Ah, no job description.
Before Liz could make any response, Elodie said, with cheerful animation, “Hugo and I have been having the most fascinating conversation.” She brandished the breadknife in the air like a cheerleader waving her pompoms. “Sit down, pour yourself a glass of wine.”
“About —?”
“About vampires,” she said. There was just a touch of hysteria in her voice, which seemed to Liz to be more about a wild desire to laugh, than fear. “Hugo can tell you all you might ever want to know about them.”
Gandalf turned away from his pan of mushrooms, and chuckled. “The undead,” he said, and held up his glass of wine, which stood close to the stove. From the colour of his cheeks, it was far from being his first, and he looked not in the least vampire-like. “Here’s to the undead,” he repeated.
Almost exactly an hour after their across-the-garden-fence conversation, Hugo Shawcross had arrived at Elodie’s front door carrying a very nice bottle of wine, a paper bag of mushrooms, and a buff-coloured folder. The trouble-making play, presumably, thought Elodie as she let him in, although it was not at all certain if he knew he was in Mrs. Maxwell’s bad books. They exchanged the usual pleasantries, thank-yous for the invitation and the wine, idle chatter about mushrooms, appreciative comments from Hugo about Elodie’s cottage, and an offer to do the mushroom-cooking.
“Lovely. I’ve already put out a suitable pan, and I’ll make garlic bread — if you like garlic bread?”
“Love it.”
“So,” said Elodie, vigorously mashing crushed garlic cloves into the softened butter, “tell me about your play. I hear the subject matter is somewhat controversial?”
Hugo helped himself to a blue-and-white striped apron from a peg by the stove and put it over his immaculate white shirt. “Some have found it so, and, unfortunately, the some in this case is a Mrs. Maxwell, who has clout in the group.”
So he knew that much. “Not just in the group, Hugo. She is island aristocracy.”
“I know, and that’s the other thing. I am, naturally, interested in the ancient Guernsey families — she’s a Gastineau, isn’t she? — but when I started asking questions about her family history she seemed quite put out, I can’t think why.”
“Not a good person to get on the wrong side of. You said ‘the other thing.’ What else is she upset about?”
Hugo stopped cleaning the mushrooms, and banged his fist on the wooden table. “It’s my own fault,” he said. “She got up my nose with her hoity-toityness and I made a stupid joke. The play, you see, involves vampires, and the Players are hopeful it will bring in a new, younger audience. She objected, and I — laughingly — claimed to have the inside track on vampires, because I am one.”
“Gracious!” Elodie waited, but Hugo didn’t go on to his neck-biting threat. “I wonder why she was so upset about vampires? It seems to me they are everywhere nowadays — in the entertainment world, I mean, and besides,” she added, “you’re not, are you?” She laughed and held up a clove of garlic, and Hugo playfully shrank away from her in jest. Hopefully in jest.
“Interestingly enough, they don’t play a significant part in Guernsey folklore. Werewolves, yes, but no vampires. Of course, that could be why, because the werewolf is the sworn enemy of the vampire. But you’re right. They are everywhere.”
“Literally?”
The most troubling thing about Gandalf, thought Elodie, is that he is absolutely straight-faced about this stuff.
“Who knows. But he, or she, is an archetype, and we humans love archetypes. And we all know people who feed off the emotional energy of others.” Hugo reached for the bottle of olive oil on the table and added some to the pan, which was already heating. He tossed the prepared mushrooms into the pan on the stove, then spread them out carefully. Faintly, they began to splutter. “But there is one overwhelming truth about vampires that has the Mrs. Maxwells of this world up in arms.” Hugo poured himself another glass of wine and took a good swig.
“And that is —?”
“Sex. The vampire, above all, is an erotic metaphor. The vampire, Elodie, is always about sex.”
Hugo Shawcross turned and fixed a piercing gaze on Elodie. Just at that moment, mercifully, she heard the sound of Liz’s Figaro in the driveway.
They sat around the kitchen table to eat, and the meal was delicious. Liz was starving, so she ate and watched Hugo Shawcross, allowing her aunt to do the questioning. All she had to do was listen, and the wine had loosened Hugo’s tongue, which probably didn’t require much loosening in the first place.
“Are you a vampirologist? I believe that’s what they’re called — people who study the phenomenon?”
“Well, that is part of the project I am involved with right now, so maybe I am!” Hugo chuckled through a mouthful of garlic bread, and helped himself to more. “I was originally a university lecturer with a particular interest in European folklore, and I was able to devote myself to it after I took early retirement. I am now working with a group of researchers on a project dear to my heart.”
Liz allowed herself a question. “About vampires?” she asked. It was all she asked, but Hugo Shawcross gave her an impatient glance as if she had interrupted some private moment, and turned back to Elodie.
“Have you heard of the Malleus Maleficarum?” Without waiting for a response, he continued, “Not many have, so let me explain. It is a fifteenth-century Latin text on the hunting of witches. In English, the title means ‘The Hammer of Witches.’ At one time, there was much heated discussion in the Catholic Church about its validity as a part of Catholic doctrine, but the twentieth century more or less threw it out the stained glass window.” He chortled at his little bon mot. “We, a group of us, feel it’s time to take another look at it.”
Elodie got up, took Hugo’s plate back to the stove for another helping of lamb. His back was to her and, above his head, she threw a glance at Liz and grimaced. “Sorry, Hugo, if I’m being a bit slow here, but does this book have anything to do with vampires?” She brought the plate back to the table and placed it in front of him, then reached out for Liz’s plate.
“It’s okay, El. I’ll get my own, thanks. This is just delicious.”
Cutting into her remark, Hugo went on. “Not directly, but the man who first translated it from the Latin was indeed a vampirologist. His name was Montague Summers. A much misunderstood man, in my opinion. I became interested in him, and thus interested in vampires.”
“Hence the subject matter of the play.”
“Oh yes! The perfect topic to bring in a younger audience, and to recruit new talent to the group. A dramatic theme.” Hugo wiped a piece of bread around the last juices on his plate.
“A melodramatic theme.”
Standing behind him, Liz could not see the expression on Hugo Shawcross’s face at her observation, but she saw Elodie’s eyes widen. She picked up her plate and walked back to her seat. As she passed him, he grasped her arm, nearly knocking the plate out of her hands.
“Wrong, little lady, wrong. Serious theatre. I will not allow it to be played any other way.”
Looking down into his eyes, Liz saw malevolence — or was she now being melodramatic? She pulled her arm away.
“Sorry I spoke.” She resumed her seat and her meal as if nothing much had happened.
“But there is the chance nothing will come of this, because of Mrs. Maxwell’s opposition.” Elodie poured herself the last of the wine from the bottle on the table. She could