Lord Darcy Investigates Read online

  “Excellent! You’re the perfect host, Father.” Lord Darcy took a bracing jolt from the mug, then fished in his waistcoat pocket with thumb and forefinger. “Oh, by the by, Sir James, here’s your play-pretty.” He held up a small golden tube.

  Sir James took it and looked at it while Master Sean scowled in a way that made him seem rather cross-eyed.

  “The seal has been cut,” Sir James said.

  “Yes. By your man, Standish. I suggest you give the thing to Master Sean for resealing until you get it back to Ipswich.”

  Sir James gave the Phial to Master Sean. “How did you get it back from them?” the King’s Agent asked.

  “I didn’t.” Lord Darcy settled himself back in the big chair. “If you’ll be patient, I’ll explain. Last evening, I was approached by a young woman…”

  His lordship repeated the entire conversation verbatim, and told them of her gestures and expressions while they were talking inside the church.

  “And you went with her?” Sir James asked incredulously.

  “Certainly. For two very good reasons. Primus: I had to find out what was behind her story. Secundus: I had fallen in love.”

  Sir James gawked. Master Sean’s face became expressionless. Father Art cast his eyes toward Heaven.

  Sir James found his voice first. “In love?” It was almost a squawk.

  Lord Darcy nodded calmly. “In love. Deeply. Madly. Passionately.”

  Sir James shot to his feet. “Are you mad, Darcy? Don’t you realize that that woman is a Serka agent?”

  “So indeed I had surmised. Sit down, James; such outbursts are unseemly.” Sir James sat down slowly. “Now pay attention,” Lord Darcy continued. “Of course I knew she was a spy. If you had been listening closely when I quoted her words, you would have heard that she said I was investigating the death of Standish. And yet everyone here knows that the body was identified as Bourke. Obviously, she had recognized Standish and knew his name.”

  “Standish had recognized her, too,” Sir James said. “Secret Agent Number 055, of Serka. Real name: Olga Polovski.”

  “Olga,” Lord Darcy said, savoring the word. “That’s a pretty name, isn’t it?”

  “Charming. Utterly enchanting. And in spite of the fact that she’s a Polish agent, you love the wench?”

  “I didn’t say that, Sir James,” said Lord Darcy. “I did not say I loved her; I said I was ‘in love’ with her. There is a fine distinction there, and I have had enough experience to be able to distinguish between the two states of mind. Your use of the word ‘enchanting’ is quite apropos, by the way. The emotion was artificially induced. The woman is a sorceress.”

  Master Sean suddenly snapped his fingers. “That’s where I heard the name before! Olga Polovski! Six years ago, she was an undergraduate at the University in Buda-Pest. A good student, with highgrade Talent. No wonder you ‘fell in love’ with her.”

  Sir James narrowed his eyes. “I see. The purpose was to get information out of you. Did she succeed?”

  “In a way.” Lord Darcy chuckled. “I sang like a nightingale. Indeed, Darcy’s Mendacious Cantata, sung forte e claro, may become one of the most acclaimed works of art of the twentieth century. Pardon me; I am euphoric.”

  “You have popped your parietals, my lord,” Sir James said, with a slight edge to his voice. “What was the result of this baritone solo?”

  “Actually, it was a duet. We alternated on the versicles and responses. The theme of my song was simply that I was a criminal investigator and nothing more. That I hadn’t more than a vague notion of what His Imperial Majesty’s Secret Service was up to. That, for some reason, the apprehension of this murderer was most important to the Secret Service, so their agents were hanging around to help me. That they were more hindrance than help.” He paused to take another swallow of laced caffe, then continued: “And—oh, yes—that they must be going to England for more men, because, four days ago, a heavily armed group of four men took a Navy cutter from Harfleur for London.”

  Sir James frowned for a second, then his face lit up. “Ah, yes. You implied that we had already found the Phial and that it was safely in England.”

  “Precisely. And since she had not heard of that oh-so-secret departure, she was certain that it could not be a bluff. As a result, she scrubbed the entire mission. Around midnight, she excused herself for a moment and spoke to someone—I presume it was the second in command, the much-maligned Suv. Her men took off to three of the four winds.”

  “And she didn’t?”

  “Of course not. Why arouse my suspicions? Better to keep me under observation while her men made good their escape. I left her shortly after dawn, and—”

  “You were there from sunset till dawn? What took you so long?”

  Lord Darcy looked pained. “My dear James, surely you don’t think I could simply hand her all that misinformation in half an hour without her becoming suspicious. I had to allow her to draw it from me, bit by bit. I had to allow her to give me more information than she intended to give in order to get the story out of me. And, of course, she had to be very careful in order not to arouse my suspicions. It was, I assure you, a very delicate and time-consuming series of negotiations.”

  Sir James did his best not to leer. “I can well imagine.”

  Father Art looked out the window, solemnly puffing his pipe as though he were in deep meditation and could hear nothing.

  Rather hurriedly, Master Sean said: “Then it was you who broke the clay brick I dug out of the cliff, me lord.”

  “It was; I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, but you were at Mass, and I was in somewhat of a hurry. You see, there were only two places where the Phial could possibly be, and I looked in the less likely place first—in that lump of clay. Standish could have hidden it there, but I thought it unlikely. Still, I had to look. It wasn’t there.

  “So I got my horse and rode out to where the body was found. You see, Standish had to have had it with him. He opened it to get away from his pursuers. I presume Master Sean knows how the thing works, but all I know is that it renders everyone blind for a radius of about a mile and a half.”

  Master Sean cleared his throat. “It’s akin to what’s called hysterical blindness. Nothing wrong with the eyes, ye see, but the mind blocks off the visual centers of the brain. The Phial contains a charged rod attached to the stopper. When you open it and expose the rod everything goes black. That’s the reason for the auric-stabilized psychic shield which forms the Phial itself.”

  “Things don’t go black for the person holding it,” said Lord Darcy. “Everything becomes a colorless gray, but you can still see.”

  “That’s the built-in safety spell in the stopper,” said the little Irish sorcerer.

  “Well, where was the blasted thing?” Sir James asked.

  “Buried in the sand, almost under that big rock where his body was found. I just had to dig till I found it.” Lord Darcy looked somber. “I fear my analytical powers are deserting me; otherwise, Master Sean and I would have found it yesterday. But I relied on his metal detector to find it. And yet, Master Sean clearly told me that a psychic shield renders anything psychically invisible. He was talking about Standish, of course, but I should have seen that the same logic applied to the Ipswich Phial as well.”

  “If ye’d told me what ye were looking for, me lord…” Master Sean said gently.

  Lord Darcy chuckled mirthlessly. “After all our years together, my dear Sean, we still tend to overestimate each other. I assumed you had deduced what we were looking for, though you are no detective; you assumed I knew about psychic shielding, though I am no thaumaturge.”

  “I still can’t quite see the entire chain of events,” Father Art said. “Could you clarify it for us? What was Standish doing out on that beach, anyway?”

  “Well, let’s go back to the night before he was killed. He had been following the mysterious Bourke. When Bourke was firmly ensconced in the Green Seagull, Standish rode for Caen, notified you
via teleson, then rode back. He borrowed the sexton’s cloak and went over to the inn. When he saw his chance, he dodged upstairs fast and went to Bourke’s room presumably to get the Phial.

  “Now, you must keep in mind that all this is conjecture. I can’t prove it, and I know of no way to prove it. I do not have, and cannot get, all the evidence I would need for proof. But all the data I do have leads inescapably to one line of action.

  “Master Sean claims I have a touch of the Talent—the ability to leap from an unwarranted assumption to a foregone conclusion. That may be so. At any rate, I know what happened.

  “Very well, then. Standish went into Bourke’s room to arrest him. He knew Bourke was in that room because he was psychically locked on to Bourke.

  “But when he broke into the room he was confronted by a woman—a woman he knew. The woman was just as surprised to see Standish.

  “I don’t know which of them recovered first, but I strongly suspect it was the woman. Number 055 is very quick on the uptake, believe me.

  “But Standish was stronger. He sustained a few good bruises in the next several seconds, but he knocked her unconscious. I saw the bruise on her neck last night.

  “He searched the room and found the Phial. Unfortunately, the noise had attracted two, possibly three, of her fellow Serka agents. He had to go out the window, losing his cloak in the process. The men followed him.

  “He ran for the beach, and—”

  “Wait a minute,” Sir James interrupted. “You mean Bourke was actually Olga Polovski in disguise?”

  “Certainly. She’s a consummate actress. The idea was for Bourke to vanish completely. She knew the Secret Service would be after her, and she wanted to leave no trace. But she didn’t realize that Standish was so close behind her because he was psychically invisible. That’s why she was shocked when he came into her room.

  “At any rate, he ran for the beach. There was no place else to go at that time of night, except for the church, and they’d have him trapped there.

  “I must admit I’m very fuzzy about what happened during that chase, but remember he had ridden for two days without much rest, and he was battered a little by the blows Olga had landed. At any rate, he eventually found himself at the edge of that cliff, with Serka closing in around him. Remember, it was a moonless night, and there were only stars for him to see by. But at least one of the Polish agents had a lantern.

  “Standish was trapped on the edge of a cliff, and he had no way to see how far down it went, nor what was at the bottom. He lay flat and kept quiet, but the others were getting close. He decided to get rid of the Phial. Better to lose it than have it fall into King Casimir’s hands. He took out his knife and carved the ‘055’ in the side of the cliff, to mark the spot and to make sure that someone else would see it if he were killed. I’m sure he intended to dig a hole and bury it there. I don’t believe he was thinking too clearly by then.

  “The Serka men were getting too close for comfort. He might be seen at any moment. So he cut the seal of the Phial and opened it. Blackout.

  “Since he could see his pursuers—however dimly—and they couldn’t see him, he decided to try to get past them, back to the village. If he had a time advantage, he could find a place to hide.

  “He stood up.

  “But as he turned, he made a misstep and fell twenty feet to the sand below.” Lord Darcy paused.

  Father Art, looking thoughtful, said: “He had a gun. Why didn’t he use it?”

  “Because they had guns, too, and he was outnumbered. He didn’t want to betray his position by the muzzle flash unless he had to,” Lord Darcy said. “To continue: The fall is what broke those ribs and sprained that wrist. It also very likely knocked him out for a few minutes. Not long. When he came to, he must have realized he had an advantage greater than he had thought at first. The Serka couldn’t see the muzzle flash from his handgun. Badly hurt as he was, he waited for them.”

  “Admirable,” said Father Art. “It’s fantastic that he didn’t lose the two parts of the Phial when he fell. Must have hung on for dear life.”

  “Standish would,” said Sir James grimly. “Go on, my lord.”

  “Well, at that point, the Serka lads must have realized the same thing. They had no way of knowing how badly Standish was hurt, nor exactly where he was. He could be sneaking up on them, for all they knew. They got out of there. Slowly, of course, since they had to feel their way, but once they reached the Old Shore Road, they made better time.

  “But by that time, Standish was close to passing out again. He still had to hide the Phial, so he buried it in the sand where I found it.”

  “Me lord,” said Master Sean, “I still don’t understand who killed Standish and why.”

  “Oh, that. Why that was patently obvious from the first. Wasn’t it, Father Art?”

  The good father stared at Lord Darcy. “Begging your pardon, my lord, but not to me it wasn’t.”

  Lord Darcy turned his head. “Sir James?”

  “No.”

  “Oh, dear. Well, I suppose I shall have to back up a bit, then. Consider: The Damoselle Olga, to cover her tracks, has to get rid of ‘Bourke.’ But if ‘Bourke’ disappears into nowhere, and someone else appears from nowhere, even a moron might suspect that the two were the same. So a cover must be arranged. Someone else, not connected in any way with ‘Bourke,’ must appear at the Green Seagull before ‘Bourke’ shows up.

  “So, what happened? A coachman named Danglars shows up; a servant who registers for himself and his mistress, Jizelle de Ville. (Danglars and Suv were almost certainly the same man, by the way.) But who sees Mistress Jizelle? Nobody. She is only a name in a register book until the next morning!

  “The original plan was to have Mistress Jizelle show up in the evening, then have Bourke show up again, and so on. The idea was to firmly establish that the two people were separate and not at all connected. The arrival and intrusion of Standish changed all that, but things worked out fairly well, nonetheless.

  “It had to be ‘Mistress Jizelle’ who killed him. Look at the evidence. Standish died—correct me if I’m wrong, Master Sean—within plus or minus fifteen minutes of the time Standish was found.”

  Master Sean nodded.

  “Naturally,” his lordship continued, “we always assume a minus time. How could the person be killed after the body was found?

  “But there was no one else around who could have killed him! A farmer and his two sons were close enough to the road during that time to see anyone who came along unless that someone had walked along the beach. But there were no footprints in that damp sand except those of ‘Mistress Jizelle’!

  “Picture this, if you will: Number 055, still a little groggy, and suffering from a sore neck, is told by her returning henchmen that they have lost Standish. But she is clever enough to see what must have happened. As soon as possible, she puts on her ‘Mistress Jizelle’ persona and has her lieutenant drive her out to that section of the beach. She walks down to take a look. She sees Standish.

  “Standish, meanwhile, has regained his senses. He opens his eyes and sees Olga Polovski. His gun is still in his hand. He tries to level it at her. She jumps him, in fear of her life. A struggle. The gun goes off. Finis.”

  “Wouldn’t the farmers have heard the shot?” Master Sean asked.

  “At that distance, with a brisk wind blowing, the sea pounding, and a cliff to baffle the sound, it would be hard to hear a pistol shot. That one was further muffled by the fact that the muzzle was against Standish’s head. No, it wouldn’t have been heard.”

  “Why did her footprints only come up to some five yards from the body?” Sir James asked. “There were no prints in the dry sand.”

  “Partly because she smoothed her prints out, partly because of the wind, which blew enough to cover them. She was shaken and worried, but she did take time to search the body for the Phial. Naturally, she didn’t want any evidence of that search around. She went back to consult Danglars-Suv
about what to do next. When she saw the farmers, there was nothing she could do but bluff it through. Which, I must say, she did magnificently.”

  “Indeed.” Sir James le Lein looked both cold and grim. “Where is she now?”

  “By now, she has taken horse and departed.”

  “Riding sidesaddle, no doubt.” His voice was as cold as his expression. “So you let her get away. Why didn’t you arrest her?”

  “On what evidence? Don’t be a fool, Sir James. What would you charge her with? Could you swear in His Majesty’s Court of High Justice that ‘Mistress Jizelle’ was actually Olga Polovski? If I had tried to arrest her, I would have been a corpse by now in that Romany camp, even if I’d had the evidence. Since I did not and do not have that evidence, there would be no point.

  “I would not call it a satisfactory case, no. But you have the Phial, which was what you wanted. I’m afraid the death of Noel Standish will have to be written off as enemy action during the course of a war. It was not first degree murder; it was, as Master Sean put it yesterday, a case of accidental murder.”

  “But—”

  Lord Darcy leaned back in the chair and closed his eyes. “Drop it, Sir James. You’ll get her eventually.”

  Then, very quietly, he began to snore.

  “I’ll be damned!” said Sir James. “I worked all night on my feet and found nothing. He spends all night in bed with the most beautiful woman in Europe and gets all the answers.”

  “It all depends on your method of approach,” Master Sean said. He opened his symbol-decorated carpetbag and took out a large, heavy book.

  “Oh, certainly,” said Sir James bitterly. “Some work vertically, some horizontally.”

  Father Arthur Lyon continued to stare out the window, hearing nothing he didn’t mean to hear.

  “What are you looking up there, in that grimoire?” he asked Master Sean after a moment.

  “Spells, infatuation; removal of,” said Master Sean calmly.

  The Sixteen Keys