The Fall of the House of Cabal

by Jonathan L. Howard

  ‘I’m not sure the Bible specifically mentions fish sandwiches.’ Miss Barrow walked by him and started up the steps.

  ‘It hardly needs to, does it? What else are you going to do with fish and bread?’ He followed her, considering such exciting theological concepts as he went, and finding solace thereby. After all, how could such a philosophical cove as he be regarded as a humorous sidekick?

  * * *

  At the entrance they were met by a police sergeant who took charge of them and conveyed them hence to the presence of Inspector Lament. Their route took them through the theatre’s foyer, a fantasy wrought in marble and red carpet and sweeping staircases that would have given the impression of an opulent ballroom, but for the footling detail that no ballroom was as large, nor did any ballroom of such grandeur usually aspire to selling ice cream in little tubs and cartons of cold drink most safely described as ‘orangesque’.

  They processed through doors marked as the provenance of Staff Only and, subsequent to some windings about narrow corridors whose layouts seemed to have been settled upon using haruspicy, finally and a little unexpectedly, found themselves in the wings and so onto the stage.

  ‘Always wanted to be on the stage,’ said Horst. He looked about him. The place was peppered about with strange items of apparatus and faux-Oriental decorations, hangings, and lanterns. He was just wondering what sort of play would have such a curious setting when he belatedly realised that a dummy of a man in brightly coloured silken robes sitting slumped in some form of throne was in fact, not a dummy at all. ‘Oh, look,’ he said, as if spotting an uncommon yet not rare bird during a stroll, ‘there’s a dead feller.’

  This struck him as odd in two respects. Firstly, that even quite outré productions rarely have corpses onstage. This, he reasoned brilliantly, must be the victim of the perfidious crime that he and Leonie Barrow had been summoned to solve. After a moment he revised the thought. This must be the perfidious crime that Leonie Barrow and he had been summoned to solve.

  The second odd detail was not one he thought wise to mention in open company. The man seemed to have suffered a chest wound of some description, to judge from the large red stain that disfigured the gorgeous robes. There was a good deal of blood there, and yet Horst—a vampire—had failed to scent it. Usually, the smell of blood glowed in his senses much as the scent of bacon does for so many others. On this occasion, though, he was barely aware of it. Did this mean the blood was fake? Or …

  He belatedly noticed that he was breathing, and it wasn’t purely for purposes of conversation. He tried holding his breath, and it quickly became uncomfortable, so he started breathing again. He thought of blood, and it seemed unappealing.

  Leonie noticed his very apparent consternation. ‘What is it?’ she asked him quietly. ‘Whatever is the matter, Mr Cabal?’

  ‘I…’ He looked at her aghast as he understood the desire that was growing in him. ‘Miss Barrow … the most extraord … I…’ He looked at her wide-eyed. ‘I could absolutely kill a bacon sandwich.’

  ‘There’s a cabbies’ caff around the corner, son,’ said the sergeant. ‘Go and get yourself stoked. This looks to be an all-nighter.’

  With a muttered apology to Miss Barrow and a promise to be back ever so quickly, Horst bolted back for the wings. She regarded him thoughtfully as he disappeared back into the Staff Only corridors, a lust for a bacon roll lending him unerring navigational skills through the labyrinth.

  ‘Loves his bacon, doesn’t he, miss?’ said the sergeant.

  ‘Only very recently,’ she said slowly. ‘Usually his tastes are distinctly more rarefied.’ She turned her attention to the dead man on the gaudy throne. ‘In his absence, perhaps you might tell me why I’m here.’

  ‘Oh?’ The inspector cleared his throat with the sardonic air of a man who is used to being outshone by gifted amateurs. ‘You can’t tell?’

  She favoured him with a cool glance, then said, ‘Well, all I see is the obvious. A dead man chained upon a throne. He appears to have been shot in the chest by a quarrel presumably launched from the crossbow mounted over there, its trigger pulled by the sand-driven timing mechanism standing by it. Without knowing the specifics of the event, one guesses he is a stage magician whose grand escape from the Throne of Death—or whatever else the publicists might call it—proved rather tardy. Presumably in the normal run of things, he would free himself at the last second? Flinging himself aside as the fatal bolt is shot?’ She crouched by the throne, looking at the quarrel’s shaft still protruding from the dead man’s chest. There was a great deal of blood, considering it was not an open wound. The pressure required to force blood by the shaft offered confirmation to her opinion that the quarrelhead must have penetrated the left side of the heart, causing rapid shock and exsanguination. ‘No doctor could have saved him,’ she said half to herself. She straightened and addressed Inspector Lament. ‘So what makes you think it wasn’t simply an accident, Inspector? Conjurers and escapologists have died when things haven’t gone as planned before.’

  Lament was examining the crossbow, hands clasped behind his back to prevent him inadvertently touching anything. ‘True, Miss Barrow. But our man Maleficarus here seemed to think this would be his last performance.’

  ‘He did?’ Leonie was just concentrating on pursing her lips and nodding in the most ineffably wise manner she could manage, when her equanimity abruptly shattered. ‘Hold on. What was his name?’

  The inspector made a show of consulting his notebook. ‘Maximillian Maleficarus ay kay ay Maleficarus the Magnificent. Rather an impressive show from what I’ve heard, miss. Leastways’—he nodded at the corpse—‘I doubt anyone will be forgetting this performance in a hurry.’

  * * *

  ‘I’m beginning to see what you mean about how this place reflects the people who find it,’ said Horst. He was eating the fourth of six bacon rolls he had been carrying on his return, the first of which he’d devoured en route. ‘Maleficarus? It’s an unusual enough name, after all. There can’t be that many of them about. Even fewer after Johannes crossed paths with them.* He mentioned running into Maleficarus senior once upon a time, but I don’t think it played out like this. Much too mundane for my darling brother. From what I gather, it was all rather more occult.’ He illustrated his understanding of ‘occult’ by waggling his fingers, immediately employing them on the conclusion of this illustration by re-engaging the diminishing stack of bacon rolls.

  ‘I know about the son, Rufus Maleficarus. Or, at least a little about him. A necromancer, too, wasn’t he?’

  ‘Hmmm,’ said Horst. ‘But he’s dead now. Twice. Well, not quite dead. Well, sort of dead. You know how it is with necromancers.’

  Leonie Barrow decided not to pursue that subject, which was just as well given the sordid and bloody details of Rufus Maleficarus’s varied career as necromancer, Lord of Powers, freestyle bastard, and talking box.

  They were talking quietly in a corner of the backstage while waiting for the theatre manager, a Mr Curry, to conclude his statement to the police. Leonie had already told Horst what had happened onstage that evening as witnessed by a full house.

  The performance had gone through assorted pieces of legerdemain and illusion and been as well received as every previous performance. Maleficarus the Magnificent was a highly regarded and very popular magician, routinely performing before the crowned heads of Europe, the oligarchs of America, and the general unwashed of everywhere.

  So he had arrived at a literal showstopper—the last wonder to be performed before the interval—and, just for once, the show had stopped him. The effect was entitled ‘The Throne of Death,’ exactly as Miss Barrow had predicted with an accuracy that now perturbed her. It was a little bit of mild Grand Guignol suitable for family audiences; Petit Guignol, if you will.

  Max Maleficarus began by relating a tale to the audience of a mandarin of the mysterious and exotic Orient. A terrible man of profane appetites, he preyed on those he should have governed
and thereby made them fear him. The tortures he visited upon them were many and imaginative, and the people were cowed. That all came to an end the day a humble travelling scholar happened into the mandarin’s power.

  Here Maleficarus was garbed in gorgeous and colourful silks—hardly the clothes of a humble travelling scholar, but in a story littered with factual inaccuracies, it hardly mattered—and the stage around him was decked out in oriental finery. Lanterns and vases were carried in, and banners (sporting fanciful characters that would baffle anyone with even the faintest grounding in sinograms) fluttered down from the full-fly space behind the proscenium.

  Throughout the transformation, Maleficarus continued the story, and detailed how the scholar came to loggerheads with the evil mandarin and so was condemned to suffer upon the dreadful Throne of Death. Here, Maleficarus was accosted by stagehands labouring under hastily applied yellow-face make-up and unconvincing wigs bearing black yarn queues.

  Struggling—but not too much—he was dragged to the throne and secured upon it, the chains that bound him locked tight with a padlock supplied from a respected member of the audience earlier in the performance, and held by them until that moment. A paper screen bearing a fantastical painting of a Chinese dragon was raised before the throne, hiding the victim from the audience’s view.

  Now the ‘mandarin’ began the mechanism of murder. Sand ran from a reservoir onto a balance pan, the spring-loaded mechanism that would trigger the crossbow beneath. When the pan was heavy enough to go past the balance point, it would slam down, and the crossbow would launch its deadly cargo directly at Maleficarus’s heart.

  Yet, of course, he was never there when it struck. After struggling valiantly against the chain for the minute or so that the balance required to pass equilibrium, Maleficarus would release himself just as the balance pan started its descent, leaping aside as the bolt flew.

  Except this time. He had cried out when the mechanism passed the tipping point, a cry he had never made on any of the previous performances. And he remained there, helpless as the pan struck down, the mechanism was triggered, the crossbow released, the quarrel flew, his heart was pierced, and as his blood left him.

  ‘Sounds like an accident to me,’ said Horst, and he did so through bacon. On realising the faux pas he swallowed and apologised. ‘Bacon’s the most wonderful thing in the world right now. I don’t think coming here just changed our clothes and careers, Miss Barrow. The little voice has gone. Gone altogether.’

  ‘Little voice?’

  ‘In my head. I have a little voice.’

  Leonie laughed. ‘Your conscience?’

  ‘No.’ Horst was emphatic. ‘I don’t need a little voice to tell me not to do bad things. The little voice I mean is the one that specifically tells me to do bad things.’

  ‘You have an anti-conscience?’

  ‘Hmmm. It came with being a vampire. “Stick your fangs in that un.” “Break that un’s neck.” All the time. Such a nag. Anyway, it’s shut up. I don’t even think I can do the thing with my fangs. Y’know, extend them? Can’t seem to do that at all. Blood suddenly seems like a pretty unpleasant thing to be feeding on, and I suddenly have an urge for bacon.’

  ‘You’re not a vampire.’ Leonie said it with barely a thought. It was so obvious a conclusion. ‘Not any more.’

  ‘Exactly. This place, wherever we are, has devampired me somehow.’

  She considered this. ‘I wonder why.’

  ‘I’m more wondering if it’s permanent.’ His tone made her look him in the face. There was a longing there, and she understood just how desperately he wanted it to be true. He stirred the nest of paper bags on the small table where they sat, looking for any surviving bacon rolls. ‘What if it’s permanent?’

  * * *

  Mr Curry was pink and round, startled and baffled, tired and dismayed. ‘I really cannot see what I can tell you that I haven’t already told the police, madam,’ he said, and patted his florid face with a handkerchief redolent of lavender.

  ‘In all eventuality, Mr Curry, nothing. But one never knows.’ She smiled and was charming, and Mr Curry was charmed and smiled in return, and throughout all this Miss Barrow wondered when exactly she had become so charming.

  ‘Very well.’ He became fatuously ebullient, as an uncle coaxed into opening the biscuit barrel for the children might. ‘Very well! Ask your questions, then.’

  Leonie’s smile hardened just an iota. ‘Tell me, why do you think Mr Maleficarus was murdered?’

  Curry’s smile waned quickly, and he became worried. ‘I … don’t necessarily think…’

  ‘I’ve read your statement already, Mr Curry. You’re very cagey about it, and I can understand that. It looks like a tragic accident, and that’s probably exactly what it is. Best to get things sorted out and get your theatre’s name out of the news as quickly as possible. Despite what some think, I doubt many people come to see a death-defying act in the hope that the performer will die. The thrill of coming close is enough.’ She spread her hands in a conciliatory manner. ‘I am simply a consultant the police have on retainer. We all want this dealt with quickly for a plethora of reasons. So, in your own time…’

  Curry cast his gaze about his office, seeking alternatives. He sighed upon finding none, and said, ‘He told me. Straight to my face. “Lemuel,” he said, “I am not peaceful in my own mind that all will go well this evening.” He said that. I asked him what he meant, but he seemed to think he’d already said too much and became as silent as a clam. And then this happens. It was as if’—he leaned forwards, opening his eyes too wide for propriety—‘it was a premonition.’

  * * *

  ‘It was suicide,’ said Horst with undue cheerfulness. ‘Bit of a melodramatic way to do it, in front of a packed house and all, but all he had to do was twiddle his thumbs and wait for the crossbow to do its business.’ He noted Leonie Barrow’s somewhat acidic expression and changed tack with the natural assurance of the saloon bar Lothario that he had once been. ‘Or he was just off his game for some reason. Touch of dyspepsia, not feeling right in himself, frets about things, and—when it comes time to do the miraculous escape—he just can’t concentrate. “Did I pay the newsagent for this week? Did I turn the gas off? Did I do this? Did I do that? Oops, out of time.” Twang! Dead.’ Horst smiled self-indulgently and awaited the applause for his masterful piece of deduction. When it didn’t come, he said, ‘Or it was an accident. It could always just have been one of those things, I suppose.’

  ‘So, to enumerate,’ Leonie counted off the points on her fingers, ‘it was murder. It was suicide. It was an accident. It was an act of God.’ She regarded him with dry aspect. ‘These are your conclusions?’

  ‘Yes.’ His smile wavered as he thought about them. ‘Doesn’t actually narrow things down much, does it?’

  ‘Deduction means to take away the things that are not so. Whatever is left is the truth. It’s like chipping away from a block of marble until a statue is left.’

  Horst considered this. ‘That’s very poetic, Miss Barrow, but—’

  ‘For heaven’s sake, call me “Leonie.”’

  ‘Oh! Thank you. Yes, where was I? That’s very poetic, Leonie, but there are all kinds of statues you might get out of a block of marble.’

  ‘An artist might argue there’s only one, and so I stand by the simile. There are all kinds of statues you might make, but only one of them is the truth. All the rest are failures or, worse yet, miscarriages of justice. We must be careful with our chisels, Horst.’

  ‘Yes, we must. Indeed we must.’ He shook his head. ‘I have no idea what you mean by that.’

  ‘For the moment, we have more potential witnesses to interview. Firstly, the closest witness.’

  ‘And who is that?’

  ‘Maleficarus’s assistant, one Athena la Morte.’

  ‘L’amour?’ Horst asked, sensitive to the possibilities of love.

  ‘La Morte,’ Leonie corrected him, sensitive to the ubiquity of
death.

  * * *

  Athena la Morte—born Pansy Kett—was discovered in her changing room, where the police had put her until such time as they decided what to do next. Horst knocked and entered first, and so discovered Miss la Morte in the process of repairing her make-up. Leonie noted that her eyes were puffy, and when Athena blew into the handkerchief Horst offered her, there was little evidence that the sniffling was histrionic.

  Even in such a dismayed state, she was clearly a very attractive woman in her mid-twenties, dark hair still clipped back as it had been when she had worn it beneath a wig and headpiece that evening as a concubine of the wicked mandarin. Beneath her candlewick dressing gown in an unflattering shade of pale terracotta could be seen the historically inaccurate but still very fetching cheongsam she had worn as her costume.

  ‘Trick?’ she said to Horst’s inquiry. ‘There was no trick. That was an honest piece of escapology. Every evening, every matinee Max had to crack a padlock he hadn’t seen before. And he did it. Max is a genius.’ She faltered. ‘Was.’

  ‘Why the paper screen, then?’ asked Miss Barrow, sitting by la Morte. Horst had made a beeline to take that chair, but a warning glance from the Great Detective had stopped him in his tracks, and now he was standing, forced to be sympathetic from a safe distance. Safe for Miss la Morte, that was. Since discovering that in this curious city that never was and probably never would be, he was fully human and prey to human wonts and desires, Horst had recalled which of those wonts and desires were his personal favourites and was looking to exercise them before the presumably inevitable return to vampirism. So far he had successfully sated his desire for bacon by dint of it being reasonably simple to address. Higher on his list was another desire that Miss Barrow seemed intent on thwarting at every turn.

  Athena smiled ruefully. ‘What’s honest escapology to a performer isn’t really the same to the punters. They think you should be able to pick a lock without tools. Course, no one can do that. So, Max has … had … lock picks concealed. The screen was so the audience couldn’t see they were hidden in the arms of the throne, or how he used them.’ She looked hopelessly from face to face. ‘I can’t understand it. The lock was a bog-standard Schumann. Whoever brings in the lock has to give written assurance that the lock is new and hasn’t been tampered with in any way. It’s closed and unlocked a few times in Max’s sight so he’s satisfied nobody’s trying to be clever by altering the mechanism. His life depends on it being an honest feat of skill. He could do a Schumann in his sleep. I just don’t understand what went wrong. Except…’ She frowned. ‘I’m not sure. I’m onstage, obviously, and half of my job is to distract the audience. Nothing is unrehearsed. I always know what I’m supposed to be doing, but … maybe my timing was off.’