Lord Darcy Investigates Read online

  Lord Darcy looked utterly guileless. “Not really, Lord Gisors. However, if you should care to discuss the death of his lordship, it might clear up some of the mysterious circumstances surrounding it. I know that none of you were in that room at the time of the—ah—incident. I am not looking for alibis. But have any of you any conjectures? How did the late Count de la Vexin die?”

  Silence fell like a psychic fog, heavy and damp.

  Each looked at the others to speak first, and nobody spoke.

  * * *

  “Well,” Lord Darcy said after a time, “let’s attack it from another direction. Sergeant Andray, of all the people here, you were apparently the only eyewitness. What was your impression of what happened?’ ‘

  The sergeant blinked, sat up a little straighter, and cleared his throat nervously. “Well, your lordship, at a few minutes before ten o’clock, Guardsman Jaime and I were—”

  “No, no, Sergeant,” Lord Darcy interrupted gently. “Having read the deposition you and Jaime gave to Chief Jaque, I am fully conversant with what you saw. I want to know your theories about the cause of what you saw.”

  After a pause, Sergeant Andray said, “It looked to me as if he’d jumped through the window, your lordship. But I have no idea why he would do such a thing.”

  “You saw nothing that might have made him jump?”

  Sergeant Andray frowned. “The only thing was that ball of light. Jaime and I mentioned it in my report.”

  “Yes. ‘A ball of yellowish-white light that seemed to dance all over the room for a few seconds, then dropped to the floor and vanished,’ you said. Is that right?”

  “I should have said, ‘dropped toward the floor,’ your lordship. I couldn’t have seen it actually hit the floor. Not from that angle.”

  “Very good, Sergeant! I wondered if you would correct that minor discrepancy, and you have done so to my satisfaction.” Lord Darcy thought for a moment. “Now. You then went over to the body, examined it, and determined to your satisfaction that his lordship was dead. Did you touch him?”

  “Only his wrist, to try to find a pulse. There was none, and the angle of his head…” He stopped.

  “I quite understand. Meanwhile, you had sent Guardsman Jaime for the fire wagon. When it came, you used the extension ladder to go up and unlock the door, to let the other guardsmen in. Was the gaslight still on?”

  “No. It had been blown out. I shut off the gas, and then went over and opened the door. There was enough light from the yard-lamps for me to see by.”

  “And you found nothing odd or out of the way?”

  “Nothing and nobody, your lordship,” the sergeant said firmly. “Nor did any of the other guardsmen.”

  “That’s straightforward enough. You searched the room then?”

  “Not really searched it. We looked around to see if there was anyone there, using hand torches. But there’s no place to hide in that room. We had called the Armsmen; when they came, they looked more carefully. Nothing.”

  “Very well. Now, when I arrived, that gaslight over the window was lit. Who lit it?”

  “Chief Master-at-Arms Jaque Toile, your lordship.”

  “I see. Thank you, Sergeant.” He looked at the others, one at a time. Their silence seemed interminable. “Lady Beverly, have you anything to add to this discussion?”

  Lady Beverly looked at Father Villiers with her calm eyes.

  The priest was looking at her. “My advice is to speak, my child. We must get to the bottom of this.”

  I see, Lord Darcy thought. There is something here that has been discussed in the confessional. The Reverend Father cannot speak—but he can advise her to.

  Lady Beverly looked back to Lord Darcy. “You want a theory, my lord? Very well.” There was a terrible sadness in her voice. “His late lordship, my father, was punished by God for his unbelief. Father Villiers has told me that this could not be so, but”—she closed her eyes—“I greatly fear that it is.”

  “How so, my lady?” Darcy asked gently.

  “He was a Materialist. He was psychically blind. He denied that others had the God-given gift of the Sight and the Talent. He said it was all pretense, all hogwash. He was closed off to all emotion.”

  She was no longer looking at Lord Darcy; she was looking through and beyond him, as though her eyes were focused somewhere on a far horizon.

  “He was not an evil man,” she continued without shifting her gaze, “but he was sinful.” Suddenly her eyes flickered, and she was looking directly into Lord Darcy’s gray eyes. “Do you know that he forbade a wedding between my brother and the Damoselle Madelaine because he could not see the love between them? He wanted Gisors to marry Evelynne de Saint-Brieuc.”

  Darcy’s eyes moved rapidly to Lord Gisors and Madelaine MacKenzie. “No, I did not know that. How many did?”

  It was Captain Sir Roderique who spoke. “We all did, my lord. He made a point of it. The Count forbade it, and I forbade it. But legally I had no right to forbid my daughter.”

  “But why did he—”

  Lord Darcy’s question was cut off abruptly by Lady Beverly.

  “Politics, my lord. And because he could not see true love. So God punished him for his obstinacy. May I be excused, my lord? I would hear the Three Hours.”

  Quickly, Father Villiers said: “Would you excuse us both, my lord?”

  “Certainly, Reverend Sir, Lady Beverly,” Lord Darcy said, rising. His eyes watched them in silence as they left the room.

  Half past noon.

  Lord Darcy and Master Sean stood in the courtyard below the Red Tower gazing at a small sea of broken glass surrounded by a ring of Armsmen and Guardsmen.

  “Well, my dear Sean, what did you think of our little breakfast conversation?”

  “Fascinating, me lord,” said the sorcerer. “I think I’m beginning to see where you’re going. Lady Beverly’s mind is not exactly straight, is it?”

  “Let’s put it that she seems to have some weird ideas about God,” Lord Darcy said. “Are you ready for this experiment, Master Sean?”

  “I am, me lord.”

  “Don’t you need an anchor man for this sort of thing?”

  Master Sean nodded. “Of course, me lord. Chief Jaque is bringing Journeyman Emile, forensic sorcerer for the County. I met him last night; he’s a good man: he’ll be a Master one day.

  “Actually, me lord, the spells are quite simple. According to the Law of Contiguity, any piece of a structure remains a part of the structure. We can return it to the last state in which it was still a part of the contiguous whole—completely, if necessary, but you only want to return it to the point after the fracture but before the dispersal. Doing it isn’t difficult; it’s holding it in place afterwards. That’s why I need an anchor man.”

  “I’ll take my measurements and make my observations as quickly as possible,” Lord Darcy promised. “Ah! There they are!”

  Master Sean followed his lordship’s gaze toward the main gate of the courtyard. Then, very solemnly, he said: “Ah, yes. One man is wearing the black-and-silver uniform of a Chief Master-at-Arms; the other is wearing the working garb of a Journeyman Sorcerer. By which I deduce that they are not a squad of Imperial Marines.”

  “Astute of you, my dear Sean: keep working at it. You will become an expert detective on the same day that I become a Master Sorcerer. Chief Jaque and I will go up to the tower room while you and Journeyman Emile work here. Carry on.”

  * * *

  Lord Darcy toiled up eight flights of stairs, past several offices, vaguely wishing he were in the castle at Evreux, where the Countess D’Evreux’s late brother had installed a steam-powered elevator. No fool he, Lord Darcy thought.

  At the top landing, an Armsman and a Guardsman came immediately to attention as his lordship appeared. He nodded at them. “Good afternoon.” With thumb and forefinger he probed his lefthand waistcoat pocket. Then he probed the other. “Is that room locked?” he asked.

  The Armsman tested it. “Yes, your lordship.”

  “I seem to have mislaid the key. Is there another?”

  “There is a duplicate, your lordship,” said the Guardsman, “but it’s locked up in Captain Sir Roderique’s office. I’ll fetch it for you, if you like; it’s only two floors down.”

  “No. No need.” Lord Darcy produced the key from his right-hand waistcoat pocket. “I’ve found it. Thank you, anyway, Guardsman. Chief Jaque will be up in a few minutes.”

  He unlocked the door, opened it, went in, and closed the door behind him.

  Some three minutes later, when Chief Jaque opened the door, he said: “Looking for something, my lord?”

  Lord Darcy was on his knees, searching a cupboard, moving things aside, taking things out. “Yes, my dear Chief; I am looking for the wherewithal to hang a murderer. At first, I thought it more likely it would be in one of the high cupboards, but they contain nothing but glassware. So I decided it must be—ah!” He pulled his head back out of the cupboard and straightened up, still on his knees. From his fingers dangled a six-foot length of ordinary-looking cotton rope.

  “Bit scanty to hang a man,” Chief Jaque said dubiously.

  “For this murderer, it will be quite adequate,” said Lord Darcy, standing up. He looked closely at the rope. “If only it—”

  He was interrupted by a halloo from below. He went to the shattered remains of the window and looked down. “Yes, Master Sean?” he called.

  “We’re ready to begin, me lord.” the round little Irish sorcerer shouted up. “Please stand back.”

  In the courtyard, Armsmen and Guardsmen stood in a large circle, facing outward from the center, surrounding the fragments from the broken window. Journeyman Emile, a short, lean man with a Parisian accent, had carefully chalked a pale blue line around the area, drawing it three inches behind the bootheels of the surrounding guard.

  “It is that I am ready, Master,” he said in his atrocious patois.

  “Excellent,” said Master Sean. “Get the field set up and hold it. I will give you all the strength I can.”

  “But yes, Master.” He opened his symbol-decorated carpetbag—similar to in general, but differing from in detail, Master Sean’s own—and took out two mirror-polished silvery wands which were so deeply incised with symbol engraving that they glittered in the early afternoon sunlight. “For the Cattell Effect, it is that it is necessary for the silver, no?”

  “It is,” agreed Master Sean. “You will be handling the static spells while I take care of the kinetic. Are you ready?”

  “I am prepared,” Journeyman Emile said. “Proceed.” He took his stance just inside the blue-chalked circle, facing the Red Tower and held up his wands in a ninety-degree V.

  Master Sean took an insufflator from his own carpetbag and filled it with a previously-charged powder. Then moving carefully around the circle, he puffed out clouds of the powder, which settled gently to the courtyard floor, touching each fragment of glass with at least one grain of the powder.

  When he had completed the circle, Master Sean stood in front of Journeyman Emile. He put the insufflator back in his carpetbag and took out a short, eighteen-inch wand of pale yellow crystal, with which he inscribed a symbol in the air.

  The Cattell Effect began to manifest itself.

  Slowly at first, then more rapidly, the fragments from the shattered window began to move.

  Like a reverse cascade in slow motion, they lifted and gathered themselves together, a myriad of sparkling shards moving upward, fountaining glitteringly toward the empty window casement eighty feet above. There was a tinkling like fairy bells as occasional fragments struck each other on the way up as they had struck on the way down.

  Only the superb discipline of the Armsmen and Guardsmen kept them from turning to see.

  Up, up, went the bits and pieces, like sharp-edged raindrops falling toward the sky.

  At the empty opening, they coalesced and came together to form a window—that was not quite a window. It bulged.

  * * *

  Inside the late Count’s upper room, Lord Darcy watched the flying fragments return whence they had come. When the stasis was achieved, Lord Darcy glanced at the Chief Master-at-Arms.

  “Come, my dear Jaque; we must not tax our sorcerers more than necessary.” He walked over to the window, followed by the Chief Armsman.

  The lozenged window was neither a shattered wreckage nor a complete whole. It bulged outward curiously, each piece almost touching its neighbor, but not fitted closely to it. The leading between the lozenges was stretched and twisted outward, as if the whole window had been punched from within by a gigantic fist and had stopped stretching at the last moment.

  “Not quite sure I understand this,” said Chief Jaque.

  “This is the way the window was a fraction of a second after his lordship, the late Count, struck it. At that time, it was pushed outward and broken, but the fragments had yet to scatter. I direct your attention to the central portion of the window.”

  The Chief Master-at-Arms took in the scene with keen eyes. “See what you mean. Like a mold, a casting. There’s the chin—the chest—the belly—the knees.”

  “Exactly. Now try to get yourself into a position such that you would make an impression like that,” Lord Darcy said.

  The Chief grinned. “Don’t need to. Obvious. Calves bent back at the knees. Head bent back so the chin hit first. Chest and belly hit first.” He narrowed his eyes. “Didn’t jump out: didn’t fall out. Pushed from behind—violently.”

  “Precisely so. Excellent, Chief Jaque. Now let us make our measurements as rapidly and as accurately as possible,” Lord Darcy said, “being careful not to touch that inherently unstable structure. If we do, we’re likely to get badly-cut hands when the whole thing collapses.”

  Below, in the courtyard, an unmoving tableau presented itself. Armsmen and Guardsmen stood at parade rest, while the two sorcerers stood like unmoving statues, their eyes and minds on the window above, their wands held precisely and confidently.

  Minute after minute went by, and the strain was beginning to tell. Then Lord Darcy’s voice came: “Anytime you’re ready, Master Sean!”

  Without moving, Master Sean said sharply, “Sergeant! Get your men well back! Move ‘em!”

  The Sergeant-at-Arms called out orders, and both Armsmen and Guardsmen rapidly moved back toward the main gate. Then they turned to watch.

  The magicians released control. The powerful forces which had held up the glass shards no longer obtained, and gravity took over. There was an avalanche, a waterfall of sparkling shards. They slid and tumbled down the stone wall with a great and joyous noise and subsided into a heap at the foot of the Red Tower.

  The display had not been as spectacular as the reconstruction of the window had been, but it was quite satisfactory to the Armsmen and Guardsmen.

  * * *

  A few minutes later, Master Sean toiled his way up the stairs and entered the late Count’s laboratory.

  “Ah! Master Sean,” said Lord Darcy, “where is Journeyman Emile?”

  The Irish sorcerer’s smile was a little wan. “He’s headed home, me lord. That’s exhaustin’ work, and he hasn’t trained for it as I have.”

  “I trust you conveyed to him my compliments. That was a marvelous piece of work the two of you did.”

  “Thank you, me lord. I gave Journeyman Emile my personal compliments and assured him of yours. Did you get what you wanted, my lord?”

  “I did, indeed. There is but one more thing. A simple test, but I’m sure it will be most enlightening. First, I will call your attention to those two five-gallon carboys which Chief Jaque and I have just discovered in one of the lower cupboards.”

  The carboys, which had been lifted up to the worktable, stood side by side, labels showing. One of them, with scarcely half an inch of pale yellowish liquid in it, was labeled Concentrated Aqueous Spirit of Niter. The other, half full of a clear oily-looking liquid, was Concentrated Oil of Vitriol.

  “I suppose you knew you’d find ‘em, me lord?” Master Sean said.

  “I didn’t know; I merely suspected. But there presence certainly strengthens my case. Do they suggest anything to you?”

  Master Sean shrugged. “I know what they are, me lord, but I’m not a specialist in the Khemic Arts.”

  “Nor am I.” Lord Darcy took out his pipe and thumbed tobacco into it. “But an Officer of the King’s Justice should be widely read enough to be a jack-of-all-trades, at least in theory. Do you know what happens when a mixture of those acids is added to common cotton?”

  “No—wait.” Master Sean frowned, then shook his head. “I’ve read it somewhere, but—the details won’t come.”

  “You get nitrated cotton,” Lord Darcy said.

  Chief Jaque coughed delicately. “Well, what does that do, your lordship?”

  “I think I can show you,” his lordship said with a rather mysterious smile. From his wallet, he took the four-inch piece of blackened rope he had found near the door the evening before. Then he picked up the six-foot piece of clean rope he had found half an hour before. Using his sharp pocketknife, he cut a small piece from the end of each and put them on the lab table about eighteen inches from each other. “Chief Jaque, take these long pieces and put them on the desk, well away from here. I shouldn’t want to lose all my evidence. Thank you. Now watch.”

  He lit each bit with his pipe lighter. They both flared in a sudden hissing burst of yellow-white flame and were gone, leaving no trace. Lord Darcy calmly lit his pipe.

  Master Sean’s eyes lit up. “Aaa-hah!”

  Chief Jaque said: “The demon!”

  “Precisely, my dear Chief. Now we must go down and talk to the rest of the dramatis personae.”

  As they went back down the stairs, Master Sean said: “But why was the short piece covered with dirt, me lord?”

  “Not dirt, my dear Sean; lampblack.”

  “Lampblack? But why?”

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