Sideways In Crime Read online

  The empire expanded cautiously, east across Asia, south into Mesopotamia and Persia, and west into Europe. By 1500 Europe had been partitioned between Roman and French spheres, with a hinterland of petty German and Italian statelets between the two-- ironically Rome itself was an independent city-state, governed by the Pope.

  “We stood against them,” the French prince said bitterly. “If not for France the eagle standard would fly in London as it does in Baghdad and Vladivostok--”

  “I’m sure we’re all jolly grateful to you Frenchies,” Armstrong said dryly. ‘But getting back to the matter in hand--”

  Marcus said, “You regarded the gift of your ancestor’s cross as an insult. Was it grievous enough to kill for?”

  Philippe sneered. “I would not trouble myself to spit upon a dissolute boy like Gavrilo. The Caesar will feel France’s wrath at the next round of trade negotiations...”

  “His motive is flimsy,” Marcus said after the prince had gone.

  Armstrong said, “Flimsy unless he, or the Ottoman, or both, wanted to start a war. You heard what he said about trade negotiations. There are always factions in such courts spoiling for a fight...”

  As they argued about motives, Imogen felt impatient, convinced they were on the wrong track. She begged leave to take some lunch, and left them to it.

  She walked back to the Hall of Ambassadors. A butler on the palace staff brought her lunch: a sandwich and a glass of fresh milk.

  Eating slowly, she peered up at Michelangelo’s marvelous ceiling. She knew that historians thought it an irony that King Henry, who had enriched himself by plundering the wealth of the Church through the English Reformation, had used those funds to hire great artists like Michelangelo who could not find suitably wealthy sponsors in the impoverished city-states of Catholic Italy, trapped as they were between the flaring ambitions of the French and Roman empires. She was grateful the work had not been harmed by last night’s fire.

  The others kept talking of motives. Certainly you could say both Ottoman and French had a motive to murder Gavrilo, if you really believed that one of them wanted to start a war. Conceivably Philippe also had a personal motive, if he felt insulted by the crusader rag. But Philippe certainly did not have the means, as far as she could see, however strong his motive, for there was absolutely no evidence he ever came into physical contact with the fire-lance.

  Perhaps Osman Pasa could have done it. But he wasn’t alone in handling the murder weapon; the British and Roman authorities had both had a hold of it, and could perhaps have tampered with it. She supposed some of the Romans might have a motive to do down Caesar’s son, if they despised his reign sufficiently--even if it meant their own death. What she couldn’t work out was what possible motive the British could have for killing Gavrilo. After all he was here to be betrothed to a British princess. And yet the means existed.

  Means, not motive, had to be the key to this murder. That was what she kept telling Marcus, and here she was forgetting it herself.

  On impulse she made her way back to Gavrilo’s reception room, alone. The police stationed here recognized her and allowed her in.

  She looked again at the bloodstained carpet, the fire-damaged walls. Aware of the stern warnings not to disturb anything, she bent down and kneeled, peering at the weapon and the damage it had caused: the smashed chair, the remains of the lance itself, the trigger, the traces of the fuse. The timer was a mass of components, like the innards of a watch. They gleamed, finely worked. The trigger was simpler, but was just as well made. It looked remarkably clean, she thought. Too clean perhaps. She leaned closer yet, holding her hair back from her forehead.

  And she saw something. A trace she longed to take away. She left it in place.

  She sat back on her heels, thinking hard. A British peeler, standing alongside a Roman centurion, watched her cautiously.

  Then she walked slowly back to the office Marcus had requisitioned.

  Marcus and Armstrong were still arguing about motives.

  Marcus said, “Perhaps we should suspect the Pope, then, major! After all Martin Luther nailed his Ninety-Five Theses to a church door in Wittenberg, a Roman city. Was it all a Roman plot to destabilize the Vatican? Or what of the natives of the Americas? If the Romans had not blocked off trade routes to the east, Columbus would never have sailed...”

  “Now you’re being absurd.”

  ‘Of course I am. But my point is... Oh! Never mind.’

  As Imogen sat down, Armstrong folded his arms. “I think we’ve spent enough time on this. It seems perfectly obvious that the culprit is our Ottoman friend, for his was the gift that turned out to be the murder weapon. He had the motive; he had the means. I think the best thing we can do now is announce our conclusions to our superiors.”

  “And risk a war?” Imogen asked softly. “Without being sure, major?”

  They both looked at her. Marcus said, “Miss Brodsworth? Do you have something?”

  She considered the conclusion she had been forced to come to, hoping to find holes in it. Unfortunately it seemed to her as complete and perfect as the jeweled cane Philippe had given to Gavrilo.

  “Means and motive,” she said to Armstrong and Marcus. “We kept talking about motive. But the means was the key to this crime. How was it committed? That would tell us who. That was what I was thinking after my lunch. I went back to Gavrilo’s reception room. I suppose I hoped I would find some bit of evidence, something clinching, that would establish the means beyond doubt, no matter what the motive. Perhaps I was being absurd...”

  “Yes,” said Armstrong heavily. “What did you imagine you would spot that evaded the Criminal Investigation Department?”

  Marcus hushed him. “What have you found, Miss Brodsworth? Tell us plainly.”

  She took a breath, avoiding Armstrong’s eye. “A shred of tobacco.”

  “What?”

  Armstrong said with a dangerous calm, “This sounds like nonsense to me, Miss Brodsworth, and dangerous nonsense at that.” He made to stand up, pushing back his chair. “I think it’s time you were removed from this comical investigating--”

  “Sit down,” said Marcus. And for the first time Imogen thought she could hear the authority of the Caesars in his voice.

  Armstrong complied.

  Marcus asked, “A shred of tobacco?”

  “There was something odd about that trigger mechanism,” she said. “I don’t pretend to understand the clockwork of the timer. But the trigger itself was such a simple thing. And perhaps it’s because it is so simple, there is something about it nobody seems to have noticed.”

  “Yes?”

  “It was never fired. Even though the bomb detonated, the trigger never fired. You can see it quite clearly from the cleanness of the hammer. And so, I wondered, what was it that could have lit the fuse?”

  “Ah. And when you looked closer--”

  “I found a shred of tobacco, stuck in the trigger mechanism of the bomb. I left it in place for the detectives to find--I’ll show you later, prefect.”

  “Well, well.” Marcus turned to the major.

  For long seconds Armstrong stared at them stonily. Then he relaxed, subtly. “Miss Brodsworth, I now rather regret getting you out of your bed this morning.”

  Marcus faced him. “You were the only smoker, major. The legionaries would have removed any weapon from you--even your matches, a lighter. But you walked into the presence of Gavrilo with a lit cigarette in your mouth.”

  Armstrong shrugged. “I suppose you may as well know the rest. It was simple enough to rig the fire-lance and the box; we worked on it through the night after purloining it from the Ottoman’s room on his first arrival at the palace.

  “I always had it in the back of my mind that I might need a backup, though. And I was quite right. Bloody cheap bit of American clockwork--I could hear the timer fail even while I stood beside the prince, smelling his wine-sodden breath. I knew the lance wasn’t going to go off of its own accord. So, just as
I was leaving...” He mimed reaching down with a lit cigarette, to light the fuse.

  “As simple as that,” Marcus said, marveling.

  “It was always a cock-eyed sort of plot,” Armstrong admitted. “But I thought we’d get away with it. I never had much faith that the earnest peelers of Scotland Yard would work out what had happened. Besides, I thought that the incident itself would soon be overwhelmed by a storm of diplomatic notes and ultimatums. The balance of power is after all precarious.” He mimed a series of topplings. “And so the empires would fall into war, one after the other.”

  Imogen shook her head. “But why would you want that?”

  “National interest,” he said simply. “The guiding light of all British policy, Miss Brodsworth. The Ottomans and French have a pact, you see, of mutual protection against the Romans. They both rightly fear the rather awesome arsenal of weapons the Romans have developed in their Chinese wars. If war came it would be the pair of them against the Romans, a war of two fronts, and a right mess it would be.”

  Marcus listened, stone-faced. “And the British?”

  “We would come in on whichever side was winning. The Romans, even, if necessary, though I would expect that antique empire to implode. For what we want is not victory for one side or the other.”

  “What, then?”

  “Oil,” Armstrong said simply. “Those oceans of oil, locked up under Baghdad, and in the Caucasus--all under the sway of the Romans. Oil that will drive our industries, and our own testudos, and especially our ships--we are a maritime nation, and you may know we recently converted most of our ships from coal. It’s oil we need, prefect, oil to fight the wars of the Twentieth Century, and it’s oil we mean to take.”

  Imogen said, “If war comes from this, the slaughter will be immense.”

  “Miss Brodsworth, you will never grasp the solemn contemplation of empires.”

  “No,” she said, “and listening to you I’m jolly glad of it.”

  Marcus said coldly, “By cable, the Emperor will hear of this within the hour.”

  Armstrong was relaxed. “Fine. Everything I’ve told you is for your benefit only--I’ve come to feel rather fond of you two idiots. Tell Caesar what you like. No evidence will be found; my boys will make sure of that. The death of Gavrilo will no doubt be put down to an accident, muddy and unresolved. And even if some link were proven between the death and myself, the British government would deny all knowledge of it. I would be seen as a rogue, a maverick acting without instruction.”

  Imogen stared at him. “And is that the truth? That you acted alone, that His Majesty’s government knows nothing about this dreadful plot?”

  He looked at her steadily. “If that’s what you want to believe, then it’s the truth. I’ll tell you this, Miss Brodsworth. You have done your country a disservice today. A great disservice.”

  Marcus and Imogen walked to the embankment, breathing in air that was fresh with barely a hint of soot. The security cordon had not yet been relaxed, but it was a relief to Imogen not to be surrounded by the usual crush of Londoners.

  They stared at the powerful lines of the quireme on the Thames. “I feel giddy,” Imogen said. “It’s been such a long day.”

  The Roman glanced at Big Ben. “It isn’t yet three o’clock. Yet so much has happened. A shred of tobacco has unraveled a plot that might have toppled empires!”

  “I can’t believe we allowed him simply to walk away.”

  Marcus shrugged. “What else could we have done? He’s right; he and his conspirators will only refute everything, having destroyed the evidence. Let him go. With the British government’s fervent denials, I have at least a fighting chance of convincing Caesar that the death of his son was the action of a rogue element, and not worth going to war over.”

  “But there are surely other men like him in Britain, and the other powers. Men who long for war, for what they imagine is their country’s interests.”

  “Yes. And he was right, you know, that the world is a precarious place. In Europe you have four empires, counting Britain, all jealous of their interests, all armed to the teeth. If this incident does not drive us to war, it seems more than likely that something will trigger it all.”

  Imogen tried to imagine an all-out European war fought out with modern weapons, with immense guns and steel-hulled ships, and testudos crawling over the broken bodies of men. “That Chinaman who came wandering down the Silk Road has a lot to answer for.”

  He laughed. “But perhaps we would all have ended up in this situation even if he had stayed home. Fate is stronger than the will of any of us.”

  On impulse she grabbed his hand. “But if war is to come in the autumn, or in the winter, or the spring of next year, at least we have this summer’s day. Spend it with me, Marcus Helvidius.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Never more.”

  “I have duties,” he said. “I will be missed--”

  “I know the city well enough. There are places they’ll never find us. Come on. I’ve had enough of being sensible!”

  Laughing, he let her pull him away. They hurried down the embankment, not quite running, until they had slipped through the cordon of British and Roman troops, and they lost themselves in the bustle of London.

  The Blood of Peter Francisco:--Paul Park

  Paul Park’s “The Last Homosexual,” which appeared in the June 1996 issue of Asimov’s Science Fiction,, is one of my favorite short stories for some time. I’ve been looking for an excuse to work with him for years, and I had a feeling he might be a good fit for an alternate history mystery anthology. The basis for my suspicions? His recent work includes the brilliant and critically acclaimed alternate-history quartet, A Princess of Roumania, The Tourmaline, The White Tyger, and The Hidden World.

  That winter, near midnight on the second of February, I stood in the rain outside the old Regent’s Theatre, hands in my pockets, cap pulled over my face. This was hardly twenty-four hours after the murder. Seventh Avenue was full of constables in their wet oilskins, or in the shelter of the porch. As usual, I was invisible to them. They were looking at the ladies and gentlemen in their high hats and fur collars, while I stood with the others on the curb, against the line of carriages and motor-cars on Fifty-seventh Street.

  The doors opened and the crowd spilled out. Disgusted, I listened to their talk, their clipped, happy voices as they praised the soloists. A beautiful young woman had been shot twice in the face during the previous performance, but they didn’t care. The rich have no memory, so they can live without fear. I turned my back to them and to the ugly pile of bricks that is their temple. I followed the surge of umbrellas across the avenue but then continued west, hands in my pockets, whistling a little song. It was from the movement, from our friends in Russia and Germany. No one would recognize it here.

  I had gone to the theater to see if I could learn something from the cabbies in the street. This night at least, I shared a mission with the cops I’d left behind me on the corner. The chief of police had made a public promise to track down Madame Rothschild’s killer. He spoke of the city’s reputation and its shame. But I was more ashamed than anyone because of my involvement. Our society does not carry the people’s fight against women, even the wives of parasitic Jewish financiers.

  This was a claim I had made twice that day in secret meetings. And I made it without any kind of heat or sympathy, because I myself am a rabbi’s son. We are soldiers, not monsters, and the difference must be clear in everything we do. Because the newspapers serve the interests of the warmongers and capitalists, they will twist and disfigure everything. So I had to find the murderer before the police found him. I had to break any link between him and us. Already there was a story in the Daily Mail, and the governor-general had made a statement. He was no fool. He knew how close he’d come to death. It was just like him to crouch behind a woman.

  I went west beyond Eighth Avenue, where the cobblestones gave out to unpaved streets. Close to the rail
way tracks (I won’t give you the address!) I turned in under the archway and climbed the worn stairs to my rooms. Yes, I had made my argument to the platoon leader without any kind of anger, but to tell the truth I was shivering with rage as I made my ascent (I will not tell you how far!), and hardly noticed my freezing clothes or saturated cap. How could the man have made such a mistake? How could he have turned such an opportunity into another measly debacle? For three months I had been thinking about this, ever since the dauphin had announced his travel plans.

  There in the box above the stage, the fellow had a French prince, an English general, a Jewish industrialist, and Sir Rudolph Hicks himself, all at the end of his revolver, as well as several other officers. Instead he had shot the most beautiful woman in Europe in the face, and stood over her and shot her again. Then he had leapt over the rail and down into the dark hall. He had run across the stage roaring, “Sic semper tyrannis,”--absurdly, as if Brutus had killed Portia or Calpurnia! And you couldn’t even say he’d lost his nerve. He’d overcome a dozen men on his way out to the street, broken down the doors they tried to shut against him, smashed a lot of noses, all for nothing. He had clean escaped.

  Now he’d disappeared. For all my bold talk, I didn’t know where to find him. Out of breath, I paused on the landing, listening at the door. Then I unlocked it as quietly as I could, not wanting to disturb my sister. But as usual she’d waited up for me and fallen asleep at the card-table, her cheek against the back of her hand. At the sound of my key she raised her head, then sat up straight against the brown wallpaper. The chimney lamp was on the table, and in its light I watched her turn her face to me, her hair dishevelled, her cheeks wan and colorless. But even so I thought she was a match for the famous Katarina Rothschild, as I had seen her in the photographs. I thought there was a resemblance. At twenty-six, my sister had the same pale skin, dark eyes, dark brow, dark hair. I even imagined the same beseeching look as I burst on her unaware in a small space. She was always frightened when I came home late. I’d told her I was working in a restaurant.