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“Very Aubrey Beardsley.”
    Spraggue turned the page. The cast list was next, in order of appearance:
JONATHAN HARKER
Gregory Hudson
COUNT DRACULA
John Langford
THE BRIDES OF DRACULA
Deirdre Marten
 
Gina Phillips
RENFIELD
Edward Lafferty
DR. JOHN SEWARD
Frank Hodges
MINA MURRAY
Caroline Ambrose
LUCY WESTENRA
Emma Healey
DR. ABRAHAM VAN HELSING
Gustave Grayling
    Spraggue let his eyes close while his aunt pored over the list, shutting out the vast proportions of the balconied, two-story library of the old Spraggue house. Even the Cézanne over the marble fireplace offered no relief to exhaustion-blurred eyes. What time was it? One o’clock? Two? Never too late for Aunt Mary.
    He grinned at the back of her variegated head. She had hoped for a smooth transition, a graceful fading from red to silver. But the process seemed to have halted halfway, leaving untidy patches of both colors. Oddly enough, it suited her perfectly.
    â€œWell?” she said, her clear voice belying her sixty-seven years.
    Spraggue took a long sip of syrupy amber wine, a ’59 Beerenauslese Aunt Mary had brought up from the cellar to celebrate his new job. He smiled his appreciation. Mary tapped the cast list sharply with a painted fingernail.
    â€œThat,” said Spraggue hastily, “minus one, plus one, is the list of suspects.”
    â€œWho’s out?”
    â€œFrank Hodges. I’ve got his part. He could have been playing the tricks up until last week, but he had nothing to do with today’s games. Definitely in New York. I spoke to him on the phone. He wished me luck.”
    â€œDid you tell him you were investigating the—”
    â€œNo. Things like that have a way of getting around. I called to humbly ask him for any character insight he might offer me on Dr. John Seward. I had a hard time getting him off the line.”
    Aunt Mary crossed off Hodges’s name. “And whose name gets added?”
    â€œDon’t scrawl it on the cast list. She’s crew. The stage manager. Woman named Karen Snow.”
    â€œNice name.”
    â€œSeems a nice person,” said Spraggue shortly.
    â€œWhat about the rest of the crew?”
    â€œDarien says they’re out. There’s a fat guy named Dennis, the house manager. I’d like to know more about him. But Darien assures me he’s out of the running.”
    â€œAnd how reliable is Mr. Darien?” asked Aunt Mary mildly.
    Spraggue yawned. “How reliable is anyone in this business?”
    â€œWhat I meant was, is he drinking?” Spraggue’s eyebrow went up again. “You know about that?”
    â€œDoesn’t everyone? Don’t you remember that business with the auto crash? The Boston papers hardly touched it, but the New York press went after Darien with a vengeance.”
    â€œAn accident—” Spraggue said, dredging up bits and pieces of the story from his memory.
    â€œA woman was killed. I don’t recall the name. An actress, I think. Unknown.”
    â€œAnd Darien was charged?”
    â€œNo,” Aunt Mary said positively. “The public prosecutor wanted to go for vehicular homicide. Said Darien was drunk. He so often was at that time. But someone slipped up. I forget. Either no breathalyzer test was given or the results were lost or tampered with. A police officer lost his job over the mixup. Darien got off with bruises and bad press.”
    â€œAs far as I know, Darien’s stone-cold sober.” Spraggue pulled a folded scrap of paper out of his pocket. “But even if he isn’t drinking now, this could encourage him to start.”
    He handed a facsimile of the note he’d found on Darien’s desk to his aunt. “It came attached to a dead bird.”
    She fingered the note thoughtfully. “Whose suicide does this refer to?”
    â€œSamuel Borgmann Phelps.”
    â€œAh.”
    â€œYou knew him?”
    â€œ Of him. When I was a teenager, attending a