The Fanciers & Realizers MEGAPACK

by Phyllis Ann Karr

  “Eh? Why didn’t he come and tell me?” said the squire, a bit hurt.

  “You were entertaining the others, sir, and I advised him to wait. I examined Tige myself, and found no damage done.” Portent bit into a croissant.

  “Yes, well, both of ’em looked in fine fettle when I whistled ’em in this morning.” When at home, Fitzhugh reserved this doggy pleasure for himself.

  Click said, “Good thing for Tige that M. Livingstone turns out not to be very effective at quelling natives.” No doubt there was a reason for the policeman’s sigh, but Fitzhugh preferred not to examine it.

  Sergeant Lestrade was clicking her fingernails thoughtfully on the bowl of her pipe. “You’ve known M. Livingstone quite a while, Squire—” she began, but stopped as the kitchen door sounded.

  They all turned. Fitzhugh and his manservant stood at once, Em Jones a second after them.

  “Excuse me,” said Angela. Her face was unwontedly serious and her knuckles showed white where she held the doorknob. “Could I—Would it be possible to see Sergeant Lestrade? In private? Right away—well, as soon as possible?”

  Click got to his feet at last, smiling as if to make up for his lack of manners. “Maybe I can help you, M.?”

  “If you don’t mind, I’d really rather M. Lestrade ... woman to woman, you see.”

  “Sit down and finish your doughnut, Click.” Sergeant Lestrade stood, leaving her own croissant and coffee, pocketing her pipe. “M. Garvey asked for me.”

  Chapter 28

  “I was to slip up between eight and eight-fifteen,” Angela Garvey explained on their way through the corridor. “If he hadn’t been down to breakfast. In that case—Oh, good morning, Countess!”

  At sight of DiMedici rounding a corner with her grand-dame stride, Angela had halted and put on a reasonable facsimile of good cheer. Lestrade halted with her, stepping back to allow the countess some room.

  “M. Angela,” the countess acknowledged with a nod. “Sergeant?” She paused in her regal stride. “What, visiting the squire again? And at such an hour. I trust there has not been another body found?”

  “No, your Grace, we’re here today in hopes of preventing anything like that.” Lestrade returned DiMedici’s nod, which was as far as she ever went in playing up to the haughty ones’ fantasies.

  “That is your labor, Sergeant. See you do it well.” DiMedici raised her hand as if to permit them to kiss it. When neither of them dived at the chance, she lowered it again, oversized rings and all, and glided on past them. For just an instant, Lestrade could almost imagine the Florentine brocades billowing as she walked.

  Garvey let out her breath. “I don’t like her,” she murmured to the policewoman.

  “I understand that, M., but it’s not evidence.”

  “No. Well, come on before we meet anyone else.”

  Lestrade had only a few more meters to observe Garvey’s stealth before she stopped at a closed door, took a careful glance around, then opened it quickly and led the policewoman inside.

  Fancy-class bedrooms tended to look as much alike as their occupants’ clothing, even if the furniture was often real wood, the bedspreads real satin. But even in fanciers’ guest rooms, a night or two was enough for an individual to leave personal touches. The dressing gown that lay on the unrumpled bed was a common unisex style, but the toiletries on the dressing table were brands manufactured for males, flush realizers as well as fancy-class. The book on the bedside table was Perry’s Vers Macabre.

  “Not your room, M.?” said Lestrade.

  “Corwin’s. M. Poe’s. It’s all nonsense, you see, about our quarrel.”

  “Your quarrel.”

  “Yes. He insisted, in case ... in case I’d be in danger if they guessed I was helping him. It was all playacting—”

  “So you were carrying through with that scheme of his, were you?” Lestrade sighed. “M. Garvey, I’d hoped my associate might have gotten the point across that you were not to try it.”

  “I know,” she said miserably. “But he was so sure you suspected him—and I think he suspected himself, a little. And he was afraid Pamela—M. Weaver—might be in danger, and even M. Margaret.”

  Lestrade sighed again. “Well, so his bed’s been turned down but not slept in and you haven’t seen him around anywhere this morning. Any chance he might have spent the night making graveyard meditations somewhere on the grounds?”

  “He was either going to slip over to my rooms between seven and seven-thirty, or give me a signal at breakfast, or else I was to come here between eight and eight-fifteen. We’re going to twelve o’clock Mass in town, some of us—Corwin and I and the countess and M. Claude, and I think most of the others will be going to churches, too—some extra prayers for M. Aelfric. So Corwin didn’t want to risk oversleeping and losing too many chances this morning. He wanted to get through the list as soon as possible.”

  “Your own list of suspects.”

  “Yes. So when he didn’t come to my rooms or down to breakfast, I slipped up here—it was about eight-twenty, I was a little late. Nantice was going on and on about what she’s perceiving today and how awful it is, and then Stan Livingstone joined us and told one of his long stories about a native uprising he survived years ago. It was forever until I could get away politely, but Corwin would have waited, or at least left me a note. Just as I got to his door, Dobbert came by—Captain Drake—so I pretended to stumble against the door and made my knock that way. We were sure we’d cleared Dobbert, but if he saw us together, he might have gossiped about our making up. He thought the ship had lurched when I stumbled—he even stumbled himself.” She smiled briefly. “Then we had to tell each other good morning. I said it loudly enough for Corwin to hear. When Dobbert was safely round the corner, I gave Corwin our all-clear knock.” She rapped her knuckles three-two-three on a bedpost. “When he didn’t answer ... He’s very fastidious, but I didn’t want to risk calling through the outer door, in case anyone overheard, and if he was in his bathroom he’d have that door closed, so I tried the knob, and when it turned, I went in and found ...” She gestured at the emptiness.

  Lestrade walked around for a closer look at things. The dressing gown lay neat, as if waiting, rather than straggled, as if dropped down after use. In the bathroom, both washbasin and shower-tub were completely dry, and the cinerary toilet was cold. “Any chance he’s staged his own disappearance?”

  For a moment Garvey looked a little angry at the suggestion. “Not without telling me.”

  “He couldn’t have left a note for you without risk of giving the whole charade away if someone else came in first. Maybe M. Jones or M. Portent to make up the bed.”

  “He could have slipped a note under my door. M. Lestrade, I didn’t just fly to pieces and come running to you the first minute with my thumb in my mouth. I did look around a little first.”

  “Well, I’ll phone for a search squad.” Under ordinary conditions, a fancier had to be missing at least forty-eight hours to qualify for an all-out search. But situations of objective peril, like stormy seas and houseparties where a killer was probably loose among the guests, constituted extraordinary conditions. Lestrade snapped the penphone from her belt. “Anything else before I call in the message?”

  “Maybe we’d better go to my room. Would you look out first and be sure there’s nobody in the hall?”

  Garvey’s room was three doors down on the other side, and they reached it without meeting any other traffic. Beckoning Lestrade to her vanity table, Garvey opened its drawer far enough to display a row of three half-sized playing cards, two face down and the third face up.

  “We wrote their names on cards and I drew them out of a cup.” Garvey pointed first to the two face down, then to the one face up, then to several more in a jumbled stack like a discard pile. “These are the ones we’ve already tested. This was the next one—M. Tertius White. I drew
his card the last thing last night. These are the ones we were going to put back in the cup for the next draw.”

  Lestrade turned over the first two. “Captain Drake. Countess DiMedici.”

  “I wasn’t sure whether to turn hers over yet or not. But Corwin said yes, because he’d given her the test even if we don’t know the results yet.” Garvey fished beneath a couple of tissues and brought out a perfume bottle, sample size, filled with a liquid browner than any perfume Lestrade had ever seen. “He gave her a fair chance at his coffee last night. This is the sample.”

  Lestrade took it. “I’ll tell them to bring an analyst along. Grunewald, if he’s available. He can do as much with a field kit as most of them can do with a full lab. You don’t know if M. Poe had actually approached White yet?”

  “No. But he wouldn’t have tested anyone else in between, not out of sequence. That’s why we drew them one or two at a time. So if ... if anything’s happened,” Garvey went on in a low voice, “it must have been the Countess or White. I still can’t believe it was Dobbert Drake.”

  “Not necessarily. One of those three could have mentioned it to someone else.” Lestrade did not continue that line of thought aloud.

  But Garvey looked as if she had carried it through for herself. “M. Lestrade,” she said, gripping the back of the vanity chair, “how much chance—you know about these things—how much chance is there he’s still alive?”

  All Lestrade told her was, “We don’t have enough yet for a clear picture, M. Garvey.”

  “Oh.” Angela crossed the room and sat down on the bed. “Sergeant—poor M. Weaver! Yesterday morning ... I didn’t know. I hugged her, I tried to be a comfort, but I didn’t understand. I didn’t understand.”

  Rosemary Lestrade tabbed her phone and put in the call for a search squad and Grunewald with his field kit. Then for a few minutes she sent professional detachment to hell, along with the line between realizer and fancier, sat down, and held Angela Garvey woman to woman.

  Chapter 29

  Yesterday they had hovered about for their few hours like great black buzzards in human shape, measuring, collecting, asking questions, pecking, pecking, pecking. Today they had come back like huge two-legged ants, here, there, anywhere. They said there were only four more of them besides the sergeants and another one who was sitting like a mad scientist in the back rooms of the house. And they said they followed some method, some well-honed system of search. But you might find them underfoot anywhere. You might wander for five minutes, and begin to think yourself safe, and then suddenly there one of them would be, giving you a nod and a brisk, “M.” Very polite, almost deferential, but beneath it you knew they felt superior to you, because they could see what you could not, even if neither you nor they could see M. Poe yet.

  Nantice Serendip kept close beside Willa. Today the world was worse than yesterday. It had seemed mixed when she woke, not cubist any more, rather shapes of gray and dark pastel swirling into one another in the dawn, settling a little as it grew lighter, still nothing solid unless you were actually touching it; but she had been able to hope, for a few hours, that it might be better. It had turned out worse. How could they be searching outside? It was raining, or snowing ... small gray grains that plunged through the wind in frenzied patterns. They dissolved somehow just before reaching the ground, so everyone else could pretend not to see them, but it must be cold, unpleasant.

  They were all going out in it, very soon. At least there was a closed archway to the garage, and the car would be closed, and maybe the weather wouldn’t be doing this in town, ten klicks away and full of lives that were still normal. They were going to their churches, even those who never did usually. Out of respect for M. Aelfric. How would it help M. Aelfric? It would show their respect to The Standard, and he would have been in her place someday. That must be the link. Why weren’t they all going to the same church, then? M. Margaret, M. Weaver, the squire, M. Livingstone were gone already with M. Jones to drive them. The rest would be going very soon,—Nantice and Willa, the countess and Angela, with M. Portent to drive them all to St. Thomasina’s. Then Captain Drake and M. White would be left alone with all these realizers, the only brave ones who insisted on helping them search even though they said—oh, so politely—that fanciers only got in the way.

  The grains of weather pat-pat-patted against the glass on both sides of the drawing room. They had found M. Poe’s book and his empty wineglass on that little black spider-leg table in front of the fireplace. The crack in the wall—his crack—had widened. Yesterday Nantice had only been able to see it from the outside, but today she could see it from the inside, too: a zigzag running up beside the balcony door. Was that a withered ivy leaf poking through the crack, as if it might find warmth and sunlight within? Things pressed in on her from everywhere.

  Not hoping for relief, speaking only because she had to equalize the pressure somehow, she said, “It’s the second murder.”

  “Don’t say that!” Angela exclaimed.

  “I don’t want to. But there’s always at least one more murder before the end. It’s the pattern. I hate the pattern, but it’s the pattern.”

  The countess spoke. It sounded as if she said that the pattern could not have found a more suitable second victim, but she smiled as she said it, and she must have said something else, because Angela replied,

  “No, I’m not going now.”

  “Our driver is come,” the countess went on, “and it lacks barely a quarter hour until Mass-time.”

  “There’s another at seventeen-thirty,” said Angela. “I’ll wait and go this evening with Corwin.”

  “Don’t you think, child,” said the countess, “that you might be better advised to come along and pray for him now?”

  Angela opened her mouth, closed it, and dashed across the room and up the stairs. A few more brown ivy leaves found their way through the crack to the inside wall.

  Willa said, “Don’t bait her, your Grace. Someday something might happen to someone you care about.”

  Nantice moved closer to Willa, who was strong and brave. She had not said “Your Grace” respectfully at all.

  The manservant coughed politely before he said, “M.’s? Shall we be going?”

  The countess shrugged and preceded them out.

  Chapter 30

  That hateful woman! Angela listened to her own thought and repeated it in cold blood. That hateful woman. Kneel at Mass in the same pew with her?

  Pulling away from her closed bedroom door, she went to her vanity, opened it, scooped up the cards. Her hand clenched around them until the edges pressed in. Then suddenly she tore them in half, all three at once.

  She looked at the pieces. M. Lestrade might say she had destroyed evidence. She didn’t care. She picked out the two halves of the four of clubs, the Countess DiMedici’s card, and deliberately tore them again, again, tried to tear them one more time but now the bunch of fragments was too small and thick, and only bent, so she crumpled it up viciously in her fist. It calmed her enough that when she dropped the pieces she was able to lie back on her bed and close her eyes.

  The countess had no reason to hide him. Had she? Unless she found out he had only pretended to drink her poison. Or unless he did swallow some of it and then go away last night without telling me. Oh, what does it matter who did it, if only we get him back safe!

  She had slept quite well last night. The world always used to be so beautiful. So much fun. Her bedroom was still full of roses, even now ... on bedclothes, curtains, wallpaper, teapot and mug. There wasn’t any more sleep left in her, but maybe if she could just compose herself enough to think ... She had read most of his chosen namesake’s stories, years ago. They were among the classics almost everyone read while deciding what kind of world to live in. There was one story about a letter that somebody hid by putting it out in plain sight. But no one could hide a person that way. From us, it mig
ht be possible, but not from realizers. Half a dozen pollies were looking for him, and they wouldn’t miss a human being who had been hidden in plain sight. Oh, Corwin ...

  She sat up. She hadn’t been asleep, she knew that, and yet it felt as if she had dreamed him calling her name.

  A lot of Edgar Poe’s stories—the “Venerable Edgar,” Corwin called him—were about people walled up in cellars, buried alive in coffins, plastered up with animals. Wasn’t there one about someone whose senses were keen enough to hear someone else screaming from a coffin buried underground? She had reread a lot of the poems with Corwin, not many of the tales. She wished they had reread the tales together, too.

  She got up, left her room, and went downstairs. Except for Dobbert Drake and M. White…and Corwin, wherever he was ... she was the only fancier left in a house full of strange realizers. None of them were left upstairs, but she found two poking about the drawing-room panels. One polly was saying, “Pretty often they actually have real secret passages, custom built.”

  “Have you searched the cellars?” Angela asked.

  They looked at her, and one of them touched his funny little keystone cap. “We will in good time, M. We like to work from top to bottom.”

  “Thank you,” she said, and went on. There was a story, she thought from the Arabian Nights or somewhere like that, about a man who lost a coin in his bedroom while he was undressing for the night, and went out to look for it in the garden because the moon was full and so the light was much better outside.

  She reached the kitchen. The police doctor who could do such wonderful things with a field kit was working at the table. She saw her perfume bottle with an air bubble at the top where some of Corwin’s sample had been poured out. “Well?” she said. “Is it poisoned?”

  “I haven’t found any toxic substance yet, M. But I haven’t checked for everything by a long list.”