The Fanciers & Realizers MEGAPACK

by Phyllis Ann Karr

  M. Lestrade tabbed data into her notecom and said, “What about M. Danton Darnay and M. Signy Tordisdatter?”

  I didn’t know about Signy. I’d seen her old junior college holo, but she and Kelly had fooled me once that I knew about by switching their characters Dolly Revere and Betsy Pitcher. Still, I didn’t think she’d ever played Arnold. She didn’t like him, and she liked her own Betsy role too much. Kelly’d had trouble getting her to take Dolly for an evening. I’d never knowingly seen a camera image of Danton. “Fooling the doppler was too good a joke,” I told them. “Nobody else except Signy ever let me see their pictures after Zach blew his cover.” You have to learn to go along, or else stop socializing.

  “When did M. Crabtree show you his photo?” the senior sergeant asked. “Before or after M.’s Wu and Tordisdatter?”

  I had to concentrate awhile. “I think before, but I’m not sure.”

  “Honesty is appreciated. Now, could anyone else have slipped one of your cleaning rags off the pile without being seen? Say, during an exciting moment of the game? You had seven clean, folded rags piled up when I counted this morning.”

  “Someone could have taken one, I guess. I’m careful with them, not stingy.” Cleaning rags weren’t quite that hard to come by yet. “I hardly ever count them. Either you’ve got plenty for a while or you can tell by glancing them over that it’s time to find more.”

  “Can you remember who was sitting nearest your pile of clean rags a week ago last Thursday?”

  I made the most honest effort I could, and had to shake my head. “I think Tom Franklin, but I’m not sure, and that’s another one of their floating roles, anyway.”

  She tabbed more data into her notecom and went on, “You four—M.’s Tordisdatter, Darnay, Crabtree, and you—are the only members of your game group with breakable alibis. So we’re going to try a Big Confrontation Scene. They’re usually faster, when they work at all, than what we call the Daniel Process—individual interviews. You’ve already been danieled, but I want you on hand as a witness and catalyst. You can start now by drawing portraits from memory of the way you see M.’s Darnay, Crabtree, and Tordisdatter when they aren’t playing Arnold. Preferably, when they aren’t playing any game character. Is that possible?”

  I nodded.

  “You’ve got some day-to-day scrimmage of M. Darnay,” she verified, “even if you’ve never seen a camera picture?”

  “Sort of a shabby-genteel Age of Reason literary man,” I confessed. “But what’s the use?”

  “Oh, you never know,” said M. Click. “Your subpsych may tune in on some gruesome little individuating touch, like brier vs. meerschaum.”

  “But what’s the use?” I repeated. “It won’t bring Kelly back. And I’m already down for accessory.”

  “The difference, M. Nemo,” said M. Lestrade, “is that locking killers away for life keeps them from doing it again to somebody else. And that sentences for accessory after the fact get tempered according to circumstances. You might still have the chance for some kind of career on the outside.” She looked at my study for fancyscape with gnomoids. It was upside-down to her. She turned it around, looked at it again, tapped it and said to M. Click, “You see, Dave? I told you there could be a purely mercenary explanation for those panels at the Kama Sutra.” Then back to me, “All the same, M. Nemo, those Kama Sutra panels are monstrosities. Stick to your own inspiration.”

  I made a half-hearted protest that I didn’t feel inspired to sketch my friends.

  She replied, “Or else get a good director for your hackwork. And when you’ve finished studies of M.’s Crabtree, Tordisdatter, and Darnay, you might want to rest your fingers for an hour or two.”

  So I made quick sketches from memory of Signy, Danton, and Toussant as I usually saw them when they were being themselves to me. About 16:30 a licorice-striper brought me a light meal—seafruit scramble on toast, guava gelatin, coffee. At 18:00 M. Lestrade was back to take me and the police artist’s kit to the confrontation room.

  “We’ve got them labeled Tseh, Shah, and Shchah,” she explained. “Cyrillic alphabet. It still doesn’t have quite as much cultural-emotive coloration for us Westerners as the old A, B, and C, or even random Arabic numbers. You’ll have a cubedesk facing them at as neutral a distance as possible. Just draw them, label the drawings by letter, and if you think you recognize any of them, add the name in brackets. You don’t have to say anything unless asked by one of the pollies.” I interpreted that as a politely phrased command.

  The confrontation room was pretty much like the interrogation room, only larger. The back wall was a mirror instead of clear steelglass, but everywhere you see mirrors in a police station you assume they’re one-way. The back third of the floor was raised a couple of steps, making a carpeted stage. That wall was a screen, and there were slots for a retractable panel, so I guessed it was the same room they used for line-ups.

  My three friends were already sitting in straight chairs on the stage, their Cyrillic letters on the screen behind them, an officer walking around them and asking them questions. I saw and heard him as Sergeant Click. It wasn’t true recognition, of course, but I expected it to be him, and he was waving a meerschaum. It turned out I was right.

  They saw us as we came in, and the one labeled Shchah hooted, “There’s your star witness, huh? Hey, Gerry, who am I? Give you a hint: I play—”

  “No, you don’t,” said M. Click.

  Senior Sergeant Lestrade added, “Haven’t you ever heard, M.’s, that a good lawyer would rather get one honest doppler as a witness, than half a dozen cocksure realizers?” She sat in an old, cracking simleather armchair near the door and put her brier in her mouth. I eased over to the little cubedesk in front of the mirror wall.

  They all looked like Arnold Benedict to me: three identical faces, three identical costumes. Not the 18th century officer’s uniform Arnold usually wore in the game, but the same outfit he’d worn the night he killed Kelly, and then discarded, piece by piece, after leaving my room-and-a-half after confessing to me. Their voices all sounded like Arnold’s, too, whenever I heard them talk.

  I understood that the one labeled Tseh was probably Danton, since his cold was so obvious: puffy eyes, slight flush of fever, clogged voice, runny nose to which he kept dabbing his handkerchief. And when the one labeled Shah said, “How can you think I killed her? I was one of her best friends, even if we did live on different sides of the track,” I guessed it was Signy, whose world is based on the early part of the twentieth century and who likes to use old phrases like “wrong side of the tracks.” By elimination, that meant Shchah, the one who’d started ribbing me again when I came in, would be Toussant, even if I still couldn’t see his scar. My identifications were correct, but not by sight or sound. I went on perceiving them as identical, except for Danton’s cold symptoms. So that was the way I sketched them.

  “Why us?” Signy asked.

  Without giving any hint which of them was which, Sergeant Click said, “Because you’re the only three with breakable alibis. M. Crabtree lives alone, so we’ve only got his own word for it that he went straight home and read Commager—don’t quote him at us again, M., you could just as well have memorized your choice passages earlier or later. In fact, feed-in memory or not, verbatims look more like a planned alibi or a favorite author than casual reading. We can’t locate anyone who remembers seeing M. Tordisdatter at the new sleazecellar she claims to have snacked in night before last—all right, M., we’re still looking—after peeling off from M. Hewlett at Eighth and Reagan. And maybe they’re all just heavy sleepers in a building with good sound-soak, but nobody in his building heard M. Darnay sneeze between twenty-three thirty when Mama Schweitzer dropped in with his nightly dose of chicken broth and oh-five fifteen when M. Patcher got home from his shift. Everybody else in your game group sat around bulling with M. Wu until oh-four hundred hours on the night in question,
not one of them out of the others’ sight for longer than a comfort station break at a time.”

  “I shouldn’t be out of bed now,” said Danton. “Mama Schweitzer told you I had a bad relapse that night. I wasn’t in any condition to go out, then or now.” That was the only statement I heard him volunteer. Otherwise, he just coughed, sneezed, and tried to blow his nose.

  “What about old Doppler?” said Toussant.

  “M. Nemo is the first one we questioned,” said Sergeant Click. “If you’d prefer your own private grilling, M., just you and two or three of us pollies, we’ll be glad to accommodate.”

  “It must have been someone else!” said Signy. “Someone we don’t even know!”

  M. Click looked across at Senior Sergeant Lestrade. She nodded very slightly. He took another stroll around the three chairs and said, “It wasn’t just any chance stranger. It was someone who knew where M. Nemo lived, knew he and M. Hewlett were part of the same Dungeon Chess circle, knew your current game includes a character named Arnold Benedict, and knew M. Nemo’s perceptive quirk. Presumably also knew who hosted your game night before last and what route M. Hewlett walked home from there. If you can give us any names of people who fit those parameters, are not among your gamesters, and haven’t already appeared on our readouts and been cleared, feel free.”

  “If Gerry Nemo’s telling the truth,” said either Toussant or Signy—I was watching my sketch and didn’t look up because my hand started shaking for a few seconds.

  “Assuming that,” M. Click replied. “And the only reasons he wouldn’t be telling the truth are if he’s protecting the killer or if he did it himself. Still no stranger involved.”

  Senior Sergeant Lestrade took the pipe from her mouth but didn’t stand up. “If M. Nemo did it,” she said, “he must have returned home, to spread the blood traces we found there. Dazed, maybe, but not too dazed to go out again that same night and scatter the telltale clothes in fairly widespread public compactors. Showing enough precautionary sense we could reasonably have looked for him to follow through and leave town right away. Not try it a good twenty hours later.”

  “This was very carefully planned,” added Sergeant Click. “Not necessarily as murder, but certainly as assault and alleged attempted robbery. ‘Arnold’ seems to have snuck forth mummied up in thirdhand clothes, probably collected here and there over a period of weeks from Salvation barrels and muddle sales. M. Hewlett habitually wore gloves or mittens—mittens, at this season, so ‘Arnold’ probably figured that even if she clawed back, her handwear could be pulled off afterwards and destroyed along with any traces on it of the attacker’s anatomy. As things turned out, it seems to be the truth that she didn’t get much chance to put up any meaningful resistance. If ‘Arnold’ meant murder all along, for some motive we’re still working to find, everything clipped right according to program, and that little soul-baring visit to M. Nemo was an extra fillip to throw suspicion elsewhere. If robbery was the actual motive, and the killing accidental as alleged, ’Arnold’ managed to keep thinking clearly enough to go make a confessor out of the friendly neighborhood doppelganger-perceptive syndromatic, maybe not from any malicious intent to get M. Nemo in trouble, but reasoning that dopplers make absolutely safe confidants because nobody ever trusts their identifications even when they venture to make any. The panic was not long enough or complete enough to keep ‘Arnold’ from discarding the mugger’s outfit, probably as preplanned, after leaving M. Nemo. Stuffing some of the garments in breakdown compactors and pactors not scheduled to run again for two or three days could even have been another on-purpose move, if ‘Arnold’ planned or decided to slant a frame around M. Nemo.”

  I finished my third sketch and laid down the pencil. M. Lestrade came and looked over my shoulder at the studies. I had labeled them with the Cyrillic characters and my friends’ names in brackets, as instructed, and also added a question mark after each name.

  She aimed her words at the stage. “All right, Sergeant, he knows exactly who they are. He’s identified them all correctly. Perfect score.” She took my pictures back to her chair and sat again, shuffling them along with all the portraits I’d done earlier that day in my cells.

  “He knows which ones we are?” said Signy. “How?”

  “Don’t answer anybody’s questions who isn’t a polly, M. Nemo,” the senior sergeant reminded me.

  “They preprogrammed him. It’s obvious,” said Toussant.

  “We didn’t, M. Crabtree,” said Sergeant Click. “But naturally you’ll believe anything you like. And kwaddle the doppler’s version of standard reality! Now then, M. Crabtree, you played Arnold Benedict in this last installment of the game—”

  “I didn’t—” he began.

  “Be sensible, M. Crabtree!” said Sergeant Click. “Or are you trying to show us how nicely you can panic? Every one of your fellow players, except M.’s Hewlett—the late—and Nemo, identifies you as this past Thursday’s game Arnold. Even M. Darnay deposes that he found out you were slotted for the role, when he phoned in sick to M. Wu earlier that day.”

  “I didn’t do it,” Toussant finished sulkily. “I played Arnold Benedict that evening with the whole group, but not afterwards. I didn’t kill Kelly.”

  “Maybe not,” said the junior sergeant. “It was M.’s Tordisdatter and Darnay who had borrowed cleaning rags from M. Nemo the week before. M. Darnay, that session’s Arnold, was catching the first symptoms of his cold and scrounged one rag halfway through the evening, using it for a throat muffler. M. Tordisdatter came back afterwards, when everybody else had left for home, and begged another rag to use as a hanky. But of course, M. Crabtree, as that earlier evening’s ‘Tom Franklin,’ you seem to have been in a cozy position to snatch yet a third rag unseen.”

  “And I suppose M. Nemo can identify which rag is which, too?” said Toussant.

  “You’ve about used up your quota, M. Crabtree,” Sergeant Click told him, then turned to Signy and Danton. “Can either or both of you produce those rags?”

  “Mama Schweitzer accidentally picked it up while I was zonked out one day, used it to clean the loos or something, and threw it away,” said Danton. He sneezed and added, “I was going to replace it.”

  “So was I,” said Signy. “After using it for a snot-rag, I didn’t think Gerry would want the same one back.”

  “So you threw yours away, too?” said Sergeant Click. “Too bad, M.’s. Better luck next cold.”

  M. Lestrade stood up and said, “All right, Sergeant, I think you can let M.’s Tordisdatter and Crabtree go for now.”

  Danton made a sound like, “What?” and it turned into a fit of coughing. M. Click escorted the others to the door, and I thought I glimpsed some police guards there in the hallway waiting for them.

  “Now, M. Darnay,” the senior sergeant went on, going up to the stage, where he sat looking nervous and guilty, “let’s reconstruct. You programmed it for a long time. As Sergeant Click pointed out, you accumulated your costume piece by piece over weeks or months, squirreling it away and planning all along to get rid of it after its one-time wearing. Probably using M. Nemo’s rag for your makeshift blackjack was a cruel afterthought—your original purpose was to make sure the entire game group knew you were coming down with a bowler of a cold, to start setting up your alibi. You didn’t know that M. Tordisdatter copycatted you and went back later to scrounge a second rag. I’m sure for a while there, when that came up, you thought it was an unexpected stroke of luck, especially since she was the one who walked M. Hewlett partway home. Naturally, you picked your spot at a safe distance from where their trails parted, almost in M. Hewlett’s own neighborhood. Soon after the murder, however, after dropping the weapon and running so far away you didn’t feel safe to go back and retrieve it, you suddenly understood that it could conceivably point to you as well as to M. Nemo. One more reason for going to him as ‘Arnold,’ making him your confessor, figuri
ng his story had a good chance of sounding fake to us, as well as possibly implicating almost everybody else in your circle, if you were really lucky. You didn’t know how many of them would sit around most of the night with M. Wu. You also didn’t know—”

  Danton started coughing and choking and wheezing so hard that finally M. Click pounded his back and promised him a cup of hot tea.

  “In a minute,” said M. Lestrade. “Oh, yes, you’ve got a real cold now, M. Darnay. Maybe you even had the beginnings of one a week ago Thursday, though cold symptoms can be faked. But you were well enough two nights ago, or at least well enough to use Condeine or Superlynol or whichever of those wonder symptom-blankers works reasonably well for you, when it doesn’t have too much sickness to fight. But you did have one blitz of a relapse on the night of the murder, just as you’ve been trying to alibi yourself with. Because you had to peel off most of your murder clothes on your nice, roundabout circuit and then walk home shivering in the cold. But what else you didn’t know is that not all Gargiulo doppelganger perceptives are quite as helpless in the identification workline as people think.” She shuffled my drawings once more, looking at two of them very closely. “As I said, a good lawyer would rather use the testimony of one honest doppler than half a dozen cocksure reality perceivers. Now: was it for the money, or did you have some other motive we haven’t turned up yet?”

  Danton broke down. “Just the money—just the money! I didn’t want to kill her—I never wanted to kill her—she didn’t even get a chance to pull off my mask, it was all an accident! But she had so much money—all inherited, she never earned a penny of it. I was going to garbage the rag, too—nobody would’ve ever known ...”

  “Get him his tea, Dave,” said Senior Sergeant Lestrade.