The Iron Angel

by Edward D. Hoch

  “They are still here,” Michael said. “We saw them earlier.”

  “No doubt. The pests are hard to drive off.”

  “What do you want from us?” Segar asked him.

  “If we have to dig up all twelve gardens to find this statue, it will set back progress to open the estate to the public for at least a year. I was hoping the government could offer some solution to the puzzle.”

  Segar gave a snort. “You need a priest, not a bureaucrat. I have no idea who the last Apostle was, or even the first.”

  “Simon Peter,” Michael said. He remembered that much, how Christ had come upon Peter and his brother Andrew casting their fishing net into the sea.

  But already the darkness was descending. Any further examination of the twelve gardens would have to wait until morning. “We have five bedrooms,” Sibiu told them. “Please stay the night and we can examine the place by the light of the day. It is already too late for your return to Bucharest.” He glanced at the watch on his right wrist.

  Segar and Michael exchanged glances. The puzzle itself held little interest for Michael, who was inclined to think that the mysterious statue might well have been dug up decades ago by the Communist government. Still, the presence of the two Gypsies on the land interested him. They might know something, if he could find them again and speak with them. “We could stay,” he told Segar.

  His old friend chewed at his lower lip. “I must be in my office by afternoon, but perhaps we could stay long enough to have a quick look in the morning. I have no fondness for driving these roads after dark.”

  “Very good!” Claus Sibiu seemed pleased. “I ate early this evening, shortly before your arrival, but Ida can prepare something light for you before you retire. I will look forward to continuing our analysis of this puzzle in the morning.”

  He left them in the large, well-stocked kitchen and presently Ida Sibiu appeared wearing an emerald-green robe. Michael wondered if it was their custom to retire at nightfall each evening, like the birds.

  “I have prepared the large guest room at the front of the house,” she told them, “overlooking the garden. It has only one large bed –”

  “That’s all right,” Michael assured her.

  She prepared a light supper of soup and cold meat, which tasted good to Michael. Then she joined them at the table with a bottle of German beer. “You have to forgive us for the food,” she apologized, wiping a drop of blood from a cut she’d inflicted on her left wrist. “We have not entertained since Claus regained the estate from the government. I’ve even lost the knack of carving meat!”

  “You have not been married long?” Segar asked.

  She shrugged. “Nearly seven years. But of course in middle age that is only a small fraction of our lives. I met him in Greece and he would tell me fabulous stories of his great estate back here in Romania. He never thought he would see it again, nor did I. Then the Communist and Socialist governments began to topple. It was all so fast, all at once! Claus made application to the provisional government for the return of his property and no one was more surprised than he when the request was granted. We came back last year to find the place was like a jungle.”

  “You’ve done wonders with it.”

  “But we must open it to the public to generate some income! Claus is not a wealthy man. What money he had was drained away by his years of living in exile. Once we even tried to sneak back into Romania, in disguise, but I was nervous about it and we turned back before we reached home.”

  “Home. This estate.”

  She nodded sadly. “For him it was always home. He has told me he wants to be buried here.”

  Soon after that she showed them to their room. Michael slept restlessly, awakened occasionally by Segar’s snoring. Finally, when the first light of dawn slipped into the guest room, he got out of the bed and opened the drapes to gaze down at the Garden of the Apostles.

  At one of its intersecting paths the body of the Gypsy with the red kerchief was sprawled face down on the graveled earth. There was a knife in the center of his back, and from above it appeared that he’d been dragged to the spot and pinned there by some giant hand.

  Michael and Segar, whom Michael awakened hastily from his morning dreams, were unable to find their hosts in the upstairs bedrooms. They finally located Ida Sibiu in the kitchen, where she was just beginning to prepare breakfast. “A body?” she repeated, unbelieving. “In the garden?”

  Michael assured her it was true. “It appears to be one of the Gypsies. Is your husband about?”

  “He’s bathing now. I’ll go look with you.”

  She followed them through the house and out the front door, hanging back a bit when they reached the garden. “It’s Erik,” she said, apparently recognizing the red kerchief.

  “He’s dead,” Segar confirmed, kneeling by the body. “I’d better use your telephone to call Bucharest. The local authorities aren’t equipped to handle this.”

  “Who could have done it?” Ida asked.

  “The other Gypsy?” Segar suggested.

  “His name is Bedrich,” she volunteered. “They were camped at the back of our property with at least one woman.”

  “I’ll go,” Michael decided suddenly, because there was no one else to do it. “If this Bedrich did it he’ll be on the run and I can track him.”

  Segar didn’t argue. He’d known Michael Vlado too long for that. “All right, go. You’d better tell your husband what’s happened, Mrs. Sibiu, while I phone the authorities.”

  She pointed the way for Michael and he set off unarmed, hardly realizing that he’d been out of bed for only twenty minutes. The morning dew lay thick on the grass as he circled the big house and set off toward the rear of the property. He didn’t know what he might be facing – a murderer, perhaps, but more likely an abandoned campsite with embers from a fire still glowing in the daylight. If there was only one woman they had probably fought over her. There were no rules in a knife fight, except it would be rare to stab a fellow Gypsy in the back whatever the provocation.

  He saw the tent then, a little thing nestled among the firs. Had they left so quickly that the tent had been sacrificed? Not too likely. He was almost to it when the woman emerged carrying a bucket of morning wash water which she emptied on the ground. She saw him then and was startled. “Bedrich!” she called out.

  The second Gypsy emerged, bare-chested, from the tent. He was tall and well-built with olive skin and a square jaw. “What do you want here?” he asked speaking in Romany.

  They both seemed surprised when Michael replied in the Gypsy language. “Your friend Erik is dead. I have come to ask you about that.”

  They exchanged glances but he saw no surprise. “The fool was looking for trouble,” the woman said. She was dark and pretty in the way that very young women sometimes are, before age plays its tricks.

  “Did you kill him?” Michael asked.

  “He was my brother,” the woman answered. “Erik. I am Esmeralda. Those people at the house killed him because he came searching for their treasure.”

  Michael turned to the Gypsy named Bedrich, who asked simply, “How did he die?”

  “Stabbed in the back, near the center of the Garden of the Apostles.”

  “We worked for them, for Sibiu and his wife,” Bedrich said. “Then she said we stole tools and they ordered us off the property.”

  “But you are still here.”

  The man shrugged. “Erik did not want to leave without the treasure. He heard them talking about it. He knew it was somewhere in the garden.”

  “This was the statue of Cynthia?”

  “Yes.”

  “A goddess?”

  It was Esmeralda who answered, possibly because of her Greek name. “Cynthia is Artemis, the Greek goddess of the hunt, the counterpart to the Roman goddess Diana.” She closed her eyes for a moment and then opened them. “I must see my brother’s body. Take me to him.”

  Michael nodded. He could understand the need. Whe
n Bedrich followed along too, he said nothing. Back at the big house Claus Sibiu had replaced his wife in the garden with Segar. “This is a shock to Ida,” he said. “She must rest before she joins us.” He looked uncertainly at the Gypsy couple. “So you found them!”

  “They were at their camp. They had not run away. Esmeralda is the dead man’s sister.”

  Sibiu frowned. “Why did I never know that?”

  She looked away, avoiding his face. “Because you never asked. We were only workers to be accused by your wife when something was missing.” The words came from Bedrich, not her, but either might have spoken them.

  She saw the body then, only half covered by a burlap sack, and went to it. The knife was still buried in his back and she touched it gently, as if about to pull it free. Then her fingers dropped away and she began to sob quietly, showing real emotion for the first time since Michael brought her the news of her brother’s death.

  “What about the authorities?” he asked Segar.

  “No good news. There are disturbances in the streets of Bucharest. Nothing too serious but all police are on standby. It will be at least tomorrow before they can send someone up here. In the meantime, they quickly point out, I am a former investigative officer for the militia. I am to take charge and conduct my own investigation.”

  Michael could see he was unhappy with the prospect. “There must be local authorities in this area.”

  “No one qualified to investigate a murder, I fear. Help in such cases is usually summoned from the cities.” He glanced toward Gypsy Bedrich, who had not joined Esmeralda at her brother’s body. “I might as well start with you.”

  The young Gypsy seemed frightened by the turn of events. “We never stole the tools!” he insisted. “We never killed anybody!”

  Claus Sibiu glanced at the watch on his left wrist. “Will you be needing me for the next half hour, Mr. Segar? I have some phone calls to make. And I want to see how my wife is doing.”

  “Go ahead.”

  Esmeralda had returned to Michael’s side. “You are a Gypsy too,” she said.

  “Yes, from Gravita, up in the foothills.”

  “We must have the body for a traditional burial ceremony. You understand that.”

  “Of course. Segar will have a few questions first. Tell me about the knife. Did it belong to your brother?”

  “It was his.”

  “Did he always have such dirty hands?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Michael walked over and indicated the dead man’s hand. “There’s dirt on them, and under the fingernails too, as if he’d been digging.”

  “In one of the gardens?”

  “Where else? Your brother was after the so-called treasure, wasn’t he? His body lies between the gardens of Judas and Jude, at the very center of the layout.”

  “No Judas,” Esmeralda said simply. “He betrayed Christ. He is never honored with the Apostles.”

  “But there are twelve gardens. You can see that.”

  “Judas was replaced. The Apostles drew lots for a replacement after he hanged himself.”

  “There was no marking on any of these gardens,” Michael admitted. “I was told they were alphabetical. What was the name of his replacement?”

  “I do not remember. It has been years since I studied the Bible with my mother.”

  Segar had finished questioning the Gypsy Bedrich. “You both must remain on the property until tomorrow,” he ordered. “The other police will be arriving then, and may have more questions for you. I will go back to your tent now and look through it. You say you found no statue of Cynthia, but I must be certain it is not among your possessions.

  Michael was in the house with Sibiu when he returned. Nothing had been found in or around the Gypsy camp. “Are you sure?” Sibiu asked.

  Segar smiled slightly. “My old friend Michael has taught me all the Gypsy tricks. I even kicked away the remains of the campfire and dug underneath it. “There was no treasure. Erik did not find it before he was killed.”

  “Then its still out there,” Michael said. “The statue of Cynthia.”

  “I’m more disturbed about the killing right now,” Sibiu told them in his measured tones. “The government could use this as an excuse for not letting us open the garden.”

  “Something must be done with the body until tomorrow,” Segar told the man. “Do you have any sort of cold storage room in the house?”

  There was nothing except a large freezer, and they decided that was too small. The body was wrapped in a plastic bag and carried to the cool basement. Then they set about the problem at hand.

  “The statue is out there,” Segar stated firmly. “I say everything gets dug up until we find it.”

  “How will that help us identify the killer?” Michael asked.

  “Erik was killed because he guessed or deduced where the statue was buried. If he did it, we can do it.”

  “You forget he’d camped on the estate for a year or more,” Sibiu told them. “He might have seen something.”

  “According to your father’s note the statue was buried over forty years ago, long before Erik was born. Since you and Ida don’t know where it is, what could he have seen? Did either of you ever mention your father’s message to him?”

  “We might have,” Sibiu admitted. “That part about the last Apostle.”

  “Yes, the last Apostle. It didn’t mean Judas but the Apostle who replaced Judas. That’s where you’ll find the statue.”

  “We looked there!” Claus Sibiu insisted. “We dug it up and the Gypsies helped. The Apostle chosen to replace Judas was Matthias.”

  “When you say you looked there you mean you looked in the garden assigned to Judas. Don’t you see? There never was a Judas honored with the other Apostles. You were too young to remember it but the twelfth garden was Matthias’s from the beginning. It was never the sixth plot, where you dug, but the eighth plot, in proper alphabetical order between Matthew and Peter.”

  Segar had drawn twelve squares on a sheet of paper, arranged in three rows of four each and labeled as they appeared from the house. “You mean the right- hand plot in the second row?”

  “Exactly,” Michael replied.

  “But Erik wasn’t killed there,” Sibiu reminded them.

  “The killer dragged the body to the middle, to keep it away from Matthias’s plot. From the upstairs window I could detect signs of dragging on the gravel. But here’s stronger evidence that Matthias is the garden we want. You told us, Claus, that you left here as a child in the summer of nineteen forty-nine and your father’s message says you’ve been gone two weeks. So the date on the envelope, February twenty-fourth, is not when the letter was written. What does it refer to? I found it in one of your library books last night – the feast of Saint Matthias! That was before I even realized he was the last Apostle.

  “Let’s get shovels and start digging,” Segar suggested.

  They went out the front door with Michael leading the way. He paused at the right end of the second row, as seen from the house. The plot for Matthias, even though it was unmarked. Segar returned with two shovels and he and Michael plunged them into the dry earth.

  Claus gave a sigh. “Ida won’t like what you’re doing to her garden.”

  Michael avoided the well-established tulip bed and the carpet of lilies of the valley. Instead he went to work on a patch of disturbed soil, turned over since the last rain. He’d dug down only two feet before he hit something. “This may be it,” he told them. “It’s a large plastic bag. Hand me your knife, Mr. Sibiu.”

  The man slipped the blade from his belt and passed it over. Michael made a clean slit and pulled the edges of the plastic apart.

  Something is wrong, he suddenly realized even as he was doing it. They didn’t have plastic bags like this back in the forties.

  Then he saw the body, and the dead face staring up at him was the face of Claus Sibiu, the man who stood behind him at that moment.

  Segar gasped
at the sight of the uncovered face. “This is madness! Sibiu, is that a twin?”

  “There are forces at work here you cannot imagine,” Sibiu told them. “Come into the house with me and I will explain everything.”

  “The body is fresh,” Michael pointed out. “He hasn’t been dead more than a few days, if that long.”

  “Come into the house,” Sibiu repeated.

  “No, I think not,” Michael replied. He was beginning to see it all. He was beginning to see too much.

  Sibiu’s hand came out of his pocket holding a double-barreled derringer pistol, but Michael still held the knife in his hand. He rolled to one side as Sibiu fired, and hurled the knife with an aim he knew was true. It buried itself in the fleshy part of Sibiu’s arm, bringing a high pitched yelp of pain.

  Them Michael and Segar were both on him, holding him as Michael peeled away the fringe beard and the false headpiece. “What is this?” Segar demanded.

  “It is Ida Sibiu,” Michael explained, holding her tightly as he pulled the knife from her arm. “She murdered her husband and buried him in the garden of Matthias in place of the moon.”

  “Moon? What moon?”

  “Let me go!” she screeched in a fury, ignoring her arm wound as she wrestled with Michael.

  But he held her firm as he answered Segar’s question. “The golden moon that hangs on the wall of their house. No one else ever said that treasure was a statue. The message from Claus’s father described it as a likeness of Cynthia. I finally remember that Cynthia is also a poetic term for the moon. You and your husband discovered the hiding place in the garden of Matthias a few days ago. Once it was dug up, you didn’t need the pretense anymore. You killed Claus and buried him where the moon had been, then hid the treasure in plain sight on the wall of your house.”

  “Why would she kill him,” Segar asked, “when she knew I was coming to see him?”

  “That’s just the point. She didn’t know.”

  Segar had produced a pair of handcuffs from the trunk of his car and they bandaged Ida Sibiu’s arm wound as best they could before driving to the hospital in a nearby town. “I don’t understand any of it,” Segar admitted as they waited at the hospital for her wound to be treated and stitched up. “Why would she kill her husband?”