Mouldiwarp said nothing.
“Do not think silence will help you! Miss Willowes and Private Sutton can each vouch for the actions of the other. Mr. MacDonald had no reason to kill Sir Toby—indeed, his current position is due to Sir Toby’s patronage. Were I the permanent rather than Acting Director, he would have been fired the instant I stepped into this building and he knows it.” (MacDonald shrugged in a manner indicating he doubted seriously that a foreigner would ever be made permanent Director of British Intelligence.) “The other two guards never entered the building. There is no other possible suspect than you. Admit it!”
“Oh, very well, I killed him.” Mouldiwarp spread his hands, as if to say it was all beyond his control. “Willoughby-Quirke was considered a danger to the Empire and so I was dispatched to eliminate him. It was an act of war.”
“You came here as a spy and an assassin. Unlike a soldier, you are subject to summary action. I could kill you here and now and there would be no one to say I was wrong to do so.”
“But you won’t.” There was the faintest trace of a smile on Mouldiwarp’s face, as if he were in on some joke not known by the others. “You see, I am a scryer, much like your Mr. MacDonald here. I can see the future. That is how I was chosen. The Mongolian Wizard’s espionage service routinely trains precognitives as assassins. We are never sent out unless we have seen ourselves alive and well long after the event. Eighteen months from now, I will be sitting in a bierstube in Rastenburg with a stein of pilsner in my hand, a girl of loose morals on my knee, and a medal on my chest for extraordinary service to the Mongolian Wizard. So, one way or another, I will come out of this a free man. I had expected a bungled investigation, but that turns out not to be the case. So, most likely, I will be traded for one of your own assassins, caught by our people. In any event, I have nothing to fear.”
“You sound damnably sure of yourself.” Ritter could not keep the anger out of his voice.
Mouldiwarp’s face was as serene as the moon. “I have seen the future. It cannot be changed. Of course I am sure.”
Turning to address the others, Ritter said, “There has been an assassination attempt. But, by a miracle, Sir Toby escaped unscathed. Tobias Gracchus Willoughby-Quirke remains the head of British Intelligence.” He saw MacDonald open his mouth and raise a hand to object and glared him to silence. “Those are the facts as the world must know them. Anyone caught spreading rumors to the contrary will be arrested and charged with treason. Does everyone understand?”
Miss Willowes’s eyes were wide when she nodded. The major, the guard, and MacDonald all tried to look manly.
“As for this fellow,” Ritter said, drawing his automatic. “I am afraid that he was shot while attempting to escape.”
Mouldiwarp was still smirking in disbelief when the bullet penetrated his forehead and splattered blood and brain matter on the wall behind him. He had foreseen the wrong future.
* * *
When Ritter returned to the carriage, the sun was coming up. The motorman leaned over from his perch and reached down with gloved hand to open the door. Ritter got in and the engine sputtered to life. When he had settled himself into the cushions, he turned to the dark figure sitting beside him and said, “You will need to have the cook transferred elsewhere if you hope to keep up the pretense that you are dead.”
Sir Toby sighed. “I will miss Lillian’s cooking. The girl was a dab hand at Bengal toast. Still, all must make sacrifices if the war is to be won. You uncovered the murderer, of course. I can see it in your comportment. Did my doppelganger last long enough to be removed from the mill?”
“According to a messenger who arrived just minutes ago, the body disappeared shortly after being placed in the morgue.”
Sir Toby sighed deeply. “Then my timeline is the stable one, not the corpse’s. I will confess, the possibility it would go the other way had me worried. And my assassin?”
“Using my best judgment, I executed him.”
Scowling, Sir Toby said, “You were supposed to arrest the man.”
“I wanted to plant uncertainty in the enemy’s mind as to whether the assassination succeeded or not. I ordered the witnesses not to share any of the details of the execution or your death. Thus ensuring that there would be rumors. The Mongolian Wizard’s people will hear you are alive and not know whether to believe it. Their assassin will not return as he was foreseen to do. Your every action will be analyzed twice—as something you might do and as the act of an imposter. It will, however briefly, drive them mad.”
“Why, Ritter! I begin to believe we shall make a proper spy of you yet,” Sir Toby said, with an approving smile.
“Also, there was an even chance he had killed a man I esteemed and admired. That called for revenge.”
The expression soured. “Or perhaps not.”
“I would like to point out,” Ritter said, “that your lie-detecting machine did not render me redundant, as MacDonald boasted it would. In the end, all your shiny machines were inferior to one man, one wolf, and one talent.”
Sir Toby drew a cigar case from his jacket, selected his victim, bit off the end, and, striking a match, puffed it to life. At last, with great solemnity, he said, “Considering, Ritter, that all our hopes of winning this war are hinged on machinery and all the Mongolian Wizard’s on talented men such as yourself, you had best pray that you are wrong.”
About the Author
Michael Swanwick is the winner of five Hugo Awards for his short fiction. His several novels include the Nebula-winning Stations of the Tide, the time-travel novel Bones of the Earth, and the “industrial fantasy” novels The Iron Dragon’s Daughter and The Dragons of Babel. He lives in Philadelphia. You can sign up for email updates here.
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Begin Reading
About the Author
Copyright
Copyright © 2019 by Michael Swanwick
Art copyright © 2019 by Gregory Manchess
Murder in the Spook House: A Tor.com Original Page 2