The two ladies watched silently until Mademoiselle Geraldine added, “One ought to look away in disgust, I suppose.”
“Agreed,” said Sophronia. “But the one is our enemy and the other mad—we must think to our own skins.”
“Well put, young lady.” Mademoiselle Geraldine spoke to her as if she were almost an equal. It was charming. “You have a plan?”
“Of a kind.” Sophronia handed the headmistress her spare knife, filched from the kitchen, and the remaining acid. “Keep an eye on things here for a moment, would you, please?”
Mademoiselle Geraldine nodded.
Sophronia nipped out, retrieved Bumbersnoot and his two charges, and returned, shutting and locking the door behind her.
“Do we let him feed the man dry?” The headmistress’s tone was conversational.
Sophronia frowned. “I trust to your judgment in this. I will say, however, that if we did so, a man would be dead, and you likely know better than I how many legal issues always arise from that.”
The headmistress sniffed. “He wasn’t very nice to poor Professor Braithwope.”
“Perhaps we should ask him, then.”
“Excellent notion.” Mademoiselle Geraldine shook the vampire by the shoulder. “Oh, Professor?”
No response. The Pickleman was extremely pale under that seedling beard and looking husklike from lack of blood.
“Please, Headmistress. Allow me.” Sophronia snapped open the lid of her flask of lemon-infused tincture and dabbed a generous amount onto the vampire’s nose.
Nothing happened for a moment.
Then Professor Braithwope sneezed violently, which forced him to unhook his fangs from the Pickleman’s neck.
“Professor, dear,” said Mademoiselle Geraldine, “I have your robe. Do put it on.”
The vampire straightened, dazed but now free of any evidence of torture. All his wounds were healed. One could see this, of course, because he was still without clothing. He turned to face them.
Sophronia and the headmistress got a good view of all matters at that juncture.
Sophronia couldn’t entirely hold back a squeak. It was so surprising. “Goodness. Well, I always told my mother this school provided a comprehensive lesson plan. It is a good thing she did not realize how comprehensive.” She did not turn away, however. A lady of good breeding wasn’t afforded many in-person anatomy lessons, not even at Mademoiselle Geraldine’s.
Professor Braithwope struck an Adonis pose. “I was sculpted in marble. Did you know? I was once thought quite the fashion.”
The headmistress smiled and draped the yellow robe about the vampire’s shoulders. “Unfortunately, my dear man, this is England in the modern age, and you really must wear clothing. How would we otherwise get any work done? Such a distraction. And what will I tell this young lady’s mother?” Even though the Pickleman was barely conscious, Mademoiselle Geraldine was careful not to use Sophronia’s name.
If Sophronia had lingering doubts about the headmistress being a trained intelligencer, they were now put to rest.
“You tell her that her daughter got a bang-up classical education,” replied the vampire.
Sophronia didn’t entirely understand the subtext, but Mademoiselle Geraldine found this hilarious.
The vampire shrugged into his banyan, tying its fringed sash tight about his waist. Sophronia breathed a sigh of relief. It had been a bit much.
Mademoiselle Geraldine moved the conversation on. “Forgive me, Professor, but your meal? What should we do about him?”
The vampire looked at the prostrate man. “I’m full now.” His tone was childlike.
Sophronia considered the problem. “We can’t leave him. He will eventually tell what he knows.”
“And what is that?” wondered Mademoiselle Geraldine.
“That I am here, that you two are free, that I’ve already eliminated one other man, and that I intend to eliminate more.”
“Ah. I see. Your thoughts, Professor?”
“Every man should fly once in his lifetime.” The vampire’s mustache had recovered from its faint and was puffy with malcontent.
“Out the window, you think? Well, if you would do the honors.” In an aside, Mademoiselle Geraldine said to Sophronia, “We have a good excuse, that way. He could have simply fallen off.”
The vampire lifted the prostrate Pickleman. The headmistress opened a large porthole on one side, behind a pile of leaflets, and without ceremony, the vampire stuffed him through it.
Sophronia preferred not to think about the man falling to the countryside below. Even had he survived the bite, he would not survive that. Death, she thought, laid at my door. Absurdly, her brain fixated on the man’s appalling grooming habits. At least she wouldn’t have to look at that beardlet ever again.