“I shouldn’t need more than two.”
“And this one is already used up.” She plucked it from the case. While she selected another to sacrifice for the cause, he picked up the empty one, unscrewed the cap and sniffed the lingering scent: the pungent, spicy blend he remembered from yesterday afternoon.
“Perfumes,” he said. “Strange, that we who perceive most of the world so differently from one another nevertheless agree on the various textures of perfume.”
“Well, we all agree that rose perfume smells like roses and vanilla like vanilla and so on. But who knows if roses smell the same to all of us?”
“Very true. But would it not always have been thus, even before we became realizers and fanciers?”
“I suppose ... Here, I think this one really deserves to be thrown away. What do you think, Poe?”
A pallid, pale scent, more suggestive of white mushrooms in moonlight than of her rose-golden health. “A wise choice. Rid yourself of it at once. A more suitable lingering scent to permeate a poison sample it would be difficult to find.”
Chapter 19
Only the richest and most prestigious of the fancy class could afford a full staff in the oldfashioned sense. Not that the minimum wage laws were so stringent, though they encouraged a comfortablish income. And full-time servants to the fancy class could bank most of their wages away, living as they did sometimes better than governors, in private servants’ wings furnished with almost the quality of their employers’ wings, and truer if untidier decoration.
But in general, industrious members of the producing class preferred to earn their money producing or else providing their services freelance to the general public. Aesop’s Wolf and Watchdog. And while the scarcity of servants meant that servants could get away with quite a bit, the workline had not become a refuge for the lazy. With so few hands to keep up a house, idlers could only hold their position if their fancy employer was particularly besotted and any fellow servants incredibly indulgent.
Claude Harvey Portent was not idle. With an overload of mischievous energy compacted into a small, wiry frame, he thoroughly enjoyed working it off doing a variety of odd jobs. He enjoyed playing the roles of footman, coachman, valet, scullion, butler (shared with Em Jones according to which was free), vintner, secretary. Limitations of time more than of ambition prevented him from playing gardener and groundskeeper as well. Those functions were discharged by the Exmoor Landscape and Maintenance Service, which sent someone in two or five days a week, depending on the season.
He was attached to his placid co-servant as if to the mother he could not remember, the older sister he’d never had. He liked the squire—almost everyone, fancier or realizer, liked the squire. And he relished watching the fancy class close up. Fancier-watching constituted his favorite hobby, and his employer’s matchmaking houseparties provided him ideal opportunity to indulge it. He was not writing a book of characters, and he was not a secret source for the gossip sheets. He stored his observations in his head for private chuckles and occasional raconteuring among chosen peers.
He had never before in the course of his thirty-one years been so close to sudden and violent death. Had the victim been a fancier—a fancier, that is, of whom he had seen little, for one could grow quite fond of many of them on longer acquaintance—he might have enjoyed throwing a sinister dimension into his personation of the butler. But the victim was a fellow reality perceiver. One with whom Claude had never been personally acquainted, but one of the most important of the governing class. It sobered even Claude Portent’s spirits.
Nevertheless, now and then even on this grim Saturday, some quirk of fancy-class behavior tickled his private sense of humor almost as keenly as if there had been no murder. For instance, as they began to gather in the drawing room and Claude brought them their before-dinner drinks, he saw with an inward chuckle that M. White had put on a tunic with the Sun God of Machu Picchu woven in gold thread across the breast.
Realizers who did not know fanciers often asked why they had gone back to the archaic custom of dressing for dinner. Unless they had worn denjeans for a day of roughing it, their dinner finery was little different, to a realizer’s casual observation, from their morning wear: an old joke, reincarnated in every possible medium, showed a fancier agonizing over which outfit to wear from a wardrobe full of identical garments. But in the fanciers’ perceptions, dinner dress was indeed more formal and elegant; and in fact it tended to be newer or somewhat more expensive. Besides, everyone felt fresher for a wash-up and change of clothing. And if these fanciers perceived M. Aelfric’s tragedy as more than a convenient scenario, they like anyone else must find habit a comforting thing to cling to.
White was maybe aware of the Sun God on his tunic, but that possibility was so slight as to be negligible. The cool and haughty M. Tertius White had almost certainly been had by a devilish clerk who sold him a garment designed for flush-in-the-pocketbook realizers. The Sun God of Machu Picchu had been a brief fashion three years ago, and White’s tunic looked like one of the first versions produced, the fine original design that had spawned ever cheaper and cruder copies until the fad collapsed. The shopkeeper must have been stuck with an expensive tunic unsalable to realizers. What harm in unloading it on a fancier? It was still quality fabric, good as new.
Angela Garvey came in, and Claude turned from surreptitiously contemplating White’s tunic to offer her the tray of drinks. She took one with her usual smile for him and thanked him as politely as if he had been a fellow guest. The squire stood talking with White at the fireplace, the captain was stepping out on the balcony with his drink, M. Serendip and M. Quantum sat sipping and almost silent on the long couch. Angela settled down beside these last two and attempted cheerful conversation.
The Standard and M. Weaver came down together, as if lending each other moral support. Serving The Standard was a rare privilege, and Claude bowed as he offered them the tray. Had the drinks not been identical, he would have turned the best or fullest to their hands. Comradely as he inclined to fellow realizers, however, he could not help musing that Angela Garvey had given him a more friendly smile this evening than had M. Weaver. But no doubt M. Weaver was far more abstracted. Any smile at all must be hard for her to manage under the circumstances.
The Standard was making the attempt, greeting every fancier by name. “M. White,” she said as her gaze reached him. “What a striking tunic.”
He inclined his head and flashed a smile. “First worn tonight, revered Dame Margaret, in your honor.”
“I am flattered, M. The old Inca deity of the sun, isn’t it? An especially fine treatment.”
“What?” He stared down at his chest.
“Really, M. Tertius?” asked Angela Garvey, turning to look at him. “How clever of you! Did you mark it, or did you just remember which one it was?”
They were all looking at him now, everyone in the room.
“It is a plain silver tunic,” White protested. “Pure silk, pure silver. Ah! You’re testing me, respected lady.”
“I can see from here that it’s pure silk,” said M. Weaver. “But it’s white and it has the Sun God woven into it with metallic gold thread. Excellent crafting.”
White actually seized the hem of his tunic and held it out for a better look. “It is plain silver silk! I paid eighty tridols for a plain, tasteful silver tunic, free of decoration. You! Butler!” He looked at Claude. His eyes had a slightly wild expression.
“I’m sorry, M.,” Claude Portent informed him, suppressing a grin, “but M. is wearing a white tunic with the Sun God of Machu Picchu done in gold. A style which I believe was most popular among members of my own humble class a few years ago. You honor us, M.”
“Oh, I wish I could see it!” said Angela Garvey.
“No! Damn it, I paid for a plain silver tunic! Ah! I see! This is a conspiracy—you are all trying to make a fool of me!” White looked r
eady to hurl his drink at someone, but slammed it down on the mantelpiece instead and strode out of the room. M. Poe, just arriving, vacated the doorway in the very knick to avoid being shoved aside or trodden down.
“What new bee has stormed his bonnet?” Poe inquired as White disappeared.
“It would seem, M.,” Claude Portent replied, presenting him the tray, “that the honorable M. White has been cheated by some rascally shop clerk.”
“So have we all been, some time or other,” said the squire. “It don’t excuse a display like that. M. Standard, M. Weaver, let me apologize for my guest.”
“Let your guests apologize for themselves,” said M. Weaver.
The Standard gave their host a wan smile and shook her head. “The irony is that I really believed he had worn it for us realizers. I thought I was returning his compliment.”
“Of course you were,” said Poe, selecting his drink. He seemed in surprisingly good humor, both for himself and for the circumstances. The bandages were off his fingers. “If the fellow had any sense at all,” Poe went on, “he would have pretended he’d known it all along. I saw him dressed as I have always seen him.”
“So did I,” M. Quantum agreed. “What difference does it make, after all?”
“I think I saw the Sun God, a little,” M. Serendip ventured. “It was terrible. All sickly yellow squares and angles.”
“Really?” Angela Garvey asked. “That doesn’t sound like it at all. I saw a picture of it in Omnicatch, along with Al Everymind’s article. It was quite beautiful.”
Poe looked at her. “I saw that picture too, M. Garvey. It was utterly undistinguished. I should say we were spared a trite and tired big of imagery.”
She looked back at him. Portent was sure that for an instant they exchanged glances. Then Angela flounced out, “Isn’t that just like you, M. Poe! Always in your glum old dismals! And what a rude thing to say in front of The Standard, too, when she liked it! Go away and let us be. We’ll do very nicely without you.”
“Until dinner, then,” he said curtly. “I shall endeavor to return with manners polished to match your own. Meanwhile, I think I shall just enjoy the fresh sea air with Captain Drake, whom I glimpse out there on his poop deck.”
“Boor,” said Angela as he walked past the couch. “We’ve listened to your screaming and bandaged your fingers and put up with your silly posturing all day, and we’re tired of it. Maybe the captain is, too. Maybe he will push you overboard. It’d lighten the ship no end.”
“A Parthian shot, my dear M. Garvey?” he countered, and went out, closing the glass door behind him.
For a moment, all the observers were stunned. More so, perhaps, than by White’s scene. There had seemed something unpredictable about M. White all along, something waiting to break; but this spat was utterly unlike Angela Garvey, nor had Poe appeared quarrelsome when he first came in.
Claude Portent decided the tiff was a patently trumped-up job. What game were those two playing now? They must have agreed ahead of time to seize the first pretext. Maybe it’s the obligatory lovers’ quarrel. Odd hour to choose, with the house in mourning. Damned callous to The Standard’s emotions.
Squire Fitzhugh cleared his throat. Though a fancier, he must have been thinking along the same lines as his employee. “For the second time, M. Standard, M. Weaver,” he said, “I have to apologize for the behavior of a guest. I don’t know what’s getting into the fellows tonight.”
Chivalrously, he had avoided blaming Angela, but she smiled at the realizers in polite contrition. “Yes, I’m very sorry I broke out at him like that in front of all of you. Forgive me?”
“It’s this terrible day,” said M. Serendip. “We’re all on raw ganglions.”
“Hello?” said M. Livingstone, entering the room. “I say, what’s going on? Someone came clumping upstairs past my door like a dervish, drums in the jungle ... Yes, dear ladies, I’m very much afraid there’s a severe case of restlessness among the natives tonight.”
Chapter 20
So far, excellent, Corwin congratulated himself. Things fell out better than could have been hoped, as if some unseen partner were guiding us to our places on the playing board. (And some thinkers profess to disbelieve in Fate!)
Once outside, with the grillwork of glass and wrought iron closed behind him, he glanced to the left, searched his memory, and judged that the angle put the balcony’s far end out of sight to most points in the drawing room.
“Captain Drake,” he said cordially, stepping up beside the man at the balustrade.
“Ah, Poe.” Drake snapped his spyglass shut and tucked it away. “Good evening, mate, good evening.”
“A clear evening, I think.”
“Aye. Barometer at thirty point nine, wind at four knots from the south-south-west. We should have fair cruising tonight.” Drake swelled up his chest with an inhalation. “Fresh salt air! No better air for a man to breathe.”
“The waves seem a little choppy, however. Or do I mistake?”
“A little choppy, aye. Might send a landlubber below, but nothing to a man once he’s got his sea legs.”
“And yet enough, perhaps, that a sudden dip might knock a landsman’s newly found sea legs from beneath him and send him overboard.”
“Think so, lad? Well, not likely to happen to either of us, eh?”
“We shall hope not.” Corwin leaned against the balustrade as if bracing himself. “The sea was still and akin to glass, last night.”
“Bit of a roll at twenty-three bells, when I turned in.”
“Dead calm by about an hour after midnight.” Corwin lowered his voice. “Captain. I was unable to sleep. At length, while all the others slept—all the others save two, I should rather say—I came to choose a book from the library saloon within there.” He made a slight gesture with the hand that held his drink. “I saw the young Standard and one other on this same poop deck where we stand.” He went on, watching Drake closely, “I saw the murderer strike the fatal blow.”
“What? Good God, man, did you tell the shore police?” Drake’s reaction seemed genuinely ingenuous.
“Those minions of the Law? Those self-appointed judges? No, I did not tell them.” Corwin smiled. He had practiced this smile in the bedroom mirror. “Not yet. I may. If circumstances so decide me.”
“But—man, was there enough light? Could you make out who it was?”
“The moon was very bright, my eyes accustomed to the dark. Yes, I know the man’s identity.”
Drake glanced around. “Good gad, man, you shouldn’t be spouting this just anywhere! Report it to the police as soon as you can, boy, that’s my advice, and mumchance in the meantime.”
Corwin strolled to the farthest end of the balcony and leaned over the balustrade, giving Drake a clear chance at his back. “How merrily the sea’s small whitecaps mingle with the creamy rush of our vessel’s wake,” he remarked, looking at the rosebushes. “You will guard my secret as closely as your own?”
The ground, which Corwin knew that Drake perceived as the deep blue sea, began little more than a yard below the balcony floor. A tumble might prove less than pleasant, because of the rosebushes and the sharp gravel path, but hardly the fatal accident Drake would expect. Corwin forced his muscles not to tense as he felt the other’s tread come toward him.
“Mate.” The Captain dropped one hand down heavily on Corwin’s left shoulder. “I don’t know why you’ve blabbed this to me, but don’t go blabbing it to anyone else before the police row out to us again.”
Chapter 21
Tertius Black White was highly satisfied with his evening’s work. It had appeared to begin in disaster, but on gaining his own room and removing the tunic for examination, he had soon determined that it was indeed plain silver silk, innocent of decoration. Clearly The Standard had tested him. He should not have made so emphatic a display of wrath,
however justified; but further reflection showed him that since it was justified, it could not prejudice her opinion of him too adversely. Rather, she might have thought less of him had he shrugged it off as if in good humor, displaying no more pride than strength of conviction. So far, all continued well. But a second fit of temper might cancel out his gains by giving her an impression of instability. Because the strained atmosphere and fraying tempers in this house might all too easily give rise to other volatile situations, he swallowed half a Stressaway tablet. Then he re-attired himself in his plain silver tunic. To change it would be to admit some doubt of his own perception. It was, moreover, the newest and best garment he had brought with him.
Returning downstairs, he learned that, hard on the heels of his own departure, M. Poe had created a scene with Angela, the unprovoked nature of which had happily eclipsed memory of the tunic incident before it gained too disproportionate an influence on intra-house gossip. He could almost feel gratitude toward the young fool.
It was Fitzhugh’s place as host and so-called country squire to escort Dame Margaret to table, allotting her the place of honor at his right. This had displaced the countess, who complained of it rancidly in White’s ear, opining with more justice than decency that she might at least have been given that upstart Weaver’s place on Fitzhugh’s left. White endured her contralto whines. By escorting her, he gained the chair at Dame Margaret’s other hand, and his dinner conversation was a model of decorous wit and graceful sense.
After dinner, too, in the drawing room to partake of brandy and coffee, he had found his way with ease to a vacant seat beside The Standard, and proceeded to clear up the point he had judged an indecorous topic for the dinner table. “I was particularly anxious, Dame Margaret, that you should not suppose I had worn a garment lacking in respect to your junior’s memory.”
“I hadn’t supposed you meant any such thing, M. White.” She had smiled, and even M. Weaver, her constant companion since her arrival, had seemed more warmly inclined to him. “Realizers very seldom wear mourning these days,” The Standard went on, “so why should you have brought any along?”
The Fanciers & Realizers MEGAPACK Page 22
