The Bloody Red Baron: 1918

notorious Maldureve, while the Theatre des Vampires presented Offenbach's operetta La Morteamoureuse, featuring the celebrated can-can 'Clarimonde'. At the Robert-Houdin, the warm illusionist Georges Melies presented feats of presdigitation which he defied any vampire to duplicate by supernatural means. Bernhardt was giving her blood-boltered Macbeth in one of many all-female productions currently gracing the Paris stage. With most actors gone to the war, the situation of Shakespeare's day was reversed and many masculine roles were taken by women en travestie. If the war ever ended, a second Revolution would be required to force the Divine Sarah back into frocks.

Squeezed into an unremarked side street away from the famous houses, the Theatre Raoul Privache was neither magnificent nor celebrated. He had never heard of the place before receiving, in the note signed 'Diogenes', details of this appointment. A poster depicted a huge-eyed, gaunt woman in a leotard. The marquee announced, simply, 'Isolde - les frissons des vampires'. A small press of devotees clamoured for entrance. Almost exclusively male and warm and mainly in uniform, they had a greedy, hollow-eyed look that matched that of the poster woman.

Joining the audience funelling into the foyer, Winthrop looked about for Dravot. It was a game, sometimes, to locate the sergeant. Broad-shouldered and a head taller than most, the vampire did not exactly take pains to conceal himself but had the ability to fit in with any background.

An arrangement had been made at the kiosk. Winthrop was ushered down a narrow, unlit corridor to a private box. Dravot followed and took up a post at the door. He would not be able to see the performance. From the decayed state of the wallpaper and the faint smell of damp mould, Winthrop assumed the sergeant would not miss much.

Winthrop opened the door and stepped into the box. A man sat comfortably, puffing on a cigar.

'Edwin, you are remarkably punctual. Do sit down.'

Winthrop shook a firm hand and sat. Charles Beauregard had a full head of white hair and a clipped grey moustache. His face was unlined and he gave the impression of agility. Winthrop understood Beauregard had distinguished himself during the Terror, and once refused a knighthood.

Beyond the balcony, a muttering audience settled hastily into seats. A pianist tried to wring melodies from an ailing instrument.

Beauregard offered his cigar case but Winthrop preferred to smoke his own. He lit a cigarette and shook out the match-flame.

'I've read your report,' said Beauregard. 'A bad business, the other night. You mustn't blame yourself.'

'I picked Albright, the man who died.'

'And I picked you and someone picked me. No one of us is more responsible than any other. From Albright's record, I should say you couldn't have made a better choice for the show.'

A dark, winged shape flitted across Winthrop's mind.

'The Germans have awarded the victory to Manfred von Richthofen,' said Beauregard. 'If any of Condor Squadron had a chance against the Bloody Red Baron, it would have been Captain Albright.'

So the shape had been the Bloody Red Baron himself. Winthrop wondered what kind of kite Richthofen was piloting. Something new and deadly.

'German High Command are fond of building up their man- killers for the newspapers. We have no monopoly of jingo. If twenty Fokkers shoot at and down an Allied aeroplane, credit tends to be awarded where it will make the best propaganda.'

'There was only one thing in the sky with Albright.'

'I didn't say Richthofen wasn't a fearsome devil.'

An examination had shown Albright was completely dry, veins and arteries collapsed. Thorndyke, the specialist who performed the autopsy, reported the body was drained not only of blood but of every drop of liquid.

'Captain Albright was pulled out of his SE5a and killed in mid-air. I've never come across that before.'

'There's nothing new, Edwin. Even in this great modern murdering game.'

The House lights dimmed and the pianist tried harder. He wounded a theme from Swan Lake as the curtains parted. The stage was bare, except for a cane chair and an open steamer trunk.

A vampire woman walked out, a transparent moth-wing cape draped over her leotard. She was the Isolde of the posters. She had a hard face, not pretty. The shape of her skull showed at cheeks and temples. Fang-teeth stuck out of her mouth, wearing grooves in her underlip and chin.

The music continued and Isolde walked up and down the tiny stage, not even dancing. The audience was quiet.

'We are more and more interested in the Chateau du Malinbois,' said Beauregard, watching Isolde with half a glance. 'Strange stories are in circulation.'

Isolde spread out her long, lank hair with black-nailed hands. Her neck was painfully thin, prominently veined.

'The pilots all knew the place,' Winthrop said. 'Richthofen is an obsession with them. He's the man to beat.'

'Over seventy victories.'

'It would be a relief to see him downed.'

'Strange: the soldier who pulls a howitzer lanyard or works a machine-gun often kills as many in a few seconds as our Red Baron has during the entire war. Yet it is the flier who gets the press. Cavalry Captain Baron Manfred von Richthofen. He has the Pour le Merite, of course, the Blue Max. That's the Hun Victoria Cross. And more lesser decorations than a man can list.'

Isolde undid the collar of her cape and let it float away. She was unusually skinny. Each rib showed like the slat of a fence.

'Watch this, Edwin. It's ugly but you'll learn something.'

The vampire solemnly took a knife out of the trunk and held it up. It seemed entirely ordinary. Isolde stuck the point into the hollow of her throat, dimpling the skin but not drawing blood, and ran it down the front of her leotard, slicing. Fabric peeled away from her chest. She had no noticeable breasts, but her nipples were large and dark.

Winthrop had no more than the normal experience of Paris frivolity, but the drab Isolde seemed to him underdeveloped to gain much following as an ecdysiast. The popular girls of the Folies-Bergere were far more substantial than this poor creature, pigeons to her sparrow.

She shrugged and the upper half of her singlet slipped over her shoulders, falling to her waist. Her skin was unblemished but had a greenish undertone. Isolde put her knife to her throat again and repeated her cutting, this time slicing a red line down her sternum, to her stomach. There was very little bleeding.

'She's not a new-born,' Beauregard explained. 'Isolde has been a vampire for over a thousand years.'

Winthrop looked closer. He saw nothing that suggested the fabled strength and power of an elder. With her fixed fangs, Isolde looked forlorn, almost pathetic.

'She was guillotined once.'

Isolde clamped the blade between her thin lips and used both her hands. She worked the edge of her self- inflicted wound with with her nails and peeled back the skin of the right side of her chest. As she moved, exposed muscles bunched and smoothed. With her whole hand under her skin, she loosened the covering of her shoulder and slipped it off like a chemise.

The audience were rapt. Winthrop was disgusted, as much at the spectators as at the performer.

Beauregard was not watching the stage but watching him.

'We do not understand our limits,' Beauregard said. 'To become a vampire is to have the potential to stretch the human body out of its natural shape.'

As Isolde turned, skin ripped down her back. Red-lined folds hung loose. With only her nails and a few slices of the knife, she methodically flayed herself.

A group of Americans, misled as to the nature of Isolde's exposure, stormed out, protesting loudly. 'You're all gooney birds,' one shouted.

Isolde watched them go, easing the skin off her right arm as if it were a shoulder-length glove.