“Tell me again what happened,” Mircea said. Between the screams and the accusations and the gun pointing, we hadn’t had time to discuss the evening’s events in detail at vamp central.
“After speaking with Dorina, I came up to confront Elyas about his duplicity,” Louis-Cesare said tersely. “I was ushered into the waiting area.” He nodded at the small room with the comfy chairs. “I waited. But after a time I became impatient and—”
“How long a time?”
“A minute, perhaps two. I was in no mood to indulge Elyas’s power games. In the end, I went through without an escort and found him as you see.”
“Then explain why he died while you were standing over him, holding the knife used to sever his arteries!” Marlowe demanded.
“I cannot. I smelled the blood when I opened the door, but I did not know that it was his. I only discovered what had been done when I bent over the body. The knife was on the floor, and I picked it up to get it out of the way of the spreading stain. As I stood up again, he died. I felt it when it rippled through the house, and a moment later, his family was there, along with half or more of his guests.”
“Yes! Dozens of witnesses and a story a child wouldn’t believe.” Marlowe threw up his hands. “If you are going to lie to the Senate, at least make it plausible.”
“I am not lying.” It was the king-to-peasant tone again, and it didn’t look like Marlowe liked it any better than I had.
“The wooden knife was in the heart, Louis-Cesare,” Marlowe said, pointing at the gory thing that now resided on the desk. It wasn’t the usual plain-Jane stake, but a hand-carved specimen with a long, slender blade and a distinctive finial. I even thought I caught a glimpse of some metal—steel or silver—at the tip.
Elyas had been stabbed with the Cadillac of stakes.
Nothing but the best for a senator.
“As soon as the wood penetrated the muscle, he died.” Marlowe continued. “There is no delayed reaction; you know this!”
“There are two ways into the study, as you can plainly see,” Louis-Cesare said icily. “Someone must have entered from the hall, killed him, and left while I was waiting. The study is soundproofed—I would have heard nothing!”
“And this mysterious murderer did this in what?” Marlowe demanded incredulously. “The thirty-second window of opportunity he’d have had?”
“It is possible,” Mircea commented. “Elyas was playing host for most of the evening. He doubtless retired to the study to meet with Louis-Cesare only shortly before he was killed. It may well have been the first chance a murderer would have had to get him alone.”
“It was also the first chance Louis-Cesare had.”
“The master retired to the study not ten minutes before his death,” the old vamp put in, although no one had asked him. He was dressed like a butler, and he looked vaguely like one, too, with bushy salt-and-pepper hair, muttonchop sideburns and a mustache that said he was overcompensating for something. He was likely the senior vamp in Elyas’s household.
I moved around the desk while Marlowe and Louis-Cesare glared at each other. “What is it?” Mircea asked, as I leaned over the body.
“Don’t touch that!” Marlowe ordered, seeing what I was doing.
“I hadn’t planned on it.” The wooden knife in Elyas’s heart hadn’t been disturbed, and the telltale sign was still on the bottom of the blade, on the portion that had stayed outside the flesh—a small ring of pale, almost translucent gray.
“Dorina?” Mircea glanced from the hilt to my face, eyes suddenly sharp. He knew I was about to hand him something. And damn it, he was right.
I stood back up. “Elyas could have been killed at any time during that ten minutes,” I told them.
“He could not!” Marlowe barked. “We know when he died. The reaction was felt by everyone in the apartment—including you.”
I sighed. This was going to cost me a fortune. “There’s a way to delay the reaction.”
His eyes immediately narrowed on my face. “How?”
“You asked me a question yesterday, about how I get out of clubs and homes after killing a master, without his servants immediately zeroing in on me.”
“And?” His eyes had gone a bright, glittering black.
“I behead the master first, because—I don’t care who you are—that’s going to be a shock to the system.”
“Damn straight,” Ray commented.
Marlowe never even glanced at him. “And then?”
He was like a goddamned dog with a bone, I thought resentfully. “Then I tie his hands behind his back and jam the stake into his heart—a special one I previously coated in a thin layer of wax.”
His eyes widened.
“I don’t see why that would make a difference in the time of death,” Muttonchops said.
“The body’s heat melts the wax,” I said, spelling it out for him. “But not right away. I have anywhere from thirty seconds to a couple of minutes to get away before any of the actual wood touches the heart.”