EQMM, December 2006

by Dell Magazine Authors

  "I heard myself suggesting that the Shah might do the same job with an air force and at a fraction of the cost. How better to put down tribal revolts and maintain order in remote corners of the country? With warplanes a glut on the market he could buy all he needed for next to nothing. And there were plenty of aviators who'd jump at the chance to fly them.

  "The Shah said he'd study the idea,” said Jerome. “But I could tell he liked it. Now for the long and short of it. A month ago I received his letter authorizing me to put together a Persian air force. Needless to say, there'll be a tidy commission for yours truly when I do. So here I am, looking over what the Prentiss-Jenkins people have in the way of aircraft and interviewing pilots. My old friend Wing Commander Timmons is here representing a British team. Not to mention our old nemesis Baron Waldteufel on behalf of his German flyers. Even the Soviets are interested.” Jerome looked at his wrist watch. “An hour ago the Shah's man General Massoudi arrived in San Sebastiano by British flying boat from Alexandria to see what I've put together."

  As he spoke, an old open touring car turned in at the retreat-house gate. It made a complete circle of the parking lot as though Father Carlus, the driver, who was done up in motorcycle goggles and a white duster, was reluctant to end the journey. Three visitors and their baggage sat behind him fresh from San Sebastiano's old port where Imperial Airways had a quay-side hangar for their giant amphibious aircraft.

  "That's Massoudi, the one in the military uniform,” said Jerome. “The other two are my old Cairo to Cathay employers, Major Ibrahim and Mr. Wang.” He indicated the tall man in a white suit, with a long jaw and a red tarboosh, carrying a horsehair fly whisk, and an Oriental gentleman who seemed uncomfortable pent up in western dress. “They're here to discuss fresh financing for their railroad with Miss Khalila Assad.” With a nod toward the blue car, Jerome went to greet the passengers.

  Waving to Father Carlus, who had stopped to admire the Terrapin, Ganelon continued on his way to the back of the retreat house where a flagstone walk and a dozen sturdy willow trees circled a good-sized pond. Centuries before, a stream on the property had been dammed up, creating the pond and a millrace to drive the mill's waterwheel, long since fallen to ruin. The unharnessed overflow still found its way down to the sea, where its brown water vanished like chimney smoke into the sky-blue Mediterranean.

  It was Friday. Two young monks were out on the pond in a rowboat trying to net carp for dinner. Ganelon recalled Father Boniface's complaint, “English monks always chose salmon rivers when they built their cathedrals. We must do with carp."

  Suddenly a monk gave a shout and jumped into the water. His companion followed. Wading across to a large willow, they struggled, trying to extricate something from the submerged tangle of the tree's roots. As Ganelon reached them they were dragging the body of a man in a dark suit up onto the grass. One monk hurried off to fetch Father Boniface.

  Ganelon knelt to examine the body, noting the wound from a heavy blow to the back of the head. The other monk said they'd seen the dead man's heels floating beneath the willow branches. The detective found that the most interesting thing, the torso and head floating below the feet, so deep in the water.

  "It's Mr. Elmer Shypoke, the missing guest,” said a woman's voice.

  Ganelon looked up. The beautiful driver of the blue roadster was standing there. He was sorry he'd surrendered his Hrosco. The cockeyed grin it gave him charmed the ladies.

  "Strange the way he was floating,” she added, pushing her black hair out of an alert and intelligent face.

  "You've a good eye,” said Ganelon.

  A male voice with an English accent said, “A shoulder money belt filled with gold guineas will do that to you.” The speaker was a tall, fair-haired man wearing a blazer and a Royal Flying Corps tie. He had a twisted chin and an indentation like a deep thumbprint low on one cheek. A casse-gueule, as the French called those who brought face wounds out of the War. The man introduced himself. “Timmons,” he said.

  Ganelon opened the dead man's jacket to reveal the bulging shoulder money belt. Well, the killer's motive hadn't been robbery. “You the one who led Jerome around in the hospital when he couldn't see?” he asked Timmons. Jerome had been caught on the ground during one of Baron Waldteufel's aerial gas attacks. Temporarily blinded, he'd been led away in a crocodile of like-injured. During his long recuperation in a San Sebastiano hospital, Jerome and Timmons had become fast friends.

  "My jaw was all wired up,” said Timmons. “It was the dumb leading the blind. Have you met Miss Khalila Assad?"

  "So you are the famous private detective,” said the young woman. “Please call me Khalila. May I help you in your investigation? I am not without experience in such matters."

  Ganelon remembered something from one of the magazines he subscribed to—was it P.I. Tidbits?—about a Levantine religious youth group solving crimes in the city of Nancy. “Better leave this to the police,” he said. He could tell she was disappointed. But he had his reasons.

  Jerome and Father Boniface came hurrying down the path. While the priest knelt to pray beside the body, Khalila told Jerome, “Mr. Ganelon says this is a police matter. That's fine with me. I don't work well with men who talk to trees."

  "You were driving fast,” protested Ganelon. “This old man came out of the orchard to help me change a tire."

  Khalila frowned at him, put her arm in Jerome's arm, and led him away. As he went the pilot shot Ganelon a puzzled look over his shoulder.

  Ganelon watched the woman go. “Something of a coquette,” he said to Timmons.

  "Don't ask me,” replied the Englishman.

  "The money belt, how come you knew about it?"

  "We flew over from Croydon to Paris together, Shypoke, Baron Waldteufel, and I. Shypoke bragged about the gold and showed off what he called his shooting iron to keep it safe."

  Then he added, “If you ask me, Standard Oil sent the man to fish in troubled waters. Anglo-Persian Oil's agreement is with a local warlord. The Shah could invalidate it."

  "I hear the country's oil production could one day equal that of the U. S.,” said Ganelon.

  "So they say,” said Timmons. “Perhaps Shypoke thought the gold might help him with the Shah's man Massoudi. Shypoke's arrival certainly spooked the Anglo-Persian people. Instead of waiting for Massoudi, they left this morning for Teheran to deal with the Shah directly."

  "And Waldteufel was on your Paris flight, you say?"

  "Yes, our plane was a tri-engine Prentiss-Jenkins Gladiator, the ‘box kite,’ as they call them. A noon takeoff followed by a leisurely lunch on a wide table in a spacious cabin made it a very popular flight. Waldteufel was on board, but just barely. We were powering up when a chauffeured Daimler drove out onto the field to deliver him and his baggage."

  "The Daimler driver, did he have a club foot?” asked Ganelon, describing Eustace, Dorian Fong-Smythe's chauffeur. Timmons hesitated. “I didn't notice,” he said.

  * * * *

  Ganelon set out for Father Sylvanus's hermitage again, taking a path beside the nearby retreat-house chapel which led deep into the woods.

  It was perhaps ironic that a private detective of the two-fisted school would be a student of the art of nonviolent self-defense called the via felix, the Happy Way. Invented by Saint Magnus for his monks’ use in protecting the holy places of Europe during the early Middle Ages, it involved a hip lift and the redistribution of an adversary's body humors (blood, phlegm, choler, black bile), changing him temperamentally, from, say, a homicidal maniac into a hail-fellow-well-met sort. An adept practiced using a heavy wooden planchette grooved with elaborate channels and four colored balls. Ganelon had just mastered a very difficult maneuver called Navigating between Presumption and Despair which was the door to a higher level of the Happy Way.

  The detective followed the narrow path for some distance before he reached a small clearing where a fat blue-green cedar tree built of galvanized metal stood. During the War, Fong Armamen
ts manufactured these sniper boxes and observation posts for the German army. Ganelon remembered the festive note they added to the forward saps and no-man's-land at Christmas. After the Armistice, the Fongs sold some off as outhouses, toolsheds, and, in Father Sylvanus's case, a hermitage.

  Ganelon's father once described Father Sylvanus as the very image of El Greco's famous portrait of Saint Ildefonso, the patron saint of dart players. Curious, Ganelon had looked the painting up in an art book. The saint had been sitting at a small table reading his breviary. As El Greco captured him, he is holding up a dart which probably served as his bookmark and is about to let fly at a dartboard somewhere off the canvas.

  Father Sylvanus certainly had the saint's high forehead, long aristocratic nose, and whimsical smile. But today he was solemn and preoccupied. He invited Ganelon in and congratulated him after watching his work with the planchette. “Your father had not come this far.” Then his eyes went to the open door. “The trees are restless,” he observed.

  "You're the second person to tell me that today. It's the wind."

  The hermit shook his head. “I grew up near woods like these. When I was a boy people used to say: ‘Elms do grieve. Oak he do hate. Willows do walk if you travels late.’”

  "Willows walk?"

  "Indeed,” said Father Sylvanus. “Uproot themselves at night and stalk unwary travelers muttering all the way."

  "Then Willow-Walk-Behind didn't take its name from the willows and the walk behind the retreat house?"

  "It was called that and shunned locally long before our order bought the old abandoned mill and ancient willows around the millpond. We wanted the property because our founder and his early followers lived as hermits hereabouts."

  In a voice as casual as he could make it, Ganelon said, “Father Boniface thinks you have been in the woods too long."

  "And he may be right. When the winter wind works their twigs and branches I've started to believe I can read something of what the trees are dreaming. They are not happy dreams. The willows may be the unhappiest, though I haven't yet learned the cursive script of their branches. The trees fear for something. I think it is the Cairo to Cathay Railroad."

  "I don't understand."

  "The Chinese say a train journey of a thousand miles begins with a single wooden railway tie,” said the priest. “Railroads devour forests. Oh, trees are as innocent as children. When they saw their first woodman's axe they said, ‘Look, look, part of it is one of us.’ But like children their anger, when it comes, can be a terrible and mindless thing."

  Father Sylvanus stopped. “Leave me now,” he said. “I have much to do."

  On the threshold of the hermitage Ganelon turned back to ask, “What did Father Boniface mean when he said this was a very special Saint Magnus Day?"

  "Our founder rose from his deathbed, went outside, stuck his head in a hollow tree, and shouted a last prayer. Ever since we've had stories of monks meditating alone in the woods on Saint Magnus Day hearing a muffled voice speaking to them. From records kept we have discovered that this phenomenon occurs once every seventy-five years. Today is such a special day."

  * * * *

  As Ganelon approached the retreat house he saw a man in a tweed suit and hat, leather gaiters, and a narrow Malacca cane under his arm hunkered down examining Shypoke's body as Father Boniface looked on. Inspector Nestor Flanel, a third-generation policeman, had a personality so grating his superiors gave him every suburban assignment just to get him as far from the prefecture as possible. This explained the gaiters and cane, useful for investigating crime scenes in long grass. Flanel saw Ganelon and made a cold what-the-hell-are-you-doing-here face.

  Ganelon's two-fisted image would suffer if Flanel suspected he was a student of the Happy Way. The detective decided to pretend he'd come to Willow-Walk-Behind for spiritual refreshment. He turned abruptly and entered the retreat house chapel.

  The little church was famous for its unusual windows. The one toward the retreat house depicted Saint Magnus Preaching to the Trees of the Forest in bright stained glass. The window's mate on the forest side was of clear glass, as if inviting the trees to peek in.

  Ganelon paused as he had many times before to admire the stained glass. There was the saint shaping his fingers into the twiglike runic characters the forest understood. Crowded around him were trees of every size and description. Even the oak had come and brought his friend the pine. Conveniently, the window had an inch-wide border of clear glass so he could also keep an eye on Flanel at the millpond.

  When Ganelon's eyes grew accustomed to the chapel's dim he discovered he was not alone. Khalila stood nearby, staring up at the stained glass.

  "Sorry to intrude,” he said.

  "My people told me to be sure not to miss seeing this famous window,” she said without turning. “It's very impressive. And, oh, I know now why you didn't want to get involved in Mr. Shypoke's murder. Inspector Flanel is a very unpleasant person. He made it quite clear he didn't want amateurs or private detectives interfering with his investigation."

  "There's more to it than that,” said Ganelon, explaining how, over the years, his family had driven every competent criminal from San Sebastiano. So its police force no longer attracted minds of high caliber. Men like Flanel blame their lackluster careers on the Ganelons and spurn their help. He didn't tell her that his family's reputation had driven his own business away as well. Sometimes, after reflecting on his father's and his grandfather's brilliant achievements, there was nothing left for Ganelon to do but visit some low bar and pick a fight with the biggest and meanest guy in the place.

  Then he heard himself say, “I'm surprised your people would trust the Cairo to Cathay business to—” He hesitated over the right words. “—someone so young and good-looking."

  She laughed. “I thought you were going to say to such a flirt,” she said, using the word allumeuse, which went back to gaslight days. Then it meant a female lamplighter. Today it was a woman who lights the boys up and walks away.

  "Being friendly does help me with my task,” she admitted. “I've been sent here with a tentative proposal for the Cairo to Cathay principals. But my people also want to know if Persia is stable enough for a railroad to be built across it. I think the guests here at Willow-Walk-Behind can answer that question. Being friendly helps."

  "Why the interest in the railroad?"

  "My people are reclusive, industrious, and astute in the way of business. They must think it a solid proposition,” she said, adding with a smile, “though China has always fascinated my people. If I repeated some of the China stories our elders tell you'd have to laugh."

  Wondering if she'd found Shypoke an unsettling presence, Ganelon asked, “Did you see Shypoke last night?"

  "Now you sound like Inspector Flanel."

  "Flanel can make a real shambles of things. When he's around, a parallel investigation never hurts."

  "I saw Shypoke at dinner,” she said. “That's it."

  "What did you do last night?"

  "I took a walk with Captain Jerome,” she said. “Along the way we met with Ivanov, the Russian pilot. He walked with us for a bit. After that I went to my room. I came down later to Father Boniface's office. He lets me use his telephone to keep my people in the picture. But somebody else was using it. I believe it was Baron Waldteufel. So I went to bed."

  Having answered his questions, Khalila left the chapel.

  * * * *

  Ganelon remained where he was, watching Flanel oversee the loading of Shypoke's body onto a coroner's gurney. Then Khalila appeared at the millpond. A moment later Jerome and Timmons came around a corner of the retreat house, standing aside as the gurney trundled by.

  Suddenly an excited monk came running out of the woods, shouting and pointing back the way he had come. Flanel and the others followed him back into the woods.

  Ganelon came out of the chapel to find out what was happening. As he passed the millpond Baron Waldteufel stepped from behind a willow tree. �
�Still lurking, are we, Baron?” he said. In aerial action over the trenches the German liked to creep up on an enemy aviator by flitting from cloud to cloud until ready to pounce.

  The Baron stared at Ganelon through his monocle before giving a smart click of his heels and a short bow from the neck. Then he said, “Two monks on a work party in the woods discovered a second body in a crashed airplane. The others have gone to investigate.” He pointed to the path they had taken.

  "Then I think I'll join them,” said Ganelon. “Care to come along?"

  The Baron shook his head. “It's the Russian, Ivanov. Yesterday he buzzed the retreat house, no doubt hoping to impress General Massoudi with loop-the-loops and barrel rolls. He didn't know Massoudi had been held up in Alexandria by a sandstorm. This morning the Prentiss-Jenkins people had us all over at their facility for a champagne brunch and a walk-around to show off some newly arrived aircraft. Miss Assad was invited, too. Ivanov stayed on after we left. No doubt he meant to repeat his aerial display for Massoudi today."

  Then, as if he knew Ganelon's next question, Waldteufel said, “Inspector Flanel asked when I saw Shypoke for the last time. I said at dinner. But on reflection I think I heard him later that night. I was using Father Boniface's telephone. I'm pretty sure somebody was outside listening at the window next-door where the Anglo-Persian Oil people and Timmons were meeting. I believe it was Shypoke."

  * * * *

  Striding off into the woods, Ganelon soon caught sight of the others. When Jerome saw him he dropped back. “I hope our dead man isn't Ivanov,” he told Ganelon. “That would complicate things. Massoudi brought word the Shah favors a Russian team. I rather think he feels the Russians have their hands too full with their tin-pot revolution to pose any threat to his country."

  "And the British would bring too much of an imperial agenda to the task,” said Ganelon. “Which leaves Waldteufel and his Germans."