Baked to Death

by Dean James

  There arose quite a bit of murmuring at the end of Robin’s speech, and Robin once again raised his voice. “Ladies and gentlemen, for now you can assist us by going back to what you were doing. As we need information we will come to you. At the moment, I will ask only those who were present at the dinner party to remain here.” He asked the guests to join Lady Prunella and Totsye in the neighbor’s tent, and everyone but me complied with his request Giles cast me an interrogative look, but I winked. Shaking his head, he followed Tris into the tent I turned back to watch.

  Slowly the crowd dispersed, and Harald Knutson tried to sidle away with them. “Oh, no, buddy boy, you’re not going anywhere,” I said to him in an undertone as I strode forward to grab his arm.

  He turned to glare at me and attempted to shake his arm loose from my grip, but when I tightened my hand, he whimpered. “I think you should stay and talk to the nice policeman, Your Majesty.”

  I dragged a protesting Knutson none too grace-fully toward the front of Totsye’s pavilion, where Robin Chase regarded me with an unreadable expression in his eyes.

  “Assisting the police with their inquiries again, Dr. Kirby-Jones?” he asked. His question lacked its usual irony.

  I eyed him warily. “Just trying to do my civic duty, Detective Inspector. Surely you would expect no less of me.”

  Knutson mewled in distress, and I let go of his arm. He stood there rubbing it shooting daggers at me with his eyes. I ignored him after one glance to assure myself that he wasn’t trying to sneak away again.

  “I think you will find it helpful to question the king, Detective Inspector,” I said, relishing the expression of incredulity on Robin’s face.

  “King of what, might I ask?” Robin said, his eyes moving back and forth between Knutson and me.

  “I am the duly appointed monarch of this realm, Detective Inspector.” Knutson had drawn himself up to his full height and did his best to appear regal, but he couldn’t quite pull it off. The fear evident in his face quite ruined the effect.

  “And what realm is this, Your Majesty?” Robin said, with nary a flicker of an eyelid.

  Knutson launched into a rambling explanation of the GA.A Robin’s eyes quickly glazed over, and he held up a hand to stem the flow of Knutson’s babbling. “I think I get the picture now,” Robin said. “Could you explain to me then why Dr. Kirby-Jones insisted that you remain here? Were you not one of the guests at the dinner party?”

  Sniffing angrily, Knutson replied, “No, I was not I know nothing of what happened to the late Duke of Wessex, nor do I particularly care. The man was pestilence personified, and if anyone asks me, I’ll say he’s no great loss.”

  “Is that so?” Robin asked. “Perhaps you would care to tell me, Your Majesty, why you disliked the deceased so much?”

  Belatedly, Knutson realized the hole he had just dug for himself. “Detective Inspector, you mustn’t misunderstand. I didn’t like the man, but I would never do anything to harm a rival. I had no need.”

  “Rival?” Robin asked.

  Really, the man was a fool. No wonder the late duke had been so impatient to wrest the kingship away from him.

  “Would you care to explain what you meant by ‘rival,’ Your Majesty?” Robin spoke a bit sharply when Knutson failed to respond to his first question.

  Blinking rapidly, Knutson hastened to explain. “Mine is an elected position, Detective Inspector. The Duke of Wessex intended to challenge me for the kingship, but I had no reason to fear a challenge from him. He wasn’t nearly as well liked as he wanted to think, I can assure you of that!”

  “Really,” Robin said. “Were there others who despised him as much as you seem to have, Your Majesty?”

  Knutson goggled at Robin. He hemmed and hawed for a few moments but was able to produce only one name. “Reggie Bolingbroke, Sir Reginald, that is. He hated Luke, really hated him.”

  I distrusted Knutson’s surge of relief at naming his other rival for the kingship. Was he telling the truth, or merely trying to divert suspicion from himself? Then I recalled my own meeting with Sir Reggie. Knutson might not be lying after all.

  “Reggie hated Luke,” Knutson said. “Anyone can tell you that, Detective Inspector, I assure you. Reggie is a raging homophobe, and Luke made little secret of his, um, his proclivities.” Knutson pronounced the word as if it were a profanity. I figured ol’ Reggie wasn’t the only homophobe in camp. “If you ask me,” Knutson’s tone grew more confidential, “Reggie is hiding something. Don’t they say that the men who are the most homophobic are the ones who are denying their own tendencies?”

  Robin did not respond to that last query. “I shall speak to this Sir Reginald Bolingbroke later. But now, if I might return to a previous point. Why, Your Majesty, was Dr. Kirby-Jones so insistent that you should remain for questioning? Other than your position, of course.”

  When Knutson failed to answer, I could control my exasperation no longer. “Because, Detective Inspector, Knutson was in the tent this evening, just before we all arrived for the dinner party.”

  “I see," Robin said. “I think that will be all for now, Your Majesty. I shall no doubt have further questions for you, after I know more about what occurred here this evening.”

  “Certainly, Detective Inspector,” Knutson said with patent relief. “Anyone can direct you to the royal pavilion. Simply ask.” He almost scampered away.

  Robin stood staring after him, a bemused expression on his face. Then he turned to me. “These people are really serious about this stuff, aren’t they?”

  “Apparently deadly so,” I said.

  Robin ignored my attempt at a bit of black humor. “What’s your take on it, Simon? Accident or murder?”

  I shrugged. “It could be an accident, but somehow I doubt it. There’s a lot of animosity here among the rival factions for the kingship, and I think the late duke’s chances of being elected were pretty strong. Maybe someone decided to put him permanently out of the running.”

  “The present king certainly made little secret that he was glad his rival was out of the way.”

  “He certainly did,” I said, chuckling a bit. “King Harald is a bit dim, isn’t he? He handed you a motive, clear as day.”

  “One that I would quickly have heard from other sources, no doubt.”

  “That’s true,” I conceded. “So perhaps it was a preemptive strike. If so, that means Harald is brighter than I give him credit for. But somehow, I don’t fancy he’s all that good at chess.”

  Robin allowed a small smile. “Now, Simon, tell me what happened in there.” He gestured toward Totsye’s pavilion. I could see his crew at work inside. There was yet a good hour and a half until sunset, and the soft evening light lingered.

  I glanced over my shoulder to espy Tris and Giles standing at the opening of the tent belonging to Totsye’s solicitous neighbor across the way. Tris could hear every word I said to Robin because of his acute vampire hearing, but Giles was having a harder time of it I flashed them both a quick grin. Giles rolled his eyes in response, but Tris remained impassive. I wished I could read him. Perhaps then I could dismiss my suspicions of him.

  Turning my back on Giles and Tris, I stepped closer to the opening of Totsye’s tent, forcing Robin to follow me. He laid a hand on my arm to stop me from entering, then withdrew the hand quickly, as if he had been burned by the touch.

  Under my quizzical gaze, Robin flushed slightly. He stroked his moustache, a nervous tic of his that seemed to occur whenever he was around me for very long.

  Taking pity on Robin’s discomfiture, I ignored it and launched into a summary of the evening’s events. I took care to include a description of the behavior of King Harald and his henchman, Guillaume.

  Robin studied the ground carefully and continued stroking his upper lip while I spoke. When I had finished, he finally looked me in the face. “There seems little doubt that he was poisoned, and by your description, I would say that whatever it was, it was in one of those fig pastri
es.”

  “Yes,” I said. “There were two of those pastries at each place, and one of them was gone from Luke’s plate. When he vomited, it was obvious that he had recently eaten a fig pastry. Ergo, the poison was probably in the pastry.”

  “There was still one whole pastry at his place?” Robin asked.

  “There was, when I looked right after Luke was taken ill.”

  “Please stay here for a moment, Simon,” Robin said before striding inside the tent.

  Trying not to appear too obvious, I looked into the tent, trying to see the top of the table. Robin and one of his crew, however, blocked my view. Frustrated, I turned instead to see what Giles and Tris were doing.

  I almost did a double-take. Tris and Giles were standing close together, and Tris had one hand resting in a proprietary manner on Giles’s neck. As I watched, Tris stroked the side of Giles’s face with his thumb. It was an intimate gesture, one that infuriated me. What the hell was Tris playing at?

  More to the point, what was Giles doing flirting so blatantly with Tris?

  I was all set to charge across to the other tent and demand to know what the hell was going on when Robin spoke at my side.

  “Simon,” he said, “I need you to look at something.”

  “What?” I said, bewildered. “What do you want?”

  “Is something wrong, Simon?” Robin asked, concerned. Then he looked past me, and his eyes widened. “Uh, Simon, I really need you to look at something.”

  Turning my back on Giles and Tris, trying to quell my flare of temper, I said, “What is it, Robin?”

  “It’s important, Simon,” Robin said, responding to the tone of my voice. “Step inside the tent here and have a look at the dinner table.”

  Now curious, trying to push aside thoughts of what was going on behind my back, literally and figuratively, I moved closer to the table.

  I frowned. Something was different. What was it?

  Then I had it. The plate at Luke de Montfort’s place was empty. What had happened to the second pastry I had seen there earlier?

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  I scanned the table once more to be sure, but at Luke’s place there was not a single fig pastry. Every other place had two, though some of them had a bite or two missing. I shut my eyes and concentrated on the table as it had been after Luke became ill. I was certain that there had been one pastry, and I was certain also that no one had, in the interim, switched the place cards.

  During my rapid cogitations, Robin had waited patiently. “What is it, Simon? What is different?”

  I pointed to Luke’s place. “When I examined the table after Luke became ill, there was one whole fig pastry at his place. Now there is none.” Anticipating Robin’s next question, I continued, “And, no, the place cards have not been switched. I am positive of that.”

  “What is the point of taking a pastry away?” Robin asked in a tone indicating he was thinking aloud.

  “Someone is playing a twisted little game here,” I said. “I’m not certain exactly what, but for some reason, the murderer didn’t want you to have the second pastry. When it was taken, I don’t know, it could have been any time after Luke collapsed, but you’ll have to ask whether anyone noticed anything.”

  Robin nodded. “Sounds plausible. Now we’ll have to search for the second pastry, or traces of it.” He called one of his men over and issued some instructions.

  “Now, Simon,” he said, “you realize this is just a formality, of course, but would you mind letting one of my men search you?”

  I thought about it for a moment. After all we had been through together, surely Robin didn’t consider me a suspect? No, I reasoned, he probably didn’t, but he couldn’t afford to neglect any possibilities.

  “No, Robin, of course not. Anything to help, as I always say.” I grinned at him. “But why don’t you perform the search?”

  His cheeks grew the slightest bit red. “I think that is a task better left to one of my men, Simon.” He called a name, and after a moment, one of his staff, a grizzled veteran, came from the back of the tent.

  I waited patiently while my examiner patted me down. At least Robin had let the tent flap down, so no one outside was treated to the sight of me being frisked.

  After a thorough search, which included a close look at my hands, the policeman reported to Robin that I was clean. Robin thanked him and sent him back to his previous task. He opened the tent flap again, for which I was thankful. The atmosphere inside the tent was oppressive.

  “Now that that is out of the way, Robin, what’s next?”

  “I will continue pursuing my inquiries, Simon, as you know very well. One of the priorities will be to determine how the poison was administered.” He shook his head. “Nasty business, poison.”

  “Yes, poison is a devious means of killing someone, don’t you think? Surely the postmortem will reveal something about how long the digitalis had been in his system before causing that collapse.”

  As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I realized I had erred. Robin didn’t miss a beat when he asked, “And just how do you know it was digitalis, Simon? If indeed it was.”

  A curse word of supposedly Anglo-Saxon origin came to mind, but I was too genteel to utter it aloud, particularly in the presence of a police officer. Instead I smiled as sweetly as I could at Robin. He blinked. “I don’t really know that it was digitalis, Robin. But it certainly seems plausible, given Luke’s symptoms, don’t you think?”

  Should I grass on Tris to Robin? If I didn’t mention it now, surely someone else would. Oh, what the heck. “Actually, Robin, it was Tristan Lovelace who first mentioned digitalis.”

  Robin wasn’t taken in by my feigned innocence. “And just what does Professor Lovelace know about digitalis poisoning? I thought he was an historian specializing in the medieval period, like you.” When I didn’t reply immediately, Robin went on, “Do both of you make a habit of studying poisons, Simon? Does Professor Lovelace also stumble over dead bodies as frequently as you?”

  “You’ll have to ask Professor Lovelace that for yourself, Robin,” I replied in frosty tones. Really, the man was being unnecessarily sarcastic, I thought. “He was the one who mentioned that Luke’s symptoms were like those brought on by digitalis poisoning.”

  “I certainly will ask him about that, Simon,” Robin said. “In fact, if I can peel him away from young Blitherington, I’ll ask him right now.”

  Robin had been facing the opening of the tent and I had momentarily forgotten the flirtation I had witnessed minutes earlier between Tris and Giles. Robin’s rather catty remark brought the memory, and my anger, flooding back I whirled around, and, sure enough, Tris and Giles were still standing there, much too close together.

  I marched out of the tent and over to them. I tapped Tris on the arm. Actually, I thumped him, but to him it felt no more than a tap. “Yes, Simon, what is it?” Tris drawled at me without taking his eyes from Giles’s face.

  I poked him again. “Detective Inspector Chase wishes to speak to you, Tris, if you can tear yourself away from this tawdry little scene you’re enacting. Now!”

  From behind me came the sound of a clearing throat. “Professor Lovelace, I would like to speak to you for a few minutes, if you don’t mind.”

  Tris took his hand away from Giles’s neck and turned to regard both Robin and me. Tris’s eyes held a faint glint of humor as they met mine. Then he focused on Robin and let the poor man have the full force of his dazzling smile. When I glanced back at Robin, he was stroking his moustache so furiously I thought he might actually rub it off.

  Tris stepped past me and followed Robin back to the opening of Totsye’s pavilion. I turned my back at them to glare at Giles.

  “And just what was all that about, I’d like to know?”

  Giles blinked at me. He had the appearance of a man who had been in a trance but was now slowly coming back to the present. “What was what all about, Simon? What are you talking about?”

 
“That rather intimate little tete-a-tete you were having with Tris,” I said, watching him uncertainly. “You know, when he had his hand on your neck and was gazing deeply into your eyes?”

  Giles’s right hand went to his neck in an involuntary gesture. He frowned. “Really, Simon, are you sure about that? I remember talking with Professor Lovelace about something, I’m not sure what, but that’s all.”

  My gaze bored into his, and I focused all my senses on him to get a reading of his emotions. He gave off an aura of confusion, not of deceit. He wasn’t lying to me.

  This was very odd. I had thought that vampires on the pill, like me, weren’t able to “put the glamor” on anyone the way they could if they were still bloodsuckers. I certainly wasn’t able to do it. But Tris had followed the old ways for much of his existence as a vampire, since the convenient pills had been invented only about twenty years ago. Perhaps because he had been a bloodsucker for so long, he still had the power to hypnotize people with his eyes, for that’s all that the “glamor” really was.

  “Perhaps I was mistaken, Giles,” I said, “but it did look for a moment there like Tris was flirting with you and you weren’t doing much to resist.”

  Giles hooted with laughter, causing his mother to turn admonishing eyes on us. She pointed to the still recumbent Totsye and then made a shooing gesture with her hands. Giles laughed again, but then put a hand on my arm and drew me a bit away from the tent.

  “Really, Simon, this is too, too delicious,” he said with a wicked grin. “The tables are well and truly turned if you’ve started imagining that Professor Lovelace has designs on me, when it’s you he’s been all hot and bothered about. That really is quite amusing.”

  I started to protest that it was anything but my imagination, but an explanation would entail more information than I was ready to impart to Giles. “Perhaps I was mistaken then.”

  “I should say so,” Giles responded. “I grant you, Simon, that Professor Lovelace is a very attractive man. I have always admired older men, as you well know.” Here he fluttered his eyelashes at me. “But, really, Simon, the handsome professor is rather a bit too old for me, don’t you think?”