Ten Little Wizards: A Lord Darcy Novel (20 page)

The bedroom was pitch-dark. From the heavily canopied bed, the sound of even breathing indicated that its royal occupant was sound asleep. But this was doubtful.

Two men waited silently by the bedroom door; Lord Darcy on the right, and Lord Peter on the left, for what Lord Darcy knew—and had convinced them all—was going to occur. Farther into the room Coronel Lord Waybusch was concealed beside a dresser and Master Sean O Lochlainn waited by the head of the bed.

For three hours, which seemed like three months, nothing happened. Then, gradually, with a sound so slight that only silence-tuned ears could have heard it, the door lock released. After a longer wait the door swung inward.

Lord Darcy held his breath and listened to the slight creak of the door hinges, only inches away from his face, as the door opened toward him. There was a cautious footstep into the room, and then another.

Lord Darcy couldn’t be sure whether there was one person entering the room or two. He fancied there were two. Which would simplify things.

The sound of footsteps crept across the floor toward the bed.

“NOW!”

A bellow in Master Sean’s voice—the agreed-upon signal. Lord Darcy slammed the bedroom door and twisted the lock closed in a practiced gesture.

The room suddenly erupted in bright-white wizardly light as Master Sean activated an already-in-place illumination spell. There, in the middle of the room facing the bed, frozen in the sudden glare, were two men. One of them clutched an ancient, two-handed sword with a basket handle, its blade flat against his chest, its point three feet over his head.

For a second they were too startled to move, and then they both bolted; one toward the door and the other—the one with the sword—toward the bed.

Several things happened at once. Lord Darcy and Lord Peter dove for the man heading for the door, and after a moment’s resistance, he lay still and raised his hands. “I will not fight you,” he said.

The other man reached the bed, his broadsword raised high above his head, and screamed “Die! Die! Die!” in an insane liturgy as he swung it at the sleeping form.

The man in the bed threw his covers aside and gestured in a complex motion with both hands.

The sword glowed bright red and sprang from its holder’s hands, thudding firmly and deeply into the ceiling. The man flopped over onto his back and sprawled, motionless at the side of the bed.

The man in the bed got up and rubbed his hands together. “Dot was very good,” he said. “A good, strong spell you weave, Master Sean O Lochlainn. You Angevin sorcerers are not all cupcakes.”

Master Sean grinned. “It was very effective, Your Majesty, wasn’t it?”

His Majesty the King of Courlandt and Crown Prince of Poland shrugged. “In Poland,” he said, “we got good magicians too.”

Lord Darcy pulled the man on the floor to his feet. “I think, Count d’Alberra, that you have a lot to answer for,” he said.

The Count straightened his clothing and dusted himself off calmly. “You win a few, you lose a few,” he said, smiling at his captor. “But I don’t think you will be asking me any questions. I wish I knew how you knew it was me—but I will never find out. You’re a clever man, Lord Darcy.” His grin twisted sideways and his jaw clamped.

“Watch it, my lord!” Lord Peter said sharply, reaching across to grab at Count d’Alberra. “He’s taking poison!”

But before either of them could do anything, Count d’Alberra, with a high-pitched gargling sound, fell to the floor. He kicked twice convulsively, and then he was dead.

“Well!” Lord Darcy said. “Now that all the excitement seems to be over, we should be going. Coronel Lord Waybusch, would you take the prisoner, please. And arrange for the body to be disposed of. Oh, yes; one last thing.” He opened the bedroom door, which lead to the living room of the Polish suite. “Johnson!” he called.

A little man crawled out from under the living room sofa. “Yes, my lord?”

“Did you see who let them in?”

“Tall, skinny man with short-cropped blond hair,” Johnson said. “Came from the third door on the left down that hall.”

“Very good. Your Majesty, did you hear that?”

“Ja. General Vitapeski. Who would have thought? We will take care of him.”

“No doubt. Good night, Your Majesty.”

The Crown Prince of Poland walked them to the door. “Tonight,” he said, “I think I sleep with my wife. Protocol be damned. Tomorrow I think we move to another suite. I no longer like this one.”

“The seneschal will be delighted,” Lord Darcy said. “Come, my lords, let’s let His Majesty get some sleep.”

“Well, My Lord Darcy,” the Duchess of Cumberland said, “I think you’d better tell us all about it.”

It was the next afternoon, and they were assembled, at the Duchess’s invitation, in the main room of the Cumberland suite in the White Chateau. Her Grace’s stepson, the Duke of Cumberland, had greeted his guests as they arrived and then discreetly gone back to cleaning his fishing gear. The invited guests, besides Lord Darcy and Master Sean, included Marquis Sherrinford, Lord Peter, Coronel Lord Waybusch, and Sir Darryl Longuert. Duke Richard was not present, but Lord Darcy, as his eyes took in the Chinese screen that walled off one corner, had a feeling that there might be royalty in the room nonetheless.

“What do you want to know?” Lord Darcy asked.

“Everything!” Mary of Cumberland said, looking up at him innocently.

“How did you know it was Count d’Alberra?” Marquis Sherrinford asked. “And, for that matter, how could it have been Count d’Alberra? He came here from Italy with letters from His Holiness. How could he be a Polish agent?”

“And why would a Polish agent be trying to kill the Crown Prince of Poland?” Lord Peter added. “And how did you know?”

“All right,” Lord Darcy said. He leaned back in his corner of the couch and sipped at his ouiskie and water. “Let me trace it out for you.

“What threw us all off was the reference to ‘His Majesty’ in Albert Chall’s dying words. He overheard someone—it was probably the man we know as Count d’Alberra—say the target was ‘His Majesty,’ and it never occurred to him, or to de London, or any of us, that it might not be His Angevin Majesty who was being referred to.”

“Curiously enough, it is only his enemies who insist in calling him ‘His Majesty’ in Poland,” Lord Peter said. “It’s sort of a joke.”

“Yes, well, we heard him being called ‘His Majesty’ enough times here to have thought of it.”

“So the whole plot was to kill the Crown Prince of Poland,” Marquis Sherrinford said.

“Yes,” Lord Darcy agreed. “And have it blamed on us.”

“But he was going to be killed by a madman,” Coronel Lord Waybusch said.

“Yes, but an Angevin madman. It makes all the difference.”

“Tell us about the Count d’Alberra,” Mary of Cumberland said.

“A learned man, a brilliant doctor of the mind,” Lord Darcy said, “who was killed a month ago in the
Gryphon d’Or.
The person who died last night was a
Serka
agent who took his place.”

“Ah!” Coronel Lord Waybusch said.

“Wasn’t he taking an awful chance?” Mary of Cumberland asked.

“A chance, yes,” Lord Darcy said. “But not so great a chance. He would have known that not very many people from Italy were coming to the coronation. And I imagine his research showed him that the real Count had never before left Italy, and would be known by almost nobody here. And then, I imagine his resemblance to the real Count is striking. Besides, whatever else he was, he was a brave man and not afraid to die for his cause, as he showed last night.”

“An evil cause,” Coronel Lord Waybusch said. “A cabal to kill the Crown Prince of Poland and blame it on an Angevin madman.”

“That poor man,” Mary of Cumberland said. “Is he incurably mad?”

“The Archbishop of Paris is afraid so, Your Grace. But we will have skilled healers look at him. He is a man who started with a grudge against wizards, and had it fostered by a skillful mental scientist. For, even though the man who died last night was not the real Count d’Alberra, there is no doubt that he was a skillful mental scientist. Look at the success he had in treating Marquis Sherrinford’s headaches.”

“On that account I shall miss him,” Marquis Sherrinford said. “I will have to send to Italy and get the real Count d’Alberra’s writings, as I assume that the counterfeit used the same techniques.”

“I would think so, my lord,” Lord Darcy agreed. “A necessary verisimilitude.”

“It’s no wonder that my Polish agents didn’t pick up any sign of the plot,” Lord Peter said. “A cabal of one Polish group against another Polish group is going to be carefully hidden. Especially when the target is the Crown Prince. And a very clever idea it was too. Any move against Prince Stanislaw in Poland would be immediately suspect. But to have him killed at Castle Cristobel would remove him from the line of succession and worsen relations with the Angevin Empire at the same time.”

“That also explains one thing that was troubling me,” Lord Darcy said. “Why the murders were made to look like impossible crimes.”

“Why?” Marquis Sherrinford asked.

“So that the final murder—that of the Crown Prince—would look like an impossible crime. Otherwise it would have occurred to everyone immediately that someone on the Prince’s staff was a traitor. But with people being killed in locked bakeries, in the middle of freshly shellacked ballrooms, and in a locked and guarded throne room, it becomes possible to have someone killed in a locked bedroom in a guarded suite.”

“How were those done, Lord Darcy?” Coronel Lord Waybusch asked. “Magic?”

“No, my lord,” Master Sean assured him. “I was able to rule that out, remember. Otherwise, don’t you see, they wouldn’t have been impossible crimes.”

“The bakery was easy,” Lord Darcy said. “Just because we had to break into it, doesn’t mean you couldn’t close the door going out. A rod inserted through the door to hold the wooden bar up as you close the door, and then withdrawn at the last instant to allow the bar to fall into place, would do very nicely. Or a stout cord running around the bar and over the door to the outside. I don’t know which method he used, but I fancy it was one of those two.”

“And the ballroom?” Coronel Lord Waybusch asked.

“The thin wire that Bowers used to try to kill Sir Darryl was used there. It’s about twenty feet long. It was put around the victim’s neck and held on to by a wooden handle at one end. As the victim ran into the room, he sliced his own throat.”

“Nasty!” Mary of Cumberland said.

“Indeed,” Lord Darcy agreed. “This whole plot was a nasty-minded piece of business.”

“And the throne room?” Marquis Sherrinford asked.

“I’m not sure,” Lord Darcy said. “I am still investigating that. I’ll make a report when I have an answer.”

“Glad you’re not infallible, my lord,” Coronel Lord Waybusch said. “It makes you more human, don’t you know.”

The conversation continued for a while longer and then broke off, as the busy men went back to their duties. After all, the coronation was less than a week off.

After the last of the visible guests had left, a royal hand pushed the screen aside. “My Lord Darcy,” the familiar Plantagenet voice said.

Lord Darcy dropped to one knee, and the Duchess of Cumberland curtsied low. “Your Majesty.”

“Once again, my lord, We have occasion to be grateful that, long years ago, you chose to indulge in your knack for puzzle-solving rather than merely manage your estates or practice beekeeping.”

“Thank you, Your Majesty,” Lord Darcy said.

“One question,” His Majesty said. “Tell me the truth about the throne room death. You do know how it was done, don’t you?”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

“How?”

“There is only one possibility. The pseudo Count d’Alberra was practicing more than his mental science on Marquis Sherrinford. His Lordship was hypnotized. He let the Count and the victim into the throne room that night, and the recollection of it was wiped from his mind. Then he went back to the ballroom, and the Count used a wooden wedge to keep the door open.”

“You have proof of this?”

“I have the wedge,” Lord Darcy said.

“We see,” His Majesty said. “We had best not tell Marquis Sherrinford. It would only distress him.”

“I agree,” Lord Darcy said.

“Once again you have done a good job for us, Lord Darcy,” His Majesty said. “We are pleased.” he turned and walked to the door. “Good day, Lord Darcy. Mary of Cumberland. We are lucky to have such subjects.”

“May God keep Your Majesty,” Mary of Cumberland said as the king closed the door behind him.

“Well, that’s that,” Lord Darcy said. “I’m glad it’s behind me.”

“You say that now,” Mary of Cumberland told him, “but you’ll be bored in a week.”

“You’re probably right,” Lord Darcy admitted. “But human nature being what it is, I doubt that I’ll be bored very long.”

“Come,” Mary of Cumberland said. “Cook is making her special omelettes for lunch. And it looks like the weather is clearing. Perhaps after lunch we’ll go for a walk.”

The author of over thirty novels and a melange of short stories, articles, and other stuff,
Michael Kurland
has been writing professionally for over three decades. His stories are set in epochs and locations from Ancient Rome to the far future—anyplace where the reader won’t spot the anachronisms too easily. His works have appeared in Chinese, French, Italian, Spanish, German, Swedish, Polish, Portuguese, Japanese, Czech, and some alphabet with a lot of hooks and curlicues. They are believed to be the fragments of one great opus, a student of the
Untermensch
. He has been nominated for a Hugo, two Edgars, and the American Book Award, and various book clubs have picked up various of his books. More can be learned at his website:

www.michaelkurland.com