Murder in Halruaa
Page 21
“Matthaunin Witterstaet?” he wondered, then shook his head. “It’s hard to believe anyone spending twelve hours beneath a watchful eye while studying the means, motive, and opportunities of hundreds of immigrants would have the time or inclination to confront a mage and kill him.
“Sheyrhen Karkober? Is it possible that someone who appears so guileless and acts so silly is capable of plotting the coldblooded murder of a mage in the middle of a city of mages?” He nodded curtly. “Possible.” She gasped. “But not likely,” he concluded. She relaxed, but not for long.
“Besides,” Pryce continued, “she was too busy hiding her affair with Gamor Turkal from the man who has secretly been her devoted paramour for years.”
“Sheyrhen!” the restaurant owner shouted like a wounded bull. “How could you—”
Pryce cut off any further exchange between the two. “Forgive her, Azzoparde,” he told him, stepping between the burly barkeep and the shamed serving wench. “I’m sure Gamor pressured her unmercifully and made many tempting promises of wealth and fame he had no intention of keeping. I’m also sure that it was only one night, and she regretted it so deeply and was so intent on keeping you from being hurt that she allowed herself to become a murder suspect before she would admit the unfortunate truth.”
Pryce moved his head so Azzo could see Karkober nodding anxiously, then quickly straightened to lock eyes with the restaurant proprietor. “But you yourself aren’t out of the woods yet, Azzoparde Schreders. Although I know that the hours needed to run a successful tavern are long, you have your own secret, don’t you?” He stared at the bearded, burly man until Azzo’s gaze wavered. Only then did Pryce shake his head. “You knew, didn’t you? Just as Sheyrhen was keeping the secret of her one-night stand, you were keeping your knowledge of it from her, weren’t you?” The burly tavern owner said nothing. Instead, he looked sheepishly down at the deck.
Karkober ran into his arms.
Pryce stepped back, a small smile crossing his face. “No, although you might have the urge to kill Gamor Turkal for what he did,” he told the burly man embracing the beautiful waitress, “I don’t think you had the time or inclination to murder a mage.”
“How—how did you know?” Azzo wondered.
“You forget,” Pryce said with a grin. “I knew Gamor Turkal, too … probably better than all of you put together! And then … I saw the way you looked at Sheyrhen when you thought she had called me ‘darling’ in the bar last night. The rest was easy.” He sniffed modestly.
He turned quickly from the visibly relieved barkeep to the defiant inquisitrix. “Berridge Lymwich,” he mused aloud. “She certainly has cunning and desire that know few reins.…” He stared hard at the cold-eyed woman who faced him with her chin thrust forward.
He continued, his tone softening. “But she also has an entire castle of sisters who spend all day and night trying valiantly to teach her … that ambition without wisdom is meaningless.”
Lymwich held her defiant pose for a moment more. Then the words made it past her mental defenses, and she blinked. Her stare wavered and she turned quickly to look at her inquisitrix leader.
Wendchrix Turzihubbard smiled benevolently and slowly nodded.
As Berridge Lymwich looked down at the deck, her fists clenching and unclenching, Pryce stepped carefully around her and faced the mine owner. “And now we come to Asche Hartov, visitor to our fair shore.…”
“All right, all right!” the gaunt man exploded, surprising everyone, including Covington. “You want to know why I came to Lallor? I’ll tell you why. Did I have the opportunity to meet with Geerling Ambersong and Gamor Turkal? Yes, I did, but I didn’t kill them! I tell you, I didn’t!”
“Wait a minute,” Pryce cried, trying to mentally catch up with the mine owner’s words. “If you didn’t kill them, what did you do, Asche?”
Hartov stared at Pryce, his lips trembling. “You know, Blade,” he whispered, almost blubbering. “Don’t you?”
“I only think,” Pryce stressed. “You know.”
“Yes,” Hartov cried, hiding his face in his hands. “I plotted with them—Fullmer and Turkal and I. I admit it!”
Pryce hastily looked at Lymwich and Turzihubbard, holding his arm out to keep them back. “To do what, Asche?” he demanded. “Speak now, or they’ll disintegrate you. You plotted with them to do what?”
The mine owner’s head shot up, tears blinking out of his eyes, remembering where he was … and what powerful people were in attendance. “Not to kill anyone! To steal magic artifacts! We only planned to plunder the secret workshop, I swear!”
“Only to plunder the workshop” Lymwich cried, but a quick look from Pryce shut her up.
“Details,” Covington demanded urgently of the mine owner. “In twenty-five words or less.”
“Gamor—it was Gamor! He came to me with the idea. Teddington and I met with him several times. Turkal said he could get us inside. Fullmer would transport the material, and I would secrete it in one of my empty mines.”
“It would take three people days to empty the workshop!” Dearlyn Ambersong interjected angrily.
“Not all at once!” Hartov babbled. “A bit at a time.”
“But then Gamor was gone,” Pryce said soothingly. “Wasn’t he, Asche?”
“Yes,” Hartov said, grabbing that reality like a life preserver. “I looked all over Lallor for him. Fullmer … Fullmer made me stay until we heard from him. Curse him!”
“Ah, yes,” said Pryce. “Teddington Fullmer.” He turned away from the shuddering mine owner for the moment and addressed the others. “Ladies and gentlemen, this is as good a time as any to reveal to you a most important principle of detection. The most important letter for a detective is Y. And the most important why at the moment is this: Why hasn’t the murderer killed me?”
The question caught everyone off guard for a moment. “Think about it,” Pryce suggested. “The murderer was powerful enough to kill Geerling Ambersong, and I am merely his lowly student. Here I am, devoting all my energy to finding my master’s killer, and what happens to me?” He looked resolutely at Gheevy. “Nothing. Why?”
It was safe to say that they were all perplexed. Pryce continued. “When you think about it, there can only be one reason.…”
Mystra Superior Wendchrix Turzihubbard wasn’t interested in playing guessing games. “And what is that, Mister Blade?” She made it clear by her tone that the answer should be forthcoming immediately.
He looked at her calmly, pausing as thunder rumbled in the distance. “Because the murderer can’t.”
“Why not?” Turzihubbard retorted evenly.
He looked directly at her, but he spoke to them all. “Because the person who killed my teacher and master, Geerling Ambersong, is also dead.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Blade Straight and True
The sky rumbled once more. Pryce looked up to see storm clouds gathering directly in the ship’s path. “Captain!” he called. “Can we avoid the storm?”
“No,” Scottpeter called back. “But the beacon from Mount Talath will pull us through. It may be rough, but we’ll make it!”
“Fair enough.” Pryce turned back to the others. “But it doesn’t give us much time.”
“Mr. Blade!” Turzihubbard called out. “Explain yourself.”
He looked at her helplessly. “This is the only thing that makes sense, Mistress Turzihubbard—especially if you follow Santé’s teachings, which my master most certainly did. I ask you all to think about who else is dead.”
He looked from one to the next as he carefully explained. “Gamor is gone. Geerling is gone. We will never know who killed them unless we solve the mystery of who murdered Teddington Fullmer.”
It was silent on deck except for the creaking of stevlyman wood and an ominous rumbling far off in the sky. Finally Matthaunin Witterstaet managed to choke out a laugh. “My word, Mr. Blade. It sounds rather like the sort of conundrum I set for my immigration test.�
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Pryce turned to him and smiled. “Yes, Matthaunin, that’s true. For instance, why can’t a person living in Halarahh be buried west of the River Ghalagar?” They all looked at each other for the answer, but it was forthcoming only from Pryce. “Because he’s still living. Remember?” A few of them started to laugh, but Pryce added, “Unlike Teddington Fullmer.” That sobered them up again.
“All right,” Pryce stated, taking a position in the middle of the deck. “Think. Remember that most of you were in Schreders’s tavern the afternoon I spoke with Fullmer in the grotto. Any one of you could have overheard us planning a meeting for that night But who is the only one who could have killed him and then, more importantly, placed him in the locked secret workshop?”
Pryce glanced at the clouds, which were boiling and turning black, then moved in among his audience for the intellectual kill. He looked from Witterstaet to Lymwich and back again. “You two told me. How much magic do the people we pressed into moving the contents of the workshop possess?”
“Why, none,” said Matthaunin.
“And why would they kill Fullmer, anyway? To get the workshop for themselves?” Pryce waved that thought aside with a look of distaste. “A motive shared by all is no longer really a valid motive. Look for an unusual motive, a motive with a difference. In that motive the truth may lie.”
He pointed at the remorseful mine owner. “Would he kill Fullmer in order to get out of their plan to plunder the workshop? I don’t think so.” He pointed at Azzo and Karkober. “They were serving food and drink to dozens of people at the time Fullmer was attacked. The kitchen crew will corroborate that they never left the dining area.”
“None of them possesses magical abilities,” Lymwich spoke up. “And I was keeping my shift in front of the orbs of eyewitness in the Mystran Inquisitrix Castle, along with several of my sister inquisitrixes.”
Both Pryce and the Mystra Superior looked at Lymwich in surprise. How dare she interrupt this denouement? But her purpose became clear when she turned to confront Pryce on the skyship deck. “There was only one other person with the necessary magical power,” she said accusingly. Lymwich pointed directly at him. “You.”
Pryce Covington did not panic at her assertion. He even managed a small smile. “I didn’t do it,” he said mildly.
“Can you prove it?” Lymwich retorted, feeling a sense of triumph welling up in her. But her sense of accomplishment was short-lived.
“I can,” he nodded. “I have a witness.”
“Who?” Lymwich asked incredulously.
“Geerling Ambersong.”
The suspects sputtered and cried out, and Lymwich even laughed derisively, but the Mystra Superior quieted them all. “The haunt!” she exclaimed.
Pryce nodded. “The haunt,” he agreed. “Geerling Ambersong’s restless spirit. He told us—Dearlyn, Gheevy, and me—who had killed him.”
“He did not!” Dearlyn flared, marching forward. “That’s not true. I told you what happened, Berridge, and the halfling corroborated my story.”
For the first time, Lymwich looked indecisive. “You said Geerling’s spirit possessed the still-living body of Teddington Fullmer. And when you asked him who he was killed by, he first said Darlington Blade, then paused. Then he said Darlington Blade wasn’t the one who killed him. It was—”
“ ‘It was the one behind him,’ ” Pryce finished for her. “ ‘Behind him.’ Interesting choice of words. Not ‘the man behind him,’ but ‘the one behind him.’ Behind whom? Geerling Ambersong? Darlington Blade? Me?”
“What is this nonsense?” Dearlyn confronted him before anyone took careful note of his ironic list of suspects. “How can you say that these words prove anything?”
Pryce frowned and shrugged. “Well, perhaps not words, then, Miss Ambersong. What about actions?”
“Actions? What actions?”
“Ah, I see you didn’t tell Berridge everything, did you?” He turned toward the halfling. “You remember, don’t you, Gheevy? When Geerling was trying to control Fullmer’s body, he seemed to point at me. Then when Miss Ambersong tried to kill me, he loomed up behind her—”
“Yes,” croaked Gheevy, his voice cracking from so little use. “That’s true! He fell on her, saying you had not killed him, that it was the person behind!”
“What are you two going on about?” Dearlyn interrupted angrily. “This is absurd!”
Pryce directed his words at her with quiet conviction. “A haunt’s statement is sacrosanct,” he informed her. “As are, I imagine, his actions. So I have no choice but to state categorically that you are, and were, ‘behind’ Darlington Blade metaphorically, physically, and actually quite literally.”
Dearlyn looked at Pryce as if he had suddenly turned into a death knight. “You—you can’t be serious!”
“I’m sorry, Dearlyn,” he apologized sincerely. “But it had to be you. There is no one else.”
“B-But why?” she cried. “How can it possibly be me?”
“Because,” Pryce said, “you were the only one with the proper magic to accomplish it”
Had they been frozen in time, there would have been no less movement from the others. Only Dearlyn Ambersong’s face moved. Her mouth opened and closed, but nothing came out. Her forehead became a sea of creases. Her eyes wavered and shook, her mind unable to accept the depth of his betrayal.
The sky took that moment to split open with thunder. The sudden sharp crack shook everyone. Karkober even let out a small shriek. Dearlyn may have said, “Do you know what you’ve done?” but Pryce couldn’t be sure.
“Magic?” Lymwich declared. “What magic?”
Pryce didn’t take his eyes off Dearlyn Ambersong. “Don’t you see? It had to be her. The haunt fell on her. She was the only one with no alibi. She was the only one allowed free, unattended travel throughout the city. She is truly the one ‘behind’ Darlington Blade—physically in the workshop, but also during her father’s entire life.”
“She killed her own father?” Matthaunin asked incredulously.
Only then did Pryce take his eyes off her. “No,” he explained.
“Gamor Turkal killed Geerling Ambersong. She killed Gamor.”
It was the inquisitrix’s turn to be flabbergasted. “Gamor?” Lymwich exclaimed. “You must be joking!”
“Gheevy said you wouldn’t believe it,” Pryce mused philosophically, “but the one positive thing I remember anyone in Lallor saying about Turkal was that he had an incredible memory. I didn’t realize why that stuck in my mind until now. He must have been memorizing everything Geerling had been teaching me.”
“Nonsense!” Lymwich cried.
“Unlikely,” Witterstaet agreed.
Pryce whirled on Hartov. “Asche! You said Gamor contacted you. How did he accomplish that?”
“What do you mean?”
“Did he send a messenger, come in person, or what?”
“Why, no. He came to me … in a vision!”
“Like dust taking form in a shaft of light … his face … talking to you?”
“Why, yes.”
Pryce turned back, his arms out. “You see? Magic. He was using unique Ambersong magic. And he had conceived of a way to steal the Ambersong legacy with the help of people he knew back in Merrickarta, which is where he came from. Only Geerling must have found out. But when he confronted Gamor, just before I arrived for a rendezvous, Gamor surprised him. Even with magical knowledge, the only way someone like Turkal could have killed someone like Geerling was through what is known in the lexicon as ‘a lucky shot.’ ”
He turned back to Dearlyn sadly. “But Gamor wasn’t the only one taking advantage of Geerling’s magical studies, was he? You, too, had been soaking up what you felt was rightfully yours, quite possibly following Gamor, your father, or both to eavesdrop on the lessons in magic. So you were there to witness what Gamor had done, and then you gave him a shot of your own.”
“How can you even think that?” Dearlyn cried.
Dearlyn flashed a look of anger at the inquisitrix, who stiffened, then stared back at Pryce with pure hatred. “You have destroyed me. Don’t you know that?” Dearlyn asked.
“As you destroyed Gamor?” he responded. “You had to make it look like a suicide, so you made it appear that Turkal had hanged himself.”
“Blade, really!” a shocked Witterstaet piped in.
“Matthaunin, divide thirty by half and add ten,” Pryce snapped with irritation. “Tell me your answer when this is all over!” Covington quickly returned his attention to Dearlyn Ambersong. “You used your ill-gotten magic to lift Gamor’s already dead body, but I’m sure you knotted the rope around his neck yourself.”
“How can you be so sure?” Lymwich growled skeptically.
Pryce looked this way and that, stopping only when he saw Dearlyn’s staff leaning against the first mast. He leapt over and grabbed it. “How many times have you thrust this in my face?” he demanded, shaking it at her. “And each time I knew I had seen something that bothered me.…”
He grabbed the horsehair covering and pulled it back to reveal the garden implements attached to the end by leather thongs. “Gardening tools indeed! This is nothing more than your way to carry a concealed weapon. But that’s not what betrayed you. Each of those tools is tied to the staff by a very interesting knot … the exact same knot that attached the rope around Gamor Turkal’s neck!”
Lightning flashed down to strike the central mast, dancing in spider-webbed sparks all the way down to the deck. The thunder that followed a split second later was deafening.
“Captain!” Turzihubbard cried.
“Don’t panic!” Scottpeter called back. “The masts act as lightning rods. The entire craft is grounded. We’ve been through storms like this before. Just a few more minutes and it all should be over.”