Blood Will Have Blood Read Online Free PDF

then?” pouted Deirdre.
    Georgina gave a little squeal and pointed. On the floor, near the place where Dracula had first appeared, was a sack. The two women pounced on it eagerly, transforming themselves again into animals, bacchantes. Deirdre, eyes gleaming, reached in the bag to pull the morsel out.
    A human child, Spraggue remembered.
    Deirdre screamed, a shriek that was female, not animal. The sack hit the stage floor with a thud. The dark woman held up her hands. Blood trickled down to her elbows.
    â€œWhat the—” Darien’s yell was almost lost in the commotion. Spraggue found himself onstage. He grabbed the bag that had fallen from Deirdre’s unresisting fingers.
    â€œIt’s not the doll,” she whispered. “It’s something awful. Look at my hands.” She stared at them, transfixed.
    â€œGeorgie,” Spraggue said firmly. “Go help her wash up.”
    Georgina gawked. The stage manager propelled Deirdre offstage.
    Spraggue eyed the sack warily. Darien was beside him now. The others circled, waiting: Greg, Langford, Eddie, Emma, Georgina. Spraggue wished he could see their faces more clearly.
    At first he thought the thing in the bag was a skull. His hand recoiled as he touched it. Too flimsy for bone. He lifted it out. The light caught it and Greg Hudson gasped.
    The head was a likeness of Hudson’s. Grotesquely thin, a caricature, but unmistakably him. The neck had been rudely hacked from a nonexistent body. The straw-blond wig, partially askew, was dappled with blood from the gaping wound. The face itself was beautifully sculpted. A Halloween mask attached to a wig form, Spraggue hazarded. The whole thing covered with celastic strips, molded to Greg’s image. Whoever the joker was, he—or she—had an artist’s touch.
    A retching sound came from Hudson’s direction. He ran offstage. Emma followed. Everyone started to speak at once.
    Spraggue paid no attention to the tumult. He’d seen something else inside the sack. A flash of white, stiff cardboard with rough penciled numbers. Familiar printing that made him think of Mickey Mouse paper and decapitated bats.
    In the confusion, he transferred the card to his pocket. It didn’t say much: 1538. That was it.
    With luck, Spraggue thought, he’d have the whole thing figured out by the time the show played its one thousand, five, hundred and thirty-eighth performance.

Chapter Five
    The next evening, Spraggue ate sushi alone at the Japanese restaurant down the block from the theater. The meal was good. Not great, the way his Thursday night dinners customarily were. Thursday night meant dinner at the Brookline estate—created by Dora, the cook who’d spoiled Spraggue for Boston’s best restaurants.
    But not tonight. He’d called Aunt Mary filled with excuses and finally agreed to come over later for a nightcap. No time was too late for Aunt Mary.
    He savored the delicately flavored raw fish slowly, then abandoned his chopsticks, finished his green tea, and ordered a refill on the small flask of saki.
    Rehearsal had gone like clockwork. No bloody heads, no decapitated bats. Just nine straight hours of lines, cues, and blocking, with costume fittings and publicity stills sandwiched in between.
    Eight-thirty. Fifteen more minutes and it would be dark enough to begin. Rehearsal had broken up at six. The crew left at seven. Some of the cast had stopped for a drink at the bar next door. Spraggue had watched them from his carefully chosen dining nook. Everyone was gone now.
    He fingered the picklocks in his left hip pocket and smiled. How close he’d come to giving them to a police-sergeant friend after he’d decided that private detection was not for him. He’d convinced himself that he must have thrown them away, right until the moment he’d found them in the bottom desk drawer.
    Spraggue paid the check, bowed to the impossibly tiny waitress, and left. Two