Lord Darcy Investigates
Page 23
Fred began serving the drinks he had mixed, but before anyone could taste his, Captain Sir Stanley Galbraith said: “A moment, gentlemen, if you please. I would like to propose a toast. Remember, we will have another funeral to attend after the one in Napoli.”
When Fred had finished serving, he stood respectfully to one side, his own drink in his hand. The others rose.
“Gentlemen,” said the Captain, “I give you Commander John Wycliffe Peabody, who did his duty as he saw it and died honorably in the service of his King.”
They drank in silence.
22
By twenty minutes after one that afternoon, the Napoli Express was twelve miles out of Rome, moving on the last leg of her journey to Napoli.
Lord Darcy and Master Sean were in their compartment, quietly relaxing after an excellent lunch.
“Me lord,” said the sorcerer, “are you sure it was right to turn those copies of the treaty over to the Praefecture of Police for delivery to Imperial Naval Intelligence?”
“It was perfectly safe.”
“Well, what’s the use of our carrying our copies all the way to Athens, then?”
“My dear Sean, the stuff Peabody was carrying was a sham. I looked it over carefully. One of the provisions, for instance, is that a joint Anglo-French-Greek Naval base shall be established at 29° 51’ North, 12° 10’ East.”
“What’s wrong with that, me lord?”
“Nothing, except that it is in the middle of the Sahara Desert.”
“Oh.”
“Kyril’s signature was a forgery. It was signed in Latin characters, and the Basileus reads and writes only Greek. The Greek and Latin texts do not agree with each other, nor with the Anglo-French. In one place in the Greek text, the city of Constantinople is referred to as the capital of England, while Paris is given as the capital of Greece. I could go on. The whole thing is a farrago of nonsense.”
“But—Why?”
“One can only conjecture, of course. I believe he was a decoy. Think about it. Sixteen men all about to go to a funeral, and, at the last minute, four of them have their leaves canceled. Why? I feel the Royal touch of His Majesty’s hand in there. I think it was to make certain Peabody got aboard that train with his fellow officers. It would look like a cover, as though he, too, were going to Jourdan’s funeral.
“I think what happened was this: His Majesty found that the Serka had somehow gotten wind of our Naval treaty with Roumeleia. But they didn’t know it was being signed by Prince Richard as proxy in Rouen, so they started tracing it in London. So His Majesty had this utterly nonsensical pseudo-treaty drawn up and sent it with Peabody. He was a decoy.”
“Did Peabody know that?” Master Sean asked.
“Highly unlikely. If a man knows he is a decoy, he tends to act like a decoy, which ruins the illusion. No, he didn’t know. Would he have fought to the death to preserve a phony document? Of course, being an honorable officer, once that pouch was locked, he would not have opened it, so he did not know its contents.”
“But, me lord! If he was supposed to be a decoy, if he was supposed to lead Serka agents off on a wild goose chase somewhere else while you and I got the real thing safely to Athens—why was the decoy dumped practically in our laps?”
“I think,” said his lordship with care, “that we missed connections somewhere. Other transportation may have—must have—been provided for us. But something must have gone awry.
“Nonetheless, my dear Sean, all will work out for the best. A murder aboard the Napoli Express will certainly hit the news services, but the story will be so confused that Serka won’t be able to figure out what happened until too late.”
“It would have been even worse confused if Cesare had come out with his conspiracy theory,” the magician said “He’s a good man at his job, but he doesn’t know people.”
“His problem,” Lord Darcy said, “is that he happens to be a master at paper work. On paper, he can spot a conspiracy two leagues away. But sentences on paper do not convey the nuances of thought that spoken words do. A conspiracy is easy to concoct if it involves only paper work, and it takes an expert to find it. But you, as a sorcerer, and I, as a criminal investigator, know that a group of human beings simply can’t hold a conspiracy together that long.”
“Aye, me lord,” the stout little Irishman agreed. “I’m glad you stopped me. I almost told Cesare to his face that his theory was all foolishness. Why, that bunch would have given it away before they finished the job. Can you imagine Zeisler tryin’ to keep his mouth shut about somethin’ like that? Or young Jamieson not breaking down?”
Lord Darcy shook his head. “The whole group couldn’t even hide the fact that they were doing something perfectly innocent like assuring an old comrade that they did not think ill of him. Even more ridiculous than that is the notion that any such group would pick a train to commit their murder on, a place where, to all intents and purposes, they would be trapped for hours. Those men are not stupid; they’re trained Naval officers. They’d either have killed Peabody in Paris or waited until they got to Napoli. They still couldn’t have held their conspiracy together, but they would have thought they had a better chance.”
“Still and all,” Master Sean said staunchly, “Cesare Sarto is a good investigator.”
“I must agree with you there,” said Lord Darcy. “He has the knack of finding answers even when you don’t want him to.”
“How do you mean, me lord?”
“As he and Praefect Angelo were taking Norton away, he offered his hand and thanked me. I said the usual things. I said I hoped I’d see him again. He shook his head. ‘I am afraid,’ he said, ‘that I shall never see Father Armand Brun again. But I hope to meet Lord Darcy some day.”
Master Sean nodded silently.
The train moved on toward Napoli.
ALSO BY RANDALL GARRETT
THE GANDALARA CYCLE
(with Vicki Ann Heydron)
The Steel of Rathskar
The Glass of Dyskornis
The Bronze of Eddarta
The Well of Darkness
The Search for Kä
Return to Eddarta
The River Wall
THE LORD DARCY SERIES
Murder and Magic
Too Many Magicians
Lord Darcy Investigates
all available as Jabberwocky ebooks
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