Castle Murders Page 4

  Footsteps sounded out in the hallway. Thaxton looked over his shoulder.

  A man in quasi-Renaissance dress went walking by. As he did he glanced into the alcove. He did a double take and halted.

  “You there,” he said. “What’s going on?”

  Thaxton turned his head to look down at the body.

  “I asked you a question,” the man said as he came into the alcove. His gaze locked on the body. “Ye gods!”

  Thaxton stepped aside.

  After kneeling over the corpse for a moment, the man stood up and faced Thaxton. He was tall and black-bearded, like the dead man. He looked somewhat younger. His eyes were fiercely blue.

  “What do you know of this?” he demanded.

  “Not very much, I’m afraid.”

  “When did this happen?”

  “My golf partner and I found him not five minutes ago,” Thaxton said, “right where he is.”

  The man regarded Thaxton suspiciously for a moment, then turned around to view the body again, his chest rising and falling rapidly. “What happened?”

  “I’m afraid I don’t know that either. May I ask …?”

  The man gave Thaxton a sharp look. “Yes?”

  “Might I ask who this gentleman is?”

  “The viscount Oren, of course!”

  Thaxton nodded.

  The man turned his head again and said quietly, “My brother.”

  “You have my condolences,” Thaxton said.

  “Thank you,” Oren’s brother answered dryly. “Did anyone see him take ill?”

  “I’m afraid I wasn’t at the garden party.”

  “Weren’t you serving?” The man looked Thaxton up and down. “Oh. You’re one of them. I should have known by the ridiculous costume.”

  Thaxton glanced down at his knickerbockers and saddle shoes, then coolly scanned the man’s attire — a rehash of the viscount’s but heavier on the embroidery.

  “I rather think that’s a case of pots calling kettles, don’t you?”

  The content of the remark sailed over the man’s head, but not the implication. “How dare you! I’ll have none of your impertinence, do you hear? And you will address me as ‘my lord.’”

  Thaxton coughed quietly into his hand. “Don’t you want to examine the body?”

  “Eh?”

  “There may be clues.” Thaxton added, “My lord.”

  He understood. “Oh, yes. Yes. The body.” He began a motion to stoop, but halted. “Run and fetch someone. Tyrene.”

  “He is being summoned, my lord.”

  “Ah. Good.” He knelt, then looked up. “What is your name?”

  “Thaxton, my lord. And whom do I have the honor of addressing?”

  “Arl. Lord Arl.”

  Thaxton watched Arl fumble with the corpse’s clothing. “Might I suggest we turn the body to one side?”

  Thaxton helped him, lifting the body toward himself. When Arl’s eyes found the hole in the gown, they went round and wild.

  “Merciful gods!”

  He shot to his feet. “He’s been murdered. My brother’s been murdered!”

  “So it would seem, my lord,” Thaxton said. “Frightfully sorry.”

  Arl looked helpless, confused. “It can’t be. It simply can’t be.”

  Running footsteps came from the hallway. Breathless, Tyrene — Captain of the Guard — burst into the alcove, followed by two Guardsmen. He immediately went to his knees and examined the wound.

  “Gods,” he said in a whisper.

  Presently, Tyrene stood and faced Thaxton. “Did you see anybody in the hall just before you found the body?”

  “Not a soul,” Thaxton said.

  Arl was still standing over the corpse, unmoving.

  “My lord, did you see anybody?”

  Arl wrenched his gaze from his brother’s body. “No. I — no.”

  “Was the viscount at Her Highness’s fête?”

  “Yes,” Arl said. “It can’t be more than a quarter-hour since I saw him there.”

  “Did you see him leave, my lord?”

  “No. No, I did not. I grew bored and left early. I was passing in the hall when I saw this man, here. And my brother … lying there. Dead.”

  “My sincerest commiseration is yours, my lord, in this your hour of grief.”

  Arl nodded absently.

  Dalton puffed into the alcove, halted, bent over and put his hands on his knees for a moment and breathed deeply. Then he straightened and leaned toward Thaxton. “Just a little winded,” he whispered.

  “I’m sorry; I should have gone. Not thinking.”

  “You seemed to have had the situation well in hand.”

  “My lord,” Tyrene was saying, “can you give me any information at all concerning your brother’s actions during the fête that would shed light on the question of who may have attacked him?”

  Lord Arl took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Then he said, “I can tell you little. As you may know, my brother and I were not on speaking terms. We did not speak at the fête, nor did we associate. I saw him playing hedge ball. Then later I saw him sup with Lady Rilma. That was not very long before I departed. I thought I’d left him at the fête.”

  “My lord, did you see him speak or associate with anyone else besides his wife?”

  “He was playing hedge with Lord Belgard and Lady Rowena.”

  “Very good, my lord. My lord, if it be not too inconvenient, might we continue this line of questioning later? I must to the fête and inform Her Highness and the other guests.”

  “Yes. Yes, by all means, Tyrene.”

  “Thank you, my lord.”

  Two more people arrived: a young page, who carried a folded leather stretcher, and a gray-haired older man in a brown cloak. Although Thaxton had never availed himself of the man’s services, he recognized Dr. Mirabilis, the castle physician. Thaxton wondered about the state of forensic medicine in the castle.

  “Obviously a dagger or other sharp instrument,” Dr. Mirabilis pronounced after examining the body. “I’ll know more after I perform an autopsy, but I’d say there’s a good chance that the viscount died as a result of the wound. There’s been a great loss of blood, probably bleeding into the chest cavity. As I said, we’ll know for certain later.”

  “When can the autopsy be performed, Doctor?” Tyrene asked.

  “Immediately. If you can have the body brought to the infirmary.”

  The body was lifted onto the stretcher. The page produced a sheet to drape the body, then he and one Guardsman bore the stretcher away.

  “I’ll have my report messengered directly to you, Captain,” the doctor said. Then he departed.

  “His Majesty must be informed immediately,” Tyrene said. “Was he at the fête, my lord?”

  “He hadn’t arrived by the time I left,” Arl said. “But I’d heard he would be late.” He looked away for a moment, then added, “I will inform Lady Rilma.”

  “I should be grateful to be relieved of that burden, my lord. Thank you.”

  Tyrene turned to Thaxton and Dalton. “I wonder if you two gentlemen would mind accompanying me to the Formal Garden? I imagine His Majesty would like to hear from your mouth any testimony you have to give.”

  “Certainly,” Thaxton said. Dalton nodded.

  Tyrene, Lord Arl, and the other Guardsman left.

  Thaxton began to follow. Over his shoulder he said, “Let’s go, old boy.”

  “What about the bags?” Dalton said, pointing to the dropped golf clubs.

  “We’ll send a servant. Come on, man. The game’s afoot!”

  Chapter Four

  Conservatory

  The concerto was drawing to a close.

  The pianist was animated, beads of sweat at his brow. With masterly skill and artistry, he threw off a sparkling glissando that swept from the one end of the Bösendorfer’s keyboard to the other. The flurry of notes climbed high, coalescing into a cloud of rippling chords in five-beat rhythm, sounded first
in the upper registers then repeated an octave lower.

  Behind him, the “orchestra” rested for the cadenza.

  There were no musicians.

  There were, however, many instruments. All the traditional symphonic instruments of Western (Earth) music were represented — strings, woodwinds, brass, and percussion — but there was only one piece for each section: one violin, one viola, one horn, and so forth, except for percussion, which had the full complement. The instruments rested on chairs or tables or, like the contrabass and cello, were propped against the wall.

  The cadenza finished on the highest G octave on the keyboard. Then, with a resounding chord in C major, piano and orchestra came in together, fortissimo, restating the main theme of the third movement, which had twice before been played voluptuously, rapturously. Now, for the final time, it unfolded with grandeur and majesty, yet was still charged with an uncontainable passion.

  The piano alternated massive chords and syncopated accents to the orchestra’s melodic line.

  Among the strings, bows bowed, held by invisible hands. Stops and valves depressed in the woodwinds and brass. Although there was only one of each kind of instrument, the sound was of a full orchestra. The conservatory reverberated to the climax of the concerto.

  The main theme done, the pianist launched into technical pyrotechnics while the orchestra played staccato cadences, sharply banging out the finale. Complex stacked chords cascaded down the keyboard at a furious rate. An impossible display of virtuosity. The whirlwind of sound rose again into the rarefied reaches of the upper octaves before resolving with a crash into four final notes hammered out at the bottom of the keyboard.

  Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor, Opus 18, was over.

  The pianist sat back, took a cloth from an inner pocket of his doublet, and wiped his forehead.

  He looked around the chamber. “What, no standing ovation?”

  He waved a hand and the room erupted in tumultuous applause. He rose and bowed to the invisible audience. Turning to the orchestra, he raised his arms. The instruments rose from chair and table, standing on end. They all tilted forward in a comic semblance of a bow.

  The soloist waved his hand again, and the applause cut off abruptly. The instruments settled back down.

  “Thanks, guys. You can sit this next one out.”

  He seated himself again, rubbed his hands, dried his palms on his purple gown.

  Then he essayed the lugubrious opening bars of the Beethoven Pathétique.

  A servant walked in.

  “Sire …”

  Incarnadine — liege lord of the Western Pale, and, by the grace of the gods, King of the Realms Perilous — was annoyed. He lifted his hands from the keyboard.

  “What is it?”

  “Sire, your pardon for interrupting, but something of extreme urgency has come up.”

  Incarnadine’s fist pounded the keyboard. “Merde!”

  “Sire?”

  “Dorcas’s party! I forgot!” He scowled at the young page. “Why didn’t you remind me?”

  “Sire, I was just about to when a messenger came from Captain Tyrene.”

  “Oh. It had better be damned important. Where’s the message?”

  “It was oral, Sire. I am to tell you that the viscount Oren was found dead inside the castle, a short distance from the Garden aspect. Murdered.”

  Incarnadine blinked. “Did you say murdered?”

  “Sire, I most certainly did.”

  “I see.” Incarnadine rose from the piano. “Was the viscount at the party?”

  “That is all there was to the message, Sire.”

  “I’d better get down there right away.” Incarnadine took a few steps and halted. “No, wait, I want to get changed first. Tell Tyrene to start his investigation immediately, on my personal authority. Tell him I have every confidence in him.”

  “Yes, Sire.”

  Incarnadine hurried to the door, passing displays of musical instruments from hundreds of worlds. At the threshold he stopped.

  “Wait, another thing. Tell Tyrene that no one at the party is to leave the Garden aspect until I get there. That includes my sister.”

  “Yes, Sire.”

  “Have to keep them contained. They’re a slippery bunch.”

  Out in the corridor, he made a right at the first intersection, walked a few paces to a stairwell and entered it.

  He climbed six stories. On his way up to the seventh he was huffing and puffing.

  “Gods, I’m out of shape,” he mumbled.

  He stopped.

  Standing in the gloom of the stairwell, he thought the problem through while he caught his breath.

  At length he said, “Seems like cheating, though.”

  He continued up the stairs and exited at the next landing. Out in the hall he stood in front of a blank wall and said, “I need an elevator.”

  In a moment, one materialized, a section of wall to his right transmuting into metal doors that parted to reveal the interior of a modern elevator. He entered, and the doors slid shut.

  “Family residence,” he said to no one who could be seen.

  The elevator rose, rumbling and humming.

  His study was lined with books and filled with endless curios. Quaint astronomical gear occupied one corner, alchemist’s paraphernalia another. Maps and star charts covered areas of wall not taken up by books. There were several desktop computers in the room, and some of these were unusual. Instead of CRT screens, they had crystal balls.

  He sat at the terminal of one of these morganatic marriages of the magical and the technological and tapped out a few commands.

  The ball, mounted on a wooden base sitting on top of the computer, began to glow.

  He peered into it, keyed in more commands, looked again. Shadows flickered dimly in the depths of the glass.

  He kept at it until he saw something come to life. He watched intently.

  After a good while he sat back and grunted. He hit a key and the light inside the ball faded.

  “Well now, that’s interesting,” he said abstractedly. “Veddy, veddy interesting.”

  He sat for a time thinking, absently stroking his clean-shaven chin. His hair was long and light, and his eyes were brown this month. He had a habit of changing his appearance now and then. After three hundred years one could grow tired of one’s looks. He refrained from transforming his face into something unrecognizable; that would confuse the servants and Guests. But he was wont to alter his hair and eye color slightly with a simple spell. Underneath he remained the same: dark-haired, blue-eyed, strong of chin, thin blade of a nose. Generally a good face; perhaps even a handsome face, disregarding that the brow was a little low and the chin a shade too prominent.

  Handsome or not, he was a lord. The peerage had devolved to him down through thousands of years. But he was also a king, and for that regal title he owed an ancestor who had got the notion that the lord of Perilous, master of thousands of worlds, should have his honorific upgraded to something more impressive. So Incarnadine was “King of the Realms Perilous,” and actually did directly reign in several of the castle’s domains. He had a hand in the politics of a hundred worlds, interests in thousands more. The piano-playing had been time stolen from a full schedule.

  No time now.

  He rose and began walking toward the door, but something rang off in a corner, and he turned and moved toward it. The device was an old-fashioned telephone, the upright kind with a conical mouthpiece and detachable earphone. Behind it, though, was a television screen, and beside that was a small device that looked like an automatic answering machine. Before he reached the desk on which all this lay, a somber recorded voice was already on the line:

  You have reached Castle Perilous. We cannot answer your call at this time, but if — and let me emphasize the ‘if’ — you have some matter of great moment to impart, you may leave your name at the sound of the trump. On the other hand, if your call is being made on some contrived pretext,
or, worse, is in the nature of an annoying solicitation, you run a grave risk.

  He sat back down, propped a hand under his chin, and watched the screen. A form wavered on it, a face.

  — we do not need storm windows, we do not need aluminum siding, we most certainly do not care to be the ‘lucky winners’ in some transparently fraudulent giveaway scheme. Let me now enumerate and quickly describe the variety of calamities that could befall you should any of the above conditions obtain. You could be incinerated on the spot —

  The image on the screen clarified and sharpened: a thin-faced man with glasses.

  — colonies of fire-lice could suddenly infest your spouse’s —

  He hit a switch on the answering machine and interrupted the recording, then unhooked the earpiece and put it to his ear.

  “Howland, I’m here. Go ahead.”

  The man on the screen look relieved. “I gotta say, that is one intimidating answering-machine message.”

  “It screens out the bothersome calls.”

  “No kidding. I was half tempted to ring off myself.”

  “Glad you stuck it out. What’s up?”

  “Well, it’s Tweel. He’s made his move, I’m afraid. His dengs moved in on all our operations across the river — casinos, sporting houses, joy dens, wire parlors, everything.”

  “A hostile takeover, eh?”

  “I should say. All the upper-level managers were let go, and Tweel’s creatures installed.”

  “Did he even try to make it legal this time?”

  “Oh, sure. The stock transactions are on record. He acquired controlling interest in all the subsidiaries through the usual junk bond issue. Then he sent out his demons to do the actual dirty work and make it stick.”

  “Any resistance on our part? We lose anybody?”

  “Yes, two of our boys bought it. Curt and Tully. A little scuffle when they moved in on the Fifty-eighth Street sporting house. Curt was feeling a little protective of one of the girls when one of the dengs tried to take her upstairs.”

  Incarnadine shook his head. “They had standing orders not to offer any resistance.”

  “Curt was a hothead, but I can’t say I blame him. The girl was screaming her head off. Not that I blame her, either. Anyway, it was pretty gruesome. Tully tried to help, and both of them … well, they had to practically shovel them into the morgue wagon.”