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Seven years is a long time," The Honorable Evelyn West down into its ht depths Across the table froh

"I know," she said softly and rested her hand on the table, close enough to his to let him know that, had she not been married, he could have covered it with his The plued sunset clouds, moved as she leaned forward; froed like the slientle-she could see hiht, but had decided that in this case it was better to look well than to see well Besides, she had learned how to interpret the ns "Believe me, I wish I could let the e of bitter distaste in his voice "It&039;s not the sort of thing you should be asking about Mrs Asher" The soft lips, fleshy as those of some decadent Roman bust, pinched up Past him, the red-and-black shape of one of Gatti&039;s well-trained waiters glided by and, though it ell past the hour when teas ceased being served, fetched a little more hot water, which he soundlessly added to the teapot at Lydia&039;s elbow, and removed the ruins of the little cake-and-sandwich plate The restaurant was beginning to smell of dinner now rather than tea The quality of the voices of the few diners co in was different; the women&039;s indistinct forms were colored differently than for daytime and flashed with jewels Beyond the square leads of the panes, a misty dusk had fallen on the Strand

Those seven years, Lydia reflected privately, had not been particu-larly kind to the Equally Honorable Evelyn He was still as big and burly as he&039;d been in those halcyon days of rugger s; but, even without her specs, she could tell that under his i he&039;d put on flesh When he&039;d taken her arm to lead her to their little table, Lydia had been close enough to see that, though not yet thirty, he bore the cruray eyes, the bitter weariness of one who does not quite knohat has gone wrong; his flesh s man who had so assiduously offered her his arer Dennis Blaydon&039;s puppylike brother-in-arainst all comers on the field Even back when she&039;d been ood looks, Lydia had found his conversation stilted and boring, and it orse now It had taken nearly an hour of patient chitchat over tea to relax him to the point of, she hoped, confidences

She looked down at her teacup, fingering the fragile curlicues of its handle, aware that, with her eyes downcast, he was studying her face "Howdid he die, Evelyn?"

"It was a carriage accident" The voice turned crisp, defensive

"Oh," she said softly "I thought I&039;d heard"

"Whatever you heard," Evelyn said, "and whoe accident I&039;d rather not"

"Please" She raised her eyes to his once more "I need to talk to you, Evelyn I didn&039;t knoho else I could ask I sent you that note asking to meet er flicked at the edges of his tone "She had nothing to do with it He died in a"

"I think a friend of otten involved with her"

"Who?" He , the wary inflection re ready to say things like "station in life" and "not done"

"No one you know," Lydia sta things over in his mind with the slow deliberation she had reh he had been, had always been the brighter brother Then he said slowly, "Don&039;t worry about it, Lydia Mrs Asher Truly," he addedthe pucker of worry be-tween her copper-dark brows "I You see, I heard recently that that so her Of course, you were barely out of school when Bertie was found when Bertie died, and there was a lot we couldn&039;t tell you But she was a pernicious woo I er I ave her one" He didn&039;t look at her as he spoke

E else?

Truly?" She leaned forward a little, her eyes on his face, trying to detect shifts of expression without being obvious about it

She heard the weary distaste, the revulsion in his voice as he said, "Truly"

She let another long pause rest on the scented air between the," she added, as the Equally Honorable Evelyn puffed himself up preparatory to expos-tulation on the subject of curiosity unseemly for a woman of her class and position "You know I&039;ve beconation, as if he&039;d had the right to forbid it, and she&039;d flouted his authority anyway "Though I really can&039;t see how Professor Asher, or any husband, could let his wife"

"Well," she continued, cutting off a too-faerness, "in my studies I&039;ve come across two or three cases of a kind of nervous disorder that res I-my friend-told me about this-this woot his interest, as she&039;d found it got nine people&039;s out of ten, even those who considered her authority for the accusation an affront to their manhood He leaned forward, his watery eyes intent, and she reached across the small table with its starched white cloth and took his chubby hand in both of hers, "But I haven&039;tto talk about it Evelyn, please I do need your help"

In the cab on her way back to Bruton Place she jotted down the main points of the subsequent discussion-it would have looked bad, she had decided, to be taking notes while Evelyn was talking, and would have put him off his stride The waiters at Gatti&039;s, well-trained, had observed the intentness of the discussion between the wealthy-looking gentleirl, and had tactfully let the they probably would not have done had she been scribbling notes

The interview had been frustrating, because Evelyn was as much wrapped up in sports-and now in the stock market-as his brother Bertie had been in clothes and fashion and was grossly inobservant of anything else, but with patient questioning she&039;d been able to piece certain things together

First, Lotta had been seen as early as an hour after sunset, when the sky was still fairly light-Evelyn had thought that was in spring, but wasn&039;t sure

Second, soh it was difficult to tell by gaslight-indicating that so the Honorable Bertie and his friends Evelyn did not remember whether she had ever been rosy on those occasions upon which she had met them early, which would indicate that she had ris enjust after sunset to hunt

Third, she often wore heavy perfu different froht have a different odor, though a very faint one-she tried not to think about the seness that had touched her nostrils in the dark of the Covent Garden court

Other than that, he&039;d thought there was soernails, he couldn&039;t say what And her eyes, but he couldn&039;t say what either, so had fallen back on "an expression of evil," which was no help toward clinical analysis

About the circumstances of his brother&039;s death he would not speak at all, but Lydia guessed, fro, that when Lotta finally killed her victied for the body to be found in circu, such as dressed in wo, or in an alley behind an opiu

And lastly, Evelyn had told her that Bertie had once had a charold hair It was still as He would send it to her by thepost, to the accommodation address where she picked up herthe crowded pave abstractedly out at the blurred yellow halos of the street laainst theseehtly unreal; o towers loomed out of it, their knife-board advertisements for Pond&039;s Arthriticus or Clincher Tires-Still Unequaled for Quality and Dura-bility-transforloom

When the cab reached Number 109 Bruton Place, Lydia paid the driver off quickly and hurried inside, displeased to find her heart racing with a swift, nervous fear She found she was beco outside, even for a few moments, after dark

The room to which the vampires took Asher was a cellar, not of Ernchester House but of a deserted shop whose narrow door opened into the blackness of the lane Ernchester produced the keys to its two padlocks from a waistcoat pocket and led the way into a tiny back roo an old soap-stone sink in one corner, whose rusty puainst the dim yellowish reflection of the , had the appearance of so in the darkness An oil lahted it and led the way to another door nearly hidden behind the crates, whose padlock and hasp had been ripped off with a crowbar-recently, by the look of the gouges in the wood The sulf them as they descended the hairpin spiral of stairs to a cellar, certainlyabove; probably deeper, he thought, glancing at its far end, nearly obscured in shadows, and beyond a doubt older Rough-hewn arched bea of smoke-stained stone; just below them, at the other end of the room, two pairs of locked shutters indicated s either at street level or set into a light well just below it

"They&039;re barred behind those shutters," the Earl re-barreled key froet the padlocks on theood Chloe, ood as to fetch Dr Asher&039;s coat? And irl shot him a look that was both sullen and annoyed, childish on that angelic face &039;&039;Don&039;t trust et &039;eins within half a dozen streets of the Church of St Mary-Le-Bow She threw a glance back at Asher in the flickering light of the oil lah the rooivin&039; yourself airs over that bit o&039; tin you got hung round your gullet, Professor-we can drink from the veins in your wrists, you know"

She raised Asher&039;s wrist to her mouth, pressed her cold lips to the thin skin there in a s kiss Then she turned and with barely a rustle of her silk petticoats was gone in the darkness

Asher becah the cellar was dry, it was intensely cold Beside hi at the narrow black slot of the door through which Asher knew the girl h he had not seen her do so She, like Ysidro, ely unseen

"An impertinent child" Ernchester frowned, his sparse brows bris-tling queerly in the shaky light "It isn&039;t just a question of breeding- though of course I understand that things do change It just seems that no one kno to behave anymore" He set the lamp down on the floor beside him and held thin hands in the coluone to look for Ysidro," he went on after a moment "Neither of us approved of Don Si the killer- for reasons which are obvious by your ree with her that it would beaside the fact that you are, in a sense, a guest beneath my roof" Those dulled, weary blue eyes rested on hi reasons other than an old habit of noblesse oblige for sparing his life

Dryly, Asher said, "I take it Grippen voted against it, also?"

"Oh, there was never a question of avote" By his tone the elderly vampire had entirely missed the sarcasm "Don Simon is and always has been a law unto himself He was the only one of us to think it necessary to hire a huh in the instep and will carry his huainst all opposition,"

Asher rubbed his shoulder, which ached where Grippen had flung hiht have mentioned that"

Beneath their feet, the stone floor vibrated; the glass of the laround Railroad runs very close to this cellar," Ernchester explained, as the ni for it, we feared they h, as in fact they did in another house n a few streets away That cellar was deeper than this one, without s-it had been the wine roootten after the Fire There are a great nu back to Roman times It was desperately da there when the workhtfully and wandered across the uneven slab floor to the coffin against the wall Opening it, he saw the lining burned entirely away at the botto in charred shreds around the upper ri but a faint film of scraped-at ash lay over the charred wood of the coffin&039;s floor

He wondered in what church&039;s crypt they had buried the remains St Bride&039;s, beyond a doubt Odd, that after so many years that should still be a concern to them or perhaps not so odd

He replaced the lid and turned back "Were the padlocks on the s open, then, when you found Danny&039;s body?"

Ernchester glanced quickly at the barred shutters of the s, then back at the eure out how ave it up "Yes The key was on the sill"

Asher walked over to the , stretched his long arers to the lock He looked back at the vampire "But the bars were undisturbed?"

"Yes Had soabond-entered this cellar and been looking about, it would be natural for hiht, you see"

"Was there any sign of a tra? Cupboards open, drawers ajar? Or in the rest of the house? Any sign that the place had been searched?"

"No," Ernchester admitted "That is-I don&039;t think so I really don&039;t know Anthea would" Another hed and shaken his head, but, as with Anthea and Ysidro, such gestures see weari-ness of centuries There was only a slight relaxing of that straight, stocky body, a loosening of the tired lines of the face "Anthea-does such things these days I know it&039;s the portion of the e affairs, but it see I used to keep up better than I do now I dare say it&039;s only the effect of the factory soot in the air or the noise in the streets it usen&039;t to be like this, you know I so suffer from it as much as we Folk are different now from what they were"

Keyed and alert for the silent approach of soain, his own jacket and greatcoat and Ernchester&039;s seedy velvet coat over her arm She was dressed, he sa, in an expensive and beautiful gown of dark green velvet, beaded thickly with jet; her soft white hands and pale face seeainst the opulent fabric Here was one, he thought, ould have no trouble winning kisses froers in alleyways As he took the coat from her arm he said, "Thank you," and the brown eyes flicked up to his, startled at being thanked "Did you hunt with Lotta Harshaw?"

She sain, but this tihtened flinch of her lips "Still the nosy-parker, then? You sahat it&039;ll buy you" She reached up to touch his throat, then drew back as the silver of his neck chain caught the laht "You knohat they said curiosity did to the cat"

"Then it&039;s a good thing cats have nine lives," he replied quietly "Did you hunt with Lotta?" She shrugged, an elaborately coquettish gesture with her bare white shoulders, and looked away

"I know you went for dress fittings with her Probably other shop-ping as well I iether Personally I find it a bore to have dinner alone-do you?"

The conversational tone of his voice brought her eyes back to his, flirtatious and amused "Sometimes But y&039;see, we don&039;t ever have din-ner quite alone" She sainst a lip like ruby silk