The Sword in the Stone-Dead, page 2
part #1 of Great Vicari Mystery Series
“Why? They seem a charming couple.”
“Leo needs Linnie to stay at home and tend to me, otherwise he might have to do it himself.”
“Ah,” said Vickery. “And yet I see...”
“What do you see?” Margot peered through her glasses again.
“It is probably nothing.”
“Out with it. You always ‘see’ more than anyone else.”
“Linette, I think, has gone beyond a mere desire to defy her father. Those two are engaged, I should say.”
Margot laughed. “There you are wrong, I can tell you that. Oliver asked Leo’s permission, and Leo refused.”
“And yet the pair went ahead despite his forbidding. See how she touches her finger? There is a ring, I think, that she is just now not wearing.”
“She wouldn’t dare...” Margot breathed.
“You were quite daring yourself at her age, if I am not mistaken?” Vickery raised an eyebrow and smiled. Margot smiled too.
“Well, well, the little minx. She’s coming this way: I shall speak to her and try to catch her in a lie.”
“I am sure she is up to the challenge,” Vickery said.
“Hello, mother. Daddy says you look like a ‘bloody widow.’”
“You can tell your father that I live in hope,” Margot said. “Walk with me and tell me what you’ve been up to, I haven’t seen you for days...”
Vickery edged away from mother and daughter, and was stopped by a brisk tap on his shoulder.
“Are you the wizard?”
Vickery turned. The woman who had spoken was tall, broad-shouldered and dressed in trousers and a man’s tweed jacket. Her cheeks were ruddy and her hair a bright carrot red frosted with white.
“Miss Fulbright?” Vickery said.
“Veronica. The hair’s a dead give-away, isn’t it? Glad to meet you.” Her handshake was firm. “I just came down on the train—didn’t have time to dip into the dressing up box. I’m so glad my brother has hired you—‘The Great Vicari’—a real magician! You look exactly how a magician should.”
“I am a ‘technical advisor’ only. Mr. Bannister is portraying Merlin,” Vickery said. “I retired from performing some years ago.”
“You really shouldn’t do that.”
“Do what, Miss Fulbright?”
“Make out that you’re some sort of old fossil. You’re not as old as my brother, and he’s chasing after some woman half his age.”
“My chasing days are over, I think. It is so undignified.”
“What rot! You’re just afraid.”
“I am?”
“You suffered a personal tragedy and are determined not to allow anyone close enough to hurt you again.” Veronica laughed. “Don’t look so shocked: we had newspapers, even—where I have been.”
“Indeed,” said Vickery. “But not everyone is so adept at reading between the headlines.”
“I do believe that was a compliment. But don’t worry, I’m not going to tell anyone your little secret: we’ll let them go on believing you are the enigmatic Vicari, Man of Mystery!”
“You are most kind.” Vickery’s attention was caught by Veronica Fulbright’s shoes: they were highly polished men’s brogues, glossy as horse chestnuts. Veronica Fulbright seemed amused by his interest them.
“They were daddy’s,” Veronica explained. “They’re about all I have that belonged to him. It amuses me to wear them. My brother believes he walks in my father’s footsteps—”
“—but it is you who wears your father’s shoes,” Vickery said.
“You get it, I am pleased.” Vickery gave her a little mock-bow. “I have daddy’s pipe too, but Leo doesn’t like me to smoke in public.”
“Your brother is watching us now,” Vickery observed.
“Brothers do that, don’t they? Even little ones.”
“He’s younger than you?”
“By three years, yes. But he’s always felt a need to watch over me—make sure nothing terrible happens.”
“It is natural that he doesn’t want any harm to come to you.”
“Yes, that as well. I was first-born—but daddy wanted a son. And my mother wanted a daughter. I disappointed them both!” She grinned, showing the same large, yellowish teeth that Fulbright had.
“I am sure that is not true. You hinted earlier that you had been away for a while,” Vickery said. “Abroad?”
“Not abroad, no. And not in a convent. Do girls still do that?”
“Some do, I am sure.”
“Leo knows we’re talking about him.” A note of concern had crept into her voice. “He’s coming this way. He’ll want to know what we were talking about.”
“My sister behaving herself, Vickery?” Fulbright asked.
“Indeed, yes. We were just comparing notes on family history.”
“Were you, indeed? Well, we were brought up to believe that nothing is more important than family, isn’t that right, Veronica?”
“Yes, Leo.” Veronica Fulbright seemed unusually subdued in her brother’s presence.
Fulbright scowled at them both and turned away. She brightened the moment he was gone, like a cloud had passed from the sun.
“He’s always checking if I am behaving myself. I have to do what he says: I’m dependent on him since daddy died. He doesn’t let me forget.”
“Your brother inherited the family estate?”
“He has all of it now.” Her voice was curiously flat, as if she was resigned to her fate. “And I—Do you believe in love, Mr. Vickery?”
“I believe it exists.”
“Some people spend their whole lives wondering if they will ever meet that one special person who is out there for them, don’t they?”
“And others find that person, and then lose them,” Vickery said.
“Yes, that happens to some of us, doesn’t it? And when it does—I wonder if we can ever find happiness with someone else?”
“Widows remarry,” Vickery suggested.
“But we are not widows, are we Mr. Vickery?”
They were both silent a moment then, until: “I still wonder what my life might have been like, if I hadn’t—if Leo hadn’t had to—to lock me away.”
“Lock?”
“It was for my own good,” she said, too quickly. “I wasn’t ready to live by myself. And poor George—well, he wouldn’t have been able to take care of me. He wasn’t the right sort at all.” It sounded as if she was repeating something she’d been told, probably more than once.
“But George loved you?”
“Oh, yes, he does,” she said brightly. But then the cloud crossed in front of the sun again. “Or he did at least.”
“Until—?”
“Until he—until my brother had to intervene.”
“And lock you away?”
“For my own good, yes.” Her face brightened again. “I’m sorry, you must find all this family stuff frightfully dull. It’s not important now. After all, everyone has their secrets, don’t they?”
“Indeed.”
“Shall I tell you another one of yours?” She asked.
“I—”
“You’re not really here as a magic advisor.”
“I’m not?”
“You’re here because my brother thinks someone wants to kill him. I know about the poison pen letters. And about your clandestine activities.”
“My—?”
“You’re a detective, Mr. Vickery,” Veronica stage-whispered.
“Hardly a detective, Miss Fulbright. I have merely helped out an acquaintance on occasion.”
“Solving mysteries.”
“Something like that. Now, I think perhaps I ought to show you a little sleight of hand in order to demonstrate to any onlookers that I really am here as magician-in-residence.” Vickery took a pack of cards from his pocket and fanned them out, faces towards Veronica Fulbright. “Think of a card.”
“Don’t I get to pick one?”
“You already have.”
Veronica frowned.
“What was your card?” Vickery asked.
“Seven of clubs.”
“As I thought. It’s in your top pocket.”
Veronica dipped her fingers into the jacket pocket behind her handkerchief. The card she extracted was the Seven of Clubs. She smiled.
“Do you investigate as well as you prestidigitate?”
“That remains to be seen,” Vickery said.
“No clues so far?”
“The night is young.”
“Yes it is,” Veronica said. “I think you should go and talk to Malloy.”
“Malloy?”
“Don’t pretend you haven’t noticed him. My brother’s driver. Shoulders like a rugby player, eyes like a poet.”
“And what should I talk to Mr. Malloy about?”
“You’re the detective. But if I were you, I’d ask him how he got that bruise on his jaw.”
“Not playing rugby?” Vickery asked.
“You’ll have to ask him that—if you want to know.” She turned her body away, but kept her eyes on him. Then she winked and was gone.
“I don’t know what she was telling you,” Fulbright said, looming over Vickery, “but she shouldn’t—”
“She was telling me about George.”
“What about him?” Suspicious.
“He was her one true love.”
“Pshaw! She was infatuated with him. Schoolgirl crush. I don’t think George felt the same way about her. Or he would have stuck around when—”
“When Veronica ‘went away’ for a while?”
“You know about that?”
“You did it for her own good,” Vickery said flatly. “And that’s also why you had to take control of your father’s estate while she was away?”
“She wasn’t fit to look after herself, not the state she was in.”
“And George?” Vickery asked.
“No idea what happened to him. But I think I did him a favour too, in the long run.”
“I’m sure he sees it the same way,” Vickery said.
Fulbright humphed. “I had better go and look out for Eleanor.”
“It must be quite a burden for you,” Vickery said, as Fulbright turned away.
Fulbright stopped and cast him a quizzical look.
“—being surrounded by women who need you to take care of them,” Vickery finished. “Veronica after her ‘episode,’ shall we call it? Your wife after her accident. Your daughter. And now Eleanor—”
Fulbright frowned. “We do what we have to, for the people we care about. Don’t even question it, do we? Don’t go looking for motives there—they all need me. They’re not going to poison the golden goose, are they?”
“Interesting you should say ‘poison.’ That is typically seen as a woman’s preferred method.”
“What?”
“For murder. Men tend to prefer something that better demonstrates their—power over the victim.”
“That right?” Fulbright said. “In case you’ve forgotten, the idea is that you find out who has sent those blasted letters before I am murdered.”
“I shall endeavour to oblige,” Vickery said.
“Do that.”
Seeing that Linette had gone to re-join her fiancé, Vickery returned to Margot’s side. She was staring up at the walls of the tower.
“Is Leo thinking of buying Silberman’s Keep?” Vickery asked.
“Good lord, no. He hasn’t any money.”
“I heard someone referring to ‘Fulbright’s Folly,’ and thought they meant this place.”
“They were probably talking about this dratted moving picture of his.”
“Did you apply the thumbscrews to Linette?” Vickery asked.
“Couldn’t get a thing out of her. She’s hiding something, though. Walk with me, let’s go and frighten the groundlings.” Taking his arm, she led him down the steps and across the courtyard.
“Isn’t it unusual to have a party like this before the shooting of the motion picture is complete?” Vickery asked.
“I think Leo’s afraid none of them will be talking to each other by the time they get to the end. Assuming they even get to the end. This thing will probably bankrupt him. Again. Remember that Shakespeare tour of Belgium? That’s why I insist on separate finances. He’s only invited me down here because he wants me to stump up the cash to get his blasted picture finished.”
“Is it going well?”
“I doubt it. A bunch of old Shakespearean hams bellowing at the camera and gesticulating wildly, working without a prompt. It’ll be like... well, we’ll see, won’t we? The highlight of this evening is going to be a screening of the first few days’ filming. Every retake, missed cue, and fluffed line, I suppose. I intend to be well and truly sozzled before then. Come on, there must be drink here somewhere. I just hope it’s not bloody mead.”
“I distinctly heard the sound of champagne corks inside,” Vickery reassured her. They headed through the open door into the keep.
Chapter 2
Margot and Vickery entered the great hall. People were standing by a wooden table to one side, drinking and chatting in twos and threes. Vickery collected glasses of champagne and returned to Margot’s side.
“Look at that bloody table,” Margot said. “There’s no escape, is there?”
The table—a replica of King Arthur’s round table that had been built for Fulbright’s motion picture—looked vast, with a dozen places set around it. The centre was covered with plates of carved roast meat, dishes of steaming vegetables, jugs of wine, and platters of breads and fruits.
The great hall looked to have been painted recently, but already damp was beginning to discolour the walls in places, and cracks had reopened. Bare oak beams in the roof made the hall seem larger than it really was, and a fire in the inglenook fireplace cast a pleasant glow.
The keep was furnished in Victorian Gothic style, with dark wood panelling. Large oil paintings and various bits of medieval weaponry adorned the walls. Electric lighting had been installed, but that looked to be the limit of any attempted modernisation.
Silberman’s Keep was built around the courtyard. The gatehouse, with walls either side, made up the front. A large drawing room made up the left wing of the building, and the great hall the right. Both wings had an upper floor containing bedrooms. At the back, the tower dominated, with a library to its left and dining room to the right. Behind the keep, outside the dining room, was a terrace; outside the library was a small orchard. Beyond this, paths through the uneven gardens and lawns down to the lake, a summer house, and—away to the left—through a small wood.
The ground floor of the tower consisted of a stone-floored entrance hall, with a grand staircase facing the door. Half-a-dozen steps carpeted in a rich red led up to a wide first landing, on which a stately grandfather clock stood. The landing was almost big enough to serve as a stage. Stairs led off left and right to the bedrooms above. There was a small servants’ staircase in one corner of the entrance hall, leading down to the kitchens and cellars, and up to the staff quarters in the middle floors of the tower.
Margot took a sip of her champagne and grimaced. “Perhaps Leo is broke already. Now, where’s his flat-chested little queen?”
“Here I am!” Said a voice brightly. Margot turned and under her gaze the thin young man in the minstrel costume visibly wilted.
“Not you, half-wit,” Margot growled. The man smiled weakly and scurried away. Margot watched him go. “If my legs looked that good in red stockings, I could have done better than Leo Fulbright.” She saw that Vickery was frowning at her. “Was he a friend of yours?” She asked.
“No, but still—” Vickery said.
“Simpering idiot. Artie used to be Ted Kimball’s dresser. How on earth he got Leo to cast him as a minstrel, I have no—”
“Perhaps on the strength of his singing voice?”
“He sings?”
“As a minstrel, one would hope so.”
“You’ve heard him?”
“Not as a—minstrel, no.”
“There’s something you’re not telling me.”
“Why do you say that?” Vickery asked.
“Because there is always something you don’t tell me.”
“I have a reputation as an enigma to uphold,” Vickery said. “Will you sit by me at the table? I’m going to have a word with one of the waiters, get him to serve us the good champagne for the rest of the evening.”
“That will help ease the discomfort.”
“Your back troubles you tonight?”
“That as well.”
“Ah, and there is Excalibur!” Vickery said, as people moved away, allowing them to see the papier-mâché rock into which the sword had been plunged. “Aren’t you going to try and draw the sword from the stone?”
“If I had a sword in my hand, I might be tempted to use it,” Margot said.
They watched as several people tried and failed to pull the sword out of the rock.
“It’s a trick rock,” Artie Delancey said, appearing beside Vickery. “I can tell you how to draw Excalibur out.”
“A disguised foot-pedal,” Vickery said. “Used in stage magic for years.”
The young minstrel looked disappointed, until Vickery told him that he himself had been ‘in the trade.’
A camera that looked like it had been made from an accordion and a Meccano set had been mounted on a tripod, and the young man from the sports car could be seen ushering those in costume to stand before it to remain motionless for portraits, or to adopt frozen poses to give the impression that an action had been captured spontaneously. Even Leo Fulbright struck a kingly pose for a photograph and hardly seemed annoyed when he was half-blinded by the flash bulb.
“Young Mr. Garvin has been hired to provide publicity photographs?” Vickery asked. “I thought Leo wanted to keep him away from your daughter?”
“Ollie offered to do it for nothing,” Margot said. “He must be an idiot.”
“The work he does tonight may lead to paid work in the future,” Vickery suggested.
“As long as he doesn’t have to pawn the camera to pay for whatever he’ll need to print those photographs. He can’t afford to be doing this.”
