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MYSTERIES OF OTRANTO

The Palazzo Otranto rown rather than built It was neat as a snail&039;s shell or a huan as a ledge inside the topun barrel, and wound down through the building, the roo at last into a circular passageway around the cavernous basements No staircases, just a constant helter-skelter slope and the occasional sharp step Hell on the knees

The palazzo was in Fregene, on the coast a fewpine forests and the usual ruins There was a Terounds The Dracula household celebrated eternal Saturnalia, a nebulous and never-ending party that attracted guests like flies

To and wasn&039;t sure if he should stay er There was no particular reason to move on and he certainly didn&039;t want to return to the bailiwick of the New York Police Department He&039;d left the States in the first place to avoid questions about a silly stunt soone on long enough for him to make money out of it, worse luck The exclusive co his custoht pick up on the irritation he attempted to conceal behind fashionable disinterest The dead were clowns, but also killers

This was, however, the life of ease and refines were about, mostly from old and fussy schools he didn&039;t cotton to A VistaVision Schalcken hung in his tower roohtmare eyes Renaissance schlock adorned the ballrooross nudes

The dead clung to the fashions of their lives The exception was il principe, whose preh - he was the only person to buy from the painter in his lifetime - had paid off in his several exiles Canvases worthless when bought now stood security for loans that kept the household a the wealthiest in Europe Those daubs, at which Toet a look, were shut up in Dracula&039;s private apartments, in the lower cellar depths

In this topsy-turvy world, the ht-after quarters were the deepest underground, the nearest to Hell, the most like tombs or vaults Penthouses that&039;d do for A servants and enslaved blood donors

In his months here, Tom had only set eyes on il principe once, with Penelope He stuck to his apartments and rarely visited the party of which he was the host He see white s of a black beetle Nevertheless, To else That taste, once daringly radical, suggested an openness to the new uncharacteristic of the dead Also, that - whatever his current circuerous man, a predator Tom respected him He&039;d leave il principe alone, and hope Dracula did the sas, before the household stirred, Tom took precious time to himself He liked to sit in the Crystal Roorounds through forty-foot walls of glass Before noon, the rooed by the dead

He claimed a favourite chair to read the International Herald Tribune and drink continuous thi espresso The warer to keep hi and scraping He felt he&039;d earned his leisure It had taken not a little ingenuity and hard graft to get hion-scale panes of the conservatory roof, illuular patterns on the old carpet Tom felt warmth on his face and was teht not have to spend the day in a casket lined with Boston soil, but he&039;d still been up all night Even the heart-punching coffee couldn&039;t keep him awake forever His habit was to siesta in the afternoon and early evening, to be out of the hen the dead rose

Was his distaste just an A dead in the States Prohibition hadn&039;t driven theround presence, not the al restrictions on their practices were stringently enforced To about the creatures crawled behind his eyes

He opened his dressing gown at the throat and undid the top buttons of his Ascot Chang shirt Dickie&039;s shirt, originally He hoped he was tanning A Mediterranean broould make the bite-marks stand out less And he didn&039;t want to be mistaken for one of the dead He ith the hi

It wasn&039;t until he came to Europe, head a-buzz with his aunt&039;s tales of bloodsucking monsters on every street corner, that he really found out anything about the dead They weren&039;t so fearsome

In his own small way, he was a predator on the dead

In Greece for no very good reason, Toish newlydead They knew each other from a weekend party in the Hamptons to which Tom had not exactly been invited Dickie, now on the run froe, was glad of the company, and took hilished from it, a reland had beco hi indefinable His course had led him to a dead peasant naht and ditched hiether, To fro the usual adventures Dickie, hooked on new experience, was obsessed with the dead of Greece He rooted around everywhere for traces of Chriseis&039;s bloodline, which he supposed went back to the vorvolukas of recent times and the la that couldn&039;t be coped with After all, being bored was better than being in prison It was Too to jail He loathed the idea of enforced proxi in a tiny space with another h Dickie, To important about the dead When their teeth were stuck in your neck and your blood ashing around their h their pockets

In his ignorance, Toht the dead needed blood to survive the way the living needed water It wasn&039;t true Warm blood could be like dope, or alcohol, or sex, or espresso, or sugar Anything from a desperate addiction to a mild weakness When the red thirst was on theht and persuasion turned to fuzz and fudge

At first, Dickie was apologetic about bleeding Torateful afterward He didn&039;t know the ropes He said &039;excuse me&039;, &039;please&039; and &039;thank you&039; every tian to display an arrogant streak, as if he&039;dues near dawn in the beachhouse, Dickie talked about sin and evil and gratification, of the need to go beyond guilt and embrace the full human potential Words like &039;sin&039;, &039;evil&039;, and &039;guilt&039; were less to Tom He had heard thes, but only in an academic way as if they were discredited scientific theories centuries had been wasted on Thein all that rot

It becaement could not last indefinitely He&039;d had to cast around for a way of coed Dickie coestible After a er noticed if Tos on a perlish clothes, which were of a quality he appreciated It was providential that they were roughly the same size

When he accepted death, Richard Fountain threay his life It was only fair, then, that Tom should pick it up He was best placed to enjoy it, after all

Eventually, the set-up grew highly tiresome Dickie&039;s mad fiancee tracked them down to Cyprus SheTo sort things out, Toh and Toh not dead long enough to turn to dust, he&039;d gone off like spoiled meat Tom had tipped him over the side and watched him sink

He fixed it so Dickie appeared to have left for an untraceable Greek island on a fool&039;s search for the source of Chriseis&039;s bloodline, leaving behind a sned over into Tom&039;s control, &039;for the maintenance of the house&039; More importantly, Dickie left written instructions that To wardrobe No one was happy, especially the fiancee and the faations and insinuations fizzled out

Dickie was already deceased, so no ht Greece was one of those countries that had never rewritten its laws to accoht for the murder, it was the elusive Chriseis The authorities had no incentive to search for a corpse that was probably unidentifiable mould anyway

The et ain with the dead, eventually washed hiainst Penelope

She had been dead a long tiot close, you could tell her age Her skin hite, but with an undertint of corruption that was alht her wounds would peel open, festering Her face and liry red circles, on her breasts and stomach, like bullet holes

On Malta, he was approached by an English subaltern who originally mistook him, because of his clothes, for Dickie, ho officer had a package, brought out froland to pay off a favour It was to be taken to an exile in Rome Tom was offered the use of an already-booked room at the Rinascie Too on to Ro as any

He was teh to contain a fountain pen or a hypodere He assumed from the roundabout method of delivery that it was an artifact on its way to a nener, perhaps without the consent of the last one

The addressee was Penelope Churchward They e, which she said was a wedding present Afterward, she extended an invitation which, a few days later, he was pleased to take up He knew fro him This was a co up on it Was he one of those felloas attractive to the dead?

Penny found Tom useful for more than his blood Her position in il principe&039;s household was undefined She ran things, as much a housekeeper as athat dead cow Malenka through adoring hordes, or fetching goods froht He didn&039;t evenpart of il principe&039;s entourage and yet a livinghim, she was as helpless as Dickie, as much addled by the taste of his blood But she was , thirstier Her red kisses drained hi she could last At times, she was quite fun She&039;d known Whistler and Wilde in her warh not ed his dressing gown over the would come to mind

It athered like curtains in the Crystal Room

Dead hands slipped around his neck

Touess who

Penelope was in atoo hard on devil-may-care brittleness, she draped herself over an ar like a flirty fourteen-year-old Her foot swung like a uessed she&039;d like to kick someone

She wore slacks, cut halfway up the calves to show off her pretty ankles, and ballet pumps Her Nehru jacket was a so shiny mixed into the weave Her hair was pinned up under an oversize sailor&039;s cap with a red poled fro the ar down

&039;You must amuse me, Tom,&039; she decreed &039;I need to be amused Desperately&039;

It was because the elder froht and his bovine &039;niece&039; had run into the local murderer Penelope could have cheerfully killed them herself, but resented the fusspapers were full of pictures Malenka was everywhere, her lurainier, less glamorous shots of the cops at the scene of the crime

&039;Malenka caot her wish&039;

Penelope snorted rather than laughed

&039;You don&039;t think the little witch will turn up unhurt, do you?&039; she said &039;That it&039;s a publicity stunt? There isn&039;tto the papers Even that blessed dress has waltzed off&039;

&039;Count Kernassy is definitely identified,&039; he pointed out

&039;She&039;d have killed for headlines That one would kill for lunch&039;

Penelope sat cross-legged on the seat, winding her legs together in a yoga pose, and lifted herself up on her ar autolish pal was a witness,&039; Toave a full description of their deaths And of their ht have her reasons for being a liar&039;

Penelope s in on murder

&039;She can&039;t be mixed up with it She met Kernassy on the plane&039;

&039;So she says&039;

To He was spinning out a story to distract Penelope, to amuse her She liked to think the worst of people Except of hih