Chapter Six
Our ride through the early-morning streets was a cold one, and so was the body at the end of it. Mrs. Beaumont lay on her back at the feet of a plush divan when we arrived, the intricate swirls and rosettes of a Persian carpet splaying out beneath her. At a glance, she could have been sleeping. I found myself watching her chest, waiting for some sign of breath—but as the seconds ticked by, I began to feel a knot of queasiness rising in my stomach, and I looked away.
“Maybe it’s best if you wait outside, young lady,” said Marlowe.
I shook my head. “If you’ve enlisted Mr. Jackaby, then you’ve enlisted me as well, Commissioner.” I plucked up my nerve and my notepad, and began to record the scene before me. Marlowe turned his attention to my employer, who was already bent over the body.
“First impressions?”
Jackaby stood beside the corpse. His hands hovered over the body, stirring the air. “There has been an abomination in this house.” He pulled back with a grimace, rubbing invisible particles from his fingers with distaste.
“You mean like a murder?” Marlowe suggested flatly.
“Worse,” said Jackaby. He stepped to the woman’s head and knelt. He drew a magnifying glass from his pocket, but rather than gazing through it, he held it by the glass and used its stem to gently nudge the lace collar away from the woman’s neck.
“I was wondering how long it would take for you to find that.” Marlowe paced around the body and stood across from Jackaby. “What do you make of it?”
I inched closer and peered over my employer’s shoulder. On the woman’s right side, just beneath her jaw, was an oblong blemish the length of my forefinger—a violet bruise, dappled with dark plum spots. Within the mottled oval was a pea-sized circle of deep red where the woman’s skin had been pierced.
“Peculiar,” said Jackaby. “There ought to be two.”
“There’s no exit wound,” Marlowe informed him. “It’s the only mark we’ve found on the body. Doesn’t look like a typical gunshot, but I’ve asked the coroner to look for bullet fragments, all the same.”
“He won’t find any,” said Jackaby without looking up. “It’s not a projectile; it’s a puncture. The assailant struck the jugular directly. Exsanguination is almost certainly the cause of death. The lack of blood about the body and the burst capillaries around the injury indicate suction . . .”
“A vampire,” I said.
Jackaby tucked the magnifying glass back into his coat. “A touch too glaring for my taste, Miss Rook, but that would be the most obvious conclusion.”
Marlowe groaned and rubbed the bridge of his nose with one hand.
“You disagree?” Jackaby said, rising.
“Of course I disagree. The ‘most obvious conclusion’ is a lunatic with an ice pick or a jealous lover with a letter opener . . .” He took a deep breath. “But the most obvious conclusion keeps falling short—which is why you’re here. So, that’s your first guess, then? You’re opening with vampire?”
“I’m not ruling out the Russian strigoi or Chinese jiangshi. This is a country of immigrants, after all. There are also countless numbers of demons and ghouls known for bleeding their victims dry, but vampires certainly make the list.”
The commissioner’s eye twitched, and he sighed. “Not a word of this leaves this room. I mean that, and stay away from the press, both of you. Reporters haven’t stopped hounding me for details from our last case—and they would have a field day with a vampire in New Fiddleham. This town is still reeling from one supernatural serial killer. The last thing we need is to spread panic about a second.”