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"Oh, Lord, yes," said the won identified as Minette as clearly as her accent indicated that the nainally been Minnie "That hair! A truer blonde could never have worn that vivid a gold-turn her yellow as cheese, it would But it just picked up the green in her eyes My gran used to tell me folk with that dark riarded Asher with eyes that were enorh without any evidence of second sight whatsoever, clearly sharp with business acuh he had shut the shop door behind him, Asher could still hear the din of traffic in Great Marlborough Street-the clatter of hooves, the rattle of iron tires on granite paving blocks, and the yelling of a costerainst the rhythed down the very slightly tinted spectacles he wore balanced on the end of his nose-spectacles whose glass was virtually plain but which he kept as a prop to indicate harmless ineffectuality-and looked at her over their tops "And did she tell you she was an actress?"

Minette, perched on a stool behind the white-painted counter, cocked her head a little, black curls falling in a terapes, on the ruffled ecru of her collar lace "Wasn&039;t she, then?" There was no surprise in her voice-rather, the curiosity of one whose suspicions are about to be confirmed

Asher hed audibly But he held off co hiht there was so a bit ruet up and about &039;til evening and are on &039;til all hours, but they do get days off, you know I always figured she spent them with one of her fancyin the evenings-between houses, she said I will say for her she always did make it worth my while, which comes in handy in the off season when all the nobs are out of town"

"Fancy h, and pro-duced a notebook in which he made a brief entry The blue eyes fol-lowed the movement, then nicked back to his face "You a &039;tec?"

"Certainly not," he replied primly "I am, in fact, a solicitor for a Mr Gobey, whose son was-or is-a-er-friend of Miss Harshaw&039;s-or Miss Branhame&039;s, as she called herself to you Did Mr Gobey-Mr Tho here? Or pay her bills for her?"

Tho of the cards of invitation found in Lotta&039;s reticule; it was better than even odds that, even if he were dead by now, the dressmaker hadn&039;t heard of it As it transpired, Gobey had, two years ago, paid seventy-five pounds to Minette La Tour for a gown of russet silk mull with a fur-tri else Lotta had pur-chased there, in the evening

Discreetly peering down over Mde Minette&039;s shoulder as she turned the ledger pages, Asher noted the names of other men who had paid Lotta&039;s bills, on those frequent occasions on which she did not pay them herself Most were familiar, names found on cards and stationery in her rooms; poor Bertie Westmoreland had disbursed, at a quick estimate, several hundred pounds to buy his murderess frocks and hats and an opera cloak of ao, he was interested to note, Lotta had purchased an Alice-blue "sailor hat"-Lydia had one, and it was nothing Asher had ever seen any sailor wear in his life-with ostrich plumes, which had been paid for by Valentin Calvaire, at an address in the Bayswater Road

He shut his notebook with a snap "The proble Mr Gobey has beeninquiries, his family learned that Miss Harshaho is not, in fact, an actress-has also disappeared At the et in touch with theht knohere they have gone Did Miss Harshaw ever come here with female friends?"

"Oh, Lor&039; bless you, sir, they all do, don&039;t they? It&039;s half the fun of fittings She came in once or tith Mrs Wren-the lady who introduced her to us, and a custo, poor woe and do fittings at night by gaslight-for a bit extra, which she was alilling to pay up, like the true lady she is"

"Do you have an address for Mrs Wren?" Asher inquired, flipping open his notebook again

The dress She was a young wo her clientele The shop, though narrow and in a not quite fashionable street, was brightly painted in white and priiness of its solitaryIt took a wealthy and established modiste indeed to live co the off season when fashionable society de-serted the West End for Brighton or the country-by August, Minette would probably have agreed to do fittings at

"Now, that I don&039;t, for she&039;ll pay up in cash In any case, I doubt they&039;re really friends Goodness kno they met in the first place, for a blind man could see Mrs Wren wasn&039;t her sort of woman at all- not that it&039;s Mrs Wren&039;s real naer, either She has a drunk-ard of a husband, on&039;t let her out of the house-she has to slip out when he&039;s gone to his club to buy herself so est you look up her other friend, Miss Celestine du Bois, though if you was to ask ave him a saucy wink " Miss du Bois is about as French as I aed to look frostily disapproving of the whole sordid business as he stalked out of Mile La Tour&039;s

The address given by Celestine du Bois on those occasions when bills were sent to her and not to gentlemen admirers-one of whom, Asher had been interested to note, was also Valentin Calvaire-was an accom-modation address, a tobacconist&039;s near Victoria Station and reachable froround Calvaire&039;s address in the Bayswater Road was also an accommodation

address, a pub-both vampires had picked up their letters personally

"Does Miss du Bois pick up letters here for anyone else?" Asher inquired, casually sliding a half-crown piece across the polished lance toward the back of the shop, where hispackets of Gentlemen&039;s Special Sort

"For a Miss Chloe Water man replied in a hushed voice and wiped his pointy nose "She comes in-oh, once, twice a week sometimes, usually just before we puts the shutters up"

"Pretty?" Asher hazarded

"Right stunner Short little thing-your pocket Venus Blond as a Swede, brown eyes I think-always dressed to the nines Not a loafer&039;ll speak to her, though, with the big toff what comes in with her half the time- Cor, there&039;s a hard boy for you, and never mind the boiled shirt!"

"Name?" Asher slid another half crown across the counter

The boy threw another quick look at the back shop as the owner&039;s bulky form darkened the door; he whispered, "Never heard it," and shoved the half crown back

"Keep it," Asher whispered, picked up the packet of Russian ciga-rettes which had been his ostensible errand, and stepped back into the street to the accoation of Lotta&039;s grave in Highgate yielded little It was a discouragingly easy ht- the narrow avenue of tos around it were absolutely deserted, silent in the dripping gloom Anyone could have entered and completely dismem-bered every corpse in the place uninterrupted, not just planted a stake through the heart and cut off the head

With the door left wide, a thin greenish light suffused the crypt, but Asher still had to have recourse to the uncertain light of a dry-cell electric torch, whose bulky length he&039;d sled in under his ulster, as he examined every inch of the coffin and its niche He found whatthe charred bones, though it was difficult to distinguish it froments of rib or tell whether it ood or bone-he wrapped it in tissue and pocketed it for later investi-gation It told hi he did not already know In a far corner of the tomb, he found a nasty huddle of bones, hair, and corset stays rolled in a rotting purple dress: the foruessed, of the coffin Lotta had commandeered

What remained of the afternoon he spent in a back office at theDaily Mail, studying obituaries, police reports, and the Society page,names with those on the list he&039;d assembled from the debris in Lotta&039;s rooms and from Mile La Tour&039;s daybooks Poor Tho sickness" only months after the purchase of the russet silk dress Asher noted the address-the Albany, which told hibroth-ers, sister, parents, fiancee

It had been disconcerting to recognize names on those cards of invita-tion which dated froo Poor Bertie Westay circle of friends who had sent her invitations or bought her trinkets, though he was evidently the only one who had paid the ultih Albert Westmoreland had died in 1900, the Honorable

Frank Ellis-another of Lydia &039;s suit-ors, though Asher had never own as late as 1904 Who kne many oth-ers had also kept up the connection?

He shivered, thinking how close Lydia had passed to that unseen plague then, and thanked all the strait-corseted deities of Society for the strict lines drawn between young girls of good faood fa the pretty,"

Lydia had been very young then Eighteen, still living in her father&039;s Oxford house and attending lectures with the tiny cluraduates interested in irls had dealt as best they could with the coradu-ates and deans alike-apologetic, frustrated, or defiant For the enuinely puzzled over her father&039;s blustering rage when she&039;d chosen studying for Responsions over a season on the London ht well have threatened to disinherit her from the considerable fah her supporter, had been scandalized by the direction of her studies Education for wo in ter up of cadavers and learning how the huans operated

Asher s how even the most anti-woman of the dons, old Horace Blaydon, had coh he&039;d never have admitted it "Even a da!" he&039;d bellowed at a group of ey he&039;d called Lydia a dairl everywhere but in the classes And the old ht, even had his son not been head over heels in love with her Staring at the obituaries spread out on the grilanced at his list of Lotta&039;s adht about Dennis Blaydon

Lydia was probably the last person anyone would have expected to capture Dennis Blaydon&039;s fancy, let alone his passionate and possessive love Bluff, golden, and perfect, Dennis had been used to the idea that any woard would automatically accept his proposal; the fact that Lydia did not had only added to her fascination Since the first time he&039;d seen her without her spectacles and decided that she was possessed of a fragile prettiness as well as great wealth, he had wanted her and had put forth all hisher, to Asher&039;s silent despair Everyone in Ox-ford, from the Deans of the Schools to the lowliest clerk at Blackweli&039;s, had accepted his eventual triuhby matrimonial lists as a matter of course Her father, who considered one intellectual h in the family, had been all in favor of it To Horace Blaydon&039;s query as to what his son would ith a woy laboratories, Dennis had replied, with his custo earnestness, "Oh, she isn&039;t really like that, Father" Presumably he knew better than she did what Lydiawas like, Asher had thought bitterly at the tied, brown, nondescript colleague of her uncle, he could only watch theether and wonder how soon it would be that all hope ofher a part of his life would disappear forever

Later he&039;d mentioned to Lydia how astonished he&039;d been that she hadn&039;tsuitor She&039;d been deeply insulted and deht she&039;d have been taken in by a strutting oaf in a Life Guards uniforrinned to himself and pushed the memories away However it had transpired, Dennis and his other friends-Frank Ellis, the el Taverstock, the Honorable Bertie&039;s Equally Honorable brother Evelyn-had had a close escape Lotta had known theood-looking, and susceptible How long would it have been before she had chosen an-other of theh years had passed for theet poor Bertie&039;s death?

What old score was Lotta paying off, he wondered, folding up his jotted lists, in the persons of those wealthy young men? He donned his scarf and bowler and slowly descended the narrow stairway past the purposeful riot of the day roo briefly to thank his reporter friend with a discreet reference to "King and Country"

Had it been some ancient rape or heartbreak, he wondered as he descended the long hill of Fleet Street, its crush of cabs and tra shadow of St Paul &039;s doainst the chilly sky Or irl who hated the poverty in which she had grown up and hated stillways and whose carriage wheels had thrownby Mile La Tour&039;s books, Celestine-or Chloe-seemed to be far more apt to pay for her own dresses than Lotta was, and the s were not the men of Lotta&039;s circle Their nah to supply her with two hats She was either more businesslike about her kills than Lotta, or siood vampire"? Like Lotta, did she savor those kisses flavored with blood and innocence? Did she make love to her victims?

Were vampires capable of the physical act of love?

The wo it, anyway As he descended to the Underground at the Teave onto the platforlottal vowels scrawling Whitechapel almost visibly across her painted mouth Asher tipped his hat, shook his head politely, and continued down the steps, thinking: They would have to feed so, to warm the death-chill from their flesh

Back at Prince of Wales Colonnade he returned to the now-neat cata-logue of Lotta&039;s finances Seated tailor-fashion on the bed in his shirt sleeves, he sorted through the bills, letters, and cards, arranged by prob-able date Mile La Tour had only served her vampire clientele for a few years, of course-the earliest entry for Mrs Anthea Wren was in 1899 Lotta&039;s pile of yellowing bills dated back through the nineteenth cen-tury and into the eighteenth, paid bydead to modistes whose shops were closed, sold, or incorporated with others&039;-a woman cannot keep the same dresse

There were only four names on the recent invitations not accounted for either in the obituaries or last week&039;s Society pages

There was a Ludwig von Essel who had bought Lotta things between April and December of 1905 and was then heard of no ht Lotta a yoked waist ofpeau de soie, embroidered and finished with silk nailheads, whatever those were, in March of this year; and a Chretien Sanglot, who had sent her a card of invitation to meet him at the ballet and who not only picked up his mail at the same pub as Calvaire did but, to Asher&039;s semitrained eye, at least, wrote in the same execrable French hand And lastly, there was so from the Napoleonic Wars and on notes of Baton&039;s finest creaned hi of a style not seen since the reign of Jaue while writing up a precis of his findings, lighting the gas so aware of it He doubted that the families of any of Lotta&039;s victis, but if Lotta and Calvaire had hunted together, her victiht be able to offer leads Lydia would undoubtedly knohere he could reach the Honorable Evelyn and Westain, he&039;d have to be careful-careful of the va his every move, careful, too, of the killer, and careful of whatever it was that Ysidro wasn&039;t telling hin Office habits prompted him to add a shorter list, just for the sake of off-chances: Anthea Wren; Chloe/Celestine Waterlot; Grippen And looking up, he discovered to his utter surprise that it was quite dark outside,

He hadn&039;t strolled for very long along the crowded flagways of Gower Street when he was suddenly aware of Ysidro beside him The valanced to his left and saw the slender form in its black opera cape at his elbow, he knew he had been there for so for his appearance, but it seeer re that and just coht about it for aall the exits fro"

The houses in Half Moon Street were Georgian, red bricksoot of the city&039;s atraciousness of hts in their s; in the gaslight, Asher could ardens-little roo to Number Ten, three-quarters of the way down the pavear-dener who had not been kept up to his work, and front steps that eeks orscrubbed-fatal, in London

"Housekeeping presents its own problems for the Undead, doesn&039;t it?" he remarked quietly as they ascended the tall steps to the front door "Either you keep servants or scrub your doorstep yourself-the s here haven&039;t been washed, either Every doorstep on the street is brickbatted daily but this one"

"There are ways of getting around that" Ysidro&039;s face, in profile against the reflection of the street lamps as he turned the key, retained its calmly neutral expression