She pointed to the basement door. “Has anyone gone down there to look?”
“Not yet, M. Thorough, systematic search from the roof down.”
“You’d rather look where the light’s best?”
“We’ve always found it the best procedure,” he assured her solemnly, seeming not to catch the allusion.
“Thank you,” she said again. He bent back down to his work. She went to the basement door, took the flashlight from its hook, turned and said, “I’m going down there right now.”
“Um,” he said, absorbed with his test tubes and droppers, tweezers and burners and tiny bits of paper. Maybe he didn’t pay as much attention to a fancier as he would have to a realizer. She flicked on the stair light and started down, leaving the door open in case he needed a reminder where she was.
The stairs were carpeted, bright and colorful. They led to a pair of doors. Starting with the one to the left, she found a tiled game room with soundcatch wall panels; two workout rooms, one carpeted, one soft-tiled, also with soundcatch walls; a large, divided shower room with ceramic tiles even on the ceiling; and a den with fireplace, mock bearskin rugs, and knotwood paneling. This must be directly below the drawing room, and it would be very cozy when the fire was on. She tapped the panels, but the walls beneath sounded solid. The fireplace was of stones as big as watermelons, and the mortar was old and dry, without even the surface damp of humidity. After a few moments of pressing one hand on her chestbone to keep her heartbeat where it belonged, she stooped and shone the flashlight up the chimney, but it was clear.
On the other side of this den was a second one, with another fireplace sharing the same chimney, and also a kitchenette, a bar, a built-in food locker and a lot of cupboards. Again she checked the mortar and tapped the paneling all around, opening every cupboard and the food locker as she went.
She called his name more than once in every room, and she left all the lights on to mark where she had been.
Beyond the den she found a series of small art and hobby rooms. Strange to have them in the basement, but the lighting was splendid, glow-panels on walls and floor as well as ceiling, and individual dials to adjust every lighted side to any intensity from “Off” to “Sahara Noon.” Remembering the letter hidden in plain view, she paid special attention to these brightly-lightable cubbies, but he was not in any of them.
They ended with a pottery room and a kiln. Beyond this was a pantry, and when she reached its end and opened the far door she saw she had come a roundabout circle back to the kitchen stairs.
But she located another light switch, and it flooded the area behind and beneath the stairs. Following the light, she came to a second stairway down. Top to bottom, she scolded herself. I’m working exactly like those pollies up there.
She descended. These steps were dustier. The last four or five felt like stone beneath her feet. This was better: this was more Poe-esque. She checked for stairs to yet a third basement, but if there were any they were not below the second stairwell.
She found the squire’s wine cellar, most of the bottles coated with dust that glittered silver-pastel in the light of tiffany-shaded lamps. She found a small cool-storage locker with shelves full of cheeses and candied fruits. The rest were rummage rooms, large and small, full of trunks, wardrobes, bedsteads, dressers, chairs and small tables, enough mathoms and gormanghastables to fill a museum. Had realizers ever sorted through all this old furniture? Where to start? Run upstairs and make the pollies come down at once? Probably they’d only waste more time talking about their system.
Dust, that was something she might start with. Angela Garvey Garvey would have no reason to perceive dust where it wasn’t, would she? And a coat of undisturbed dust on a trunk or dresser should mean he wasn’t in that one. But there ought to be footprints on the floor ... No, part of it was drainage tile with slat platforms to hold the mathoms a few inches above it, and where it was solid it was dirty gray concrete that seemed not to show the dust. But the stored things obtruded over it until you could only pick your way through in a few places. She decided to adapt her own bottom-to-top system and start at the farthest back room she could find.
In one room the light switch did not work. She used her flashlight. The beam picked out a spider moving about its silver filigree web. It moved its long, graceful legs more daintily than a ballet dancer. Angela hoped there were no rats down here, but she didn’t mind mice and spiders. Aiming her light in the direction one of the spider’s legs seemed to point, she glimpsed another closed door and worked her way toward it through the mathom-maze. In the middle of the room the chain of an old-fashioned ceiling light brushed her face. She tugged, but this light was broken or burned out, too.
She got through the last door and felt for the light switch. Again, it brought no results. Once more she played her flashlight around the chamber. The beam glanced on the glass panes of an upright piece at the far wall. She strained her eyes—she thought she saw—she called his name again, but no movement answered her.
This room was a little clearer than most of the others. She hurried across, having a hard time holding the flashlight steady. The piece of furniture against the far wall was some sort of antique display cabinet, thick glass panels in a solid, heavy upright frame. The lower part of the front panel was darkened. The cabinet was filled up more than halfway with something light in color, and his head and shoulders stuck up from all this padding. She knew it was Corwin. From brow almost to chin his head was wound with cloth, but his forehead, chin, dark hair ...
The cabinet door was locked. It would not even rattle when she pulled. If she pulled too hard she might overbalance the whole thing, solid and heavy though it was. If she smashed the glass it might cut him. She needed more light.
She found a lantern with a candle that had been snapped in two, the top half hanging by the wick. She yanked it off the rest of the way, lit a match, and held it to the stub. She always carried a folder of matches, like everyone whose world had candles and incense: if they weren’t really candles, they simply didn’t take the match, and for a few moments that’s what she feared this time…but the wick caught at last on the third match, and when she closed the reflector the lantern gave off a more decent light.
But it gave her precious little help. She didn’t know anything about picking locks, and even if she had, her hands were shaking so much—and God! suppose time was running out? She remembered something about levers. After a short, hectic search she found some sort of thick old butter knife that could be forced through the groove between cabinet door and neighboring post, just below the lock. She put her whole weight on it, the post would be the whatchacallit she needed beneath the lever ... She leaned harder than her whole weight ... Something snapped, throwing her against the cabinet—something smash-tinkled behind her. The cabinet was very solid, it didn’t fall over. The butter knife had broken and part of it must be what had flown out past her, but some vital piece of the lock had snapped, too, and now she could get it loose with a few seconds of desperate rattling.
The dark panel was not attached to the door. It was an old pegboard, a little wider than the door, that had been stuck inside. She worked it out from between the posts, and Corwin fell forward in a shower of brittlefoam packing chips.
She caught him and eased him down to the floor. He was still warm, still supple—but she had been mistaken yesterday about M. Aelfric, and why didn’t Corwin move? His arms and legs were tied, but the first thing was to get his face free. Mouth—uncover the mouth right away. His lips fell slightly open when she got the handkerchief off, but he still didn’t answer when she said his name. There was only one fold of cloth over his nose. Anyone could breathe through one fold, couldn’t they? She got the blindfold off, and his eyes stayed closed, but she could feel the pulse in his neck—she was sure she could feel it, hard and fast.
“Corwin!” she pleaded again. When he still didn’t answer she tried t
he first desperate test that flashed into her mind. She kissed him. She had never done anything but family kissing and flirt-pecking before, but this time she pressed down and kissed as hard as she could.
And he responded! She couldn’t mistake that. Even if she was new at kissing, how could she possibly mistake that? She pulled a few inches away and saw that his eyes were finally open.
“We were mistaken,” he murmured. “This is the most exquisite torture.”
“What on earth do you mean? And why didn’t you answer when I called you! Why did you go on letting me think ... Oh, Corwin!”
He watched her intently. When she paused, he said, “I can see you’re talking, Garvey, but he stopped my ears. I believe there may be candle wax involved,” he went on as she bent to look, “so perhaps we had better wait for the trained touch. Meanwhile, oh dear Garvey, untie my hands!”
“Poe,” she answered, remembering that he liked to see the pucker of her lips around his name.
His arms were crossed low, as if straitjacketed, so in order to get at the knot in back she had to sit him up. The first thing he did when his arms were free was pull her into a hug, weak but tremblingly tight, and kiss her again. Then he leaned into her shoulder and sobbed. They held each other several moments like that, she rubbing his head and shoulders while her own tears rolled down less violently.
At length he pulled away, groped for a handkerchief, and blew his nose into the one that had been his blindfold. “I dared not weep in there, for fear of clogging my nostrils.”
She smiled at him, nodded, and moved down to untie his legs as he continued the explanation.
“They used sometimes to practice a certain experiment in the twentieth century. They would suspend the subjects—volunteers, purportedly—in vats of tepid water, in chambers from which all light, sound, and odor were strictly excluded. The purpose, I suppose, was to induce insanity. He had read of these experiments, and judged that duplicating such conditions in so far as possible must be the most exquisite burial alive of all for a person like myself, one so passionately devoted to all sensory input, the beautiful and the terrible alike. He was wrong. The most exquisite torment was to feel your kiss, Garvey, know it was yours and be unable to return your embrace. ... What o’clock is it?”
It had been about twelve when she started down, so she held up all ten fingers, then two.
“Midnight? ... Noon?”
She nodded for noon and went back to getting the rope loose from around his knees.
“God! And limited even to a fraction of my own thoughts: such meditations as might not bring tears. It’s fortunate I was already mad, or I must have become so.”
She got the rope off, threw it aside, and wrote “MAD?” in the air with her finger.
“Of course we are. At least, most civilizations in the history of this globe would have called us so. Down to the closing decades of the twentieth century, we would have been shut away from the reality perceivers. I think at last there came to be too many of us for their asylums, so they gave us money and wide playgrounds instead, and now they incarcerate only those of us who prove truly dangerous. Garvey, is my voice too loud?”
Hard at work on the cord around his ankles, she shook her head.
“That’s good. They say the voices of the deaf are often overly loud. How did you find me?”
She got the last length off, helped him to his feet, and pointed at the cabinet.
“A showcase with glass sides all around? Let me feel it ... A glass showcase, is that what you perceive?”
She nodded.
He gazed wonderingly around, at the candle-lamp, the flashlight on the floor, the other dusty mathoms in the room, back to the cabinet with all the little packing chips slid out in heaps around it. “I thought it the case of an Egyptian mummy. He said he perceived ... Our whole world is one large asylum of the venerable Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether! Garvey, there were a few stimuli which not all his precautions could prevent. Where is the nearest comfort closet?”
* * * *
When M. Chris Grunewald, who was so clever with a field kit, had cleared the right ear, Angela asked a question of her own. “But why on earth didn’t you make some sign, Poe? You must have been able to feel something when I jimmied the lock and got you out. You might have nodded your head to let me know you were still alive.”
“I dared no longer think of rescue, nor or you, lest I weep. I dared think only that it was he come back. I had already lost sufficient dignity in his eyes. It proves to be no such simple problem for one man to hold another with the aid of a gun alone. He had seen too many dramas of the victim triumphant with a desperate back jab. I had to bind my own legs, under his direction, put preliminary loops round my hands and lie prone before he would come within arm’s reach. It was that or be shot at once.” He turned his head to present M. Chris the left ear. Holding Angela’s hand, because even with modern tools the ear-cleaning process caused a few winces, he continued to gaze at the squire’s kitchen as at a new revelation.
Chapter 31
Lestrade looked at Fitzhugh’s living room clock. Fourteen thirty hours, and the stage was set. She had Espinoza and Robeson back out in the garden for window dressing, supposedly still hard at the search, actually with their penphones tuned in to the Big Confrontation Scene. Wang and O’Flanagan stood one posted on this side of the dining room doors, the other at the stairway to the second floor.
The Standard sat in the high gray armchair, M. Weaver on a straight-backed folding rattan beside her. Lestrade had told them, “We should have M. Weaver on hand. I’m sorry. These people expect it. They all read too many Golden Age Whodunits in their schools, and they wouldn’t feel that anything had really been solved without it. But there’s no real reason for you to sit in, M. Margaret. Since you didn’t arrive until yesterday afternoon, I can explain you out of it.”
M. Margaret had smiled. “My grandfather was a fancier, M. Lestrade. One of the earliest to be recognized as such. Also one of my aunts. I spent five years in a mixed school, until we were sure which way I’d go. I’ve read some of those old Queens and Christies myself.”
So she was on hand, wearing true black with her gold badge of office at the left shoulder.
Angela Garvey sat on Fitzhugh’s other side, filling up the couch with suppressed energy. The countess had taken the second largest armchair. M.’s Quantum and Serendip sat together in the antique nagahide two-seater. M. Livingstone had put his wood folding chair between these two quiet women and the countess, to sit like a buffer, waving a ping-pong paddle at himself as if it were a palm-leaf fan, which to him it undoubtedly was. Captain Drake sat near the balcony window, looking out at the two pollies and talking about small boats in choppy waters. Portent and M. Jones stood handy to the sidetable with its decanters and water pitcher. M. Tertius White stood near the fireplace, and Dave Click leaned near him, one elbow on the mantel, holding his pipe at one corner of his mouth in what Lestrade knew to be a caricature of her own prop mannerism.
Click enjoyed these scenes. They were his favorite part of investigations like the present one. Lestrade looked forward to the day when she decided she could trust him to lead them.
“We seem all to be gathered,” White observed. “With the exception of M. Poe, and he may be late.”
“That’s unkind and unfair,” said Angela.
Lestrade cleared her throat and removed the pipe from her mouth, glancing round to see if her junior sergeant copycatted immediately, but for once he had the grace to delay echoing her action. “I’m the one being paid to lead this discussion,” she told the company. “First—”
“Speak, then,” said the countess at the same moment. Lestrade gave her a frown. It did not quell her. She fell silent, but her posture said it was condescension.
“You all had the opportunity,” Lestrade went on. “Except for M. Margaret, of course.” (With a deferent
ial nod to her.) “And you all had access to the weapon.”
“You don’t mean to say,” Angela protested on cue, “that I could have hurt anyone with a Chinese paper lantern? Or M. Tertius with a beeswax taper?”
“No, but in fact it was a brass lamp, and you could have lied about what you perceived. I’d even incline to suspect someone who claimed to see a harmless paper lantern over someone who admitted to seeing a lamp heavy enough for a bludgeon.”
“I lied,” M. Quantum said in a flat voice. “I didn’t see a flashlight. I thought you would laugh if I told you what I really saw. But I didn’t ... kill him.”
“Oh?” Click grabbed his unscripted opportunity. “What exactly did you perceive, M. Quantum?”
She sighed. “A lignum-28 midilamp. No, don’t ask me to describe it, or someone would laugh. It would have been heavy enough, but I didn’t do it.”
“So would the flashlight you described have been heavy enough,” said Lestrade. “And probably better shaped for the job. Yes, opportunity and weapon for every one of you. Which brings us to motive. Now, M. Livingstone perceives realizers as natives. It’s possible he could have seen M. Aelfric as a hostile on the verandah—”
“Not a fellow guest!” the squire exclaimed.
“But Tige,” whispered M. Serendip, her eyes opened wide. “Last night he thought Tige was something about to attack us.”
“That was last night,” Livingstone defended himself. “We had reason to be nervous last night. Not the night before.”
Click tapped his pipe against the mantelpiece, saving Lestrade a similar gavel duty.
“Or it’s possible,” she went on, “that the squire himself had some secret motive.”
“Here, I say!” cried Fitzhugh.
“You were the one who invited M. Aelfric, who planned in advance for his presence beneath your roof. In fact,” the policewoman went on, peering around, “any one of you could have had some private motive, some fancy developing on the spur of the moment, something that wouldn’t be obvious to anyone but yourself.”
The Fanciers & Realizers MEGAPACK Page 26
