EQMM, March-April 2009

by Dell Magazine Authors

  "I heard stories,” Winterluck said. “Some claimed that Macker killed him with a poisoned sword, that this was the only way it could have happened."

  "Yes,” Von Baden acknowledged. “I heard the stories too. In truth, poor Cassan was poisoned. The autopsy proved it. But by that time, it was too late to check Macker's sword. For the rest of his college days, though, he lived in disgrace, under a cloud of suspicion. Eva left him, refused even to speak to him. A few years later he was killed by a train, and some called it suicide."

  "That would pretty much confirm his guilt,” Winterluck said.

  Van Baden fingered the scar on his cheek. “On the contrary, old friend, it confirmed his innocence. A man who would poison the blade of his sword would hardly lose much sleep over it afterward. Poisoning is a careful crime. It takes a great deal of thought and premeditation. And of course, the best evidence for his innocence: until the last moment, he thought he was fighting me, not Cassan. After Cassan stepped in to take my place, Macker never left the center of the room. He had no chance then to poison the blade."

  "Then who did? Could the swords have become switched when they were dropped somehow?"

  "No, no. The hilts were different colors, remember, to match the corps color."

  "But...” Winterluck puzzled, “no one could have poisoned Macker's sword once Cassan entered the duel. There must have been fifty pairs of eyes on them both! Certainly Eva couldn't have done it. And certainly no one would have wanted to poison you!"

  "No,” Von Baden agreed. “No one would have wanted to poison me."

  "Then who?"

  Von Baden smiled. “There remains only one possibility."

  "You know?"

  "I've known for years."

  "Of course! I should have realized it! The doctor! He applied the poison while he was swabbing the wounds on Cassan's face!"

  "A good ending for a detective story, old friend, but hardly for real life. The doctor would have no motive."

  "He was really Eva's father, avenging his daughter's honor!"

  And now Von Baden laughed aloud. “You would make a wonderful writer! I'm sure the doctor could have chosen a far safer and less spectacular method of murder, had that been his desire. Or at the very least, a slower-acting poison."

  "Then where are we left?"

  "With the truth,” Von Baden said. “The truth.” He fingered the scar again. “As you can see, I did fight after all, later on. I fought bravely and well, both for the White Corps and for Hitler. I collected my medals, and my ribbons."

  "Tell me,” Winterluck said.

  "Sometimes fear can be a terrible, twisted thing. Men will kill for love, or revenge, or in anger, but I sometimes think that fear is the greatest motive for murder. After all, wasn't it fear of a sort that drove us to kill the Jews?"

  "And?"

  "I was afraid to fight Macker,” he said, looking away. “Afraid for my life, or my face, or my honor. Afraid. Terrified! I coated the blade of my sword with poison from the chemistry lab, to kill Macker, or at least sicken him and let me win the duel. But then Cassan fought with my sword, and when it broke a piece flew back to nick his scalp. And kill him."

  "My God!"

  "A foolish thing, a senseless thing. As I said, a vorpal blade."

  They had reached the farthest point of the prison yard, and now the uniformed guard was motioning them back. The exercise period was over, and they must return to their cells. “It is something of a paradox, I suppose,” Von Baden observed as they walked slowly back. “We are caged here because they call us war criminals, and yet I killed this first man because I feared to fight. Was I perhaps a peace criminal in those days?"

  But the guard separated them at the entrance and the question went unanswered.

  ©1981 by Edward D. Hoch. First published in Mystery, March 1981.

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  Fiction: DEAD AND BREAKFAST by Marilyn Todd

  * * * *

  Art by Mark Evans

  * * * *

  Marilyn Todd currently sets her work in three different historical periods: Ancient Rome, where we find series heroine Claudia Seferius; Ancient Greece, in which the adventures of High Priestess Iliona unfold; and the 1950s, which the author has chosen for a just-completed novel and a variety of (so far) non-series stories, including last year's Shamus Award nominee “Room for Improvement.” Her latest published novel is Blood Moon (Severn House), in the Iliona series.

  * * * *

  "Georges, have you put those pillows in Number Twenty-two yet?"

  Pillows. Pillows. Georges dragged his eyes away from the grebes out on the lake as he remembered the pile of goosedown in his arms.

  "Doing it now, Mother."

  But it was so comical, the way they dived for fish. You watch them go down, follow the ripples on the surface, then pick a spot where you think they'll come up. Except you're wrong. Every time, it's that much further from where you expect them to, and this time one of the grebes had caught a fish. A big one. Georges watched, fascinated by the contest between predator and prey. One false move and the fish was gone forever. Both sides fighting for survival.

  "And don't forget to unblock that drain in the second-floor bathroom while you're up there, love."

  Drain? He looked at the spanner in his hand. Oh. Drain. “No, no,” he called down. “I won't forget."

  Georges loved this lake. He loved the way the boats bobbed on smooth days as well as in rough weather, their yards clanking gentle lullabies, their hulls gleaming in the sun. He loved the way that spring dawns glimmered hazy and yellow on the surface, like melted Camembert. How fiery sunsets multiplied out and flickered on the water. How autumn mists swirled round the islands and then disappeared, as if by magic, and how the moon reflected double on the lake. And none of this would be possible, were it not for the pines that surrounded it, repelling the winds that drove in from the west, fending off the snows that swept up from the Pyrenees, thwarting the desiccating frosts that gripped the rest of France. In fact, he thought, if it wasn't for the gulls, flapping round the perimeter in search of tiddlers in the shallows, you'd think the coast was a lot further than eight kilometres away.

  Except not everyone enjoyed neat promenades that served up ice creams and carousels, or took pleasure in roasting themselves on broad, white sandy beaches that stretched to infinity in both directions. The people who holidayed at Georges’ lake were more discriminating. Not for them long treks through woods, laden with parasols and picnic hampers, just to then do battle with the highest dunes in Europe. Let others wrestle with deck chairs and drink lukewarm lemonade—

  "Oh, Georgie!” His mother jerked the pillows from his arms with a good-natured, but nonetheless exasperated sigh. “Will you ever stop your silly daydreaming?” She gave his cheek an affectionate squeeze, before setting off down the corridor to give 22 their extra pillows. “But if you don't mind, love. The drain?"

  The what? Oh, that. Second floor. Blocked. At last, the grebe managed to turn the wriggling fish and gulp it down. Almost at once, it was diving back down for more.

  "Now, if you wouldn't mind.” She didn't seem entirely surprised to find her son still staring out of the window when she returned. “Breakfast'll be over any minute, and the guests are bound to need the bathroom."

  "Right-oh."

  He mightn't have won any prizes for spelling, maths, or grammar, but Georges was handy with his hands. In no time at all, he'd unscrewed the waste and was flushing out the pipe, though he didn't see what all the fuss was for. A few hairs, a bit of gunge, and bien sar, it would reduce the drainage to a trickle, but that was no reason to go grumbling to his mother. She went to a lot of trouble to make the guests feel welcome. She set vases of flowers in their rooms, left them boiled sweets on the dressing table, and placed mothballs in the drawers. The sheets always smelled crisp and clean and fresh.

  But then, some folk were never satisfied, he thought, his big, strong hands spannering the pipes back into pla
ce. If they weren't griping about lumpy mattresses, they were moaning because there wasn't an ashtray, or could someone change their bedside lamp, it wasn't bright enough to read by. Still. He mopped up the puddle of dirty water with a towel. Surrounded by such stunning scenery, people probably expected the same level of perfection from Les Pins. Most of the time, they blooming got it, too.

  "I don't believe it!” An hour must have passed before his mother came storming into the dining room, where he was cramming the last of the unwanted croissants in his mouth. “Look what you've done to Madame Fouquet's towels!"

  Eh?

  She held up the filthy, sopping linen. “She's absolutely livid, and quite frankly, so am I."

  Oh. Those towels. “Then she should have taken them back to her room,” he said, spraying crumbs over the table. “Instead of leaving them in the bathroom for anyone to use."

  "That's still no excuse for you to use them as rags. And to just leave them lying there, as well, you lazy toad!"

  "Sorry."

  It wasn't often that he saw his mother angry, and it wasn't simply because she had endless patience with him. She simply could not afford to lose control. Georges’ father, Marcel, was the chef, and since food was his passion as well as the foundation for his business, he was either shopping for it at the market or else creating magnificent works of art with it in the kitchen. The hotel management was Irene's responsibility, something she accomplished with a combination of politeness, style, and military crispness, being just strict enough to keep the chambermaids on their toes, but not so tough that they looked for work elsewhere. Welcoming enough towards the guests, but not so sociable that they might be tempted to take advantage.

  "Oh, Georgie, it's not you,” she said, instantly calm again. “It's that wretched bloody bathroom that's got me so worked up.” She swiped her hair out of her eyes with the back of her hand. “I'm going to have to call a plumber out, and God knows how long that'll take in August."

  "Why?” He might be big and slow and clumsy, but Georges took great pride in his work.

  "Why?” Her voice rose. “Because that stupid, bloody washbasin's blocked up again already—"

  Wash ... basin ..."I'll take another look."

  "Not sure there's any point, you've only just been up there."

  "Yes, but I'll check further down the pipes.” He turned away, so she wouldn't see how red his cheeks had gone.

  "Will you? Oh, you are an angel. And while you're up there, would you put clean towels in Thirty-four for Madame Fouquet? I can hardly leave the poor woman with just a hand towel for her bath."

  "Right-oh."

  Washbasin. He wrote it on the back of his hand with a biro, so as not to forget. Second floor, he scribbled underneath. And towels.

  Which was just as well, because by the time he'd brushed Minou the cat, topped up the birdbath, and then fed the ducks out on the lake, it was fast approaching midday. Four o'clock before he actually got round to fixing it.

  Madame Fouquet never saw her towels.

  * * * *

  For all its pine-scented air and picture-postcard views, it wasn't always easy here for Georges. Life was comfortable enough. Marcel and Irene were the first to think of shipping in sand, to create a private lakefront beach. They revamped the gardens with Mediterranean palms and oleanders, tacked on a veranda, then a terrace, and built moorings for the hotel clients’ boats. This was good. With every improvement, the hotel grew and prospered.

  The trouble was, in order to capitalize on a silence broken only by the croaking of frogs and the splash of fish—the very qualities their middle-aged, middle-class guests looked for in a holiday—his parents also banned transistor radios and banished TV to the public lounge. Their intention was that busy Parisians should come down, plug into two weeks of time-warp bliss, then go home refreshed and free of stress. But for Georges, this was his home. And, rather like the resort itself, which had grown up to create its own identity but in doing so had paradoxically isolated itself from the outside world, so he, too, became disconnected.

  While other teenagers were rebelling, flower power passed him by, and whatever the Summer of Love might be, it never came his way. But not being “groovy” didn't trouble him. To be honest, he didn't know what groovy was, so it didn't matter that Jesus might be loving Mrs. Robinson more than she would ever know, much less that Mick Jagger was having his mind and other things blown by honky-tonk girls. But then he turned sixteen and things began to change. Not being clever enough to stay on at school, he quickly lost touch with the few friends that he'd had, and though he took over as the hotel handyman from doddery old Rene, the staff were invariably too busy to stop for idle chit-chat. Naturally, Georges picked up the broad outline of events from the national news, but what he wasn't getting was life's rich tapestry of trivia, and this became a problem. All he wanted was to do what the Parisians did, only in reverse. Plug into normal life. But how?

  The more time passed, the more his desire—his need—to tap into normality intensified. It wasn't that he was lonely, exactly. He'd always enjoyed his own company, but there was a hole somewhere, a big black hole that needed to be filled, and whoever said it was the little things that mattered was absolutely right. And it was the little things that were missing from his life.

  At least, that was the case until one warm and sunny April morning when his mother asked him to oil the sticky lock on No. 17. And would you believe it, there was the answer. Staring him right in the face. He oiled, he turned, he oiled, he turned. No sticking. No rubbing. No catching.

  No noise...

  At long last, Georges had found a way to connect to the world beyond Les Pins.

  * * * *

  The idea of being called a Peeping Tom would have cut him to the quick. There was nothing mucky about what he was doing. Nothing sinister about his motives. He was simply using his master key to slip into the rooms, and there, just being among the guests while they slept, he was able to note other people's eccentricities and foibles. The big, black void was filled.

  While Irene was just delighted that her son had at last showed some initiative by oiling all the bedroom locks, not just the one.

  * * * *

  "Madame Garnier's eldest daughter's getting married,” Georges told Parmesan, the heavy horse who used to pull a plough but had long since been put out to pasture. “I saw the telegram on her dressing table."

  MAMAN PAPA GUESS WHAT STOP HENRI PROPOSED AT LAST STOP ISN'T THIS JUST WONDERFUL STOP

  "Both Monsieur and Madame Garnier were smiling in their sleep,” he added. “So they must be pleased about it."

  Although he still spent the same amount of time fishing, bird-watching, and watching squirrels in the woods, Georges and Parmesan tended to see a lot more of each other these days. Blissfully unaware, of course, that Marcel was having to drop his boef bordelaise and drive at breakneck speed so the Gerards—the LeBlancs—the St. Brices or whoever—didn't miss their trains. Or that the Duponts, the Brossards, and the new people in 38 had to lug their cases up several flights of stairs, because the handyman had forgotten to reconnect the lift after re-greasing the cogs and chains.

  "Mother doesn't like that Madame Dupont, with the blue-rinse hair, who rustles when she walks. She thinks she's hard and crusty, but she's not.” Georges passed the horse an apple. “She's soft as dough inside."

  He knew this because of the soppy romances Madame Dupont read, and more than once he'd had to pick up a paperback that had fallen from her hand, replacing the bookmark and laying it gently on the cover next to her.

  "You wouldn't think it, but Twenty-seven wears a toupee.” It gave Georges quite a fright, seeing it draped over the footstool. He thought it was a rat. “Someone should tell him he looks a lot younger without it, though.” Unlike Madame 27, whose teeth snarled at him from the glass beside her bed. “She snores, as well,” he said.

  In fact, it was quite a revelation, seeing what the guests were really like, as opposed to what they wanted you to
think. For instance, Georges could tell who was putting on a front, pretending to read highbrow literature when they were sneaking tabloid news inside their daily papers. He knew who was sloppy and who was not from the way they folded their clothes or tossed them on a chair, and, even more importantly, by squeezing the towels, he knew who took a bath every day and who only took one once a week and disguised their lack of personal hygiene with cologne.

  Darker secrets came out, too. Major Chabou, for instance, swapped dirty pictures with the banker in the room upstairs. Suzette the chambermaid was having an affair with No. 14, even sleeping in his bed after his poor wife had had to rush back home to see to her sick mother. Mind you, Suzette didn't sleep in curlers, like the other female guests. Or wear a hairnet, either, for that matter.

  * * * *

  So summers came and summers went, and even though Georges assumed the Year of the Cat was just one more Chinese holiday, who cared? The same people booked the same rooms for the same two weeks in the season, and simply by taking stock of their toothbrushes, their writing pads, their cosmetics, and their clothes, he was able to follow the changes in their lives and circumstances.

  Some guests never changed, of course. Monsieur Prince still put his dirty shoes on Irene's clean white linen sheets. The Bernards still stashed the hotel's face flannels at the bottom of their suitcase. Madame Morreau still treated Georges the same way she did when he was seven, only now instead of ruffling his hair and giving him a bag of aniseed, she had to reach up on tippy-toes just to pat his shoulder. But she still brought him aniseed, which Georges had never liked but which he could at least feed to Parmesan, even though it made him kick and swish his tail. And Georges still very much looked forward to her visits.

  Which made it doubly hard when Madame Morreau died.

  "Take a look at these architect's plans, love, and tell me what you think."

  From the outset, his parents had involved him in their projects, but to be honest, the squares and boxes on the page confused him. What did it mean, “drawn to scale,” he wondered? Fish had scales. Kitchens had scales. But gardens? And this 250:1 stuff. Georges didn't understand where bookmakers fitted into plans for new extensions, and whenever he saw things like this, he was glad he hadn't been forced to stay on at school.