“I seem to have,” Lord Darcy said, “although I think I have a stiff neck. Good morning, Master Sean. I trust you got a little sleep yourself.”
“Aye, sufficient,” Master Sean acknowledged.
“We should have been in hours ago,” Lord Darcy said, staring out the window. “What happened?”
“Mud slide,” Master Sean told him. “Ahead of the train. They’re digging it out now. We’re only a half hour from Castle Cristobel, I understand, but it will be two or three hours before we can proceed. I inquired about the possibility of our proceeding on foot, in case you felt the necessity, and was informed that much of the way has certainly turned to quicksand. It is, as they say, inadvisable.”
“Well, then,” Lord Darcy said, “let me go wash up, and then let’s see what delights the dining car has to offer two hungry travelers.”
The Continental and Southern subscribed to the theory that a well-fed traveler is a happy traveler. An hour after they first sat down, Lord Darcy and Master Sean faced each other across the remains of eggs, smoked ham, wheat and barley cakes, and assorted jams and condiments, while the porter refilled their caffe cups for the third time. “I do believe I’m beginning to wake up,” Lord Darcy commented, stretching and reaching into his pocket for his pipe and pouch.
“Aye, my lord,” Master Sean said. “I feel the same—but I’m not altogether sure that I can rise from this chair. I may have overeaten slightly.”
“Unless you were planning to go for a swim,” Lord Darcy said, “we might as well sit here and drink our caffe. You can describe for me the results of your thaumaturgical investigations yesterday.”
“I haven’t much to tell you, my lord. The most suggestive results are highly uncertain, due to the length of time since the murders and the method of disposal of the bodies; and the most certain results are uninformative.”
“Whatever crumbs you have for me,” Lord Darcy said, “I shall gratefully accept.”
Master Sean reached into his symbol-decorated carpetbag and pulled out a large notebook. “With the aid of Sir Pierre Semmelsahn—who, incidentally, is a very good man—I performed the basic forensic examination upon the two bodies. The male was in his mid-forties, below average height, sound of wind, and in good health at the time of his death. He was strangled with a fine wire, which was left tied around his neck. Similarity tests on the wire and such other pieces as we could find around the inn proved negative. Sir Pierre is going to continue hunting for samples to test.”
“The killer brought it with him,” Lord Darcy said. “But I wish I knew why.” He struck a match and touched it to the rim of his pipe, sucking at it thoughtfully. “This crime was planned, in great detail, somewhere else, and then accomplished at the Gryphon d’Or. And if I knew why, Master Sean, I’d probably know who.”
Master Sean looked up at Lord Darcy and then back down to his notebook. “The female, Demoiselle Augerre, was twenty, comely in life, dressed in a cotton nightdress with lace ornamentations. She and the male had had intercourse within two hours of their deaths—which took place within moments of each other. The dirt under the male victim’s fingernails shows a strong correlation to the inn, but not to any specific room.”
“It would be too much to hope,” Lord Darcy said. “If we knew which room the victim came from, we could probably identify him. But that was a month ago, and who remembers one guest of average appearance in a busy inn a month later? How much trouble would the killer have had getting into the room, assuming that’s what happened?”
“The Gryphon d’Or has the usual privacy spells on the locks on its rooms,” Master Sean said. “Commercial jobs, but well and conscientiously done. A master sorcerer could have gotten through such a locked and protected door in about three minutes without a key. A clever journeyman could have done it in ten minutes or so with a key, and perhaps an hour without. A layman would have had to break down the door, which surely someone would have noticed.”
“Picture a layman with a spell-in-a-bottle, prepared in advance by some master sorcerer,” Lord Darcy suggested. “What then, Master Sean?”
Master Sean started to shake his head a strong negative, but then he paused and looked thoughtful. After a minute of frozen silence, he slowly nodded his head. “It could be done,” he said. “It could indeed. Mind, it wouldn’t be easy, my lord. It would take a real master to prepare the concoction, and the layman would have to have some training in handling the symbolic equipment—a brazier and such. And there are spells to be said. But it could be done.”
“I think it was done, Master Sean,” Lord Darcy told the tubby magician. “There is no other reasonable explanation. The gentleman—I think we can assume he was a gentleman—whose body we examined today was in his room with Demoiselle Augerre. They were, or had been, engaged in, ah, amorous dalliance. Surely the door was locked. Nobody likes being interrupted at such delicate moments. What puzzles me is the rabbit.”
“Rabbit, my lord?”
“Yes. The rabbit that started all this. The one that paused right over that infernally clever blanket, thus puzzling three hounds and revealing what otherwise might have been a perfect crime.”
“That’s no problem, my lord. It’s a question of balance.”
Lord Darcy looked quizzically at his companion. “What sort of balance, Master Sean?”
“A balance of fears, my lord. There was this poor rabbit, bounding desperately away from three hungry dogs. Now, just as a man in a similar situation would leap into a roaring river current to escape a pursuing tiger, so the rabbit leaped into the area of repulsion when faced by a greater fear from behind. The dogs, who were only after a little sport and a little dinner, did not have nearly enough incentive to overcome the spell in pursuit of the rabbit. So there the little creature sat, frozen in fear, until the dogs gave up and went away. It’s surprising that the rabbit didn’t die of fright.”
Lord Darcy nodded. “Thank you, Master Sean,” he said. “You have solved one minor but vexing problem for me. Now I can concentrate on the more human aspects of this affair.”
The waiter came by and refilled their cups. “We’ll be moving in about ten minutes, my lord,” he said.
Master Sean poured some of the rich, thick, yellow Norman cream into his caffe. “I have a feeling the problem that lies ahead of us will be fully as vexing as the one behind,” he said. “You’re going to have your hands full for the next little while, my lord.”
“And yours, if anything, even fuller,” Lord Darcy replied. “And I have a feeling that these cases are going to prove to be intimately and intricately related.”
“I have learned to trust your feelings, my lord,” Master Sean told him.
CHAPTER TEN
Goodman Domreme stood at nervous ease before the long table, his large, well-callused hands clasped behind his back, his work-lined face creased in worry. Behind the table sat the eight men who, besides His Majesty himself and Father Gibbin, Goodman Domreme’s confessor, the goodman stood most in awe of in the whole Empire.
“Just tell your story slowly and clearly,” instructed Marquis Sherrinford, who sat fourth from the left, on Duke Richard’s left hand. “You will be doing His Majesty a great service in aiding in this investigation, Goodman Domreme. Don’t be nervous.”
Which, of course, made poor Goodman Domreme even more nervous. “I’ll try, Your Lordship,” he said. “Yesterday afternoon I went into the ballroom—”
“No, no,” Marquis Sherrinford interrupted. “Start at the beginning. We want to hear the whole thing.”
Goodman Domreme looked puzzled. “But, Your Lordship, that is the beginning. Isn’t it?”
“Tell us your name and job,” Marquis Sherrinford said, “and what you’ve been doing in the ballroom, and the precautions you’ve taken, and then what happened yesterday. A connected narrative, my good man. We don’t know what bit of information Lord Darcy will find useful, so we need it all. Take your time.”
Lord Darcy and Master Sean sat patient
ly, waiting for the story to be unfolded. They had been hurried to this meeting—this conference, this investigation-by-committee—upon their arrival at the Castle a half hour before, and had as yet not found out a thing about yesterday’s murder. Marquis Sherrinford preferred going to the source. He didn’t, so he said, want to take a chance of misleading Lord Darcy with a secondhand narrative. Usually a good idea, but in this case perhaps a bit time-consuming.
Goodman Domreme stood there and thought it out. Just as it had never bothered him that there were people who knew things he didn’t, it had never occurred to him that other people didn’t know everything he did. And these other people, he would have thought, knew everything. There was Richard, Duke of Normandy, who must possess all secular knowledge; and next to him on his right, the Archbishop of Paris, who surely possessed all heavenly knowledge; and on his right, Coronel Lord Waybusch, in charge of the guards, whose job was knowing everything; and on his right Master Sir Darryl Longuert, Wizard Laureate of England, who certainly knew everything magical. To the Duke’s left were Marquis Sherrinford, the King’s Equerry; and then Lord Darcy, Chief Investigator for the Empire, who everybody knew could read your mind. Next to him was Lord Peter Whiss, who, rumor claimed, could tell when you were lying. And at the end of the table, in his wizard’s blue robes, was Master Sean O Lochlainn, who, it was said, could make corpses talk.
Goodman Domreme took his time. If he knew something these gentlemen did not, it was up to him to remedy that. And he didn’t want to make a mistake. “My name is Isadore Domreme,” he said thoughtfully. “I was born of poor but honest parents in the village of—”
”Start with six days ago,” Marquis Sherrinford interrupted again, sounding annoyed. “Start with the ballroom six days ago.”
Goodman Domreme nodded slowly. “Six days ago, Your Lordships,” he said, “I was instructed to refinish the floor in the grand ballroom. We had been waiting for dryer weather to do it, on account of the shellac dries so slowly in damp weather, but Goodman Druthers, who is in charge of castle maintenance, decided as we weren’t going to get any dry weather before His Highness’s coronation, so we were to go ahead and do the job now.
“So we cleared out the furniture and stripped and cleaned the floor. We used a standard stripping spell, as was supplied by Goodman Peppier, the journeyman sorcerer who has a contract with the castle maintenance department for such things, and a lot of ammonia and water. It took two days to strip, clean, and dry the floor. Used a spell to help with the drying, too, Your Lordships.”
“Go on,” Marquis Sherrinford encouraged the man.
“Yes, Your Lordship. Three days ago—Tuesday, it were—we put down the new layer of shellac. All the doors were locked at that time, to prevent anyone accidentally walking on the new shellac and ruining the finish. Goodman Druthers decided to let the floor dry naturally. He said if we used magic to dry the shellac faster, it might bubble. Begging your pardon, Sir Darryl, Master Sean.”
“No pardon necessary,” Master Wizard Sir Darryl Longuert, Sorcerer Laureate of England, said mildly. “It might, you know. It might bubble. No denying that.”
“And then, yesterday?” Marquis Sherrinford prompted.
Goodman Domreme looked hurt. That’s what he’d wanted to talk about all the time. “Yesterday,” he said, “I unlocked the service door to take a look at the floor—see how much more drying time it needed. I,” he said proudly, “was put in charge of the drying.”
“Yes?”
Goodman Domreme’s eyes got large with remembering. “There was a gentleman,” he said. “Right in the middle of the floor. He was lying there. Dead.”
Lord Darcy closed his eyes and visualized the ballroom. It was a rectangle, about a hundred feet wide and a hundred twenty feet long. There were a row of columns running the length on each side, about fifteen feet from the wall and fifteen feet apart. A balcony ran all around the room; wide enough at the front to hold a small orchestra, it was no more than three feet wide for the rest of its circumference. There were a number of doors leading into the ballroom. Lord Darcy didn’t know about doors off the balcony. He would find out.
The service door must be one of the two small doors opposite each other in the side walls toward the back. In addition to this there were two large doors in the front wall, the grand entrance and the grand exit, and two large doors at the middle and toward the back of each side wall which led to refreshment rooms and lavatories. The back of the room had, as Lord Darcy remembered, only the one small door, which led, through a small anteroom, to the private corridor across from the throne room. And only Their Majesties and the Marquis Sherrinford had keys to that. But still, it was not exactly a locked-room mystery. Not yet, anyway.
“Describe the salient facts about the body, Goodman Domreme,” Marquis Sherrinford said.
“How’s that?”
“Tell us about the corpse. The way you found it. Anything you noticed at the time.”
“Ah, yes, Your Lordship. There were a few things as I noticed. As I told Goodman Druthers, as I told the armsman when he came to investigate, there were some odd features to the happening. Not that but what finding a dead corpse in the middle of the ballroom floor was pretty odd to my way of thinking, Your Lordships.”
“Do go on.”
“I went around the body, being careful to stay near the wall, where the shellac was already dry, so as I could get a glimpse of the gentleman’s face. It was not someone with whom I was acquainted personally. But I could see that he was—had been—one of the gentry. First thing as I noticed was that he’d had his throat slit. A pool of blood there was on the floor all under the head and shoulders. And blood all around the body for maybe a yard or two in every direction, looking like it had been sprayed. And with the shellac still wet. No way to get it out without sanding down to the bare wood, which is going to be a pretty job. Next thing I noticed was that there was no weapon by the body—no knife or razor or anything like that. Which was odd, you see.”
“Why was it odd?” Lord Darcy asked, speaking for the first time.
Goodman Domreme had the look of a man who is taking an oral exam and is not going to be caught by a trick question. “Well, Your Lordship, it means he didn’t commit suicide. And, as he wasn’t murdered—at least not by mortal hands—”
”Mortal hands?” Coronel Lord Waybusch interrupted, looking startled. “Just what do you mean, Goodman, ‘not by mortal hands’?”
“Would you explain that, Goodman Domreme, if you please?” Marquis Sherrinford asked. “What made you think that he wasn’t murdered?”
“It was the shellac,” Goodman Domreme explained, twisting his fingers together behind his back. “It was still damp, so it took footprints. And there weren’t any footprints in the room except the dead man’s own!”
* * * * * * *
A half hour later Lord Darcy and Master Sean stood on the balcony overlooking the ballroom and stared down at the scene of the crime. Goodman Domreme was circuiting the perimeter, lighting the gas lamps, and each new light brought the scene below into clearer and more terrible view. The corpse was still in place, sprawled in death into a posture impossible in life; a preservation spell keeping it, and all else in the area, as it had been found. Dried blood could be seen in a large fan around the body, where it had spurted out of the still-living throat. And a pool of blood had gathered under the head and shoulders. A trail of two-by-four-foot cardboard rectangles led from the service door to one side of the body, put down at Marquis Sherrinford’s instruction so that any markings in the newly shellacked floor would not be disturbed.
Duke Richard had gone about his duties, but the other five members of the committee were ranged behind Lord Darcy and Master Sean O Lochlainn. They awaited Master Sean’s assurance that the murder was one they could understand. It could have been done by magic—a magician wielding a spell could cause a knife to float on air and, unsupported, to jab and thrust—and slice. That they could understand. That Master Sean could find
traces of with his forensic arts. That could be guarded against by the proper counterspells supplied by a master sorcerer.
But if magic—white or black—was not employed in the murder, why then the thing became incomprehensible. And no man was safe in his bed.
Marquis Sherrinford approached the edge of the balcony and glared at the corpse, as though the death were a personal affront. “It was my decision not to move the body, my lord,” he said. “None of us wanted to take the chance of disturbing some clue—some bit of dust, or etheric vibration—which you or Master Sean might pick up.”
The victim had been identified as Master Paul Elovitz, Chief Magical Officer for the Teleson Group. He was a portly man in his late fifties, who enjoyed his work, his young wife from a recent marriage, and his two (now grown) children. He would no sooner commit suicide than he would declare war on Spain. He had come as a representative of the Communications Guild, as well as a Master Sorcerer, to attend the coronation. Those few of his friends and business acquaintances currently at the castle agreed that he was a happy, harmless man who had never knowingly given offense to anyone.
Lord Darcy turned to Marquis Sherrinford. “The body has not been examined?” he asked.
“The body has not been touched,” Marquis Sherrinford told him. “The same, ah, dreadful question is on all of our minds, but we agreed that it was more important for you and Master Sean to see the corpse in situ than for us to indulge our morbid curiosity.”
“Well, then,” Lord Darcy said, “if you will excuse us, my lord, Master Sean and I shall go down and examine it.”
There were two entrances to the balcony. The one they had come up led through a dressing room area for the orchestra, which was itself kept locked, and the only two keys in the charge of the seneschal and the concertmaster. Subject to Master Sean’s affirming that the affinity spells on the locks had not been disturbed, that made the use of that entrance highly unlikely. The second entrance was from a small door in the ballroom itself, the one right across from the service door.
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