The Fanciers & Realizers MEGAPACK

by Phyllis Ann Karr

  “They might have been poisoned on the chance.”

  “Dr. Macumber,” he went on, “could have dabbed the poison on along with the antiseptic, except that M. Withycombe refused antiseptic.”

  “And didn’t state his refusal until the time came. But we can more or less put Dr. Macumber above suspicion anyway. He’s hardly likely to risk losing the easy luxury of his last years.”

  “In what way could the State make him suffer more than for his original murders?”

  “The State couldn’t. But his fellow ‘guests’ could ostracize him, and the hotel corporation could stop paying his way and shunt him into a cheap state pen. A public announcement about his having murdered or tried to murder someone else—even another convicted murderer—at this stage of his life would defuse any social-watchdog protest at heartless treatment of the elderly. So Doc Mac would have nothing to win and everything to lose. Besides, he’s an old dear.”

  “Hmmm,” said Corwin. “But is it certain that there was poison? That M. Withycombe’s dangerous condition did not result simply from some…ah ... overzealousness on the part of his purgators?”

  “It would have been the first time in more than twenty years, according to the joint testimony of Lady Larghetta, M. Logefeil, Double Oh Nine, and M. Hogeboom, who’s one of the staff-member Purgatoriants.”

  “Not of Dr. Macumber nor of Chief Running Stag?”

  “Neither of them was here twenty years ago. “Remember Doc Mac’s wanderlust when it comes to sampling various luxury lock-ups? And the chief only started serving his sentence a dozen years ago. The Purgatory Club rituals didn’t have this pavilion or include a true sun dance before he came, true. But the Purgatoriants as an organization have still had two and a half decades of experience, and M. Withycombe is the first member who almost died since the club’s earliest few years, when they were just learning the ropes. Although the poison,” she added, cocking her head, “was cleverly chosen. Collapse, erratic heartbeat, coma—it could have been chalked off to a result of sun dancing carried too far.”

  Corwin suspected that collapse, erratic heartbeat, and coma—called fainting, painstrain, and vision trance—would be usual effects of a sun dance. But no doubt M. Magadance referred to all these symptoms in an abnormal and life-threatening degree. “How and where,” he inquired, “could the poison have been obtained?”

  She actually laughed. “Either the infirmary supply cabinet, the gardener’s shed, or the housekeeper’s closet of pesticides would have served very nicely, I imagine. Also, the pet shop has its own cupboard full of flea powder and such. As I said, we don’t bother to lock things up here in our trusting little community.

  “But surely you—or rather, I ought to say, the gardener, housekeeper, and individuals in charge of the infirmary and pet shop, keep things inventoried.”

  “When they come in and when they run low enough to need reordering. I doubt that anyone keeps strict track of the number of times the weed killer or silverfish spray or flea powder is used, though Dr. Macumber and M. Cleanswish—the registered nurse who graces us with her daylight services—may watch the levels in the infirmary bottles more carefully. But if you don’t like the patented poisons for lawn, garden, and household pests, we have deadly nightshade, various toxic mushrooms, poison ivy, poison oak, poison sumac, and a whole pharmacopoeia of other noxious flora growing wild in our woods and elsewhere about the grounds. Quite a few of our tended ornamental plants can offer up the stuff of poison, as well. One might also brew up something deadly from kitchen or private bathroom cabinet supplies. I’ve been studying herbals and poison books for months, and so far I’m still tunneling through the tip of the iceberg.”

  “Might that not make you a greater expert on the subject than the poisoner’s self?”

  “The poisoner only had to find one recipe—or two, one to be introduced via flesh wound and the other to be swallowed. I have to search through hundreds, even thousands, of possibilities.”

  “The other poison was swallowed.” Corwin inflected it as a statement, but meant it as a question.

  Which she answered. “In the water ritual. The European, not the Chinese. Your lordship is aware of the difference?”

  He was, but her use of “lordship” reminded him that some scraps of his own knowledge might be less than appropriate for Lord Moan’s mental lumber. “Not entirely,” he said. “I gather that whereas the famous Chinese water torture involves drops of water falling clepsydra-like on some part of the anatomy, this European version somehow entails swallowing?”

  “Being forced to swallow, in uncomfortably large quantities. It’s only a laysoul’s guess, but I suspect he survived because he swallowed so much that the sheer quantity of liquid flushed itself through him before most of the poison it contained had a chance to be assimilated.”

  There are indeed people who practice these things upon one another, Corwin was thinking, and I have come among them! With a deep breath to steady himself, he said in a voice he hoped was as clinical as that of M. Magadance: “How, then, can you rest confident that poison was involved?”

  “I can’t,” she confessed candidly. “And once again, the symptoms would have been in keeping with what your lordship so neatly called ‘overzealousness’ on the part of the purgators—weakness, asphyxiation, and collapse. But wouldn’t it be just a shade too much coincidence that the only two such accidents in the annals of the Purgatory Club for the last eighteen years should both have happened to the same purgatant, within eleven months of each other?”

  Asphyxiation, because the human tract was not constructed to breathe and swallow at the same time, so that if the tormentors poured too long without a break ... Remembering a time when for hours he had dared think no sad nor despairing thoughts—an extremely difficult avoidance, under the circumstances—lest he clog his nasal passages with tears and strangle on the gag over his mouth, Corwin guessed that M. Magadance’s term “weakness” must be ironic understatement for the first of M. Withycombe’s symptoms of distress. Aloud, he said, “A telling coincidence, indeed.” He admired the steadiness of his voice. “But might it have resulted from a simple grudge or smoldering dislike on the part of a purgator?”

  “I like to think,” she replied, “that we have better manners than to murder one another on grounds of simple grudges. I like to think there’s a stronger motive behind it than that. Besides, M. Withycombe is one of the most amiable of us. I find it very hard to understand anyone developing that cruel a dislike of him in so short a time. He’s been here fewer than twenty months, you see.”

  “I think you misunderstand my question. I meant to imply that these things might have resulted from simple overapplication of the regular process, with no poisonous additive, perhaps even with no self-awareness on the part of the too-eager purgator. A psychomystical explanation, triggered by some grudge or dislike in no way strong enough to motivate a conscious murderous intent, but sufficient to cause carelessness.”

  She shook her head. “Two purgators are involved in the water purgation, one to pour and one to hold the funnel. The sun dance takes at least four—two on the roof to haul up on the cords and two on the ground to prod and spin the purgatant. Besides one or two to cut the slits and insert the skewers, but Dr. Macumber usually takes care of that himself, and always supervises the whole process of any purgation. You see how safe it always ought to be.”

  “Save enough to patent and franchise,” Corwin murmured, wondering rather giddily whether a chain of licensed Purgatory Clubs across the continent would find enough law-abiding customers to turn a profit. “Ought you reveal all this to one whose

  initial appeal has barely been filed?”

  She treated him to another searching gaze. After meeting it for several seconds, he returned his own scrutiny to the items in the chest, trying to act unaware of anything in the nature of an outstaring contest.

  “I perceive herein o
nly such equipment as you have described as appropriate to the sun dance,” he went on.

  “We keep the water purgation things in the cave, where we usually hold that particular ceremony. We have four regular meeting places in all. Is your lordship anticipating leaving us for good when your appeal reaches court?”

  “Hardly.” He essayed putting a sardonic curl to his lips, and hoped their trembling was not visible. “The Law is tenacious of its chosen victims.”

  “So what would be the point in excluding you from full rights of participation in the meantime? If we waited until everyone’s last appeal had been denied, we might never be able to muster a quorum. M. Logefeil, for one, wouldn’t have been asked to participate even yet. I expect you’ll be getting a more formal invitation this evening over brandy.”

  Chapter

  They’d sleep tonight in Reno. On a compromise. Same hotel—the Alpha Arms—but different floors and different parts of the layout, Lestrade in Room 85 and Hammersmith in 1012. They’d made two separate advance reservations through the Nostalgia City Accommodations Databank, whose keyboard asked only the name and thumbprint of each user, and made no editorial comments.

  They were also sharing a compartment on the needletrain to Reno. Another compromise. In return for travel time and a nightcap, to be spent in nonpersonal talk, Lestrade had exacted an oath on the Scriptural Anthology that the private eye would leave her strictly alone from the time she went to her room until she met him in the hotel coffee shop at 07:30 for breakfast.

  She was thinking back over the brief newscreen account of this day of the Moan trial. About all the public-consumption account could tell her was that the case hadn’t gone to the jury yet, which gave them at least this weekend to dig up new evidence. Would it be worth her effort to phone Dave Click, ask him to feed her fuller details? To gain access to a computer terminal with enough security safeguards for receiving the transcript, she’d have to deal with Nevada pollies. Besides, making the request would suggest that she wasn’t using her minivacation for strict stressrelief. Dave might keep the secret, but refuse to input privileged data on grounds that she wasn’t supposed to be worrying about it right now, anyway.

  Hammersmith broke into her thoughts. “That party with whom our boy Apex was seen ascending to his New York penthouse. It wouldn’t necessarily have been a cutie of the opposite sex, not if the relationship between Apex and White is what it looks like.”

  Lestrade glanced up. “Is that one of White’s holocards you’re smudging your fingerprints all over?”

  “Hoo, mon! No wonder you didn’t want ice in your Scotch. Any extra coldness, and your windpipe would freeze solid.”

  “Drat it, Hammersmith, we’ll have to be careful enough concealing the photocopies! What possessed your so-called brain to let you lift one of the original postcards?”

  “I like the view. The lights of the Greater L.A. Basin by night. And color holos don’t photoprint worth a plugged nickel.”

  “I suppose, in a pinch, you’ll hide it, act innocent, and guess it must have been lost in the mail?”

  “Things like that have been known to happen, mon Sergeant. Especially with holiday holocards mailed from shipboard.”

  “Hmmm.” She returned her gaze to her own photocopy of Withycombe’s letter. “Nielsen’s News Service’s ‘Whispers about Town.’ With that and Apex’s name and address, getting the personality’s name from any newsfile databank should take two minutes maximum.”

  “Must be slipping. We could have looked it up before leaving Nostalgia City.”

  “I thought about it. Anybody else who did any digging might have noticed the coincidence—that particular news item accessed in the same city the same weekend somebody broke into the condo of one of the parties named, while a letter mentioning it was waiting on the floor beneath his maildrop.”

  “Really getting paranoid, aren’t you?”

  She nodded. “Maybe I am. Maybe pollies get that way when they operate like private dicks.”

  “Yeah, well, I wish to highgrave you’d relax. The only party likely to get interested is Hector H. Apex’s own sweet self, and he ain’t likely to see any sign at all of anybody’s having broken into his digs. Not unless you got careless, Dragon Lady. Or unless he keeps a record of the exact level in his booze bottles.”

  “So far as we could see, he shouldn’t notice anything. Sometimes homeowners see little things that one-time visitors don’t. Invited or not.”

  “Middleclass homeowners who spend nine-tenths of their personal time in the same boxy little domicile. Our boy Apex is a rich fancier with half a dozen perches to hang his hat on. Don’t measure him by your own lifestyle, Sarge Lestrade.”

  “I suppose you’ve tried life in Apex’s style, M. Hammersmith?”

  He got out his pocket flask and took a swig. “Life’s a pretty seamy proposition, whichever land you drive—”

  “Stop right there.” Lestrade didn’t think she could take another of his distillations of hardboiled philosophy. “All right, granted we covered our tracks, even tissued all fingerprints off the correspondence paper. I notice you glued the envelope, by the way.”

  “Huh?”

  “The envelope Withycombe’s letter was in. The one you said was unsealed when you found it.”

  “Did I tell you that? Don’t believe everything you hear, Lady Les.”

  “Don’t worry, I didn’t believe it. You’re pretty good with steam, though.”

  He shook his head. “Ronco patented pocket sonoprobe unbonder. Carry one around with me at all times. Only fifty-nine ninety-five, all major credit codes accepted. You oughta read the screen ads once in a while, Sarge.”

  “Sonoprobe unbonder. Must have thousands of everyday household uses for the ordinary, law-abiding citizen.”

  “Yeah, surprisingly enough, it does. Getting price labels off without destroying the surfaces of new purchases, removing stamps from old envelopes neatly and all ready to mount in your album, rearranging items in your scrapbooks ...”

  “Point taken.”

  “Anyhow,” the p.i. went on, “our chum Apex isn’t going to dust that letter for anybody’s prints. Or carry it down to your colleagues at the Nostalgia City P.D., either. Or even report it to Hilmar. After all, there’s no law says security hotel guests can’t send mail to floaters on the outside, any more than there’s a law against selling bourbon swizzlers to dolphins. Why make laws against what’s officially impossible? And if somebody wants to smuggle some dolphin a bourbon swizzler now and then ... Where was I?”

  “Listing all the options M. Apex is not going to exercise when he finds his brother’s letter.”

  “Right. What he is going to do is burn it up very, very carefully in one of his antique ashtrays and feed the ashes to some recycler not too close to The Elmgrove.”

  “Any ideas why?” said the policewoman.

  “Same reason he’ll have been and will be destroying any other letters his brother’s been sending him.”

  “That reason being?”

  Hammersmith eyed her over the holocard of the Greater L.A. Basin by night. “Don’t give me that, Dragon Lady! You think it’s as obvious as I do. I watched your face the first time you perused that l’ll document. I mixed your Scotch and soda. And I’m the floater who told you what room Apex has his photocopier in.”

  “Pretend you’re on the witness stand, M. Hammersmith. Pretend I’m a lawyer, and just answer the question without hedging.”

  “And the other team’s lead lawyer jumps up and hollers, ‘Objection! Conjecture,’ and the judge, who is probably thinking about next Sunday’s round of golf or else wishing the water pitcher was full of dry martinis, says, ‘Objection sustained.’”

  “Congratulations. That’s my point. On the surface of it, there isn’t one actionable item in Withycombe’s letter.”

  “Except maybe whatever
went on between Apex and that personality up in his New York penthouse.”

  “Quit living in the twentieth century, M. Hammersmith. The Hoferites haven’t gotten the consenting adult laws abridged yet. Anyway, it’d be for the personality to complain, and if the incident got into Nielsen’s ‘Whispers about Town,’ it isn’t exactly shrouded in secrecy.”

  Hammersmith gave her a “So you’ve got a dirty mind too, huh?” leer. She returned it with a carefully expressionless stare. They returned to studying the holocard and the photocopied letter respectively.

  The whole silly byplay lasted maybe three seconds before the p.i. said, “I wasn’t referring to anything covered by the consenting adult laws, Lady Lestrade. They might have been doing something else up there together, something that is against a viable law somewhere. Something that neither Apex nor our mystery personality would want getting around. Something, for an e.g., like selling each other narcotic substances.”

  “And how would Withycombe have known about it? Whatever his letter is about, he doesn’t seem so much concerned what Apex may have been doing with the personality in question, as where they were doing it.”

  “Which somehow violated some promise Withycombe had extracted from brother Apex, presumably before going into Hummingbird Hill. A lifer blackmailing a free floater from inside prison! I love it.”

  “Withycomb’s covered himself pretty well, too. There’s nothing you could call an explicit threat—”

  “The whole blessed thing’s an obvious explicit threat!”

  “To us, maybe,” she replied, “it looks like one. Because we’re hyped up to find some motive Apex would have for wanting his brother dead, not just permanently out of circulation.”

  “People who look for things tend to be the best at finding things. Especially when they know what they’re looking for. That don’t necessarily make the things they find ersatz.”

  “Maybe not.” She tapped her photocopy. “But it still doesn’t give a lawyer any solid evidence to build a case against either Apex or Withycombe.”