The Eyre Affair

me?’

I looked around desperately for some kind of weapon, but apart from a chair—which drew out of my grasp as I reached for it—there was nothing.

‘Thoon be over.’ Frampton grinned. He had sprouted an inordinately long single front tooth which grew over his bottom lip and gave him a lisp.

‘Thoon you will be joining Thpike for a little thnack. After I have finithed!’

He smiled and opened his mouth wider; impossibly so—it seemed almost to fill the room. Quite suddenly Frampton stopped, looked confused and rolled his eyes up into his sockets. He grew grey, then black, then seemed to slough away like burned pages in a book. There was a musty smell of decay that almost blotted out the reek of formaldehyde, and soon there was nothing at all except Spike, who was still holding the sharpened stake that had so quickly destroyed the abomination that had been Frampton.

‘You okay?’ he asked with a triumphant look on his face.

‘I’m good,’ I replied shakily. ‘Yuh, I feel okay. Well, now I do, anyway.’

He lowered the stake and drew me up a chair as the lights flickered back on.

‘Thanks for that,’ I murmured. ‘My blood is my own and I aim to keep it that way. I guess I owe you.’

‘No way, Thursday. I owe you. No one’s ever answered a call of mine before. The symptoms came on as I was sniffing out Fang here. Couldn’t get to my injector in time…’

His voice trailed off as he looked forlornly at the broken glass and spilled formaldehyde.

‘They’ll not believe this report,’ I murmured.

‘They don’t even read my reports, Thursday. Last person who did is now in therapy. So they just file ‘em and forget ‘em. Like me, I guess. It’s a lonely life.’

I hugged him on an impulse. It seemed the right thing to do. He returned it gratefully; I didn’t expect that he had touched another human for a while. He had a musty smell about him—but it wasn’t unpleasant; it was like damp earth after a spring rain shower. He was muscular and at least a foot taller than me, and as we stood in each other’s arms I suddenly felt as though I really wouldn’t mind if he made a move on me. Perhaps it was the closeness of the experience that we had just shared; I don’t know—I don’t usually act in this manner. I moved my hand up his back and on to his neck, but I had misjudged the man and the occasion. He slowly let me go and smiled, shaking his head softly. The moment had passed.

I paused for a second and then holstered my automatic carefully.

‘What about Frampton?’

‘He was good,’ admitted Spike, ‘real good. Didn’t feed on his own turf and was never greedy; just enough to sate his thirst.’

We walked out of the lab and back down the corridor.

‘So how did you get on to him?’ I asked.

‘Luck. He was behind me in his motor at the lights. Looked in the rear-view mirror—empty car. Followed him and pow; I knew he was a sucker soon as he spoke. I would have staked him earlier ‘cept for my trouble.’

We stopped at his squad car.

‘And what about you? Any chance of a cure?’

‘Top virologists are doing their stuff but for the moment I just keep my injector handy and stay out of the sunlight.’

He stopped, took out his automatic and pulled the slide back, ejecting a single shiny bullet.

‘Silver,’ he explained as he gave it to me. ‘I never use anything else.’ He looked up at the clouds. They were coloured orange by the streetlamps and moved rapidly across the sky. There’s weird shit about; take it for luck.’

‘I’m beginning to think there’s no such thing.’

‘My point precisely. God keep you, Thursday, and thanks once again.’

I took the shiny bullet and started to say something but he was gone already, rummaging in the boot of his squad car for a vacuum cleaner and a bin-liner. For him, the night was far from over.

18. Landen again

‘When I first heard that Thursday was back in Swindon I was delighted. I never fully believed that she had gone for good. I had heard of her problems in London and I also knew how she reacted to stress. All of us who returned from the Peninsula were to become experts on the subject whether we liked it or not…’

Landen Parke-Laine. Memoirs of a Crimean Veteran

‘I told Mr Parke-Laine that you had haemorrhagic fever but he didn’t believe me,’ said Liz on reception at the Finis.

‘The flu would have been more believable.’

Liz was unrepentant.

‘He sent you this.’

She passed across an envelope. I was tempted just to throw it in the bin, but I felt slightly guilty about giving him a hard time when we had met the previous night. The envelope contained a numbered ticket for Richard III which played every Friday evening at the Ritz Theatre. We used to attend almost every week when we were going out together. It was a good show; the audience made it even better.

‘When did you last go out with him?’ asked Liz, sensing my indecision.

I looked up. ‘Ten years ago.’

‘Ten years? Go, darling. Most of my boyfriends would have trouble even remembering that long.’

I looked at the ticket again. The show began in an hour.

‘Is that why you left Swindon?’ asked Liz, keen to be of some help.

I nodded.

‘And did you keep a photo of him all those years?’

I nodded again.

‘I see,’ replied Liz thoughtfully. ‘I’ll call a cab while you go and change.’

It was good advice, and I trotted off to my room, had a quick shower and tried on almost everything in my wardrobe. I put my hair up, then down again, then up once more, muttered ‘too boyish’ at a pair of trousers and slipped into a dress. I selected some earrings that Landen had given me and locked my automatic in the room safe. I just had time to put on a small amount of eyeliner before I was whisked through the streets of Swindon by a taxi- driver, an ex-Marine involved in the retaking of Balaclava in ‘61. We chatted about the Crimea. He didn’t know where Colonel Phelps was going to talk either, but when he found out, he said, he would heckle for all his worth.

The Ritz looked a good deal shabbier. I doubted whether it had been repainted at all since we were last here. The gold-painted plaster mouldings around the stage were dusty and unwashed, the curtain stained with the rainwater that had leaked in. No other play but Richard HI had been performed here for over fifteen years, and the theatre itself had no company to speak of, just a backstage crew and a prompter. All the actors were pulled from an audience who had been to the play so many times they knew it back to front. Casting was usually done only half an hour before curtain-up.

Occasionally seasoned actors and actresses would make guest appearances, although never by advance booking. If they were at a loose end late Friday night, perhaps after their performance at one of Swindon’s three other theatres, they might come along and be selected by the manager as an impromptu treat for audience and cast. Just the week before, a local Richard III had found himself playing opposite Lola Vavoom, currently starring in