The Mammoth Book Of Vampire Stories Written By Women

"You've got a secret. Maybe you're only warped shut, that would be the damp up here There may be a lining that could baffle the X-ray."

She tried the wrench, specifically designed not to inflict any injury. But it slipped and slithered and did no good. Jonquil knelt down and began to feel all over the chest, searching for some spring or other mechanism. She was caressing the chest, going so cautiously and delicately over it. Its likeness to a coffin was very evident, but bones would have been seen. "Giving me dreams," she said. Something moved against her finger. It was very slight. It was as if the chest had wriggled under her tickling and testing like a sleeping child. Jonquil put back her hand — she had flinched, and reprimanded herself. At her touch the movement came again. She heard the clarity of the click she had heard before in the dream. And before she could stop herself, she jumped up, and stepped backwards, one, two, three, until the wall stopped her.

The lid of the chest was coming up, gliding over, and slipping down without any noise but a mild slap. Nothing sat up in the chest. But Jonquil saw the edge of something lying there in it, in the shadow of it.

"Yes, it is," she said, and went forward. She leaned on the chest, familiarly now. Everything was explained, even the psycho-kinetic activity of the dream. "A painting."

Jonquil Hare leaned on the chest and stared in. Presently she took hold of the elaborate and gilded frame, and got the picture angled upward a short way, so it too leaned on the chest.

The painting was probably three centuries old. She could tell that from the pigments and disposition of the oils, but not from the artist. The artist was unknown. In size it was an upright oblong, about fifteen metres by one metre in width.

The work was a full-length portrait, rather well executed and proportioned, lacking only any vestige of life, or animation. It might have been the masterly likeness of a handsome doll — this was how the artist had given away his amateur status.

She looked like a woman of about Jonquil's age, which given the period meant of course that she would have been far younger, eighteen or nineteen years. Her skin was pale, and had a curious tint, as did in fact the entire scene, perhaps due to some corrosion of the paint but even so it had not gone to the usual brown and mud tones, but rather to a sort of yellowish blue. Therefore the colour scheme of clothing and hair might be misleading, for the long loose tresses were yellowish blonde, and the dress bluish grey. Like the hair, the dress was loose, a robe of a kind. And yet, naturally, both hair and robe were draped in a particular manner that dated them, as surely as if their owner had been gowned and coiffured at the apex of that day's fashion. She was slender but looked strong. There was no plumpness to her chin and throat, her hands were narrow. An unusually masculine woman, more suitable to Jonquil's century, where the sexes often blended, slim and lightly muscular — the woman in the painting was also like this. Her face was impervious, its eyes black. She was not beautiful or alluring. It was a flat animal face, tempered like the moon by its own chill light, and lacking sight or true expression because the artist had not understood how to intercept them.

Behind the woman was a vista that Jonquil took at first for the lagoon. But then she saw that between the fog-bank of blued-yellow cloud and the bluish-greenish water, a range of pocked and fissured mountains lurched like an unearthly aqueduct. It was the landscape of Johanus's Venus. The artist of the picture was the mad astrologer who had invested the house.

How could it be that the authorities had missed this find?

"My," said Jonquil to the painting. She was excited. What would this not be worth in tokens of fame?

She pulled on the painting again, more carefully than before. It was light for its size. She could manage it. She paused a moment, close to the woman on the canvas. The canvas was strange, the texture of it under the paint — but in those days three centuries before, they had sometimes used odd materials. Even some chemical or experimental potion could have been mixed with the paint, to give it now its uncanny tinge.

A name was written in a scroll at the bottom of the picture. Jonquil took it for a signature. But it was not the astrologer's name, though near enough it indicated some link. Johnina .

"Jo- nine -ah," said Jonquil, "we are going for a short walk, down to where I can take a proper look at you."

With enormous care now, she drew the picture of Johnina out of the attics, and down the narrow stair towards the salon.