“That’s mean.”
“I hope it’s romantic. We need that around here, especially these days.”
“These days … ? Wasn’t that terrible about Dr. Branston-Hay’s accident? Such a nice man. And his boys, they are so adorable. And then the fire.”
“Fire?”
“Didn’t you hear? Last night, the electrical box shorted. It was terrible. They lost everything—all his years of research, and his own Babbage system. At least they escaped.”
“At least …” I shook my head. “It wasn’t in the paper. I didn’t know.” So much for Branston-Hay’s backup disks. VanBecton wasn’t leaving much to chance.
“It will be. Poor woman.”
“Strange. First Miranda’s murder, then this. The watch hasn’t been able to do much. You know, after her murder, they even called in the Spazi?”
“They did?”
“There was a big gray Spazi steamer parked right next to the watch office for two days.” I shook my head. “Gerald was doing some sort of research for the Ministry of Defense. He didn’t like to talk about it. I wouldn’t either, I suppose, not with all the other fires and accidents happening at Babbage centers at other schools. Still, the feds won’t let on, and probably poor Chief Waetjen will get the blame for not solving the crimes. And another fire.” VanBecton liked fires, or this was a way to pin it on Ferdinand.
“Ah, do you think so, Doktor Eschbach?”
I grinned. “Given the federal government, is there any doubt?” I grinned. “I need to go, and please don’t tell Doktor duBoise. Let her find it when she picks up her messages.”
“I won’t.” She smiled faintly, as well she might, since her husband was on the town council that had hired Chief Waetjen.
That had been one of the purposes of my visit, that and reminding Llysette that I was still around. She had been reserved, or was it just preoccupied with her opera production coming up? Or was I withdrawing from her?
I waved briefly to Hector as he was placing snow shelters over the bushes beside the music building, but didn’t see Gertrude anywhere. Hector waved back, in his somber but friendly manner, and I marched back to the Natural Resources building, where I repeated the same conversation with Gilda, not because she was connected to anyone in particular, but because she talked to almost everyone about everything. Except with Gilda, I added one more twist.
“I wonder if the Spazi have their fingers on the chief.”
“Don’t they have their fingers on everyone?”
We both laughed, but Gilda’s laugh died as the good Doktor Doniger marched toward his office.
“Gilda. Where is the memorandum from the dean?”
I went upstairs, actually reading through the text assignments—novel concept—and reviewing my notes for my eleven o’clock before I trudged through the snow flurries to Smythe Hall for Natural Resources 1A.
“I beg your pardon for my breathless arrival, and I do know that you are waiting breathlessly.” I held up my hand. “Unfortunately, a number of matters have retarded my arrival, including a few recent deaths.” I waited. “I assume you have heard about the accident that killed Doktor Branston-Hay? I hope it is not part of the unfortunate pattern of accidents involving professors at university Babbage centers across the country.” I shrugged.
“Accidents?” finally came a whisper.
“You should read the press more closely. However, in answer to your question, there have been explosions and fires at a number of Babbage centers across the country. I do not know if students have been killed, but several professors and staff have died. There was even one incident in Munich. Now, enough of noncurricular speculation! What about solid deposition?”
I looked around the room. “Mister MacLean? What is solid deposition?”
I got a blank look, but eventually, someone got the idea. We didn’t get into carbon, and I had to spend far too much time explaining why it was highly unlikely that significant quantities of VOCs would ever be present in any form of atmospheric deposition, solid or liquid.
A faint glimmer of sunlight graced my departure from Smythe, but it vanished as I entered the bright redbrick walls of the student activities building.
After wolfing down the bowl of bland chicken noodle soup at the counter in the activities building, I returned to my office through another, heavier snow flurry, and finished grading the Environmental Politics 2B papers. The last papers weren’t that much better than the first.
Since I hadn’t heard anything from Llysette, I dialed her number at about quarter to two, but there was no answer. I shrugged and gathered together the papers.
The grass wore a thin sheet of white flakes, but the brick walkways were merely damp, and the snow had stopped falling before I left the Natural Resources building. Perhaps three students nodded to me as I crossed the green back to Smythe. I nodded in return, but all three looked away. I must have looked grim. Either that or the word was out that Professor Eschbach was flattening all markers, or whatever the current slang on the korfball court was.
My Environmental Politics 2B class almost cowered in their desks, except for one brave soul—Demetri Panos, a Greek exile. What he was doing in New Bruges, I never understood. He shivered more in a classroom under a coat than even Llysette did outside:
“Professor, you will be generous in considering our faults?”
I had to smile.
“If your faults show effort and some minimal degree of perception, Mr. Panos.” I felt safe saying that, since he’d actually gotten a B, a low B but a B, one of the few. Then I began handing back the papers, trying to ignore the winces and the mumbles.
“… not graduate school …”
“… what does he want …”
I did answer the second mumble. “What I want from you is thought. You have brains. You should read the material, make some effort to comprehend it, and then attempt to apply what you have learned to one of the topics. For example, take the second topic, the one dealing with whether real environmental progress has been made, or whether most of the environmental improvements of the past generation occurred for other, less altruistic, reasons. Were the petroleum taxes pushed through by Speaker Aspinall for environmental reasons, or because the Defense Ministry pointed out the need to preserve domestic petroleum supplies with the drawdown of the Oklahoma fields and the difficulties in extracting North Slope oil?”
Half of them still looked blank. I wondered if that blank expression were a regional trait common to New Bruges or a generational expression common to all young of the species.
Somehow we struggled through, and I got back to the main office. Still no message from Llysette, and I wondered if she were out on a short tour with her group. But would she be traveling so near a production?
Or had I done something to offend her? Finally I picked up the handset and dialed.
“Hello.”
“Is this the distinguished soprano Llysette duBoise?”
“Johan, do not mock me.”
“I wasn’t. I was just remarking on the quality of your voice.”
A sigh followed. I waited.
“A long day it has been.”
“So has mine. Would you like dinner?”
“We are still rehearsing, and still I am beating the notes into their thick Dutch heads.”
“Chocolate before rehearsal? Now? At Delft’s?”
“I do not …” She sighed again. “That would be nice.”
“I’ll be at your door in a few moments.”
And I was. And another wonder of wonders, she actually was ready to leave, carefully knotting a scarf over her hair and ears as I rapped on the studio door.
“Johan …” I got a kiss. A brief one, but a kiss. “For the note. Sweet and thoughtful it was.”
“Sometimes I try. Other times, I’m afraid I’m trying.”
We walked down the hill to the center of town.
“How are you coming with rehearsals?” I shook my head. “From what I’ve seen, you�
�re really pushing them to do Heinrich Verrückt. Didn’t everyone think Beethoven was totally insane for writing an opera about Henry VIII? From what you’ve told me, it has the complexity of the Ninth Symphony and the impossibility of Mozart’s Queen of the Night in every role.”
“Johan,” Llysette said with a laugh, “difficult it is, but not that difficult. To baby them I am not here.”
Delft’s was almost empty, and we got the table by the woodstove again.
“Ah, much better this is than my cold studio.” She slipped off the scarf even before sitting.
Victor’s son Francois arrived and nodded at Llysette. “Chocolate? Tea? Coffee?”
“Chocolate.”
“I’ll have chocolate also, and please bring a plate of the butter cookies, Dansk style.”
As Francois bowed and departed, Llysette shifted her weight in the chair, as if soaking in the warmth from the stove.
“Johan?”
“Yes.”
“Well did you know Professor Branston-Hay?”
“I can’t say I knew him exceptionally well. We talked occasionally. We had troubles with the same students.”
“A tragedy that was.” Llysette pursed her lips. “Some, they say that it was not an accident.”
I shrugged. “I have my doubts. According to the papers, a lot of Babbage researchers are dying in one way or another.”
“Is that not strange? And Miranda, was she not a friend of Professor Branston-Hay?”
I nodded.
“Your country, I do not understand.” Llysette’s laugh was almost bitter.
“Sometimes I don’t, either. Exactly what part don’t you understand?”
“A woman is killed, and nothing happens. A man dies in an accident, and the watch, they question many people, and people talk. No one says the accident could be murder. But they question. The woman, she is forgotten.”
Except I hadn’t forgotten Miranda, and I didn’t think vanBecton had, either.
Francois returned with two pots of chocolate and a heavily laden plate of Danish butter cookies. He filled both cups.
The chocolate tasted good, much better than the bland chicken noodle soup that had substituted for lunch. The cookies were even better, and I ate two in a row before taking another small swallow of the steaming chocolate.
“Did they question you?” I asked.
“But of course. They asked about you.”
“Me? How odd? I barely knew either one—I mean, not beyond being members of the same faculty.”
“I told the chief watch officer that very same.” Llysette shrugged. “Perhaps they think it was a ménage à trois.”
“Between a broken-down federal official, a spiritualistic piano teacher, and a difference engine researcher with a soul written in Babbage code? They must be under a lot of pressure.” I refilled my cup from my pot and hers from the one on her left.
She laughed for a moment, then added, “Governments make strange things happen. People must … make hard choices, n’est-ce-pas?”
“Mais oui, mademoiselle. Like insisting on producing Heinrich Verrückt in New Bruges. Why didn’t you just use one of the Perkins adaptations of Vondel?”
“Vondel? Dutch is even more guttural than low German.”
“I think it’s interesting. Seventeenth-century Dutch plays turned into contemporary operas by a Mormon composer.”
Llysette made a face.
“The Dutch think that Vondel was every bit as good as Shakespeare.” I took a healthy swallow of chocolate. The second cup was cooler.
“Good plays do not make good operas. Good music and good plays make good opera.”
“You have a problem with Perkins?”
“Perkins? No. Good music he writes. The problem, it is with Vondel.” Llysette looked at her wrist. “Alas, I must go. A makeup lesson I must do, and then the rehearsals.”
I swallowed the last of my chocolate, then left some bills on the table for Francois.
Llysette replaced her scarf before stepping into the wind. A few damp brown leaves swirled by, late-hangers torn from the trees lining the square.
“Makeup lesson?”
“The little dunderheads, sometimes, they have good reasons for missing a lesson.”
“Few times, I would guess.”
Llysette did not answer, and we proceeded in silence to the door of the Music and Theatre Building. I held it open, and we walked to her empty studio.
“Take care.” I bent forward and kissed her cheek.
“You also, Johan.” Her lips were cold on my cheek. “The note—I did like it.”
I watched for a moment as she took off the scarf and coat, then blew her a kiss before turning away.
As I walked back to my office, I had to frown. Was I getting so preoccupied that Llysette was finding me cold? She still seemed distracted … but she had kissed me and thanked me. Was I the distracted one—not that I didn’t have more than enough reasons to be distracted—or was something else going on?
I went back to my own office, where I reclaimed my folder before locking up. The main office was empty, although I could see the light shining from under David’s closed door. Whatever it was about me that he’d been discussing with the dean apparently was still under wraps. He was probably plotting something. God, I hated campus politics.
The wind continued to gust as I walked to the car park. A watch car was pulled over to the curb on the other side of the street outside the faculty car park. I started the Stanley, then belted in. As my headlamps crossed the dark gray steamer, glinting off the unlit green lenses of the strobes, I could make out Officer Warbeck, clearly watching me. When I got to the bottom of the hill, he had pulled out, following me at a distance. He followed me across the river, but not up Deacon’s Lane.
First Llysette, and then the watch.
At least Marie had left me a warm steak pie, and I had eaten most of it when the wireset rang. I swallowed what was in my mouth and picked up the handset.
“Hello?”
“Doktor Eschbach?”
“Yes.”
“This is Chief Waetjen. I just had one additional question.”
“Oh?”
“Do you recall whether Professor Miller was wearing a long blue scarf the night she was killed?”
I frowned. “I only felt her ghost. So I wouldn’t have any way of knowing what she wore. I hadn’t seen her since that Friday, I think, and I don’t remember what she was wearing then. You might ask one of the women.”
“I see. Well, thank you.” Click.
I looked out into the darkness onto the lawn, barely visible under the stars that had begun to shine in the rapidly clearing skies.
In belated foresight, the situation vanBecton was setting up was clear enough. Johan Eschbach had been under enormous stress, had even received a health-based pension for wounds from a would-be assassin. Now a murder, perhaps one he had committed in his unstable state, would be found to have turned him into a zombie—one of the more severe varieties. And his ghost would never be found. What a pity!
I walked upstairs and looked outside, seeing a few bright and cold stars between the clouds and wondering how long before I got a caller. Then I opened the false drawer in the armoire, taking out a few Austro-Hungarian items—and the two new shiny nuts I had put there just the day before. Of course, the whole thing was ridiculous, since no real agent would carry anything even faintly betraying, but the items were suggestive—a medallion reminiscent of the Emperor’s Cross, a fragment of a ticket in German, the sort of thing that could get stuck in a pocket, a pen manufactured only in Vienna, and a square metal gadget which contained a saw and a roll of piano wire, totally anonymous except for the tiny Austrian maker’s mark.
As evidence they might be too subtle, but I didn’t have much to lose. I put them in my pockets, not that they were any risk to me, since I’d either walk away or be in no shape to do so.
I studied the lawn, but no one was out there, not that I could see. So I w
alked back downstairs and washed the dishes. Then I went into the study, got the disassociator, and set it in the corner by the door. I got the quilt from the sofa and rolled it up and set it on the chair before the Babbage console, putting a jacket from the closet around it and an old beret on top. I’d never worn it, not since Anna had sent it to me from her trip to New France years earlier, but I doubted any agent knew what I did or didn’t wear in my study. In any case, the lights would silhouette the figure, and, from the veranda, it would be hard to distinguish the difference between me and the impromptu dummy from any distance because the Babbage screen assembly would block a head-on view until an intruder was almost at the windows.
I reached forward and turned on the difference engine. After that, I slipped the truncheon from the hidden holder on the table leg into my belt, then turned on the lights, picking up the disassociator.
I didn’t have to wait long before a tall figure in a watch uniform glided up the hill and across the veranda. I shook my head. He was relying a lot on his uniform, and I’ve never had that much respect for cloth and braid and bright buttons.
He fiddled with the door, opened it, and lifted the Colt-Luger.
Crack. crack.
The young Spazi—I was sure the imposter’s name wasn’t Warbeck, even if I had appreciated his sense of humor—actually fired two shots into the quiltdummy before he looked around. Metal glinted under his watch helmet. His large Colt-Luger swung toward me.
Crack.
I jumped and pulled the trigger on the disassociator, then dropped it. The room went dark, but I hadn’t waited for that, as I had dropped forward and to Warbeck’s right. I could feel him ram into the heavy desk, and his hesitation was enough, even if it took me two quick swings with the truncheon. I had to aim for the temple because I didn’t know how effective the truncheon would be with Gerald’s mesh cap and Warbeck’s regular hat over it.
Still, even in the darkness, I could tell I’d hit him too hard, not that it frankly bothered me much. The Colt thudded to the carpet, but did not discharge again. My effort with the truncheon had been quick enough that there would be no ghost, although the disassociator would have taken care of that detail.
Ghosts of Columbia Page 25
