The Second Way: LEONIE BARROW, GREAT DETECTIVE

 

One moment they were at the prophesied place on the outskirts of Constantinople; the next they most certainly weren’t.

‘So,’ said Horst, taking in their abruptly altered surroundings, ‘this is the fabled kingdom of Prester John, is it? It’s a bit more … industrial than I’d imagined. Is it usual to have a deep-cast mine in the middle of a city?’

They were in an unprepossessing urban street, illuminated by gaslights running down either side, one side faced with a long row of small terraced houses of the ‘two up, two down’ variety, net curtains hanging like cataracts in the blank, dark eyes of their windows. The red brickwork barely showed through the grime of ten thousand chimneys, yet the glass of the windows was clean, the paintwork maintained, and the doorsteps assiduously scrubbed. The phrase ‘poor but proud’ could not help but occur to the disinterested viewer.

The opposite side of the street was marked by a brick wall some ten feet in height, and looming beyond it were the lift works of two deep-cast mineshafts, the distinctive asymmetric triangle of the structures and the great wheels of the cable runners some fifty feet from the ground more suited to a Welsh valley or a Northern hillside. Behind the buildings was the lowering bulk of a spoil heap, the leavings of the coal extraction process.

‘I’ll be blunt,’ continued Horst. ‘It’s less mystical than I hoped. There, I said it.’

‘You had your mysticism and fabled kingdom just before we got here.’ Miss Barrow was far less judgemental about their new surroundings and far more intrigued. ‘All that business with the bored man on the throne with the tusks? You recall? No, that was just an overture. This is the real point of our journey.’

‘If you say so.’ Horst stuck his hands in his pockets. ‘Don’t really see what the idea of the magical shenanigans dumping us by a town-centre coal mining operation is, though.’

‘I think that may be the point.’

‘The point?’

‘The point is we have to find the point.’

Horst sighed and his breath coalesced in the chill air of the night. ‘I was rather hoping for something a bit more adventuresome. Bandits. Pirates.’ He thought on for a moment. ‘Giant ants,’ he concluded.

‘Adventures are where you find them. Ah. We have company.’

Horst followed her line of sight and saw a police constable of serious demeanour strolling slowly towards them with the steady pace of justice unavoidable. He was wondering how they would explain away their light summer clothes chosen for the Turkish climate when he abruptly realised Miss Barrow was wearing heavy autumnal clothes and, with a shock, that so was he. Miss Barrow examined her gloved hand with only moderate surprise before glancing back at him to check that, yes, he, too, had noticed the change in their circumstances.

‘Evening, ma’am,’ said the constable as he reached them, ‘sir.’ He touched the brim of his helmet, but that was the limit of his courtesy as he regarded them with undiluted suspicion.

‘Good evening, Constable,’ said Miss Barrow. ‘A chill one, at that.’

‘It is that. Got lost, have you?’ This to Horst. ‘Long way from the south side here.’

‘I suppose we must have. Well, you know how it is; you get talking and the next thing you know, you’ve wandered miles.’ Horst said it with the easy duplicity of a man whose success with women was equalled by his competence at not having seven shades beaten out of him by their attendant fathers, brothers, and occasionally husbands.

‘Just so, sir.’ The constable had apparently been lied to by better than Horst, which was injurious to the pride of them both. He glanced sideways at Miss Barrow and, remarkably, his brow raised with apparent recognition. ‘I … might I enquire your name, ma’am?’

Less inured to casual duplicity than Horst, Miss Leonie Barrow blithely supplied it. The result was magical.

‘Miss Barrow!’ said he, worthy in serge. ‘I thought I knew you!’ He glanced around the dark houses and nodded. ‘Of course. You’ll be on the job, won’t you?’

Leonie was at quite the loss. Horst glowered on her behalf. ‘What are you implying?’

His chivalric wrath was both unnecessary and unnoticed, for the policeman said, ‘On a case, of course.’

‘A case?’ Leonie Barrow considered the words, and the sense of ‘rightness’ they carried clustered about her on the instant like a cloud of supportive butterflies.

‘A case?’ She looked at the constable and the look of respect she found there. Not simply the respect any police officer should show an innocent member of the public but rather a professional respect, an earned respect.

‘A case…’ On what felt momentarily like impulse but what she realised even during its commission was a grounded and logical suspicion, she opened the reticule that hung upon her arm and looked within. There she found a small but very practical semi-automatic pistol and a business card case. This she opened, took a moment to enjoy the thrill of what she was already sure she would find there, then withdrew a card and handed it to the constable.

Horst, all confusion and frowns and the more adorable for them, shuffled quietly around that he might read the card over the officer’s shoulder.

MISS LEONIE BARROW M.PHIL OXON CANTAB FORENSIC & SECURITY CONSULTANT PRIVATE DETECTIVE

‘Yes,’ she said, her smile confident and open. ‘Yes, we are on a case.’

*   *   *

It transpired that they were soon to be on another. The constable informed them that Inspector Lament of the Yard required her presence at her earliest convenience. If she could get in touch as soon as possible, he might have need of her proven powers of deduction. She could also bring along her assistant, Horst Cabal, if she must. To this end, the constable accompanied them to the nearest police telephone box to call in.

‘Assistant?’ Horst was filled with as much outrage as he could manage without making a scene, expressed as a high-pitched whisper. ‘How have events conspired to make me your assistant?’

‘You have a problem being subordinate to a woman?’ said Leonie.

‘Not if they’re clever, and Johannes seems to think you are.’

That brought Leonie to a dead halt. ‘He said that?’

Horst thought about it to make sure he was definitely talking about the same woman. ‘Yes. I’m sure he meant you.’ He waved her on to keep up with the policeman. Once they were under way once more, he continued, ‘But that’s not what I mean. I mean the way he said “assistant.” There was a distinct subtext of “comedy sidekick” about it. I’m not sure I care for that.’

‘I’m sure you imagined it,’ Leonie reassured him while equally sure that he had not. Then she cut off any further utterances of hurt on his part by saying, ‘A detective, though. Isn’t it wonderful? Just like Sherlock Holmes.’

‘Prettier than Sherlock Holmes,’ said Horst, the reflexive gallant. ‘The trouble is, I think they’re expecting you to do some detecting.’

She glanced at him from the corner of her eye. ‘And?’

‘And you’re not. A detective, that is. What are we going to do when they present you with some terrifically complicated case and there isn’t a handy butler to point at?’

‘What do you think I’m going to do?’

‘How should I know? I’m not a detective.’

‘No, you’re not.’

‘Wait…’ Horst’s tone was warning. ‘Wait a minute. You cannot seriously be suggesting…’

‘We are going to look at the case. And then I am going to solve it. Don’t you understand, Horst? That’s what this place is. It’s a test. It’s cobbled something together from the real world that touches on what we do, and now we’re going to be tested upon how well we do it.’

‘Have you ever actually done any real detective work before?’

‘A little. With your brother along, but a little. And I’ve done a great deal of studying. Have a little faith in me, would you?’

Horst grimaced. ‘And what’s my role in all this?’

‘You are my faithful assistant, apparently.’ This failed to pour any oil on troubled waters. Leonie wondered if said oil was perhaps flammable. It was worth the experiment, so she carelessly and with malice aforethought added, ‘And the comedy sidekick.’

Horst began to express outrage at such presumption, but then saw Miss Barrow’s smile, and his wrath was punctured. He smiled back, albeit a little dejectedly. ‘What if we can’t crack the case?’

She had not considered that, but at the instant she did the ramifications became apparent. Somewhere at the end of this was something wonderful, too wonderful to simply be given away or allow second attempts. ‘We’ll probably be kicked out of here and never permitted to return.’

‘Oh, dear. That’ll be tough to explain to Johannes. He’ll have to have a shot. If we mess it up.’

‘I don’t think he’ll have that option, to be honest.’ She looked around at the city about them. ‘This quest of his isn’t simply about collecting the clues. I’m beginning to see that now.’

‘It isn’t? I was guaranteed a simple few weeks of clue gathering, dumping them in triumph at Johannes’s feet, and then wandering off while he makes sense of them. What makes you think it’s not going to work that way?’

‘Because this is where I want to be, Horst. Doing what my dad did, if not quite by the same methods. Solving crimes. Setting things right. Making things better. This is tailor-made for me. I don’t think this place even existed until I agreed to help your brother. The dice are already cast. There’s no going back now. I’m the Great Detective, you’re the light relief, and there’s a crime to solve.’

*   *   *

They reached the police telephone box a few paces behind the constable, who had already unlocked the small door in the large blue box’s side to reach the phone that lay there.

‘We have to keep the handset locked away in this neighbourhood; elsewise the kids’ll cut the wire, the little buggers.’ He blushed. ‘Begging your pardon, ma’am.’

To cover his confusion over such saucy language, he made a great show of calling the police switchboard and thence being redirected to the office of Lament of the Yard.

‘I have Miss Leonie Barrow for you, sir,’ he said with the air of a herald announcing the arrival of an empress before passing the handset to Leonie.

From Horst’s perspective the telephone conversation was brief and wilfully enigmatic. Miss Barrow performed a few very serious nods, said, ‘I see, Inspector’ twice and, ‘Yes’ four times, and made some notes in a small black book that she produced from her pocket as if she knew exactly how this Platonic ideal of her carried such things. Then, infuriatingly, she said, ‘Interesting’ in such a way to indicate that it really was terribly interesting and curiosity fairly made Horst squirm.

Then she concluded the call with brusque efficiency and demanded of the constable, ‘Where might we find a cab in this area at this hour?’

The constable indulged in a chortle. ‘Nowhere, ma’am. Nobody around here can afford a taxi. But the station’s not far from here, and we can send you over to wherever the inspector needs you in the area car. Where would that be, ma’am?’

*   *   *

The Alhambra Theatre was a grand venue, of that there was no doubt. A large structure in a far more prosperous section of the city than the terraces by the mines, the theatre faced onto a grand thoroughfare of Roman pretention. The theatre itself would not have disgraced Imperial Rome. A vast portico of pale stone in the neoclassical style, of a scale to make the Glyptothek of Munich seem like a pup tent, topped by a frieze in which Shakespearian characters rubbed shoulders with Euterpe, Calliope, tragic Melpomene, and comedic Thalia.

‘That,’ said Horst as they stepped from the police car, ‘is quite a large theatre.’ He smiled at Leonie. ‘That was understatement. I’ve been practising it. Actually, that theatre is absolutely huge. I’ve never seen the like. You could put the Bible on here and have all the characters onstage for the encore, including the five thousand with their fish sandwiches.’

‘I’m not sure the Bible specifically mentions fish sandwiches.’ Miss Barrow walked by him and started up the steps.

‘It hardly needs to, does it? What else are you going to do with fish and bread?’ He followed her, considering such exciting theological concepts as he went, and finding solace thereby. After all, how could such a philosophical cove as he be regarded as a humorous sidekick?

*   *   *

At the entrance they were met by a police sergeant who took charge of them and conveyed them hence to the presence of Inspector Lament. Their route took them through the theatre’s foyer, a fantasy wrought in marble and red carpet and sweeping staircases that would have given the impression of an opulent ballroom, but for the footling detail that no ballroom was as large, nor did any ballroom of such grandeur usually aspire to selling ice cream in little tubs and cartons of cold drink most safely described as ‘orangesque’.

They processed through doors marked as the provenance of Staff Only and, subsequent to some windings about narrow corridors whose layouts seemed to have been settled upon using haruspicy, finally and a little unexpectedly, found themselves in the wings and so onto the stage.

‘Always wanted to be on the stage,’ said Horst. He looked about him. The place was peppered about with strange items of apparatus and faux-Oriental decorations, hangings, and lanterns. He was just wondering what sort of play would have such a curious setting when he belatedly realised that a dummy of a man in brightly coloured silken robes sitting slumped in some form of throne was in fact, not a dummy at all. ‘Oh, look,’ he said, as if spotting an uncommon yet not rare bird during a stroll, ‘there’s a dead feller.’

This struck him as odd in two respects. Firstly, that even quite outré productions rarely have corpses onstage. This, he reasoned brilliantly, must be the victim of the perfidious crime that he and Leonie Barrow had been summoned to solve. After a moment he revised the thought. This must be the perfidious crime that Leonie Barrow and he had been summoned to solve.

The second odd detail was not one he thought wise to mention in open company. The man seemed to have suffered a chest wound of some description, to judge from the large red stain that disfigured the gorgeous robes. There was a good deal of blood there, and yet Horst—a vampire—had failed to scent it. Usually, the smell of blood glowed in his senses much as the scent of bacon does for so many others. On this occasion, though, he was barely aware of it. Did this mean the blood was fake? Or …

He belatedly noticed that he was breathing, and it wasn’t purely for purposes of conversation. He tried holding his breath, and it quickly became uncomfortable, so he started breathing again. He thought of blood, and it seemed unappealing.

Leonie noticed his very apparent consternation. ‘What is it?’ she asked him quietly. ‘Whatever is the matter, Mr Cabal?’

‘I…’ He looked at her aghast as he understood the desire that was growing in him. ‘Miss Barrow … the most extraord … I…’ He looked at her wide-eyed. ‘I could absolutely kill a bacon sandwich.’

‘There’s a cabbies’ caff around the corner, son,’ said the sergeant. ‘Go and get yourself stoked. This looks to be an all-nighter.’

With a muttered apology to Miss Barrow and a promise to be back ever so quickly, Horst bolted back for the wings. She regarded him thoughtfully as he disappeared back into the Staff Only corridors, a lust for a bacon roll lending him unerring navigational skills through the labyrinth.

‘Loves his bacon, doesn’t he, miss?’ said the sergeant.

‘Only very recently,’ she said slowly. ‘Usually his tastes are distinctly more rarefied.’ She turned her attention to the dead man on the gaudy throne. ‘In his absence, perhaps you might tell me why I’m here.’

‘Oh?’ The inspector cleared his throat with the sardonic air of a man who is used to being outshone by gifted amateurs. ‘You can’t tell?’

She favoured him with a cool glance, then said, ‘Well, all I see is the obvious. A dead man chained upon a throne. He appears to have been shot in the chest by a quarrel presumably launched from the crossbow mounted over there, its trigger pulled by the sand-driven timing mechanism standing by it. Without knowing the specifics of the event, one guesses he is a stage magician whose grand escape from the Throne of Death—or whatever else the publicists might call it—proved rather tardy. Presumably in the normal run of things, he would free himself at the last second? Flinging himself aside as the fatal bolt is shot?’ She crouched by the throne, looking at the quarrel’s shaft still protruding from the dead man’s chest. There was a great deal of blood, considering it was not an open wound. The pressure required to force blood by the shaft offered confirmation to her opinion that the quarrelhead must have penetrated the left side of the heart, causing rapid shock and exsanguination. ‘No doctor could have saved him,’ she said half to herself. She straightened and addressed Inspector Lament. ‘So what makes you think it wasn’t simply an accident, Inspector? Conjurers and escapologists have died when things haven’t gone as planned before.’

Lament was examining the crossbow, hands clasped behind his back to prevent him inadvertently touching anything. ‘True, Miss Barrow. But our man Maleficarus here seemed to think this would be his last performance.’

‘He did?’ Leonie was just concentrating on pursing her lips and nodding in the most ineffably wise manner she could manage, when her equanimity abruptly shattered. ‘Hold on. What was his name?’

The inspector made a show of consulting his notebook. ‘Maximillian Maleficarus ay kay ay Maleficarus the Magnificent. Rather an impressive show from what I’ve heard, miss. Leastways’—he nodded at the corpse—‘I doubt anyone will be forgetting this performance in a hurry.’

*   *   *

‘I’m beginning to see what you mean about how this place reflects the people who find it,’ said Horst. He was eating the fourth of six bacon rolls he had been carrying on his return, the first of which he’d devoured en route. ‘Maleficarus? It’s an unusual enough name, after all. There can’t be that many of them about. Even fewer after Johannes crossed paths with them.* He mentioned running into Maleficarus senior once upon a time, but I don’t think it played out like this. Much too mundane for my darling brother. From what I gather, it was all rather more occult.’ He illustrated his understanding of ‘occult’ by waggling his fingers, immediately employing them on the conclusion of this illustration by re-engaging the diminishing stack of bacon rolls.

‘I know about the son, Rufus Maleficarus. Or, at least a little about him. A necromancer, too, wasn’t he?’

‘Hmmm,’ said Horst. ‘But he’s dead now. Twice. Well, not quite dead. Well, sort of dead. You know how it is with necromancers.’

Leonie Barrow decided not to pursue that subject, which was just as well given the sordid and bloody details of Rufus Maleficarus’s varied career as necromancer, Lord of Powers, freestyle bastard, and talking box.

They were talking quietly in a corner of the backstage while waiting for the theatre manager, a Mr Curry, to conclude his statement to the police. Leonie had already told Horst what had happened onstage that evening as witnessed by a full house.

The performance had gone through assorted pieces of legerdemain and illusion and been as well received as every previous performance. Maleficarus the Magnificent was a highly regarded and very popular magician, routinely performing before the crowned heads of Europe, the oligarchs of America, and the general unwashed of everywhere.

So he had arrived at a literal showstopper—the last wonder to be performed before the interval—and, just for once, the show had stopped him. The effect was entitled ‘The Throne of Death,’ exactly as Miss Barrow had predicted with an accuracy that now perturbed her. It was a little bit of mild Grand Guignol suitable for family audiences; Petit Guignol, if you will.

Max Maleficarus began by relating a tale to the audience of a mandarin of the mysterious and exotic Orient. A terrible man of profane appetites, he preyed on those he should have governed and thereby made them fear him. The tortures he visited upon them were many and imaginative, and the people were cowed. That all came to an end the day a humble travelling scholar happened into the mandarin’s power.

Here Maleficarus was garbed in gorgeous and colourful silks—hardly the clothes of a humble travelling scholar, but in a story littered with factual inaccuracies, it hardly mattered—and the stage around him was decked out in oriental finery. Lanterns and vases were carried in, and banners (sporting fanciful characters that would baffle anyone with even the faintest grounding in sinograms) fluttered down from the full-fly space behind the proscenium.

Throughout the transformation, Maleficarus continued the story, and detailed how the scholar came to loggerheads with the evil mandarin and so was condemned to suffer upon the dreadful Throne of Death. Here, Maleficarus was accosted by stagehands labouring under hastily applied yellow-face make-up and unconvincing wigs bearing black yarn queues.

Struggling—but not too much—he was dragged to the throne and secured upon it, the chains that bound him locked tight with a padlock supplied from a respected member of the audience earlier in the performance, and held by them until that moment. A paper screen bearing a fantastical painting of a Chinese dragon was raised before the throne, hiding the victim from the audience’s view.

Now the ‘mandarin’ began the mechanism of murder. Sand ran from a reservoir onto a balance pan, the spring-loaded mechanism that would trigger the crossbow beneath. When the pan was heavy enough to go past the balance point, it would slam down, and the crossbow would launch its deadly cargo directly at Maleficarus’s heart.

Yet, of course, he was never there when it struck. After struggling valiantly against the chain for the minute or so that the balance required to pass equilibrium, Maleficarus would release himself just as the balance pan started its descent, leaping aside as the bolt flew.

Except this time. He had cried out when the mechanism passed the tipping point, a cry he had never made on any of the previous performances. And he remained there, helpless as the pan struck down, the mechanism was triggered, the crossbow released, the quarrel flew, his heart was pierced, and as his blood left him.

‘Sounds like an accident to me,’ said Horst, and he did so through bacon. On realising the faux pas he swallowed and apologised. ‘Bacon’s the most wonderful thing in the world right now. I don’t think coming here just changed our clothes and careers, Miss Barrow. The little voice has gone. Gone altogether.’

‘Little voice?’

‘In my head. I have a little voice.’

Leonie laughed. ‘Your conscience?’

‘No.’ Horst was emphatic. ‘I don’t need a little voice to tell me not to do bad things. The little voice I mean is the one that specifically tells me to do bad things.’

‘You have an anti-conscience?’

‘Hmmm. It came with being a vampire. “Stick your fangs in that un.” “Break that un’s neck.” All the time. Such a nag. Anyway, it’s shut up. I don’t even think I can do the thing with my fangs. Y’know, extend them? Can’t seem to do that at all. Blood suddenly seems like a pretty unpleasant thing to be feeding on, and I suddenly have an urge for bacon.’

‘You’re not a vampire.’ Leonie said it with barely a thought. It was so obvious a conclusion. ‘Not any more.’

‘Exactly. This place, wherever we are, has devampired me somehow.’

She considered this. ‘I wonder why.’

‘I’m more wondering if it’s permanent.’ His tone made her look him in the face. There was a longing there, and she understood just how desperately he wanted it to be true. He stirred the nest of paper bags on the small table where they sat, looking for any surviving bacon rolls. ‘What if it’s permanent?’

*   *   *

Mr Curry was pink and round, startled and baffled, tired and dismayed. ‘I really cannot see what I can tell you that I haven’t already told the police, madam,’ he said, and patted his florid face with a handkerchief redolent of lavender.

‘In all eventuality, Mr Curry, nothing. But one never knows.’ She smiled and was charming, and Mr Curry was charmed and smiled in return, and throughout all this Miss Barrow wondered when exactly she had become so charming.

‘Very well.’ He became fatuously ebullient, as an uncle coaxed into opening the biscuit barrel for the children might. ‘Very well! Ask your questions, then.’

Leonie’s smile hardened just an iota. ‘Tell me, why do you think Mr Maleficarus was murdered?’

Curry’s smile waned quickly, and he became worried. ‘I … don’t necessarily think…’

‘I’ve read your statement already, Mr Curry. You’re very cagey about it, and I can understand that. It looks like a tragic accident, and that’s probably exactly what it is. Best to get things sorted out and get your theatre’s name out of the news as quickly as possible. Despite what some think, I doubt many people come to see a death-defying act in the hope that the performer will die. The thrill of coming close is enough.’ She spread her hands in a conciliatory manner. ‘I am simply a consultant the police have on retainer. We all want this dealt with quickly for a plethora of reasons. So, in your own time…’

Curry cast his gaze about his office, seeking alternatives. He sighed upon finding none, and said, ‘He told me. Straight to my face. “Lemuel,” he said, “I am not peaceful in my own mind that all will go well this evening.” He said that. I asked him what he meant, but he seemed to think he’d already said too much and became as silent as a clam. And then this happens. It was as if’—he leaned forwards, opening his eyes too wide for propriety—‘it was a premonition.’

*   *   *

‘It was suicide,’ said Horst with undue cheerfulness. ‘Bit of a melodramatic way to do it, in front of a packed house and all, but all he had to do was twiddle his thumbs and wait for the crossbow to do its business.’ He noted Leonie Barrow’s somewhat acidic expression and changed tack with the natural assurance of the saloon bar Lothario that he had once been. ‘Or he was just off his game for some reason. Touch of dyspepsia, not feeling right in himself, frets about things, and—when it comes time to do the miraculous escape—he just can’t concentrate. “Did I pay the newsagent for this week? Did I turn the gas off? Did I do this? Did I do that? Oops, out of time.” Twang! Dead.’ Horst smiled self-indulgently and awaited the applause for his masterful piece of deduction. When it didn’t come, he said, ‘Or it was an accident. It could always just have been one of those things, I suppose.’

‘So, to enumerate,’ Leonie counted off the points on her fingers, ‘it was murder. It was suicide. It was an accident. It was an act of God.’ She regarded him with dry aspect. ‘These are your conclusions?’

‘Yes.’ His smile wavered as he thought about them. ‘Doesn’t actually narrow things down much, does it?’

‘Deduction means to take away the things that are not so. Whatever is left is the truth. It’s like chipping away from a block of marble until a statue is left.’

Horst considered this. ‘That’s very poetic, Miss Barrow, but—’

‘For heaven’s sake, call me “Leonie.”’

‘Oh! Thank you. Yes, where was I? That’s very poetic, Leonie, but there are all kinds of statues you might get out of a block of marble.’

‘An artist might argue there’s only one, and so I stand by the simile. There are all kinds of statues you might make, but only one of them is the truth. All the rest are failures or, worse yet, miscarriages of justice. We must be careful with our chisels, Horst.’

‘Yes, we must. Indeed we must.’ He shook his head. ‘I have no idea what you mean by that.’

‘For the moment, we have more potential witnesses to interview. Firstly, the closest witness.’

‘And who is that?’

‘Maleficarus’s assistant, one Athena la Morte.’

‘L’amour?’ Horst asked, sensitive to the possibilities of love.

‘La Morte,’ Leonie corrected him, sensitive to the ubiquity of death.

*   *   *

Athena la Morte—born Pansy Kett—was discovered in her changing room, where the police had put her until such time as they decided what to do next. Horst knocked and entered first, and so discovered Miss la Morte in the process of repairing her make-up. Leonie noted that her eyes were puffy, and when Athena blew into the handkerchief Horst offered her, there was little evidence that the sniffling was histrionic.

Even in such a dismayed state, she was clearly a very attractive woman in her mid-twenties, dark hair still clipped back as it had been when she had worn it beneath a wig and headpiece that evening as a concubine of the wicked mandarin. Beneath her candlewick dressing gown in an unflattering shade of pale terracotta could be seen the historically inaccurate but still very fetching cheongsam she had worn as her costume.

‘Trick?’ she said to Horst’s inquiry. ‘There was no trick. That was an honest piece of escapology. Every evening, every matinee Max had to crack a padlock he hadn’t seen before. And he did it. Max is a genius.’ She faltered. ‘Was.’

‘Why the paper screen, then?’ asked Miss Barrow, sitting by la Morte. Horst had made a beeline to take that chair, but a warning glance from the Great Detective had stopped him in his tracks, and now he was standing, forced to be sympathetic from a safe distance. Safe for Miss la Morte, that was. Since discovering that in this curious city that never was and probably never would be, he was fully human and prey to human wonts and desires, Horst had recalled which of those wonts and desires were his personal favourites and was looking to exercise them before the presumably inevitable return to vampirism. So far he had successfully sated his desire for bacon by dint of it being reasonably simple to address. Higher on his list was another desire that Miss Barrow seemed intent on thwarting at every turn.

Athena smiled ruefully. ‘What’s honest escapology to a performer isn’t really the same to the punters. They think you should be able to pick a lock without tools. Course, no one can do that. So, Max has … had … lock picks concealed. The screen was so the audience couldn’t see they were hidden in the arms of the throne, or how he used them.’ She looked hopelessly from face to face. ‘I can’t understand it. The lock was a bog-standard Schumann. Whoever brings in the lock has to give written assurance that the lock is new and hasn’t been tampered with in any way. It’s closed and unlocked a few times in Max’s sight so he’s satisfied nobody’s trying to be clever by altering the mechanism. His life depends on it being an honest feat of skill. He could do a Schumann in his sleep. I just don’t understand what went wrong. Except…’ She frowned. ‘I’m not sure. I’m onstage, obviously, and half of my job is to distract the audience. Nothing is unrehearsed. I always know what I’m supposed to be doing, but … maybe my timing was off.’

Leonie was making notes. ‘Off in what way?’

‘I could have sworn the crossbow shot before it was supposed to. Not by much—only a second or two—but that might have been enough.’ She shook her head. ‘I’m making something out of nothing. The timing was never quite predictable. You’d think a sand clock would be accurate to a second when it doesn’t have to run very long, wouldn’t you?’

‘Yes.’ Leonie underlined something. ‘Yes, I would. Who’s responsible for the apparatus? The police mentioned an engineer?’

‘Engineer … yes, I suppose you could call him that. That’s Max’s son. I haven’t even seen him since this happened. The police seem to be keen on keeping everyone apart.’

‘That’s good practise, Miss la Morte. People’s memories are less reliable than you might think. If a couple of witnesses compare notes completely innocently before statements are taken, they can influence one another. Something one of them thought he saw becomes something they both definitely saw.’

‘Yes, I can imagine that.’ La Morte gestured at her costume. ‘A lot of a stage illusionist’s job is making people think they saw something that they didn’t.’

Leonie wasn’t entirely listening. She had noticed Horst’s expression had become uncharacteristically serious. ‘Horst?’

‘Miss la Morte,’ he asked. ‘This son of Mr Maleficarus, what is his name?’

‘Rufus,’ she replied. ‘His name is Rufus Maleficarus.’

*   *   *

‘He’s the killer,’ said Horst with certainty as they went to interview the son of the deceased. ‘As sure as night follows day, he’s the killer.’

‘This isn’t our world,’ Leonie reminded him. ‘He might be a wonderful and loving son here.’

‘No. Rufus Maleficarus is a stinker of the first water. His stink is strong enough to travel across the spheres. Every Rufus Maleficarus in every possible world is an utter stinker, too.’ He nodded with certainty. ‘You’ll see. I bet he’ll be wearing plus fours, the blackguard.’

*   *   *

He was not wearing plus fours, although that didn’t stop Horst from scowling at him. Leonie had never met him in the flesh, and Horst had only seen his corpse, and that a riffle away from this reality. But Horst had heard of the history of Rufus Maleficarus in forensic and unalloyed detail from his brother, and drawn from that the only possible conclusion: Rufus Maleficarus was a stinker. Further, he had seen the result of Maleficarian magic himself in a conflict that had claimed the lives of people he had liked, and who had deserved more than to be snuffed out by this, the most preposterous of magicians. Johannes had explained that Maleficarus was not entirely responsible, at least at a metaphysical level, for these specific deaths. Given that he was, however, also undeniably responsible for scores of deaths in a cack-handed scheme that almost resulted in the global extermination of humanity, that footling mitigation was very small beer indeed.

This iteration of Rufus Maleficarus wore brown warehouse overalls and suede, soft-soled shoes, the better to travel unheard around the near-stage areas while a performance was in progress. He was red-haired and clean shaven, a man barely into his twenties. He was not nearly as ursine as the version Horst was more familiar with, but his frame was large, and it seemed likely he would grow thus in the next few years. He was also surly, which was unendearing.

‘I’ve already spoken to the police. I didn’t see anything, and I wasn’t anywhere near the stage when it happened. Why can’t I go?’

‘You don’t seem very heartbroken about your father’s death,’ said Horst. Leonie gave him a warning look, but he was at pains to ignore it. ‘In fact, you just seem irritated by it.’

‘We all die sometime. Magicians get killed doing their acts sometimes. It happens. Not often, but it happens. Bullet catches, water escapes, even a guillotine illusion once, I heard.’ He smiled, a twisted cynical line across his face. ‘Audience certainly got their money’s worth that night. My dad was very good, but he risked his life every time he sat on that throne. We all knew it. It’s the life.’ He cast his hand around the understage area where he apparently held domain. It seemed to have been at least partially converted into use as a workshop, judging from the workbench, the pots of paint, tools, spools of wire, board, and even welding gear propped up in the corner.

‘What do you think went wrong?’ asked Leonie, heading Horst off at the interrogatory pass.

Rufus turned his mouth down in professional consideration, the sort of expression a plumber displays just before he says the dripping tap means a new boiler is required. ‘He was slowing down. It was obvious. Every year it took him longer to do the same old things. He shouldn’t have been using such risky prestige at his age. Lost his fire. He was all about going off to the Far East a few years ago, learn some new stuff from them. But that looked too much like work, so he didn’t bother. Just carried on with the same old card tricks and nonsense. He’d have been pulling rabbits out of hats at children’s parties in a few years, the way he was going on.’

He took a long breath and blew it out. ‘This might be the best thing that ever happened to him. Magicians who get killed by their acts get a sort of immortality. The name of Maleficarus will live on, now.’

Leonie looked up from her notebook. ‘You really don’t sound very fond of your father.’

‘Fond?’ Rufus scratched his nose. ‘Not really the kind of man you get fond of. If he’d done what he said he would, gone east, I’d have been proud of him, you know? Do something a bit different. A new direction. But no, that was too much bother.’

‘Where exactly were you when the incident occurred?’

‘Incident?’ He laughed without humour. ‘I was checking the props for after the interval, staging them to go into the wings.’

‘You were in the wings?’

‘No, not at that point. I was under the stage. I spend most of my waking hours under the bloody stage.’ He half laughed at his choice of words. ‘I’m used to hearing screams from the audience when the crossbow shoots. Then there’s laughter and applause. Not tonight, though. Not tonight.’

*   *   *

‘I’ve changed my mind about Rufus Maleficarus,’ Horst said as they walked back to the stage. ‘He’s too obvious. I’ve read detective stories. I know how this works.’

‘This isn’t a detective story.’ Though she was loath to admit it, Leonie couldn’t help thinking Rufus was a little too overtly unlikable to be the villain of the piece.

‘But it is. This isn’t real life. You’re not really the world’s greatest detective or whatever you’re supposed to be, and I’m not the light relief.’ He pulled a face. ‘Except I am, aren’t I? Obsessed with bacon rolls and the fairer sex all of a sudden, to comic effect.’

‘I thought I was going to have to extract you from Miss la Morte’s cleavage with a crowbar.’

‘You exaggerate. I made a point of looking at her face once a minute or so. You must admit, though, she’s a very handsome creature.’

‘If you like that sort of thing, I suppose she is.’ She chased a half thought that had occurred to her during the questioning. ‘Doesn’t something strike you as a little off about her, though?’

‘Off? She seemed very sincere.’

‘That’s not what I mean. Maximillian’s act seems very staid in many respects; enough to disgust his son, certainly. Yet he has an assistant whose wardrobe seems to run strongly to black, crimson, and silver, who is stage-named for the goddess of wisdom and prudent warfare in addition to death, and whose role on that stage is to play the villainess as much as anything. None of that strikes you as odd?’

Horst shrugged. ‘You see all sorts of acts, all sorts of themes in the theatre.’

‘What I mean is how it seems to be two halves of different acts glued together. She simply isn’t the sort of assistant I would expect for somebody whose performance is so very much of the old school of gentleman illusionists. She belongs to a more current generation.’

*   *   *

They arrived at the stage to find Lament overseeing the work of the police photographer. Overseeing, in this case, comprised mainly of standing to one side and smoking a pipe.

‘Done your detectin’, then, Miss Barrow?’ he said with what Leonie recognised with a small tickle of pleasure was a fond irony. She had only just met Lament, but in this world their acquaintance was apparently well formed, and mutually respectful.

‘Not nearly, Inspector. The incident has interesting aspects.’

Lament’s face, already as dour as a bloodhound receiving bad news, fell further. ‘Oh, Lord. It doesn’t, does it? I thought we could just chalk this up to a terrible accident and go home.’

‘That might yet be the true state of affairs. I’m just curious about some details.’

‘Such as?’

‘Well, to whom Miss la Morte is betrothed. That would be a beginning.’

Horst almost jumped. ‘What? What makes you—’

Leonie touched her bare ring finger. ‘She clearly and habitually wears a ring; the mark on her finger is obvious. Equally obviously, she doesn’t wear it for performances. It makes her more interesting and therefore more distracting for male members of the audience if she appears unattached, and a ring is all too apparent when caught in the limelight. I glanced over her dressing table and saw it there, an engagement rather than a wedding ring. I didn’t feel it was the right time to enquire directly of her, so I left it until now. Who is her fiancé, Inspector?’

Lament didn’t even need to resort to his notebook, but simply nodded at the throne. ‘The deceased.’

Leonie cocked her head. ‘Really?’

‘You seem surprised.’

‘A little. Presumably becoming his assistant is how they met in the first place?’

‘I would think so, miss.’

She bit her lip and looked up into the shadows above the stage beyond the grid. ‘One would think so. Indeed one would.’ She slapped Horst in the chest with the back of her hand. ‘Come on, faithful sidekick. I need to ask more questions of Miss la Morte.’

Horst’s shoulders sagged at the suggestion. ‘Do you need me to come along? Her changing room’s not that close to the stage.’

She looked him in the eye as she moved a step to present her back to Lament and, when she was sure she had his undivided attention, said, ‘Cleavage’ in an undertone.

‘Lead on, my captain. I shall follow you to the ends of the earth,’ he said, suddenly motivated.

*   *   *

He was to be a little disappointed, however, as—by the time they returned—Miss la Morte had changed out of her stage clothes and was wearing an altogether soberer ensemble suitable for returning to her digs.

‘Engaged? Why, yes. To Max. But how is that relevant?’

Leonie Barrow was candid. ‘I have no idea. I am simply trying to form a full image of everybody and how they relate to one another. How did you meet Max Maleficarus?’

‘Rufus introduced us. His father was encouraging Rufus to spread his wings, to go out and put his own act together. Rufus is a very capable magician himself, you know.’

‘That was my understanding,’ said Leonie, with a modicum of irony. ‘What happened to those plans?’

La Morte looked uncomfortable. ‘Max did. I did. We … we just got on very well, and all of a sudden Rufus’s act didn’t seem so pressing. Max needed a new assistant, and … it just seemed the obvious thing to do.’

‘And how did Rufus take this?’

‘He was confused about what was happening at first. Then he was angry. My God, he was angry. But he took a little time off, cooled down, and came back. He said perhaps it was as well he didn’t go solo just yet. He wanted to work on his act a little more first, in any case.’

‘I see. Purely as a matter of curiosity, what sort of act was Rufus working towards? Something a little more dramatic than his father?’

‘Dramatic?’ La Morte laughed uncertainly. ‘Max’s act was dramatic enough. You should have seen him when the time was almost up and he struggled madly on the throne just to gee the audience up. Always made it out. Always.’ She looked bleakly into nowhere.

‘Of course. I meant in tone. Something a little darker, perhaps?’

Miss la Morte smiled awkwardly. ‘Oh. I see. This is to do with my stage name?’

Leonie shrugged and smiled. Horst noticed it wasn’t the warmest of smiles. There was something of frozen mercury and razor blades about it.

‘Roofy … Rufus thinks that stage magic has to keep moving on if it isn’t to stagnate. People want sensation. Why not give it to them?’

‘What was Max’s view of that?’

‘That change is inevitable, but that reaching for it too soon looks desperate, not challenging. The audience can smell desperation. He thought that Rufus was onto something, but its time had not quite come yet.’ She looked from Leonie to Horst and back, her need to emphasise her sincerity palpable. ‘Max was entirely supportive of Rufus. Always has been. He loved his son.’

*   *   *

They found a quiet corner in which to compare notes. Horst’s were mainly pictures of goats. ‘They’re the only animal I can draw,’ he said. ‘But, really, there’s little to detect here, isn’t there? We still don’t have the faintest hint that this isn’t what it looks like—a terrible accident. I agree the ménage between father, son, and beautiful assistant is a tad … unusual, but that doesn’t mean the old man simply didn’t have some wretched luck.’

‘There are five possible explanations for what happened on the stage tonight,’ said Leonie Barrow. ‘Firstly, it is just as you say. Max Maleficarus simply didn’t manage to undo the padlock in time for whatever reason. His concentration was off, he fumbled the lock pick, the apparatus malfunctioned and shot too soon, or a dozen other possibilities.

‘Secondly, that it was suicide. That he deliberately sat there and waited for the sand to tip the balance.

‘Thirdly, that Miss la Morte engineered his death.

‘Fourthly, that Rufus did. I’m considering that they were in cahoots as part and parcel of those possibilities.’

‘Cahoots,’ said Horst for no other reason than the word felt nice in his mouth.

‘And finally, that Max Maleficarus was done to death by person or persons unknown to us at present.’

‘That sounds thorough. Which do you favour?’

‘I don’t know. If we’re not sure of motive, or even if there ever was a motive, it’s hard to bring anything to the perpetrator’s door. Method, perhaps. If it was murder and a method is detectable, then that might give us an idea as to the killer’s identity.’

‘You’re frightfully good at this,’ said Horst. ‘You sound just like a real detective.’

‘While we’re here, I am a real detective. Try to remember that, Horst.’

‘And I’m the slightly dim sidekick. I know, I know. I didn’t mean it as an insult. More, you know … a compliment. You are good at this, Leonie.’

‘If I find out what happened on that stage tonight, then I’ll agree. Until then, this is all playacting. Come on, let’s do what I should have done right at the beginning and study the crime scene properly. Sherlock Holmes would be furious with me. I cannot theorise without data, and I’m a fool to try.’

*   *   *

The photographer had finished his work, and the police were on the point of removing the body by the time Leonie and Horst returned.

‘Might I crave your indulgence for just a few minutes, Inspector?’ Leonie applied the hapless expression and joined hands suggestive yet not precisely analogous to an attitude of prayer, a combination that worked well on older men in her experience. Her father, any rate. As a ploy it seemed to have definite puissance, for paternal relays almost audibly clicked home in Inspector Lament’s head, and he nodded indulgently.

‘Ten minutes and no more, Miss Barrow. We’re all keen to wrap this one up for the evening.’

Leonie thanked him and went straight to business. She examined the body, the quarrel still thrust through the dead man’s heart, the chains and padlock, the lock pick grasped in the cold fingers. Then she briefly looked over the paper screen pierced by the bolt and the marks on its reverse side that showed it had been repaired after the previous few times it had been penetrated.

Lament consulted his notebook. ‘They replace it after about eight performances on average.’

‘Eight? Why eight?’

‘That’s a week’s worth. One evening performance a day, matinees on Wednesday and Saturday. No performances on a Sunday, obviously.’

‘Eight a week.’ She checked her pocket diary and found that it was full of notes she had no memory of making; entries made by the historical version of her that this playhouse of a reality had made for the real her, referring to other people, places, cases. It seemed she was quite busy and quite successful. It made her feel both a fraud and anxious not to let herself down, in several manners of speaking. She swiftly counted the repaired tears and counted seven. This tallied with her diary; it was Saturday evening. Somewhere in that fake city, fake newspapermen were writing up a fake story for fake people to read in the morning.

Faithfully followed by Horst, who was developing craning curiously to one side and rising on the balls of his feet to a minor art form, Miss Barrow next went to inspect the actual engine of death.

It was, she had to admit, a very competently wrought piece of engineering. Behind all the fanciful direction lurked a device of brilliant simplicity built to a very high standard. Everything about it demonstrated forethought, from the steep angles of the sand reservoir to prevent clumping to the precision bearings on the balance itself, all built into a steel frame that would not admit warping or any other cause for imprecision that might result in the sort of terrible accident that had occurred that evening.

‘This is the dead man’s design?’ asked Leonie, sprawling unladylike upon her back to inspect the device’s underside.

‘It was, miss.’

There was silence for a moment, and the assembled company of men looked just about everywhere but at the pair of lady’s ankles so indecorously exposed as Miss Barrow lay beneath the device like a mechanic beneath a car. Finally, her voice wafted out. ‘And he built it?’

‘No. The son, Rufus, is the engineer. He built it.’

Leonie climbed back to her feet and dusted herself off. ‘He knows his job. I can’t see anything obviously wrong. Or any way it might be influenced.’

She turned her attention to the contents of the scale. It seemed at first her interest would be as brief as her other investigations had, perforce, to be, yet this time she hesitated.

She took a pinch of sand and sprinkled it along one of the prop’s horizontal struts. Then she reached into her jacket pocket and withdrew—with, to Horst’s eye, evident delight—a magnifying glass. This she used to examine the grains for a few seconds.

Lament came over, his indulgent air giving way to professional interest. ‘Have you found something, miss?’

‘Possibly.’ She squinted at the sand through the glass for a few moments more. ‘Horst!’

‘At your service!’

‘Would you fetch a fire bucket for me, please?’

Nonplussed yet obliging, Horst trotted off into the wings. Presently he re-emerged carrying a battered bucket upon which was helpfully painted the word FIRE.

‘Thank you.’ Leonie took a pinch of sand from it and sprinkled it a little further along the same strut. She then spent the next minute examining first one sample and then the other without saying a word, causing her audience inexpressible frustration.

Finally, she stepped away, offering her magnifying glass to the inspector. ‘Take a look, Lament. Tell me what you see.’

Perplexed, the inspector spent a few moments looking at them. ‘Two samples of sand, miss. Quite different. One is very fine and pale, beige, I suppose you’d call it, and the other has larger grains and more of a red colour to it.’

‘And that’s all?’

‘Well, it would be easier if you’d kept the samples further apart, miss. They’ve become a bit mixed up with one another.’

‘Take another look.’

Conscious of his subordinates’ eyes upon him, Inspector Lament’s patience was wearing thin. ‘There’s nothing else of note. Just that…’ He started to say something extraordinarily salty, remembered there was a lady present, and turned a fierce pejorative into a short collection of nonsense syllables. ‘I’m a fool! The samples aren’t mixed up at all. Well, not by you. The sample from the fire bucket has none of the finer grains, but the sample from the balance is riddled with coarse sand. How is that? Why is that?’

For her answer, Leonie probed into the fallen sand on the balance and, pinched neatly between thumb and forefinger, produced a cigarette butt. Horst glanced into the fire bucket; the surface was specked with similar fag ends.

‘I would suggest that you find a clumsy stagehand, Inspector. Occam’s razor always suggests we should look for incompetence, accidents, and pure rotten luck before assuming conspiracy. I think Maleficarus the Magnificent may very well have been done in by the former.’

*   *   *

The body had finally been removed while further enquiries had been made. Finally, the unwitting culprit was discovered; a stagehand called Jacobey who was neither more nor less clumsy than any of his fellows, but neither was he immune to the confoundments of wretched luck. A young man and eager to make a fist of it in the theatre, he had been dismayed that, in stowing away the crossbow device after the previous evening’s performance, he had caught the well-built but ungainly frame on a corner and succeeded in spilling much of the sand from the scale pan.

Being of a practical mind, he had gathered up as much as he could in a dustpan and put it into an empty bucket he had secured for the job. A good quantity of the sand, however, was lost between the boards, and he was momentarily baffled as to where he might make up the shortfall. Then he remembered the fire buckets that so many of the staff used as convenient ashtrays and sought one out. The sand hadn’t looked exactly the same, but after some stirring, the two types seemed to mix well enough, and he was sure that, thanks to his quick thinking, there would be no trouble.

Then Maleficarus the Magnificent had ended up dead, and Jacobey had decided this was the ideal opportunity not to tell anyone about it, because ‘Manslaughter’ can look very bad on a curriculum vitæ.

‘I’m awfully dense, I’m sure,’ said Horst in the heavy tone of somebody who knows it is his role to be awfully dense and to make the protagonist look terribly clever, but that doesn’t mean he has to like it, ‘but why would mixing the sand change anything?’

‘You’re close to the money already,’ said Leonie. ‘It’s all about density. You saw that machine; it’s a precision piece of engineering. Any change in the way it’s operated could affect how long Maleficarus had to perform his escape. The rough sand added to the fine sand the apparatus had been calibrated for was enough to alter the density of the mixture. It made it trigger a little early; not very long, but quickly enough to catch Maleficarus by surprise.’

‘Oh.’ Horst seemed a little underwhelmed. ‘I’m a little underwhelmed,’ he said, confirming it. ‘What about all this backstage drama and jealousy and Rufus being such an utter arse that he couldn’t possibly have done it?’

‘He didn’t do it.’

‘I know, but it shouldn’t just have been down to one silly ass of a stagehand, should it?’

Leonie shook her head. ‘Aren’t you even slightly impressed that I solved this?’

‘Of course I am. You’re terribly clever. I’ve never said you’re not. Just I was hoping for a little more Sturm und Drang, you know? At the very least, a bit of a “You may be wondering why I’ve called you all here today” moment. I’m not disappointed that you solved all this, just that what you solved turned out to be a silly accident. That boy won’t get in trouble, will he?’

‘Not from the police. There was no reasonable way he could have known what would happen. His career at the Alhambra might be over, though.’ She tightened her lips. ‘You’re right. It is a bit underwhelming. I wonder if that’s the lesson this place is supposed to teach us.’

‘Perhaps. I still don’t understand why we’re in such a peculiar place, anyway.’

They had left the theatre and were walking along the great thoroughfare. In the east, the sky was growing light. At a newsstand, they bought an early edition of the local Sunday paper.

‘The Sepulchre Sentinel?’ said Leonie. ‘This city’s called Sepulchre?’

Horst wasn’t very concerned by that, instead focussing on the headline, DEATH ON THE STAGE—POLICE CALLED AS FAMOUS MAGICIAN AND ESCAPOLOGIST DIES IN GROTESQUE INCIDENT.

Inside, the story sailed around the edges of whether the death was accidental or deliberate, but it was clear the reporter was hoping against hope that it was murder by some thrillingly obscure method.

‘Bad luck, old son,’ muttered Horst. ‘You’re going to be as disappointed as the rest of us when Lament does his press announcement.’ He suddenly became more animated. ‘It could still be murder, you know! What if friend Jacobey knew full well what changing the sand would do?’

Miss Barrow blew out a breath into the chill air. She was wondering at what point they would be allowed to move on from the sinister city of Sepulchre. She had assumed it would be dependent on solving the case, but that did not seem to be so. Perhaps she would have to solve more than one?

‘It’s not impossible, but it seems very unlikely,’ she said. ‘Jacobey had a good character and apparently wouldn’t say “Boo!” to a goose. What would his motive be?’

‘He might be a hireling?’ said Horst, but his enthusiasm for the idea was foundering.

‘From what I saw of the backstage people, there are half a dozen more reliable and more corruptible hands I would have chosen before Jacobey for that job. No, it seems off. I’m sure he didn’t do it deliberately.’

‘If you say so, o Great Detective. I suppose you must be right. If it’s all just brought down to the laws of physics like that, it doesn’t allow for much uncertainty.’ No answer came. He turned to find Leonie deeply pensive, inured in a brown study. ‘Why the morbs, leader?’

‘I should go back. Insist Lament actually have those sand samples tested for density. What you just said about physics, you’re right. I’ve been insufficiently scientific.’

‘That rough sand’s obviously heavier, though.’

‘“Obviously” doesn’t butter science’s parsnips, Horst. “Obviously” means you’re taking things on faith. Everything should be tested and…’ She fell silent.

As the silence extended uncomfortably, Horst watched her with growing consternation. Her eyes were half-shut and the fingertips of her right hand twitched as if she were enumerating things in her mind.

‘I know what that is,’ he said slowly. ‘I’ve seen Johannes do something similar. You’re cogitating, aren’t you?’

She made an irked noise at least as much hiss as shush at him, and he fell silent.

Her eyes opened, and she looked angrily at Horst. Then he saw her anger was directed elsewhere. ‘You were right,’ she said.

‘I was? Hurrah!’

‘Then you were wrong.’

‘One out of two isn’t bad.’

‘Possibly right and wrong. I’ve been so muddle-headed. We need to get back to the theatre before Inspector Lament lets everyone go.’

‘It wasn’t an accident?’

‘I don’t know yet, but I suspect not.’

‘You don’t know? Why? What do you think killed Maleficarus?’

‘If I’m right…’ She was already walking quickly back towards the theatre. ‘If I’m right, science killed the magician.’

*   *   *

Miss Leonie Barrow was all business and no chat when she secured re-admittance to the building. ‘I’m sorry,’ she told Lament, ‘but I may have been premature when I suggested the case was solved. If I could beg your indulgence for just a few minutes longer?’

Inspector Lament’s patience, apparently a plentiful commodity where she was concerned in the usual run of things, was nevertheless beginning to run dry. ‘Miss Barrow. We have been here all night. The sun is very nearly up. We are all tired. Could this perhaps wait?’

Perhaps it could, but Miss Barrow was subject to an ineffable sense that it should not. The sun was rising; it seemed relevant to the presence of Horst and herself that she should be done before the sun finished doing so, a simple rightness to the time. She did not doubt this feeling; for all her reliance upon the scientific method, she was wise enough to know when science—known science, at least—was insufficient to comprehend every possible circumstance. She had personal experience of that which chafed at the boundaries of the known, and did not presume to test it when she was so utterly beyond those boundaries herself.

‘No,’ she said with certainty. ‘We should resolve this matter immediately, if at all possible.’

‘I thought it was already,’ said Lament under his breath, but did not argue further and had everyone of note in the matter brought to the stage prior to finally being released.

On reaching the stage she made her way directly to the crossbow device. The stage around it occupied her interest for the moment. ‘Mr Curry. These marks upon the stage. They seem semi-permanent. What might be their function?’

Mr Curry seemed at least as dismayed as Lament that the investigation was conspiring to still keep him from his bed even after he had been assured that all was settled. ‘They’re for the scene shifters, the stagehands. So they know exactly where to put the properties.’

‘Close enough isn’t good enough, then?’

‘Heavens, no!’ He chortled at such naivety. ‘They are employed commonly enough even in the most undemanding of sitting room comedies, never mind a magician’s act. Things must be placed exactly so. Lines of sight and placement of props are of paramount importance.’

‘Good, good.’ Why exactly it was ‘Good, good’ she didn’t care to share at this juncture. Instead she said to Horst, ‘What keeps that flower in your lapel?’

Horst wasn’t sure he had heard aright and raised his eyebrows. ‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Do you use a pin?’

‘Well, yes. They tend to…’

‘May I have it, please?’ She held out her hand, and when he didn’t immediately oblige her, she beckoned for it impatiently. Beginning to wonder if somehow Johannes had possessed the woman, he handed it over. She examined it briefly, muttered, ‘Good, good’ to herself once more, and then vanished beneath the machine again.

There were quiet sounds of tinkering for a second, and then she emerged, started to hand the pin back, thought better of it, and put it in her own lapel while assuring Horst she would return it shortly, and then demanded a balance or scale of some sort. Mr Curry sent off his stage manager to recover the scales used in a production of The Merchant of Venice the previous year, and everyone stood around in a slightly baffled silence while they were fetched, with the exception of Miss Barrow, who spent the time striding around the stage and alternately examining things with her magnifying glass, and glaring at Curry, Rufus Maleficarus, and Athena la Morte.

When the scales arrived, Miss Barrow wasted no time in measuring identical volumes of sand out from the fire bucket, and from the crossbow device. She snorted with something like disgust at the results, and turned to face her audience.

‘You may,’ she said without a hint of irony, ‘be wondering why I have called you here tonight.’

Horst was suddenly filled with great admiration for Miss Barrow, and a desire for popcorn.

‘I am guilty of wasting a lot of time, and I must ask you to forgive me for that. I have been … distracted recently. My focus was poor, and it has taken me far too long to understand what has been going on here. Strictly, I ask forgiveness from all but one of you. That person has been furnished with a few extra hours of liberty due to my lack of diligence, and he … or she … should not forgive me, but thank me for that time. Now, to facts.

‘The sand. The sand that killed him. It didn’t, and if I had thought about it more carefully at the time, that should have been obvious to me without even having to weigh it. I made a silly assumption—that the coarse sand must have a greater density than the fine sand and so it tripped the crossbow that much earlier. That cannot be so. If we assume that the rock that is the source of the sands has a similar density, then the finer stuff will—if anything—have the higher density. Smaller particles and smoother grains means smaller air gaps between those grains. This is borne out by the simple weighing you just saw, but even then the difference is minuscule. Even extrapolating to the larger bulk of sand used in the device, we are only looking at an ounce or two.’

‘But in an escape timed to the second, even that small difference…’ Lament paused, thinking it through. ‘Of course, even if it made a small difference, it would have been in favour of the deceased. He would have had an extra second or two, not less.’

‘Exactly. And there is a further factor. The adulterated sand had already failed to kill him once. Why would it suddenly do so this evening?’

‘The matinee performance!’ Mr Curry was pleased to join the deductionary clique. ‘Of course! Why didn’t the effect go wrong yesterday afternoon if the sand was of such concern?’

‘Yes.’ Miss Barrow’s gaze darted from face to face. ‘The sand had nothing to do with the tragedy. There was no accident.’

‘Then what is it, Leonie? That is … Miss Barrow?’ asked Horst. ‘Murder or suicide?’ He somehow prevented himself from commenting further that, obviously, murder would be far more thrilling, so that had his vote.

She spat the word out. ‘Murder.’

Horst strangled down the very nearly overwhelming impulse to clap his hands with glee while shouting, ‘Huzzah!’

Inspector Lament looked at the candidates for the crime. ‘You’re suggesting the apparatus was tampered with, I take it?’

‘It was.’

‘Then that puts Rufus in the clear. He wasn’t anywhere near the apparatus, there’s no trapdoor or anything in a position to allow him to tamper with it, it’s subsequently been checked and found to be operating exactly as it should, and this is the closest he’s been permitted since his father’s death, so he has had no opportunity to remove any traces of sabotage.’

‘That is correct in all but two details, Inspector. He was able to get very close to it during the performance. About’—she held up a hand with thumb and index a couple of inches apart—‘yay close. Indeed, his proximity was vital for the illusion to work in all those other performances.’

‘It wasn’t an illusion.’ Miss la Morte was adamant. ‘You don’t understand. It was an escape, done by skill alone.’

‘That was the illusion. Max was undoubtedly very practised and highly competent. But he was also slowing down, and he knew it. You said it yourself, ma’am. You never knew exactly how long the escape would take. It was always more or less the same period, but with a few seconds’ variation. If the scale was so accurate, how was even that much possible? And how did Max always seem to know exactly when the pan was going to fall and trigger the crossbow?’

‘He…’ La Morte’s voice wavered, unsure as she replayed events in her head and found her rationalisation of events now fell short. ‘He could see the pan starting to fall.’

‘I think the only time he saw the pan fall unexpectedly was tonight. Previously, he always knew exactly when it would drop.’

Lament went to stand by the Throne of Death and regarded it curiously. ‘How? He couldn’t trigger it himself. There is absolutely no connection between the throne and the mechanism.’

‘There is. And tonight that connection killed him.’ She looked at Rufus Maleficarus. ‘Didn’t you, Rufus?’

‘You’re fishing,’ he said evenly. ‘You’re throwing dirt and seeing if anyone reacts.’

‘Not at all. I said the inspector was wrong on two details. The first was that you were very close. You were directly beneath the stage, after all. The second was that you left no trace of your involvement.’ Miss Leonie Barrow took the pin from her lapel. ‘But you did.’

Before the gathering, she walked a few steps to the crossbow mechanism. She held the pin up for them all to see, and then she brought it close to the metal pan of the balance mechanism. With a sharp click whose significance far outweighed its volume, the pin snapped from her hand and stuck to the metal.

‘It’s a magnet!’ said Horst.

‘It’s magnetised,’ she corrected him. ‘The result of its many, many exposures to an electromagnet. One built by his son and used at every performance to trigger the balance at the exact moment his father signalled him to use it.’

‘The struggle.’ La Morte spoke as in a reverie. ‘He’d struggle, slam his feet down just as he freed himself. It was a signal?’

All eyes were on Rufus Maleficarus. He shrugged. ‘Nice theory. How do you intend proving it?’

‘These gentleman,’ Leonie said, nodding at the police officers, ‘and I shall be going through your understage workshop in close detail, looking for a suitable bar and the length of wire you undoubtedly spent the time waiting to be interviewed putting back onto a spool. But you know what wire’s like; it never quite smooths out perfectly. I should think it will be painfully obvious. Of course, we were never supposed to know what it was we were looking for, were we?’

‘You can’t prove a thing.’ Rufus seemed bored now.

In contrast, Miss la Morte was growing more passionately upset by the second. ‘Why didn’t I know about this? I was in the act! Why was I never told?’

Leonie shrugged. ‘Only Rufus can tell you that now. I would guess it was because Max was trying to impress you. A middle-aged man pulling off an escape eight times a week that would terrify younger men. He probably meant to tell you at some point early on, but it became more difficult with every week that went by. After a while he began to fear that if he told you the one great death-defying moment of the show was as illusionary as all the rest, he would lose your respect. That there was still risk wasn’t enough. He would rather face a crossbow quarrel than disappoint you.’

‘Oh, God. Max. You stupid, stupid man.’ She began to weep in exhausted, hopeless little gasps.

‘Stupid’s right,’ muttered Rufus. He looked around, jagged little reckonings showing in his eyes. ‘If he’d stuck to his word, none of this would have happened. Well done, Miss Barrow. You deserve your reputation. I thought you were as big a fraud as my father at first, but I have to admit this late rally of yours … I’m impressed. Well, don’t you want to know why I did it?’

‘I know why you did it, and you just filled in the last detail. Your father fronted your act and reduced you to a backstage engineer while he got the plaudits. This was only intended to be for a brief while, wasn’t it? A season or two? Then there’d be some grand publicity about the father passing on the mantle, and you were to take over and he would become the engineer or perhaps just retire. But then things became complicated. He fell in love with Miss la Morte and, rather more unexpectedly, she fell in love with him. Now he had a new lease on life. Now a season or two wasn’t enough.’

‘I have plans, you know.’ Rufus shook his head. ‘Had plans. Such plans. A new form of magical theatre. More risky, more risqué. My father took them all and made them the same as everything else out there. Bland. Predictable. He took Athena away and turned her into another pouting assistant. Some faint shadows of what I had planned, but becoming safer with every performance. He’d have had you in ostrich feathers and sequins by the end of the season, Athena! Just another showgirl!’ He calmed and looked at Lament. He curled his lip. ‘I was angry. I lost concentration. My finger slipped, and I activated the magnet too early. Just a little too early. It was an accident.’

‘No, it wasn’t,’ said Leonie Barrow.

He turned his surly leer upon her. ‘Prove it.’

*   *   *

‘The sun.’ Horst watched it rise above the busy skyline of municipalia and industry, the cold rays of a new day throwing golden light into soot-stained streets. He held his hand up to bathe it in the brightness, delighting in how it felt good and how it didn’t feel of violent combustion. ‘Is this a gift? Is this some way this place is saying, “You play a blinding silly ass, Horst. Kudos to you, old man”?’

There was no immediate reply. He looked over to find Leonie Barrow cross-armed and furrow-browed. ‘For somebody who just solved a pretty tricky crime, you’re looking a bit woeful, glorious leader.’

She looked at him and did not so much shake off the reverie as crawl disconsolately from it. ‘I failed, though, didn’t I? Rufus is right; nothing can be proved beyond what I demonstrated and what he confessed to. If the police try him for murder, it will all come down to how good the barristers are and just how arrogant he is in front of the jury.’

‘Ah, the British jury. Stout yeomen all.’

‘Exactly. A bigger bunch of nincompoops it’s hard to imagine. Yet if they let him off with manslaughter instead, who can blame them? There’s nothing to suggest premeditation. If he decided even a minute beforehand to kill his father, it’s murder. If he triggered the thing on the spot in a paroxysm of rage, it’s manslaughter. If he fumbled and did so while distracted, it’s accidental. Only Rufus knows the truth, and his truth will get him off with the lightest charge. The jury will have little choice.’

‘That’s the law.’

‘It is. Doesn’t feel much like justice, though, does it?’ She watched as the sun melted the hoarfrost from along the ridge of a nearby wall. ‘Perhaps that’s what this was all about? I don’t know. I wonder if we’re supposed to move on now, or if we’re stuck in Sepulchre for a while.’

Horst shook his head. ‘I have no idea. I just know I’ve missed the sun. Also,’ he said, flexing his hand, ‘I sort of miss being a vampire. I’m feeling very mortal all of a sudden. Weaker. More vulnerable. Not sure I like that.’

‘It’s what you once were. You’ll get back into the swing of it, I’m sure.’

‘Yes, but … you know Johannes is saying he thinks he might be able to cure the vampirism. I was all ‘Yes! Wonderful!’ about it at the time, but this is making me wonder.’ He looked to Leonie, troubled and sincere. ‘Before, I was nothing. Not really. I was charming, I suppose, and I like to think I was witty, but so were any number of other fellows. But after what happened to me, things changed. I became special. Unique even. Not that I’m the only vampire, but I doubt you’d find another quite like me.’

Miss Barrow nodded; it seemed a likely truth.

‘I helped save the world. That’s something, isn’t it? But old Horst couldn’t have done it. He’d have been dead in the first five minutes. Properly dead.’ He shielded his eyes to look into the dawn. ‘I miss the sun, but perhaps that’s a sacrifice I should make. What do you think?’

She half laughed. ‘Why are you asking me?’

‘Because you’re the Great Detective.’ She started to laugh again, but then saw there wasn’t a glimmer of a smile on his face and the laugh died. ‘Or at least a great detective.’

‘You mean that, don’t you?’ She said it with some wonderment and perhaps even a little gratitude.

‘I do. Johannes is intelligent, but you’re clever.’

‘He’d have figured out what was going on with the balance faster.’

‘Probably, but that’s because he would have focussed on the balance and barely spoken to anyone else. He’d have found the method, but he would have been very slow finding the motive, if he found it at all.’

‘The Great Detective. It’s sweet of you to say that.’ She pecked him on the cheek to his mild astonishment. ‘Is that you being honest or charming?’

‘Occasionally I have the opportunity to be both,’ he said.

They watched the sun rise over Sepulchre.