“He’s shy,” I said.
“I like ’em shy.” Henrietta waggled her eyebrows, then reached across the table and chucked Kit under the chin.
I was so impressed by the length of her arm that I almost missed the chuck under the chin, but Kit, as the chuck’s recipient, was unable to ignore it. He mustered a pained grimace that, in a dim light,
124 Nancy Atherton
could have passed for a smile, then lowered his chin to his chest and began furiously dissecting a gherkin.
“Does Jacqueline help you in the kitchen?” I asked quickly, to distract Henrietta from Kit’s undeniably pretty face.
“I don’t need help in the kitchen,” she said. “Mostly Jacqueline runs up and down stairs so Mr. Bellamy and I don’t have to.”
“Wow,” I said. “Just the four of you in this big house . . . Are you allowed to have guests?”
“No,” said Henrietta, “but I have all the company I need. A cleaning crew comes up from London every couple of months to dust the place down, and another crew comes up to mow the lawn.”
“You have a lawn service?” I asked, unable to conceal my surprise.
“They don’t maintain it,” said Henrietta. “They don’t roll it or fertilize it or grub up the weeds. They just keep it from overrunning the house, is all. It’s an easy day out in the country for them. They’re nice blokes. They bring me the news from London, and I give them slap-up meals. They like my cooking,” she added, with the quiet pride of a woman who enjoys feeding people. “Miss Charlotte, now, she eats like a bird. Hardly touches a morsel I send up. Some cooks would take offense, but I see it as a challenge. I’m always on the lookout for dishes that might tempt her.”
I was about to recommend a plateful of blood pudding or a dainty feast of venison tartare when a painfully thin young woman drifted into the kitchen. She was dressed in ripped jeans, a wooly turtleneck, and sneakers, and she’d pulled her straight blond hair back into a ponytail.
“Have your ears been burning, Jacqueline?” Henrietta asked amiably. “I was just telling my new friends about you.”
The girl turned her pale face toward us and shrugged incuriously. Without saying a word, she proceeded to take a can of diet soda from the refrigerator and drift out of the kitchen.
Aunt Dimity: Vampire Hunter
125
“A very inward sort of person, is our Jacqueline,” Henrietta observed, sawing a slice of bread from a dense brown loaf. “Artists often are, you know.”
“She doesn’t look too healthy,” I said cautiously.
“Iron defi ciency,” said Henrietta.
Blood deficiency, I thought, and lost what little appetite I had left.
“I do my best to feed her properly.” Henrietta sighed as she mashed a wedge of Stilton on the slice of bread. “But you know what girls are these days. They’d rather be starving sparrows than fat pheasants.”
Her words brought to mind the damp pheasant I’d seen in the woods when I’d been looking for the herd of fallow deer that, according to Lizzie, served as the DuCarals’ private blood bank.
“I was told that a herd of deer roams the property,” I said, “but I didn’t notice one when Kit and I were in the woods.”
“There haven’t been deer at Aldercot since old Mrs. DuCaral passed away,” said Henrietta. “Mr. Bellamy told me that Miss Charlotte sold the herd to a deer park up in County Durham after her mother died, to save herself the trouble and expense of looking after it.”
I wondered distractedly if the herd’s sale had coincided with the arrival of a series of disturbingly thin maids-of-all-work like Jacqueline. It stood to reason that once the deer were gone, the lunatic in the attic would require another source of fresh blood. If the servant girls were in his thrall, they’d go to him willingly, and they wouldn’t tell Henrietta what was happening to them. They’d just fade away before her worried eyes until one day they’d simply “disappear,” and others would be brought from London to take their place.
I must have been lost in disquieting thought for some time, because Kit fi nally worked up the courage to speak to Henrietta.
“Did you know Mrs. DuCaral?” he inquired.
126 Nancy Atherton
“No,” she replied, twinkling at him. “And between you and me, Kit, it’s just as well. God rest her soul and all that, but from what Mr. Bellamy’s let slip, it sounds as if she was too proud for her own good. Only the finest London shops would do for her. She wouldn’t have anything in the house that was made or grown round here, except milk, and that was left at the gates, so Mr. Bellamy had to send the girl down there to fetch it every morning. Mrs. DuCaral never got to know her neighbors, never took an interest in county affairs.
From what I’ve gathered, she just stayed at home, looking down on the rest of the world.”