Too Many Magicians

CHAPTER 1

Commander Lord Ashley, Special Agent for His Majesty’s Imperial Naval Intelligence Corps, stood in the doorway of a cheap, rented room in a lower middle-class section of town near the Imperial Naval Docks in Cherbourg. The door was open, and a man lay on the floor with a large, heavy-handled knife in his chest.

His lordship lifted his eyes from the corpse and looked around the room. It was small; not more than eight by ten feet, he thought, and the low ceiling was only a bare six inches above his head. Along the right-hand wall was a low bed. It was made up, but the wrinkles in the cheap blue bedspread indicated that someone had been sitting on it — most likely, the dead man. A cheap, wooden table stood in the far left corner with a matching chair next to it. An ancient, lumpy-looking easy chair — probably bought secondhand — stood against the left wall, nearer the door. Another wooden chair, the twin of the one at the table, stood at the foot of the bed, completing the furniture. There were no pictures hung on the green-painted walls; there were no extraneous decorations of any kind. The personality of the man who lived here had not been implanted forcibly upon the room itself, certainly.

Lord Ashley looked back down at the body. Then, cautiously, he closed the door behind him, stepped over to the supine figure, and took a good look. He lifted up one hand and felt for the pulse that should throb at the wrist of a living man. There was none. Georges Barbour was dead.

His lordship took a step back from the corpse and looked at it thoughtfully. In his lordship’s belt pocket were one hundred golden sovereigns, money which had been drawn from the Special Fund to pay Goodman Georges Barbour for his services to Naval Intelligence. But Goodman Georges, My Lord Commander thought to himself, would no longer be any drain upon the Special Fund.

My lord the Commander stepped over the body and looked at the papers on the wooden table at the far corner of the room. Nothing there of importance. Nothing that would connect the man with the Imperial Naval Intelligence Corps. Nonetheless, he gathered them all together and slipped them into his coat pocket. There was always the chance that they might contain information in the form of coded writing or secret inks.

The small closet in the right-hand corner of the room, near the door, held only a change of clothing, another cheap suit like the one the dead man wore. Nothing in the pockets, nothing in the lining. The two drawers in the closet revealed nothing but suits of underwear, stockings and other miscellaneous personal property.

Again he looked at the corpse. This search would have to be reported immediately to My Lord Admiral, of course, but there were certain things that it would be better for the local Armsmen not to find.

The room had revealed nothing. Since Barbour had moved into the room only the day before, it was highly unlikely that he could have constructed, in so short a time, some secret hiding place that would escape the penetrating search of my lord the Commander. He checked the room again and found nothing.

A search of the body was equally fruitless. Barbour had, then, already dispatched whatever information he had to Zed. Very well.

Lord Ashley looked around the room once more to make absolutely certain that he had missed nothing.

Then he went out of the room again and down the hall to the narrow, dim stairway that led to the floor below. He went down the stairway briskly, almost hurriedly.

The concierge, who sat in her office just to one side of the front door, was a rather withered but still bright-eyed little woman who looked up at the tall, aristocratic Commander with a smile that was as bright as her eyes.

“Ey, sir? What may I do for ye?”

“I have some rather sad news for you, Goodwife,” my lord said quietly. “One of your tenants is dead. We shall have to fetch an Armsman at once.”

“Dead? Who? Ye don’t mean Goodman Georges, good sir?”

“None other,” said his lordship. He had told the concierge only a few minutes before that he was going up to see Barbour. “Has he had any visitors in the past half hour or so?” The body, my lord the Commander reasoned to himself, was still warm, the blood still fluid. By no stretch of the imagination could Barbour have been dead more than half an hour.

“Visitors?” The old woman blinked, obviously trying to focus her thoughts. “Other than yourself, sir, I saw no visitors. But there! I mightn’t have seen him at all. I was out for a few minutes, a few minutes only. I went to the shop of Goodman Fentner, the tobacconist, for a bit of snuff, as is the only form of tobacco I uses.”

Commander Lord Ashley looked sharply at her. “Exactly when did you leave and when did you come back, Goodwife? It may be of the utmost importance that the time be known.”

“Why… why… it was just afore you come, good sir,” the old woman said rather nervously. “As I come in, I heard the bell of St. Denys strike the three-quarter hour.”

Lord Ashley looked at his own watch. It was one minute after eleven. “The man must have waited until he saw you leave; then he came up and came down again before you returned. How long were you gone?”

“Only as long as it takes to walk to the corner and back, sir. I don’t like to stay too long away in the daytime when the door is open.” She paused and a vaguely puzzled frown came over her face. “Who was it must have come up and gone down, sir?”

“Whoever it was,” said my lord the Commander, “stabbed your tenant Georges Barbour through the heart. He was murdered, Goodwife, and that is why we must call an Armsman without delay.”

The poor woman was absolutely shaken now, and Lord Ashley realized that she would be of no use whatever in dealing with the Armsmen. He was glad that he had asked her about any possible visitors before he had mentioned that the death was murder; otherwise, her valuable testimony might have flown from her head completely.

“Sit down, Goodwife,” he said in a kindly voice. “Compose yourself. There is nothing to fear. I shall take care of summoning the Armsmen.” As the old woman practically collapsed into the shabby overstuffed chair she kept in her office, Lord Ashley stepped to the outer door and opened it. He had heard the noise of boys’ high-pitched voices outside, shrill with excitement over the game they were playing.

Because of his years of Naval training, it was easy for my lord the Commander to spot the urchin who was the obvious leader of the little group.

“Here, my lad!” he called out. “You, lad, with the green cap! How should you like to earn yourself a sixth-bit?”

The boy looked up, and his slightly grimy face broke into a smile. “I would, my lord!” he said, snatching the rather faded green cap from his head. “Very much, my lord!” He had no notion whether the personage who had addressed him actually was a lord or not, but the personage in question was most certainly a gentleman, and such a person one always addressed as “my lord” whenever there was a job in the offing.

The other boys became suddenly silent, obviously hoping that they, too, might gain some small pecuniary advantage from this obviously affluent gentleman.

“Very well, then,” said Lord Ashley briskly. “Here is a twelfth. If you return here with an Armsman inside of five minutes, I shall give you another like it.”

“An… an Armsman, my lord?” It was obvious that he could not conceive of any possible reason why any sane person would want an Armsman within a thousand yards of him.

“Yes, an Armsman,” Lord Ashley said with a smile. “Tell him that Lord Ashley, a King’s Officer, desires his immediate assistance and then lead him back here. Do you understand?”

“Yes, My Lord Ashley! A King’s Officer, my lord! Yes!”

“Very good, my lad. And you others. Here is a twelfth-bit apiece. If you come back with an Armsman within five minutes, you, too, will get another twelfth. And the first one to come back gets a sixth-bit for a bonus. Now run! Off with you!”

They scattered to the winds.

At half past two that afternoon, three men met in a comfortable, club-like room in the Admiralty Headquarters Building of His Imperial Majesty’s Naval Base at Cherbourg.

Commander Lord Ashley sat tall, straight, and at ease, his slightly wavy brown hair brushed smooth, his uniform immaculate. He had changed into uniform only twenty minutes before, having been informed by the Lord Admiral that, while this was not exactly a formal meeting, civilian dress would not be as impressive as the royal blue and gold uniform of a full Commander.

Lord Ashley might not have been called handsome; his squarish face was perhaps a little too ruggedly weatherbeaten for that. But women admired him and men respected the feeling of determination that his features seemed to give. His eyes were gray-green with flecks of brown, and they had that seaman’s look about them — as though Lord Ashley were always gazing at some distant horizon, inspecting it for signs of squalls.

Lord Admiral Edwy Brencourt had the same look in his blue eyes, but he was some twenty-five years older than Lord Ashley, although even at fifty-two his hair showed touches of gray only at the temples. His uniform, of the same royal blue as that of the Commander, was somewhat more rumpled, because he had been wearing it since early morning, but this effect was partially offset by the gleaming grandness of the additional gold braid that encased his sleeves and shoulders.

In comparison with all this grandeur, the black-and-silver uniform of Chief Master-at-Arms Henri Vert, head of the Department of Armsmen of Cherbourg, seemed rather plain, although it was impressive enough on most occasions. Chief Henri was a heavy-set, tough-looking man in his early fifties who had the air and bearing of a stolid fighter.

Chief Henri was the first to speak. “My lords, there is more to this killing than meets the eye. At least, I should say, a great deal more than meets my eye.”

He spoke Anglo-French with a punctilious precision which showed that it was not his natural way of speaking. He had practiced for many years to remove the accent of the local patois — an accent which betrayed his humble beginnings — but his effort to speak properly was still noticeable.

He looked at My Lord Admiral. “Who was this Georges Barbour, your lordship?”

My Lord Admiral picked up the brandy decanter from the low table around which the three of them sat and carefully filled three glasses before answering the Chief’s question. Then he said: “You understand, Chief Henri, that this case is complicated by the fact that it involves Naval Security. Nothing that is said in this room must go beyond it.”

“Of course not, my lord,” Chief Henri said. He was well aware that this area of the Admiralty offices had been carefully protected by potent and expensive guarding spells. His Majesty’s Armed Forces had a special budget for obtaining the services of the most powerful experts in that field, magicians who stood high in the Sorcerer’s Guild. These were far more powerful than the ordinary commercial spells which guaranteed privacy in public hotels and private homes.

Admiral Brencourt carefully replaced the glass stopple in the brandy decanter before he spoke again. “I’m afraid I must apologize to you, Chief Henri. Acting under my orders, Commander Lord Ashley has withheld information from the plainclothes Sergeant-at-Arms who questioned him about the Barbour murder this morning. That was, of course, for security reasons. But I have now authorized him to tell you the entire story. If you will, my lord…”

Lord Ashley tasted his brandy. Chief Henri waited respectfully for him to speak. He knew that certain things would still be omitted, that Lord Ashley had been briefed as to which details to reveal and which to conceal. Nevertheless, he knew that the story would be much richer in detail than it had been when he first heard it.

Lord Ashley lowered his glass and set it down. “Yesterday morning,” he began, “Monday, October 24th, I received a special sealed packet from the Office of the Lord High Admiral in London. My orders were to deliver it to Admiral Brencourt this morning. I left London by train to Dover, thence across the Channel by special Naval courier boat to Cherbourg. By the time I arrived, it was nearly midnight.” He paused and looked candidly at Chief Henri. “I should point out here that if my orders had been marked ‘Most Urgent,’ I should have immediately taken pains to deliver the packet to My Lord Admiral, no matter what the hour. As it was, my orders were to deliver it to him this morning. I give you my word that that packet never left my sight, nor was it opened, between the time I received it and the time it reached the Admiral’s hands.”

“I can verify that,” said Admiral Brencourt. “As you are aware, Chief Henri, our Admiralty sorcerers cast spells upon the envelopes and seals of such packets — spells which, while they do not insure that the packets will not be opened by unauthorized persons, do insure that they cannot be opened without detection.”

“I understand, my lord,” said the Chief Master-at-Arms. “You had your sorcerer check the packet, then.” It was a statement, not a question.

“Yes,” said the Admiral. “Continue, Commander.”

“Thank you, my lord,” said Lord Ashley. Then, addressing Chief Henri, “I spent the night at the Hotel Queen Jeanne. This morning at nine, I delivered the packet to My Lord Admiral.” He glanced at the Admiral and waited.

“I opened the packet,” Admiral Brencourt said immediately. “Most of what it contained is irrelevant to this case. There was, however, an enclosure which I was directed to hand over to Commander Lord Ashley. He was directed to take a certain sum of money to one Georges Barbour. That was the first that either of us had ever heard of Georges Barbour.” He looked back at Lord Ashley, inviting him to take up the tale.

“According to my instructions within that sealed envelope,” Ashley said, “I was to take the money immediately to Barbour, who was, it seems, a double agent, working ostensibly for His Slavonic Majesty Casimir of Poland, but in actuality working for the Naval Intelligence Service of the Imperial Navy. The money was to be delivered to Barbour between fifteen minutes of eleven and fifteen minutes after. I went to the appointed spot, spoke to the concierge, went upstairs, and found the door partially open. I rapped, and the door swung open farther. I saw Georges Barbour lying on the floor with a knife in his heart.” He paused and spread his hands. “I was surprised by that development, naturally, but I had my duty to do. I removed his private papers — those on his desk — and I searched the room. The papers were turned over to the Admiral.”

“You must understand, Chief Henri,” said Admiral Brencourt, “that there was a possibility that some of those papers might have borne coded or secret messages. None of them did, however, and the lot will be turned over to you. Lord Ashley will describe to you where each item lay in the room.”

Chief Henri looked at the Commander. “Would you mind submitting a written report, with a sketch map indicating where the papers and so on were?” He was more than a little piqued at the Navy’s high-handed treatment of evidence in a murder case, but he knew there was nothing he could do about it.

“I will be happy to prepare such a report,” said Lord Ashley.

“Thank you, your lordship. A question: Were the papers disarrayed in any way — scattered?”

The Commander frowned slightly in thought. “Not scattered, no. That is to say, they did not appear to have been thrown around haphazardly. But they were not all in one pile. I should say that they were… er… neatly disarrayed, if you follow my meaning. As though Barbour had been going through them.”

“Or someone else had gone through them,” said the Chief thoughtfully.

“Yes. That’s possible, of course,” the Commander agreed. “But would the killer have had time to look through Barbour’s papers?”

“Suppose,” the Chief said slowly, “that there was one single paper — or maybe a single set of them — that the killer was after. And suppose he knew enough to be able to recognize those papers on sight. He wouldn’t have needed more than a few seconds to find them, would he?”

The Commander and the Admiral glanced at each other.

“No,” said the Commander after a moment. “No, he wouldn’t.”

“Do you have any idea what such paper or papers might pertain to?” Chief Henri asked with deceptive casualness.

“None,” said My Lord Admiral firmly. “And I give you my word that I am concealing nothing. This office was not even aware of the very existence of Georges Barbour; we have no idea what he was doing or what sort of papers he may have been handling. This was our first knowledge of him, and we have received no further word from London. Thus far, London does not, of course, even know he is dead. One day, perhaps, some sorcerer may discover a way to get teleson lines across the Channel, but until then we must rely on dispatches sent by courier.”

“I see.” Chief Henri rubbed his hands together rather nervously. “I trust that your lordships understand that I am bound to do my duty. A murder has been committed. It must be solved. I am bound to expend every effort to discover the identity of the killer and bring him to justice. There are certain steps which I must, by law, take.”

“We quite realize that, Chief Henri,” said the Lord Admiral.

The Chief finished the rest of his brandy. “At the same time, we have no desire to hamper the Navy in any way nor to disclose information publicly that may be of benefit to our country’s enemies.”

“Naturally,” the Lord Admiral agreed.

“But this case is a difficult one,” Chief Henri went on. “We know — thanks to the evidence of the concierge — the time at which the crime was committed to within ten minutes. We know that Barbour stayed in that room all night, left this morning at about five minutes of ten, and came back at approximately twenty after. Everyone else in the house had left much earlier, since they are all working folk. There was no one in the building except Barbour and the concierge. All very fine so far as it goes.

“But this case is almost clueless. We do not know Barbour. We have no notion of whom he might have known, whom he might have met, or with whom he might have had dealings. We have no idea who might have owned the very common knife with which he was killed.

“When all that is added to the international ramifications of this affair, I am forced to admit that the case is beyond me. The law is clear upon that point; I must notify the Investigation Department of His Royal Highness at Rouen.”

Admiral Brencourt nodded. “That’s quite clear. Certainly, anyone from His Highness’ offices would be of assistance. Is there any further way in which we can help you?”

“If it is possible, My Lord Admiral, there is. Presumably someone in London knows something about this fellow Barbour. If it would not be a violation of security, I should like to know as much about him as possible. I should like very much to have more information from London.”

“I shall certainly see what can be done, Chief Henri,” the Lord Admiral said. “Lord Ashley is returning to England within the hour. The Office of the Lord High Admiral must be informed of this development immediately, of course. I shall send a letter requesting the information you desire.”

In spite of himself, Chief Henri grinned. “By the Blue! Lord Darcy is never wrong!”

“Darcy?” My Lord Admiral blinked. “I don’t… Oh, yes. I recall now. Chief Investigator for His Highness. He cleared up that situation here in Cherbourg last year — the ‘Atlantic Curse’ business — didn’t he?”

Chief Henri coughed delicately. “I may say that he did, My Lord Admiral. I am not permitted to discuss details.”

“Of course, of course. But why do you say that he is never wrong?”

“Well, I have never known him to be,” Chief Henri said staunchly. “When I made my call to Rouen to inform his lordship of the murder, he told me that he would not be able to come immediately, that he was sending down his second-in-command, Sir Eliot Meredith, to take charge until he could get here. He also said that you would undoubtedly be sending a courier to London almost immediately and he wondered if I would be so good, as he put it, to ask My Lord Admiral if the courier could carry a special message for him.”

Lord Admiral Brencourt chuckled. “An astute gentleman, Lord Darcy. I dare say we can see our way clear to that. What is the nature of the message?”

“Lord Darcy’s chief forensic sorcerer, Master Sean O Lochlainn, is attending a convention in London at the Royal Steward Arms. He would like you to convey the message that he is to return to Normandy, to come straight here to Cherbourg, as soon as possible.”

“Certainly,” the Lord Admiral said agreeably. “If you will write the letter, Lord Ashley will deliver it upon his arrival. The Royal Steward is not far from the Admiralty offices.”

“Thank you,” said Chief Henri. “The mail packet will not leave Cherbourg until this evening, and the letter wouldn’t be delivered until late tomorrow afternoon. This will save a great deal of time. May I borrow pen and paper?”

“Certainly; here you are.”

Chief Henri dipped the Admiral’s pen in the inkstand and began to write.