THE ORDER OF THE BOOT
Princess Asa Vajda was on her knees at the foot of her bed, face pressed to the eiderdown, hair a thistly tangle. The coverlet was streaked with bloody tears.
Tom tried warily to get her attention. The last time he'd been sent to ask after the Princess, she'd tossed a Faberge Devil Egg the size of a hand grenade at him. The door was dented and the bauble lay unnoticed on the thick carpet, its surmounting inverted cross bent out of shape. It was priceless but in hideous taste.
'Princess,' he said.
Asa's back was racked with sobbing. She was like a dark Ophelia, driven out of her mind with grief.
'Princess,' he insisted.
She looked up from the eiderdown. Ropes of hair hung like seaweed over her eyes. Smudges of blood were smeared on her cheeks. She'd chewed her lush lower lip. There was even a little water in her tears.
'Penelope... Miss Churchward... wondered if you would like to come down, and have tea. The police have left.'
Inspector Silvestri was tactfully refraining from pressing the Princess for an interview. But the cops came back to Fregene every day and had still not finished their investigation of the scene of the crime. Many areas of the Palazzo Otranto were roped off and guarded.
Asa's hands crawled over the bed like white spiders. Tom tensed, in case she was looking for another weapon. Instead, she stood up. She'd been wearing the same soiled white gown for days, the wedding dress she was cheated out of. The garment would do for a shroud.
The room was musky with an odour of the dead. A basin of shrivelled violets stood beside the bed.
The Princess ran fingers through her hair. Her knuckles caught on snaggles and knots. She was not fit for society.
The dead bitch fastened Tom with a mad stare. He was proof against her fascinations. Penelope had overwhelmed him totally. It was not that he had the strength to resist an elder like Asa, but that he had no will of his own to be dominated and broken.
Asa gave up.
'Tea will be served in an hour,' he said. 'Company is expected.'
What he felt for Penelope might be love. He'd once assumed he wasn't capable of love, frankly doubting the emotion everyone talked about actually existed. Now his whole person was wrapped up with another, a dead woman at that. His contentment and ease of mind were dependent on her moods. If he hadn't been in such a daze from the bleedings, he'd have been terrified to have stepped so far off the track. Now he understood why people spoke of 'falling in' love rather than 'ascending to' it. He was plummeting.
She was in the Crystal Room, working at a paper-strewn desk. In late afternoon, the sun didn't shine into the room, but she still wore a wide-brimmed hat and dark glasses. The murder of il principe had thrown the rest of the household into a panic, but Penelope showed an English cool head. She coped with everything from an avalanche of condolence cards to easing relations between the cops and the Carpathian Guard.
'I've told Princess Asa about tea,' he said.
'Will she come down?'
'I don't know.'
Penelope's mouth narrowed. 'Very well. Come here, would you, Tom?'
This time, he would not obey. He was determined. But he found himself standing by Penelope's desk, a schoolboy summoned to the headmaster.
She stood, bent back her hatbrim, and stuck her mouth to his neck. The electric shock of penetration came, and a little more of him flowed into her. She swallowed, dabbed her lips with a hankie, and sat down, looking again at the ledger open on the desk.
Tom swayed a little, unsteady on his feet. He was not sure if he was dismissed.
Though Penelope was bleeding him as regularly as ever, she was more businesslike about it. She nipped without passion, as if he were an animal or a servant. She was concerned with too much else to spare time for coaxing him along. He didn't even mind. Just so long as he could stay.
'I think we have discovered why the late Prince was so attractive to the House of Vajda,' Penelope said.
She stabbed a finger at a column of numbers.
'Not to put too fine a point on it, Asa is stony broke and has been for two hundred years. She inherited a fortune with her title, but spent it all on living from decade to decade. She has never had any income except plunder, never made any investments. Without Dracula's gold, the poor dear will have to throw herself on the mercy of her creditors. Or find herself another wealthy fiance.'
Penelope spoke as if this discovery didn't please her. She seemed to express genuine sympathy for the Princess.
'That's the trouble with elders,' she said. 'They live forever and don't realise things run out. They were born in an age when stewards ran households, and never learned to balance the books.'
A little of his blood was smudged at the corner of her mouth. He didn't point it out.
She slammed the ledger shut.
'Asa's bankruptcy is a minor inconvenience. Since no connection was actually made with the House of Dracula, she can safely be sent packing with a charitable handout. The real nightmare will come when we have to settle the Count's affairs. The guests who are expected for tea will complicate matters. I had hoped to put them off until after the police closed the case, but they are impatient.'
Penelope took charge because someone had to. When word came of the other murders in Rome on the night of Dracula's death, the elders assembled for the ball scurried out of Italy, dispersing to the corners of the world. Without their Prince, most of the Carpathian Guard felt no duty to remain at Otranto. Dead men who had stuck to their posts for centuries were gone overnight. Some exposed themselves to the sun and crumbled, out of shame at their failure to protect their master. Others less honourable simply deserted, taking with them whatever items of value they could lay their claws on. Many of the servants also hightailed it out of the palace. The retainers who stayed did so perhaps because they couldn't think of anywhere else to go.
There was all manner of mess. Penelope had rolled up her sleeves and set to clearing up.
Klove opened the door and let five people into the room.
'Good afternoon,' said Penelope, a perfect hostess.
The distinguished newcomers were Clare Boothe Luce, the American Ambassador; John Profumo, the British Minister of War; General Giovanni Di Lorenzo, head of the Italian Secret Police; Andrey Gromyko, the Soviet Foreign Minister; and General Charles de Gaulle, President of the Republic of France. De Gaulle might have come in person to make sure Dracula was truly dead.
Double doors opened and servants wheeled in a convoy of tea trolleys.
'Might I offer you hospitality?' asked Penelope. 'It is a tradition of this house.'
She was acting like the widow. As she picked up a hefty teapot and bent forward to pour, Profumo sneakily eyed the top of her summer dress.
De Gaulle snorted through his prominent beak at this British affectation. Penelope drew his attention to a decanter of brandy that evidently met with his approval. Mrs Luce, who reminded Tom nastily of his aunt, didn't take kindly to the display of indulgence; she was as ill at ease both with taking tea from a dead woman as with the presence of a known Communist. Gromyko sipped his weak, milky tea and stuck out his little finger like a charm school graduate.
'Thank you, gracious lady,' said the Russian.
'You are welcome.'
'If we could get down to brass tacks, Andrey,' said Mrs Luce. She used the Russian's Christian name like an insult.
'Very well, Clare,' he retorted, shrugging an apology to Penelope.
'Who is this person?' Di Lorenzo demanded, meaning Tom.
'My good right hand,' said Penelope. 'A countryman of yours, Ambassador. Perhaps you know his people.'
As it happened, she didn't. Which was a mercy
'Miss Churchward,' ventured Profumo, 'do you have the authority to speak for the House of Dracula?'
'So it seems,' Penelope admitted. 'I've no formal position, but have been with the household long enough to be familiar with its affairs. In the absence of any official executrix, I've taken matters in hand. Thus far, I have not been opposed.'
Profumo nodded.
'You are aware of the terms of il principe's residency in the Palazzo Otranto?' asked the Italian.
'Not entirely,' said Penelope. 'I understand a treaty was struck during the last war, between Dracula and the Allies. I assume that is why this party has such an interesting international flavour?'
'Dracula lived here at the sufferance of the Allied powers,' Mrs Luce stated. 'A condition of the Croglin Grange Treaty was that he make no attempt to leave.'
Penelope nodded. Tom had wondered whether Dracula might not have been some sort of prisoner.
'We were concerned, dear lady, about his engagement,' said Gromyko. 'It was never clear where the bride and groom would reside. The possibility that they might choose to leave this palace, and thus violate Croglin Grange, gave us much to worry over.'
Mrs Luce shot the Russian a nasty look. A die-hard anti-Communist, and prominent supporter of the late Senator Joseph McCarthy, she was also known to loathe vampires. She had coined the slogan 'Never Dead Nor Red', popularised by her husband Henry's blatantly-titled magazine, Life.
'Sadly, that concern is at an end,' said Penelope.
'Indeed, indeed,' said Profumo, trying to smooth things over. The minister attacked the bourbon biscuits as if he'd skipped lunch.
'There is no Dracula,' said Di Lorenzo. 'There is no Croglin Grange.'
Tom didn't understand.
'Very well,' said Penelope. 'If I might be permitted to stay on long enough to settle things.'
'Of course, of course,' said Profumo. 'Does anyone have any objections?'
De Gaulle looked up from his brandy and said, 'Non'.
Tom realised they were being evicted. The Italians wanted their palace back. It hadn't occurred to him, but of course Otranto had never really been Dracula's property.
This party couldn't just be to award the Order of the Boot to the last of Dracula's household. There must be other matters to settle, of international importance.
'Gracious lady,' said the Russian, 'we are anxious that the papers of the late Prince be disposed of tactfully.'
'There is a great deal of documentation,' Penelope admitted. 'In a variety of languages, with few of which I am familiar. Much must be of historical importance. I should hope a permanent home could be found for this Dracula archive.'
The distinguished visitors exchanged looks. Tom understood these people. They all wanted to be left alone with the papers, to search for documents embarrassing to themselves or their enemies. None trusted the others not to exploit the material for their own ends, quite correctly. They were all out for what they could get.
'The British Museum Library would be willing to take the burden,' Profumo suggested, accepting another pouring of tea.
'Non,' said de Gaulle.
No one else was blatant enough to put their own case. That would come later.
There was a commotion outside.
'I believe the Princess Asa is joining us,' said Penelope.
Klove, deferentially unhappy about it, opened the door again, and the princess trailed in. Asa still wore her wedding gown. Flowers were wound into her hair and spots of rouge inexpertly applied to her cheeks. She all but wailed as she dragged herself into the Crystal Room.
'Princess, dear, can I offer you refreshment?'
Penelope held a white mouse by its tail. She had taken the animal from a writhing fishbowl full of the rodents. Leftovers from the party.
Asa took the mouse and savaged it in two bites. Blood squirted down her lacework bosom.
Penelope looked at her with triumphant sympathy. She shared the expression with her guests, allowing herself the hint of a 'what can you do?' shrug.
Asa swallowed what she'd chewed and clung to Penelope like a child. The Englishwoman picked through the Moldavian's hair, smoothing tangles and extracting dead flowers.
'She's had a shock, poor thing,' Penelope explained, needlessly. 'But she'll be her own self in a few years. Won't you, dearest Asa?'
She nodded and Asa mimicked her.