Mrs Gruber was alone and expected no company that day. Her mistress had left Ulrichsberg after the funeral for her sister’s house in Hamburg with her little son and the best plate. Her only duties in the past fortnight had been to catalogue the contents of the house and see it protected from dust and sunlight until the final decisions could be made. The will had been read and confirmed her master as a man reasonable and fair in death as in life. His family were content and the servants had all been left with a little something to keep out the cold. Mrs Gruber thought she might go and live with her son, perhaps invest the money she had been left, and that she had saved, in the business he was beginning to grow. He and his wife had offered her a home in the past, and told her they would be glad of her help with the book-keeping. There was a good chance of growing old peacefully and secure there. Well. There it was. She would not be sorry to leave Ulrichsberg. But now the question had crept in through the keyhole and she wondered how to answer it. There was, after all, no help coming to her master now, but then again … He had been generous. He had been kind. He had put business her son’s way, and even if he could be short-tempered at times when the gout was eating him up, a little careless in the friends he made and brought to the house sometimes, he deserved something.
She decided to take a walk. She would put on her hat and spend a little part of the morning in the fresh air, and if the chance came to speak her mind, so be it.
The third person Mrs Gruber exchanged good-days with that morning was her niece, who worked as a maid in the palace: the young girl was delighted to interrupt her morning’s comings and goings to gossip with her aunt. They talked about the preparations for the wedding and after speculating about what share in the entertainments they might expect, the girl chatted about the English who had arrived, friends of Mr and Mrs Clode. Her aunt asked her if they seemed friendly or respectable people. Her niece confirmed it, and told her in great detail about the strange Mr Michaels who was now in residence in the fake village and who spoke the dialect of the region like one of them. Mrs Gruber nodded, made her decision and within half an hour of this conversation was knocking on Mr Michaels’s door. Half an hour later she found herself seated in a private drawing room of the palace with Mrs Westerman, Mr Crowther and Mr Michaels as support. She was given tea, treated with great civility and left glad she had come. When she sat down to her modest lunch some hours after that, back in the kitchen of her dead master’s house, she was not sure if she had done the right thing. Part of her thought His Honour would want to be left in peace. But she had learned how a question can lead one in strange directions. The image of Mrs Westerman’s open smile and schoolgirl German stayed with her the rest of the day. Mr Crowther’s eyes, she noticed, were ice blue like her master’s.
As soon as Frau Gruber had left them, Harriet and Crowther went in search of Krall. They found him surrounded by paper in a cloud of tobacco. He greeted them happily enough.
‘I have traced the mask! It seems it was not tainted before it arrived in Oberbach — Padfield’s housemaid tried it on to amuse the footman and suffered no ill-effects.’ He realised the English were not listening to him with the attention he had hoped for.
‘The Honourable Diether Fink,’ Crowther said at once.
Krall drew heavily on his pipe then wafted away the smoke as if it had come as a bit of a surprise to him. ‘A good man. Banker and adviser to the court. Died in his bed some two weeks ago. The Duke himself rode before the coffin. What of him?’
‘You did not feel that another suspicious death following on that of Lady Martesen was of significance?’
Krall rubbed at his forehead with his fingertips. ‘Suspicious? It wasn’t suspicious. He choked. His doctor hooked the nut that killed him out of his throat himself — he told me so. A tragic loss, of course. But people die and he had reached a fair age.’
‘His wrist had been cut,’ Harriet said. ‘Deeply. Then cleaned and bandaged.’
Krall dropped his hand to the table and stared at her. ‘His wrist? His wrist?’ His eyes narrowed, making Harriet think of the rocks overhung with vines she had seen on the road to Castle Grenzhow. ‘How do you tell me of this?’
‘His housekeeper came to see us,’ she replied. ‘She saw the wound as she was laying him out. There was no other mark on his body.’
Krall hunched his shoulders. ‘His wrist? Yet cleaned and bandaged? You trusted the woman?’
Crowther nodded. ‘She seemed quite respectable, and kept apologising for troubling us with her fancies. Is the fact Lady Martesen’s wrist was injured widely known?’
‘No, no … I don’t know. It seemed an unimportant detail. The gossips had plenty to feed on. No, I don’t think it was widely known. Why did the woman wait to speak till now?’
It was Harriet who replied. ‘She had been uneasy about it since the morning of Fink’s death, but when she heard there was some doubt after all about Lady Martesen’s murderer …’
‘I see, I see. Well, my humiliation is complete. Damn that incompetent sawbones. How could he not notice?’ Krall sank his chin into his chest. His craggy face had grown red and his fists were clenched. He said in a lower voice, ‘What else?’
‘That there were no servants in the house that evening, but there were signs Fink had a guest.’
‘That I had heard. No one knows who …’
‘That did not strike you as suspicious?’ Crowther said.
‘Fink had plenty of guests!’ Krall exploded. ‘The man loved his whores — half the bastards in Ulrichsberg are his! There was no surprise he chose to entertain on the quiet while his wife was in Strasbourg. I heard because the other gentlemen liked to say that at least he died content. And why should we look? We had Lady Martesen’s murderer safely locked up. Were it not for Mr Clode’s connections and nationality, we would probably have condemned him already.’
Harriet moved to the window. As the day of the arrival of the new Duchess approached, activity in the palace seemed to continually increase. As she watched, a number of gentlemen, musicians by the shapes of the cases they were carrying, were crossing the yard in the direction of the Royal Opera House. A man in green and gold was directing an over-laden cart under one of the archways. ‘It must be related. From her description, the wound was not accidental. I believe whoever killed Lady Martesen killed this banker too.’ She felt the fabric of the curtain hangings with one hand. Thick material, heavy and the colour of blood. ‘Two killings of members of the court. Was Clode merely a convenient scapegoat then? The attack on him incidental?’
‘I think not,’ Krall replied, rubbing his temples. ‘Whoever killed Lady Martesen went to some trouble to drug that mask, then lead Mr Clode to the scene. It would have been simpler to drag in some fool from the streets. He would have had no rich friends to support him, no Ambassador to force us to keep him safe. Two … two targets. What is the phrase?’
Crowther twisted his cane. ‘Kill two birds with one stone, I think is what you have in mind, Herr Krall. Mrs Westerman, the answer must be locked in with Mr Clode. He must give us a list of those people he met at court since his arrival here, and his dealings with them.’
‘Graves and Rachel will return to the castle today to continue his interrogation. And you and Herr Krall are right: whoever has performed this killing is clever enough to know a peasant would make a better scapegoat than the agent of an Earl.’
‘We cannot be sure that Fink was murdered,’ Krall said, almost to himself. ‘Some coincidence, some accident.’
Crowther watched him steadily. ‘I do not think you believe that, Herr District Officer.’
‘No. I do not.’ Krall kept his chin low. ‘What am I to tell Swann? The cortege of the Princess arrives at the border tomorrow morning. She arrives here the day after. Well, it is too late for her to go home now. As long as news doesn’t reach them before they are past the borders of Maulberg.’ He brought a fist down on the table. ‘Damn this to hell.’
He looked up at Harriet, a slight air of
challenge in his eye, but she made no sign of offence or distress.
‘What if Lady Martesen were not the first victim?’ she said instead.
‘What?’ Krall said, distracted. ‘What do you mean, madam?’
‘I mean, whoever has done this has managed to throw sand in our eyes most effectively. Perhaps they have tried and succeeded before. Have there been any other deaths in the last few months?’
‘People do die, Mrs Westerman.’
‘Yes, Herr Krall, but I am talking about members of the court and ignoring any case of long illness, or falls. Fire, for instance.’
Krall looked at her suspiciously, but said nothing.
‘Fire, Mrs Westerman?’ Crowther asked.
Rather than give him any answer, she turned to Krall, her head tilted to one side.
‘I believe,’ Krall said wearily, ‘Mrs Westerman might be referring to the death of Count von Warburg. He was indeed killed in a fire at his house just before Christmas.’
‘The circumstances?’ Crowther said shortly.
Krall looked a little angry. ‘There was a fire and he died. Just before Christmas! Von Warburg had supped at court and returned to his own house. The maid woke in the night smelling smoke; by the time she knew what she was about, the whole of the top floor of the house was ablaze. Luckily for her, she slept in the kitchen. They managed to save the neighbouring houses, but there was nothing much left of Warburg’s place. It was assumed he had gone to bed drunk and the candle had caught on the bed-hangings.’
‘And that might be exactly what happened,’ Crowther said.
‘It might well be,’ Harriet replied, ‘or it might be another murder concealed.’
Harriet saw her friend close his eyes briefly. This was exactly what Crowther hated most. When he had a body, or a collection of facts to examine, he was content, focused. This sort of speculation frustrated him, made him feel lost in the fog.
‘Was the body examined?’ he asked.
Krall turned to stare out of the window. ‘The upper storey collapsed. There was not much of a body to bury, let alone examine.’
He then groaned slightly and put his head in his hands.
‘You have remembered something else?’ Crowther said, perhaps unnecessarily.
‘And then there was Bertram Raben,’ Krall said heavily.
Harriet folded her arms. ‘Yes?’
‘A suicide. It seemed. In January. He was a serious sort of fellow, a writer and poet, a young man but well thought of. He wrote for our newspaper here. We thought perhaps this fashion for suicide which has swept the country in recent years had finally caught up with us. But something was a little odd about it to me.’
‘We are all attention, Herr District Officer.’
‘I happened to be in town, and my colleague asked me to look in. Well, there was his room, papers everywhere, of course, and him just sat in the middle of it, opposite the door on a straight-backed chair. Thought it was an odd place to choose to die. Why not the easy chair by the fire? And there didn’t seem to be enough blood.’
‘Interesting.’
Krall stood up and leaned on the desk, his shoulders up. It cost Harriet some effort not to back away. ‘This is madness,’ he growled. ‘Yesterday I had one woman dead, and her murderer under lock and key; now you want to persuade me I am looking at four murders and no suspect.’
‘We cannot waste time with nostalgia, Herr Krall,’ Harriet said in slightly clipped tones. ‘Now to whom can we speak about these gentlemen?’
IV.2
Having done his duties at the palace, Michaels made his way into the town. The market square was swarming with workmen who were building stands on three sides; they looked as if they aimed to dwarf the cathedral. He paused to watch them work, and thought after a few minutes of observation that he would trust them enough to sit there, were he invited. Not that he would be. These were the stands where the nobility of Maulberg would wait, carefully ranked and placed to watch the arrival of their new Duchess in two days’ time. Michaels rolled his shoulders and set off at an easy pace for the house of Colonel and Mrs Padfield.
On his arrival he was shown into the library. It was a rather grand name for a modest room, about the size of the third-best private parlour at the Bear and Crown. He mostly used it to store furniture that needed mending. Michaels sometimes thought houses were built with libraries in order to provide a place for men such as himself to be received. His thick beard and rough coat were not in keeping with the delicate decoration of a fashionable lady’s salon, but he had become too powerful a man to keep standing in the hall.
He had come to Maulberg to assist his friends, knowing that with his guidance they would cross Europe a great deal more quickly, and he aimed to speed their return in the same way. He was happy to leave his business in the care of his wife and thought it might be a chance for his eldest son, a boy of fifteen or so, to step out from his shadow. His time in Maulberg he had intended to spend in looking around at the land his mother had been born in, see how the locals managed their horses and their brewing, and find out if there were any interesting opportunities in which to invest his growing wealth. Still, the mysterious request for an audience from these friends of Mrs Clode’s was intriguing. And he was at liberty while Mr Crowther and Mrs Westerman harried out the truth from this place.
Mrs Padfield did not keep him waiting long. She was a good-looking young woman with a pointed chin and round eyes that seemed to bulge a little from her head, and though she was slight, her movements were quick and her orders to her maid brisk.
‘Did anyone see you come in?’ she asked at once.
Michaels affected a slightly befuddled surprise. ‘No, ma’am.’ In front of this thin-edged woman, he thickened his accent a trifle. Her bright little eyes danced over him as he shifted from foot to foot and turned his round hat in his hands.
She watched him for a few moments longer, then laughed. ‘All right, Mr Michaels. No need to play the yokel with me.’ He kept his eyes low, though he let a smile lift the corner of his mouth. ‘The palace gossips say you are a wealthy man, and one to be treated with respect. Mrs Clode has told us of your authority in your village.’
He looked up at her. ‘What do you want of me then, madam?’
She took a seat and nodded to the chair opposite. ‘Sit down, please, Mr Michaels. What I am about to tell you is known only to one other person, my husband, and to my shame he only learned of it two nights ago. I have decided to take a great risk in sharing this with you. I hope Mrs Clode is right, and you are a man to be trusted as well as respected.’
Michaels sat, but made no comment, asked no further question. She sighed and turned away from him. ‘When we met I told my husband that before I arrived in Ulrichsberg, I worked as a governess. That I came here in search of work. In truth, between the ages of twelve and twenty I helped my sister and uncle trick the rich into giving us their gold, and that is how we ate.’ Her words came out quickly towards the end, and as she finished she looked him boldly in the eye, her chin in the air.
He pulled on his beard. ‘What manner of stealing? Can’t see you raiding travellers at twelve, and someone’s taken pains over your education, haven’t they? No one bothers to teach a pick-pocket or a house-breaker lady’s manners.’
She nodded. ‘The man who called himself our uncle took me and my sister from the orphanage in Leipzig and trained us to be mediums for the spirit world. We had a talent for it.’
‘You’re some manner of witch then?’
She smiled and shook her head. ‘More an actress. It was all theatrics, a keen eye, a few tricks. Imagine a young girl, all dressed in white in a dark room with my uncle murmuring incantations, telling you all your secrets and giving you messages from your dead friends and enemies. I grew used to the sound of gold coins rattling on the table-top.’
Michaels had met a fair number of tricksters and fools in his time, but his scepticism must have shown on his face. She reached over and touched his hand an
d he looked up. Her voice became very soft. ‘Your son is quite well, Michaels. He has had a more gentle start than you did, but he has your eye for people. Trust him. He will not grow soft because he did not have to earn his first money with his fists.’ She sat back again and laughed at the expression on his face. ‘Worth a coin or two?’
‘Fair play, lady. I’m impressed. You have a talent for reading people. How did you know of my son?’
Still smiling, she picked up an ivory puzzle ball from the table at her side. It was a narrow tower with a ball on top, pierced and carved to show another ball within, also pierced, also containing another. ‘Mrs Clode mentioned your family. Your history as a fighter is written in your face and hands if you know how to read it. It doesn’t always work. We’d arrive in a town where there were enough bored rich nobles, and set about milking them with tales of their future, their dead loved ones. Once we’d made a few too many mistakes, my uncle would sweep us off to the next place. An unsettled life. But he fed us and clothed us, gave us an education and never tried …’ She shrugged.
‘So what happened? Ran out of towns, did you?’
‘Not quite. But my sister was ambitious. She heard that there were nobles ready to pay through the nose if you could convince them you knew the secrets of alchemy. But my uncle was getting old, and did not like the risks. When he got sick, she ran off with half our money, and half our jewels. Beatrice is her name. Sharp as a pin. Hair black as a crow’s wing. She was proud of it. Made her stand out among all the fair-haired peasants and the powdered rich.’ She moved the puzzle ball so the ivory spheres turned and clicked against each other.
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