by Mike Ashley
Thomas Bit took a deep breath to steady his nerves and approached the stand. “Miss Bracy,” he said, “are you aware that it was early evening when Marvin Sply went out with Harriet Cord on her ill-fated ride?”
“Of course,” she said. “Everyone knows that.”
“And are you further aware that he was back in a matter of hours?”
“Sure,” she said.
“Then how could there possibly be any connection between the blackbird you claimed you saw and Harriet Cord’s death, if the blackbird’s nocturnal flight was shortly after midnight?”
Thelma drew herself up, proud and confident. “A supernatural creature is not bound by the ordinary laws of time and space,” she replied.
There was considerable applause from the spectators, which the judge indulgently permitted to die down of its own accord, while Thomas Bit gritted his teeth to keep from breaking down and sobbing.
“Supernatural!?” he said, fiercely. “Do you expect a court of law to recognize such a statement?”
“Son,” said the judge, not unkindly, “this is the State of Massachusetts . . .”
Approaching despair, Thomas Bit tried one more query.
“Would you kindly tell the court just what you think this ‘blackbird’ of yours did to cause the deaths of Miss Cord and the three men, Stanley, Forbes and Gulby?”
“Certainly,” said Thelma. “That man is a werebird!”
“A werebird?”
Thelma nodded. “Human by day, feathered fiend by night. Flying the countryside after sundown, in hideous unnatural guise, sucking the souls from helpless people that cross his gruesome path!”
“Your Honour,” said Thomas Bit, “I move that this testimony be stricken from the record as irrelevant, fanciful, and just plain ridiculous.”
“Overruled,” said His Honour.
Shoulders drooping, Thomas Bit said, “No further questions,” and returned to his seat, beside his client.
“I call Herbert Hoskins, MD, to the stand,” said the DA. The town corner arose and made his way to the witness seat.
As Thomas Bit doodled hopelessly on a pad of paper, hardly listening to the testimony of the coroner, a hand fell lightly upon his shoulder. He looked up into the face of a stranger, a sporty-looking fellow with a pink-tipped nose and thick muttonchop sidewhiskers. The stranger winked his eye.
“Having a bit of difficulty, eh?” he smiled.
“Who are you?” asked the lawyer.
“Wallen’s the name, son. Wilbert Wallen. I’m sort of a specialist in rare diseases. That’s why I’m here.”
Thomas Bit cocked an eyebrow at the stranger. “I’m afraid I don’t see—”
“You will, son, you will,” said Wilbert Wallen, seating himself beside the young lawyer. “I’m your star witness.”
“My what?” said Thomas Bit.
Wallen began to explain, in a low, urgent whisper. As his meaning became clear to Bit, the lawyer’s eyes grew round, and the subtle beginnings of a smile touched his lips for the first time that day.
“You’re kidding!” he said to Wallen.
“Scout’s honour,” said the specialist. “Soon’s I read about the case in the papers, I got to East Anchorville fast as I could.”
“Zowie!” said Thomas Bit, reverently.
Burns, the DA, finished with Hoskins.
“Your witness,” he said.
“No questions,” said Thomas Bit.
“Not giving up, are you?” asked the DA with a tiny simpering smile.
“I call Wilbert Wallen, MD, to the stand,” said the lawyer. The courtroom buzzed, and the DA and the judge exchanged looks, raised eyebrows, and shrugs as Wallen took the stand.
“Your name?” asked Thomas Bit.
“Wilbert Wallen.”
“Occupation?”
“Pathologist. My specialty is rare diseases.”
The room grew strangely quiet.
“Can you perhaps throw some light on these four deaths which the accused is supposed to have brought about?”
“Light?” Wallen chuckled. “I can tell you exactly what caused them!”
“Would you please do so . . . ?” said Thomas Bit.
“Well . . .” Wallen cleared his throat, loudly. “I have just come from the Ogilvy Funeral Parlour, wherein Miss Cord, and Messieurs Gulby, Forbes and Stanley are lying in state. It seems as if the employees of that establishment were all over here at the trial – in fact, this whole burg looks like a ghost town today – so I took the opportunity to examine the four.”
“That’s against the law!” thundered the judge. “Without a court order, bodies of deceased persons may not be subjected to—”
“Your Honour,” Thomas Bit interrupted smoothly, “in this case, there was no time to await a court order.”
“No time?” said the judge. “What do you mean, no time?”
“For the sake of the town – which includes Your Honour, of course – Doctor Wallen had to move quickly.”
The spectators murmured, louder and louder, until the judge rapped for silence. “Mister Bit! Are you implying . . . There’s something ominous in your tone.”
“If Your Honour will hear Doctor Wallen out?”
“Most irregular . . .” His Honour hedged. Then his curiosity got the better of his jurisprudence, and he nodded. “Very well. But it better be good.”
“I found,” Wallen continued, “that Miss Harriet Cord was what you might call a ‘carrier’. A sort of Typhoid Mary.”
The judge’s face paled. “A carrier of what?” he said, in a hoarse whisper.
“A very rare disease, known in the trade as Leprosis Arboris, a sort of cross between Jungle Rot and Chestnut Blight. The victim’s innards turn to sawdust. It’s more or less painless. There’s no approach in this disease, no warnings. One moment you’re full of vigour, the next moment . . . ‘Foosh’.”
“Foosh?” asked the judge.
Wallen nodded. “All the internal organs crumble into a nice oaken dust.” He sighed, and scratched his nose. “It’s rather painfully obvious what happened. Somehow, those unfortunate men came in contact with Miss Cord—”
The three widows stiffened and gasped in unison.
“—And they were goners.”
All over the courtroom, men were losing colour, and wives were narrowing eyes. The judge, his face the colour of buttermilk, asked, with a break in his voice, “Is – is there any cure?”
“Oh, certainly.” Wallen smiled. “Rose petals.”
“Rose petals?” A note of hope had crept into the judge’s voice. He had a rosebush on his estate, and he was certain the autumn cold had spared a few tiny buds.
“Yup,” said Wallen. “No processing, either. Just pop one in your mouth like candy, chew it, swallow it, and presto! – you’re as good as new.”
At the rear of the room, a man slipped toward the door, then another man, and another. His Honour’s eye caught the motion, and he remembered that his rosebush was near the roadside where everyone in town must have admired it.
Judge, DA, coroner, sheriff, editor and every last townsman in the room clawed, punched and kicked his way out the door.
When the thundering died down, and the dust began to settle, Thomas Bit shook Wallen’s hand.
“I guess the case is dismissed,” he said. “You’ve made me a success. I’ve won my first case. Is there anything I can do for you? Can I buy you a beer, take you to lunch, pay for your transportation to your home?”
Wallen laughed and clapped Bit on the back, shaking his head. “No, thanks, son. Don’t drink beer, brought my lunch, and my transportation’s arranged for.”
He picked up a small bag, tied with twine, and began to undo it. The Turk, smiling happily, sat down beside Wallen. “Thanks, Uncle Wilbert,” he said, fondly.
“Least I could do.” Wallen smiled. “You being my sister’s boy, and all.”
“You’re related?” Thomas Bit gasped.
“Well, of course.”
Then Wallen frowned. “Gad, son, don’t tell me you fell for that mumbo-jumbo on the stand?”
“I—” Thomas Bit sank weakly onto a bench. “You mean it wasn’t true? The disease and all?”
“Heck, no,” said Wallen. “Made the whole danged thing up outta my head. Good, wasn’t it?. . . Gosh, boy, I ain’t even a doctor.”
Bit’s heart sank slowly into the quicksand of dread that oozed into his breast. “But all those people – out in the cold – eating roses!”
“Won’t hurt ’em none,” said Wallen, smiling. “Fresh air’ll do ’em good.”
“But why’d you do it?” asked Thomas Bit.
Wallen finished unwrapping his lunch, and indicated the Turk with a tilt of his head. “Couldn’t let him down. My only sister’s boy, you know. She died. I brought him up.”
“You brought him up . . .” Thomas Bit mumbled blankly.
“Sure,” said Uncle Wilbert. “Raised him from an egg.”
As icy horror began to tickle Thomas Bit’s frayed nerve-endings, Uncle Wilbert leaned over to him in a friendly manner and extended the box of lunch.
“Have a worm?” he asked.
PALE ASSASSIN
James Bibby
James Bibby is the author of the Conan-like spoofs set in Midworld that began with Ronan the Barbarian (1995). He has also been a frequent contributor of jokes and sketches to many television series including Not the Nine O’Clock News and Three of a Kind. The following story, specially written for this anthology, brings to the fore one of the hitherto minor characters in the Midworld saga, the redoubtable Inspector Heighway. Any similarity to Inspector Morse is, of course, just a remarkable coincidence.
It was a typical midwinter’s day in the city of Koumas. The muddy, litter-strewn streets were packed with carts, wagons and drays. Traders, shopkeepers and barrow boys bickered and haggled with their customers. Children squabbled and shouted. The pavement taverns echoed to the laughter of warriors, merchants, travellers and even the occasional dwarf or elf, all sitting on wooden benches beneath the rain-spattered canvas awnings, drinking wine or beer from pewter tankards and swapping stories of daring deeds in far-off places. The clatter of hooves, cursing of draymen and the squeaking of wooden axles filled the air, and the clamour of a thousand voices spiralled up towards the leaden skies. It was like Bedlam, only it was louder and it smelled worse.
In his tiny office on the top floor of the main police station, Inspector Heighway was trying to do the crossword on the back page of the Koumas City Chronicle and finding it hard going. It wasn’t that he was bad at word games; on the contrary, he could usually finish the difficult crossword in the Lampa Sanda Times inside ten minutes. But there were three factors conspiring against him today.
Firstly, the sheer tumult of noise pouring in through the window was making it difficult to concentrate. Secondly, he knew from experience that the crossword’s current compiler wasn’t exactly the most literate person in the world. In fact, the guy couldn’t spell to save his life, and Heighway had spent ten minutes trying to think of a three-letter word for a wriggly fish beginning with o before realizing that the compiler must have spelt six across schewl instead of school. And thirdly, Heighway was being “helped” with the crossword by his assistant, Sergeant Raasay, a man completely unencumbered by even the merest hint of intelligence.
“Fifteen down,” Heighway muttered. “Digging tool. Six letters.”
“Pickaxe?” suggested Raasay.
“Six letters. And if the compiler has spelt ‘mince’ like I think he has, it begins with an S.”
“Spade?”
Heighway sighed and laid his newspaper down on the desk. He had learned to be tolerant, especially since the time when the sergeant had been writing a report and had blacked out whilst trying to spell “misappropriation”. But there were moments when it became a little wearing.
“I need a break,” he told Raasay. “You stay here and hold the fort while I nip downstairs for a spot of lunch.” Bracing himself for the ordeal of a trip to the canteen, Heighway left his office, his stomach rumbling hungrily.
At first, he thought he was in luck. It was blissfully quiet as he trotted apprehensively down the police station’s rear staircase, and the only sound that could be heard was the tup, tup, tup of his feet on the stone steps. But then, all at once, a series of agonized screams came hurtling up from the basement dungeons, the desperate sounds of a human in mortal agony. The shrieks echoed around the stairwell and set Heighway’s skin crawling like a tankful of cockroaches.
Taking the last flight of stairs at a run, the inspector burst through the double doors and strode along the corridor leading to the canteen, his hands over his ears. But it was too late. Once again, his appetite had disappeared without trace, to be replaced by a vague queasiness and a desire to take up a kinder, more honourable profession than being a member of the Koumas City police force. Slave-trading, perhaps, or possibly assassination.
Heighway had always thought it was a big mistake to have the police canteen on the ground floor, directly above the Department of Interrogation. He couldn’t understand how anyone could enjoy the canteen food when it was accompanied by the distant sounds of someone having their fingernails forcibly removed.
But then, he couldn’t understand how anyone could eat the canteen food, full stop. The current cook was a half-orc whose idea of cuisine was to boil food fiercely for several hours until it gave up. The only reason Heighway came here at all was because the superintendent had banned him from visiting taverns during working hours.
Pessimistically, Heighway pushed open the canteen door and wandered across to the servery. The table here was liberally strewn with cracked and stained serving dishes that held congealing piles of unidentifiable grey items that might once have been recognizable as food. Behind it, Ratshagger the cook was on patrol, a food-encrusted serving spoon at the ready in one hand, the other wedged down the front of his pants, absently scratching his scrotum.
Heighway stared down at a bowl of round, pallid objects that huddled together in a pool of black gravy and realized with a shock that they were meant to be dumplings. He prodded one doubtfully with a knife and decided that he’d seen softer, moister granite.
“You want dumpling?” asked Ratshagger, eagerly. Extracting his hand from his pants, the half-orc picked up one of the items in his grimy fingers and offered it to the inspector. “ ’Ere, you all right?” he added. “You gone funny colour . . .”
Heighway shook his head and gestured weakly as a wave of nausea swept over him. The sight of a coarse and suspiciously wiry hair poking out of the dumpling had caused the last few traces of his appetite to melt away, leaving him feeling as though he would never eat again. He could still hear muffled screams coming through the floor from the basement, and for a moment he wondered whether some poor soul was being forcefed some of Ratshagger’s cooking.
“Afternoon, Inspector Heighway . . . sir,” growled a familiar and detested voice, and with a sinking heart Heighway turned to find the vast, loathsome bulk of Sergeant Hogman standing behind him, idly cleaning dirt from behind one of his fingernails with the tip of his dagger.
“Ah . . . Sergeant. Good afternoon.” Heighway tried not to stare at the dried blood on Hogman’s hands. “I thought that had to be you at work in the basement.”
“Ah, that.” Hogman paused as more screams filtered through the floor. He listened with his head on one side, his piglike eyes unfocused and a faint smile on his lips, as though he was savouring the sound. “No,” he continued, after the screams had died away. “That’s Constable Zaglin, or ‘Fingers’, as he likes to be known. He’s just joined us from the Lampa Sanda force. A very promising boy. Looks like being an excellent interrogator.”
“Why is he known as ‘Fingers’?” Heighway asked, then immediately wished he hadn’t.
“He likes to keep a memento of all his . . . customers,” leered the sergeant. “He’s got quite a collection. It’s started a bit of a tre
nd amongst the lads downstairs.”
Heighway winced. All at once he understood why the members of the Interrogation Department had recently taken to calling Hogman “Knackers” . . .
“He keeps himself in shape, too,” added the overweight Hogman, with obvious admiration. “He’s got us all on a bit of a health-and-fitness kick . . .”
Heighway was about to mutter something devastatingly cutting about ill health and fatness but then the screaming started afresh and, suddenly, he couldn’t stand it any more. He felt that he had to get away from the barbarity of Hogman and his cronies and, even though the superintendent had expressly forbidden it, Heighway knew that only the soothing atmosphere and the finest beer of some friendly hostelry would calm him.
So, pushing past Hogman and ignoring his scornful sneer, the inspector headed away from the horrors of the basement dungeons and the canteen food, and out onto the teeming streets, in search of the blissful peace and relaxing atmosphere of his favourite tavern.
Two hours later, Heighway was sitting in The Green Manticore, his third tankard of Old Organs bitter in front of him, a bowl of hot chicken stew inside him and his crisis of conscience behind him. The good food and the smooth, creamy beer had produced their usual soothing effect, and the inspector was feeling a great deal happier.
After all, he thought, there were plenty of positive aspects to the job. The work was varied and interesting. And in a world where a sizeable proportion of the population consisted of large, muscle-bound warriors with short tempers and long swords, there were more than enough murder inquiries to go round.
Heighway also liked the fact that he was getting quite a reputation as a bit of a maverick amongst the other detectives. They were amused by his insistence on trying to find the real perpetrator of a crime by discovering clues, questioning witnesses and using his brain, but the fact that he frequently succeeded elicited a grudging respect. And on those rare occasions when the superintendent considered it vital to find the actual criminal, as in the recent blackmail case at the Pink Centaur Club, it was always Heighway who was put on the case.
Picking up his beer, Heighway downed half of it in one long swallow. He was just thinking that maybe life wasn’t that bad after all when the distant shouting of a familiar voice reminded him of yet another negative aspect to his job. Sergeant Raasay.
