Castle Murders

by John Dechancie

  “Hi, Velma. Just to talk, I expect.”

  “Yeah, a nice little chat. Cozy like. Couple of drinks. You two fellas ought to be able to talk this out.”

  “Sounds lovely. I accept. But I’ll get there on my own hook, thanks.”

  “Hey, anything I can do to help.”

  “You can help by leaving.”

  The deng was deeply offended. “I offer to do you a favor, and this is the kinda hospitality I get. That stinks.” The demon lifted his glass and dumped ice into its mouth, where large white teeth crunched it up. “You stink.”

  “You’re entitled to an opinion.”

  “Yeah, and if I say all humans are cesspool runoff, I’m entitled to that opinion, too.”

  “By all means. But how about taking your opinions and your business somewhere else?”

  The deng chuckled. “Everybody keeps sayin’ that, but I don’t see no action.” Onyx eyes took in the room. “I like it here. Real nice place. Great. I think I’m gonna stay.” He reached into his jacket and brought out a hip flask. “And I brought my own.”

  “Leave now,” Carney said, changing his intonation, “or you’ll get hurt.”

  The demon guffawed. “You? Gonna hurt me? This I’d like to see.”

  “Then get the dame out of the way. Or are you going to hide behind her?”

  “Huh?” The demon reached out. “Okay, babe, move it.”

  With one easy motion he yanked her off the bar stool. She wound up sprawled on the floor with her skirt up over her buttocks, which were not inordinately hidden by brief black silk panties. She got to her knees and crawled off a distance, then sat up and turned around. She appeared neither offended nor hurt.

  The deng lifted the hip flask to its lips and drank. Lowering the flask, it smiled toothily. “Take your best shot, fart-face.”

  Flame shot toward the demon, originating from somewhere in Carney’s vicinity. A ball of fire enveloped the deng’s huge form.

  It stood there burning, black smoke rising to the ceiling and pancaking out. The whole nightclub was silent except for the crackling. Burning scraps of fabric fell from the demon’s body, and black ash like dirty snowflakes floated away.

  The flames died. Most of its clothes burned clean off, the demon calmly took another swig from the flask.

  Velma’s eyes had gone wide at the sight of the demon’s strange genitalia.

  Tony Montanaro was on the other side of the bar with a .45 automatic in each fist. He leaned over the counter to look.

  “Hey, boss. Kinda handy to have a spare, ain’t it?”

  “I don’t think that’s the exact function.”

  The demon threw the flask across the room, slid a forearm across its mouth. Naked and defiant, it laughed. “What gave you the idea that fire was gonna give me any trouble?”

  “Didn’t think it would,” Carney said.

  “Now it’s my turn,” the incubus said, advancing.

  Tony opened up with the .45’s. Slugs bounced off the muscular green-tinged carapace.

  Carney said, “But I did sort of figure you wouldn’t like this.”

  He picked up the seltzer bottle and gave the deng a spritz.

  The water doused its chest and belly. With a suspiring hiss, steam rose instantly.

  The demon stopped and howled, its darkened face contorted with surprise and pain.

  “What is that?” it roared.

  “Holy seltzer.” Another stream of carbonated water arched out and splashed.

  The deng screamed and backed off. Carney advanced, continuing to hose his adversary down.

  “No! No!”

  “Then get out.”

  “All right!”

  The deng backstepped, then turned and hurried out of the barroom.

  The Pelican Club gradually came back to life. The Goldfarb medley resumed, and low conversation filled the air. Glasses chinked. A woman laughed nervously.

  “Nice work, boss,” Tony said, sweeping brass casings from the bar top.

  “Thanks.” Carney went to Velma and helped her up. Her eyes looked a little glazed. He eased her onto a bar stool.

  “What were you drinking?”

  She looked at him and her vision seemed to focus. “Sloe gin fizz.”

  “A pink lady for the lady,” Carney called to the bartender.

  “Thanks.”

  “Was that a friend of yours?”

  “Sort of.”

  “He treated you pretty rough.”

  “He’s a guy. All guys are bastards. Either that or they’re simps.”

  “Bastards or simps. Quite a dualism.” He lit her cigarette.

  “Thanks.”

  “You a friend of Clare Tweel?”

  “Oh, yeah. Real close.”

  “You’re being catty.”

  “He has a lot of friends. Lots of girls, too. Did you know he has a new one?”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah.” Her drink came and she took a sip. “Her name is Helen. Helen Dardanian.”

  “For some reason I’m supposed to be affected by this revelation?”

  She smiled. “I’m sorry. I don’t want to make trouble for you. You’re nice.”

  “Does that make me a simp?”

  “You’re no simp. You took care of my date quick enough.”

  “Then I’m a bastard.”

  She giggled. “A nice one.”

  “That’s reassuring. Want a lift home?”

  “Yeah. Thanks.”

  “Where?”

  “The Tweeleries.”

  Carney lifted the glass of neat Scots whisky that the bartender had set in front of him. “That’s where I’m going.”

  He took a healthy belt. It went down like the stock market on Black Whit-Monday.

  Chapter Eight

  The Jaundiced Aye

  There was a crowd that night. There was usually a crowd at the Jaundiced Aye, and it was always the same mixture of adventurers, poetasters, bohemians, ne’er-do-wells, and spottily employed cavaliers. Thrown into this pot was the odd hooligan, and one or two respectable burghers seeking a bit of slightly disrespectable diversion. For there was always good cheer and camaraderie to be had at the Aye, to say nothing of all the uproarious jokes and japes. And there was never a shortage of improvised sonnets or witty epigrams, available from any thin-faced scribbler for the price of a tankard of ale.

  The young man with the blond beard made his entrance into this milieu, sniffed the air — stale tobacco smoke, smells of fried fish and spilled beer — and wished he were elsewhere. Nevertheless, he entered the tavern and shut the door. He was dressed in the manner of a young gentleman — lace collar and cuffs, short-waisted doublet, trousers, boots with lace tops, and a proper hat. But he did not wear the costume well. Perhaps the problem was his slender frame, his narrow shoulders, or his oddly flaring hips. At any rate, he drew skeptical stares and the peremptory sneer or two.

  All attention seemed to gravitate toward a pair of cavalier sorts at the middle table. One of them was huge, an anomaly in boot-hose nearly twenty-five hands tall, his head topped by a cloud of snowy white hair. The other was a youngish man who wore no wig.

  Gathered around these two, a crowd of admirers hung on every word of the smaller of the pair, who had been regaling everyone with a tale of derring-do. Apparently it had all happened earlier that night.

  “Tell it again, Eugéne!”

  Eugéne waved disdainfully. “It grows wearisome.”

  “Again, please! How many of the Legate’s men vanquished?”

  A modest shrug. “Twenty-eight … or nine. Thirty perhaps.”

  “Between the two of you!”

  “Imagine!”

  Eugéne raised his mug to drink. “It was nothing.” He drank.

  “Nothing, he says! Nothing since Shem prevailed against the Ashkelonians with the thighbone of a ram!”

  The newcomer found himself an empty table toward the back. The barkeep eventually noticed and grudgingly came.

>   “Mulled cider with cloves and cinnamon, if you have it,” the young man said.

  The innkeeper curled his lip. “No spirits?”

  “Oh, throw a shot of something in it, I don’t care.”

  “Anything to eat?”

  “Nothing, please. Um, tell me. Who are those two, er, gentlemen that everyone’s gathered around?”

  “Troublemakers, I call ’em,” the barkeep said. “Ragueneau’s thugs will have their hides soon enough. I just hope it happens out in the gutter and not in here, where I’ll have to clean up the mess. Cider. That all you want?”

  “Yes, thank you.”

  The barkeep left. The young man looked around. He didn’t like the looks of some of the patrons. Some of these looked as though they didn’t particularly care for him.

  “It’s not so much the heroic deed,” one of the crowd of rowdies was saying, “as the manner in which the deed was done. While composing a ballade!”

  “A trifle,” Eugéne said. “Something to occupy the mind so as not to let fear take hold. A simple trick.”

  “Fear, bah! Hardly the babblings of a timorous versifier. Rather, the lays of a warrior-poet.”

  “Recite it again!”

  “Yes, we’d like it again!”

  “Especially that part about ‘And as I end the envoi — lunge through!’”

  “Yes, yes, that’s the best part!”

  “Gentlemen, please. I grow weary. The hour is late.”

  “Lord Snowden, you tell us, then.”

  The huge white-haired one shook his massive head. “Hey, don’t look at me. I don’t know any poetry.”

  “Tell us again how you killed three at one time. Forget the verse.”

  “Well, okay. I took two and cracked their heads together, see. One of ’em was kinda little, so I used him like a blackjack and brained another guy.”

  “Astounding!”

  “Amazing!”

  “Fantastic!”

  “An astonishing story!”

  Eugéne scoffed, “Fantasy and science fiction. He exaggerates.”

  “No, there were witnesses. We’ve heard all the stories. You can’t deny it, Eugéne.”

  “Please, a little less enthusiasm, I beg you.”

  The blond-bearded young man’s cider was delivered, and he drank of it. It was bland and weak, and tasted like dishwater. He made a face and looked toward the bar, trying to catch the barkeep’s eye.

  “Well, what have we here?”

  The young man turned and found two cavaliers standing over him.

  “Good evening,” he said pleasantly.

  One said to the other, “A Northern type, I warrant.”

  “Yes, it has the look.”

  “Pallild and phthisic.”

  “Yes, how pale his beard, his face.”

  “Tell me, young popinjay, what brings your sort here?”

  “Uh, just out for a drink … gentlemen.”

  The other looked to the one. “It has a strangely lilting voice.”

  “High enough to chant descants.”

  “A coloratura, I’ll wager.”

  “A protégé of the Legate, most likely. He’s a patron of the arts, you know.”

  “Look, if you gentlemen will just leave me alone …”

  The one on the right screwed up his face. “Might it be a citizen of the Cities of the Plain?”

  “Thought I smelled salt and brimstone.”

  “Well, see here, young Zeboimite, if that you be, take care to guard your tongue in this place. If Eugéne and Snowden get wind of you, you might end up skewered in a way you had not bargained on, or stuffed into a firkin and set out as salt meat.”

  “Or both.”

  The young man nodded. “Yeah, I’ll watch my step.”

  “It would be wise.”

  They left.

  The young man’s eyes smoldered. “Rotten macho creeps …”

  “The poem again, Eugéne! Please!”

  Eugéne downed the rest of his muscatel. “Oh, very well. But not the same poem. An improvisation from memory is your moron’s oxymoron. No, I’ll improv new lines, afresh. And on a new subject.”

  “Bravo!”

  “Hear, hear!”

  Lord Snowden sat back and regarded the rafters.

  Eugéne mounted the table and drew his rapier. Putting one finger to his temple, he said, “One moment, while I choose my rhymes.”

  “Oh, brother,” the young man murmured, rolling his eyes.

  “I have them,” Eugéne said presently. “Now to begin:

  “‘’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

  Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;

  All mimsy were the borogoves,

  And the — ’”

  “Up yours!”

  Silence. Everyone slowly turned to look at the source of the outburst.

  Eugéne cast an imperious eye in that direction. Pointing, he said, “Who … is … that … man?”

  “One of the Legate’s catamites, we’ve surmised.”

  “Does this creature have a name?” Eugéne asked.

  The young man shouted, “Baron Lyndon of the castle!”

  “Baron Lyndon of the cas —?” The wind spilled out of Eugéne’s sails. “Uh … oh. Well, fine.”

  “Eugéne! You’d let the impertinent puppy live?”

  “Forget it. Has a right to his opinion.”

  Unbelieving looks were exchanged amongst the audience.

  “The poem, then!”

  “Yes, the new poem.”

  “Where was I? Uh, yeah.

  “‘In Xanadu did Kubla Khan

  A stately pleasure dome decree:

  Where Alph, the sacred river, ran — ’”

  “Plagiarist! Throw the bum out!”

  The crowd was outraged.

  Lord Snowden stood. “Who is that?”

  “It’s a perilous night, Snowy!”

  “Hey, I know who that is.”

  Someone shouted, “Make mincemeat of him, Eugéne!”

  “Everyone out!” Eugéne shouted.

  “But, Eugéne!”

  “Leave him to us! Go on, get out. Come back later.”

  “But Ragueneau’s men —”

  “We’ll meet you back here in an hour. Come on, guys, take a hike, okay?”

  Grumbling, the troop of cavaliers left. Soon the tavern was empty but for the barkeep.

  The two men advanced on the blond.

  “Linda!” Gene whispered. “What are you doing here in that ridiculous get-up?”

  “They don’t let women in bars here. Think I wanted to come in drag?”

  “You know, men’s beards are almost never blond.”

  “Yeah, so I found out. Jeez, it was almost impossible to get close to you guys. I chased you all over town, from one dive to the other.”

  “Well, we’re on the Legate’s poop roster, so we have to keep on the move. What’s up? What the matter?”

  “It’s Melanie. She —”

  “Melanie? Who’s that?”

  “Melanie McDaniel, the new Guest — at lunch? Remember?”

  “Oh, yeah. Yeah. Sorry, go ahead.”

  “She wandered into a wild portal and it closed up on her.”

  “Damn. That’s tough.”

  “It was my fault. I let her out of my sight.”

  “What were you doing in a wild area?”

  “We weren’t! The portal popped up in one of the safest parts of the castle.”

  Gene clucked ruefully. “Well, it’s been known to happen. Even the stable areas aren’t one hundred percent.”

  “And it had to happen to Melanie. Gene, we’ve got to do something. That’s why I took the chance of coming here. I had to talk to you. I feel so awful. What are we going to tell that poor girl’s parents?”

  “Would they believe us? Nah, best to say nothing.”

  “But we have to do something.”

  “Like what? You know how the castle works, Linda. Wild portals can lead any
where, any universe, and not necessarily one listed in the books. No telling where she wound up. That portal might never open again.”

  “Gene, we have to take the Sidewise Voyager out and search for her.”

  Gene sat back and let air into his lace collar. “Linda, that’s going to be a problem, seeing as how the thing’s wrecked.”

  “But Dolbert and Luster say they can fix it.”

  Gene laughed mirthlessly. “Those two. They’ve been fiddling with it for months.”

  “It’s not an easy job.”

  “I’ll say. The thing needs parts. Where’re they going to get ’em? That thing was built in a universe that I’m not sure even exists in the ordinary sense.”

  “Dolbert has been building some parts from scratch in the castle smithy.”

  “I dunno,” Gene said doubtfully.

  “Jeremy says Dolbert’s a mechanical genius.”

  “Yeah, well, idiot savant he may be, but he’s still an idiot. Besides, I wouldn’t stake my life on Jeremy’s judgment. He’s somewhat of a cretin himself.”

  “That’s not fair. Jeremy’s —”

  “Forget it. That’s not the point. The point is travel in the Voyager is risky, even at best. What does Incarnadine say?”

  Linda looked downcast. “He’s disappeared again.”

  “He’d probably say the same thing.”

  “Gene, please. I’ll never forgive myself. Never. That poor girl is alone in a strange universe. She might be in danger right now. She might die, Gene.”

  Gene let out a long sigh. “Oh, well. Trouble is my business.”

  “But if you’re afraid —”

  “My dear, you’re talking to a man who has laughed in the face of death, sneered at doom, and chuckled at catastrophe. I’m petrified. But let’s get back to the castle and see what we can do.” Gene started to rise. “Which, I’m afraid —” He sat back down.

  “Trouble?”

  “Well, it so happens the portal is in the Legate’s part of town. The city is divided up between the king’s regent, who’s kind of weak in the power department, and the Legate Ragueneau. Local politics, it’s complicated.”

  “What about the revolution you were talking about?”

  “They had it without us. The peasants revolted and overthrew the Directorate. Got fed up with starving. But it turned out that Ragueneau was backing the regime because he was buying grain from them at bargain prices and selling it on the … but forget about that. It’s real complicated, and anyway it’s beside the point. The point is, we’re on the Legate’s hit list, and his goons are out in force tonight looking for us.”