Sideways In Crime Read online

  “Your majesty is indeed a loving and merciful great mother,” said Will, heart pounding.

  “No; Volsinghome is a fool,” said the queen. “Caesarion converts with the sword, and his one-god priests are ruthless in suppressing any thought they do not approve. What happens then? The best minds of the east flee his empire in droves. Because we offer them refuge, they bring us their skills, their inventions. If rogues like your accomplices come with them, it makes no odds; our nation grows rich all the same.

  “Perhaps Volsinghome fears that foreign gods are stronger than our own, in which case we don’t think much of his faith,” she added, with a fearsome sneer. “Perhaps he simply dislikes seeing brown faces in the marketplace, or smelling strange spices in the air. Ha! We will not shape our state to suit his delicate nerves. We absorbed his Saxon race and remained Brithan; these hordes too we shall gather in.

  “And therefore we have made our decision. We shall announce that it was a man, and no god, who killed the earl.” She pointed her spear at Will. “But you must furnish us with some plausible proof of murder. What made the splash you heard, little Master Shaxpur?”

  Scorilo and Alazon were packing frantically when he returned.

  “Where do you think you’re going?”

  “Down to the river at midnight,” said Alazon. “We steal a boat, we go over to Gaul. Coming with us?”

  “No,” said Will. “I had an audience with the queen.” He looked around the sanctuary, thinking hard. “Has anybody been out to feed the fish this morning?”

  “What?” Alazon turned to stare at him.

  “It’s all this rain,” said Scorilo, with a groan. “Makes their brains mildew. Where are you going?” For Will had turned and run out to the pool in the rear of the temple precinct. They followed him.

  “Oh! Look at that!” cried Scorilo, falling to his knees in dismay. “It’s an omen! A terrible omen!”

  “Damn!” said Alazon. “Those fish cost a fortune!”

  For all the red carp in the pool were now floating belly up, quite dead. Will was pacing along the edge of the pool, peering down into the water. He went into the antechamber long enough to fetch a pair of tongs from its fireplace; coming back he knelt on the pool’s coping and, using the tongs, carefully pushed aside the lily pads to look beneath. “Ah,” he said.

  “What have you found?” Alazon ran to his side.

  “The murder weapon, I think,” said Will. Using the tongs, he drew out a long slender object. It was a tin novelty backscratcher in the shape of an arm and flexed hand, the sort that tourists brought back in hundreds from Cornwall every summer. This one had a twist of thick wire wrapped around the hand, the two sharp ends bent downward. Will pulled his sleeve down to cover his hand and picked it up, swinging it experimentally. It punched two neat holes in the surface of a lily pad, just like fang marks. Will peered at the wire points again. They were discolored.

  The murderer had clearly scaled the rear precinct wall, which was not especially high, and left in the same manner. The following day a body was found floating in the Thames, a thin and ragged man with a cut throat. Oddly, he had not been robbed; he had a golden guinea in his purse.

  The verdict on both the beggar and the earl was murder by persons unknown.

  Standing at the late earl’s pyre, as Scorilo chanted hastily improvised funeral rites, Will watched the royal family and wondered just how much was known. Princess Arnemetia and her son looked daggers across the flames at Princess Berecyntia and her husband, the Earl of Kent, where they stood by Volsinghome. All three were smirking, making no effort to conceal their glee. The queen looked on, impassive, her eyes hooded.

  Oddly enough, the temple of Glycon grew more crowded than before. Princess Arnemetia was loud in her unshaken faith. Young Vellocatus let it be known he had spent all his pocket money on most puissant curses, and such a touching act of filial piety was sure to bring his father’s murderers to justice. Before a packed audience of courtiers and celebrity chasers, they knelt together without Glycon’s sanctum and prayed for justice. The great god, stammering a little, was heard to promise that death would swiftly find the wretched sinners who had dared to defame him.

  “You have an awful lot of murderers in this country, do you know that?” complained Scorilo. Will, who had been composing a new prayer to Glycon as Guardian of Innocent Lambs, looked up, startled.

  “What?”

  “And your cider gives a man a damnable headache too,” said Scorilo, dropping down on the bench beside him and fanning himself. It was two days to Lammas, hot sticky weather. “All I wanted were some anodyne powders for this hangover. Hermes the Egyptian had a nice little apothecary shop in Silver Street. Had, notice I said. Somebody laid him out beside his mummies last night. The place is all closed off and the street wardens won’t let anybody in. What am I to do about my headache, eh?”

  “Willow-bark tea,” said Will, leaning back again. “You can get it anywhere.” He was about to close his eyes so he could concentrate on composition when his attention was drawn by the royal messenger, ascending the steps of the temple. “Oh, shite--”

  “Priests of Glycon!” The royal messenger brandished his spear. “The Living Boudicca commands the presence of Master Shaxpur!”

  Volsinghome was just emerging from the audience chamber as Will was ushered in. He wasn’t smiling now; in fact he looked at Will with something like fear as he hurried past him.

  Nor was the queen smiling as she received Will. Andraste Twdwr seemed to have aged twenty years in the month since he’d seen her. She looked at him bleakly and said: “You are a clever little man. I wonder if you are clever enough to solve another murder?”

  The royal messenger and a brace of royal guards escorted him to the mansion of Princess Berecyntia. Grim-faced street wardens blocked the door, but as they stood aside to let Will enter there was fear in their eyes too. He was marched in through the house and out to the back garden, which sloped down to the Thames. There was a big pavilion there, its screened windows standing open. In the pavilion was a bed, lately slept in but empty now.

  “The princess and her lord took their rest here last night, as was their custom in summer’s heat,” said the royal messenger. “The servants slept in the house. None of them heard anything untoward. At daybreak the earl’s valet came out to wake his master, and found him gone, nor was the princess to be seen.”

  Will was opening his mouth to suggest they had simply gone swimming when he saw the track on the floor of the pavilion, clear in a layer of summer dust. It circled the bed, a strange looping sprawl of a print full of smaller marks... scales? It looked something like the track a snake would leave, but a snake of monstrous size.

  “Was it your god devoured them, priest of Glycon?” demanded the valet, who had followed the guards out to the garden.

  “No,” said Will steadily. “But we were meant to think so.” He squatted to look more closely at the curious print. Here and there beside its length was a little parallel track, not continuous, a thin dragging mark such as might be made by a twig. In some places it paralleled the left side of the main print; in some places it was on the right. Will tugged at his beard, studying the print a moment longer.

  He rose and looked at the bed itself. Not a drop of blood, but the bedclothes were in wild disarray: sheets flung aside, pillows here and there, the blanket wadded up on one side of the bed. But nothing on the floor. Nothing to obscure the scuffed print. Will bent down and looked again at the print’s pattern. It reminded him of something... he crouched further and peered under the bed. Gingerly he reached under and pulled close what he saw there, and stared at it a moment.

  It was a scaled and stubby thing, like a mummified hand with black claws. A brown bone protruded from one end.

  Will stood up abruptly. “You have been charged to help me solve this murder, haven’t you?” he said to the royal messenger.

  “I have. You agree it’s murder, then?”

  “Most foul,” sai
d Will. “Take me to Silver Street, if you please.”

  It was early afternoon when he was once again admitted to the presence of the Living Boudicca. He bowed low. She regarded him with a flinty stare.

  “We see we were not mistaken in our judgment of you,” she said, in a hoarse voice.

  “You have been told, then, Ma’am.”

  “We have. Both of them in a fresh-dug grave in Hampstead. Not a mark on the bodies to show how they died, but the strangest thing: they shared their grave with a stuffed crocodile. A three-legged one, no less.”

  Will nodded. “And now I must grieve you further.”

  She shrugged. “We may sorrow, but we doubt we will be surprised. What have you to tell us?”

  Will wondered how best to break the news. “You may have heard, Ma’am, that the crocodile was stolen from an apothecary’s in Silver Street.”

  “We had. They murdered the poor devil for it, it seems.”

  “So it seems. He did not die quietly; there would appear to have been a fight. His jars of mummy-dust and his curative powders were knocked over and broken. His murderers left tracks in the dust. There were three of them: two men, both barefoot, and a boy, shod. And the boy’s shoes--”

  “Showed that he had a clubbed foot,” said the queen.

  “Yes,” said Will. “And the crocodile was taken to drag along the floor of the pavilion, to make it look as though a great snake had been there.”

  A long silence followed. “We expect his mother put him up to it,” said the queen at last. “Though he’s poisonous enough to have had the idea on his own.”

  Will cleared his throat. “There was also evidence, in the shop, that one of the men cut his foot on a broken jar. If the servants’ feet are examined--”

  “Yes. We take your meaning. You have done well, Master Shaxpur.”

  “I am sorry, Ma’am.”

  “We don’t know that we are,” said the Living Boudicca, tapping her fingers on the haft of her spear. “Berecyntia was a murderess. Just as well she was stopped before she made a habit of it.”

  “Ma’am?”

  “Shall we tell you how we became queen, little man?” Andraste Twdwr looked him in the eye. The unaccustomed familiarity unnerved Will, for her gaze was like a spear, but he met it steadily. “I was young, and in those days fair; my sister Genupa was much older, and not so fair. As the years drew on and she bore no children to her husband, she came to envy me my state. Our Aunt Magaidh was queen then, growing old.

  “Genupa’s husband lusted after me. The gods know I didn’t want the man; but Genupa caught him trying to kiss me, at a drunken banquet, and she went mad. She challenged me.

  “Aunt Magaidh gave us weapons and bid us fight it out. Poor Genupa was no fighter; she rushed at me, screaming, and fending her off I wounded her in the shoulder with my spear’s point. She came at me and I blocked again, and again, and so we circled each other, as Aunt Magaidh looked on in silence.

  “Genupa began to laugh. She laughed, and staggered as though she was drunk. She shouted at me, hateful things, but happily, as though I were crawling in the dust at her feet. At last she tripped on the haft of her own spear and fell sprawling. I stood back and waited for her to rise, but she never rose. I heard her choking and ran to turn her over. She was past rising; she died then and there, grinning like a skull.

  “I stood, weeping. I looked at the point of my spear and saw the poison smeared there, and my aunt said: ‘She was old and barren, and not so clever as you. This granted her an honorable death. And now there will be no dispute over the succession.’

  “My aunt died not long after. I inherited her throne and the secret of the poison. It’s rare potent stuff, brewed in the east, reserved for kings. It kills quickly and painlessly. The victim experiences euphoria. You will remember how Arnemetia’s husband laughed, that night, after he’d been wounded. To say nothing of his other symptoms.” The queen smiled bitterly. “I have never kept it; I detest poisoners. But Berecyntia obtained some easily enough, from Caesarion’s ambassador. I made her confess as much.

  “Well, well. What to do now, Master Shaxpur? We have no doubt it will be proved that Arnemetia had her sister killed. And there is the matter of the poor little Egyptian apothecary. Who answers for his blood?”

  “That is not for me to say, majesty,” said Will, bowing his head.

  “Quite so.” The queen stared into space. “We must bear it alone. It’s one thing to kill off a mere consort; another thing entirely to kill your own sister. We will hand her over to the druids, she and the boy. It is good for the people to see that no one is above our justice.” She looked down at Will. “But we fear Great Glycon has been the cause of too much trouble. We think it were best your friends pack up their puppet and seek their fortunes over in Gaul. You, however, must remain here.”

  “I, majesty?” Will began to sweat.

  “Even you.” The queen looked at him critically. “You are not a fool; your wit pleases us. You must not end your days telling fortunes in Gaul. We have another fate in mind for you.”

  A veiled girl entered the room then, and drew back when she saw Will.

  “Come in, girl,” said the Living Boudicca. “We sent for you an hour since.”

  “I was reading,” said the girl, a little sullenly. “And may speak to no man.”

  “The case is altered, child,” said the queen. “Holy Modron can do with one less nun in Her service. You will be queen after us, now, and this man will be your consort. Look upon him.”

  Affronted, the girl raised her veil and glared at Will. He was already breathless from shock, and now he gasped. Princess Damara was young and fair as her mother had been once, with the same coppery hair. Her eyes, however, were green as the sea. She regarded him steadily a moment, before shrugging.

  “He’s handsome enough. I don’t mind about his hair. Still, you can’t mean to marry me to a commoner?”

  “Of course not,” said her mother. “That’s easily fixed. What say you, Master Shaxpur, to an earldom? Oxford, we think. Yes. Ought to suit you nicely.”

  Via Vortex:--John Meaney

  John Meaney’s Nulapeiron Sequence, which comprises the novels Paradox, Context and Resolution, is, in my humble opinion, the most exciting and important space opera written since Frank Herbert’s Dune. I was a tremendous fan of his work years before it was my privilege to edit him. Lately, he’s been fishing in the darker pools of his imagination, without losing any of the brilliant SF extrapolations for which I love his work, as his new duology Bone Song and Dark Blood attest. The story that follows comes from a similar place as his novels of “Tristopolis,” if from another universe entirely.

  They call it courtroom chaos, that reactive moment when the judge pronounces sentence, when the defendant learns that he--nearly always a man--has lost everything because of a moment’s impulse or a lifetime traveling some inevitable path of violence and suffering. But I was calm as Judge Zimmer told Morton the worst, because for me this was vindication, a moment of clarity. It ended a story that began when I started working the case, a sequence played out against a backdrop of grieving families, unable to comprehend the hellish foreshortening of their daughters’ lives.

  Morton screamed: “No!”

  He launched himself from the dock, arcing his manacled fists toward the guards. But they were big men, well trained, who were almost gentle as they smothered his lashing limbs with superior mass, becoming a living cell. They kept in motion, moving toward the exit as a flexible unit, with Morton a wriggling, trapped nucleus who had no choice but to leave with them.

  Judge Zimmer raised the gavel, then gently lowered it. He had kept order throughout the trial; now he could allow the spectators a few moments of excited commentary. For a second, his steel eyes focused on me--I fancied I could hear the servomotors’ tiny whine--and I nodded. Then the journalists in the row in front of me stood up, blocking my view.

  “Sir?”

  The voice came from the aisle. Klaus S
chroder, fit, tanned, and too fresh-looking to be on my team, was waving.

  “One moment,” I called.

  As I worked my way along the row, with polite apologies, I decided to order Klaus to take a vacation. His wife and two-month-old son needed him.

  We moved away from the benches, and stood beneath a federal black-eagle insignia.

  “In England,” said Klaus, “they reckon only Amerikans and Deutschlanders enjoy Schadenfreude.”

  I glanced at the journalists. Some of them were smiling. And most of the spectators had been fascinated throughout the trial. I wasn’t sure that was the same thing.

  “Come on, Klaus. What the hell do you know about England?”

  “Less than you, Herr Leutnant. Obviously. So she’s here to see you, not me.”

  I raised my eyebrow, and gave him my cut-the-shit-right-now look. “Who? What? Where?” My first questions, at the start of every new case.

  Klaus’s mouth twitched. “A chief constable from New Scotland Yard, which I believe is in London, not so? I drove her here from HQ. She’s outside in the foyer.”

  “Wonderful.”

  Because I could do with time off, too. Alone in a tent in the Catskills, hiking during daylight, shooting deer with my digital camera rather than a rifle, staring up at the infinite stars every night. Or I could fall straight into the next case without a rest.

  A bailiff said: “The court will stand to order.”

  Everyone got to their feet. Judge Zimmer’s steel eyes glinted as he rose, straightening his scarlet robe.

  “Judgment has been served,” he said. “God bless Amerika.”

  “God bless Amerika,” murmured the crowd.

  I tugged Klaus’s sleeve, but we were only half way to the exit before the rest of the spectators spilled in to the aisle, forming a slow, viscous tide of people. Klaus kept close to me.