L Neil Smith - [North American Confederacy 03]

by Their Majesties' Bucketeers (epub)

  Killing, in all decency, ought to be a personal thing.

  The setting of the murder—and I do not believe Mav ever doubted it was anything but that—was a large room more than thirty lam-heights along each of its three sides. Its northern corner held the speaker’s platform, itself precisely equilateral and perhaps eight or nine lam-heights in width, a simple elevated expanse of treewood planking not more than two or three hand-widths off the polished granite floor. It had obviously been constructed as an afterthought, for the ancient laminated cactus door beside it in the northeast wall (one of two such entrances leading into the next room) terminated at the original floor level, rather than that of the stage, and for that reason had been nailed shut, by all appearances, for nonades.

  Near the southeast comer, the second door allowed access to one of the smaller display halls on the ground-floor level, a place where archaic memorabilia of war were exhibited along the walls and in numerous glass cases scattered about. This door had been left ajar for the night’s lecture, affording admission to sanitary facilities across the Weapons Hall in another room beyond. Both smaller chambers (the second, I recall, was a place where thousands of insects were pinned horribly to neatly labeled cards) had been partitioned off across their southern ends, leaving only narrow access to three modem restrooms on the east side of the building.

  The northwest wall of the lecture auditorium, hung with faded tapestries and battle-weary banners from an earlier age, was architecturally featureless, lacking doors or windows, as it formed a portion of the outermost perimeter of the Museum, one of few relatively ancient structures in the city made of stone (no doubt at hideous expense in those days) that had, at one time, been a garrison upon Mathas’s northern edge, and later, for a briefer period, a prison.

  The south and remaining wall of the room was pierced by triple doors of modem artifice through which nearly everyone present had earlier entered and which communicated to the Grand Display Hall toward the front of the Museum. During the lecture, owing to the disturbances outside, these had been firmly bolted and, with the nearby open side door I have made mention of, conscientiously attended by both Bucketeers and the old Museum guard, Sdinsu Amh Leds.

  “Mymy,” Mav said as he approached me when the room was finally cleared of all but uniformed authorities and I was wiping up my instruments. He displayed a small des-leather notecase that I had long ago observed he carried with him at all times. “I have, over the past several years, taken note of those procedures I believe ought to be followed in an instance such as this, set them in a likely order, and . . .” He turned the wooden knob upon the end of the case, scrolling to an entry that pleased him. “The first item upon my tentative agenda is to attempt to discover by what physical means the crime was done.”

  This seemed reasonable to me, and I said as much, adding, “If I follow you, this effort should provide some insight into the identity of the culprit. For instance, had the victim been done in with a hammer, the murderer might be a carpenter or blacksmith.”

  “Quite so, or perhaps one of those armored warriors in the Weapons Hall, although I fear in this case we shall not have the truth quite as easily as all that.”

  Indeed, I thought, for what sort of profession or avocation predisposes someone to secrete a substantial charge of whitepowder in a philosophy professor’s lectern? This, in turn, set me to wondering by what means the bomb had been ignited, and much the same question must have been on Mav’s mind, for he questioned me at considerable length concerning what I had seen before the explosion and what I had done afterward. Not even surgical details were insignificant to him, and he had me repeat many an observation more than once. Finally:

  “I thank you, Mymy, for your perspicacity and diligent memory. And now, is it not considerably past the time by which respectable lurries ought to have been home?” Here he made to tuck his notecase away. “I fear, in all this confusion, I’ve been sorely remiss in my duties as a—”

  “I am more than capable, my dear Inquirer, of seeing to

  my own well-being. Furthermore, it seems to me, sincc I have had to patch and mop up a deal of this ‘confusion’ myself, that I may lay legitimate claim to an interest in its resolution.”

  He paused, perplexity racing against amusement in conflicting waves through his fur. “Indeed you may, and well spoken, my dear. I warn you, however, that I do not know what hours looking into this will keep me up to.”

  “When you are quite ready to depart, so shall I be, and not until then. In the meantime, tell me how I may be of further assistance—it strikes me that we might call for some refreshment, since you are fatigued enough to have uncharacteristically left a preposition dangling in your last utterance.”

  He failed to reply, but signed to the Museum guard. “Good Leds, will you be kind enough to bring my friend and myself some kood or whatever else suits your convenience? Rhe has complained of a spell of fatigue, and—” "Mav!"

  “—and I suspect that we lamn could all profit from a respite, as well.” He retrieved his case and looked again at his notes. “You know, I rather fancy old Srafen would be amused by what has happened here tonight.”

  “Amused? I scarcely—”

  “Well, perhaps ‘relieved’ would be a more appropriate term. Rhe hated being aged and feeble, you know, especially after such an energetic and productive youth. And to finish in so spectacular a manner! I take it back—‘amused’ is the only suitable word, after all. Rhe always appreciated a well-delivered punchline.”

  “I had wondered that you weren’t more aggrieved than you appeared. And what, precisely, was the manner in which rhe departed, would you say?”

  “Do not mistake me, Mymy.” He once again surveyed the platform, hopped up upon it, and began looking closely at the floorboards. “Someday the world will learn how much it owes to Srafen, and the scoundrel who did this will be made to pay if I have to make the collection my life’s work. Nonetheless— Oh, Dapod, there’s a good fellow, bring your lantern over, will you?”

  I knew from my own occupation that, whenever work is close, there’s never enough light. Although the place seemed adequately illuminated with electric candles, spots here and there, particularly the corner behind the lectern, were in partial shadow. Mav seemed interested in the sealed door to the right. I thought a moment, then plunged a hand into my bag:

  “I say, Mav, might this be of some use to you?” I held the object up where he could see it.

  “Capital, Mymy! You’ve justified your presence here already! Do hand me Mymy’s glass if you will be so kind, Dapod.” This uniformed worthy, having a longer reach than I, stretched out and gave over the magnifier, a large and powerful one I use for removing splinters and finding cinders and the like in patients’ eyes. He also handed the detective his Bucketeer’s carbide-acetylene lamp, taking care, at my companion’s admonition, not to venture on the platform himself.

  “Odd,” mused the detective, and a little later, “Hmm?” He crawled about quite comically, his carapace tipped up nearly vertical, suspended but a finger-width from the floor by his middle hand. “Extraordinary!” he exclaimed, and, “I’ll be drowned!” At last he seized upon some loose object lying on the boards, stood abruptly, marking the position with a bit of chalk, and tucked both in a pocket, leaping lightly off the stage.

  Both Dapod and I met him, questions written blatantly in our pelts. I asked how he imagined the lectern bomb might have been set off, but he signed negatively and marched across the room to where Leds had laid out the makings of our kood.

  Indeed, I reflected, quieting my annoyance, there are only twenty-seven hours in a day, and we were all long overdue by now for that brief hour of oblivion which revitalizes mind and body. It suddenly occurred to me that, with the fire this afternoon, I had missed two periods of hann. Physiologically speaking, kood was no adequate substitute, but it does provide relief and satisfaction and is perhaps the most civilizing custom that the Empire has spread abroad—the cease of all meaningful a
ctivity in favor of a pleasant, empty social grace. I rather suspect that deprivation of some equivalent custom is what makes Foddu’s rival, the Hegemony of Podfet, so barbaric and distempered at times.

  At the back of the hall, Leds had rearranged chairs into a cozy circle about the little wheeled serving table he’d brought with him, and we gathered round as he struck a match to the wick. It sputtered, and in a moment or two delicious invigorating vapors issued from the silver service as he placed its perforated lid atop the kood holder and took a chair of his own.

  I inhaled deeply, relaxing. “Tell me, Mav, what is it you discovered up there on the plat— Mav?” My companion had quite disappeared while all of us had been preoccupied with the kood. “Mav?”

  “Just coming now, Mymy,” an unseen voice replied, then he stepped out of the shadows through the door that had been open to the Weapons Hall. “Is that the kood I smell?” He rubbed his hands together. “How delightful!” As he took a seat beside me and inhaled the vapors, I could tell that he was far more pleased than mere refreshments or a trip to the s.c. alone might account for. However, social decorum demands that nothing of moment be discussed while still the wick burns, so I would have to be content with the rough sort of small talk that serves not only males, but, worse luck, Bucketeers, for polite kood-time conversation.

  Or so I had believed.

  “I say, tell me, Leds old fellow, that’s a splendid kood service you have there. Does it belong to you?” Perhaps the strain had been too much for Mav, for he uttered these words in the same tones employed by the kind of person who sells my mother draperies.

  The old lam puckered up his fur. “To me? Oh, no, sir, it’s the Museum’s. Seventy-five years old, it is, an’ once th’ property of Lord Admiral Roytoyt hisself. His heirs donated it, but Professor Srafen had an older one, an’ nicer, so he lets us—that is, he let us fellows use this one.” His voice betrayed the strain and grief of losing such a kindly and respected employer, and his fur was all adroop.

  “I see,” answered Mav, seemingly unaware of the old lam’s feelings. “And where is it that you keep it when it isn’t in use? The Curator’s office at the north end of the Weapons Hall?”

  “Sir? Oh, no, sir, in the atrium guard station, out front. You passed through it tonight when you came in.”

  “Capital! Well then, what do you think of Ednotem this year? I hear the odds-makers give them three-to-two to take the City Medal.”

  When the kood was nearly done with, Mav held up a finger and spoke quietly: “Now, Mymy, I’m aware you have a question for me. Do be good enough to come with me into the other room, for I believe I have this mystery more than two-thirds solved already.”

  My amazement must have shown, but he was silent as I gathered up my bag and followed him through the door into the Weapons Hall. Here, instead of going straight across to the sanitary closets as I’d assumed he’d done before, he turned to the left, pushing aside the portable screen that blocked off the rest of the room. When we were on the other side, he reached into his pocket. “I trust you’ll forgive me that idiotic piece of conversation earlier, about the kood service. I had to be assured that no one had come through this screen and disturbed the contents of this room. Tell me, Mymy, what do you make of this?”

  The article he’d handed me, an iron implement of some kind, was obviously ancient, for it showed that brownish-blue patina to which such metals are subject after prolonged exposure to the atmosphere. About twice as long as my hand, it appeared to be a solid rod about the circumference of my finger, and of unremarkable features save one end, which, through some cataclysmic force, had blossomed into a scorched and jagged deadly looking flower, the unmistakable stink of whitepowder smoke plain to discern. The other end was slightly worn and battered, little specks of bright, untarnished metal showed through the corrosion, but nothing so spectacular as the end, which had been . . . well . . .

  “Exploded! You found this on the stage? What is it? Is it—”

  He silenced me again with a gesture and led me down to the extreme end of the room, where there was a door to the left, flanked on either side by suits of iron battle dress, one with a massive sword, the other with a giant war-hammer. In the center of the panel hung an olden shield displaying the arms of one of good Queen Viigoot’s ancestors.

  “This door,” said Mav, “is that which, on the other side, adjoins the speaker’s platform. As you can see”—he pointed to the frame all round—“it has been nailed shut for rather a long time.” In fact I had already noted that on the other side. We were now just opposite the place where Professor Srafen had been murdered, and I said as much.

  “You are correct. Observe what else we are near.” He gestured broadly at the room behind us, and my eye fell upon a display case, not more than a lam-height away, which had been—

  “Broken into! How did this happen, Mav? Surely the explosion couldn’t have—”

  “You’re quite right again, Mymy. This doubtless occurred sometime beforehand, when the villain removed . . . the murder weapon!” He pointed into the case, and suddenly I knew the identity of the iron implement that he had shown me. Lying on the velvet amidst a shameful mess of shattered glass was an old Podfettian springbow, much as the one Tamet’s tavern is named after. Octaries ago, before the invention of whitepowder and firearms, the device had been a potent weapon well thought of, at least by those who think of such things.

  “Yet innovations,” Mav observed, “are never wholly taken up at once, nor reliable devices rapidly abandoned. Note those quarrels in the case.” He pointed toward a number of short, heavy arrows, some with ugly barbed warheads, others plain, as if made for target practice. But the one he indicated in particular must, at one time, have been a mate to the damaged bolt he’d picked up off the stage. Instead of barbs or blades, it had a bulbous, hollow end. “You see how it unscrews? It is empty now, of course, but if you were to fill it with whitepowder and place a percussion cap on the end, so . . .”

  From somewhere on his person, he’d obtained the sort of little brass cup one finds with old-fashioned pistols such as were used before self-contained metallic cartridges came into general fashion. My father had equipped himself with such a gun in his youth, and it was hanging now, if I recalled, over the mantelpiece at home.

  BANG! He’d let the springbow bolt plummet, point-first upon the granite floor. Without a charge of powder, only the cap had exploded, but I began to understand what must have become of Srafen. “You mean to say that someone shot him with this antique weapon?”

  “One can hardly avoid the conclusion. Mymy, I have been right about the art of detection. The inherent logic of the evidence is such that it directed me immediately to this place. I knew no bomb could have been placed in the lectern—”

  “What?”

  “Precisely so, for in the first place, the only possible means of ignition would have been a lighted fuze—which surely Srafen, if no one else, would have noticed—or a clockwork timer, and the explosion would have strewn its gears and springs all over the stage. I found no such mechanical remnants.

  “Also, what you told me of the injuries among the audience made it clear: one might reasonably have expected splinters from the podium, but never fragments of Srafen’s carapace—may rhe rest in peace—which a lectern-bomb would have propelled upstage, and not into the audience!

  “These caps, and this whitepowder flask in my pocket, were tossed into the display case afterward where I found them. And come, look at this!”

  We stepped back to the door and Mav made to pry up the shield, which I had assumed was nailed upon it. Instead, the thing was only hung there, and behind it was a large and ragged hole smashed brutally through the wood!

  “Why, Mav, you’re brilliant! Obviously the culprit fired through the door! Now it only remains to question the guards to ascertain who passed through the other door during the lecture, and—”

  “Slowly, Mymy. It’s possible the villain lurked in here for some time before th
e lecture, and thus did not have to pass through the door when it was supervised. Also, some practical questions still remain: how did he aim so accurately through solid wood. Well, perhaps he paced it off beforehand. In any event, I’m satisfied that we will soon find out— Hallo, what in the eternal dampness is this?”

  I shifted my attention to the display case again as Mav began to trace a fabric-covered metal filament that dropped down from the glassed-in top and ran along the grooves between the blocks of granite flooring, out through the screens at the front of the room. This we followed around into the lecture hall and beyond, into the Grand Display Hall. Along the way, we met old Leds, who accompanied us to the atrium guard station, where the wire joined dozens of others at a complicated and very modem-looking device attached to the underside of the cloakroom counter.

  Disgust began to affect the texture of my companion’s fur as Leds explained how the Museum’s new electrical alarm-system operated.

  Or sometimes didn’t.

  “Musta been the explosion, sir. For some reason, right afterward, th’ clammy thing began t’ring its bloody jaws off. Soon’s I was able, I shut it down, but every time I try t’turn it on again, it rings.” This he demonstrated with a quick throw of the knife-switch. “Loosened wires some-wheres, no doubt. Now I’ll have t'go over every one of these goddamp cases . . .” He waved an arm out across several acres of displays inside the Grand Hall.

  “I think not, Leds. We’ve found your broken case and, I suspect, broken some rather fervent hopes of my own in the process. You see the difficulty, don’t you, Mymy?”

  “I believe that I do. If the case containing the springbow was breached to permit the murder, then why did not the alarm go off until after the explosion?” My mind began to reel from exhaustion, confusion, and disappointment for Mav’s sake.

  “And furthermore,” he said, again examining the damaged springbow bolt, “if this accursed thing passed vio-lendy through the door, why did it not explode upon that initial impact?” He held my glass very close to his eye and thrust the ancient weapon before it.