Lord Darcy Investigates

by Randall Garrett

  “To render it invisible, of course.”

  * * *

  “You are not preaching the Three Hours, Reverend Father?” Lord Darcy asked with a raised eyebrow.

  “No, my lord,” Father Villiers replied. “I am just a little too upset. Besides, I thought my presence here might be required. Father Dubois very kindly agreed to come over from the monastery and take my place.”

  Clouds had come, shortly after noon, to obliterate the bright morning sun, and a damp chill had enveloped the castle. The chill was being offset by the fire in the great fireplace in St. Martin’s Hall, but to the ten people seated on sofas and chairs around the fireplace, there seemed to be a different sort of chill in the huge room.

  The three MacKenzies, father, son, and daughter, sat together on one sofa, saying nothing, their eyes moving around, but always coming back to Lord Darcy. Lady Beverly sat alone near the fire, her eyes watching the flames unseeingly. Master Sean and Dr. Pateley were talking in very low tones on the opposite side of the fireplace. Chief Jaque stood stolidly in front of the mullioned window, watching the entire room without seeming to do so.

  On the mantelpiece, the big clock swung its pendulum with muffled clicks.

  Lord Gisors rose from his seat and came toward the sideboard where Lord Darcy and Father Villiers were talking.

  “Excuse me, Lord Darcy, Father.” He paused and cleared his throat a little, then looked at the priest. “We’re all a little nervous, Reverend Sir. I know it’s Good Friday, but would it be wrong to—er—to ask if anyone wants a glass of Xerez?”

  “Of course not, my son. We are all suffering with Our Lord this day, and may suffer more, but I do not hink He would frown upon our use of a stiff dose of medicinal palliative. Certainly Our Lord did not. According to St. John, He said, ‘I thirst,’ and they held up to Him a sponge soaked in wine. After He had received it, He said, ‘It is accomplished.’ ” Father Villiers stopped.

  “ ‘And gave up His spirit,’ ” Lord Gisors quoted glumly.

  “Exactly,” said the priest firmly. “But by Easter Day His spirit had returned, and the only casualty among the faithful that weekend was Judas. I’ll have a brandy, myself.”

  Only Lady Beverly and Chief Jaque refused refreshment—each for a different reason. When the drinks were about half gone, Lord Darcy walked casually to the fireplace and faced them all.

  “We have a vexing problem before us. We must show how the late Count de la Vexin met his death. With the cooperation of all of you, I think we can do it. First, we have to dispense with the notion that there was any Black Magic involved in the death of his lordship. Master Sean?”

  The Irishman rolled Xerez around on his tongue and swallowed before answering. “Me lords, ladies, and gentlemen, having thoroughly given the situation every scientific test, I would be willing to state in His Majesty’s Court of Justice that by whatever means his lordship the Count was killed, there was no trace of any magic, black or white, involved. Not in any capacity by anyone.”

  Lady Beverly’s eyes blazed suddenly. “By no human agency, I suppose you mean?” Her voice was low, intense.

  “Aye, me lady,” Master Sean agreed.

  “But what of the punishment of God? Or the evil works of Satan?”

  A silence hung in the air. After a moment, Master Sean said: “I think I’ll let the Reverend Father answer that one.”

  Father Villiers steepled his fingers. “My child, God punishes transgressors in many ways—usually through the purgatorial torture of conscience, or, if the conscience is weak, by the reaction of the sinner’s fellow men to his evildoing. The Devil, in hope that the sinner may die before he has a chance to repent, may use various methods of driving them to self-destruction.

  “But you cannot ascribe an act like this to both God and Satan. There is, furthermore, no evidence whatever that your late father was so great a sinner that God would have resorted to such drastic punishment, nor that the Devil feared of his lordship’s relenting in the near future of such minor sins as he may have committed.

  “In any case, neither God nor the Devil disposes of a man by grabbing him by the scruff of the neck and the seat of the pants and throwing him through a window! Execution by defenestration, my child, is a peculiarly human act.”

  Lady Beverly bowed her head and said nothing.

  Again a moment of silence, broken by Lord Darcy.

  “My Lord Gisors, assuming that your father was killed by purely physical means, can you suggest how it might have been done?”

  Lord Gisors, who had been at the sidetable pouring himself another drink, turned slowly around. “Yes, Lord Darcy. I can,” he said thoughtfully.

  Lord Darcy raised his left eyebrow again. “Indeed? Pray elucidate, my lord.”

  Lord Gisors lifted his right index finger. “My father was pushed out that window. Correct?” His voice was shaking a little.

  “Correct,” Lord Darcy acknowledged.

  “Then, by God, somebody had to push him out! I don’t know who, I don’t know how! But there had to be someone in there to do it!” He took another swallow of his drink and then went on in a somewhat calmer voice. “Look at it this way. Someone was in there waiting for him. My father came in, walked toward the window, got up on his desk, and that someone, whoever he was, ran up behind him and pushed him out. I don’t know who or why, but that’s what had to have happened! You’re the Duke’s Investigator. You find out what happened and who did it. But don’t try to put it on any of us, my lord, because none of us was anywhere near that room when it happened!”

  He finished his drink in one swallow and poured another.

  Lord Darcy spoke quietly. “Assuming your hypothesis is true, my lord, how did the killer get into the room, and how did he get out?” Without waiting for an answer from Lord Gisors, Lord Darcy looked at Captain Sir Roderique. “Have you any suggestions, Sir Roderique?”

  The old Guardsman scowled. “I don’t know. The laboratory was locked at all times, and always guarded when his lordship was in there. But it wasn’t especially guarded when Lord Jillbert was gone. He didn’t go in often—not more than once or twice a week. The room wasn’t particularly guarded the rest of the time. Anyone with a key could have got in. Someone could have stolen the key from My Lord de la Vexin and had a duplicate made.”

  “Highly unlikely,” Lord Darcy said. “His lordship wanted no one in that room but himself. On the other hand, my dear Captain, you have a duplicate.”

  Roderique’s face seemed to turn purple. He came suddenly to his feet, looking down at Lord Darcy. “Are you accusing me?”

  Darcy lifted a hand, palm outward. “Not yet, my dear Captain; perhaps not ever. Let us continue with our discussion without permitting our emotions to boil over.” The Captain of the Guard sat down slowly without taking his eyes from Lord Darcy’s face.

  “I assure you, my lord,” the captain said, “that no other duplicate has ever been made from the key in my possession and that the key has never been out of my possession.”

  “I believe you, Captain; I never said that any duplicate was made from your key. But let us make an hypothesis.

  “Let us assume,” Lord Darcy continued, “that the killer did have a duplicate key. Very well. What happened then?” He looked at Sergeant Andray. “Give us your opinion, Sergeant.”

  Andray frowned as though concentration on the problem was just a little beyond his capabilities. His handsome features seemed to be unsure of themselves. “Well—uh—well, my lord, this is—I mean—well, if it were me—” He licked his lips again and looked at his wineglass. “Well, now, my lord, supposing there were someone hidden inside the room, waiting for My Lord Count. Hm-m-m. His lordship comes in and climbs up on the desk. Then the killer would have run forward and pushed him out. Yes. That’s the only way it could have happened, isn’t it?”

  “Then how did he get out of the room afterward, Sergeant? You have told us that there was no one in the room when you went in through the window, and tha
t the Guardsmen outside found no one in the room after you let them in. The room was under guard all that time, was it not?”

  “Yes, my lord, it was.”

  “Then how did the killer get out?”

  The sergeant blinked. “Well, my lord, the only other way out is through the trapdoor to the roof. He might have gone out that way.”

  Lord Darcy shook his head slowly. “Impossible. I looked at that rooftop carefully this morning. There is no sign that anyone has been up there for some time. Besides, how would he get down? The tower was surrounded by Guardsmen who would have seen anyone trying to go down ninety feet on a rope, and there is hardly any other way. At any rate, he would have been seen. And he could hardly have come down the stairs; the interior was full of the Guard.” His lordship’s eyes shifted suddenly. “Do you have any suggestions, Damoselle Madelaine?”

  She looked up at him with her round blue eyes. “No, my lord. I know nothing about such things. It still seems like magic to me.”

  More silence.

  Well, that’s enough of this, Lord Darcy thought. Now we go on to the final phase.

  “Does anyone else have a suggestion?” Apparently, no one did. “Very well, then; perhaps you would like to know my theory of how the killer—a very solid and human killer—got in and out of that room without being seen. Better than merely telling you, I shall demonstrate. Shall we repair to the late Count’s sanctum sanctorum? Come.”

  There was a peculiar mixture of reluctance and avidity in the general feeling of those present, but they rose without objection and followed Lord Darcy across the courtyard to the Red Tower and up the long stairway to the late Count’s room.

  * * *

  “Now,” said Lord Darcy after they were all in the room, “I want all of you to obey my instructions exactly. Otherwise, someone is likely to get hurt. I am sorry there are no chairs in this room—evidently My Lord de la Vexin liked to work on his feet—so you will have to stand. Be so good as to stand over against the east wall. That’s it. Thank you.”

  He took the five-inch brass key from his waistcoat pocket, then went over to the door and closed it. “The door was locked, so.” Click. “And barred, so.” Thump.

  He repocketed the key and turned to face the others. “There, now. That’s approximately the way things were after Lord de la Vexin locked himself in his laboratory for the last time. Except, of course, for the condition of that ruined window.” He gestured toward the casement, empty now save for broken shards of glass and leading around the edges.

  He looked all around the room side to side and up and down. “No, it still isn’t right, is it? Well, that can soon be adjusted properly. Firstly, we’ll need to get that unused oil lamp down. Yonder ladder is a full two feet short to reach a ten-foot beam. There are no chairs or stools. A thorough search has shown that the long-handled hook which is the usual accouterment for such a lamp is nowhere in the room. Dear me! What shall we do?”

  Most of the others were looking at Lord Darcy as though he had suddenly become simple-minded, but Master Sean smiled inwardly. He knew that his lordship’s blithering was to a purpose.

  “Well! What have we here?” Lord Darcy was looking at the brass key in his hand as if he had never seen it before. “Hm-m-m, the end which engages the lock wards should make an excellent hook. Let us see.”

  Standing directly beneath the brass globe, he jumped up and accurately hooked the brass ring with the key. Then he lowered the big lamp down.

  “What is this? It comes down quite easily! It balances the counterweight to a nicety. How odd! Can it be that it is not empty after all?” He took off the glass chimney, put it on the worktable of the east wall, went back and took out the wickholder. “Bless my soul! It is quite brimful of fuel.”

  He screwed the wickholder back in and lowered the whole lamp to the fullest extent of the pulley chain. It was hardly more than an inch off the floor. Then he grabbed the chain firmly with both hands and lifted. The lamp came up off the floor, but the chain above Lord Darcy’s hands went limp and did not move upward. “Ah! The ratchet lock works perfectly. The counterweight cannot raise the lamp unless one pulls the chain down a little bit and then releases it slowly. Excellent.” He lowered the lamp back down.

  “Now comes the difficult part. That lamp is quite heavy.” Lord Darcy smiled. “But, fortunately, we can use the ladder for this.”

  He brought the ladder over to the locked and barred door, bracing it against the wall over the lintel. Then his audience watched in stunned silence as he picked up the heavy lamp, carried it over to the ladder, climbed up, and hooked the chain over one of the apparatus hooks that the Count had fastened at many places in the ceiling.

  “There, now,” he said, descending the ladder. He looked up at the resulting configuration. The lamp chain now stretched almost horizontally from its supporting beam to the heavy hook in the ceiling over the door. “You will notice,” said his lordship, “that the supporting beam for the lamp is not in the exact center of the room. It is two feet nearer the window than it is to the door. The center of the beam is eleven feet from the door, nine feet from the window.”

  “What are you talking about?” Lady Beverly burst out suddenly. “What has all this to do with—”

  “If you please, my lady!” Lord Darcy cut her off sharply. Then, more calmly, “Restrain yourself, I pray. All will become clear when I have finished.”

  Good Lord, he thought to himself, it should be plain to the veriest dunce…

  Aloud, he said, “We are not through yet: The rope, Master Sean.”

  Without a word, Master Sean O Lochlainn opened his big symbol-decorated carpetbag and took from it a coil of cotton rope; he gave it to Lord Darcy.

  “This is plain, ordinary cotton rope,” his lordship said. “But it is not quite long enough. The other bit of rope, if you please, my dear Sean.”

  The sorcerer handed him another foot-long piece of rope that looked exactly like the coil he already held.

  Using a fisherman’s knot, Lord Darcy tied the two together.

  He climbed up on the late Count’s desk and tied the end of the rope to another hook above the gaslight—the end with the tied-on extra piece. Then he turned and threw the coil of rope across the room to the foot of the ladder. He went back across the room and climbed the ladder again, taking with him the other end of the rope.

  Working carefully he tied the rope to the chain link just above the lamp, then taking the chain off the hook he looped the rope over the hook so that it supported the lamp.

  He climbed back down the ladder and pointed. “As you see, the lamp is now supported solely by the rope, which is fastened at the hook above the gaslamp over the window, stretches across the room, and is looped over the hook above the door to support the weight.”

  By this time they all understood. There was tension in the room.

  “I said,” continued Lord Darcy, “that the rope I have used is ordinary cotton. So it is, except for that last additional foot which is tied above the gaslamp. That last foot is not ordinary cotton, but of specially treated cotton which is called nitred or nitrated cotton. It burns extremely rapidly. In the original death trap the entire rope was made of that substance, but there was not enough left for me to use in this demonstration.

  “As you will notice, the end which supports the lamp is several inches too long after the knot was tied. The person who set this trap very tidily cut off the excess and then failed to pick up the discarded end. Well, we all make mistakes, don’t we?”

  Lord Darcy stood dramatically in the center of the room. “I want you all to imagine what it was like in this room last night. Dark—or nearly so. There is only the dim illumination from the courtyard lamps below.” He picked up an unlit torch from the workbench a few feet away, then went to the door.

  “My Lord Count has just come in. He has closed, locked, and barred the door. He has a torch in his hand.” Lord Darcy lit the torch with his pipe lighter.

  “Now, he walks
across the room, to light the gaslamp above the window, as is his wont.” Lord Darcy acted out his words.

  “He climbs up on his desk. He turns on the gas valve. He lifts his torch to light the gas.”

  The gas jet shot a yellow flame several inches high. It touched the nitrated cotton rope above it. The rope flared into hissing flame.

  Lord Darcy leaped aside and bounced to the floor, well away from the desk.

  On the opposite side of the room, the heavy lamp was suddenly released from its hold. Like some airborne juggernaut, it swung ponderously along the arc of its chain. At the bottom of that arc, it grazed the floor with the brass ring. Then it swung up and—as anyone could see—would have smashed the window, had it still been there. Then it swung back.

  Everyone in the room watched the lamp pendulum back and forth dragging the cotton rope behind it. The nitrated section had long since vanished in flame.

  Lord Darcy stood on the east side of the room with the pendulum scything the air between himself and the others.

  “Thus you see how the late Count de la Vexin came to his death. The arc this thing cuts would have struck him just below the shoulder-blades. Naturally, it would not have swung so long as now, having been considerably slowed by its impact with the Count’s body.” He walked over, grabbed the chain and fought the pendulum to a standstill.

  They all stared fascinated at the deadly weight which now swung in a modest two-inch wobble.

  The young Lord Gisors lifted his head with a jerk and stared straight into Lord Darcy’s eyes. “Surely my father would have seen that white rope, Darcy.”

  “Not if it were covered with lampblack—which it was.”

  Lord Gisors narrowed his eyes. “Oh, fine. So that’s the end of it, eh? With the lamp hanging there, almost touching the floor. Then—will you explain how it got back up to where it belongs?”

  “Certainly,” said Lord Darcy.

  He walked over to the lamp, removed the length of cotton rope, pulled gently on the chain to unlock the ratchet, and eased the lamp up. After it left his outstretched hand it moved on up quietly to its accustomed place.