The Fanciers & Realizers MEGAPACK

by Phyllis Ann Karr

  They paused. A few crystal clicks, a liquid slur, told the listener his new companion had stopped to fill a glass.

  At length the fellow guest came into Corwin’s line of sight. He was a Harlequin figure in checkered dressing gown and motley pantaloons.

  “Ah, it’s you, Poe,” said the Harlequin. “I assumed someone in addition to myself was abroad, with the fire turned up and the lamp on.”

  “White. Good evening.” Corwin started to close his book on his finger, caught himself on pinching a bruise, and laid the volume closed on the table with his place unmarked. His heart beat faster. The latest card Angela had drawn for him in her room, half an hour ago, was that of Tertius White. He had supposed this encounter would not take place until the early morrow.

  “Don’t let me disturb you,” White went on. “I came down with the same idea.” Setting his glass on the mantelpiece between the ivory bust of Pallas and the bronze Acteon, White turned to the shelves and lifted his candle, studying the gilt titles on the morocco-leather spines.

  Corwin considered leaving it till tomorrow, and the option calmed his pulse a little. But Drake and DiMedici were tested and tallied, with White’s marker next in Angela’s scorekeeping. The time and place were too propitious, the stage too well set. Did he fail of the attempt tonight, how should he tomorrow cover such a lapse? It was as if the Delphic Oracle had spoken. His pulse quickening again, he took a long sip of brandy and said,

  “Conscience, White?”

  The Harlequin turned, his face a mask of dark and pale greasepaint.

  Corwin drew a deep breath and made himself more clear. “I repeat, does an uneasy conscience disturb your rest?”

  “I might with equal justice put the same question to you.”

  “No. No, I think not. You see, White, I have suffered all my life from insomnia, or, more accurately, from that peculiar nocturnal humor which cleaves to the dark hours as most of humanity cleaves to the sunlit. Last night, at about this time or a little later, I came down to this room. I carried a light, but did not propose to kindle it until I reached the bookshelves. My night vision is excellent, and the moon was already bright. For descending the stairs and crossing the floor, I needed no stronger illumination. Glimpsing two men on the balcony, I walked still softer, not caring to disturb their seemingly private conversation.” He decided to cut the tale short. White was watching him with slightly narrowed eyes. “Not to weary you with further details, I saw the murder.”

  “And recognized the murderer?”

  “Clearly. I saw his profile against the rising moon.” That touch, Corwin understood even as he said it, was a gamble. The exact hour of the blow was slightly in doubt.

  “And what did you do when he came inside? How did you escape his notice then?”

  Blood seemed to roar through Corwin’s head, a vein in the left side of his throat palpitated with the pressure until he felt sure White’s gaze was fixed on it. His calm voice and rapid thought processes amazed himself. “I was not so far advanced toward this wall that instant retreat into the shadows was cut off.”

  “And you bumped against nothing in the dark? Made no noise? Hard to believe, Poe.”

  “In the semi-dark. The slightest leakage of light into a darkened place, with the eyes’ property of adjustment, enables a being with senses as acute as my own to make haste very silently. And I had advanced along my same line of retreat only moments before.”

  White took his glass from the mantel and put it to his lips. As he swallowed, the fire cast a dancing core of brighter crimson into the heart of the wine. “There still seems to be a hole in your story, Poe,” he said on lowering the glass. “You walked softly so as not to disturb their conversation, yet you continued toward the bookshelves? Did you fail to see that when you kindled your light it would call their attention to you after all?”

  “I had decided to slip a few volumes from the shelves at random.”

  “I see. A curious decision—to tell the police nothing of all this when you had your chance today.”

  “I resented their methods of pressing for information. Moreover ...”

  “Moreover?” White smiled and lifted the glass to his lips again.

  There is still time, thought Corwin. Still time to shift the tale, pretend to have recognized one of the others. But that would waste all this preparation. His heart pounding as if to wake the household, he said evenly, “Moreover, White, I wanted the opportunity to see how much my silence might be worth to the murderer.”

  “Blackmail. The most despicable crime of all.”

  “How, more despicable than murder?” Corwin would have liked another swallow of brandy, but feared his hand might tremble visibly if he lifted it from the arm of the chair. “I prefer to think of myself as a shopkeeper,” he amplified. “A shopkeeper with one very valuable commodity, for sale to one peculiarly interested buyer.”

  “And if you tell end by telling the police? They can hardly fail to notice that you withheld evidence the first time around.”

  Corwin managed a casual shrug. “I might spend a few years in prison for it, emerge, and find some way to turn the experience into a profitable publication. For the murderer, it will be life until death in the asylum.”

  White laid down his candle and put the hand thus freed into the pocket of his dressing gown. “As I see it, Poe, you’ve made two very foolish mistakes. The first was not telling the police when you had the chance. The second was telling me when we’re alone. What do you see in my hand?” he finished, taking it from his pocket.

  Part of Corwin’s mind remembered statements to the effect than when suspense turned to certainty, the worst was over. It was not true. “A dueling pistol, silver-chased. I assume it is some sort of lethal weapon?”

  “A thirty-six caliber Wentley-Harper silent automatic. Loaded.”

  Surely at this point some visible agitation would not be too undignified. Expecting momently to feel the shot, Corwin lifted his glass and gulped a swallow, too fast. He choked, coughed, took another sip, got his hand once more to the chair’s arm, breathed deeply and looked at the Harlequin again.

  White was smiling, as if in some amusement. It might have been a trick of the shadows.

  Chapter 26

  Did our great-grandparents have these problems? Lestrade wondered, and concluded they probably had. Dr. Dickens, Senior English prof at E.S.U., liked saying that the term “red tape” could be traced back to pre-Victorian times, and bureaucracy must have existed in the Fertile Crescent. Things might have been worse before cordless phones and modern computers, but from the pictures some of the old detective fiction painted, in the bad old days they didn’t have to clear so much permission before throwing up clockround protective service on the premises. So maybe it evened out.

  By the time Portent spoke with his employer, the squire talked M. Margaret into accepting the marginal intrusion on her privacy, The Standard phonecommed her permission, and the chipwork filtered up to Flynn, it was 01:25. By the time Lestrade and Click got out to Fitzhugh Manor it was after 02:00. The gate was closed. In daylight, you could look through the steelglass and see the house, a kilometer distant at the end of the tree-flanked private drive. You could not see the house now, meaning that if any lights were on, they were at the back.

  “Damn,” muttered Lestrade. “Should’ve phoned ’em again when we left the station.”

  “Well, you’re the one who napped all evening.” Click yawned. He had reported in pleasantly keyed up, but despite the coffee he’d been pouring into himself from the car dispenser, he had mellowed into the state where people could still snap awake and function at need but dozed off when nothing much was happening.

  “For all the winks you can grab in the station lounge.” Lestrade understood her own brain must be a little grainier than she liked it, or she wouldn’t have overlooked the idea of calling Portent in advance. She tabb
ed his number now, as they sat in front of the gate, and in due course it swung open by remote control.

  “Look sharp for the dogs,” Portent told her over the phonewave. He meant don’t run them over. Lestrade drove through and the gate closed behind the rear bumper.

  “Woo-oo-oo!” Click muttered in the time-hallowed tradition. The dogs barked somewhere on the grounds, but were smart enough to keep away from the drive. One outside light went on at the front door, followed by a second one at the corner, pointing the way around the house to the kitchen door at the back.

  Both servants were waiting in the kitchen, M. Jones getting a pot of coffee ready to percolate in the oldfashioned method she swore by. When they reported the house had been quiet all evening till now, Lestrade suggested she postpone perking the coffee till morning. Click was leaning against the basement door, closing and opening his eyes, and if things were in order they might as well get a few hours’ sleep.

  Portent took Click for a once-over of the ground floor while M. Jones guided Lestrade on a quiet inspection of the upstairs apartments. M. Standard was awake but drowsy, M. Weaver asleep and breathing smoothly, Squire Fitzhugh snoring. M. Quantum had someone in bed with her, and Lestrade decided that was enough of a spotcheck. Nobody’s moral styles shocked her any more, and it might be a case of platonic bedfellow, but if the fanciers were coping with their nerves by mixing and matching beds, a nose count would not be worth the complications. Not unless Click noticed anything out of place downstairs—and when they got back down, he reported everything looked all right. “Someone read the self sleepy in the living room and went away without turning the lamp and fireplace off, that’s all.”

  “And the fireplace has a sorbent screen,” Portent pointed out as if forgetting that pollies were realizers and could see it for themselves. “The fire could be left on at full force all night without danger.”

  “Waste of electricity,” said Lestrade.

  “In fact, Sergeant, it was on at barely point-four. We generally leave it burning at minimum with a houseful of guests, as a sort of night light.”

  “Uh-huh,” said Click. “Well, let’s not waste it.” He shoved one end of the long couch around toward the fireplace, stretched out, and apparently fell asleep without waiting for blanket or pillow. Lestrade asked M. Jones to make up a bed for her in the little antechamber of The Standard’s suite, and Fitzhugh Manor settled back into darkness and quiet.

  Chapter 27

  They held a realizers’ council in the kitchen Sunday morning at half past eight: The Standard, M. Weaver, the two officers, Portent, and Em Jones—handy, how the short for her given name sounded like the honorific for everybody. And Thurby Fitzhugh, sitting in as host and squire. Feeling a trifle strange, in his own house and kitchen, to be odd man out in a company of half a dozen. Something the way M. Weaver must have felt yesterday, alone amongst fanciers. He sat next to her and when nothing else claimed his full attention he watched her near hand. It was a nice hand, long-fingered, feminine, sturdy but dexterous. Wonderful dexterous things, were female hands with their quick, thin, dainty fingers. And hers was a realizer’s hand, too, full of sturdy competence. A hand he’d like to be holding, old uncle though he was.

  Em Jones and Portent had breakfast for the other guests set out in the breakfast room, in chaffing dishes, hotbaskets, and urns, the good, oldfashioned way. Several guests were already down. When the squire had looked in to say good morning, Angela, M. Willa, and little M. Nantice were sitting with Livingstone. Angela’s plate had been filled and emptied, Livingstone was eating with a good appetite, the other two were only pecking at their plates and drinking their coffee.

  When he reached the kitchen and saw seven plastic mugs and a chipped platter of croissants on the table, Fitzhugh had started to dress his manservant down. “The best china, Portent. Our best’s none too good for The Standard. Gad, what cellar did you dredge this stuff up from?”

  “Beggin’ your pardon, Thurby,” Em Jones had informed him—being his old nurse gave her use of his first name and a unique camaraderie in private—”those are from the same set we put out in the breakfast nook. You just see ’em different in the kitchen light, that’s all.”

  “And the chip out of that platter?”

  “That platter’s genuine antique Noritake,” she explained comfortably. “One of the best pieces you own. Only two others like it in this pattern known between here and the Rockies, so a tiny little chip like that hardly counts. You don’t even see it when we use this platter out front.”

  He had examined one of the mugs. It sat in a saucer, right enough, but it still seemed a thick institutional thing of stained plastic. “Em,” he had asked, “what are they, really? Are they decent china, or ... Dash it, Em, quality—that’s the one thing we always recognize!”

  “I expect it’s just this weekend, Thurby.” She had taken the mug from him and passed it to Portent. “Things like this, well, they affect every one of us somehow or other. It’s made your perceptions go a little tiltish, that’s all. Used to happen to you once in a while when you were a tad and got too fussed. Like the Christmas your Aunt Trina died three days before and you thought Santa’d brought you shoddy that year.”

  Portent had brought the mug back, steaming with Em Jones’s fresh brew, and presented it to his employer. The coffee, at least, tasted the same as always.

  “I’d not like to think,” Fitzhugh said, “that my faithful servants were suffering harsh economies belowstairs.”

  “Bless you, sir,” Portent assured him, “we skim the top of the cream for ourselves.”

  “Huh!” Em Jones amended. “We don’t risk your best china back here every day, Thurby, but we do very well. You don’t skimp us, and we don’t skimp ourselves.”

  Then the others had started coming in, and she went back to addressing him as “M.” and “sir.”

  Fitzhugh received the distinct impression that M. Weaver must have been somewhat in the officers’ confidence right along. Remarkable young woman. Some good, sturdy infusion of realizing blood could be a healthy thing for any family from time to time. If it didn’t seem so confounded like cheating on poor young M. Aelfric’s memory ...

  And everyone naturally deferred to Dame Margaret. But precious little new information anyone seemed to have. Fitzhugh might have told ’em a bit. M.’s Willa and Nantice might be bidding fair to make a roommateship of it, which was not quite what he had hoped, but why not? One of his houseparties had led to—what did they call it? Four of ’em setting up together, and Sandy Fotheray no longer in her salad days, neither. The countess seemed keener on White than he was on her; and Fitzhugh had caught him once or twice throwing glances at M. Weaver. Unfortunate. Much better suited to the DiMedici—she obviously felt it, and surely M. Weaver had too much sense to make such a mistake as that would be—herself and White. Well, if worse came to worst, the squire might have to break his common practice of hands-off after introducing ’em all. Poe and Angela—no trouble there. That little affair last night, no more than the obvious lovers’ tiff, almost de rigueur in certain scenarios, they’d be making it up today, loving every minute. People might laugh at Squire Fitzhugh’s little matchmaking parties, but they resulted in a good percentage of happy unions, and one of his secrets was always to include at least one couple who’d just about reached it and only wanted a little friendly push.

  None of that, however, bore on the sad business at hand, so Fitzhugh kept quiet and listened. Dame Margaret mentioned the silly episode of White’s tunic. “He must have been thoroughly convinced we had played a joke on him. He returned wearing the same one, and confided to me that he was particularly anxious not to wear anything unsuitable, as if he utterly believed himself dressed like an undertaker.” She forced a smile.

  “As if we’d want to play silly jokes on anybody,” said M. Weaver. “Not that I’d mind putting a few over on him. Under different circumstances.” Her s
mile was not completely good-natured, but it was unforced, and her tone took some burden off the Squire’s avuncular heart.

  Nevertheless, in all fairness to White, he said, “Ah, there may have been—what d’ye call it?—extenuating circumstances there. Understand his family fortune is, uh ...” Hold on, here. Might not be playing the chap fair. More sporting to modify it. “Is tied up pretty tight. Investments, annuities, land. Gives him a bit of a problem sometimes with the cash flow, he don’t always have enough ready for all the frills he’d like.”

  “Oh?” said Sergeant Lestrade. “Interesting.”

  “Not that it excuses the scene he made about it, but the poor fellow must have felt it pretty sharp, finding out he’d been fobbed off just when he wanted to put his best foot forward. Wouldn’t even have mattered, you know, if the very individual he wanted to honor highest wasn’t the one who could see it plainest.” Fitzhugh coughed and stole another glance at his coffee mug.

  “I hope you don’t mind my asking, Squire,” said Sergeant Lestrade, “but how do you know this?”

  Fitzhugh shrugged. “One hears things around. Among ourselves, M.’s? Wouldn’t want to embarrass the lad.”

  Click started to mutter something about gossip, but at a glance from his partner he changed it to, “Well, you had all yesterday evening with the fingerprints, Les. You could’ve run them through and checked it out.”

  Sergeant Lestrade cleared her throat. “If and when it becomes necessary, Click.”

  “Oh!” said M. Jones. “There was a mix-up with one of the dogs last night, too. Tell ’em, Portent. You’re the one who had it first-hand.”

  Portent drank from his mug before speaking. “Yes. It seems that M.’s Garvey, Quantum, and Serendip went out yesterday evening after dinner for a stroll in the garden with M. Livingstone. Hearing a noise in the bushes, he flushed out what he apparently took for a restless native. It proved to be our good dog Tige. I had this from M. Livingstone himself when they came in. He wanted to apologize and to alert me for any bruises or emotional damage it may have done the hapless beast.”