by Mike Ashley
LEONARDO DA VINCI, DETECTIVE
Theodore Mathieson
Theodore Mathieson (b. 1913) turned to writing in 1955 after fifteen years as an English teacher in the public high schools of California. After he had started to sell regularly to Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, he turned to an ambitious project of writing a series of stories each featuring a famous character from history faced with a puzzling crime to solve. The series began with “Captain Cook, Detective” (1958) and ran on through a dozen stories.
The remarkable achievement of the series is that the crime and background in each story is directly related to its main character, using their own particular skills and abilities and linked very firmly to the world and beliefs about him. This required a considerable amount of research, for the series spanned the years from Alexander the Great to Florence Nightingale. The following story is one of the most ingenious, with its step-by-step unravelling of a seemingly impossible crime.
On a fine late-spring afternoon in 1516, Leonardo da Vinci sat peacefully in the rose-embowered garden behind his mansion near Amboise, with a sketching pad upon his lap, drawing a golden oriole which fluttered occasionally within the confines of a large aviary. Although the Italian master was over sixty now, white-bearded and slightly stooped, the hand that had painted The Last Supper and Mona Lisa had lost none of its deftness, nor his eyes their keen brilliance. All around rose the gentle, sunwarmed hills of central France, and the bees hummed in the chaparral.
His young servant Jacques stepped hesitantly from the terrace to confront him, then spoke softly.
“Maître, a gentleman from Amboise. He demands to see you.”
Leonardo nodded kindly, but before the boy could turn to deliver the message, a tall, sturdy black-haired figure with a thick beard strode across the terrace.
“Ah, Monsieur Blanchard,” Leonardo said sympathetically. “You shatter the sylvan peace with your distress. Sit down and observe the golden oriole with me. I do not care to take the bird into captivity like this, but the oriole is most difficult to sketch in its natural habitat – ”
“You mistake me, Monsieur,” the man said. “I am not Monsieur Blanchard.”
“Have my eyes lost their skill?” Leonardo said, blinking up at him. “Indeed, they must have, for you are not the King’s minister after all!”
“I am Baron de Marigny, at your service. The Queen is most anxious that you come to Amboise at once.”
“The Queen!” Leonardo looked surprised. His Majesty, Francis I, of the House of Valois, favored him. He had invited Leonardo to live in France, had given him this house, opened the castle at Amboise to him, and often sought his company. But the Queen! The regal French beauty had never liked him and had not dissembled from the first.
“How can my humble services be of value to the Queen?” Leonardo asked, temporizing.
“She gave me explicit orders to discuss nothing. At the same time – ” Marigny’s eyes shifted uneasily to the flutterings of the oriole. “His Majesty was not in favor of her calling you at all.”
“But he permitted her to do so?”
“Yes. The Queen’s whims are not easily discouraged.”
“Then I shall come at once,” Leonardo said, moving toward the terrace. “Ever to investigate, to know – especially when it is a Queen’s whim. Jacques, my cloak!”
The coach carrying Leonardo and the Baron jolted along the narrow, poplar-lined road to within a hundred meters of the gray, rounded contours of the castle, and then debouched into a green open field to the west toward gently rising hills, perhaps a kilometer distant.
“We approach the amphitheater?” Leonardo asked.
“That is where it happened,” Marigny said absently. Then his lips thinned and tightened. “They are waiting for you there. They will explain everything.”
The coach drew up in a cloud of dust at the entrance of the amphitheater, which lay to the south. Here Francis, passionately fond of tournaments, masquerades, and amusements of all kinds, provided outdoor entertainment for himself, his court, and his guests. Colored flags fluttered from tall masts, announcing the afternoon’s gala entertainment, already concluded, and nearly everyone had now departed except a small group sitting beneath a striped canopy inside a circle of soldiers. Leonardo recognized the King and Queen and their retinue.
The minister Blanchard approached Leonardo, his arms outstretched, his pale face smudged with perspiration and dust.
“This is terrible, Monsieur da Vinci. Monsieur Laurier has been stabbed in the chest and lies dead within the amphitheater. Her Majesty wishes you investigate this crime and demands to see you at once.”
Leonardo nodded and strode like a noble patriarch to the others sitting beneath the awning. Arriving before the royal pair, Leonardo bowed deeply.
The King, handsome in his large-nosed way, acknowledged the greeting wearily, but his eyes were alert and watchful.
“Before the Queen speaks to you, Leonardo, let me say that I did not wish to disturb you. She is upset and may say things that are personal and uncomplimentary, but I ask you to make allowances. A friend of ours, Philip Laurier, lies dead out on that field. Murdered.”
“A foul, most flaunting deed!” the Queen broke in, her voice strident with emotion.
The King raised his hand imperiously. “Let me acquaint Leonardo with the facts. Today we had a fine demonstration of marching formations done by special troops from the Netherlands, from Spain, and from Scotland.”
“Is it not the Scottish warriors who wear the skirts?” Leonardo asked curiously.
“Kilts, Monsieur,” corrected the minister Blanchard, cracking his knuckles.
“Kilts and tartans,” said Francis, “a brilliant uniform of red and green and yellow which, I should imagine, would make these barbarians easy to shoot at.”
“These and other colors are set in squares and stripes, Monsieur – a distinctive pattern which differs from clan to clan, from terrain to terrain,” said Blanchard.
“Blanchard knows more about it than I do,” said the King tolerantly. “He went to Scotland to make the arrangements for their coming.”
“Monsieur Laurier is dead,” chanted the Queen.
The King looked annoyed. “What happened,” he said, “was that when the exhibition closed with the Scottish clan parading and playing their weird instruments – ”
“Bagpipes,” said the minister.
“Then the Queen and I and the others here left the field and returned to the castle. We had just descended from the coach when word came that Philip had been killed upon the field, and we returned here at once.”
“Tell him how he died,” said the Queen.
A look passed between Francis and his wife – hers of acute suspicion, his of impenetrable aloofness.
“Come, Leonardo – and all of you,” said the King deliberately, rising and leading the way toward the amphitheater. “You must see how it was.”
Leonardo saw how Marigny, his former coach companion, walked close beside the Queen, who paid no attention to him; she appeared to be sleepwalking. Then the King gave a quick sign to Marigny, and the latter came at once to his sire’s side, like a hound trained to heel.
“Philip is – was – a promising young nobleman from the south,” the King continued as they walked. “He went far in the last year, since he came to court. It was his office at these outdoor affairs to represent the King’s power at the close, after all the spectators had gone. He would approach the center of the field, blow a trumpet as a signal to the guards mounted along the hills, and remain in possession of the field until the soldiers had closed formation and retired.”
The King and Leonardo, followed by the others, passed through a pair of marble portals into a wide corridor cut from the hills, and entered a dell, the floor of which was covered with thick, springy turf. Elliptical in shape, with only the one entrance, the vale was perhaps two hundred feet long, and fifty at the widest point, close to the midsection. From the arena’s le
vel floor the sides sloped gently upward, the reddish earth neatly landscaped with low-lying shrubs – cotoneasters, pyracanths – no one of them high enough to conceal a man. Creepers partially covered the ground, and flat round stones were laid here and there so that one might mount to the hilltop without stepping upon the earth.
At a glance Leonardo could see that no one but himself and the royal party were within the amphitheater – they, and the figure lying motionless upon the greensward close to the center of the field. At the sight of the inert body the Queen gave a cry of dismay.
“It was your order, my dear, that he should remain there,” the King said.
“Let me speak now – ”
“In a moment, my dear! Let us tarry here. Today, after almost everyone had left, Laurier approached the center of the field. The guards all had their backs to the arena, as is a fixed rule, so they did not see anything. The last three people to leave the arena were Count and Countess Angerville and their daughter.”
The King turned to a distinguished-looking middle-aged couple and a beautiful blond girl.
“Tell them what you saw, Angerville,” the King said.
“I turned first,” Angerville said in a firm, resolute tone. “Philip had just started to raise the trumpet to his lips. We walked on for several seconds and were just about here, and then when no sound came, I looked back, my wife and daughter looking back too. Philip seemed to stagger forward – away from us – dropping his trumpet. He turned slightly and we caught the glint of the knife-hilt as he fell. The knife could not have been thrown from the hilltop by any of the guardsmen!”
“They are too distant,” the King said, “and the angle is too oblique for accuracy. The knife could only have been thrown by someone standing at the level of the arena floor!”
“But how could that be?” cried the girl with the blond hair.
Angerville took his daughter’s hand in his. “It is impossible – and yet it happened,” he said simply. “My wife and I and our daughter looked all about the arena from where we stood. There is no place of concealment. See there? Even the tiers of marble benches are set flush in the hillside and offer no hiding place. I swear it, there was nobody within the arena but ourselves!”
“But you did not mind that Laurier was killed, did you, Angerville?” said the Queen bitterly.
Angerville paled and the King raised his hand, but he could hold the Queen in check no longer.
“You knew your daughter was in love with Monsieur Laurier, and you were afraid they might marry!” the Queen went on. “Oh, the entire court knew about it.”
“Your Majesty – ” Angerville protested.
“Oh, I don’t say you did it, Angerville. You wouldn’t have dared. But I cannot stand your hypocritical concern – ”
She turned and faced Leonardo, her dark beauty wild with passion.
“Monsieur da Vinci – ”
“Careful now, my dear,” Francis said resignedly. “Leonardo might take offense at your words and return to Italy, and we should be the poorer for it.”
The Queen’s lips curled in scorn. “Always Francis says to me, until I am weary: ‘No other man has ever been born who knows as much as Leonardo da Vinci. Artist, inventor, engineer, mathematician, musician, philosopher – all these and more. He sees everything, he knows everything.’ Well, Monsieur, I have not been willing to share my husband’s views. I spent my girlhood in Valladolid, where Italian accomplishment is not held in too high regard. I cannot help my feelings.”
Leonardo tilted his head in quick sympathy, tinged with satire.
“A friend – of ours – lies dead there.” The Queen closed her eyes. “So far as we can see, no one was at his side nor anywhere around to kill him – yet he was stabbed. His Majesty and I shall remain outside the arena until the sun sets. That is in perhaps a little over an hour. We shall answer willingly any and all questions you may ask. If in that time ‘the greatest mind in all Europe’ can discover who killed Monsieur Laurier, I shall be ready to agree with my husband’s opinion of da Vinci’s skill!”
In the moment of intense silence that followed the Queen’s outburst, Leonardo was aware of the long shadows of the late afternoon, of a cloud of midges, and of the lazy flappings of the festive banners. A hysterical woman had flung down a challenge which the others were waiting to see if he would accept. He needn’t accept, of course; he could go back to his peaceful garden and sketch golden orioles, but not for long. A frustrated Queen would leave her husband no peace, and Leonardo felt a return to Florence now would be an anticlimax to his life.
“Very well, Your Highness,” he said finally. “I prefer death to lassitude. And I never tire of serving others.”
He turned then, and with the minister Blanchard at his heels walked toward the silent figure in the center of the field . . .
Before his death, three years later, Leonardo da Vinci told Francis how and why he set out to work as he did that fateful afternoon.
“When I was a boy in Vinci,” the Italian master said, “my closest village playmates told me that a mark made upon the trunk of a tree grew higher from the ground with each year’s growth of that tree. First I made sure they believed what they said; if they were lying, it would be needless to investigate. When I soon found that even the adults of the village believed this true, I went into the woods, notched a healthy young tree with a fleur de lis, and measured it from the ground. I returned each year for three years and measured again, and found that what everyone said was not true. A mark upon the trunk of a tree remains at the same height for the life of the tree, because a tree grows vertically from the crown, while its trunk increases only in girth!” . . .
First, then, that afternoon, Leonardo called Countess Angerville and her daughter to him.
“Are you as certain as your husband, Madame, that there was no one within the arena at the time Laurier was killed?”
“Yes, Monsieur,” the woman said without hesitation, and her gray eyes were honest and steadfast.
“And you, Mademoiselle?”
The girl nodded, though she seemed under a spell.
“What did you do when you saw Laurier fall to the ground?” he asked the Countess.
“My husband ran forward to look at him, warning us to stay where we were. Then he ran back and told us to follow him, so that we might tell the others what had happened.”
“He forgot the soldiers who stood circling the tops of the hills?”
“I suppose he did, Monsieur.”
“Then all three of you ran out of the arena leaving Laurier upon the ground?”
“Yes.”
Leonardo turned to the girl. “Is it true, Mademoiselle, as the Queen suggests, that you and Monsieur Laurier wished to marry?”
“No, no!” She seemed to come suddenly alive. “I – I loved him, yes, but – he did not wish to marry me. I know this because there was someone else – ”
Her mother laid a warning hand upon the girl’s arm, and she fell silent. Leonardo did not press the question. He could guess who her rival was.
“Would it be possible,” Leonardo addressed both the mother and the girl, “that Laurier might have conceived this as a way of dramatically committing suicide?”
“No, no,” the Countess assured him vehemently. “Philip was ambitious, alive to his very fingertips. The whole world was before him.”
Leonardo examined the sprawled body before he had it removed from the field, and withdrew the knife from Laurier’s chest, where it had been embedded to the dudgeon. It was a plain hunting knife, razor-sharp, with a yellow bone handle.
The Italian then had minister Blanchard order the soldiers to bring a thick plank into the arena and set it upright – in the exact spot Laurier had occupied. The soldiers obeyed with alacrity.
“Now who is proficient in the art of hurling the knife?” Leonardo asked Blanchard.
“I am,” the minister announced quietly. Leonardo was surprised: such a skill appeared at odds with the man’s self-e
ffacement.
“And anyone else in the party?”
“It is a common skill here in France,” the minister said, shrugging. “Baron de Marigny is my equal, and even the barbarian, Bruce Stewart, the leader of the Scottish troops, has vied successfully with us.”
“Ask those two to come here at once,” Leonardo said.
Marigny arrived with a gloomy countenance and stood sulkily by as they waited for Stewart, who at last marched vigorously into the arena, resplendent in his brilliant tartan.
“Ach, mon, the laddies tell me you want me to throw the knife,” Stewart said, smiling. He was a ruddy-faced Scot with heavy jaws and craggy brows, and he looked as if all of life was a laughing matter. “I’d be muckle pleased to know my competitor.”
Leonardo stationed Marigny on the floor of the arena, about fifteen paces from the board, Blanchard halfway up the east side, cautioning him to stand only upon the flat stones amid the creepers; he placed Stewart at the top of the hill, between two guards, whose discipline apparently was so stern that not one had turned to look at the proceedings below. And they had been standing there all afternoon.
Leonardo used the bone-handled hunting knife in the test. Marigny threw first and embedded the knife so deeply in the board that it took two soldiers to pull it out. But first Leonardo studied the angle of the penetration. Blanchard threw second and again Leonardo studied the angle. Stewart made four tries, missing the board altogether thrice, and succeeding only on his fourth try.
“The sun was in my eyes,” said the Scot, his face almost as red as his tartan.
“But it was not only the sun,” Leonardo told Francis. “It was the distance which made it unfeasible, too, and I consoled him. You were right, Your Highness. The murderer had stood on a level with his victim or slightly above – not as high as I placed Blanchard – for the blade had entered Laurier’s chest at only a slight angle, and not acute as it would have been if the knife had been thrown from higher up.”
