Lady Killer Read Online Free

until a constable could be found, she saw Toast turn abruptly and go into a tavern door and she knew she had no choice but to follow him. As she reached the tavern and saw the sign with a picture of a heavily made-up woman hanging over it, Clio felt a flicker of surprise and relief. Despite its name, the Painted Lady Tavern was one of the most respectable houses in the area, more often hosting poets and playwrights than the ruffians and rakes who crowded the benches at other establishments.
    What was more, she knew the proprietor well. Indeed, Clio had recovered Lovely Jake’s prize pig for him that spring, and so was relieved to see him standing behind the bar as she entered. Whispering to her young companion to stay by the door and not move, a request to which she got only a barely visible sullen nod, Clio scanned the length of the dimly lit room looking for Toast. It was empty except for a solitary figure hunched over the table near the stairs and snoring loudly, around whom Toast was dancing ecstatically.
    The thought that a vampire would sleep all day in order to be fresh for his kills flashed through Clio’s mind, but was quickly dispersed by a hearty welcome from Lovely Jake.
    “Miss Thornton, it is an en-orm-ous pleasure to see you,” he boomed. Lovely Jake had earned his nickname playing the Maiden in numerous plays to packed playhouse crowds in his youth three decades earlier. Although it was hard to imagine the now enormous man as a captivating damsel, his voice, particularly when he chose to exercise it, could still command the attention of even the farthest boxes. He was exercising it now. “How is the Triumvirate these days?” he bellowed, as if in proof. “They have been off scene, if you will pardon me a theatrical expression, this long month. Have they a new project afoot?”
    “It’s a pleasure to see you, too,” Clio said quietly, her eyes not leaving Toast. Then, moving close to Jake, she stood on her toes, pointed in the direction of the sleeping figure, and whispered, “Who is that man?”
    Jake looked remorseful. “It would bring honor to us both if I could speak his name,” he replied, in his idea of a confidential whisper, audible in Southern Kent. “But I cannot—nay, I must not. I do hate to wear the mask of secrecy, but you see, I took a stack of gold as long as my shoe and promised to, as we thespians say, stand mute upon my mark. ” Clio eyed Jake’s enormous shoe and felt her heart sink. There was no way she could match that offer. “I can tell you this, though, my dear Miss Thornton,” Jake went on. “That is neither a happy man, nor a content man. His role upon the stage of life hangs heavy upon him. I begrudge no man my company, but one would think he would have had enough of it by now. He has been here, much as you see him at this moment, since yesterday midday, or as we say in the theater, intermezzo, and I must confide that I do not see any sign of exit, End Act I, on the near horizon.”
    If the man at the table had been in the tavern since the previous noon, there was no chance that he had made the muddy footprints Clio had seen at the doll house, which meant there was little chance he was the vampire. Clio’s relief that she was probably not facing a fiend just now was undermined by what that meant: the murderer was still out there, possibly getting ready to kill another victim. Her only consolation was the bizarre dance that Toast was performing around the sleeping man. The monkey’s sense of smell was as unerring as a dog’s, so there had to be something linking this man to the dead girl. Impatient to question the sleeping man at once, she just nodded her thanks to Lovely Jake and headed straight for the table.
    The man was snoring contentedly, his head down over his arms, his body covered with a red silk cape. Clio stood over him, watching him sleep for a moment, then suddenly remembered the expression of horror she thought she had seen— it had looked so real