She laughed.
The kitchen and satellite rooms on the other side of the butler’s pantry were still buzzing with clean up and break down activity. There had to be eight people wearing the accoutrements of cook or wait staff.
“Got to hand it to you,” I said to John David. “You went all out.”
“What sort of friend would I be if I withheld hospitality?”
“Well…” I never got a chance to answer that question. I suppose answering that question would’ve been silly since it was clearly rhetorical. So, no loss, but I digress.
We froze in place when we heard raised voices coming from somewhere in the building.
“Sounds like someone found something,” I said. “Let’s go.” John David stepped back for me to pass. I said, “Nothing doing. Inspectors always go last.”
John David cocked his head. “Is that true?”
“I don’t know. Sounds right though.”
He accepted that and set off, arm in arm with Esmerelda.
Jarvis was moving toward us quickly when we emerged on the dining room side of the butler’s pantry.
“Sir.” He ran toward John David, looking truly freaked out. The man was excellent at his craft. I almost believed he was beside himself. “The young woman has been found.”
“Oh good,” John David said.
“Ah…” Jarvis attempted speech but failed.
“There’s more?” Jarvis nodded. “Then spit it out, man,” John David told him in a lord-of-the-manor tone.
“She’s dead, sir.”
“Dead?” I had to hand it to John David. He seemed authentic in his surprise. “Where?”
“The billiard room.”
Those three words removed all doubt. I burst into laughter. “The billiard room? There’s a body in the billiard room? Seriously? How cliché can you get?” I slapped at the vampire’s hard-as-stone bicep, then turned to Jarvis while still trying to get the giggles under control. “Tell me, Jarvis. Did the butler do it in the billiard room?”
Three faces stared at me as if I was certifiable. They were better at acting than I was.
“Alright.” I gave in. “I’m your patsy. Onward to the billiard room.”
I’d been to the manor house before and could’ve found my way there, but I halfway believed what I’d said about inspectors always going last.
The location of the billiard room was a twist of architectural interest. Halfway up the grand staircase we came to an expansive landing. Turn left and continue upstairs. Turn right and enter the billiard room.
We were the last to arrive.
The billiard room was adjacent to a music room with grand piano and other instruments. When the large French doors were open, as they were at the moment, it could’ve functioned as one room. Other than being exceptionally large, it was everything you’d expect, including a few exotic trophies hanging at intervals with grotesque glass eyes. But nothing in imagination could be as grotesque as the sight of Lorca Scarlet lying half on, half off the ornately carved pool table. Her throat had been ripped out. Streaks of drying blood made a stark contrast to the champagne-colored dress, and also accentuated the violet of her eyes, which were open and staring.
When I began to feel queasy, I kickstarted an internal chant.
It’s not real. It’s not real. It’s not real.
I told myself that makeup artists can work miracles, but that bit of self-comfort was quickly followed by the realization that makeup artists can’t help an actor stare indefinitely without blinking.
“Well, Inspector,” said Colonel Connolly, “it would seem you have a murder on your hands.”
“Did someone check to see if she’s really, um, dead?” I said lamely.
“I did,” Keir said. “She’s really dead. See for yourself. Check her pulse.”
“You want me to check her pulse?”
“Only if you doubt that she’s really dead.”
I was getting more uncomfortable with every minute that passed when Lorca didn’t blink. Just then I saw a bubble of blood rise and pop on her neck. I was sure I was going to be sick.
Also, those satin dresses from the twenties come with two problems. One is that they look equally bad on everybody. The other is that the tiniest little movement looks like tsunami waves of jiggle. It seemed to me that, if she was breathing, the dress would give it away.
My friends and neighbors didn’t appear to be having fun any longer. They looked serious as the grave.
“She can’t be really dead,” I whispered to the room. When no one said anything, I reasoned that I had to force myself to feel for a pulse.
Systems check. Big girl panties raised all the way to the natural waist.
I walked slowly toward Lorca’s haphazardly reclined form, forced myself to take hold of her wrist, but dropped it like I’d received a jolt of electricity. There was no point in checking for a pulse, her body was room temperature, which feels very, very cold on another person.
“No. No. No. No. No. No. No. She can’t be really dead.”
Keir brushed past me, apparently on his way to the music room. “Why not? You knew he was a vampire.”
My lips parted into a dumbfounded gape as I watched him sit down at the studio grand and begin playing “As Time Goes By”. I’d just been confronted with the fact that the fun murder mystery dinner party had turned into the most gruesome reality of a real murder. But I must’ve been jaded from decades of movies and TV because I managed to think, “Keir can play the piano?”
I quickly forgot about that when my eyes returned to what was left of poor Lorca Scarlet. My ears were starting to whir. It felt like I might be on the verge of having an out of body experience. The idyllic existence I’d believed I’d found was feeling like I’d stepped into a nightmare.
“Maggie,” I pled. “Tell me this isn’t real.”
Maggie shrugged and took a sip of orange dessert wine, which she’d refused to leave behind. I was thinking, That was smart. I wish I’d done that. Then she said, “You know what they say. Vampires will be vampires.” Her nonchalance was so jarring it took my breath away.
I remembered that John David had been gone from the dining room at the same time as Lorca Scarlet. I also remembered that he’d returned alone with a toothpick.
Ew! I took a deep, shaky breath then wheeled on my host. There was no avenue by which to escape the obvious conclusion.
“John David! You’ve been a VERY, VERY, VERY, BAD VAMPIRE!”
At the end of that utterance, I heard a familiar snort coming from the music room. That small sound functioned as a signal that gave everybody the permission they’d been waiting for to begin laughing.
“But,” John David said, “she’s an actor from London. It’s not like she’s one of us!”
That caused the little gathering to laugh even harder.
“Are you all insane?” I cried. “There’s a dead body in the room.”
“Look again,” John David said.
“What?”
My eyes jerked back to the pool table in time to see the air shimmer around the corpse, which then blurred into a white aqueous goo. Within a couple of seconds Lorca Scarlet’s body was gone, replaced by a very-pleased-with-himself Geoffrey, straightening his cuffs and looking quite the catch in his perfectly fitted tux.