Lord Darcy Investigates Read online

  At last, Master Sean, having covered an area of some eight by twelve feet, said: “That’s it, me lord.”

  Lord Darcy stood up, brushed the sand from his hands and trousers, and looked at the collection of junk he had put on the big flat rock. “Too bad we couldn’t have found a sixth-bit. We’d be an even solidus ahead. No gold in the lot, either.”

  Master Sean chuckled. “You can’t expect to find a complete set of samples from the Imperial Mint, me lord.”

  “I suppose not. But here—” he took the small lump of lead from his waistcoat pocket, “—is what I expected to find. Unless I am very much mistaken, this bullet came from the .36 Heron that the late Standish carried, and is the same bullet which passed through his head. Here; check on it, will you, my good Sean?”

  Master Sean put the bullet in one of the carefully insulated pockets of his capacious carpetbag, and the two men trudged back across the sand, up the slope to the top of the cliff again.

  Master Sean spread himself prone and looked over the edge of the cliff. After a minute inspection of the carving in the sandy clay of the cliff face, he got up, took some equipment from his carpetbag, and lay down again to go to work. A simple cohesion spell sufficed to set the clay so that it would not crumble. Then, he deftly began to cut out the brick of hardened clay defined by the spell.

  In the meantime, Lord Darcy had called the senior of the two Armsmen to one side and had asked him a question.

  “No, my lord, we ain’t had any trouble,” the Armsman said. “We been runnin’ three eight-hour shifts out here ever since the body was found, and hardly nobody’s come by. The local folk all know better. Wouldn’t come near it, anyway, till the whole matter’s been cleared up and the site’s been blessed by a priest. Course, there was that thing this morning.”

  “This morning?” Lord Darcy lifted an eyebrow.

  “Yes, my lord.” He glanced at his wristwatch. “Just after we come on duty. Just on six hours ago—eight-twelve.”

  “And what happened?” his lordship asked with seemingly infinite patience.

  “Well, these two folks come along the beach from the east. Romany, they was. Whole tribe of ‘em come into St.-Matthew’s-Church fairground early this morning. These two—man and a woman, they was—come along arm in arm. Dan—that’s Armsman Danel, over there—warned ‘em off, but they just smiled and waved and kept coming. So Dan went down to the beach fast and blocked ‘em off. They pretended they didn’t speak no Anglo-French; you know how these Romany are. But Dan made it clear they wasn’t to come no farther, so off they went. No trouble.”

  “They went back without any argument, eh?”

  “Yes, my lord, they did.”

  “Well, no harm done there, then. Carry on, Armsman.”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  Master Sean came back from the cliff edge with a chunk of thaumaturgically-hardened clay further loading his symbol-decorated carpetbag. “Anything else, me lord?”

  “I think not. Let’s get some lunch.”

  * * *

  In a tent near the fairgrounds, an agent of Serka, Mission Commander for this particular operation, was opening what looked on the outside like a battered, scuffed, worn, old leather suitcase. The inside was new and in the best condition, and the contents were startlingly similar to those of Master Sean’s symbol-decorated carpetbag.

  Out came two small wands, scarcely six inches long, of ruby-red crystal wound with oddly-spaced helices of silver wire that took exactly five turns around the ruby core. Each wand was a mirror image of the other; one helix would to the right, the other to the left. Out came two small glass flacons, one containing a white, coarsely-ground substance, the other an amber-yellow mass of small granules. These were followed by a curiously-wrought golden candlestick some four inches high, an inch-thick candle, and a small brazier.

  Like any competent sorcerer, the Commander had hands that were strong and yet capable of delicate work. The beeswax candle was being fitted into the candlestick by those hands when there came a scratching at the closed tent flap.

  The Commander froze. “Yes?”

  “One-three-seven comes,” said a whispered voice.

  The Commander relaxed. “Very well; send him in.”

  Seconds later, the tent flap opened, and another Serka agent ducked into the tent. He glanced at the thaumaturgical equipment on the table as he sat down on a stool. “It’s come to that, eh?” he said.

  “I’m not certain yet,” said the Commander. “It may. I don’t want it to. I want to avoid any entanglement with Master Sean O Lochlainn. A man with his ability and power is a man to avoid when he’s on the other side.”

  “Your pardon, Mission Commander, but just how certain are you that the man you saw on the mule this morning was actually Master Sean?”

  “Quite certain. I heard him lecture many times at the University at Buda-Pest when I was an undergraduate there in ‘sixty-eight, ‘sixty-nine, and ‘seventy. He was taking his Th.D. in theoretics and analog math. His King paid for it from the Privy Purse, but he supplemented his income by giving undergrad lectures.”

  “Would he recognize you?”

  “Highly unlikely. Who pays any attention to undergraduate students at a large university?”

  The Commander waved an impatient hand. “Let’s hear your report.”

  “Yes, Mission Commander,” Agent 137 said briskly. “I followed the man on muleback, as you ordered. He met another man, ahorse, coming from the village. He was tall, lean but muscular, with handsome, rather English-looking features. He was dressed as a merchant, but I suspected…”

  The Commander nodded. “Lord Darcy. Obviously. Continue.”

  “You said they’d go to the site of the death, and when they took the left-hand bypass I was sure of it. I left off following and galloped on to the village, where Number 202 was waiting with the boat. We had a good westerly breeze, so we made it to the cove before them. We anchored and lay some two hundred yards off-shore. Number 202 did some fishing while I watched through field glasses.

  “They talked to the Armsmen atop the cliff for a while, then went down to the beach. One of the Armsmen pointed to where the body had been. Darcy went on talking to him for a while. Then Darcy walked around, looking at things. He went over to the base of the cliff and began digging. He found something; I couldn’t see what.

  “Master Sean put it in his bag, then, for ten minutes or so, he quartered the area where the body’d been, using one of those long, blue-black metal wands—you know—”

  “A metal detector,” said the Commander. “Yes. Go on.”

  “Yes. Lord Darcy dug every time O Lochlainn pointed something out. Dug up an awful lot of stuff. But he found something interesting. Don’t know what it was; couldn’t see it. But he stuck it in his pocket and gave it to the sorcerer later.”

  “I know what it was,” said the Commander in a hard voice. “Was that the only thing that seemed to interest him?”

  “Yes, as far as I could tell,” said 137.

  “Then what happened?”

  137 shrugged. “They went back topside. Darcy talked to one of the Armsmen; the other watched the sorcerer dig a hole in the cliff face.”

  The Mission Commander frowned. “Dig a hole? A hole?”

  “That’s right. Lay flat on his belly, reached down a couple of feet over the edge, and dug something out. Couldn’t see what it was. Left a hole about the size of a man’s two fists—maybe a bit bigger.”

  “Damn! Why couldn’t you have watched more carefully?”

  Agent 137’s face stiffened. “It was very difficult to see well, Mission Commander. Any closer than two hundred yards, and we would have drawn attention. Did you ever try to focus six-by field glasses from a light boat bobbing up and down on the sea?”

  “Calm down. I’m not angry with you. You did well. I just wish we had better information.” The Commander looked thoughtful. “That tells us something. We can forget about the beach. Order the men to stay away; they
are not to go there again for any reason.

  “The Phial is not there now, if it ever was. If Master Sean did not find it, it wasn’t there. If he did find it, it is gone now, and he and Lord Darcy know where it is. And that is a problem I must consider. Now get out of here and let me think.”

  Agent 137 got out.

  * * *

  The public room at the Green Seagull, as far as population went, looked like a London railway car at the rush hour.

  Amidst all the hubbub, wine and beer crossed the bar in one direction, while copper and silver crossed it in the other, making everyone happy on both sides.

  In the club bar, it was somewhat quieter, but the noise from the public bar was distinctly audible. The innkeeper himself was taking care of the customers in the club bar; he took a great deal of pride in his work. Besides, the tips were larger and the work easier.

  “Would dere be anything else for dee?” he asked as he set two pints of beer on one of the tables. “Something to munch on, mayhap?”

  “Not just now, Goodman Dreyque,” said Father Art. “This will do us for a while.”

  “Very good, Fahder. Tank dee.” He went quietly away.

  Lord Darcy took a deep draught of his beer and sighed. “Cool beer is a great refresher on a midsummer evening. The Green Seagull keeps an excellent cellar. Food’s good, too; Master Sean and I ate here this afternoon.”

  “Where is Master Sean now?” the priest asked.

  “In the rooms you assigned us in the Rectory, amidst his apparatus, doing lab work on some evidence we dug up.” His voice became soft. “Did you find out what happened here that night?”

  “Pretty much,” Father Art replied in the same low tones. “There are a few things which are still a little hazy, but I think we can fill in most of those areas.”

  Standish’s quarry had arrived at the Green Seagull late in the afternoon of the fifth, giving the name “Richard Bourke.” He was carrying only an attache case, but since he had a horse and saddle and saddlebags, they were considered surety against indebtedness.

  There were only six rooms for hire in the inn, all on the upper floor of the two-storied building. Two of these were already occupied. At two-ten, the man Danglars had come in and registered for himself and his mistress, Jizelle de Ville.

  “Bourke,” said Father Art, “came in at five-fifteen. Nobody else at all checked in during that evening. And nobody saw a young man wearing evening clothes.” He paused and smiled brightly. “Howev-er…”

  “Ahhh. I knew I could depend on you, my dear Arthur. What was it?”

  Still smiling seraphically, the good father raised a finger and said: “The Case of the Sexton’s Cloak.”

  “You fascinate me. Pray elucidate.”

  “My sexton,” said Father Art, “has an old cloak, originally made from a couple of used horse blankets, so it wasn’t exactly beautiful when new. But it is warm. He uses it when he has to work outside in winter. In summer, he hangs it in the stable behind the church. Claims it keeps the moths out—the smell, I mean.

  “On the morning of sixth June, one of the men who works here in the inn brought it over to the church, asked my sexton if it were his. It was. Want to take a wild, silly guess where it was found?” Father Art asked.

  “Does the room used by Bourke face the front or the rear?”

  “The rear.”

  “Then it was found on the cobblestones at the rear of the building.”

  Smiling even more broadly, Father Art gently clapped his hands together once. “Precisely, my lord.”

  Lord Darcy smiled back. “Let’s reconstruct. Bourke went to his room before five-thirty. Right?”

  “Right. One of the maids went with him, let him in, and gave him the key.”

  “Was he ever seen again?”

  “Only once. He ordered a light meal, and it was brought up about six. That’s the last time he was seen.”

  “Were either of the other guests in the house at the time?”

  “No. The man Danglars had left about four-thirty, and hadn’t returned. No one saw Mistress Jizelle leave, but the girl who turns down the beds says that both rooms were empty at six. Bourke was still there at the time.”

  “Hmmmm.”

  Lord Darcy looked into the depths of his beer. After half a minute, he said: “Reverend Father, was a stranger in an old horse-blanket cloak actually seen in this inn, or are we speculating in insubstantial mist?”

  Father Art’s mouth twisted in a small grimace. “Not totally insubstantial, my lord, but not strong, either. The barmaid who was on duty that night says she remembers a couple of strangers who came in, but she doesn’t remember anything about them. She’s not terribly bright.”

  Lord Darcy chuckled. “All right, then. Let’s assume that Standish actually came in here in a stolen—and uncomfortably warm—cloak. How did that come about, and what happened afterwards?”

  Father Art fired up his old briar and took another sip from his seidel of beer. “Well, let’s see. Standish comes into the village an hour after Bourke—perhaps a little more. But he doesn’t come in directly; he circles round behind the church. Why? Not to steal the cloak. How would he know it was there?” He took two puffs from his pipe, then his eyes brightened. “Of course. To tether his horse. He didn’t want it seen in the public square, and knew it would be safe in the church stable.” Two more puffs.

  “Hmmm. He sees the cloak on the stable wall and realizes that it will serve as a disguise, covering his evening dress. He borrows it and comes here to the inn. He makes sure that Bourke is firmly in place, then goes back to his horse and hightails it for Caen to send word to Sir James. Then he comes back here to the Green Seagull. He waits until nobody’s looking, then sneaks up the stairs to Bourke’s room.”

  The priest stopped, scowled, and took a good, healthy drink from his seidel. “Some time later, he went out the window to the courtyard below, losing the cloak in the process.” He shook his head. “But what happened between the time he went upstairs and the time he dropped the cloak, and what happened between then and his death, I haven’t the foggiest conjecture.”

  “I have several,” Lord Darcy said, “but they are all very, very foggy. We need more data. I have several questions.” He ticked them off on his fingers. “One: Where is Bourke? Two: Who shot Standish? Three: Why was he shot? Four: What happened here at the inn? Five: What happened on the beach? And, finally: Where is the Ipswich Phial?”

  Father Art lifted his seidel, drained its contents on one extended draught, set it firmly on the table, and said: “I don’t know. God does.”

  Lord Darcy nodded. “Indeed; and one of His greatest attributes is that if you ask Him the right question in the right way, He will always give you an answer.

  “You intend to pray for answers to those questions, my lord?”

  “That, yes. But I have found that the best way to ask God about questions like these is to go out and dig up the data yourself.”

  Father Art smiled. “Dominus vobiscum.”

  “Et cum spiritu tuo,” Lord Darcy responded.

  “Excavemus!” said the priest.

  * * *

  In his room in the Rectory, Master Sean had carefully set up his apparatus on the table. Noel Standish’s .36 Heron was clamped securely into a padded vise which stood at one end of the table. Three feet in front of the muzzle, the bullet which Lord Darcy had dug from the sand had been carefully placed on a small pedestal, so that it was at exactly the same height as the muzzle. He was using certain instruments to make sure that the axis of the bullet was accurately aligned with the axis of the Heron’s barrel when a rhythmic code knock came at the door. The sorcerer went over to the door, unbolted it, opened it, and said: “Come in, me lord.”

  “I hope I didn’t interrupt anything,” Lord Darcy said.

  “Not at all, me lord.” Master Sean carefully closed and bolted the door again. “I was just getting ready for the ballistics test. The similarity relationship tests have already as
sured me that the slug was the one that killed Standish. There’s only to see if it came from his own gun. Have you found any further clues?”

  “None,” Lord Darcy admitted. “I managed to get a good look at the guest rooms in the Green Seagull. Nothing. Flat nothing. I have several ideas, but no evidence.” Then he gestured at the handgun. “Pray proceed with your work, I will be most happy to wait.”

  “It’ll only be a minute or so,” Master Sean said apologetically. He went back to the table and continued his preparations while Lord Darcy watched in silence. His lordship was well aware of the principle involved; he had seen the test innumerable times. He recalled a lecture that Master Sean had once given on the subject.

  “You see,” the sorcerer had said, “the Principle of Relevance is important here. Most of the wear on a gun is purely mechanical. It doesn’t matter who pulls the trigger, you see; the erosion caused by the gases produced in the chamber, and the wear caused by the bullet’s passing through the barrel will be the same. It’s not relevant to the gun who pulled the trigger or what it was fired at. But, to the bullet it is relevant which gun it was fired from and what it hit. All this can be determined by the proper spells.”

  In spite of having seen it many times, Lord Darcy always liked to watch the test because it was rather spectacular when the test was positive. Master Sean sprinkled a small amount of previously charged powder on both the bullet and the gun. Then he raised his wand and said an incantation under his breath.

  At the last syllable of the incantation, there was a sound as if someone had sharply struck a cracked bell as the bullet vanished. The .36 Heron shivered in its vise.

  Master Sean let out his breath. “Just like a homing pigeon, me lord. Gun and bullet match.”

  “I’ve often wondered why the bullet does that,” Lord Darcy said.

  Master Sean chuckled. “Call it an induced return-to-the-womb fixation, me lord. Was there something you wanted?”

  “A couple of things.” Lord Darcy walked over to his suitcase, opened it, and took out a holstered handgun. It was a precision-made .40 caliber MacGregor—a heavy man-stopper.