Lord Darcy Investigates Read online

  He looked around quickly then went to the door and opened it.

  “Corporal, is there a hook to lower that oil lamp?”

  “Blessed if I know, my lord,” said the Corporal of the Guard. “His lordship never used it, the lamp, I mean. Hasn’t been used as long as I know. Doubt if it has any oil in it, even, my lord.”

  “I see. Thank you.” He closed the door again. “Well, so much for additional illumination. Hm-m-m. Dr. Pateley, you measured the body; how tall was My Lord Count?”

  “Five feet six, my lord.”

  “That accounts for it, then.”

  “Accounts for what, my lord?”

  “There are seven gas jets in this room. Six of them are some seven and a half feet from the floor; the seventh, over the window, is nine feet from the floor. Why did he habitually light that one first? Because it is only six and a half feet from the desk top, and he could reach it.”

  “Then how did he reach the others if he needed more light?” Dr. Pateley asked, adjusting his pince-nez.

  Master Sean grinned, but said nothing.

  Lord Darcy sighed. “My dear chirurgeon, I honestly think you never look at anything but human bodies, ill, dying, or dead. What do you see over there?” He pointed to the northeast corner of the room.

  Dr. Pateley turned. “Oh. A ladder.” He looked rather embarrassed. “Certainly. Of course.”

  “Had it not been here,” Lord Darcy said, “I would be quite astonished. How else would he get to his books and…”

  His voice trailed off. His eyes were still on the ladder. “Hmm-m. Interesting.” He went over to the ladder, tested it, then climbed up it to the ceiling. He bent his head back to look at the ceiling carefully. “Aha. This was the old watchtower.” He pushed up with one hand, then with both. Overhead, a two-and-a-half foot panel swung back on protesting hinges. Lord Darcy climbed on up and hoisted himself through the opening.

  He looked around the roof of the tower, which was surrounded by crenellated walls. Then he came back down, closing the panel.

  “Nothing up there, apparently, but I’ll have to come back by daylight to check again, more thoroughly.”

  Then, without another word, he moved silently around the room, looking intently at everything but touching nothing. He looked up at the ceiling. “Heavy brass hooks,” he murmured. “Why? Oh, of course. To suspend various pieces of his apparatus. Very good.”

  He had covered almost all the room before he finally came across something that really piqued his interest. He was standing near the door, his eyes searching the floor, when he said: “Aha! And what might this be?”

  He knelt down, looked down at the object carefully, then picked it up between thumb and forefinger.

  “It looks,” said Master Sean, “like a four-inch piece of half-inch cotton rope, me lord. Very dirty, too.”

  His Lordship smiled dryly. “That appears to be exactly what it is, my good Sean. Interesting.” He examined it closely.

  “I would be obliged, my lord,” said Master Sean in a semiformal manner, “if you would explain why it is so interesting.”

  Dr. Pateley merely blinked behind his pince-nez and said nothing.

  “You have noticed, my dear Sean,” Lord Darcy said, “how immaculately clean this laboratory is. It is well dusted, well cleaned. Everything seems to be in its place. There are no papers scattered about. There are no messy areas. The place is as neat and as well-kept as a cavalry officer’s sabre.” He made a sweeping gesture to take in the whole room.

  “It is, me lord, but—” Master Sean began.

  “Then what, may I ask,” His Lordship continued, “is a short piece of dirty rope doing on the floor?”

  “I don’t know, me lord.” Master Sean was honestly puzzled. “What is its significance?”

  Lord Darcy’s smile broadened. “I haven’t the foggiest notion in the world, Master Sean. But I have no doubt that there is some significance. What it is will await upon further information.”

  Another dozen minutes of inspection revealed nothing further to Lord Darcy’s scrutiny. “Very well,” he said, “we’ll leave the rest of this until the morrow, when the light’s better. Now let us go down and discuss this affair with those concerned. We’ll get little sleep tonight, I fear.”

  Master Sean cleared his throat apologetically. “My lord, the good chirurgeon and I, not being qualified for interrogating witnesses, had best occupy our time with the autopsy. Eh?”

  “Eh? Oh, certainly, if you wish. Yes, of course.” This, Lord Darcy thought, is what comes of assuming that others, even one’s closest associates, have the same interests as oneself.

  * * *

  Within St. Martin’s Hall, the clock on the mantelpiece solemnly struck the quarter-hour. It was fifteen minutes after two on the morning of Good Friday, 12 April 1974.

  The Reverend Father Villiers stood near the fireplace, looking up at Lord Darcy. He was not tall—five-six or so—but his lean, compact body had an aura of physical strength about it. He was quick and accurate in his movements, but never seemed jerky or nervous. There was a calm awareness in him that showed spiritual strength as well. He was, Lord Darcy judged, in his forties, with only a faint touch of gray in his hair and mustache. The fine character lines in his handsome face showed strength, kindliness, and a sense of humor. But at the moment he was not smiling: there was a feeling of tragedy in his eyes.

  “They are all in the Chapel, my lord,” he was saying in his brisk, pleasant, low tenor. “Lord Gisors, Lady Beverly, the Damoselle Madelaine, and Sir Roderique MacKenzie.”

  “Who are the latter pair, Reverend Sir?” Lord Darcy asked.

  “Sir Roderique is Captain of the Count’s Own Guard. The Damoselle Madelaine is his daughter.”

  “I shall not disturb them, Reverend Father,” Lord Darcy said. “To seek solace before our Sacramental Lord on His Altar of Repose on this night is the sacrosanct right of every Christian, and should not be abrogated save in dire emergency.”

  “You don’t consider murder an emergency?”

  “Before its commission, yes. Not after. What makes you think it was murder, Reverend Father?”

  The priest smiled a little. “It wasn’t suicide. I spoke to him shortly before he went over to the Red Tower: as a Sensitive, I’d have picked up any suicidal emotions easily. And it could hardly have been an accident; if he’d merely lost his balance and fallen, he’d have landed at the foot of the wall, not eighteen or twenty feet away.”

  “Eighteen,” murmured Lord Darcy.

  “Ergo—murder,” Father Villiers said.

  “I agree, Reverend Father,” Lord Darcy said. “The theory has been advanced that My Lord Count saw some sort of apparition which so frightened him that he leaped to his death through a closed window rather than face it. What is your opinion?”

  “That would be Chief Jaque.” The priest shook his head. “Hardly. His late lordship would not even have sensed the presence of a true psychic apparition, and a phony—a piece of trickery—would have neither fooled nor frightened him.”

  “He couldn’t have perceived a true psychic apparition?”

  Father Villiers shook his head once more. “He was an example of that truly rare case, the psychically blind.”

  Ever since St. Hilary of Walsingham had formulated his analog equations on the Laws of Magic in the late Thirteenth Century, scientific sorcerers had realized that those laws could not be used by everyone. Some had the Talent and some did not. It was no more to be expected that everyone could be a sorcerer or healer or sensitive than to expect everyone to be a musician, a sculptor, or a chirurgeon.

  But the inability to play a violin does not mean an inability to enjoy—or not enjoy—someone else’s playing. One does not have to be a musician to perceive that music exists.

  Unless one is tone-deaf.

  To use another analogy: There are a few—very few—men and women who are totally color-blind. They are not just slightly crippled, like those who cannot distinguish between red and green; they see all things in shades of gray. To them, the world is colorless. It is difficult for such a person to understand why or how three identical objects, all the same shade of gray, can be identified by someone else as “red,” “blue,” and “green.” To the totally color-blind, those words are without referents and are meaningless.

  “His late lordship,” the priest said, “had an early desire to go into the priesthood, to forgo his right to the County Seat in favor of his younger brother. He could not do so, of course. An un-Talented, psychically blind man would be as useless to the Church as a color-blind man would be to the Artists’ Guild.”

  Naturally, Lord Darcy thought, that would not exclude the late de la Vexin from an executive position in His Imperial Majesty’s Government. One doesn’t need magical Talent to run a County effectively.

  For over eight centuries, since the time of Henry II, the Anglo-French Empire had held its own and expanded. Henry’s son, Richard, after narrowly escaping death from a crossbow bolt in 1199, had taken firm control of his kingdom and expanded it. At his death in 1219, his nephew Arthur had increased the kingdom’s strength even more. The Great Reform, during the reign of Richard the Great, in the late Fifteenth Century, had put the Empire on a solid working basis, using psychic science to establish a society that had been both stable and progressive for nearly half a millennium.

  “Where is My Lord the late Count’s younger brother?” Lord Darcy asked.

  “Captain Lord Louis is with the New England Fleet,” Father Villiers said. “At present, I believe, stationed at Port Holy Cross on the coast of Mechicoe.”

  Well, that eliminates him as a suspect, Lord Darcy told himself. “Tell me, Reverend Father,” he said aloud, “do you know anything about the laboratory his late lordship maintained on the top floor of the Red Tower?”

  “A laboratory? Is that what it is? No, I didn’t know. He went up there regularly, but I have no idea what he did up there. I assumed it was some harmless hobby. Wasn’t it?”

  “It may have been,” Lord Darcy admitted. “I have no reason to believe otherwise. Have you ever been in that room?”

  “No; never. Nor, to my knowledge, has anyone else but the Count. Why?”

  “Because,” Lord Darcy said thoughtfully, “it is a very odd laboratory. And yet there is no doubt that it is some kind of laboratory for scientific research.”

  Father Villiers touched the cross at his breast. “Odd? How?” Then he dropped his hand and chuckled. “No. Not Black Magic, of course. He didn’t believe in magic at all—black, white, purple, green, red, or rainbow. He was a Materialist.”

  “Oh?”

  “An outgrowth of his psychic blindness, you see,” the priest explained. “He wanted to be a priest. He was refused. Therefore, he rejected the basis for his refusal. He refused to believe that anything which he could not detect with his own senses existed. He set out to prove the basic tenet of Materialism: ‘All phenomena in the Universe can be explained as a result of nonliving forces reacting with nonliving matter.’ ”

  “Yes,” said Lord Darcy. “A philosophy which I, as a living being, find difficult to understand, to say nothing of accepting. So that is the purpose of his laboratory—to bring the scientific method to bear on the Theory of Materialism.”

  “So it would appear, my lord,” said Father Villiers. “Of course, I have not seen his late lordship’s laboratory, but—”

  “Who has?” Lord Darcy asked.

  The priest shook his head. “No one that I know of. No one.”

  Lord Darcy glanced at his watch. “Is there anyone else in the Chapel besides the family, Reverend Sir?”

  “Several. There is an outer door through which the occupants within the walls can come in directly from the courtyard. And there are four of the Sisters from the convent.”

  “Then I could slip in unnoticed for an hour of devotion before the Blessed Sacrament at the Altar of Repose?”

  “Most assuredly, my lord; there are people coming and going all the time. But I suggest you use the public entrance; if you use the family entrance, someone is sure to notice.”

  “Thank you, Reverend Father. At what hour will you celebrate the Mass of the Presanctified?”

  “The service begins at eight o’clock.”

  “And how do I get to this outside door? Through that door and turn to my left, I believe?”

  “Exactly, my lord.”

  Three minutes later, Lord Darcy was kneeling in the back of the Chapel, facing the magnificently flowered Altar of Repose, his eyes on the veiled ciborium that stood at its center.

  An hour and a quarter after that, he was sound asleep in the room which had been assigned him by the seneschal.

  * * *

  After the abrupt liturgical finale of the Mass of the Presanctified at a little past ten on Good Friday morning, Lord Darcy and Master Sean stood waiting outside the family entrance of the Chapel. Dr. Pateley had excused himself immediately; he had volunteered to help one of the local men to prepare the late Count’s body for the funeral. “Put things back the way we found ‘em, my lord,” was the way he worded it.

  Darcy and the stout little Irish sorcerer had placed themselves at the back of the congregation and had come out ahead of the family who were in their reserved pew at the front.

  “I trust,” murmured his lordship very softly, “that Almighty God has reserved a special place of punishment for people who commit murder during Holy Week.”

  “Aye, me lord; I know what you mean,” Master Sean whispered. “Meself, I enjoy the Three Hours of Sermon on Good Friday—especially by a really good preacher, which Father Villiers is reputed to be. But—’business before pleasure.’ ” He paused, then went on in the same low tone. “D’you expect to clear up the case soon?”

  “Before the day is out, I think.”

  Master Sean looked startled. “You know who did it then?” He kept his voice down.

  “Who? Of course. That should be plain. But I need more data on how and why.”

  Master Sean blinked. “But you haven’t even questioned anyone yet, my lord.”

  “No need to for that. But my case is as yet incomplete.”

  Master Sean shook his head and chuckled. “Your touch of the Talent, me lord.”

  “You know, my dear Sean, you have almost convinced me that I do have a touch of the Talent. How did you put it?”

  “Like all great detectives, my lord, you have the ability to leap from an unjustified assumption to a foregone conclusion without passing through the distance between. Then you back up and fill in.” He paused again. “Well, then, who—”

  “Ssst! Here they come.”

  * * *

  Three people had come out of the Chapel: Lord Gisors, Lady Beverly, and the Damoselle Madelaine MacKenzie.

  Master Sean’s lips barely moved and his voice was barely audible as he said: “Wonder where the rest of the Clan MacKenzie went, me lord?”

  “We’ll ask.” Both of them knew that Captain Sir Roderique MacKenzie and his son, Sergeant Andray, had been sitting in the family pew with the others.

  The three came up the hallway toward the big fireplace in St. Martin’s Hall, where Lord Darcy and Master Sean were waiting.

  Lord Darcy stepped forward and bowed. “My Lord de la Vexin.”

  The young man looked startled. “No. My fa—” He stopped. It was the first time anyone had ever addressed him as “Lord de la Vexin.” Of course it was only a courtesy title; he would not be the Count of the Vexin until his title had been validated by the King.

  Lord Darcy, seeing the young man’s confusion, went on: “I am Lord Darcy, my lord. This is Master Sean. We appreciate the invitation to breakfast that was conveyed to us by your seneschal.”

  The new Lord de la Vexin had recovered his composure. “Ah, yes, I am pleased to meet you, my lord. This is my sister, Lady Beverly, and the Damoselle Madelaine. Come; breakfast should be ready for us immediately.” He led the way.

  The breakfast was delicious, not sumptuous: small, exquisitely poached quinelles de poisson; portions of eggs Boucher; hot cross buns; milk and caffe.

  Captain Roderique and Sergeant Andray made their appearance a few minutes before the meal began, followed almost immediately by Father Villiers.

  Conversation during breakfast consisted only of small talk, allowing Lord Darcy to observe the others of the party without being obtrusive about it.

  De la Vexin still seemed dazed, as though his mind were somewhere else, only partly pulled back by conversation. The Damoselle Madelaine, blond and beautiful, behaved with decorum, but there was a bright, anticipatory gleam in her eyes that Lord Darcy did not care for. Lady Beverly, some ten years older than her brother, her dark hair faintly tinged with gray at the temples, looked as though she had been born a widow—or a cloistered nun; she was quiet, soft-spoken, and self-effacing, but underneath Lord Darcy detected a firmness and intelligence kept in abeyance. Captain Sir Roderique MacKenzie was perhaps an inch taller than Lord Darcy—lean, with an upright, square-shouldered posture, a thick light-brown mustache and beard, and a taciturn manner typical of the Franco-Scot. His son was a great deal like him, except that he was smooth-shaven and his hair was lighter, though not as blond as that of his sister Madelaine. Both had an air about them that was not quite either that of the military or that of the Keepers of the King’s Peace, but partook of both. They were Guardsmen and showed it.

  Father Villiers seemed preoccupied, and Lord Darcy could understand why. The symbolic death of the Lord Jesus and the actual death of the Lord de la Vexin were too closely juxtaposed for the good Father’s own spiritual comfort. Being a priest is not an easy life-game to play.

  After breakfast, a fruit compote of Spanish oranges was served, followed by more caffe.

  The late Count’s son cleared his throat. “My lords, ladies, gentlemen,” he began. He paused for a moment and swallowed. “Several of you have addressed me as ‘de la Vexin.’ I would prefer, until this matter is cleared up, to retain my title of Gisors. Uh—if you please.” Another pause. He looked at Lord Darcy. “You came here to question us, my lord?”

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