Blood Will Out by Jill Downie Read Free Book Online

ever was. Have you heard of Lilith Fair?”
    â€œCan’t say as I have. Enlighten me.”
    Liz poured them both cognac, came and sat down opposite Elodie. “It happened in the nineties, an all-female concert series, started by a singer I like — a Canadian called Sarah McLachlan. There’s a song of hers I came across when I was getting over — someone — so I looked it up, and got interested. But it was really about the music, nothing else. Shawcross said ‘it’s always about the blood,’ didn’t he. Outside of my job, for me it’s always about the music.”
    â€œApart from your — what did he call it? — your feminist claptrap, he seemed just as disturbed by that job of yours,” said Elodie.
    â€œDidn’t he, though? Did he say anything before I came that might be useful?”
    â€œIt’s more what he didn’t say. He told me about his claim to be a vampire, but he didn’t mention his threat. Other than that, there was just the fact that he quizzed Marie Maxwell about the Gastineau family history and she clammed up. Or so he said.”
    â€œCould just be he’s nosy, and Mrs. Maxwell pushed him away. Wasn’t there an old saying? The Brocks speak to the De Saumarez, the De Saumarez speak to the Careys, the Careys speak to the Gastineaus, but the Gastineaus speak only to God? That certainly doesn’t include the undead.”
    â€œSpeaking of the Gastineaus and God,” said Elodie, “I did just that earlier this evening.”
    â€œYou spoke to God?” Liz looked inquiringly at her godmother, whose religious scepticism was a source of some discomfort among certain family members.
    â€œAlmost. I spoke to a Gastineau, Marie actually, and put the cat among the theatrical pigeons. I’ll let you know what happens.”
    â€œI’ll look forward to hearing about it, but I should make a move now.” Liz uncurled her legs from under her and started to get up.
    â€œStay and let that brandy go down a bit longer,” said Elodie. “Let’s talk of other things, anything else but vampires and demons. And blood. What was the song you liked? That had you researching Lilith?”
    â€œIt’s called ‘I will remember you.’” Liz grinned. “And you know what? I didn’t.”
    After Liz had gone, Elodie went to her office and switched on her computer. “I don’t remember,” she said out loud at the screen. “I don’t remember.” She typed in “Lilith,” and sat there into the small hours. When she finally went to bed, it was the reproduction of a painting that stayed in her head, of Lilith naked, tossing her long mane of hair, a snake wound around her legs, one of its massive coils hiding her pudenda.
    Sex and blood. Sex and blood. The three words drummed over and over in her head until, finally, sleep came.

Chapter Three
    T he police station in St. Peter Port had at one time been the workhouse, “La Maison de Charité,” a fine eighteenth-century building on Hospital Lane. Hospital Lane was formerly the Rue des Frères, which had led to the ancient friary, now Elizabeth College, the private boys’ school on the island. Ed Moretti had been at school there, thanks to a scholarship. Certainly, his Italian father, who had survived slave-labour on the island during the occupation, and had come back to find and marry the girl who had saved him from starvation, could not have afforded the fees.
    Class , he thought, as he got into his vintage Triumph roadster and looked back at his family home. Like the poor, it is always with us, whatever they may say . His own ancestral pile was a cottage, a two-storey building of island granite, that at one time had been the stable and coachman’s quarters for a long-gone grand home. It was now worth more than any workingman could possibly afford. A coral-coloured climbing rose framed the curved stone