Ten Little Wizards: A Lord Darcy Novel Read online

  Lord Darcy stood up. “Where?” he asked. “And who was killed?”

  “In the bakery shop of Goodman Bonpierre in Between the Walls, my lord. Master Sorcerer Raimun DePlessis.”

  “DePlessis?” Sir Darryl rose to his feet involuntarily, as though about to do something. Then, realizing it was too late, he sat back down. “Well, well,” he said. “A lovely man. How strange.”

  “What’s that?” The Archbishop of Paris looked startled. “What about Master DePlessis?”

  “He was the victim, Your Grace,” Serjeant Martin said. “Stabbed through the heart with no weapon in sight, and no way in or out of the building.”

  “Incredible,” the Archbishop said, crossing himself. “I had dinner with him last night. A fine healer. A brilliant theoretician.”

  “I’m on my way,” Lord Darcy said. “Send someone for Master Sean O Lochlainn, and have him meet us there.”

  “It has already been done, my lord,” Serjeant Martin said.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The construction of Castle Cristobel was a process that had been ongoing since the thirteenth century. The original fortress had been expanded, modified, and rebuilt so many times in the past seven hundred years that, with the exception of the ancient and central Arthur Keep, only a careful perusal of the architectural documents could tell one what was built when.

  The massive and well-protected Norman Gate had been designed as the main gate to the Castle. Protected by a wide moat, it faced a gentle slope and was the only gate accessible by carriage. Over the centuries a group of commoners providing services to the Castle had been allowed to build their houses on the slope outside the gate, and a town had grown up. In the sixteenth century the moat had been filled in and a new castle wall had been extended to the bottom of the slope, enclosing the town; which henceforth and thereafter was known only as “Between the Walls.”

  Now Lord Darcy followed Serjeant Martin through the footway in the Norman Gate and along a series of narrow, twisting streets in that ancient cluster of houses and shops. The rain seemed to have let up for the moment, but the overcast was still complete; and the slate-gray sky cast a feeling of gloom over the shadowless streets. As they rounded one corner, turning onto Paternoster Lane, Lord Darcy saw groups of gossiping shopkeepers gathered in doorways up and down the narrow street. Nothing like a murder, he thought wryly, to disrupt the workday.

  A small group of armsmen were clustered in one doorway, which told Lord Darcy which shop he was headed for even before he could read the baker’s sign swinging above; and the puffs of light blue smoke he noticed emanating from the doorway when they approached told him that Master Sean O Lochlainn had arrived before him and was already hard at work on the forensic examination of the corpse and the murder scene.

  Coronel Lord Waybusch was standing to one side of the shop door, looking worried. A stocky man in his early fifties, with a head of thick, black hair and a wide black mustache, the Coronel was wearing the gold-and-crimson dress uniform of the Household Guard, which looked as though it had been designed particularly to show off his ruggedly masculine good looks. “Glad you’re here, Darcy,” he growled, sticking his large right hand out to be shook. “Job of keeping order in this damned carnival is going to be quite enough without having any damned mysteries to solve. Putting you in charge of this, if you don’t mind. If His Majesty approves. Impossible crime; right up your alley.”

  “I know none of the details, Coronel,” Lord Darcy said. “Could you fill me in?”

  “Damned few details known,” Coronel Lord Waybusch said. “We’ll know more, of course, as soon as Master Sean finishes his preliminary examination. The chirurgeon has seen the body already. Certified that the chap’s dead. As if we couldn’t tell.” He looked into the cloud of blue smoke that was the interior of the shop, and then looked away. “Don’t like to disturb a wizard while he’s doing his thing,” he said. “Any man who’s an expert at his job should be left alone to do it without outside interference. Most particularly wizards.”

  “A prudent philosophy,” Lord Darcy agreed. He usually liked to get a preliminary look at the scene of the crime and the corpse as soon as possible; but as Master Sean seemed well under way in his magical tasks, it would be best to wait until he was done. Interfering with wizardry in progress sometimes had unexpected and disconcerting effects for all concerned.

  “The goodman over there,” Coronel Lord Waybusch said, pointing to a quartet of rain-caped commoners standing together nervously in the company of two uniformed armsmen in the doorway of a shop down the street, “the elderly one with the apron, is Master Bonpierre, the baker. It’s his shop, and he found the body. He can tell you what there is to be told until Master Sean is finished.”

  “Thank you, Coronel,” Lord Darcy said. “I shall speak with him.”

  Lord Darcy walked over to the quartet of tradesmen across the street. “Master Bonpierre?” he asked.

  The eldest of the four men stepped forward and doffed his oversized white cap. A skinny man with a prominent nose, he was swaddled from neck to knee under his rain cape in a white apron that seemed several sizes too large for him. “Your Lordship,” he said. “That would be me. This goodman here is Master Chef Virgil DuCormier, and these are my two journeymen; Paval Skettle and Robert Pitt.” He pointed in turn to a short, dark-haired man, who appeared to be in his mid-thirties, and two self-composed, intense men in their late twenties who stood quietly behind him.

  Lord Darcy nodded. “I am Lord Darcy, and I shall be investigating the death. I need to ask you some questions,” he told them. “I understand that the bakery is your shop and that you found the body. Is that right?”

  “Yes,” Master Bonpierre agreed hesitantly. “Leastwise, it is my shop. As to finding the body, well, we all found it together, as one might say.”

  “It was horrible!” Journeyman Pitt volunteered. Master Bonpierre turned around and silenced him with a glance. Murders were for masters to discuss, not mere journeymen.

  “Tell me about it,” Lord Darcy suggested.

  Master Bonpierre tipped his head to one side thoughtfully, as though he was composing an epic poem and wanted to get every word right the first time. “It was like this,” he said finally. “We arrive at the shop, the three of us, on the minute of two o’clock, by the sounding of the Stephain bell, as is usual. We meet Master DuCormier there, as was arranged, and I unlock the door. But the door, although unlocked, will not open. I am surprised.”

  “Two o’clock is your usual opening time?” Lord Darcy interrupted.

  “For the shop, yes,” Master Bonpierre said, looking slightly annoyed that the flow of his narrative had been broken. “I am, as I say, surprised. I think at first that it is sticking because of the weather—rain-swelled, you understand. But it has never done this before, and indeed this is not the case. I push at the door, but to no avail. It does not want to open. This is not usual.”

  “Why so late?” Lord Darcy asked.

  Master Bonpierre sighed. “We do not have our ovens in the back of the shop,” he explained. “They are, instead, in a separate bakery built up against the new wall. It is there that we go at four in the morning to make bread. It is there that our dozens are sold; to the Castle kitchens, to the military, to the inns. Then at two we open this shop for the trade, and the ‘prentices bring over the stock, and we stay open till the stock is sold or till vespers. Whichever, as you might say, happens soonest.”

  “There’s no oven in this shop?”

  “Only a small one for special orders,” Master Bonpierre said. “Birthday cakes and such. The large one was converted into a preservator last Michaelmas.”

  “Why were you meeting Master DuCormier outside the shop?” Lord Darcy asked. “Doesn’t he work with you?”

  “No,” Master Bonpierre said.

  “At present I am employed in the Castle kitchen,” Master DuCormier said in a thick French accent, stepping forward. “I am a master chef of the cakes and pastries and des co
nfitures—the sweetmeats. Also the table decorations I do. I have come especially from Paris for His Highness’s coronation. I will be creating the reception cake.”

  “I see,” Lord Darcy said. “And you came here...?”

  “To arrange for the vending of des souvenirs gateaux—the little cakes to commemorate the occasion.”

  “Very commendable,” Lord Darcy said. “Thank you for clearing that up.” He turned back to Master Bonpierre. “Now please go on with your narrative. What happened?”

  “Yes, Your Lordship. At two o’clock we arrive at the shop. The door does not open. I push at it immensely, you understand, but it will not budge. Journeyman Skettle, who is a strong fellow, he pushes also upon it. To no avail. What are we to do? the ‘prentices will be along at any moment with their panniers full of bread.

  “I think of the rear window... .” Master Bonpierre paused for the brilliance of this to be appreciated. “It will admit a person. A small person.”

  “What of the front windows?” Lord Darcy asked.

  “They are both barred, Your Lordship. It’s a regulation on establishments selling comestibles. Mostly to prevent small children from climbing in at night and damaging themselves, or eating themselves sick.”

  “Is there no rear door?”

  “There is, Your Lordship; but it opens only from the inside. It’s double-barred at night, and there isn’t even any keyhole.”

  “But the rear window?”

  “It is high up off the ground, and it is only used for ventilation. It is hinged at the bottom, you understand, and opens no more than six inches at the top. In the normal course of events it cannot be opened far enough to allow entrance. But, as these are abnormal events, I have Journeyman Pitt take a brick and smash the glass out. Then we boost him through the window and ourselves go around to the front, so he can let us in.”

  “The bakery seems to adjoin the buildings on each side,” Lord Darcy commented.

  “Yes, it does,” Master Bonpierre agreed. “There is an alleyway at the back that is accessed from a locked gate around the corner. We did not bother with that today, but asked Goodwife Brewler if we could go through her shop.” He indicated the store next to the bakery, which appeared to sell silver, brass, and pewter kitchen ware.

  Lord Darcy turned to the tall, bony youth. “So you went through the window, Journeyman Pitt?”

  Pitt rolled his cap into a ball and screwed up his face in concentration. “I did, Your Lordship,” he affirmed. “And I went through to the front room and opened the door. It were the bar what were keeping it closed. I mean it were barred from the inside—like the back door.”

  “How could that happen?” Lord Darcy asked.

  “It couldn’t,” Master Bonpierre stated. “No way. Not unless it was magicked.”

  Lord Darcy let that stand and turned back to the journeyman. “Why didn’t you open the back door instead of the front?” he asked. “Your master was standing right there; he wouldn’t have had to run back to the front.”

  Pitt scratched his head. “I didn’t think of it,” he said. “Master told me to open the front door, so open the front door I did.”

  “And then?”

  “And then,” Master Bonpierre took over again, and continued his thoughtful description, “I enter the shop. I join in wondering how the front door could have become barred; it is a mystery. Journeyman Skettle opens the shutters on the front windows while I light the lamps. Then the ‘prentices arrive with their panniers full of good French bread. I take my rain cape off and go around the counter to prepare to receive the bread. And then....”

  Master Bonpierre’s description slowed to a halt. His eyes widened as, once again, they saw what they had seen an hour before. “And then—on the floor behind the counter—I see...him.”

  “Yes?” Lord Darcy said. “Take your time.”

  “He is lying there dead—on the floor behind the counter—this overly large man dressed in the robes of a master wizard. There is a surplus of blood on the floor past his head. The floor, you understand, leans that way. He is arranged in death, you know, lying there.”

  “You mean composed?” Lord Darcy asked. “As though he expected to die, or was ready for it?”

  “No, no,” Master Bonpierre said. “Arranged. As by the undertaker. His feet together. His arms crossed—so—over the great belly. His raiment pulled down and folded neatly about him. It was, somehow, more shocking than if he had just been lying there.”

  “I see what you mean,” Lord Darcy said. “What then?”

  “Then I send Journeyman Skettle out for the nearest armsman, I send the ‘prentices back to the ovens with the panniers of bread; and we, the rest of us, go outside the shop to wait for him.”

  “You didn’t touch anything in the shop?”

  “No, no. Certainly not. Not after the body was found.”

  “Very thoughtful, thank you,” Lord Darcy said. “You know we like to have the scene of a crime left as pristine as possible for our investigations.”

  Master Bonpierre shuddered slightly. “It was not forethought, you understand. It was simply lack of desire. We all wished to be outside the shop while that body was inside it.”

  “I understand,” Lord Darcy said. He looked around at the others. “Tell me, did any of you recognize the corpse? Have any of you ever seen him before?”

  There was a murmuring of negatives from the four bakers. None of them had ever seen the corpse in life, to the best of their recollection. And none of them ever wanted to see such a thing again, thank you.

  “Thank you all very much for your assistance,” Lord Darcy told them. “An armsman will be by sometime later to take full statements from each of you. Please do not let this upset you, it is merely our routine.”

  Lord Darcy walked through the kitchen ware shop, nodding politely to Goodwife Brewler, who made a curtsy so deep that she must have thought that he was at least a royal duke in disguise. The back alley was just that, a back alley. It was narrow, paved, and swept clean. There appeared to be no entrance other than the back doors of the shops on both streets and the gate at the far end. A small table was against one wall, with several chairs around it; where, Lord Darcy guessed, some of the shopkeepers shared cups of caffe and a game of cards on a quiet afternoon.

  The back of the baker’s shop was as described. There was a door, which had no keyhole and was bolted from the inside, and a window about seven feet off the ground, which had recently had all the glass broken from its frame. On the ground to the left of the door, under the roof overhang, were a stack of old and well-used straw panniers, which had worn out in the baker’s service. They were not doing too well in the almost-constant rain.

  Lord Darcy contemplated hoisting himself up and peering through the broken window, but decided against it. Whatever there was to see, he could see much better from inside, when Master Sean was ready for him. He returned through the kitchenware shop to the street.

  The tubby little forensic sorcerer emerged from the bakery shop about ten minutes later, his cabalistically-marked carpetbag in hand. Putting it carefully down to the side of the door, he wiped both his hands carefully on a bleached white cotton handkerchief which he pulled from his sleeve. “You can go in now,” he told Coronel Lord Waybusch. “I’m done for the nonce. Mind you, don’t disturb anything. Be especially careful about the covered brass bowl on the tripod, it’s still quite hot.”

  “I have no interest whatever in going in,” Coronel Lord Waybusch said firmly. “I shall leave that to Lord Darcy here. No point in my mucking around when I have the services of two such experts as yourselves.”

  “Ah, Your Lordship,” Master Sean said, turning to face Lord Darcy. “I didn’t see you standing there. Would you like to see what there is to be seen?”

  “I would indeed,” Lord Darcy said. “I have been admirably patient, Master Sean, and kept out of the shop while you were busy. Now let us go in together and I shall look things over while you tell me what happened.”r />
  “As I’ve told you before, my lord, I am but a magician, not a miracle worker,” Master Sean said. “I may be able to give you a few indications as to what took place, but don’t expect a lot of detail. Forensic sorcery needs facts to work on; and when the facts aren’t there, the greatest magic in the world cannot create them.”

  “All that I ask, my dear Master Sean, are the facts you have assembled and any logical surmises you can make from them,” Lord Darcy said, peering into the doorway. “How long will it take for this smoke to clear?”

  “Oh, yes,” Master Sean said. “Sorry about that.” He took a small silver wand from the leather pouch at his waist. “If you’d stand aside for an instant, my lord...” He stood in the doorway, legs planted firmly in a position of power, and felt the air in the room with his left hand as though there were an invisible handle somewhere just within his grasp. Then, with the wand in his right hand, he drew some small circles in the air and muttered a set of unintelligible phrases.

  There was a low, prolonged crackling noise, which went on for about twenty seconds, and the room was clear of smoke.

  “Excellent, Master Sean,” Lord Darcy said.

  “Elementary, my lord,” Master Sean replied, a broad smile creasing his chubby face.

  “Well, then,” Lord Darcy said, rubbing his hands together, “let’s see what there is to be seen.” He stepped into the room and turned slowly around, observing and categorizing, getting the feel of this space that now enclosed a murdered man. “What are your findings, Master Sean?” he asked.

  Master Sean stooped over to touch his tripod-supported bowl, and decided it was still too hot to put away. “’Tis a shame,” he said. “Lying there on that wooden floor is the mortal remains of Master Raimun DePlessis, a true gentleman, and one of the finest theoretical thaumaturgists of our time.”

  “A friend?” Lord Darcy asked sympathetically.

  “A casual friend,” Master Sean said. “But a friend all the same. We would meet at the occasional sorcerers’ convention. We dined together, and sat and talked many times. We appeared together on a panel once. He was a healer, you know. Most of his theoretical work was on the healing art. He will be missed.”