they had left by the door and shrugged her shoulders. “A bit too chatty for my liking. But he seems pleasant enough, certainly non-threatening.”
Liz held the door as her aunt went in with the basket, and put it on the kitchen table. Elodie had made many changes in the early-eighteenth-century cottage, but, apart from its modern appliances, the kitchen was very much as it had been when its original owners roasted their beef and mutton on the spit over the giant fireplace. She knew how lucky she had been when the cottage had come onto the “open” market. Once you had left the island, it was difficult to get back as a homeowner, because of the protective property laws.
And the other piece of luck was a colossal divorce settlement. Every cloud, as they say. It had certainly helped when it came to putting in a bedroom and bathroom beneath the roof in what had been a loft, and taking out some of the interior walls downstairs to open up the space. She had replaced the white trim around the windows, put in a flagged driveway for her car, keeping the old limestone gateposts marking the edge of the property, and retiled the sloping roof in softly glazed coral-pink terra cotta tiles. Then, having taken care of the personal, she had had the whole place rewired to accommodate her professional working life.
“So, this is by way of being an official call?”
Liz laughed, took off her leather jacket and hung it over the back of a chair. “Not official, no. We’ve had a complaint about him, and since my boss has been off the island, I was asked to look into it. Discreetly.”
“Discreetly?”
Elodie was transferring three large Mason jars to the worn pine surface of the sizeable table that stretched across the centre of the kitchen. She fetched a bottle of vodka from the equally sizeable sideboard, and some chopped-up lemon rind.
“Is he anything I should worry about? Here,” Elodie pointed to a large crockery bowl high on a shelf near the fireplace, “get that down for me, would you?”
Liz obliged. “I don’t think so, and the complaint is so bizarre it could be that we should be looking into the complainer rather than your new neighbour.”
She pulled out a branch of berries from the basket, holding them up against the light, admiring their purple translucence in the sunlight streaming through the window. “Now what do we do?”
Elodie took another branch from the basket. “We’ll need something for the stems and so on. They are mildly toxic. We’ll use this.” She pulled out a plastic pail from under the table, then a tall stool. “You’ll be fine with a chair, but this suits me better.
“So, tell me — is he a flasher? A con artist?” She hopped up on to the stool, and started to pull off the berries, her fingers swiftly turning purple.
“Nothing so run-of-the-mill, El.”
Liz hesitated. It had all sounded so ridiculous this morning, and she couldn’t believe Chief Officer Hanley had asked her to look into it. But he had, and she knew why. Because the complainant was the wife of one of the major estate agents on the island, a man not to be trifled with. It was a familiar theme. She watched the juices trickle over her hands and thought of Lady Macbeth, and blood, and said, “We have been told he is a vampire.”
The shriek of laughter that burst out of Elodie shook the stool on which she was sitting, and she grasped the edge of the table to steady herself.
“Liz, Liz — which demented islander told you that? I cannot believe you are taking this seriously.”
“I’m not, and it certainly added a little light relief to my morning. But Elton Maxwell’s wife does.”
“Ah. So the chief officer does.” Elodie pulled out another branch of berries, and winked across the table at Liz.
“Got it in one. Mrs. Maxwell’s a member of the Island Players. Do you know her?”
“Only as a fellow player. I don’t socialize much with the Maxwells.” Elodie leaned across the table. “Tell me more. Should I be avoiding the garden after dusk? Carrying garlic? Is she out of her tiny mind? If she has one at all?”
Liz shrugged her shoulders and went on picking berries from the stem in her hand. “She’s not quite as wacky as that makes her sound, actually. She says he is writing a play for the group — do you know anything about that?’
“No. But then, I’m only just coming up for air after finishing a really tough project for a researcher at Great Ormond Street Hospital. What does playwriting have to do with vampires?”
“Everything. That’s what the play is about, and what has upset Mrs. Maxwell is that Hugo Shawcross says it is an area of interest to him, because he is a vampire himself, descended from a long line of the undead. She says he is trying to create a splinter group within the Island Players, and has joked about secret oaths and blood sacrifices.”
“Seriously?” Elodie had stopped working on her branch of elderberries, and now looked concerned. “I know they were hoping to get some new blood into the group — sorry, terrible choice of expression — and wanted to attract a younger crowd. But this doesn’t sound like a good idea.”
“No, and that was one of her complaints. That he is a bad influence on the island young. She also said he became threatening when challenged. Mind you, it could be that Mrs. Maxwell doesn’t have much of a sense of humour. He told her to leave him alone or one dark night she’d wake up to find him chomping down on her. Or words to that effect.”
“Yuk. Not nice.” She caught Liz’s eye, and giggled. “Sorry again, Liz, but this is just ridiculous. Does chomping down on someone’s neck constitute a death threat?”
Liz grinned. “Don’t feel the need to apologize. You should hear the jokes back at the office — well, you shouldn’t. Some are just filthy. Even Chief Officer Hanley had difficulty keeping a straight face when he told me, and he’s not a laugh-a-minute kind of feller.”
“Were you planning on going round to talk to him? Do you need backup? We could take some of that.” Elodie pointed to the string of garlic hanging near a thick rope of onions. “I don’t have any crucifixes handy, I’m afraid.”
“I sort of need backup — at least, that is what I was going to ask you.” Liz was no longer looking amused. “But I am now rethinking that, in case this guy is —”
“Dangerous? Have you seen him? He’s not much taller than me, looks more like Gandalf than a vampire, and I’m pretty sure I could take him if I had to.” Elodie got up and went over to the sink to wash her hands. “See, Liz, I don’t believe in fairies, or ghosts, or vampires. But I do think he could be trouble. The Island Players have always played second fiddle to GADOC, and I’m sure that’s what this is about.”
GADOC, the Guernsey Amateur Dramatic and Operatic Society, were the principal group on the island, with a history that went back close to a century. They performed at the well-equipped theatre in the Beau Sejour centre; the Island Players had come into being with a mandate to perform more challenging material. Their audiences, not surprisingly, were considerably smaller, and they were constantly in need of funds.
Elodie went on. “The Players may be hoping that something shocking will help membership. I can always just ask about the play — say I’ve heard about it. I often see him out in his garden, through the trees.”
Elodie turned around and grabbed at a towel near the sink.
