A Snoop Without Magic, page 30
“There is a Vaarekian here?” the king said.
Sam stood and bowed, wondering why he was singled out.
“I exiled a young man who reportedly headed to Tolloy. How do I know that isn’t you?”
“I am Effian Walk, Your Majesty.”
“Then make a cushion for me.” He waved Sam up to him. The boy I exiled couldn’t make pollen. Prove to me you aren’t him.”
Sam smiled. “Do you want a firm cushion or a soft one, sire?”
The king drew himself up. He was still short. “This thick and firm.” He indicated four inches.
“May I have a napkin, so you won’t have to sit on raw pollen?”
The king snapped his fingers and gave Sam a generous silk square. Sam laid it on the seat of the chair.
“That isn’t what I want.”
“Watch, Your Majesty.” Sam waved his hand over the cloth, and a cushion appeared in an eyeblink underneath the napkin.
The king eyed two of the nobles. One of them was Lord Instep. He pressed his hand down on the pad. “Wonderful. You have quite a command of pollen,” he said as he settled on the chair.
The cushion made him sit as high as the other men. Sam suspected this was a pre-arranged trap just for him. Lord Instep glared at him, but Sam turned and walked away.
“What was that all about?” the courtiers asked him.
Sam shrugged. “I guess they thought I was someone else, but why would anyone challenge any one of us to make a common cushion?” Sam smirked. “I made him a nice one.”
Dinner was an active affair. Sam was asked questions by the men at his side, and the duelists had began to boast among themselves by the time the dinner plates were cleared, and fruit and pastries were brought out along with large ewers of wine. The king had left halfway through the dinner portion of the evening. Sam hoped Stefen would rescue him from the drinking, and he did.
“Your other engagement, master.”
Sam nodded, glad that he wasn’t the first diner to leave the banquet.
“You will excuse me,” he said to the men at each side and left the ballroom, relieved that was over. In a sense, that was the true Baskin trial in his mind. He had publically shown the king that he could produce pollen.
“Was the banquet acceptable?” Stefen asked once they were inside the hired carriage waiting outside the palace walls.
“Not at all,” Sam said, as he related the experience to the butler. “I could have been exposed had my pollen talent not been restored. Someone told the king that I am in Toraltia. I thought we had been careful enough.”
“I am sure you have been. Have we been betrayed?”
Sam shook his head. “Lord Instep knew all about my fight with Larus at Hander Pot’s house.”
“He is the leader of the Court of Nobles,” Stefen said.
Sam just nodded, hoping he wouldn’t cross paths with the man again. As they rode through the city streets, the cobbles still slick from the recent rain, Sam kept reviewing whom he had talked to and who knew him as Sam Smith until they came to the Vane Mansion. Two carriages and a constable wagon were parked at the entrance. Sam had had the impression the party would be more intimate.
Sam walked in, while Stefen headed towards the servant’s entrance.
Dickey looked stricken, leaning up against the foyer wall, crowded with constables. “At least you have an alibi,” he said.
“What?”
“Lord and Lady Vane were murdered before I arrived.” He looked around. “I had Stefen’s replacement turn away my brother-in-law away before he could enter the drive,” he whispered. “It looks like I might have to come out of retirement for this one. You might be pressed to help me since you will be identified coming here.”
Two chief constables stepped out of the drawing room. One of them was Faddon Bentwick. He looked up to see Dickey.
“Dickey, Effian, you can look at the scene now,” Faddon said.
“They didn’t deserve this,” Dickey said, looking down at the two bodies.
“Stabbed,” Sam said, kneeling by Lady Vane’s body. He took her hand and then put his palm on her forehead. “It wasn’t done very long ago. She is very warm for a corpse.”
Dickey examined Lord Vane and nodded.
“No visible sign of a struggle,” Faddon Bentwick said. “Chief Home has his men going through the mansion to see if anything was stolen, but Lord and Lady Vane still have their jewelry on.”
“A hasty murder or an assassination,” Dickey said.
Sam got up to examine the doors leading to a garden courtyard and found them locked. “So supposedly no one came in the room?”
“Dickey arrived, and the Vane’s butler led him to their sitting room, but the door was locked. When the man unlocked it, they found Lord and Lady Vane as you see them,” Bentwick said.
The butler was hanging in the background. “I was in the foyer in sight of the sitting room at all times.”
“And the outside doors?” Sam asked.
“They lock from the inside,” the butler said.
Sam went back to the outside doors and examined them. “You have a key?”
The butler nodded.
“Could you unlock them?”
The butler inserted the key, but the handles wouldn’t move. He tried the doors again. “They are stuck.”
Sam took his spectacles off and examined the inside of the doors, but didn’t see anything.
“Has something happened?” Hander Pot said, sticking his head in the door, and then he gasped. “They are dead!”
Dickey gave Hander a wry smile. “How perceptive. We are in the middle of a mystery.”
Hander looked at Sam with surprise. “What are you doing here?”
“Here for a meeting with Lord and Lady Vane, like you.”
Hander looked confused but seemed to compose himself.
“I need to do a little snooping. Now for a strong lantern,” Sam said.
The butler brought one from a closet in the foyer and lit it.
“Outside,” Sam said. He looked at the others. “I can do this by myself with the assistance of the butler.”
They went outside and around to the back of the house. The pathway continued on into the back garden, but the lights from the sitting room shone in the dark across a narrow lawn and through a bed of plants. “I want you to hold the lantern to the ground.
Footprints had been made in the grass leading to and from the small patio off the house. Sam could see the shoe was an inch smaller than his own. He instructed the butler not to step on the footprints. The flower bed was next. Sam could see the damaged plantings that the murderer had stepped on in his wake, but the perpetrator still had some partial footprints in the mud.
He examined the grass again, and the mud had been scrubbed off by the lawn. “Let’s look at the doors.”
The murderer had wiped off his feet on the grass, but there were the footprints on the patio. By one set of doors, Sam could see traces of two shoes placed together. Another rain shower and that evidence would have been gone. Sam put his spectacles on and took them off until he found the pollen patches that held the doors closed. They were thin and would likely drop off in a few days. He couldn’t touch them, but he asked the butler to remove them. A half-inch block of pollen was at the edge of the patio. Sam had the butler gather that, as well.
He pushed the doors open. “The method of entry and exit is not a mystery any longer. The murderer came through these doors, killed the couple, and left by the same way. The doors weren’t locked but sealed by pollen patches,” Sam said. “He took his boots off before he entered the house.”
“But Lord and Lady Vane always keep those doors locked,” the butler said.
“Easy enough to explain,” Dickey said. “The murderer was known to Lord and Lady Vane. He or she tapped on one of the windows and the murderer was let in.” Dickey looked again at the bodies on the floor. “From the placement of the bodies, the murderer killed Lord Vane first when he opened the door, and then did the same to Lady Vane.”
“And the murder weapon?” Faddon asked.
“He took it with him. A sharp knife that slid easily through the clothes and out again. The murderer might not have gotten any blood on him,” Dickey said. “Too sharp for pollen.”
“It was a single person,” Sam said. “Only one set of footprints.”
“Oh, my!” Hander Pot said, holding a handkerchief to his nose. “Who could have done such a thing?”
Sam looked at Hander’s shoes and compared them to his own. They were damp with one tiny ridge of mud a bit above the sole and smaller than Sam’s shoe.
“You did,” Sam said.
“Me?” Hander’s face turned red. “How dare you accuse me! I am a noble.”
“Nobles can murder as well as others,” Sam said. “I have fought a few on the dueling platform. I wondered who could have possibly told Duke Instep I was in Toraltia. It wasn’t any of my friends, since they all knew.”
“Knew what?” Hander said. He looked guilty if nothing else, Sam thought.
“That I can create pollen.”
“You can?”
Dickey smirked, Faddon folded his arms, and Hander looked even more guilty.
Sam created a pollen version of his wand and poked it gently into Hander’s stomach. “Pollen, but my curse remains. Everything I create is invisible. but you and Lord and Lady Vane weren’t told.”
“Impossible.”
Sam shook his head. “I was to be captured tonight at the competitors’ banquet in front of the king, who I am sure was trotted out to specifically command me to make pollen. In the meantime, you came here and assassinated Lord and Lady Vane. No one would have stopped you because it had just rained, it was dark, and the Vanes expected you. Lord Vane opened the door for a guest, and why wouldn’t he? Then you killed them both to return later after they were discovered. That is why you were late and why you were surprised I was here.”
“Sam is right, Pot,” Dickey said. “You have been caught, but what was your motive?”
“Motive? My business, my life, my family, my prestige. The Court of Nobles was in the process of ruining me. It isn’t a secret that I am a supporter of Harrison Dimple. They brought me to Baskin to assassinate Vane, now that he has resigned from the Court of Nobles, and capture Harrison.” Hander looked around. “Why isn’t he here?”
“I sent him away before he entered the mansion grounds,” Dickey said. “It is you who are captured.”
Hander lifted his chin and pointed to Sam, Faddon, and Dickey. “Arrest these men,” he commanded the other Chief Constable in the room. “You have the men.”
“All the men here are pledged to Harrison Dimple, Lord Pot,” the other Chief Constable said. “Take him to the safe house. He is not to be released under any circumstances.”
“He should be killed,” Dickey Nail said. “Not only to keep him quiet but because he murdered two innocent people.”
“The time isn’t right,” Bentwick said.
A constable approached them. “I found this in Lord Pot’s carriage.”
“The murder weapon,” Bentwick said. “A two-sided stiletto. An assassin’s weapon all right and that fits the wounds on the bodies.” He handed it to Dickey.
“There are still traces of blood on the blade next to the hilt.” The ex-snoop sighed and looked at Hander. “What an amateur! You didn’t even have the courtesy to lead us on a chase for clues,” he said with disgust.
Chapter Thirty-Six
~
L ady Keeta Grate smiled at Sam as they ate in her dining room. “So it was just as well that Hander Pot is discovered to be a betrayer now rather than at a later time.”
Harrison shook his head. “He still only knew a little about our plans. Had he not killed the Vanes, he would have attended a meeting that was to coordinate plans, and now that won’t happen. The group behind the Vanes may be lost. Lord Vane never told us who his allies were. Hander’s associates are known to me, but most of them are distributed all around Toraltia. Not that many were given permission to come to the Baskin Trials.”
“Are your plans ruined?” Sam asked.
Harrison smiled. “Not at all. I never planned either contingent as a major part of my plan, which I have decided not to share with you. The time for sharing has been put off. I am impressed by your snooping skills. You knew exactly what to look for.”
“I had an expert for a teacher.” Sam looked at Dickey, who smirked.
“Luck, luck, luck. I have never seen a person face so much good fortune when investigating. I didn’t teach you how to use pollen so effectively. That is something you developed on your own with a little help from your friends,” Dickey said. “That includes Harrison, a little bit from me, and Banna Plunk, I am reluctant to admit.”
“I had to develop some kind of skill, since I can’t see pollen without those.” Sam pointed to his spectacles on the table.
“Who would have known dining in an Oak Basin restaurant changed your life so thoroughly?” Harrison said.
“It did, and the gold-washed spectacles continue to help, since I still can’t see everyone else’s pollen. What bothers me is how much the Court of Nobles knows about your movements and your plans. Hander Pot can’t be the only one they have bribed.”
“He isn’t. I know of others, but I won’t share their names with you. I know Dickey isn’t one, nor my sister. Bentwick and his family are in the clear. It becomes more complicated after that, but that is why I don’t share all my plans with everyone, only Faddon Bentwick, so he is the principal target. You are still vulnerable, even though you did manage to pass my cousin’s test. Being known to be a supporter of mine brings anyone a certain amount of peril, and for that I am sorry.”
Sam sighed, but he had been in a similar situation in Tolloy and in Zogaz. “It isn’t anything different for me,” Sam said.
Harrison smiled. “I won’t be back until after the Trials. Try not to kill all the members of the Court of Nobles while I am gone, will you?”
Sam smiled and realized that Harrison could have been serious if it wasn’t for the grin on his face. “I’ll save at least one for you, and I’ll save the king.”
“That is kind of you, Sam,” Lady Grate said with a grin to match her husband’s.
~
With a week to go, the practices moved to the Baskin Hall as mandated by the rules. Sam thought it was a waste of time. Duelists wanted to work out on the platforms to show off, and the patrons wanted to see the men they would back with bets. Sam would have preferred more time in Kened’s studio where others couldn’t see him.
He had to do most of his practicing with Ian, but the tricks and special techniques wouldn’t be shown in the open. Worren and Kened spent all their time scouting the opposition.
Ian and Sam found a secluded space underneath the seats on the far side of the arena from the warm-up area where other duelists worked while waiting for their time on the platforms.
“You seem distracted,” Ian said.
Sam took a deep breath. “I am. Now that we are practicing in the arena, the end of the Trials looms over me like a thunderhead. I’ll try not to think about it, but it is there in the back of my mind.”
“What are your plans after all this?”
Sam shook his head. “I’d like to become a snoop.”
“Not a swordsman? You could open up a studio just like Kened.”
Sam looked at Ian. “What are you doing, now that you’ve retired from the Trials?”
Ian smiled. “Who said I retired?”
“What? You are entering?”
Ian nodded. “I am, and I have been practicing with my principal opponent for weeks now.”
“But you have been teaching me all your tricks,” Sam said.
“Not all, and you still haven’t shown me everything you have, right?”
Sam nodded. “So we are friendly competitors?”
“As friendly as competitors can be. If we meet each other on a dueling platform, we each try to win, correct? I think we know each other’s styles well enough; it should be an entertaining match for all.”
Sam didn’t know what to think. “Do other duelists train together?”
Ian nodded. “The better the person you train against, the more improvement you can make.”
“Does Kened know?”
Ian nodded. “It was a condition of my working with you, so I haven’t hidden my intention from anyone except you.”
Sam felt strange talking to Ian as a competitor. “Except me. You didn’t go to any of the social events.”
“I got over those after my second year at the Trials. It is a distraction. They aren’t required, you know.”
Sam nodded. He hadn’t accepted all the invitations he had received, either.
“Then let us get to work,” Sam said.
“And we won’t spar the same way again, now that you know.”
Ian was right. Sam didn’t see how he could, but he would try.
After three simulated matches, Kened found them. “Platform time.”
“I told him,” Ian said.
Kened sighed and looked at Sam. “I didn’t know when to tell you about Ian, but I guess I won’t have to worry about that. Realize that you are much more prepared for the Trials than before Ian started.”
“I know. I don’t like being kept in the dark, but sparring was different just now,” Sam said. “You did the right thing.”
Kened nodded. “I hoped you’d take it that way. Let’s give the patrons the show they are expecting.”
Sam walked out with Ian. Everyone else had to know they were both going to compete. Someone else had jumped into their slot, so they would be waiting for another quarter-hour. He saw a familiar face among the competitors.
“Norna?” he said as he detoured and pulled her aside. “I am Effian Walk,” he said before she had a chance to call him Sam Smith. “I was trained at the University of Tolloy and drafted into Kreb’s army. I came to Holding to seek my fortune.”
She looked at Sam. “Nice beard, Effian Walk. We were still classmates, right?”
