Lord Darcy Investigates Page 14

  It took them nearly an hour, even with the help of Master Sean, Goodman Torquin, and the Coronel. They found all sorts of little odds and ends about, but nothing of importance. Certainly no Roumeleian naval treaty.

  “Well, Your Highness,” said the Coronel, “if it’s not in this house, it must be outside, eh? Just you wait, though; one of my lads will turn it up. Old Vauxhall probably dropped it somewhere between here and the manor house. That’s where I set my sharpest lads to work. I know it’s disappointing, though. Tell you what! Let’s all have a good stiff drink. Do us no end of good after all that dusty work. What say?”

  With the exception of the two sorcerers, everybody agreed with him, for once.

  They were all standing around silently, holding their glasses, or staring at walls, when a knock came at the front door, followed immediately by the entrance of Lord Sefton, the Foreign Secretary.

  He was perspiring, which gave an oily look to his red, jowly face. “Ah! Your Highness, my lords, gentlemen. Thought I’d find you here.” He glanced quickly at the men, not knowing any of them but the Duke and the Lord High Admiral. Prince Richard made introductions.

  “Just dropped down to tell Your Highness that the Armsmen have finished searching the house. Haven’t found the blasted thing, so Chief Donal is having them go over it all again. Looking for secret panels and the like. I thought maybe you’d found it here.”

  “No such luck,” Prince Richard said. He looked at Lord Darcy. “How about that, my lord? Should we look for secret panels?”

  Lord Darcy shook his head. “I’ve looked. Wallpapered walls like this don’t lend themselves to such things. There’s no way to hide the cracks. Everywhere they could be, I checked. I’m going to go out to the gallery again and look behind the pictures, though; if there are any secret hiding places, that’s where they’ll be.”

  “Well, then, Lord Darcy,” Lord Sefton said importantly, “have you determined who committed the murder?”

  “Good God!” Coronel Danvers almost dropped his glass. “Murder? What murder?” He jerked his head around to look at Lord Darcy. “You didn’t say anything about a murder. Has there been a murder? What the devil is the fellow talking about?”

  “I’m sure I don’t know,” said Lord Darcy. “Nobody’s said anything about a murder. What are you talking about, Lord Sefton?”

  “Yes,” said Prince Richard, “please explain yourself, my lord.”

  Lord Sefton’s flabby mouth opened, closed, and opened again. “Wuh—wuh—why, Lord Vauxhall! I saw him through the window when you called me down! He was right there! With a gun in his hand! Looked like an Egyptian mummy!” He stopped, swallowed, then, more calmly: “Oh. Was it suicide, then?”

  Lord Darcy looked at the Duke. “You know, Your Highness, I think that might explain the gun. I believe he was thinking of it—before he died.”

  “I think you’re right,” the Duke said solemnly. “He might have thought it would be an easier way to go. Perhaps it would have been. It might have been less—painful.”

  Master Sean shook his head. “ ‘Tisn’t painful, Your Highness. Except mentally. Seeing yourself go all to pieces that way. But the nervous system goes pretty fast. Numbness sets in quite rapidly toward the last.”

  Lord Sefton seemed ready to go to pieces himself. “Buh—buh—but what are you talking about? Chief Donal said Vauxhall’d been killed by Black Magic! Why are you all taking it so calmly? Why?”

  “My lord, please calm yourself and sit down,” Prince Richard said firmly.

  “Yes, my lord, do sit down,” said the Coronel. “Here, let me fetch you a glass of brandy. Straighten you right up.”

  Lord Sefton took the brandy with a shaking hand. “I don’t understand,” he said weakly.

  “Perhaps Master Sean would be good enough to explain,” said His Highness.

  Master Sean thought for a couple of seconds, then said: “How old would you say Lord Vauxhall was, me lord?”

  “Thuh—thirty. Thirty-five.”

  “He was over seventy,” said Master Sean.

  Sefton said nothing. He just looked stunned.

  “These days, thanks to modern healing methods,” Master Sean went on, “a man can expect the Biblical three-score-and-ten as a minimum, if accident or other violence doesn’t carry him off before that. Because of the tremendous psychic burdens they bear, Kings don’t get much past that, but an ordinary fellow can look forward with reasonable confidence to his hundredth birthday, and a quarter of a century more is far from uncommon. We call a man in his sixties ‘middle-aged’, and quite rightly, too.

  “But Healers and sorcerers aren’t miracle-workers. We can all expect to get older; there’s no cure for that. A man slows down; his reflexes aren’t what they were; he gets wrinkles and gray hair and all that sort of thing. We all know it, and we expect it. And, until about a century ago—a little more—there was nothing could be done about it.

  “Then, in 1848, in the early part of the reign of Gwiliam V, two medical thaumaturgists, working independently, discovered a method for retaining the appearance and the vigor of youth. One was a Westphalian named Reinhardt von Horst; the other an Ulsterman named Duivid Shea.

  “Essentially, what they discovered was a method of keeping the entire body in balance, as it were. I’ll not go into the thaumaturgical terminology, but what happens, under the effect of the treatment, is that the body keeps katabolism and anabolism so perfectly balanced that each part contributes to the support of every other part. Do you see?”

  Lord Sefton nodded and held his empty glass out to Coronel Danvers, who promptly refilled it along with his own.

  Lord Darcy had heard Master Sean lecture on this subject before, but he enjoyed listening to Master Sean when he got into his pedagogical mood. For one thing, he lost almost all of his brogue, and for another, he always showed a new facet of any subject, no matter how many times he’d spoken on it before.

  “Now, that sounds awfully good in theory, doesn’t it, my lord?”

  “Unfortunately, it doesn’t work out that way. Take the skin, for instance. It’s one of the first things to go as age progresses. That’s why we get wrinkles and gray hair. The skin loses its youthful elasticity and its ability to pigment hair. The heart, on the other hand, is one of the toughest organs we have. It has to be. It keeps going, day and night, year after year, with only a tiny bit of rest between beats. If a man sees his Healer regularly, the old ticker will keep going strong until the very end. It can be the last thing to go, long after the rest of the body has given up and, to all intents and purposes, died.

  “But this treatment I’ve been talking about spreads the wearing-out process all over the whole body evenly. In order to keep such things as the purely cosmetic functions of the skin going, the heart, the liver, the pancreas, and so on, all have to give up some of their own life expectancy.

  “Eventually, the body reaches the point where every organ in it, every individual cell, is on the verge of death. And when they begin dying, it happens all over, with terrifying rapidity. A matter of minutes, never more than an hour. Everything goes at once. The enzymes go wild. Connecting fibers dissolve. Resistance to microorganisms vanishes.

  “Well—you saw the result. Lord Vauxhall had taken that treatment.”

  “Ugh,” Lord Sefton said. “That’s horrible.”

  “In effect,” Master Sean continued relentlessly, “what Lord Vauxhall did was trade fifty extra years of life for fifty extra years of youth. All of us who knew him suspected it, and it came as no surprise—only as a shock.”

  “Great God,” Lord Sefton said. “A man like Vauxhall, tied in with Black Magic. Horrible.”

  “Well, now, as to that,” said Master Sean, “it is and it isn’t. Black Magic, I mean. It’s not done with evil intent. No ethical thaumaturgist in the Empire would do it, but I understand it’s not considered a bad exchange in some parts of Islam. Leading the sex life of an eighteen-year-old for half a century might appear to some as a good
thing. Depends on your outlook, I suppose. But the end is pretty messy.”

  “Tell me, Master Sean,” Prince Richard said, “how many treatments does it take?”

  “Oh, you have to take the treatments regularly, Your Highness. It’s like an addictive drug, in a way. After a certain length of time, the withdrawal symptoms are pretty bad. The whole body has been weakened, you see, and without the support of additional spells you’d go to pieces. And more slowly. If Lord Vauxhall had stopped, say, twenty-five years ago, he might have lasted a year. But it would have been a rather horrible year.

  “In the long run, of course, there’s nothing a sorcerer can do. I have heard that some sorcerers using the treatment have had patients collapse and die in the middle of a treatment session. I don’t think I’d care for that, meself.”

  “Why have I never heard of this before?” Lord Sefton asked.

  “It’s rarely done,” Master Sean said. “Few magicians can do it; even fewer would do it. And it’s a devilish difficult job. Accordingly, the price is high. Very high. Only a rich man like Lord Vauxhall could afford it. And, o’ course, it’s not widely advertised. We’d rather it were not discussed very much, if you follow me, Lord Sefton.”

  “I do indeed.” The Foreign Secretary drained his glass, and then sat blinking for a minute. At last he said: “Poor old boy. Bad way to go.” He forced a smile. “Damned inconvenient, too. For us, I mean. What do you suppose he did with the treaty?” He looked up at Lord Darcy.

  Lord Darcy had been thumbing tobacco into what he called his “knockabout briar” and drawing it alight. He slowly blew out a cloud of smoke and said: “Well—let’s reconstruct what he must have done.

  “He left the table where my lords had been talking in order to get the leather diplomatic case to put the papers in. While he was gone, he received some sign that the end was near. What would that be, Master Sean?”

  “Probably his hair started coming out, me lord,” the stout little Irish sorcerer replied. “That’s usually the first indication. Then the skin around the eyes. And a sudden feeling of lassitude and weakness.”

  “We can picture the scene, then,” Lord Darcy went on. “I don’t know how I, personally, would react if I suddenly saw myself going like that, but Vauxhall was a pretty tough-minded man and he had known what the end would be like for years. He was prepared for it, in a way. But at the moment of realization, everything else became suddenly unimportant. He didn’t want others to see him; his vanity precluded that. What went through his mind?

  “Lord Vauxhall’s greatest conquests were made in the field of diplomacy, but many of his most pleasurable ones were made right here in this house. He had built it himself and was proud of it and happy with it. I think he wanted to see it one last time. He could die here in peace.

  “I think the gun must have been in a desk drawer or the like; we can check that later, up at the manor. It’s of no matter, really, except that it shows his state of mind.

  “We can imagine him making his decision and coming down here. The important thing we must imagine is what he might have done with that leather-encased treaty. He had, I think, forgotten about it. There it was, under his left arm or in his left hand, and he didn’t even notice it. Like a man who has shoved his spectacles up to his forehead and forgotten them.”

  “Why do you say his left hand, my lord?” Prince Richard asked with a frown.

  “Because he was thinking about his right hand,” Lord Darcy said gently. “There was a handgun in it.”

  The Duke nodded silently.

  “Now, at some time between then and the moment of his death, he did notice it—and put it down somewhere. I hardly think he deliberately concealed it. He had suddenly noticed it and it was rather heavy, so he unburdened himself of it.

  “He came here, poured himself a glass of wine, and—”

  Lord Darcy stopped.

  “The wine,” he said after a half minute.

  “What about it?” Lord Peter asked. “Perfectly good wine, wasn’t it?”

  “Oh, yes. But he wouldn’t drink a Rhenish warm. He wouldn’t keep it in a place where it would become warm. Oh, it’s warm now, but it was cool when he opened it. Had to be.”

  He turned away from them suddenly and looked out the front window at the wanly moonlit scene. “I can’t picture it,” he said, almost as if to himself. “I just can’t see him coming down that slope with a bottle of wine, a gun, and a diplomatic case. Even if he left the case in the manor house, would he have gone all the way down to the cellar for a bottle? No. It would have to be picked up on the way—” He swung round and looked at the Prince.

  “Were the four of you drinking wine this evening?”

  “No, my lord,” said Prince Richard. “Oh, there was Oporto and Xerez on the sideboard with the spirits, but nothing that would have been brought up from the wine cellar.”

  “Then where the devil did he get that bottle of Rhenish?”

  Prince Richard put his hand over his eyes with a sudden gesture. “I forgot all about it! There’s a small cellar right here. Come! I’ll show you.”

  They all trooped after him, through the dining room, back to the service pantry. He strode over to one wall and knelt on the parquet floor. Lord Darcy saw that there was a small, finger-sized hole in one of the wooden blocks that made up the floor and mentally cursed himself for not having seen it before.

  The Duke stuck his finger in the hole and lifted. A block of the wood came up. Beneath it was a heavy steel ring which lay flat until His Highness grasped it and lifted as he stood up. The ring made a handle, and a twenty-eight by twenty-eight section of the floor swung upward on hinges. Below, a ladder led down into gloom.

  Lord Darcy was already getting a candle from the supply he had noticed when the room had been searched previously. He lit it with his pipe lighter, and, pipe clenched between his teeth, descended into the little wine cellar.

  Once on the floor of the underground room, he lifted his candle and looked around.

  “Not much here,” he said after a minute. “Most of the shelves are empty. A few good reds. And, yes, seven bottles of the Schwartzschlosskellar ‘69 and a couple of dozen of the ‘70. Want to come down and help me look, Peter? There’s a candle here in a holder—probably the one Vauxhall used. It looks fresh.”

  The Lord High Admiral came down the ladder as if he were on a ship.

  The men above waited with what can only be called stolid impatience. After what seemed a God-awful long time, they heard:

  “Well, Darcy, so much for that.”

  “Yes. Nothing here. Dammit, where is it?”

  The two men came back up the ladder looking utterly dispirited.

  “A fine big buildup to a big letdown,” Lord Darcy said. “Sorry, Your Highness.” They all went back to the front room.

  Once there, Coronel Danvers went over to the liquor cabinet, finished his drink, picked up his dragoon officers’ cap, adjusted it smartly on his head, turned, and saluted His Highness the Duke.

  “With Your Highness’s permission, I’ll go out and take a look around between here and the manor house. I’m getting a bit fidgety waiting for someone else to find that package.”

  “Certainly, Coronel. Let me know immediately when you find it.”

  “I shall, Your Highness.” And he went briskly out the door.

  “Amazing man, the Coronel,” said the Duke.

  “A good officer,” said the Lord High Admiral. “What he needs is to see some action. Which he may, if we don’t find that treaty.”

  “I believe I’ll go with him,” said Lord Sefton. “Maybe I can be of some help. I’m of no use hanging about here. With your permission, Your Highness?”

  “Of course, my lord.”

  He went out, leaving Lord Darcy with the Prince, the Lord High Admiral, Master Sean, and Goodman Torquin.

  “Well,” Lord Darcy said with a sigh, “I suppose there’s nothing for it but to look behind all the pictures in the gallery. I wish I kne
w what rooms Vauxhall actually went to.”

  “Why, he went to all of ‘em, ye know,” said Torquin.

  Lord Darcy looked down at the small man. “He did?”

  “Oh, yea. Took a complete tour of the house, he did. The locks had just been freshly serviced by myself d’ye see, so I could tell when I opened ‘em. Nobody but him had been in the house since. Funny thing—he went through every door once. And only once. Unlocked the door, went through, locked it behind him. Extraordinary. Must have wanted the house left in tip-top form, eh?”

  There seemed to come a great calm over Lord Darcy as he said: “Yes. Most interesting. May I see that sketch plan again?”

  “Of course, my lord.” Goodman Torquin took his notebook from his bag, extracted the page, and handed it over.

  Lord Darcy scrutinized it carefully, then handed it back with a brief thanks. Then he wandered about the room, staring straight ahead as if he were looking at something others could not see. No one said anything. After a few minutes, he stopped suddenly and looked at Prince Richard. “I trust that the plumbing is functioning in this house, Your Highness?”

  “I should think so. Like the gas, it’s turned on from outside, and the servants would have made everything ready for him when they were told he was coming home.”

  “That’s good. If you will pardon me, gentlemen?” He opened the door to the west of the fireplace and went into the front bedroom, closing the door behind him.

  “He’s a deep ‘un, his lordship, eh, Master?” said Torquin the Locksman.

  “Probably the most brilliant deductive reasoner on the face of the Earth,” Master Sean said. “And possibly the most brilliant inductive reasoner. I wonder what he saw in that sketch plan of yours? He saw something. I know him well.”

  “Let’s take a look and see if we can spot it,” Prince Richard said. “I think we have all the evidence he has. If he’s come up with some kind of answer, we should be able to.”

  “As my friend Torquin, here, might say, ‘Would ye care to put a gold sovereign on it?’ ” Master Sean said with a grin.

  “No,” said His Royal Highness.