Lord Darcy Investigates Read online

  “Of course! Didn’t I make that clear?”

  “Not very.” Lord Darcy picked up the papers again. “Now let’s get a few things straight. How did the body come to be identified as Bourke, and where is the real Bourke? Or whoever he was.”

  “The man Standish was following checked into the Green Seagull Inn under that name,” Sir James said. “He’d used the same name in England. He was a great deal like Standish in height, weight, and coloring. He disappeared that night, and we’ve found no trace of him since.”

  Lord Darcy nodded thoughtfully. “It figures. Young gentleman arrives at village inn. Body of young gentleman found next morning. Since there is only one young gentleman in plain sight, they are the same young gentleman. Identifying a total stranger is a chancy thing at best.”

  “Exactly. That’s why I held up my own identification.”

  “I understand. Now, exactly how did you happen to be in St.-Matthew’s-Church that night?” Lord Darcy asked.

  “Well, as soon as Standish was fairly certain that his quarry had settled down at the Green Seagull, he rode for Caen and sent a message to my office, here in Rouen. I took the first train, but by the time I got there, they were both missing.”

  “Yes.” Lord Darcy sighed. “Well, I suppose we’d best be getting down there. I’ll have to ask His Royal Highness to order me to, so you may as well come along with me and explain the whole thing all over again to Duke Richard.”

  Sir James looked pained. “I suppose so. We want to get there as soon as possible, or the whole situation will become impossible. Their silly Midsummer Fair starts the day after tomorrow, and there are strangers showing up already.”

  Lord Darcy closed his eyes. “That’s all we need. Complications.”

  Master Sean went to the door of the office. “I’ll have Ciardi pack our bags, me lord. Looks like a long stay.”

  * * *

  The little village of St.-Matthew’s-Church was transforming itself. The Fair proper was to be held in a huge field outside of town, and the tents were already collecting on the meadcow. There was, of course, no room in the village itself for people to stay; certainly the little Green Seagull couldn’t hold a hundredth of them. But a respectable tent-city had been erected in another big field, and there was plenty of parking space for horse-wagons and the like.

  In the village, the storefronts were draped with bright bunting, and the shopkeepers were busy marking up all the prices. Both pubs had been stocking up on extra potables for weeks. For nine days, the village would be full of strangers going about their hectic business, disrupting the peace of the local inhabitants, bringing with them a strange sort of excitement. Then they would go, leaving behind acres of ugly rubbish and bushels of beautiful cash.

  In the meanwhile, a glorious time would be had by all.

  Lord Darcy cantered his horse along the River Road up from Caen and entered St.-Matthew’s-Church at noon on that bright sunshiny day, dressed in the sort of riding clothes a well-to-do merchant might wear. He wasn’t exactly incognito, but he didn’t want to attract attention, either. Casually, he made his way through the already gathering throngs toward the huge old church dedicated to St. Matthew, which had given the village its name. He guided his mount over to the local muffin square, where the array of hitching posts stood, tethered his horse, and walked over to the church.

  * * *

  The Reverend Father Arthur Lyon, Rector of the Church of St.-Matthew, and, ipso facto, Rector of St.-Matthew’s-Church, was a broad-shouldered man in his fifties who stood a good two inches taller than six feet. His bald head was fringed with silvery hair, and his authoritative, pleasant face was usually smiling. He was sitting behind his desk in his office.

  There came a rap at his office door. A middle-aged woman came in quickly and said: “Sorry to bodder dee, Fahder, but dere’s a Lord Darcy to see dee.”

  “Show him in, Goodwife Anna.”

  Lord Darcy entered Father Art’s office to find the priest waiting with outstretched hand. “It’s been some time, my lord,” he said with a broad smile. “Good to see you again.”

  “I may say the same. How have you been, old friend?”

  “Not bad. Pray, sit down. May I offer you a drink?”

  “Not just now, Father.” He took the proffered seat. “I understand you have a bit of a problem here.”

  Father Art leaned back in his chair and folded his hands behind his head. “Ahh, yes. The so-called suicide. Bourke.” He chuckled. “I thought higher authority would be in on that, sooner or later.”

  “Why do you say ‘so-called suicide,’ Father?”

  “Because I know people, my lord. If a man’s going to shoot himself, he doesn’t go out to a lonely beach for it. If he goes to a beach, it’s to drown himself. A walk into the sea. I don’t say a man has never shot himself by the seaside, but it’s so rare that when it happens I get suspicious.”

  “I agree,” Lord Darcy said. He had known Arthur Lyon for some years, and knew that the man was an absolutely dedicated servant of his God and his King. His career had been unusual. During the ‘39 war, he had risen to the rank of Sergeant-Major in the Eighteenth Infantry. Afterwards, he had become an Officer of the King’s Peace, and had retired as a Chief Master-at-Arms before taking up his vocation as a priest. He had shown himself to be not only a topgrade priest, but also a man with the Talent as a brilliant Healer, and had been admitted, with honors, to the Order of St. Luke.

  “Old friend,” Lord Darcy said, “I need your help. What I am about to tell you is most confidential; I will have to ask you to disclose none of it without official permission.”

  Father Art took his hands from behind his head and leaned forward with a gleam in his eyes. “As if it were under the Seal of the Confessional, my lord. Go ahead.”

  It took better than half an hour for Lord Darcy to give the good father the whole story as he knew it. Father Art had leaned back in his chair again with his hands locked behind his head, smiling seraphically at the ceiling. “Ah, yes, my lord. Utterly fascinating. I remember Friday, sixth June, very well. Yes, very well indeed.” He continued to smile at the ceiling.

  Lord Darcy closed his right eye and cocked his left eyebrow. “I trust you intend to tell me what incident stamped that day so indelibly on your mind.”

  “Certainly, my lord. I was just reveling in having made a deduction. When I tell my story, I dare say you’ll make the same deduction.” He brought his gaze down from the ceiling and his hands from behind his head. “You might say it began late Thursday night. Because of a sick call which had kept me up most of the previous night, I went to bed quite early Thursday evening. And, naturally, I woke up a little before midnight and couldn’t get back to sleep. I decided I might as well make use of the time, so I did some paper work for a while and then went into the church to say the morning office before the altar. Then I decided to take a walk in the churchyard. I often do that; it’s a pleasant place to meditate.

  “There was no moon that night,” the priest continued, “but the sky was cloudless and clear. It was about two hours before dawn. It was quite dark, naturally, but I know my way about those tombstones pretty well by now. I’d been out there perhaps a quarter of an hour when the stars went out.”

  Lord Darcy seemed to freeze for a full second. “When the what?”

  “When the stars went out,” Father Art repeated. “One moment, there they were, in their accustomed constellations—I was looking at Cygnus in particular—and the next moment the sky was black all over. Everywhere. All at once.”

  “I see,” said Lord Darcy.

  “Well, I couldn’t,” the priest said, flashing a smile. “It was black as the Pit. For a second or two, I confess, I was almost panicky. It’s a weird feeling when the stars go out.”

  “I dare say,” Lord Darcy murmured.

  “But,” the Father continued, “as a Sensitive, I knew that there was no threat close by, and, after a minute, I got my bearings again. I could have come back to
the church, but I decided to wait for a while, just to find out what would happen next. I don’t know how long I stood there. It seemed like an hour, but it was probably less than fifteen minutes. Then the stars came back on the same way they’d gone out—all at once, all over the sky.”

  “No dimming out?” Lord Darcy asked. “No slow brightening back on?”

  “None, my lord. Blink: off. Blink: on.”

  “Not a sea fog, then.”

  “Impossible. No sea fog could move that fast.”

  Lord Darcy focused his eyes on a foot-high statue of St. Matthew that stood in a niche in the wall and stared at the Apostle without actually seeing him.

  After a minute, Lord Darcy said: “I left Master Sean in Caen to make a final check of the body. He should be here within the hour. I’ll talk to him, but…” His voice trailed off.

  Father Art nodded. “Our speculation certainly needs to be confirmed, my lord, but I think we’re on the right track. Now, how else can I help?”

  “Oh, yes. That.” Lord Darcy grinned. “Your revelation of the extinguished stars almost made me forget why I came to talk to you in the first place. What I’d like you to do, Father, is talk to the people that were at the Green Seagull on the afternoon and late evening of the fifth. I’m a stranger, and I probably wouldn’t get much out of them—certainly not as much as you can. I want to know the whole pattern of comings and goings. I don’t have to tell an old Armsman like yourself what to look for. Will you do it?”

  Father Art’s smile came back. “With pleasure, my lord.”

  “There’s one other thing. Can you put up Master Sean and myself for a few days? There is, alas, no room at the inn.”

  Father Art’s peal of laughter seemed to rock the bell tower.

  * * *

  Master Sean O Lochlainn had always been partial to mules. “The mule,” he was fond of saying, “is as much smarter than a horse as a raven is smarter than a falcon. Neither a raven nor a mule will go charging into combat just because some human tells him to.” Thus it was that the sorcerer came riding toward St.-Matthew’s-Church, clad in plain brown, seated in a rather worn saddle, on the back of a very fine mule. He looked quite pleased with himself.

  The River Road had plenty of traffic on it; half the population of the duchy seemed to be converging on the little coastal village of St.-Matthew’s-Church. So Master Sean was mildly surprised to see someone headed toward him, but that feeling vanished when he saw that the approaching horseman was Lord Darcy.

  “Not headed back to Caen, are you, me lord?” he asked when Lord Darcy came within speaking distance.

  “Not at all, my dear Sean; I rode out to meet you. Let’s take the cutoff road to the west; it’s a shortcut that bypasses the village and takes us to the Old Shore Road, near where the body was found.” He wheeled his horse around and rode beside Master Sean’s mule. Together, they cantered briskly toward the Old Shore Road.

  “Now,” Lord Darcy said, “what did you find out at Caen?”

  “Conflicting evidence, me lord; conflicting evidence. At least as far as the suicide theory is concerned. There was evidence at the cliff edge that he had fallen or been pushed over and tumbled down along the face of the cliff. But he was found twenty-five feet from the base of the cliff. He had two broken ribs and a badly sprained right wrist—to say nothing of several bad bruises. All of these had been inflicted some hours before death.”

  Lord Darcy gave a rather bitter chuckle. “Which leaves us with two possibilities. Primus: Goodman Standish stands on the edge of the cliff, shoots himself through the head, tumbles to the sand below, crawls twenty-five feet, and takes some hours to die of a wound that was obviously instantly fatal. Or, secundus: He falls off the cliff, crawls the twenty-five feet, does nothing for a few hours, then decides to shoot himself. I find the second hypothesis only slightly more likely than the first. That his right wrist was sprained badly is a fact that tops it all off. Not suicide; no, not suicide.” Lord Darcy grinned. “That leaves accident or murder. Which hypothesis do you prefer, my dear Sean?”

  Master Sean frowned deeply, as if he were in the awful throes of concentration. Then his face brightened as if revelation had come. “I have it, me lord! He was accidentally murdered!”

  Lord Darcy laughed. “Excellent! Now, having cleared that up, there is further evidence that I have not given you yet.”

  He told Master Sean about Father Art’s singular experience with the vanishing stars.

  When he had finished, the two rode in silence for a minute or two. Then Master Sean said softly: “So that’s what it is.”

  * * *

  There was an Armsman standing off the road at the site of the death, and another seated, who stood up as Lord Darcy and Master Sean approached. The two riders dismounted and walked their mounts up to where the Armsmen were standing.

  “I am sorry, gentlemen,” said the first Armsman with an air of authority, “but this area is off bounds, by order of His Royal Highness the Duke of Normandy.”

  “Very good; I am happy to hear it,” said his lordship, taking out his identification. “I am Lord Darcy; this is Master Sorcerer Sean O Lochlainn.”

  “Yes, my lord,” said the Armsman. “Sorry I didn’t recognize you.”

  “No problem. This is where the body was found?”

  “Yes, my lord. Just below this cliff, here. Would you like to take a look, my lord?”

  “Indeed I would. Thank you.”

  Lord Darcy, under the respectful eyes of the two Armsmen, minutely examined the area around the cliff edge. Master Sean stayed with him, trying to see everything his lordship saw.

  “Everything’s a week old,” Lord Darcy muttered bitterly. “Look at that grass, there. A week ago, I could have told you how many men were scuffing it up; today, I only know that it was more than two. I don’t suppose there’s any way of reconstructing it, my dear Sean?”

  “No, me lord. I am a magician, not a miracle worker.”

  “Thought not. Look at the edge of this cliff. He fell, certainly. But was he pushed? Or thrown? No way of telling. Wind and weather have done their work too well. To quote my cousin de London: ‘Pfui!’ “

  “Yes, me lord.”

  “Well, let’s go down to the beach and take a look from below.”

  That operation entailed walking fifty yards or so down the cliff edge to a steep draw which they could clamber down, then back again to where Standish had died.

  There was a pleasant breeze from landward that brought the smell of growing crops. A dozen yards away, three gulls squabbled raucously over the remains of some dead sea-thing.

  Lord Darcy was still in a bitter mood. “Nothing, damn it. Nothing. Footprints all washed away long ago. Or blown away by the wind. Damn, damn, damn! All we have to go by is the testimony of eyewitnesses, which is notoriously unreliable.”

  “You don’t believe ‘em, me lord?” Master Sean asked.

  Lord Darcy was silent for several seconds. Then, in a calmer voice, he said: “Yes. Oddly enough, I do. I think the testimony of those farmers was absolutely accurate. They saw what they saw, and they reported what they saw. But they did not—they could not have seen everything!”

  One of the Armsmen on the cliff above said: “That’s the spot, right there, my lord. Near that flat rock.” He pointed.

  But Lord Darcy did not even look at the indicated spot. He had looked up when the Armsman spoke, and was staring at something on the cliff face about two feet below the Armsman’s boot toes.

  Master Sean followed his lordship’s gaze and spotted the area immediately. “Looks like someone’s been carving his initials, me lord.”

  “Indeed. How do you make them out?”

  “Looks like S… S… O. Who do we know with the initials SSO?”

  “Nobody connected with this case so far. The letters may have been up there for some time. But…”

  “Aye, me lord,” said Master Sean. “I see what you mean. I’ll do a time check on them. Do you want ‘em p
reserved?”

  “Unless they’re more than a week old, yes. By the by, did Standish have a knife on him when he was found?”

  “Not so far as I know, me lord. Wasn’t mentioned in the reports.”

  “Hmmm.” Lord Darcy began prowling around the whole area, reminding Master Sean of nothing so much as a leopard in search of his evening meal. He finally ended up at the base of the cliff, just below where the glyphs had been carved into the clay wall. He went down on his knees and began digging.

  “It has to be here somewhere,” he murmured.

  “Might I ask what you’re looking for, me lord?”

  “A piece of steel, my dear Sean; a piece of steel.”

  Master Sean put his carpetbag on the sand and opened it, taking out a thin, dark, metallic-blue wand just as Lord Darcy said: “Aaha!”

  Master Sean, wand still in hand, said: “What is it, me lord?”

  “As you see,” Lord Darcy said, standing up and displaying the object in the palm of his hand. “Behold and observe, old friend: A man’s pocketknife.”

  Master Sean smiled broadly. “Aye. I presume you’ll be wanting a relationship test, me lord? Carving, cutter, and corpse?”

  “Of course. No, don’t put away your wand. That’s your generalized metal detector, is it not?”

  “Aye, me lord. It’s been similarized to all things metallic.”

  “Good. Put this knife away for analysis, then let’s go over to where the body was found. We’ll see if there isn’t something else to be dug up.”

  The Master Sorcerer pointed the wand in his right hand at the sand and moved back and forth across the area, his eyes almost closed, his left hand held above his head, fingers spread. Every time he stopped, Lord Darcy would dig into the soft sand and come up with a bit of metal—a rusty nail, a corroded brass belt-buckle, a copper twelfth-bit, a bronze farthing, and even a silver half-sovereign—all of which showed evidence of having been there for some time.

  While the two of them worked, the Armsmen on the cliff above watched in silence. It is not wise to disturb a magician at work.

  Only one of the objects was of interest to Lord Darcy: a small lump of lead. He dropped it into a waistcoat pocket and went on digging.