The Alchemist's Apprentice aa-1

by Dave Duncan

  “Your Excellency is gracious,” I said. “With your permission, I will sound the trumpet.” I stalked out and headed to the salone.

  There I found three separate groups, sitting well apart and conversing in whispers-the three Orseolos, the two Tiralis and Violetta, the Feathers and Vasco. The unfortunate Pulaki sat by himself, with eyes closed and face twisted with pain. Imer had been waiting in the hallway and followed me in.

  I apologized for the delay. “We had an unexpected arrival. Pulaki, please go and help Giuseppe with the wine. I know you have only one good hand, but I’d like you to watch and see that everything happens in the same order as last time.” I waited until he had gone. “At the original viewing, the guests entered the dining room in the following order: Ambassador Tirali first, then the procurator and madonna Bianca. Your Excellency, will you represent your father for us?”

  Lizard Enrico nodded with poor grace. Bianca, I was happy to see, had raised her veil to expose her angelic child-woman face.

  “Then came sier Bellamy Feather and madonna Hyacinth. You spent some time discussing the books with Maestro Nostradamus, I believe. Vizio, you will interpret for them, please? And the next man, as you all know, was the doge, incognito. He will be represented this evening by State Inquisitor Marco Dona.”

  I wished I could watch all the faces at once, so that a sudden pallor might identify the murderer for me. I did not see one. Hyacinth demanded a translation from Vasco.

  I continued. “ Sier Pasqual, you and the lady were next. That completes the ensemble, except for Alexius Karagounis, who cannot be with us this evening because he is tied up on the Piazzetta. Will you stand in for him, please, sier Benedetto?”

  He shrugged his shoulders, sling and all. “If you will tell me where to go.”

  “That will be everyone’s problem.”

  “This is not going to work, you know,” Pasqual told Violetta. “We all moved around too much. I suppose the person who demonstrates the worst memory must be the murderer? Come, my darling, let’s go and carnival.”

  I stood at the dining room door to direct the dance. Wineglass in hand and escorted by our host, Ambassador Tirali swept by me, red senator and black attorney.

  “You introduced me to Maestro Nostradamus, did you not, attorney? But the Greek was here when I came in.”

  Benedetto Orseolo was summoned and inserted as Alexius Karagounis.

  “Then you left, attorney,” Tirali continued. “I walked down there and worked my way back up to about here. And the accursed Greek kept following and yattering at me.”

  Benedetto smiled. “Yatter, Your Excellency. Yatter, Your Excellency.”

  Tirali laughed. “You’ll do well in the Senate, my boy. I was about here…”

  He turned and I nodded to Minister Orseolo. As he entered with Imer, I noticed that the glass he carried was empty. He might scoff at tales of murder, but the Lizard was taking no chances. A moment later Bianca followed him in, flashing me a smile that raised my heartbeat significantly. She joined her father-grandfather. Imer went out again to greet more imaginary arrivals.

  Missier Grande had disappeared, which seemed odd if he had come to oversee the reenactment. The actors on stage had a brief argument over who had been standing where. I waited until they reached agreement, then nodded to Vasco to bring in the Feathers. Bellamy stalked by me without a glance. Hyacinth paused, looked me over, and fluttered her eyelashes at me before continuing into the dining room. Vasco, coming behind, shook his head at me in disbelief. I wondered if she had been flirting with him, too. How crazy was she?

  “Englishmen need more encouragement,” I explained quietly.

  He very nearly smiled.

  Now there were eight people in the room and it was becoming obvious that Pasqual had been right-the Maestro’s plan was not going to work. It had been four days, and there had been no reason to memorize the choreography of a casual social meeting, or just when who said what to whom.

  “My turn now?” murmured the inquisitor, who had been sitting close to the door all this time.

  “I think it must be, Your Excellency-or may I address you as ‘Your Serenity’?”

  Dona heaved himself up and approached the table. The Maestro directed him to a place.

  Hyacinth spun around, moving very fast for so large a woman. She barked an objection, which Vasco translated: “The Greek was here. I was not so close.”

  Benedetto stepped into place between her and the doge-substitute. I saw his lips shape, “Yatter?” but he did not say it.

  I turned to the still-crowded hallway and located our host. “Attorney, did you recognize the doge when he arrived?”

  Imer riffled his feathers. “Of course I did. You think I am blind? But before I could even bow to him he told me he wanted no ceremony. He had just come for a second look at some of the books and would stay only a few minutes.”

  “Thank you.” That explained why the doge had entered the dining room alone.

  The actors had agreed on where they should be. Violetta was disturbingly close to me, her perfume all around me, whispering promises. She said something to her patron, pointing at Benedetto.

  Pasqual murmured agreement and raised his voice. “We think the Greek was standing closer to the doge when we came in.” He entered, Violetta on his arm.

  I watched the players dance in the masque, but I had returned to my old opinion. It seemed quite impossible for anyone to have switched glasses with the procurator, or with the doge if he had been the intended victim. When the disagreements wound down I caught the Maestro’s nod and looked for Imer again.

  “Now, lustrissimo. This is where you threw out the foreigners.”

  Imer nodded and strode past me, heading for the Feathers. “Now I ask you to leave.”

  “It is where you ordered me to leave,” Bellamy countered. “It is where you insulted me. But we did leave. Come, then, Hyacinth, my love. Are we permitted to go now?” he demanded of Vasco.

  Vasco replied in English, but he pointed at me, as Carnival King.

  “That is not what happened next,” said a new voice. Bianca spoke up for the first time. “His Serenity left first.”

  “That is correct, messer,” said a quiet voice at my elbow. It was Pulaki.

  “Excellent,” I said, and beckoned him forward. “We have a new witness. Speak up.”

  Pulaki advanced one step and looked nervously around the room. He spoke to the inquisitor. “I heard voices raised in anger and looked in. His Serenity came out and told me to go to the salone and fetch a gentleman he described. I have forgotten the name, Your Excellency.”

  “Good, good!” Dona said. “Then, as doge, I leave now. Are the rest standing about where they were then?”

  Pulaki hesitated. “I only saw…” He pointed at Imer and Feather. “I did not notice anyone else, Excellency.”

  “Well, that’s a help.” The inquisitor removed himself from the group and headed for a spectator’s chair. “Carry on, puppet master.”

  I thanked Pulaki, and he left with obvious relief. His intrusion had been out of character for a servant, and even more so for a man fresh from the tormentors. Was he desperate to cooperate in any way he could, or was he just obeying orders?

  Imer showed the Feathers out into the entrance hall and Vasco followed. Behind them, the meeting became confused. Perhaps everyone had been distracted by the loud foreigners, but no one seemed at all sure where anybody had gone after it. The Maestro queried Bianca, who had not left her grandfather’s side, but even she could not be sure who had spoken with him later.

  “This is a waste of time!” the great minister complained loudly. “If I wanted to celebrate Carnival, I would do it in the Piazza or on the Lido. Marco?”

  “I seldom agree with you in the Collegio, Enrico,” the inquisitor said, “but I certainly do this time. I can’t see what more you hope to achieve, doctor.”

  The Maestro spread his tiny hands in resignation. Perhaps only I, who knew him so well, gues
sed what was coming. “Nothing more, Your Excellency. I have demonstrated what I set out to demonstrate. Didn’t you see who committed the murder?”

  “There is no poison in this glass!” Orseolo snapped, turning it upside down. Then he realized that he had made a very stupid statement. “And I did not see how or when anybody could have put any there.”

  “Because you rarely set it down,” the Maestro retorted. “Your father, examining books with a crippled hand, did not cherish it so closely. Alfeo, would you bring the others in, please?”

  Turning, I almost walked into monolithic Missier Grande, who was standing right behind me, watching over my shoulder. But everyone else out there was listening too, so all I had to do was step aside and let them file past me. I beckoned Benzon and Pulaki to join us, since they also qualified as suspects. No one objected to their presence.

  Missier Grande closed the door and stood in front of it, arms folded. Imer and Benzon began pulling chairs closer to the table. The four nobleman finished up in front of the Maestro like children before a teacher, but the rest of us were content to sit back against the wall. I certainly was, because I found myself next to Violetta. By purest chance, of course. She ignored me, attentive to the odious Pasqual at her other side.

  “You will forgive me,” the Maestro said with a hint of malice, “if I point out that everyone who was in this room that night had to be a suspect. For example, the person who had the best opportunity to poison the procurator’s glass was his granddaughter, who never-”

  “You dare suggest such a monstrous thing?” her father roared.

  “No,” the Maestro said mildly. “I am not suggesting that she did so. I am merely arguing that, since nobody witnessed the terrible deed, we must set aside all preconceived ideas and proceed by a careful analysis of the evidence, regardless of where it may lead us. I am sure His Excellency the inquisitor, and attorney Imer, and Missier Grande…and the vizio…will all confirm that this is the only way to make out a case against anyone. I could quote the immortal Aristotle, universally recognized as the paradigm philosopher, and the polymath Roger Bacon…but I digress.”

  He put his fingertips together and I braced for a lecture.

  25

  T he means were obvious from the start,” the Maestro said. “Even before he left this house I knew that the procurator had ingested poison. I knew the name of that poison. There is no known antidote. Any physic other than time and rest would have been hazardous in a man of his age, so I recommended none. I knew from its effects that the drug had almost certainly been administered in this room, and madonna Bianca later confirmed to my apprentice that her grandfather had eaten nothing for some time beforehand.

  “Most crimes have an obvious motive, but this one did not. The procurator had reached the pinnacle of his political career, his honored son now supervised the family business affairs, and most of his old enemies have long since preceded him to a better realm. The minister will understand that I speak in generalities when I note that family members are generally more likely to have motives for violence than strangers are, unless we include footpads and pirates, who are not in evidence in this case. I trust that Ambassador Tirali will take no offense at an observation that poison seems an extreme way to eliminate a rival bidder in a book sale.”

  Vasco was whispering a translation to the Feathers. The Maestro paused to let him catch up.

  “I am happy to learn,” Ambassador Tirali remarked, in a heavy-handed parody of the Maestro’s style, “that my notoriously voracious acquisitive bibliophilic instincts are not suspected of leading me into mortal sin. As I told sier Alfeo yesterday, a political motive seems equally improbable. So why was Bertucci murdered?”

  The Maestro was not about to spoil his own enjoyment by telling him that, not yet. “I could see no ready answer. Sir Bellamy and his wife are strangers, visiting our city to buy art, not to murder our national heroes. Our host here and the servants seem equally improbable killers. I was forced to wonder if the intended victim could have been someone else, such as our Most Serene Doge Pietro Moro. When the book dealer Karagounis was exposed as a Turkish agent, this explanation suddenly became worthy of serious consideration. The doge testified to Alfeo that he chose to drink retsina, which he rarely touches, simply because he knew the procurator would be here and would choose it. So an accidental switch of glasses must be considered.

  “But consider the complications required! The doge should not have left the palace without his counselors. He should not have consorted with foreigners. He did so, he told Alfeo, because at the last minute he received a note from his old friend warning him that the books actually sold might not be those he had been shown.”

  “I object!” The howl came from Ottone Imer.

  Nostradamus dismissed his complaint with a wave of his hand. “I do not say that was the case, attorney. I merely report what the doge said, quoting a note from the deceased, who might, just possibly, have been deceived by a deliberately planted rumor. Or the note might have been forged. But the chances that this too-complicated trap would lure the doge here in person were extremely remote, and even if he did decide to come and see for himself, why go through all the legerdemain with poison and retsina-a wine the doge was very unlikely to choose anyway, so far as a man like Karagounis could know?”

  “I told him,” Imer grumbled. “I told him no one would want it, but he insisted on bringing some.”

  “Quite. As I was saying, to a Turkish agent the poison would be an unnecessary complication. An ambush in a dark doorway would be far more effective. So you see, Your Excellency-” now the Maestro carefully addressed the inquisitor “-although the official theory cannot be absolutely disproved, it requires a lot of unlikely suppositions. Pluralitas non est ponenda sine neccesitate, ^ 1 as the saintly Brother William of Ockham taught us.”

  Dona did not comment. He did not look very pleased, either, from what I could see of his face from where I was sitting. I glanced at Violetta, and she was smiling quietly at no one in particular. So she had seen the answer! I wondered whether she had applied Aspasia’s sensitivity or Minerva’s logic.

  Having trashed the official government verdict, the Maestro pressed on. “ Vizio, ask Sir Bellamy for me: When he and his lady visited Karagounis at his residence to view whatever books he had for sale, did he offer them wine?”

  Translation…Bellamy nodded.

  “Retsina?”

  Hyacinth pulled a face and said what Vasco translated as, “The madonna says that whatever it was it tasted terrible.”

  “You see,” the Maestro continued happily, “we assume that the poison could not have been concealed in the other wines-although this is not certain, because no authority I have consulted gives a recipe for isolating venom from the leaves and I have not had time to carry out my own experiments. But very few people have a taste for retsina. So the question becomes, who else was drinking retsina that night?”

  “I tried it,” Pasqual said. “But I promise never to do so again. And while I have the floor, I will point out that I never stood next to Procurator Orseolo. There was always at least one person between him and me.”

  “Oh, this is a stupid waste of time!” Minister Orseolo made as if to rise. “If you have an accusation to make, then make it now. Otherwise my children and I are leaving.”

  “Two minutes more, if you please, Your Excellency. I think some of you know whom I am about to accuse?”

  Violetta said, “Yes.”

  Orseolo sat back again, glaring at her. Just about everyone else was frowning, except Bianca and Benedetto, who both looked horrified. There was a murderer in the room?

  “Very well,” the Maestro said. “One more digression and I am done. The poison in question is not available for purchase in the city. Sier Alfeo established this for me the next day. That means that the murderer obtained it from the mainland or from even farther afield and the crime was planned long in advance. Unfortunately, this information is not as useful as one would like. Mad
onna Bianca, for example, would seem to have no opportunity to acquire the herb in question, even if some demented nun in the convent had taught her its properties. But her brother attends university in Padua. I assume he came home for Christmas and…No, I am not suggesting that the procurator’s grandchildren conspired to murder him! I am just pointing out that the poison could have been acquired, given time, by almost anyone in this room. It tells us only that the motive was not a sudden impulse. Either the murderer planned the crime well in advance…” He paused, enjoying the attention like a child performing for family friends.

  “Or?” Minister Orseolo demanded.

  “Or the murderer is a professional killer, Excellency.” The Maestro stretched his lips in a smile. “Madonna Bianca, are you certain that no one put poison in your grandfather’s glass?”

  She was by far the youngest person in the room, reared in the shelter of the cloister, but she held her chin high and was not intimidated. “I did not say that, Doctor Nostradamus! I said I did not see it happen. But I was keeping an eye on his drink, in case he forgot it. I should have seen if anyone had tampered with it.”

  “Except once. You noticed the doge leaving, because he walked out when the attorney and Sir Bellamy were having their shouting match. They made so much noise that a servant looked in to see what was going on. That was the only moment when everyone was distracted and the substitution would have been safe.”

  I watched faces, as many as I could. I saw realization and even some nods. Imer was twitching again.

  “So who,” the Maestro said, “would have known that there would be a convenient ruckus? Who could have obtained the poison somewhere outside the city and had it ready to tip into a glass or switch glasses? Not Feather himself. All eyes were on him. But his wife fits these requirements.”

  Hyacinth snapped something at her husband.

  “No!” Feather jumped to his feet and gabbled a tirade at Vasco.