The Fanciers & Realizers MEGAPACK

by Phyllis Ann Karr

  Marchpane’s latest incarnation was as the ineffectual “hero” of the Three Funny Inspectors comic strip (sometimes spelled “Phunny Inspectors”), wherein he was sidekicked by the more respectably literary police inspectors Lestrade and Clouseau. Angela and Corwin still thought of it as a “new” strip because they could remember its original appearance; in fact, approximately two decades had aged it into one of the old, established, comfortable sets of weekly panels.

  Among the most endearing qualities of modern police was the manner in which they had not only accepted the inevitable, but finally assimilated it. Novelty Marchpane badges could be seen here and there on the left shoulders of off-duty pollies, occasionally even affixed near the official badges of officers on duty. Funny Inspector stickers dotted many a polcar, and Corwin had heard the theme song of the old Inkbrush screenshows being whistled in the station that very morning. No doubt the higher police authorities winked at the flippancy in the name of good public relations. The very reason their predecessors of the ’20s had protested the hapless inspector’s original manifestation.

  A culinary establishment venturing to call itself Marchpane’s and to feature the character himself painted large on the glass door would surely have drawn angry picketers in the 2020s and ’30s, especially if it were set up directly across the street from a police station. In the 2080s, it drew a thriving business from the pollies themselves.

  “But have any real officers chosen ‘Marchpane’ as a final name yet?” said Angela. “The way Sergeant Lestrade chose ‘Lestrade’?”

  “I know of none. But the world is wide, and our acquaintance among the police, even of our home town, limited.” Seeing the waiter approach their table with thermal pitchers of coffee and lemonade, Corwin put the question to him: “You wouldn’t happen to know, M., would you, of any real-life wearers of the final name ‘Marchpane’?”

  “My boss.” Grinning, the lad refilled Angela’s glass first. “Registered it as her own name when she grand-opened this place,” he went on, turning his attention to Corwin’s cup. “Hopes to clone it into a chain.”

  As the waiter hurried elsewhere, Corwin observed, “We could be witnessing the genesis of another family fortune. I wonder ...”

  “Now!” Angela cautioned him.

  He caught back a sigh. “I was simply about to wonder how many police stations there might be, from coast to coast, ripe to patronize a Marchpane’s Cafe’.”

  “Shall we ask about buying a franchise? It might be worth it just to get the recipe for this lime fizz—I mean lemonade.”

  Fearing that he detected some faint nervousness beneath her teasing tones, he dropped that subject to resume the earlier. “In any event, our senior sergeant may have chosen her name from Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories rather than from the comic strip.”

  “Oh, is that where Lestrade came from originally? I thought it was from ... you know…those French thrillers by Clare Mystique.”

  “Are you thinking of Lescalope?—Ah!” he broke off, seeing M. Click’s front momentarily replace Marchpane’s back in the doorway. “Here he is, and—” checking his pocket watch—”a mere four minutes late.”

  Annoyance flickered briefly in Angela’s face, but she turned and waved. Click spied them, grinned, waved back, and approached their booth, pausing here and there to exchange short greetings with colleagues at intervening tables.

  Relief that Click had proven true to his appointment wrought no change at all, to Corwin’s perception, in the interior of Marchpane’s.

  The junior sergeant gave his order to a waiter en passant, reached the booth, greeted the couple, and slid in beside Angela.

  “Opening kickoff,” he began, once settled. “The Old Woman reacted the way she did when you mentioned Withycombe’s possible innocence because she thinks that’s her own private theory. She’s probably never talked about it outside the Department—she’s closed-circuit about things like that—and for some reason she can’t seem to believe that anybody else could look at the published evidence and hatch independent doubts about the case. Maybe it’s because she’s still mad at both the juries.”

  Angela exclaimed, “You don’t mean an innocent person may have been locked up for life?”

  “Happens sometimes,” the policeman admitted offhandedly. “Not as often as guilty floaters going free. Back in the good old death penalty days, now and then an innocent used to get fried or drifted.”

  “How horrible!” said Angela. “I thought if there was any doubt at all ...”

  “Jury’s certainty outweighs everybody else’s doubt,” Click replied as if he were quoting something. “Unless hard new evidence turns up years later. Back in death penalty times, all they could do when they finally found out they’d made a mistake was throw apology money at the family. Now at least we can let the floaters out in person.”

  Probably embittered by the prison experience, Corwin mused, and very likely disoriented by any social changes in the outside world.

  “It would be very nice,” said Angela, “if you could turn up new evidence to prove M. Withycombe’s innocence and get him out of danger that way. He is the one being threatened, isn’t he?”

  “Allegedly,” Click confirmed. “And I expect that’s our Lady Lestrade’s thought, if she can squeeze it in around her current workload. Of course, presenting the new evidence and getting the case reopened would take time. Ah!”

  His waiter—not the same one who was serving Angela and Corwin—had arrived to set down coffee and what appeared to be an elaborated version of that popular new confection called a “crunch cup.”

  Corwin’s thoughts went on: Yet the experience of a high-luxury prison, as opposed to that of the official lock-up of popular cautionary conception ... Aloud, he said, “And during that long interval of finding new evidence and reopening the case, M. Withycombe’s nemesis might make the fatal strike. Indeed, the very hint of the proposed victim’s impending release could hasten the murderer’s hand.”

  “Besides,” said Angela, “Sergeant Lestrade must have gone through everything very, very carefully the first time. If she didn’t find anything then to prove that M. Withycombe is innocent, why shouldn’t he really be guilty, after all?”

  “Even assuming his guilt,” said Corwin, “should we allow his own life to be cut short against his will?”

  The junior sergeant laughed. “We’re not going to solve that one today, M. Poe! Coffee breaks aren’t supposed to last longer than twenty-five minutes.”

  “No,” said Angela, “we shouldn’t let anybody cut anybody else’s life short, no matter whose.” After thus neatly slicing through the philosophical Gordian knot, she added, “But that doesn’t mean we should let innocent people endanger themselves to try to save murderers. Couldn’t you send in guards from some other prison? Or—what do you call them?—trustees.”

  “Not state-prison guards,” Click told her. “They’re as tightly budgeted as us pollies. Unless you want the Income Tax back—”

  “No!” Corwin interjected.

  “There’re probably enough would-be amateur detectives among the inmates of other prisons,” Click went on. “It’d take time to recruit one, of course.”

  Corwin said, “Whereas the present situation appears made-to-order for sending in a volunteer under the guise of Lord Elegius Moan.” This time he took care to pronounce it as Lestrade had informed him.

  “But the newscoms would give it away,” said Angela. “They’d know the difference, there inside the security hotel.”

  Click shook his head. “Hilton-Maracott security hotels have been on strict closed-circuit systems since 2073, when our good buddy Brother von Hofer started his first agitation to bring back the death penalty, and the news reports sparked off major riots in fourteen state pens and three private lockups. Nowadays the private corporations are even tighter than most of the states about monitoring input
into their security properties. Except for Rhode Island, where Astoria keeps its super deluxe Free Spirit security hooked into the public databases and satellite links. But that’s the only one on the continent, and even Astoria keeps its other New England facilities closed-circuit. Not even print news magazines get into Hummingbird Hill without passing Hilmars board of censors. One of the few little luxuries they don’t wink at smuggling in. I’ve already got Hilton-Maracott to hold off awhile on letting any more bulletins on the Moan trial go on the Hummingbird Hill line. Not that the day-to-day bulletins amount to much, anyway.”

  “The wall guards and daystaffers can learn any true news to be learned when they return outside,” said Corwin.

  “The wall guards avoid any contact with the guests. A wall guard pal of mine says it’s more than mutual. The inmates, guests and clockround staff both, scorn to come within ten meters of the wall. And just now it happens there are only three daystaffers at Hummingbird Hill. The head chef, an RN, and a music teacher who goes in three days a week to give lessons. I’ve already contacted the music prof and got his oath on a stack of Beethoven manuscripts. The other two are unavailable, period, till they come out this evening, but it should be easy enough to get them sworn to secrecy before anything material about the trial reaches the public channels. Ditto the chaplains who go in for an hour or two on weekends.”

  Angela protested, “But someone inside may know Lord Moan from when they were both outside.”

  “Possible,” Click admitted, “but not likely. As far as we’ve been able to check it out, Moan only hit the American social scene twenty-six months ago. Before that, he claims to have been a big spoke in British and European circles. Not in Burke’s Standard Edition, of course. His name shows up in a couple of vanity-press fancy-class peerages. Les Reves, Paris, 2082, and Rich’s Register, London, 2084. Had either of you ever met him socially?”

  Corwin shook his head. So, after a moment, frowning, did Angela. Corwin observed, “The fact that he registered his perceptional title, which would seem to be British, in the French publication earlier is in itself suggestive. But ... suppose one or more of the present inmates should be personally acquainted with me?”

  “Yes!” said Angela. “What about—”

  “Aelfric Standard’s murderer is in the West Virginia Federal Security Hotel,” the policeman assured her, as though reading her thought. “Standard was an official of the Federal Government, so his death counted as assassination. I don’t know for sure about anybody else, but here’s the current Hummingbird Hill guest and clockround staff list, with every alternate name any of them ever registered and all known unregistered aliases.” He dug a folded printout sheet from his breast pocket and handed it to Corwin, who unfolded and read it through.

  “Good heavens!” he exclaimed on reaching the last name. “Is he still alive?”

  “Who?” Angela snatched at the paper.

  Corwin passed it to her. “James Fitzpatrick Macumber, the so-called ‘Mad Doctor of Marltown.’ Why, he must be a nonagenarian by now!”

  “Ninety-one this year,” Click verified. “Still lively as a monkey, by what the friendly music prof told me, and thinking of taking up the violin.”

  “Hardly a personal acquaintance of mine, seeing that he was apprehended and incarcerated in sycophantic luxury well before my own birth,” Corwin observed.

  “But here’s another!” Angela cried even as her husband was concluding his last statement. “Gary Logefeil.”

  Click, who had been consuming his crunch cup whilst Corwin perused the list, said, “Logefeil is the floater who’s made a catchphrase case with his appeals to get into a parole prison on grounds that in his own perceptional world it still counts as manslaughter to kill a pedestrian with a speeding car operated while under the influence. He was getting his name in the newsbases every six months for a lot of years. You two couldn’t have been much more than kids when he went inside.”

  Nor could Officer Dave Click, Corwin thought whimsically; but said nothing.

  “Oh,” said Angela. “Well, what about Siddiqui?”

  Corwin replied, “Members of the Siddiqui clan used to parade their family name as a proud boast, before finding a murderer among their number.”

  “A poor relation,” said Click. “Worth only about fifty million.”

  “But if ever we met any of them socially,” Corwin continued, “It can only have been at one of those over-populated affairs where everyone must constantly ask to hear names repeated or else bluff.”

  “We’ve got all the inmates’ mug holos on file,” Click remarked comfortably. “You can run an eyeline over the whole rogues’ gallery before going in, just to make sure.”

  “You can’t mean,” said Angela, “that you might really be serious about letting him go inside that place?”

  The policeman grinned. “If not, we’re more or less wasting time here, aren’t we?”

  “What else,” she countered, “are coffee breaks for?”

  “Well, look, M. Garvey,” the junior sergeant resumed in a more serious voice, “these are murderers, yes, but they’re genteel murderers. Most of them killed once or, at the very most, twice—specific victims for specific motives.”

  “Except for M. Logefeil,” she pointed out.

  “Who can’t possibly do it again because there aren’t any automobiles inside the walls. Not even supply trucks. Supplies are passed in and garbage bundled out through automated tunnels, or now and then something too big for a tunnel gets lowered or raised from a helicopter or airship. The point I was making is that none of them ever made any kind of pathological hobby out of killing people.”

  “Mad Doctor Macumber,” she shot back.

  “Who is in his nineties and has been harmless for decades. And even he—quite a few more victims than two, that I grant you. And more or less random, yes. But even he had a definite purpose to it—medical research, even if the victims didn’t know anything about being his test subjects. It wasn’t just pathological, not even with him. Hilton-Maracott screens psychos and serial killers over to its Daventry Straits ‘Hermitage,’ where every guest has a personal and well-walled isolation cottage. The hotel management isn’t enthusiastic about having its paying clients kill each other off. That’s why the Hilmar folks are ready and eager to go along with sending somebody in undercover to check out this alleged threat to Withycombe.”

  “And of course, since all M. Withycombe’s fellow guests are so genteel, none of them would dream of trying to kill him anyway, not without a very good motive.” Angela rarely sounded sarcastic, and Corwin noticed that she had let Click address her as “M. Garvey,” where her usual all but automatic response was reminding everyone to first-name her.

  “You’ve put your cursor right on the spot, M. Garvey,” the policeman agreed. “If the threat is real, the would-be killer probably has a motive. Anyway, that’s a mega more likely, especially if the threat is to one particular inmate, than that Hilmar’s screening program goofed. And chances are good that Withycombe’s the only floater being threatened. But if there is some kind of friction situation building up inside, the hotel board wants to know about it sooner than yesterday.”

  “Naturally,” said Corwin.

  Angela demanded, “Why doesn’t Hilton-Maracott send in one of their own people, then?”

  “They probably will, if we don’t hustle. And then, if there’s any reward in the offing, that Hilton-Maracott agent collects it. I’d go in myself, for all that potential glittery, but several of the guests and clockround staff should remember Lady Les and me a little too well.” Click lifted his cup and took a long swallow before going on, “Now. The Hilton-Maracott news sifter is blanking all actual notices about the Moan trial, and a very good sobuddy of mine who happens to be an independent reporter is ready and able to process an alternative account to feed the prison newscomps for our protective cover, in return for insi
de scoops on the Withycombe business whenever it can be okayed for public consumption. She guarantees she can send the jury out this afternoon, bring it back with its verdict tomorrow morning, and make it sound convincing enough to get our mock Lord Moan in tomorrow afternoon.”

  “Mmm,” said Corwin. “We are fortunate that today’s legal process, in its wise mercy, leaves so little gap between verdict, sentence, and the carrying out of that sentence.”

  “And what happens,” Angela wanted to know, “if the real Lord Moan is found guilty and sentenced while the undercover man is still inside?”

  “In that case,” Click assured her, “Hilmar ships him to a different security hotel. Unless he absolutely insists on Hummingbird Hill, when the corporation undertakes to keep him in ultra-security at its own expense until he can go in. We’ve even got the perfect cover for spiriting our man out or making the switch, whichever. It’s almost a sure thing that we’ll have to bring the real Moan out for a day or two in a couple of months, anyway. To testify at the trial of his alleged accessory. We can jiggle the date of Truemeasure’s trial for Hummingbird Hill’s consumption so as to bring our man out whenever we want.”

  “All very neat.” Angela rattled her ice cubes. A waiter—not their own—clearly interpreting the noise as a signal, hurried over and refilled her glass. “How did you know which pitcher to bring?” she asked him.

  “Color-coded glasses, M. Gold for lemonade.”

  As the waiter moved elsewhere, leaving them alone once more, Angela said, “You’ve been a busy boy this afternoon, Junior Sergeant Click.”

  “A few quick calls,” he replied with mock modesty.

  “And of course the Regional Police fully approve.”

  “As a department,” he answered easily, “the Regional Police don’t have many input rights in all this. M. Poe—or whoever—will be entered on Hilton-Maracott’s employee roll. And enjoy all the Hummingbird Hill luxuries at the corporation’s expense, as a fringe benefit.”