An Old Friend Of The Family (Saberhagen's Dracula Book 3), Fred Saberhagen [best large ereader .txt] 📗

let me take your coat. You flew over from London just to see the family, did you?”

   A woman of about forty-five, red-eyed and showing other signs of prolonged tension (another hopeful indication that he had not been forced to travel all this way for absolutely nothing) now appeared from deeper within the house, and exchanged glances with the policeman.

   “I’m Lenore Southerland,” she then informed the visitor, turning on him a gaze in which faint new hope and old terror were mingled.

   Again he introduced himself as Corday, which name obviously meant nothing at all to her. Then, just as the policeman was on the point of interrupting with more questions, there appeared from another room a face that the visitor could recognize, given his developed talent for perceiving a child’s features in the ruined mask of age.

   And the recognition would perhaps be mutual. As soon as Clarissa’s eyes (he had come up with her name a moment after her faced clicked into proper focus in his memory) fell on him, it seemed from a certain tremor in their puffy lids, in concert with a preparatory sagging of her body, that she might be going to faint. He locked his eyes on hers—he had taken off the dark glasses when he came inside—and presently she rallied and stood straighter.

   Ignoring the younger woman for the moment, he turned to Clarissa and took her hands in his and let her see a smile of reassurance. “Clarissa!” he greeted, in his best old-doctor voice. “It has been many years.”

   “Oh yes, it has,” she breathed in answer, and that was enough to make the policeman retire for the time being. She went on: “You know—you’ve heard about our awful troubles here?”

   “You shall tell me all about it right away.” And, after a few minutes of polite and blurred conversation with daughter-in-law, he managed to get the aged woman to himself. Apparently having her own reasons to want to talk to him alone, she led him into what looked like a functioning library—and yes, there was the table the vision had shown him sixteen hours ago, complete with a speck of red candle-wax adhering to the darkly polished wood. On the carpet beside one table leg there lay a minute sliver of broken glass.

   The door closed by Clarissa’s hand, they sat facing each other across the little table, he with his back to the windowful of winter daylight that now hung on as if it never meant to fade.

   Neither of them spoke immediately. Clarissa’s eyes, though she fought to keep them from doing so, flicked up once, twice, three times, to a high shelf behind him.

   At last she had to say something. “You know, it’s been so long…I’m afraid…I’m ashamed to have to ask, but—what is your name?”

   “Corday,” she repeated after him, mystified, when he had told it yet again. “Corday. Do you know, Doctor, I have the impression that I met you once when I was a small girl? I know that’s…”

   “In that impression I believe you are correct, Clarissa.”

   “But no. Do you suppose that could have been your father?”

   Now she was threatening to burble and gush. He sat in regal patience. Eventually he would hear more, learn more. Eventually he would confront his actual summoner, who had yet appeared.

   “It seems…it seems a strange coincidence that you should decide to visit us just now.”

   “It is nothing of the kind, my dear Clarissa, as I think you know full well. Where is the girl?”

   Almost as if he had suddenly drawn a knife. “What girl?”

   “An attractive young girl of seventeen or so dwells in this house. Last night—more precisely, about sixteen and one half hours ago—she sat in this room, at this table, with candle and mirror and a certain old book which is probably now on one of these high shelves behind me. I intend to see this girl and speak with her.”

   Clarissa’s face was crumpling, along with the pretense that she had tried to maintain, that folk usually tried to maintain, that the world was a sane place whose basic rules they understood. She shook her head and moaned like someone choking on a bone. At last she got a few words out: “The mirror broke…I thought it might have been the candle’s heat.”

   He waited silently.

   “I—I hope I did the right thing.” Her voice was very tiny now. Her eyes were those of a frightened bird.

   “Indeed, I share your hope. I have affairs of my own, as you must realize, to which I should prefer to be attending.” He sighed inwardly, wondering just how much Clarissa knew about him. Enough to scare her, obviously. “So, you instructed this girl—what’s her name?”

   “Judy.” With a gulp.

   “You instructed this young Judy in the means of summoning me.”

   “I was the one responsible. She only read the words.”

   “Only?”

   Somewhere outside the library, male voices were droning, drearily determined.

   “Clarissa, while I will do practically anything to please your dear grandmother, give every aid I can to anyone as near and dear to her as you are, I would not be amused to find my time and strength being wasted upon trivialities. So if this is a matter, say, of some stolen jewel, or perhaps some juvenile romantic difficulty—or even, God help us, a prank—let me warn you at once and bluntly that this family will be left the unhappier for my visit.” He had seen indications already that things were more serious than that, but he wanted to make the point. “And in that depressing event I believe I can explain my actions to your grandmother so that she will understand.”

   There was a pause in which Clarissa could be seen marshalling reserves of strength. She sat up straight and looked him in the eye, almost for the first time. “Dr. Corday. My grandmother, Wilhelmina Harker? She died in 1967. She was ninety-five then.”

   Again