The Fanciers & Realizers MEGAPACK

by Phyllis Ann Karr

  “If I can put my oar in,” Drake said unexpectedly, “maybe we can’t fathom your waters, Sergeant, but you don’t seem to know a landlubber’s whistle about ours.”

  “I had more motive to want him alive,” M. Weaver said in a low, intense tone.

  “For that matter,” Tertius White remarked, “some deep political currents, totally outside our knowledge and experience, may have been eddying about M. Aelfric. Let us do our reality perceivers the honor of assuming they are not incapable of hiring death at a distance.”

  M. Margaret’s hands tightened on the armchair as she sat forward. “I loved Aelfric like a nephew, M. White.”

  He bowed to her. “I have never doubted it, honored Dame, nor did I mean to accuse you. But did all the other members of your staff love him as well?”

  “It’s not unknown for heirs to hurry up the reading of the Will,” Click put in.

  “My very point,” said White. “M. Aelfric was himself the heir, not the benefactor. Dame Margaret’s heir. His heirs—potential heirs, one ought perhaps to say—must be considered his fellow Standards on Dame Margaret’s staff. Not ourselves.”

  “Three years ago,” Lestrade told them, “we had a case of a homicidal suddenly perceiving a fellow fancier as a rich old aunt with a fortune for him in her Will. It happened she bore only a superficial resemblance to that lady, but the light was bad at the time of the murder. And it was true that his own finances were seriously decayed. When I remembered that case, I had my associate do some checking on the fortunes gathered here.” She nodded to Click.

  He pulled out his notecom and started tabbing.

  “This is an unwarranted invasion of our privacy, minions,” said the countess.

  “Sorry, M., but under the circumstances, I judged it fully warranted,” Lestrade told her.

  “Your own fortune, Countess, seems to be clear, wide, and handsome,” said Click. “Enough to justify the expense of those murals in your torture chamber that M. Poe mentioned the other day. In fact, almost all of your fortunes are reasonably sound, some a little more modest than others. I won’t bore you with the tally. Everyone’s except M. White’s.”

  “Yes, I knew that,” said White with admirable calm. “But was it necessary to make it fare for public consumption among my peers?”

  “I think it was, M. White,” said Lestrade.

  “You mean,” Serendip asked, “that M. White saw M. Aelfric as a—as his rich uncle?”

  “Not exactly. But I believe M. White saw himself as the young Standard’s heir in one sense. Correct me if I’m wrong, M. White, but I think you fancy yourself a closet realizer.”

  White stared back at her, but Lestrade was equal to the old staring game. So was he. Without looking away, he said, “First my fortune and now my secret life. You intend to leave me no standing whatever in my social set. That, I perceive very accurately, though I fail to perceive your motives for stripping me so bare.” Apparently satisfied that he had proved his power to meet the policewoman’s stare, he slowly transferred his gaze to M. Margaret. “Yes, it’s true. I do perceive reality, with clear and steady senses. I had hoped to reveal it to you privately, M. Margaret, when circumstances improved. I had hoped to apply for a position on your staff, if and when my family fortune proved beyond repair.”

  “You could have applied for my staff at any time,” said The Standard. “Forms should be available in most Registry branches. But you would not have been accepted. Not unless you were joking about the sun-god design on the tunic you wore last night. And if so, it was a joke out of time, M. White.”

  “It was, though hardly of my making. But I am a perceiver of reality, M. Margaret.”

  Lestrade pushed her phone buzzer. The dining room doors opened and Chris Grunewald came in with M. Poe.

  “Yes, so you told me last night,” said Poe, “when you persuaded me that your firepiece was indeed a silent model. What was it really, White?”

  “Corwin!” Angela cried, jumping up. Overplaying it, but Lestrade was more interested in observing White’s reaction.

  “M.’s” said Click, “we have a victim-witness.”

  All this had given White time to recover. “Ah, Poe! I would have gotten back to you earlier, but it’s been rather a busy morning up here.”

  “In contrast to my morning down there. But go ahead, White. You’re promising to make an interesting explanation of it.”

  “As I recall, Poe, and I am the realizer of us two, you virtually begged me for the experience of being buried alive. I obliged you—meaning, of course,” he added with a glance at the company, “to return and release him in good time.”

  “Yes,” said Poe. “Remember that to his credit at the trial. It would have been far safer and more convenient for him to murder me at once, but he agreed to hear a last request. The necessary dangerous mercy of the villain. But I did not request the negative torture of having all my senses blocked!”

  White shrugged. “You were not entirely specific, Poe. I exercised my imagination as well as I could. As for the gun, it was an antique dueling pistol borrowed from our host’s wall, unloaded and probably long out of repair.”

  “Yes, that seems to be the remarkable feature of the case,” said Poe. “That you borrowed the pistol before knowing I was about to stage my blackmail attempt on you. I suppose you must have gotten wind of my efforts and made up your mind not to wait your turn.”

  Lestrade, watching with great interest, decided to cut ahead to the chief point. “Where you made your worst mistake, M. White, was asking him how he’d escaped notice when the murderer came back inside. That showed you were aware exactly how soon the murderer left the balcony. If you hadn’t recognized yourself in the outline he was making up, if you’d thought it was about someone else, or even if you’d recognized it as a plausible invention, you wouldn’t have been so quick to supply his details.”

  “Are you saying,” cried the countess, “that you mean to send M. White to the asylum on the testimony of that imposter?”

  Everyone looked at her. She stood up, looked at White, and continued:

  “Six enemies I have destroyed through the years, and escaped unsuspected. But now, Tertius White: to save you, I will speak.” She pointed to Poe and directed her next statement to Lestrade. “That man is an arrant imposter. I killed Corwin Poe last night with a deadly dose of arsenic, for reasons of my own. M. White’s only complicity lay in graciously disposing of the body at my request.”

  “I am sorry to disappoint your Grace,” Poe apologized. “I did not swallow the draught. I preserved a sample and poured the rest into the rose bushes.”

  Grunewald, meeting Lestrade’s glance, reported, “The only foreign matter in the sample was a little quinine, Sergeant. It wouldn’t have harmed him anyway.”

  “Your supplier must have a better conscience than you have, Countess.” Lestrade motioned Wang to take her into custody. “And you,” the policewoman continued, turning to Poe, “you really were playing a dangerous little game, weren’t you?”

  “I wasn’t going to speak, for chivalry’s sake,” said White, “but it’s true. The countess asked me to dispose of the body for her. Of course, I realized that she only thought her rings contained poison, but for his own sake I decided to go along with the joke for a little while. As for what he may have told you of the episode, who will you believe? The fancier or the realizer?”

  “Wait!” said Poe as some of the others started to speak. “You’ll accept, Dame Margaret, that all fantasy perceivers are more or less mad? And that to be shut away in silence and darkness for twelve hours or so with no company save one’s own flesh and psyche might well drive a sane human mad? Subject a mad human to the same experiment, and what might result?”

  “Corwin?” said Angela.

  “I rather think that I have become a realizer! A condition I hope may correct itself with time, but meanw
hile—White, you’re wearing a plain beige tunic, rather frayed, and trousers of a light sandalwood color. I always used to see you as Harlequin in black and white. M. Margaret, you’re in sober black. This objet d’art—he touched the brightly painted model of a mandarin duck that sat on the mantel near Click’s elbow—”that previously I perceived as a marble bust of Pallas Athena, is the model of a mandarin duck, painted in bright colors. M. Margaret?”

  “I can’t fault your perceptions,” said The Standard.

  “This is planned! Staged!” White exclaimed. Click motioned to O’Flanagan. They stepped up, each took one of White’s arms, and held on when he tried to shake them off. “You’ve coached him what to say!” White went on furiously. “It’s another trick—another test, that’s it! Dame Margaret!”

  “Here’s a better test,” said Lestrade. “Describe what you hid M. Poe in.”

  White tried to stare her down again, broke and looked away but spoke with something of his former calm. “Very well, if you will. It was an antique frost-closet, the shelves missing.”

  “Completely opaque, and equipped with a strong lock on the door, I think you remarked?” Poe shook his head. “It had a lock, a poor thing that yielded to a rusty letter-blade, and the shelves were indeed lacking, but it was an old display case with glass panes on three sides. How else did you suppose they found me again so soon?”

  “Or how could he have breathed so long?” said M. Margaret.

  “Oh, he did perceive a crack at the hinged side of the door, Dame Margaret,” Poe explained. “Some slight separation caused by the failing of old rubber, large enough for air and some seepage of sound and less than total darkness, else why the blindfold and ear stops? Unless, indeed, he lied to me about that crack, expecting me to smother before any possibility of rescue.”

  “He also broke the lights in that room and the one leading into it,” said Lestrade.

  “Which doesn’t seem like part of a practical joke scheduled to end in a few hours,” Click remarked.

  With visible effort, White maintained self control. “You claim to have become a realizer, Poe? You were not one last night, at the time of any confession you may claim to remember from me.”

  “Nor were you, it seems,” said Poe. “And I had ample enforced leisure to perfect my memory of the fatal interview.”

  M. Weaver said in a voice brittle with scorn, “So you murdered Aelfric because you thought you could take his place?”

  “Another test, M. Standard!” White still protested. “Another test of my perceptions!”

  The Standard rose and picked up an antique crystal ashtray, but Lestrade shook her head. “I think we might have a better test, M.” She would have nodded to Click, but since he was holding White, she went to bring it herself from where it waited in the dining room.

  When she returned, Click was still explaining, “We decided not to lug the display case up from the sub-basement, but we did manage one of the lamps M. White broke.”

  “A candle lantern,” said Poe. “Rusty but serviceable, and I assume you must have broken the candle when you thought you were breaking the bulb, since the glass panes are intact and I doubt the stub could have burned that short before you left me. Yes, there’s the longer piece of the candle in M. Lestrade’s hand,” he finished as she held it up.

  White looked at it, worked his jaw for a moment, and said, “An ancient railroad flashlight, badly corroded, and the bulb was broken long before we entered the basement.”

  The Standard glanced at it across the room. “M. Poe is correct.”

  “Look at the thing, Dame Standard!” shouted White. “Damn! Examine it closely!”

  “The longer I examine it, M. White, the more surely it will remain a candle in a glass lantern.”

  “Is it really?” cried Angela. “That’s what I perceive, too! You see, Poe, even I can be a realizer sometimes, with some things.”

  That was when White went completely berserk. It took Click, O’Flanagan, Lestrade, the squire and Livingstone to hold him for handcuffing, both those policemen and Portent to take him out to the car while Wang followed with the ever-sedate countess.

  At the door DiMedici paused, turned back to face M. Weaver, and said, with White’s protests still audible in the distance, “Nevertheless, he remains the best man of you all, and far better than the peasant he eliminated.”

  Poe muttered something that sounded like “Tar and feathers.”

  The squire emitted a low whistle. As the countess disappeared he said softly, “At least I had her pegged for the right man.”

  * * * *

  Epilogue

  * * * *

  “The fantasy of being a reality-perceiver,” Lestrade remarked that evening as she relaxed along with Click, Chris Grunewald, and an off-duty cocktail. “Probably the strangest fancy of all.”

  “Maybe,” said Click. “For my tridols, that countess was even more dangerous. I’m still betting you find real poison in at least one of those rings, Chris.”

  “Lucky for her victims she never happened to use that one, then,” said Grunewald.

  Lestrade closed her eyes and sipped her Green Flash Sunset.

  The initial confession out, DiMedici had boasted the full list of her victims’ names. Click had doublechecked with Names and Prints at once, found everyone alive and apparently unsuspicious. It seemed that after the countess “poisoned” a supposed enemy, she perceived that person as someone else; most of them must have been casual acquaintances and all, evidently, accepted her new identities for them—at least in their continuing relations, if any, with her—as part of the great game of life in the fancy class.

  “Ironic,” Lestrade went on. “Morally, DiMedici is guilty of seven murders for sheer pique, White of two for a clear and definite reason. But because none of hers happened to take, she’ll probably be able to get off with six months of therapy to change her private world. And because one of his did come off, he’ll get mandatory life.”

  “She may request to share lifelong asylum with him,” Grunewald suggested.

  “I won’t bet you on that,” said Click. “Serve them both fair if she does. What about M. Weaver? Think Fitzhugh might make a play for her himself?”

  “He might,” Lestrade agreed. “Mixed marriage, fancier and realizer. Sometimes works out fine. Or M. Margaret may offer her a place on the Standard staff.”

  “Not much doubt about those other two,” said Chris Grunewald, who in off-duty hours and over drinks waxed as romantic as a realizer could get.

  “I still think we should have arrested Poe,” said Click. “Just hauled him in for an overnight. Les, you make me backslide on a threat.”

  * * * *

  “Simple fingerprinting?” Poe had asked as the last pollies prepared to leave Fitzhugh Manor that afternoon.

  Lestrade remembered sighing. “Simple fingerprinting, M. Poe. For the last time, that was all.”

  He had sighed too, shaken his head slightly, and held his wrists out to Click. “Well, I believe that you promised to arrest me should I go through with my plan.”

  At that point Angela had tugged him away. “Oh, Poe, don’t make a nuisance of yourself. They’ll have enough to do this evening, and I won’t.”

  * * * *

  “Well, we didn’t arrest him,” said Lestrade, “and I think he’d been looking forward to it. He’ll just have to get his fantasy back without our help. Comfort yourself with that, Click. And go order us another round.”

  NOTES.

  Prologue. Corwin Poe and Angela Garvey first came to me July 8, 1982, as “Someone who perceives gloomy Poesian setting” and “Someone who perceives a happy, cheerful setting,” while I assembled a cast for this novel. Corwin was to have lived in a world about equally compounded from the works of Edgar Poe and H. P. Lovecraft. Then, as part of my research, I read enough of Lovecraft’s works to c
ement my own opinion that no matter how often these two writers are linked, their visions really have virtually nothing in common, Poe’s looking more or less plausibly inward and Lovecraft’s very implausibly outward. So I quickly abandoned the Lovecraft connection, but didn’t get it quite out of the novel’s opening. I have no idea why I assigned the opening line to Corwin: as nearly as I can remember, I had at that moment no inkling of how important he was to become to my own psychomystical life, or even to this novel in particular: he was, in fact, to become the heart of both versions of my R.S.A. stories. If he had not begun seriously engaging my affection by about midway through The Standard Murder Mystery, the whole alternate timeline world might have blossomed and died in that one short novel, to lie among my forgotten scraps, fragments, and literary oddments.

  Chapter 3. In Angela’s fantasy perception, the green flash apparently doesn’t need an expanse of water or flat desert.

  Chapter 4. Curiously, Rosemary Lozinski Lestrade, who was to become almost as important to my own psychomystique as Corwin Davison Poe—if he can be called the “heart” of the R.S.A. cycles, she might be called their “mind”—wasn’t in the earliest plotting at all; she appeared to me only when I saw how totally improbable it was that these people would fail to alert the nearest police at once.

  Dave Click was eventually to be re-surnamed Clayton in 2011. But I could not bear to change Rosemary’s final name, even though the original fancy-class world rationale behind it had been blanked, so I found another rationale—informal nick-surnames—for the new version of the R.S.A.

  Chapter 15. Mario Fancy-Class Andretti. As nearly as I can remember, the whole purpose of this short digression was to debate a point raised by Dame Agatha Christie in her classic novel And Then There Were None, a.k.a. Ten Little Indians. She held that the man who had accidentally committed homicide when he killed children with his speeding and reckless driving merited the most “merciful” murder-execution because his was the lightest guilt in the group. I disagree.