She seemed a little confused. I realized that she had thought I was here on official business, and probably from the police. She glanced towards her phone, as if considering calling the police right now.
“Your teenage daughter was in a vampire nest,” I goaded. “It was an unthinkable thing for a mother to do, but you did it. Why? Did you hate Leonie? She was fifteen when her father died. Was she a difficult teenager? Did you want to punish her?”
&
nbsp; That certainly took Darya’s attention away from her phone. “Of course not!” she cried out. “I loved Leonie. And yes, she was difficult. But I loved her. I would never have allowed her to go there, but I had no choice.”
My eyes narrowed. “Did the Ronins want Leonie?” I asked.
Her eyes widened. “What? No! Leonie got sick. So sick! I couldn’t care for her. And then Constance turned up, saying that her boyfriend was rich, and they could take care of Leonie. And I couldn’t say no. How was I supposed to know that Constance planned to take her to a vampire nest? I had no idea.”
“When did you find out that Constance lived with vampires?”
“Afterwards. After Leonie got better she called me and told me. It amused her. She knew it horrified me.”
“Was Leonie spiteful?”
“Sometimes. She was angry.”
“Because you’d sent her to a vampire’s nest?”
Darya shook her head insistently. “No. Leonie knew I’d had to do it. She had been sick. They’d made her better.”
“What sort of sick?”
“The doctors struggled to diagnose her. We had to rely on the national health service, and they didn’t care. They didn’t care how hard it was for me to get her to her appointments. She had XP — xeroderma pigmentosum — and she would get horribly burned each time I took her out for her hospital appointments. Everything about Leonie had been hard ever since she was born. So picky with her food. She couldn’t even go outside to play! We did so much to give her a normal life. I gave up my job to home-school her. And she was going to die. It was all going to be for nothing! Joshua was dead and now my girl was going to die too. None of the medicine the doctors gave her worked, and she was getting weaker and weaker. And Constance said that they would get her private healthcare. The best doctors. How could I say no to that? It was all too much for me. Joshua was dead. I didn’t know how to cope without him. I shouldn’t have given her up but I did. And now I have to live with that!”
Tears were pouring down her cheeks. She buried her face in her hands and sobbed. I let her cry it out. I didn’t go to sit beside her to pat her shoulder or anything, because I knew that I would probably scare the life out of her if I did that. This woman was no longer used to having people around her. She’d lost her husband and her daughter and then she’d cut herself off from the rest of the world. Her pain was radiating out at me and it was so intense and full of her own self-hatred. She had let Leonie down and she knew it. It was difficult for me to sit here and feel it, as if my psychic radar was taking a bashing.
It was a relief when she finally stopped crying. She took a long shuddering breath, and then reached for a tissue to mop up her face.
“I don’t understand what you want,” she said. “That monster Steffane Ronin murdered her.”
“Did Leonie talk to you about Steffane?”
“No. She never mentioned him. She only ever called me when… When she was angry or upset about something. But she never mentioned him. Maybe she was afraid of worrying me. I don’t know.”
“If she wasn’t angry or upset about Steffane, why was she angry?”
“She wasn’t getting along with Constance,” said Darya shortly.
“Did you ever go to visit her? Did you see her relationship with the others who lived in the house?”
Darya looked angry at this. “It was a vampire’s nest. How was I supposed to visit her?”
“Did she come and visit you?”
“She couldn’t come out of because of her XP.”
“Not even at night?”
“She didn’t want to . She was upset with me.”
“About what specifically?” I felt that this was important. Darya had said that Leonie understood that she’d had to go and live in a vampire’s nest because of her illness. “Did she want to come home and live with you?”
“No. She got the best of everything there. They spoiled her. They were so rich. And they were still paying for her medical treatment. I think she liked living there. I think she liked tormenting me with the fact that I had sent her to a vampire’s nest. We were barely speaking when that monster killed her.”
I had hoped that Leonie’s mother might be able to tell me which of the other vampires may have had a motive for wanting Leonie dead, but it looked like Darya knew very little about her daughter’s life in that household. I suspected Darya had been happy that way because she didn't have to think about the fact that Leonie was in a vampire’s nest. This woman seemed to get through life by burying her head in the sand. I sighed. It looked like the only person who is a going to be able to tell me about the truth about what happened in that vampire’s nest was Constance Ashbeck.