LA DOLCE MORTE

FROM THE PARLIAMENTARY REPORT, THE TIMES OF LONDON, JULY 30TH, 1959

...the Honourable Hamer Radshaw (Lab.) asked: 'Have you received an invitation to the wedding of Vlad Dracula, former Prince Consort, and if such is the case, will you attend the nuptials of this disreputable character and his blood-spattered bride?' The Prime Minister, Lord Ruthven (Con.) replied: 'If such an invitation were received, representatives of Her Majesty's Government and, indeed, Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition, would of course give every consideration to an appropriate response.' Mr Radshaw further asked: 'Is Her Majesty also expected to traipse off to Italy to watch a former relation by marriage make yet another dynastic match?'

The Prime Minister replied: 'I have not had the opportunity to discuss this matter with Her Majesty, but I am certain she would wish to extend hearty congratulations to her valued ally and sometime countryman, Count Dracula.' A commotion on the floor of the House prevented further debate.

8

JOURNALISM

Kate's room at the pensione was a tiny cupboard at the top and back of the building. A tall, thin window looked out into a narrow alley bridged by clothes lines. Shirts and sheets flapped lazily in the warm wind. This was the room set aside for vampires. Instead of a bed, a rough wooden coffin lined with a folded blanket stood on trestles. Less faded patches on the wallpaper showed where a crucifix and a mirror had been taken down. If the Gideons had left any reading matter, it was tidied away.

She imagined accommodations at the Hotel Hassler were of a different order.

Having arrived in Trastevere just after dawn, the night talked away with Charles and Genevieve, she crawled into the coffin intent on blacking out for most of the day. For once, her tininess was an advantage. She fit snugly into the box. At the point of sleep, she thought back to the Piazza di Trevi. She didn't want to relive what she'd seen there, but something still nagged her.

Count Kernassy, Malenka, the Crimson Executioner... the little girl.

Had she seen anything different? Kate would like to find and talk with her.

Marcello, with a milk bottle.

She smiled, and death-sleep crept over her.

* * *

At first, she was told the telephone in the hallway was for the exclusive use of the landlady's family. After she passed over five hundred lire to the landlady's son, the situation was explained in more detail. It appeared that in emergencies she would be allowed to make calls. A further five hundred lire was convincing proof that this was indeed an emergency. She specified that the emergency under discussion was likely to last the length of her stay, and parted with a final banknote to convince him.

'As you say, Signorina,' the landlady's son replied. A fifty-year-old stay-at-home, he wore a white string vest pricked through by chest hair. Braces cut like cheesewire into his doughy middle. A victim of maternal cuisine.

He left her alone, pocketing the cash.

Using the telephone would be a challenge, given her rudimentary Italian. In London she did most of her work on the phone. She should be able to convert her skills to this new system.

First, she tried Inspector Silvestri. He was out, but she got through to Sergeant Ginko, who remembered her. She gathered there were no official developments on the Piazza di Trevi murders and, judging from his careless talk, no unofficial ones either. Silvestri was over at the Hotel Inghilterra, where there was some fuss. The sergeant cut himself off in mid-sentence and changed the subject. Hotel Inghilterra. She made a mental note of that. Maybe there was an unofficial development after all.

With her best helpless little foreign-girl wheedle, she told Ginko she'd arranged to meet Marcello but got mixed up and lost the details. Did he have the number of the newspaper he worked for? Ginko knew whom she meant, said he was a freelance without an office, and suggested she try the Cafe Strega. It was in Via Veneto, of course. She thanked him and hung up.

Next, she called Genevieve. Charles was still sleeping. From Genevieve's tone, Kate could tell he'd had a bad day. A tiny barb of guilt hooked her. Had her visit been too much of a strain? She was here to help, not pester. Genevieve, intuiting Kate's qualms, tried to reassure her. Serious things were unsaid between them. The phone was no good for things like this. As vampires, they were both too used to skimming minds, picking up on nuances of expression, breathing in feelings. Falling back on muffled words was like being forced to use semaphore.

She thought about telephoning Penelope, but didn't.

Cafe Strega. The Witch's Coffee. That conjured up an image: cream and newts with that, Signora? She tried to remember which of the pavement places it had been.

Unusually, she gave some thought to what to wear. A dress was called for, and she'd only packed three: one white and elegant (Christian Dior, once removed), one black and simple (Coco Chanel, according to the stall-holder in Portebello Market), and one dun and practical (Marks & Sparks). She should save the elegant for the Engagement Ball at Palazzo Otranto, which prompted her to favour the simple over the practical. The trouble was that the simple made her look like a lost schoolgirl. She was nearly a hundred; she didn't want elderly men offering her lollipops. Hang it, she would go with the elegant. It was good enough for Audrey Hepburn.

For the ball, she'd buy something new. Genevieve would know where to shop. She was an old hand at this haute-couture lark. Kate liked the idea of something spectacular by Piero Gherardi.

By the time she was ready to leave the pensione, it was nightfall. She found a taxi on the Viale Glorioso, outside the Ministero della Pubblica Istruzione, but had to abandon it not long after they crossed the river. As she'd already discovered, Rome was not best organised for swift journeys by anything with more than two wheels. The best way to learn a city was on foot anyway. She paid off the unconcerned cabbie, and set off on her own. It was a short stroll to Via Veneto, but not uncomplicated.

She wished momentarily that she had opted for the simple or the practical. In her elegant frock, she felt overdressed. Some warm loungers in the Piazza Barberini wolf-whistled at her. She knew she was blushing. Invitations which fortunately  -  or unfortunately  -  she did not understand were called out after the gentle Signorina, which she assumed meant her. Actually, she decided, she didn't mind overly much. She wasn't often whistled at. They probably gave the treatment to every woman who passed. It wasn't an especial compliment or insult. No Italian had pinched her bottom yet. Of course, they might be afraid of her.

A few new-borns were about early in the night. Across the piazza from the loungers was an equivalent group of beautiful vampire youths, sharp-faced and sharply dressed, pale-faced sheiks with dear little fangs. They had the post-war look: white Nino Cerutti suits, those omnipresent sunglasses, tight-fit Casa Lemi shirts open at the throats to show gold tat pendants. The vitelloni let Kate pass without comment, but lowered their shades in unison to stare at a warm girl who was happening by, flexing their combined powers of mesmeric fascination.

Kate giggled. But the approach probably worked. The girl, a waifish Pier Angeli lookalike, stopped in her tracks. One of the newborns made gestures of imperious enchantment, beckoning with long fingers, projecting 'you are under my power' at her mind. As if a puppet on invisible strings, she turned slowly to the vampire crowd, pretty face blank of expression. The new-borns sprouted fanged smiles. The great hypnotist was quietly triumphant.

The girl laughed at them and walked away. She hopped into a blinding-white Maserati and cuddled up to a warm man in his sixties. He had a definite bald spot and a foot-long cigar. The sports car cruised off.

The hypnotist was crestfallen. His fellows chided him for insufficient skill, thumping him with the heels of their hands. Another girl breezed into view, this one along the more generous lines of Elsa Martinelli. The hypnotist recovered his momentarily jarred confidence and began again to cast the 'fluence.

Kate walked on.

Two nights on, the murder of Malenka didn't seem to have affected the mood of the Via Veneto. The cafes were still thriving and the paparazzi still out after famous faces. Kate had to step over Hemingway, who growled something up at her. She didn't feel like reminding Papa that they'd met during the First World War, before he got old and drunk and famous, back when he was pretty nearly a good writer.

Marcello wasn't at the Cafe Strega, but she found a table where three newsmen were arguing over a bill. They pretended not to understand her in Italian or English, so she paid the bill and bought their attention. After exhaustive apologies, a button-nosed French reporter whose stiff forelock stood up like a wood shaving admitted he knew who she was asking after and sent her off to yet another cafe, the Zeppa.

A muscular figure ambled down the middle of the road. Kate had a start. The broad shoulders and swelling chest reminded her of the Crimson Executioner. This fellow had a curly beard. He wore a peplum, the classical belted tunic of the ancient world, and sandals. He might be an actor, still costumed after a hard day of wrestling papier-mache serpents and bosomy starlets at Cinecitta.

'That's Maciste,' a crone explained, in English. 'The great hero of Rome. Whenever the city has need of him, he appears. He is the messenger of the Gods.'

Kate thought that was Hermes.

Maciste strolled on, heroically. The muscles in his back and thighs bunched and relaxed as he moved.

She remembered the grip at her neck. The Crimson Executioner could have squeezed her head off.

At the Zeppa, she did find Marcello. He was at a table on the pavement, with a gaunt-faced, austerely robed priest, whom he introduced as Father Lankester Merrin.

'And, Father, this is... I am sorry, I misremember...'

'Kate Reed,' she said, cut to the heart.

'Of course. Signorina Reed.'

Though an invitation was not forthcoming, she joined them, pulling across a chair from another table.

'I've read your book on African religion,' she lied to the priest. 'Very provocative.'

The priest smiled thinly. He had piercing eyes. She wouldn't risk another lie with him.

A waiter brought her a glass of chilled lizard blood.

'You're the other reporter who was there at the destruction of the elders, Count Kernassy and Malenka?' asked Merrin.

She admitted it.

'Marcello has been consulting me on a related matter, and now you chance along. Providence has a way of arranging these things, Miss Reed.'

'Call me Kate,' she said.

'Thank you, Kate. You may call me Father Merrin.'

She wasn't sure whether that was a joke.

From the reviews of his book, she couldn't remember which side of the vampire debate Father Merrin took. It would be rude to come out plain and ask him if he considered her a being with a soul or not.

'Marcello was on the point of politely accusing me of taking part in a secret crusade against your kind, Miss Reed.'

Marcello shrugged and tried to wave away the suggestion.

'Everyone in Rome believes in secret crusades,' Merrin continued. 'If the Vatican isn't behind it, then it must be the mafia, or the Communists, or the Si-Fan, or the CIA, or the Diogenes Club, or the Illuminati.'

'Do you believe that, Father?'

'Belief is relative. Rome is eternally complex.'

Marcello stuck a cigarette in his mouth and lit up, eloquently. He had a way with small gestures.

The late Pope Pius XII  -  the second coming of Savonarola or Torquemada, depending on whom you talked with  -  had issued a bull reaffirming the Vatican's traditional position on vampirism. Upon death, the soul fled to its reward and the remains should be decently buried. Vampires were untenanted corpses, demonic imitations of those who were formerly in residence. If bell, book and candle failed, the suggested treatment was fire, silver and the stake. Though strictly there shouldn't be a need for the measure, to turn was to invoke automatic excommunication. Then again, so was voting Communist, and Palmiro Togliatti's party regularly took a quarter of the popular vote in Italian elections.

Many vampires were extremely devout Catholics. Ironically, they tended to be the breed who blistered when splashed with holy water, choked bloodily on communion wafers, and shrank in terror from the sign of the cross. In the last hundred years or so, theologians had struggled with the vampire question. A growing body of Catholic thought considered that the undead were indeed possessed of their original souls and thus should be reclaimed for the Church. It was rumoured that the newly elevated John XXIII wished to moderate the nosferatu doctrine, stopping short of recognising vampire priests, but had been until now dissuaded from that path by his conservative Secretary of State, Monsignor Tardini.

'What's this I hear about the Crimson Executioner and the Hotel Inghilterra?' she ventured.

Marcello raised an impressed eyebrow. Her random shot convinced him she had well-informed sources.

'Someone dressed like the murderer was seen climbing the front of the hotel. Like a big red spider.'

'And has any crime been committed?'

Marcello shrugged. 'Hard to tell. There was trouble in the room of a British naval officer. He denies anything more than a drunken liaison. A maid has sold information that the liaison might have been spectacular, and not so pretty. There was blood, a gunshot. This Britisher is a vampire. Oh, and everyone knows he is one of your spies. His automobile is far too ostentatious for a sailor.'

'Not one of mine. I'm not British.'

Marcello shrugged again, which made her want to break his dark glasses.

'Was an elder involved?'

'That is a question. One of the hotel's guests has vanished as if into smoke. She signed a false name, but was clearly Lady Anibas Vajda. A relation of Princess Asa, the Royal Fiancee. A vampire elder.'

Kate had vaguely heard of the woman. Nothing good.

'She hasn't turned up murdered?'

'Not yet. But there are whispers. The very old ones sometimes do not leave remains to speak of. Coroners resent that.'

'I understand Inspector Silvestri was called in.'

Marcello nodded. 'He is the latest in charge of the Crimson Executioner case. Three other detectives have been reassigned or reduced in rank for their failures. Silvestri must be wary. Last year, an inspector of the Surete who has some reputation as a sleuth was imported in a great explosion of publicity. He vowed in a bizarre accent that the felon would be apprehended within the month, then fell flat on his face several times and was, I understand, demoted to traffic duty in an undesirable quarter of Paris.'

'This is fascinating,' Father Merrin said, standing, 'but I must leave you young people now. I am sure you'll see the matter to a satisfying and thrilling conclusion. After all, the answers to such mysteries are very often found under the soles of our shoes.'

Marcello and Kate stood, out of respect, and the priest left, vestments billowing. She watched him stride through the crowds, a lone ascetic among voluptuaries. Beneath his knife-logic mind was a not unkindly soul, she thought. But he'd cleverly dodged the question about secret crusades.

She sat down and, after a moment's hesitation, so did Marcello. He was still uncomfortable with her. Was it because he'd seen her crouched by the corpses of Kernassy and Malenka? Or had he been reserved before that? He was with vampires at the airport, so he could hardly have a phobia about her kind.

No, she realised, it was her usual curse. Whenever she met a man she liked, she gave everything away at once. She broadcast some signal that made the object of her interest privy to her hopes and desires and, at the same time, rendered her faintly repulsive to him. She'd tried being cool, being friendly, being clever, and being blatant. No approach modified the first impression.

She scared them off. That was all there was to it.

With those damned sunglasses, she couldn't tell what Marcello was thinking. Genevieve would've seen through the black lenses and read his shrinking soul. Kate worried that he was trying to think of an excuse to escape from her.

'Have you written up the murders?' she asked.

With an apologetic turn of the head, he admitted he'd passed on the bare details to several editors. She couldn't believe he was as bored as he affected to be. No newspaperman could walk into the scene of a double murder and fail to smell a by-line and a paycheque. And he'd taken the trouble to consult Father Merrin. He was posing, pretending a profound disinterest he couldn't possibly feel.

'I've been thinking of doing an article on the Crimson Executioner,' she said. 'He's unknown in Britain. By chance, I'm in the middle of the news. But I need more than just the one close shave. I need background, and I need to stay on the story. We should work together.'

That was too blunt. He'd run screaming now.

'Perhaps we might even get to him ahead of Silvestri,' she ventured.

Marcello's mouth pressed into a thoughtful line. Brows knit above the rims of his dark glasses. He let out a plume of smoke.

'Perhaps,' he said.

Perhaps. That was almost as good as ayes. Better than a maybe, and not a no.

'Partners?' she suggested, offering her hand.

He stubbed out his cigarette, lit another one, sucked in smoke, let out smoke, considered a moment, and took her hand, not squeezing, not shaking.

'Partners,' she confirmed.