Then drag him to the cemetery for some unholy rites made up on the spot?”
“Something like that,” she told me. “Then Miles and Johnson handled the rest.”
I noted her delicacy in not describing the gruesome scene which must have followed—Quincey laid out upon the stone, his blood drained away as the others watched in—what? Horror? Fascination?
“The puncture in his neck was made after death,” I remarked. “To simulate the attack of a vampire. How did you drain his blood away? The wounds in the throat were too small.”
“His femoral artery,” she explained, her expression amused.
“My grandmother was a healer and taught me a thing or two about the body. I knew that if Quincey were nicked in just the right spot, it would pour out of him and the black of his trousers would hide the fact of it in the gloom of the cemetery. It was a simple enough matter to have a basin behind the stone to catch most of the blood. I poured it away later, down into the sewers.”
“Why bother? The others had witnessed the death.”
“They had seen an unconscious man laid upon the stone. We danced and chanted, being very free with certain libations that heightened the experience and fuddled the senses. After some time, Miles bent over Quincey, shielding him from view. When he rose, there was a small pair of punctures on Quincey’s throat and he was clearly dead.
Hey, presto! A vampire has slain a victim in full view of the society. ”
I shook my head slowly. “There is no greater deviltry than murder, and by killing Quincey in front of the rest of the society, they became your co-conspirators.”