‘Shit,’ one of the men said, as he walked over to the beam and retrieved the key. ‘You want to hand over your swordbelt, and maybe that extra knife you’ve got strapped to your back, under your tunic?’
Durine was unaccountably irritated. He thought he had kept that knife a secret, and didn’t know when or how the man had spotted it. He didn’t like the idea of having stayed in place so long that that sort of thing became a possibility. But he unbuckled his swordbelt, and gave it to another of the soldiers, then drew the knife and handed it, properly hilt-first, to the one who had asked for it, then gestured at Erlic to back away.
He went into the cell quickly, half expecting that Erlic would try to jump him, and looking forward to beating him, just to get discussions off on the right foot. . .
But Erlic just moved to the back of the cell, and slumped down on the overlarge shelf stuck into the wall that served as a prisoner’s bed. A few moments later the two of them were locked in, and Tom Garnett and the guards moved out of sight, and either out of hearing or silent, although Durine wouldn’t have wanted to guess which.
It probably didn’t much matter, unless all four of them were involved in the murder, and while Durine wasn’t willing to throw any possibility out, that didn’t seem to be likely.
He hoped.
Of course, there would be a simple way to find out. If he pasted a satisfied look on his face after he had finished talking with Erlic and they were part of some sort of conspiracy to murder Baron Morray and Lady Mondegreen, they would quickly kill Durine in the cell, rather than allowing him out. If so, one of them was probably going for a crossbow right now, just to make it easy.
That thought warmed him as he turned to Erlic. ‘So,’ he said. ‘I don’t have much to bargain with, and you’ve got less, but let’s see if we can work a deal.’Working a deal was more Pirojil’s thing than Durine’s, but Durine had watched him many times. ‘I could start by, say, breaking a couple of your fingers and promising to stop if you tell me everything you know.’
Erlic looked up at him, and shook his head. ‘But I don’t know anything, except that I fell asleep at my post.’
‘Nobody asked you to look the other way while they went into Lady Mondegreen’s room, say, just to have a quick talk with her?’ Durine didn’t think that it would be that easy, but it wouldn’t hurt to ask. It still left the question of why Erlic hadn’t noticed that somebody had exited the room covered with blood, or heard the sounds of a struggle, but one thing at a time.
Erlic shook his head. ‘Nobody asked me to do anything. Baron Morray went to her room, but -’
‘But he’s done that before.’
Erlic nodded. ‘I had the watch on that hall last night, too, and the night before.’ He shrugged. ‘He just ignored me, and I pretended not to see him.’
‘Who is in the next room?’
‘From Lady Mondegreen?’
‘No,’ Durine said. ‘From Prince Erland.’
Erlic just looked confused; sarcasm, apparently, didn’t work for him.
‘Yes, from Lady Mondegreen.’
‘Verheyen on the near side - the side nearest me - between her suite and Baron Morray’s suite. Viztria and Langahan share the suite beyond her room.’
And if this castle was as lousy with secret passages between rooms as Castle Mondegreen was, there were three more people who could have done it, and if it was Verheyen or any combination of them, then maybe it wasn’t this poor sod’s fault, after all. That might save his neck.
Durine paused for a moment to consider: it could have. . . no, should have taken two people or more to kill both Baron Morray and Lady Mondegreen without raising an outcry that would have awakened this idiot, or somebody else. Maybe one man who was awfully quick with a knife -
Damn. Servants. He hadn’t thought about servants, although why. . .
He could think about why later. ‘Any of the serving staff go in or out?’
Erlic shook his head. ‘Not that I saw. Not there. Emma, the housecarl’s daughter, brought Baron Morray a bottle of wine, but that was to his suite, and she brought a tray to Baron Folson’s room, just before she brought me my own dinner, and another to Viztria’s just after the clock struck two, I remember that, but —’
‘Which he shares with Langahan.’
‘Yes, but -’
‘But nobody went into Lady Mondegreen’s room, that you saw.’
‘Except for Baron Morray, which I already said.’
‘Yeah, but I don’t think he slit her throat, and then his own.’ Durine shook his head. ‘You wouldn’t happen to know if Baron Verheyen usually stays in that room when he visits the Earl, do you?’
Erlic shook his head. ‘No, I don’t know, but. . .’
‘But what, man? Out with it.’
‘But usually, there’s only one or two barons staying in the castle, at the most, and when they don’t stay at their own residence in town - though I don’t think Baron Verheyen has one - they’re usually put up in the big suite, at the end of the hall. There was some grumbling, the other night, about the court barons getting the good suite.’
As though the fractious barons didn’t have more important matters on their mind.
‘Is there anything else you can tell me?’ Durine asked. ‘Anything at all.’
Erlic shook his head. ‘Just that I swear I’ve never fallen asleep on watch before.’ He looked as if he was about to cry.
‘Well, you certainly picked a great time to lose your virginity in that, eh?’ Durine rose. ‘Look: it may - may - not have made any difference. I want your word that you’ll wait for the Earl’s justice.’
Erlic nodded slowly. ‘I deserve that.’
‘I’m not asking what you deserve. I’m asking you for your word.’
‘You’d accept my word?’
‘Yes,’ Durine said, lying. It seemed to be the best way to get agreement from Erlic.
‘You have my word, sir. I’ll not take my own life.’
Durine nodded. ‘Good.’
He rose, and drew the other hidden knife from under his left armpit, then beat it against the bars until he heard feet pounding on the stone floor. He pasted a satisfied look on his face.
‘You found out something?’
Durine nodded wisely. ‘Yes,’ he said. It’s quite possible that I found out the most important thing. Let me out of here, please,‘ he said, resheathing the knife. ’And do keep an eye on Erlic.‘
Tom Garnett seemed to relax, and one of the other men went for the key.
Nobody tried to stab Durine as he stepped out of the cell and quite deliberately turned his back on them to speak to Erlic one more time. Durine didn’t know whether he was happy or sad about it - it would, at least, have been a clue, and despite his protestations to the contrary, he didn’t have a clue - or, to be more accurate, he either had none, or far too many.
‘We’ll be watching him,’ Tom Garnett said.
Durine nodded. ‘Yes, you will.’ If Erlic turned up dead, that would, perhaps, be another one of these clues they were looking for.
Kethol didn’t know what to look for.
The two bodies that lay in the bed were dead, and the killer hadn’t shot them with a marked arrow, or any kind of arrow at all. Unsurprisingly, there were no bloody bootprints across the deep carpet, and what impressions of feet and shoes there were, were indistinct and useless.
He had looked at the bodies, just because that was something he knew how to do.
There was obviously some dust in the air, although where it had come from, he didn’t know, but he did have to keep wiping his eyes, particularly when he looked down at Lady Mondegreen. He had opened the window to let the stink clear out of the air, but that didn’t seem to help as much as it should have, at least with the dust.
He turned back to the bodies on the bed. It was important to remember that these were just bodies, just dead meat, not two people, each of whom had treated him, all in all, better than a mercenary soldier had any rig
ht to expect.
Death was, as always, utterly undignified, although these two had escaped the worst of that. If you ignored the blood and the death stink, you could have imagined them to be sleeping. After staring at Lady Mondegreen for a few moments, he knew he couldn’t ignore the simple fact of death. The colour in her cheeks, present when she laughed, or when tweaked by the cold wind while they were riding to her estates, was gone, replaced by a near-parchment pallor that could not be mistaken for anything other than what it was.
He pushed aside any feelings of regret; he had seen death transform someone he knew from a living person into a lifeless thing too many times. He had found the Lady Mondegreen fetching, and she had been kind to him, but she was now a lifeless thing, and the faster he looked for those clues, the faster he could put this behind him.
He glanced around, as if seeking some sign, something out of place, something he would recognize: as he would a bent twig where one didn’t belong, or crushed grass or mud from a boot on the side of a rock. Jars of face powder and scented creams made no sense to him. Lady’s fineries provided no recognizable answers.
Think, he ordered himself. When you find a poached deer, the first thing you do is examine the deer. He tried to ignore the blood and the stink. With the cold wind blowing in through the window, it really wasn’t too bad.
He bent over them.
A sharp blade had slit the throats both deeply and neatly, although he had no way of telling whether the wounds had been made with a dagger or a sword - except that the awkwardness of wielding a sword mitigated against it.
It was not impossible, mind. There had been that guardsman, outside Dungaran. . .
He shook his head. No. It had been one thing to sneak up behind someone, and grip him by the hair while he whipped the man’s sword around to slice through his throat, his own sword not being available, having stuck itself too firmly into the spine of the previous guardsman. It was quite another to hack down on somebody lying asleep in the bed.
But had they been sleeping? Had they perhaps experienced a moment of awareness of what was upon them?
Probably not, or they would have raised an outcry. But he had to know, and he couldn’t ask them.
Or maybe he could, come to think of it.
He forced himself to pull down the sheets and examine the bodies.
They were covered with blood, and the room stank from the way that both the Baron and his lady had voided themselves in death, but there were no wounds on their hands or arms, just on their necks.
Kethol rubbed at an old scar on his left hand. If you didn’t have anything else to put in the way of a blade, you would use your hand, by reflex, particularly if the blade was going for your face. He had done just that, twice, and had become devout about always keeping a spare knife or two handy, after that time in Dungaran.
But no: from all the evidence, somebody - or somebodies - had simply crept into the room while the two were sleeping, and suddenly slit their throats right at the base of the neck, either both at the same time, or so quickly that neither had had the time to awaken and try to hold off the attacker. Kethol was puzzled. He didn’t think a man could strike one victim fast enough to silence her - and he presumed that she was killed first to keep her from waking up shrieking - then kill her lover without him stirring. It would take speed few men possessed.
Kethol found himself thinking, speed to match what Durine had told him he had seen in Baron Verheyen when he crossed blades with the Swordmaster. He moved to the head of the bed. Yes, a flick with the tip of the sword, starting at the base of the Lady’s neck and an upward thrust, then a downward jab with the point of the blade into the Baron’s throat, slicing outward. Yes, it was possible one man alone could do this if he were fast enough.
Very professional. Kethol could admire the workmanship with part of his mind, even while the other part wanted to get a rag to clear the caked blood from Lady Mondegreen’s chin. He pulled up the sheet to cover both of them, as it didn’t seem right for him to be looking down at a naked noblewoman, not even in death.
It probably hadn’t hurt much, or long. Kethol didn’t quite understand it, but there were some wounds, even fairly deep ones, that just oozed blood out, and were, if you could get attention quickly enough, usually survivable, although if you got even an oozing belly wound, it would fester and kill, and it would usually be over in a matter of days.
Others spurted blood in a short fountain, and could kill a man in a few heartbeats. Or a horse, for that matter - it had been only yesterday that he had admired the way that Tom Garnett’s soldier had dispatched his broken-legged horse with a similar, clean wound.
It would be interesting to know that man’s name, although it probably didn’t mean much.
He searched the floor of the room, unsurprised to find that the knife wasn’t there. It almost certainly wasn’t in the room at all, although he would search carefully for it, just in case.
Or was it? Was it there in plain sight? Could the killer have used Baron Morray’s own knife?
No. The folded clothes on the chair were just clothes. The killer couldn’t have used Baron Morray’s belt-knife, because it was undoubtedly on his swordbelt in his own suite of rooms, along with his sword. The Baron, of course, hadn’t thought to bring along a weapon when he had come to drink a late-night toast with his lady, just a bottle and two glasses.
It was hard to tell how much of the wine had splashed on the floor when the bottle had been overturned, but when Kethol carefully lifted it up from its side, there was still a small amount remaining in it.
Kethol wanted a drink as badly as he had ever wanted one, but he corked the bottle and set it aside.
Baron Morray hadn’t seemed to be an overly sentimental man, and Kethol certainly wasn’t, but Kethol hoped that the Baron wouldn’t mind if Kethol drank a toast to him, later.
Later.
A bell-rope hung near the bed, and Kethol pulled it. He wasn’t sure exactly how the system worked, although he had been down in the kitchens, once, and had seen the rack of bells mounted on the wall, each one with a slightly different sound. It didn’t matter - whichever servant appeared, Kethol would just have him or her send for the housecarl.
Ereven, the housecarl, was at the door in just a matter of a few moments, his eyes locked on Kethol’s, as though if he stared hard enough at the soldier, he could ignore the bodies on the bed.
‘Yes, Captain?’
Some things never changed. The housecarl’s normal glum expression was firmly in place.
But his schedule had been out. The dampness of his face and the bleeding nick at the point of his jaw showed that he had put off shaving until mid-morning, which wasn’t his usual habit. Kethol had never paid the housecarl much attention, but he had never seen him other than freshly shaved, and Kethol assumed that he had had to do that both day and night.
‘How long have you been housecarl here?’
Ask questions, Pirojil had said. The obvious question - who murdered these two people? - didn’t exactly seem worth asking. If he knew the answer to that, Ereven would surely have mentioned it.
‘I’ve served Earl Vandros and his father for all of my life, Captain, as did my father before me. I started off as a boy in the kitchen, washing dishes, and I have held every position on the Earl’s household staff, save for pastry cook and nursemaid.’ He smiled and shook his head. ‘I never could manage egg whites well enough to get a popover to loft well enough, and —’
‘Enough.’ If Kethol didn’t stop the housecarl, he would probably go on for the whole day. It was often that way with taciturn people - once you got them talking, you could hardly make them stop. ‘But housecarl - chief servitor - how long?’
‘Six years, Captain. Ever since Old Thomas died.’
‘Then you would, presumably, know about any secret passages in the castle?’
Ereven blinked. ‘There aren’t any -’
‘This isn’t the time for discretion,’ Kethol said. ‘Normally,
I’d be more than happy for LaMut Castle to keep its own secrets, but if the murderer came in through one of those secret passages, it would be sort of nice to know where they are, wouldn’t it?’
Ereven nodded. ‘I’m sure that that’s so, Captain, and there used to be secret passages, but the old earl had them all sealed up - at least, all of them that I know of.’ He stood silent for a moment, then shrugged and went on. ‘I think that there may be a secret exit from the Earl’s own chambers, still, and from the way that Fantus has been snaking himself down from the loft to the Aerie, I’m fairly sure that there’s some hidden way there.’ He shook his head. ‘But not in the guest wing.’
He walked past the bed, towards the door to the garderobe, Kethol following.
The garderobe itself was covered with a wooden seat, and Kethol idly wondered if it was at least theoretically possible for somebody to have made his way up the wall of the keep and into the room that way, through the open bottom of the garderobe.
He lifted up the seat and looked down at the frozen midden heap on the snow below. No, the hole cut through the stone, which permitted the user to dump his wastes below, was barely large enough to admit a child, and certainly not a full-grown man, even if he had been able to climb the side of the wall.
And he wouldn’t have been able to do that without leaving some marks on the ice-slickened outside wall, he decided: the dust that had covered the seat showed that it hadn’t been moved in some time. The nobles would, understandably, given the cold outside, prefer to use one of the thundermugs sitting on the stone floor next to the garderobe, instead, rather than exposing their private parts to the cold air.
It was the wall opposite the fixture to which Ereven drew Kethol’s attention. He pulled back on an old tapestry - faded deer fadedly frolicking in a faded meadow - to reveal a wall of bricks set into the stone, the bricks apparently solidly mortared into place.
‘This was a small cabinet, with a wooden inset in the back, when I was a boy,’ Ereven said, ‘and if you pushed up on the shelf that was here, and pushed on the moulding there,’ he said, touching his fingers to two spots on the bricks, ‘it would open into the back of the wardrobe in the Green Suite.’
Murder In LaMut Page 26