33

After supper, having finally gotten the doctor and Saucerhead off, Morley and I headed for my suite. As we climbed the stairs, I said, “I guess old Dellwood got tired of waiting.” He’d abandoned the coach hours earlier, according to the coachman, who wasn’t pleased with his own lot. It hadn’t occurred to anyone to ask him in out of the cold.

Morley belched. “That woman tried to poison me. That mess wasn’t fit to feed a hog.”

I chuckled. He’d made only one oblique negative comment and had gotten invited to cook his own meals.

His presence didn’t thrill the natives. His charm, stoked to a white heat, had been wasted on Jennifer. His feelings were hurt. He wasn’t used to being looked at like something from the underside of a rock.

They didn’t know who and what he was, only that he was somebody who had invaded their weird little world. Me, I’m not such a sensitive guy.

“A lovely bunch, Garrett. Truly lovely. The girl should work at an icehouse. Where do you find these people?”

“They find me. People who aren’t troubled don’t need me.”

He grunted. There was a lot of that going around. “I understand that.”

I suspect his clients are weirder than mine. But he doesn’t have to deal with them on an extended basis.

I checked the telltales at the door. There’d been no sloppy visitors. We stepped inside. I said, “I’m going to take a nap. I had a hard night last night. Don’t turn into a spook again.”

He gave me a sour grin. “Not this time.” He started unwinding a piece of cord he’d scrounged up while I was helping Cook clear supper dishes.

“What’s that for?”

“To measure with. You say somebody’s getting in and out without using the door, there’s got to be a way.” He measured off a foot of cord, tied a knot, folded the cord, tied another knot. Not a perfect ruler but it would do.

“I was going to do that myself. When I got time.”

“You never get time for detail work, Garrett. You’re too busy bulling around, trying to make things happen. What do you expect tonight?”

I’d hinted that we could expect some excitement. “I figure that one draug will come back. What else, who knows? Getting so I think anything can happen here. While you’re fiddling around, think of a way to get Chain to give himself away.”

“The fat guy with the garbage mouth?”

“That’s him.”

“He the baddie?”

“He’s the only one I can line up who had opportunity with Hawkes and Bradon and the attempts on me.”

“Turn you into bait. Catch him in the act.”

“Thanks a bunch. He’s screwed it up three times already. Maybe four. How many shots should I give him?”

“Take your nap. You’re safe. Morley’s here.”

“That’s not the comfort you think it should be.” I went into the bedroom, shucked my clothes and slithered in between the sheets. There was something sinful about being naked in such comfort.

For about thirty seconds I listened to Morley putter, measuring and talking to himself while rain tippy-tapped on the windows. Then the lights went out.

The lights never came on. Not quite.

But there were fires to light the night. Well, there was the threat of fire, anyway.

I woke up no longer alone. My blonde friend was back. Checking my head, touching my face, all that.

This time she didn’t move fast enough. But she was leaning way over, off balance, and I didn’t think before I grabbed. I got her wrist and gave her a come-hither tug. She fell on top of me.

It was dark. She’d have been invisible if she’d been a brunette wearing dark clothing. Still, from four inches her face was visible. She wore a sort of smile, like she wanted to look kittenish and playful. The rest of her couldn’t fake it. She shook like she was terrified.

“Talk to me,” I whispered. “Tell me who you are.” I put an arm around her, caressed the back of her neck. Her hair felt fine as spider silk, light as down. I did it to keep her from getting away, but it took only about four seconds for me to start having trouble keeping my mind on business.

She kissed me instead of answering me.

Man, oh, man. It had the kick of straight grain alcohol. It got me repeating mantras just to remember who I was.

Shaking like she was running naked through a hailstorm, she turned up the heat. She worked her way under the covers. This was what the old man needed to keep him warm. Boy, could he save on firewood.

Then I lost my mantra and kissed her back. About twenty seconds later she forgot about shivering.

Morley pounded the door. “Hey! Garrett! You going to nap all night?”

I sat up so sudden I made myself dizzy. I felt around. Just Garrett, all by his lonesome. What? I’ve got a vivid imagination and a rich fantasy life, but . . . 

“Bring a light in here.”

“What about your booby trap?”

What about it? “It’s not set.”

Morley found me on the edge of the bed draped in a sheet, looking croggled and feeling four times as croggled as I looked. “What happened?”

“You’re not going to believe it.”

He didn’t. “I never left the other room. Well, only long enough to use the pot. Nobody could’ve gotten past. You had a dream.”

Maybe. But, damn! “I could use more dreams like that. If it was. I don’t think so. I’ve never had one like that.”

“Man gets on in years, he starts living his adventures in his head.” He grinned a big one full of pointy elf teeth.

“Let’s don’t start. I’m too flustered to keep up my end. You find anything? What time is it?”

“Yes. Your cloak closet is two thirds as big as it should be. It’s about midnight. The witching hour.”

“I could probably make it through the night without cracks like that.” I got up, dragged the bedclothes with me.

Morley got a funny look, stepped over, picked something up.

It was the red belt my blonde always wore, even in Snake’s painting.

He looked at me. I looked at him. I maybe smiled a little. “Not mine,” I told him.

“Maybe we ought to get the hell out of here, Garrett.”

I pulled my clothes on. I couldn’t think what to say. I agreed, mostly. Finally, I just muttered, “You ever back out on a job once you took it?”

He got him another funny look and said, “Yes. Once.”

I couldn’t picture that. That wasn’t Morley Dotes. He delivered. He wouldn’t back down from the kingpin or from a nest of vampires. I’d seen that with my own eyes. “I don’t believe it. What were you up against? A herd of thunder-lizards?”

“Not exactly.”

He didn’t like talking about his work. I dropped it. “Let’s look at that closet.”

The situation had him more spooked than he let on. He said, “A man hired me without telling me anything about the mark, just where he’d be at a certain time. I had the biggest surprise of my life when I got there.”

I opened the closet door. “All right. I’ll bite.”

“You were the mark.”

I turned slowly. For about ten seconds I had no idea where I stood. Had we reached a moment I’d prayed would never come?

“Easy. That was six months ago. Forget it. I wasn’t going to mention it.”

He wouldn’t have unless he’d gotten so rattled most bets were off. I tried to recall what I’d been working on back then. Nothing significant. One missing person thing that had smelled from the start, but that had petered out when I found the missing guy dead.

“I owe you one.”

“Forget it. I shouldn’t have mentioned it.”

“You forget it. Let’s see where the missing space went.” I thought I got it. That missing person thing had smelled because I’d thought there was more to it than the client would admit. She’d seemed vindictive when nothing in her story indicated a reason. Looking for a man she’d claimed was an associate of her late husband.

Pieces toppled into place belatedly. The guy she was looking for could have been blackmailing her over the husband’s demise. She hadn’t needed me once she knew the guy was dead.

The guy might have hired Morley if he’d heard I was after him.

Hell with it. Water under the bridge. Nothing to do with what we were into now.

But I owed Morley. That more than balanced the stunt with the coffin full of vampire.

“On this side,” Morley said.

It was obvious once you knew it was there. On the right the closet was twenty inches smaller than it should be. “Give me the light.”

I examined the wall inside. Nothing out of the way. No door, nothing to release one or open one. “Has to be out there somewhere.”

I went out, examined the wall, looked for some hidden device, cunningly disguised, like those I’d seen before. I didn’t find any such beast.

“I got it,” Morley said.

He tipped a two-foot section of wainscotting outward like a kitchen flour bin. Bam. No sign it was there when it was in place. “Clever,” he said. “Every secret gizmo I ever saw leaves marks on the floor or something if it’s used much.” The section didn’t quite drop to the floor. A leather strap kept it from falling all the way.

We eyed each other. I said, “Well?”

He grinned. “We can either stand here and stare at it or we can do something. I vote we do something.”

“After you, my man.”

“Oh, no. I’m just the hired help. I hand the knight his lance when he’s ready to charge the Black Baron. When I’m in a real helpful mood, I polish a few rust spots off his armor. But I don’t stomp into traps for him.”

“I love you too, boy.” He was right. It was my game to play.

Didn’t hurt to try, though.

I got another lamp, made sure both were full, started to crawl into the opening. “Stay close.”

“Right behind you, boss. All the way.”

“Wait.” I backed out.

“Now what?”

“Equipment.” It seemed like a good time to arm up. Just in case.

Morley watched me ferret stuff out, grinned when he saw the colored bottles. “I wondered if you kept those.”

“Smart man never throws anything away. Might come in handy someday.” Loaded for thunder-lizard, I returned to the passageway. This time I kept going. Morley had less trouble in there, being a foot shorter and a half ton lighter. I kept banging my head. The passage ran straight ahead fifteen feet. It ran under the counter in the dressing room.

We emerged in a two-foot-wide dead space behind the bedroom and dressing room. It was claustrophobic in there. It was dusty and cobwebby, too, and there was nothing to be seen but studs, lathing, and plaster. The wall at my back was identical. It was the wall of the suite next to mine.

There were peepholes. Of course. A couple for the dressing room and three for the bedroom. The thought that I might have been watched left me real uncomfortable.

Morley said, “Here’s how you get out.”

At the end of the dead space, against the wall of the hallway, there was a two-by-two hole in the floor. Wooden rungs were nailed to the studs.

I sneezed ferociously. The dust and my cold were ganging up.

My head hurt from being banged. My skin burns gave me no respite. I had no reason to be amused. I chuckled anyway.

“What?”

“No way I’m going to get past you. You have to go first.”

“Think so?” He ducked into the passageway from my sitting room. “After you, my man.”

“You’re so slick, you’ll slide out of your casket.” I tested the rungs. They were solid.

Ever go down a vertical ladder carrying a live fire? Lucky I’m a paragon of coordination.

The third floor was identical to the fourth except for the cover over the hole opening on the second. “There’s a big open storage loft below here,” I told Morley. And sneezed so hard, I almost killed my lamp. I listened for movement below. Nothing. I lifted the cover. It swung to the side on hinges.

How would we get down? I’d seen no ladders when I’d explored the storage area.

Crafty builders. Right under the hatch was the end of a rack. The shelf supports made neat rungs.

I dropped to the floor. Knowing what to look for, I spotted trapdoors that would take me to every room in the wing.

“Pretty simple,” Morley said. “Think it’s set up for spying or for escapes?”

“I think it’s probably for whatever’s to the advantage of the Stantnors. I wonder how it works in the east wing. That layout is different.”

“You’ve already checked this wing, right?”

“Except for the cellar.”

“You didn’t find any place your girlfriend could be hiding?”

“No.”

“You ask the cook about food shortages?”

“No.” I should have. She’d have to eat. I thought of her portrait. I’d better get the paintings into the house tonight.

“Let’s do this systematically. The cellar first, then the other wing. Seems probable the passages there start in the cellar.”

“Yeah.” As I recalled the layout, the walls all sat atop one another from the first floor upward.

We descended to the pantry quietly, listened. Nothing. On to the cellar.

It was your typical earthen floor cellar, deeper than my own, where I have to stoop, but vasty, dark and dusty, a wilderness of stone pillars supporting beams that supported joists. At first it seemed mostly empty and dusty and dry—though dry wasn’t a surprise. The house sat atop a hill. The builders would have arranged good drainage.

As we moved toward the east end we encountered evidence that an earlier regime had maintained a large wine cellar. Only the racks remained.

“Great place to get rid of bodies,” Morley remarked.

“They have their own graveyard for that.”

“Somebody sank a couple, three guys in that swamp.”

He had a point.

We completed a circuit of the east end finding little but the wine racks, broken furniture, and, near the foot of the steps, sausages and stores hanging so mice couldn’t reach them. I sneezed almost continuously.

“That’s the easy half,” Morley said. We started our circuit of the western end.

That end had less to recommend it or make it interesting, except for the supports and plumbing beneath the fountain. Those would have been of interest mainly to a plumber or engineer. There were no entries to hidden passages.

I said, “We just wasted three quarters of an hour.” And sneezed.

“Never a waste when you find something out. Even if it’s negative.”

“That’s my line. You’re supposed to grumble about wasted time.”

He chuckled. “Must be infecting each other. Let’s get out before the spiders gang up.”

I grunted, sneezed. Interesting. The cellar was almost vermin-free. Other than spiders there was very little wildlife. I’d have expected a sizable herd of mice.

I recalled the cats. “Can you smell anything? I’m deaf in the nose here.”

“What am I supposed to smell?”

“Cat shit.”

“What?”

“No mice. If there aren’t any, the cats must be on the job. The only cats I’ve seen are out in the barns. If they’re getting in here, there’s a way into the basement from the outside.”

“Oh.” His eyes got a little bigger. He started watching the edges of the light more closely. There was still a draug around somewhere.

He said, “We’re not going to find anything here. Let’s do the west wing.” He was uncomfortable. Usually he’s cool as a rock. That creepy house really worked on you.

I was about halfway up to the first floor when I caught the end of a cry. “Oh, damn! What now?”

Don’t ever try to run through unfamiliar territory in the dark, even with a lamp. Between us we nearly killed ourselves a half dozen times each before we made it to the great hall.

34

We burst into the light of the hall, where the Stantnors spared no expense on illumination. “What was it?” There was nothing shaking.

“Sounded like it came from here,” Morley said. “Looks like we’re first to arrive.”

“Oh, damn! Not quite. Damn! Damn! Damn!”

Chain had beaten us there. The dragonslayer and his victim had masked him from us at first. He was on the floor, crumpled in a way no man should be. He’d bounced once, some, and had left a big smear. Blood still leaked out of him.

“Looks like he came from the top balcony,” Morley said, with an artisan’s dispassion. “Tried to land on his feet and didn’t quite make it.” He glanced up. “He didn’t jump. And I’d bet you he didn’t trip over the rail. If I was a betting man.”

“Wouldn’t touch the bet at a thousand to one.” The fall wasn’t much more than thirty feet. For Chain it must have seemed like a thousand.

Thirty feet is a bad fall, but people have survived it. If they have themselves under control or they’re lucky. Chain hadn’t been either.

I glimpsed movement on the opposite balcony, whirled. I expected to see my mystery blonde. I saw Jennifer instead, in her nightclothes, at the rail at the end of my hall. She looked down in a sort of daze. She was very pale.

Peters appeared right above us a moment later. “What the hell?” he bellowed, and came bounding downstairs.

“Stay with him,” I told Morley. “I’m going up there.” I indicated Jennifer.

Black Pete galloped up to Morley as I trotted away, mouthing questions too fast for anybody to shove an answer in sideways.

I was puffing my lungs out when I reached Jennifer, swearing that, when this one was over, I was going to work out every day. Right after I spent a week catching up on my sleep.

She was flushed now, so red she looked like she’d run a mile. She snapped, “Where were you? I’ve been trying to wake you up for ten minutes.”

“Huh?”

She stared at the floor, shivering. “You said . . . I thought you wanted me to . . . ”

Hell. I’d forgotten. Damned good thing she hadn’t come earlier. Especially damned good thing I hadn’t given her a key.

Standing there shy and shamefaced and looking vulnerable, in nightclothes that did little to hide the fact that she was one gorgeous hunk of woman, she made me react after all. I got all set to howl at the moon. Only Peters’s chatter downstairs kept my mind on business. Part of my mind on business. A small part of my mind.

“What do you know about this?” I jerked a thumb at Chain.

Her eyes got big. “Nothing.”

“Come on. You had to see or hear something.”

“All right. Don’t bully.” She eased a little closer, still shivering. Business, boy, mind on business. “I sneaked out of my room about thirty minutes ago. When I got to the end of my hall, Chain and Peters were down by the fountain. They were just sitting there. Like they were waiting for something to happen. I couldn’t get to the stairs without them seeing me. So I waited. The more I waited, the more scared I got. I was ready to chicken out when Peters said something to Chain and started upstairs. Chain turned his back, so I hurried up to the fourth floor, before Peters saw me . . . 

“Chain must have seen me when I was sneaking toward the loft stair. He yelled. I went up and over. When I got to your side he was on the fourth floor, going into the hall to my father’s suite. I ran down your hall to your door and tried to get you to answer. You didn’t. I kept trying. Then I heard that yell. I didn’t know what to do. I was scared. I tried to hide in the shadows at the end of the hall until I heard your voice.”

“You didn’t see anybody but Peters and Chain?”

“No. I told you.”

“Huh.” I thought a moment. “You’d better get back to your suite. Before anybody else comes out. Peters’s questions will be troublesome enough.”

“Oh!”

“Yeah. Let’s go.” I followed her to the stairs, up to the loft and across. The darkness there didn’t bother her a bit. We parted at the head of the stair to the third-floor balcony. I said, “I’ll come talk to you as soon as we’ve settled things down.”

“All right.” A quavery mouse voice. She was scared as hell. I didn’t blame her. I was scared myself.

Chain was dead. Helped along. My favorite suspect. My almost certain killer. Gone. Out of the picture. Meaning I’d wanted to nail the wrong hide to the wall. Unless he’d tried to do unto another and got it done to him in self-defense.

I walked along the balcony to the point where, I guessed, he’d gone over. Morley and Peters were quiet now, watching me.

“He got wool pants on?” I asked.

“Yes,” Morley replied.

There were strands of wool on the rail. There were scratches and flecks of skin, too, like he’d tried to grab hold as he’d gone over. Minute scraps of evidence but they made me certain he’d been shoved. I pictured him standing there, looking down, maybe talking to somebody, when he got a sudden boost with barely enough oomph on it. Maybe he’d even needed a little extra help after he’d started going.

Sometimes I suffer too much empathy for men who die untimely deaths. I picture the thing and conjure the feelings they must have felt as the realization hit them. Falling scares hell out of me. I had more than the usual ration of compassion for Chain.

What would it take, about a second of free fall? All of it intense with fear and wild desperation and vain hope, trying to adjust to take the fall and maybe, just maybe, survive?

I shuddered. This one was going to haunt me.

Trying hard not to think about it, I clumped down to the ground floor. I hurt everywhere. I wasn’t in a good mood at all. “What’s your story, Sarge?”

He was taken aback by my intensity. But he excused it. “We were waiting for the draug.” There was a collection of instruments of mayhem lying in the fountain. I hadn’t noticed before. “Kaid and Wayne were going to take the next watch, in about an hour. I had to take a leak. I didn’t want to go outside so I headed for my room.”

“You took a long time taking a leak.”

“Found out I had to do more once I got there. You want to check? It’s still warm.”

“Take his word for it, Garrett.” Morley isn’t your dedicated investigator, willing to stir fouled chamberpots in search of damning evidence. I’m not that devoted myself. Anyway, I believed Peters. He’d have come up with an alibi less dumb if he was going to toss somebody off a balcony.

I was about out of suspects.

Which meant I had to open the whole thing up and suspect everybody again. Even the unlikelies.

Shares of the legacy were worth over six hundred thousand now. If the value of the estate wasn’t falling faster than the murderer could expand his share.

Peters. Cook. Wayne. Who? For no sound reason I gave Wayne top billing. And Cook was starting to look better, though she had pretty good alibis. But alibis aren’t everything.

“I guess the killer knows there’s a copy of the will,” I told Peters. “That means the General could be in double jeopardy.”

“What?”

“After last night the killer has to worry about the other copies going, too. They do, all his risks have gone for nothing. So maybe he’ll want the old man to check out before the last copy of the will does. Better find out exactly how many there were and where they’re at now.” I tapped my shirt to make sure I had my copy.

Not that it was particularly safe with me, considering I was no more immortal than Chain, Hawkes, or Bradon.

Snake popped into mind, and after Snake, his paintings. I had to get those inside.

But it was pouring out. Maybe headed for something worse. There was the occasional flash of lightning. I said, “Getting around to the kind of weather that suits this place. All we need is something howling and ghost lights puttering around outside.”

Peters snorted. “You get the next best thing. A frisky draug.” He pointed.

There it was, back at the rear again, trying to get in. A lightning flash illuminated it. I got my first good look. It was more decomposed than the others.

Peters selected a few items from the stockpile in the fountain. “Shall we take care of it?”

“That’s my old sergeant, Morley. Cool in the face of the enemy.”

“Uhm.” He went through the arsenal himself. Here was something he could get a hold on.

“All right. I guess we should take care of it. Get it out of the way.” I checked their leavings. They’d taken all the best stuff already. “Hell with this.” I went and disarmed a retired knight.

I had to be getting close to the end. There weren’t many suits of armor left for me to vandalize.

35

Morley sat on the fountain surround hugging cracked ribs. Peters was curled up on the floor in a pool of vomit, clutching his groin. He did his manly best not to whimper. Me, I’d been luckier. All I’d come up with was a shin bruise and a badly stomped foot. Not on the same leg. “Maybe next time I’ll save myself some grief and let whoever wants kill me.”

Morley gasped, “Why didn’t you say the man was a hand-to-hand specialist when he was alive?”

“Don’t look at me! I didn’t know anything about him. Not even who he was.”

Pieces of draug were scattered all over. Some still moved.

“What now?”

“Eh?”

“You burned the other two. Right?”

“One of them, I know.”

“Both,” Peters groaned. He got onto his knees, his forehead on the floor. His knuckles were bone white. He’d gotten hit bad. “They dumped the other one into the stable fire when they saw there wasn’t no stopping it.” He didn’t say that in one chunk but in little gasps, a word or two at a time. The effort cost him a spate of dry heaves.

I felt for him, though not as much as I would have if I hadn’t been hurting myself.

I got up. “Better make sure we got the job done.” The thing looked like it was trying to get itself back together. The pieces were trying to get to a central point. I hobbled, pitching random limbs back.

“What the hell’s going on down there?”

I looked up. Wayne and Kaid had appeared for their shift, at the third-floor rail. “Come on down. We’re in no shape to finish this.”

Wayne beat Kaid by a floor. He looked at what was left of Chain, at the pieces of rotted corpse, at Chain again. “Man. Man, oh, man. Man.” He didn’t say anything else till he asked, “What happened?”

I told him. Kaid arrived in time to get it all.

“Man. Man, oh, man.” Wayne was scared. For the first time since I arrived I saw one of those people convinced of his own mortality.

“Hell. You’re all a hundred thousand richer now.”

“Man. I don’t care about that. I don’t need it. It ain’t worth it. I’m out of here soon as it’s light enough that nothing can sneak up on me.”

“But . . . ”

“Money ain’t everything. You can’t live it up if you’re dead. I’m gone.” The man was almost hysterical.

I glanced at Peters. He was preoccupied, though he’d made it to the fountain surround. He hoisted himself up and perched with his misery. He had no attention left for anything else.

Morley was no help. But he couldn’t be. He didn’t know the people.

I looked at Kaid. He was as pallid as a man could get, as shaken as Wayne, equally eyeball to eyeball with death. It had come home. The field was so narrow, each knew he might be next.

He swallowed about three times, then managed, “The General. Somebody’s got to take care of the General.”

Wayne snarled, “Let that bastard take care of himself. I’m gone. I ain’t dying for his money or for him.”

Pain will distract you some, but mine wasn’t so all-devouring that I couldn’t spend some effort trying to figure out what the hell would happen next. I wondered which of the three was acting and how he’d gotten so good.

I wondered some about Cook, Jennifer, even the old man, and how I could figure one of them for the killer. Or more than one. That was an angle I hadn’t given much thought. Maybe there was more than one killer. That would take care of alibis.

And my ivory lover. What of her? The mystery woman suddenly looked like a top bet for the villain.

Who the hell was she?

I plunked myself down on the fountain surround, as nimble as a quadraplegic dwarf. Kaid and Wayne came out of shock enough to start thinking and doing. Kaid went to the kitchen, got some big burlap sacks. He and Wayne stuffed them with pieces of draug and tied them shut. They gagged while they worked. My cold was that much of a blessing. I didn’t have to take the smell.

Morley was three feet away. I asked, “How you doing?”

“Be running windsprints in the morning.” He grimaced, spat on the floor, winced again as he leaned to look at it.

“What?”

“Wanted to see if I was spitting blood.”

“Come on. You rolled with it.”

He flashed me a down under smile. He was putting on a show. He wanted folks to think he was hurt worse than he was. Might be an edge for him later.

I shut my mouth.

Peters managed to say, “What now, Garrett?”

“I don’t know.”

“How do we stop this before we’re all dead?”

“I don’t know that, either. Unless we just scatter.”

“In which case the killer wins by default. Wayne walks tomorrow, it’s the same as if he got killed.”

Morley said, “Makes your job easier, Garrett.” He did a grimace. He was overacting.

“Eh?” I was at top form.

“Shortens the list by another name.”

Black Pete grunted out, “Garrett. How’re you going to catch him?”

Him? I wasn’t so sure now. If Wayne walked and Peters was clean, the crowd was so small I’d have to lynch Kaid. But I thought Kaid was too old and feeble to have done all the killer had.

“I don’t have a clue, Sarge. Don’t press me. You people know each other better than I know you. You tell me who it is.”

“Shit. It isn’t anybody. Logically. One way or another you can discard everybody. Except maybe your phantom blonde, that nobody sees but you.”

“I saw her,” Morley said. I looked at him, puzzled. Was he lending moral support?

Hadn’t he said something about seeing her last night? Or was that the other Morley?

I’d forgotten that. The thing that could be somebody else. Probably the spook that the doctor was sure was here.

It didn’t get any easier.

“Your picture,” Morley whispered.

I frowned.

“Get it and find out who she is. Besides a hot tumble.”

Maybe he was right. Maybe. I wanted to say the hell with it for now. We were out of the woods for a while. That draug had been cared for. The killer wasn’t likely to make another move for a while. I hurt everywhere. I just wanted to slither upstairs and finish what I’d started before I’d been interrupted.

But I’d put off seeing Bradon for a few minutes and look what that had cost. Not just Snake but Chain. Not to mention the stable, those paintings, and however many horses had vanished into the sunset because there was no one to round them up.

I got my feet under me. “Peters. Any rain gear handy?”

Morley got up, too. He scrunched over, held his side with his left arm.

“Rain gear? What the hell you need to go outside for?”

“Got to get something while it’s still there.”

He looked at me like he thought I was crazy. Probably right, I thought. “To your left at the end over there, through that arch. The old guest restrooms.” He still wasn’t talking in big gobbling chunks.

Morley and I went to the arch, which was barely five feet wide. A crack of a doorway for this place. It opened on an alcove, eight by eight. There was a door in front of me and one to my left. “Check that one,” I told Morley, and opened the one in front of me.

Mine was the women’s, the only pissoir I’d seen in the house. I hadn’t noticed any plumbing downstairs. Maybe it wasn’t there anymore. The place was dried up, used only for storage.

There were no raincoats.

I went to check on Morley.

His room was the men’s. Surprise, surprise. One wall was all marble that fell to a trough. The flush pipe whence water ran, at eye level, had rusted out. I spied the rain gear but not Morley. “Where are you?”

“Here.” His voice came from beyond a copse of brooms and mops and whatnot in the left-hand rear corner. He’d found another movable panel. He was halfway up the narrow stairway behind it.

“We can check it out later.” I spied a lantern amongst the junk on the marble four-holer. It smelled like it had been used in the modern era. When Morley came down I was getting it lighted.

Morley said, “If there weren’t people hanging around, you’d think the place had been abandoned for twenty years.”

“Yeah.” I shrugged into an oilcloth coat so big it hung long on me. “Let’s get with it.” While Morley tried to find something smaller than a circus tent, I snapped up a few extras to wrap Bradon’s artwork. We put on hats and dashed out into the storm.

Actually, we stumbled. I wasn’t getting any friskier. Neither was Morley. I had to spend most of my energy keeping the lantern from blowing out.

There was a brisk wind blowing, throwing barrels of water around. It came from every direction but up. The thunder banged away. Lightning, over the city, carried on like a battle between hordes of stormwardens. We reached the barn in spite of all.

“Thank heaven we found rain gear,” Morley said. “We might have gotten soaked.”

Sarky bastard. I was wet to the skin. I rooted through the place where I’d squirreled the paintings. “Damn me! Something’s gone right.”

“What?”

“They’re still here.”

“Watch out for a booby trap, then.”

I almost took him seriously. That’s the way my luck runs.

I shook the water off the extra coats. Morley held the lantern and cursed and dodged bats. “Those coats aren’t going to be enough. Let me look around.” He scurried off, leaving me halfway convinced I’d never see him again.

He came back with a couple of heavy tarps. We wrapped the paintings in two bundles. We took one apiece and slogged into the storm. I got soaked all over again. I had mud up to my knees when we reached the house, but the paintings arrived dry.

We shed our gear.

“Guess we better take these up to the suite,” I told Morley. He was looking at the paintings. “What do you think?”

“The man was disturbed.”

“And good, too. That’s her.”

“I’m in love.” He stared at the portrait like he might dive in.

“Let’s admire her upstairs.”

But we had to pass Kaid, Wayne, and Peters to get to the stairway. Black Pete asked, “What’s all that?”

No reason not to tell the truth. “Some of Bradon’s paintings. I saved them from the fire.”

They wanted to see. They hadn’t seen Bradon’s work before. The man never had shown it.

“Yech!” Kaid said after a couple of war scenes. “That’s sick.”

“It’s good,” Wayne said. “That’s how it felt.”

“But it doesn’t look like—”

“I know. It’s how it felt.”

“Man,” Peters said. “He didn’t like Jennifer much, did he?”

Somehow I’d managed to save four portraits, the blonde and three Jennifers. Just as well I hadn’t salvaged any of these guys. They wouldn’t have appreciated them. I’d gotten more than one Jennifer by accident. It had gotten hurried toward the end.

Peters lined the portraits up against the fountain. The third and probably most recent Jennifer I hadn’t seen before. It was the ugliest. Jennifer was radiant yet something horrible about her made you doubt the artist’s sanity.

Kaid said, “He was crazier than we thought. Garrett, don’t ever let Miss Jennifer see these. That would be too cruel.”

“I won’t. I took them by accident more than anything. I was just grabbing. But the blonde, now. I took that one on purpose. That’s the woman I’ve been seeing. Who is she?”

They looked at me, at the painting, at me again. Their studied blandness said they were unsure about my sanity. They thought I’d let my imagination attach itself to the first thing handy.

Peters played it straight. “I don’t know, Garrett. Never seen her before. You men?”

Wayne and Kaid shook their heads. Wayne said, “There’s something familiar about her, though.”

That seemed to cue something in Kaid’s head. He frowned, moved a step closer. I asked, “You know something, Kaid?”

“No. For a second . . . No. Just my imagination.”

I wasn’t going to argue with them till I could produce physical evidence. “Let’s get these tucked away, Morley.”

We started gathering the paintings. Now Peters was frowning at the blonde, something perking in the back of his head. He was a little pale and a whole lot puzzled.

He didn’t say anything, though. We collected the paintings and headed for the stairs.

Maybe intuition nudged me. When I reached the fourth floor I went to the rail. Peters and Kaid had their heads together, yakking away. They kept their voices down but were intense.

Morley’s ears are better than mine. He told me, “Whatever they’re talking about, they’re determined to convince each other it’s impossible.”

“They recognized her?”

“They think she looks like somebody she couldn’t be. I think.”

I didn’t like the sound of that.

36

Morley perched the mystery woman on the mantle in my sitting room, contemplated her intently. I misread his interest. I seldom do that because his interest in the female tribe is definite. “Can’t have her, boy. She’s taken.”

“Be quiet,” he told me. “Sit down and look at the painting.”

He wouldn’t be sharp if it wasn’t important. I planted myself. I stared.

I began to feel like I was part of the scene.

Morley got up and snuffed a few lamps, halving the light in the room. Then he threw the curtains open, apparently so we’d get the full benefit of the storm. He settled and resumed staring.

That woman came more and more to life, grabbed more and more of my being. I felt I could take her hand and pull her out, away from the thing that pursued her.

The storm outside intensified what was going on in the painting’s background. That damned Snake Bradon was a sorcerer. The painting, once you looked at it awhile, was more potent than the swampscape with hanged man. But this one was more subtle.

I could almost hear her begging for help.

Morley muttered, “Damn her. She’s too intense. Got to block her out of there.”

“What?”

“There’s something else there. But the woman pulls your attention away.”

He’d lost me. The rest of the painting was decoration to me. Or arrows pointing out the crucial object.

Morley got paper from my writing table, spent ten minutes using a small knife to trim pieces to cover the blonde. “You damage that thing, I’ll carve you up,” I told him. I had a notion where it ought to be displayed. There was a big bare spot on the wall of my office at home.

“I’d cut my own throat first, Garrett. The man was crazy but he was a genius.”

Curious, Morley calling him crazy without having met him.

Morley killed another lamp. He hung his cutouts over the canvas.

“I’ll be damned.” The painting was almost as intense without the woman. But now the eye could rove.

Morley grunted. “Let your mind go blank. Just let it sink in.”

I tried.

The storm carried on outside. Thunder galloped. Swords of lightning flailed. The flashes played with the flashes in the painting. The shadow seemed to move like a thunderhead boiling. “What?”

It was there for just a second. I couldn’t get it back. I tried too hard.

“Did you see the face?” Morley asked. “In the shadow?”

“Yeah. For a second. I can’t get it back.”

“Neither can I.” He removed the cutouts, settled again. “She’s running from somebody, not something.”

“She’s reaching out. You think Bradon has her reaching for somebody particular?”

“Running from somebody to somebody?” he asked.

“Maybe.”

“Him?”

“Maybe.” I shrugged.

“You? You’re the one who—”

“You said you saw her.”

“I saw somebody. Just a glimpse. The more I stare at this, the more I think it could have been the other one.”

“Jennifer?”

“Yes. They look a lot alike.”

I hadn’t seen that. I tried to see Jennifer in the blonde. “I don’t know. There’s a lot of Stantnor in Jennifer and none in this one.”

I guess I squeaked. He asked, “What?”

“That face in the background. There was a lot of Stantnor in it.”

“Jennifer? Bradon did her bad.”

“I don’t think so. I got the feeling it was male.”

“Around thirty and stark raving mad.”

The lightning had fits outside. I shuddered, jumped up, started lighting lamps. I couldn’t shake the chill. “I’m spooked,” I confessed.

“Yes. The more I look, the creepier it gets.”

The chill stayed with me. I wondered if we were being watched. “Think I’ll start a fire.”

“Whoa! What did you say?”

“I’ll start a fire. I’m freezing my—”

“You’re a genius, Garrett.”

“Nice of you to notice.” What did I genius? It went right by me.

“Fire in the stable. You figured right, too. Not for you at all. For something Bradon had hidden. What did you find hidden? The paintings.” He gestured at the blonde. “The painting.”

“I don’t know—”

“I do. What were the others? Crazy stuff. But people we’ve seen and places in the Cantard.”

So I looked at the painting again.

Morley said, “There’s the key to your killer. That’s why Bradon died. There’s why the stable burned. That’s your killer.” He laughed. It was a crazy noise. Hell. Everything was crazy in this place. “And you slept with her.” He started to say something else, caught himself, reflected. “Oh, man.” He came and put a hand on my shoulder.

He could have slept with a mass murderer and thought nothing of it. Maybe he’d have smiled and cut her throat afterward. A lovable rogue most of the time, but there’s a cold subterranean stream inside him.

He knew how it would hit me before it hit. He was there when I started to rattle.

It wasn’t as bad as I feared, but the idea did shake me. “I’ve got to pace.”

He let me get up and try to walk it off. That didn’t do much good. The whoopee-making noises outside didn’t help. The thunder ripped at my nerves like cats howling at midnight.

Then I recalled promising Jennifer I’d see her later. The old mind fixed on that, telling me I could clean out a whole bird’s nest with one stone.

“Where you going?” Morley demanded.

“Something to do. Promises to keep. Almost forgot.” I got out before he pressed me, sudden as that, not quite sure I was thinking right.

37

I glanced over the rail. Kaid and Wayne were seated on opposite sides of the fountain, not talking. They’d cleaned up Chain. Peters had gone. I wondered why they bothered. Maybe they couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t see me getting much sleep despite exhaustion and hurting everywhere.

I made it to the loft, crossed, slipped down to the third floor without attracting attention. It was a great house for sneaking. I tiptoed to Jennifer’s door. I tapped. She didn’t answer. I shouldn’t have expected her to, as long as it had been. I tried the door. Locked.

Only reasonable. Any fool would have taken that precaution. I tapped again and still got no response.

“So much for that idea.” I started for home.

And stopped. And without understanding why I turned back and went to work on the lock. I had it undone in moments.

Jennifer didn’t like the darkness. Half a dozen lamps burned in a sitting room identical to her father’s. Not knowing the layout of these end suites, I decided the best place to find her would be behind the same door the old man used to make his entrances. I locked the hall door and headed that way.

I don’t know what you’d call the room beyond. It wasn’t a bedroom. It was more a small, informal sitting room with only a few pieces of furniture and one big window facing west. It was gloomy, lighted by a single candle. Jennifer was there, in a chair facing the window. The drapes were open wide. She’d fallen asleep despite the excitement outside. I doubted she’d have heard my knock had she been awake.

Now what, bright boy? Make the wrong move and they’ll turn you into a eunuch.

Hell. It’d been tried before. I shook her shoulder. “Jenny. Wake up.”

She shrieked and jumped and stumbled away and . . . The gods were kind. One of those barrages of thunder absorbed her cry. She recognized me and got herself under control—more or less.

She held her hands over her heart and panted. “You scared me to death. What’re you doing here, Garrett?”

I fibbed a little. “I told you I’d come by. I knocked. You didn’t answer. I got worried. I fiddled the lock and came to see if you were all right. You looked so pale I just reached out to shake your shoulder. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

Did I sound sincere? I poured it on. I do sincere pretty good. Been studying Morley’s technique. She relaxed some, moved a little closer.

“Gods. I hope I didn’t wake the whole house yelling like that.”

I apologized some more. Then it seemed only natural to hug her to comfort her. A minute after that, when she’d stopped shaking so bad, she found a little girl voice and asked, “You’re going to ravish me now, aren’t you?”

For me it was the perfect thing for her to say at the moment. I busted out laughing. It took the built-up pressure out of me. It took almost too much. I had to fight it to control it.

“What’s so damned funny?”

Her feelings were bruised. “No. Jenny. Honey. I’m not laughing at you. I’m laughing at me. Honest. I really am. No. I’m not here to ravish you. The condition I’m in, after today I couldn’t ravish a chipmunk. I’ve been burned, bludgeoned, and kicked half to death. I hurt all over. I’m so tired I could pass out on the spot. And I’m totally upset about Chain. If there’s anything I’d want from a woman now, it would be for her to comfort me, not for me to ravish her.”

You slick talker. Pay attention. Talk like that, it’s eight to five you’ll wind up getting comforted by a vestal virgin. Just be harmless, helpless, and in need of mothering, and pour on the sincere.

Well, what with one thing and another, I talked myself right into something without consciously planning it. Fifteen minutes later we were in her bed. Fifteen minutes after that I was trying hard to stay harmless, helpless, and in need of comfort.

There’s something reassuring about just lying around holding somebody after you’ve been bruised and abused and treated like a wolf treats a fox that isn’t fast on its feet. But there’s also something about being comforted by somebody put together like Jennifer that makes you forget they shoved you through the meat grinder sideways—hide, hooves, and all.

We’d been whispering, mostly just talk, innocent enough but she couldn’t he still. She was relaxed enough now, considering. She moved, seemed startled, asked, “Is that what I think it is?”

Body pressure left no doubt what she meant. “Yeah. Sorry. Can’t help it. Maybe I’d better go.” I didn’t make any move to leave, though. Not me.

“I can’t believe it. No. It’s impossible.”

It wasn’t impossible at all.

For a while I forgot the painting, the storm, all my aches and pains. I even got to sleep some. Though that was more like catnaps between tests of the limits of possibility.

I knew I was going to hate myself in the morning.

It was just my body that hated myself in the morning. It felt about a hundred and two years old. My head was fine, not counting my cold. I kissed Jennifer on the forehead, nose, and chin, headed for my own quarters while it was still early enough that I might not be noticed.

Wayne and Kaid were on duty still. Sort of. Kaid was nodding. Wayne was sprawled on the fountain surround, snoring. Cook was in the kitchen cursing. I heard her all the way to the fourth floor. I wondered what was bothering her. I was sure we’d all know before long, what with her closed-mouth, stoic ways.

I went up, through the loft, down. I glanced across as I started into my hallway. The blonde stared at me from the hall to the General’s suite. I waved feebly. She didn’t respond. “Oh, boy.” I headed for my door.

For a second I thought she’d gotten there before me. Then I realized it was the painting. It seemed so creepy, I turned it to face the wall.

“You have a nice time?”

Morley was in a big overstuffed chair. He looked like he’d been asleep.

“Ghastly.”

“That’s what puts that smug look on your face. I’ll remember that. Get cleaned up. It’s almost time for breakfast.”

Him eager for one of Cook’s breakfasts? “I’ll give it a skip and take a nap instead.”

“You’re working, Garrett. You don’t take time off to nap whenever you feel like it, do you?”

“That’s the beauty of being your own boss.” He was right. More right than he knew, really. I could go get some sleep, sure. And if somebody got killed while I did, I’d be haunted for years. “Yeah. All right.”

Now he looked smug. Bastard. He knew right where to poke me. I went into the dressing room, threw some water on my face, mixed up some lather, hacked and slashed. Morley planted himself in the doorway. He watched the show awhile, then said, “I’d better move on the cook fast. Or you’ll have every woman in the place wrapped up.”

“You’re out of luck. She was my first conquest.”

He snorted.

I said, “I had to move fast because I knew you’d head for her like a moth to a candle.” I wiped my face. “On the other hand, I won’t stand in your way. She’s definitely your type. I’ll sing at your wedding.”

“Don’t think you can provoke me into a battle of wits with an unarmed man.”

“Huh.”

“I know it’s your diet talking. Maybe I ought to talk to the cook about that. Dietary improvements could do your General more good than squadrons of doctors and witches.”

“Got you on the run already?”

“What?”

“Last recourse, old buddy. You start talking about red meat and celery juice and boiled weeds.”

“Boiled weeds? You ever actually buy a meal at my place? I mean, pay for it out of your own pocket?”

I was tired enough to forget how well he does sincere. I made the mistake of offering an honest answer. “I don’t recall doing that. Every time it’s been on the house.” And not that bad, but who was going to admit that?

“And you complain about free meals. You know how much it costs to gather those ‘weeds’? They’re rare. They grow wild. They aren’t cultivated commercially.” He put on a lot of sincere. I wasn’t sure if he was yanking my leg or not. I know it isn’t cheap to eat at his place. But I’d always figured that was part of the ambience. Make his customers think they were buying class.

“We’re getting too serious,” I said, by way of ducking possible issues. “Let’s go see how she’ll poison us today.”

“Not the best choice of words, Garrett, but let’s.”

38

Sometime back a hundred years ago, Cook whumped up one big breakfast and she’d been re-warming leftovers ever since. The same old greasy meats and biscuits and gravy and all that, so heavy it would founder a galleon. Your basic country breakfast. Morley was in pain.

He concentrated on biscuits and muttered, “At least the storm passed.”

It was quiet out. The rain had fallen off to a drizzly mist. The wind had died down. It was getting colder, which I didn’t interpret as a positive omen. I figured it meant the snow would be back.

Jennifer didn’t show, which I didn’t find mysterious and nobody else mentioned, so it must not be unusual. But Wayne wasn’t around either and he wasn’t the kind who missed his meals. “Where’s Wayne?” I asked Peters, who looked groggy, crabby, and like he still hurt plenty.

He gave me the answer I was afraid I’d hear. “He pulled out. Soon as there was enough light, just like he said. Kaid said he had his stuff all packed and at the front door. He was raring to go.”

I looked at Kaid. Kaid looked like I felt. He nodded, which seemed to take all the energy he had. I muttered, “And then there were three.”

Peters said, “And I’m having a hard time talking myself into sticking.”

Cook rumbled, “What are you boys on about now?” I realized she probably hadn’t heard. I told her about Chain. And when I thought about Chain I wished I hadn’t, because Wayne the gravedigger was gone and that meant either Peters or I or both of us would have to hike over to the graveyard and wallow in the mud till we got Art Chain planted. I knew Morley wouldn’t do it. He hadn’t hired on for that, as he’d remind me with a shit-eating grin while he kibbitzed my digging style.

Eight hundred and some thousands apiece now. And all the survivors improbable suspects.

I thought about burning my copy of the will right there. But what good would that do if they didn’t know it was the last copy? Then I had a terrible thought. “Was the will registered?” You can do that to keep your heirs from squabbling. It means filing a copy of the document. If Stantnor’s was registered, then the villain did not have to worry about my copy or about the General having torched his.

They all looked at each other, shrugged.

We’d have to ask the General.

I started to say I wanted to see him, but a racket out front cut me off. It sounded like a cavalry troop arriving.

“What the hell is that?” Kaid muttered. He shoved himself off his stool, started moving like he was forty years older than his seventy-something. Everybody but Cook toddled along behind. Cook didn’t leave her bailiwick for trivia.

We swarmed onto the front porch. “What the hell?” Peters demanded. “Looks like a damned carnival caravan.”

It did. And the mob with the garish coach and wagons boasted every breed you could imagine.

None of the vehicles were pulled by horses or oxen or even elephants, which you sometimes see with a carnival. The teams were all grolls—grolls being half giant, half troll, green, and from twelve to eighteen feet tall when they’re grown. They’re strong enough to tear out trees by their roots—big trees.

A pair of those grolls waved and hollered. Took me a moment. “Doris and Marsha,” I said. “Haven’t seen them for a while.”

A skinny little guy bounced up the steps. I hadn’t seen him for a lot longer. “Dojango Roze. How the hell are you?”

“A little down on my luck, actually.” He grinned. A strange little breed, he claimed he and Doris and Marsha were triplets born of different mothers. I’d given up trying to figure that out.

“What the hell is this, Dojango?” Morley asked. I’ve never been sure but I think Dojango is some distant relative of his.

“Doctor Doom’s medicine show, carnival, and home spirit disposal service, actually. Friend of the Doc said you had a bad spirit needing handling.” He grinned from ear to ear. His brothers Doris and Marsha boomed cheerfully, not giving a damn that I didn’t understand one word of grollish. They and the other grolls and all the oddities with them got to work setting up camp on the front lawn.

I glanced at Peters and Kaid. They just stared. “Morley?” I raised an eyebrow about a foot high. “Your doctor friend’s referral?”

His smile was a little weak around the edges. “Looks like.”

“Hey!” Dojango said, sensing my lack of enthusiasm. “Doc Doom is the real thing, actually. Real ghost tamer. Exorcist. Demonologist. Spirit talker. The works. Even does a little necromancy, actually. But there ain’t much call for those skills, actually. Not when you’re not human. How many of you humans would think of using a nonhuman to call up your uncle Fred so you can find out where he hid the good silver before he croaked? See? So Doc has to make a mark here and a mark there some other way. Peddles nostrums mostly, actually. Hey. Let me go get him, bring him up, let you judge for yourself.” He spun around and headed for the coach, which hadn’t disgorged any passengers yet.

He ran halfway down the steps. I muttered, “I don’t believe this. The old man would foul his drawers if he saw it.”

Morley grunted. His eyes were glazed.

Roze came back. “Oh. Doc Doom is kind of a quirky guy, actually. You got to give him some room and be a little patient. If you know what I mean.”

“I don’t,” I told him. “Better not be too quirky. I’ve got quirky enough right here and no patience left over for more.”

Dojango grinned, managed to leave without using his favorite word again. Actually. He dashed down to that ridiculous coach, which was so brightly painted it would have blinded us on a sunny day. Breeds swarmed around it. A couple got up a giant parasol. Another one brought a set of steps. Somebody else laid out a canvas dingus from those steps to the steps to the house.

Morley and I exchanged glances again.

Dojango opened the coach door and bowed.

Meantime, grolls set up a circus on the lawn.

I asked Morley, “You heard of this guy?”

“Actually, yes.” He smiled. “Word is, he’s the real thing. Like Dojango says.”

“Actually.”

Kaid sputtered and went back into the house.

A figure seven feet tall and maybe six hundred pounds wide descended from the coach. What it was wasn’t immediately obvious. It was wrapped up in so much black cloth, it looked like a walking tent. The tent was covered with mystical symbols in silver. A huge hand came out and made a benevolent gesture to the troops. One of the taller breeds dragged something out of the coach and planted it atop Doctor Doom’s head. It added three feet to his height. Priests should wear something so bizarre and ornate.

He came toward us as though the star of a coronation processional.

“You Doc Doom?” I asked when he arrived. “Give me one good reason why I should take you seriously after that clown show.”

Dojango, bouncing around like a puppy, seemed stricken. “Hey. Garrett. You can’t talk to Doctor Doom that way, actually.”

“I talk to kings and sorcerers that way. Why should I make an exception for a clown? You better pack your tents and get rolling. The nitwit who sent you made a mistake.”

Morley said, “Garrett, don’t get excited. The man is for real, he’s just kind of into drama and maybe has a little bit of a puffed-up notion of his own importance.”

“I’ll say.”

Doom hadn’t spoken yet. He didn’t now. He gestured. A breed beside him, female, about four feet tall who looked like she had a lot of dwarf and ogre in her—she was ugly—said, “The Doctor says he’ll excuse your impertinence this once because you were ignorant of who he is. But now you know—”

“Bye.” I turned. “Sarge, Morley, we got work to do. Sarge, maybe you better see if you can find a horse. We may have to send for the garrison.” There isn’t much law anywhere in Karenta, but guys like the General have access to a little. Somebody irritates them, they can always get a hand or two hundred from the army.

Dojango had a fit. He pursued us into the hall, where he lost the thread of his thoughts as he looked around at the paintings and hardware and bellicose scenes in glass. He mumbled something about, “He’s desperate for work, actually.”

Cook strode onto the scene, as formidable as a war elephant. Now I knew where Kaid had gone. She damned near trampled Roze. I said, “I don’t think we’ll need the army.”

Morley said, “You’re being too hard, Garrett. One more time. The man is the real thing.”

“Yeah. Right.” I went back to the door to watch Cook in action.

The action was over, essentially. She stood in front of the marvelous doctor with hands on ample hips looking like she might breathe fire. He was out of his wonderful hat already and getting rid of the tent.

Like I thought, the guy inside went more stone than I had fingers to count, but I had to revise his tonnage downward. He didn’t go more that four-fifty in his work clothes.

He had some troll in him and three or four other bloods; once you saw him without the costume, you figured maybe he was smart to wear it. He made his little mouthpiece look gorgeous.

“Mr. Garrett. I’ll dispense with the showmanship. As my good friend Dojango has assured you, I am the genuine article.” His voice was down a well’s depth below bass. Somewhere along the line somebody had popped him in the Adam’s apple. That added a growly, scratchy character to his voice and made him hard to understand. He knew that and spoke slowly. “You have a problem with a malign spirit, I’m told. Unless it’s of a class two magnitude or greater, I can deal with it.”

“Huh?” I’m not up on the jargon. I try not to hang around with sorcerers. That can be hazardous to your health.

“Will you reconsider and allow me a preliminary examination of the premises?”

Why not? I’m an easygoing guy when people don’t shuck me. “As long as you knock the horse apples off your boots and promise not to wet on the carpets.”

He was so ugly his expression was hard to read. I don’t think he appreciated my humor, though. I asked, “What do you need from us?”

“Nothing. I brought my own equipment. A guide, perhaps, to show me those places where the spirit most commonly manifests.”

“It doesn’t. Leastwise, not when anyone is looking. The only evidence we have that there is one is the doctor’s opinion.”

“Curious. A spirit of the sort he suspected ought to manifest frequently. Dojango. My kit.”

Morley asked, “Could it appear to be somebody familiar?”

“Explain your question, please.”

I told him about having a Morley in my room who wasn’t.

“Yes. Exactly. If it wanted, it could cause a great deal of confusion that way. Dojango, what are you waiting for?”

Roze scampered off to the Doctor’s coach. Meantime, Doom said, “Perhaps I should apologize for distressing you with my arrival. The sort of people who usually employ me won’t believe I’m real unless they get a show.”

I understood that. Sometimes I have that problem in my business. Potential clients look at me and wonder, especially when they catalog the marks on my face. I have to remind them that they should see the other guys.

Dojango staggered up the steps with four big cases. They probably outweighed him. His face was frozen in a rictus of a grin.

Cook seemed satisfied that everything was under control. She headed into the house. Never said a word to me. My feelings were hurt.

But not much.

Dojango arrived panting like he’d run twenty miles. Doctor Doom said, “Shall we begin?”

39

Once the good doctor stopped clowning, he impressed me as quite professional.

He started at the fountain, about which he made several remarks, suggesting he thought it one of the great sculptures of the modern age. He asked if it might be for sale in the foreseeable future.

Peters and I exchanged glances. Peters was way out at sea, encountering a side of the world about which he’d only heard before. He said, “Unlikely, doctor. Unlikely.”

“A pity. A great pity. I’d love to own it. It would make a wonderful prop.” He shuffled through his cases as Dojango popped them open, took out this and that—and nobody else knew what they were. For all I could tell they had no use at all and were just stuff to impress the peasants.

Three minutes later he said, “A great many traumatic events have occurred in this house.” He looked at something in his hand, drifted to the spot where Chain had made his exit from this vale of tears. The boys had cleaned up good. I guessed Chain was taking his ease in the wellhouse till planting time.

“A man died here recently. Violently.” Doom looked up. “Pushed, I’d guess.”

“On the money,” I admitted. “Maybe an hour after midnight last night.”

He wandered around. “The dead have walked here. Zombies . . . No! Worse. Not under control. Draugs.”

I looked at Morley. “I guess he knows his stuff. Unless he’s got a friend on the inside.”

“You’re suspicious of everything.”

“Occupational hazard.”

The spook hunter spent fifteen minutes just standing by the fountain with his eyes closed, holding some doohickeys to his ears. I’d begun to wonder if we weren’t getting shucked after all when he came back from wherever he’d been. “This is a house of blood. The very stones vibrate with memories of great evils done.” He shuddered, closed his eyes for another three minutes, then turned to me. “You’re the man who needs my help?”

“I’m the guy the General hired to straighten out a mess that only gets more tangled by the minute.”

He nodded. “Tell me what you’ve learned. There have been so many evils done here that it’s impossible to separate them.”

“That’ll take awhile. Why don’t we get comfortable?” I led him to one of the rooms on the first floor west where, I presumed, in better times the business of the estate had been managed. We settled. Peters went off to sweet-talk Cook into providing the next best thing to refreshments in a household where alcohol was banned.

“A twisted place indeed,” Doom said when he learned that. I decided maybe he wasn’t so bad after all.

I told him what I’d learned, which wasn’t that much when you came down to it. Mostly a catalog of crimes.

He asked no questions till I finished. “The spirit seems content to victimize your principal? The other deaths are the work of other hands?”

“Hell, I don’t know. The longer I’m here, the more confused I get. Every time somebody dies or emigrates, the list of suspects gets more improbable.” I explained how I’d had Chain locked in as the villain—till he took his tumble.

He considered. He reflected. He took his time. He was one guy who didn’t get in a hurry. He said, “Yours isn’t my field of expertise, Mr. Garrett, but I would, as a disinterested layman, suggest that you may be following false trails because you began with faulty assumptions.”

“Say what?”

“You think you’re after someone who wants a greater share of the estate. Have you considered another motive? The heirs keep demonstrating a lack of interest in the legacy. Perhaps there’s another cause for murder entirely.”

“Perhaps.” I’m not exactly a dummy. I’d considered that. But I couldn’t come up with anything to connect these people any other way. Only the legacy offered any normal basis for bloodshed. I told him that. “I’m open to suggestions. I’ll tell you I am.”

He did some reflecting. “How separate are your separate investigations?”

I explained it the way I saw it. Morley fretted, thinking my perspective too narrow.

“Good heavens!”

“Huh?”

Doom was staring past my shoulder. I had my back to the doorway. I turned.

Jennifer had appeared.

“Good heavens,” I said.

She looked like death warmed over.

Doom said, “Come here, child. Instantly.”

I got up, put an arm around her waist. She was almost too weak to walk. She hadn’t had strength enough to dress herself properly. “Garrett . . . ” There were tears in her eyes.

That’s all she said. I led her to the seat I’d vacated. The light was better. What it showed me wasn’t. She’d taken on the color the old man showed. “It’s after her,” I croaked. “The spook.”

Doom looked at her a long time before he said, “Yes.”

Morley looked at her, too. Then he looked at me. “Garrett, let’s take a walk. Doc, see what you can do for her. We’ll be back.”

Numb, I didn’t say anything till Morley started leading me upstairs. “What are we doing?”

“That spook’s been gnawing on the old man for a year, right? It never bothered anybody else. Right?”

“Yeah.” We were headed for my suite.

“Something changed that between last night and this morning.”

We reached the fourth floor, me puffing and renewing my vow to get in shape. “I guess. But what?”

He unlocked the door with my key, held it for me. Once we were inside, he took down the portrait of my mystery blonde. “Where’d you spend the night, Garrett?”

I looked at her. I looked at him. I recalled seeing her as I wandered home. I said, “Oh.” That’s all I had to say. It was a lot to swallow.

Morley went back into the hall, me tagging along. He said, “Time to get an opinion on this from everyone.”

“Morley, this isn’t possible.”

“Maybe not. I hope not.” He has no mercy sometimes. His tone was a hot flensing knife.

We returned to the room where Doom and Jennifer were. Doom was disturbed. Jennifer looked a lot better, though. He’d done something for her. She had strength and attention enough now to put herself into better array. Morley placed the portrait on a table nearby, face down. “Peters. Would you get everyone in here? Garrett has something to show everybody.”

Peters had been hovering over Jennifer. He looked at me. I said, “Please?”

“The General, too?”

“We can do without him for the moment.”

He was gone longer than I expected. I found out why when he came back. “Cook and Kaid were up feeding the General. Garrett, he’s damned near gone. Can’t even sit up. Can’t talk. It’s like he’s had a stroke. Or had all but the last ounce of life sucked out.”

Doom listened but said nothing.

“How soon will they be here?”

“Soon as they get him cleaned up. He fouled his bed. He’s never done that before. He always got hold of Kaid or Dellwood. Most times he had enough strength to make it to his chamberpot.”

After that there wasn’t much to say. I watched Doom fuss over Jennifer and Jennifer continue to improve. I tried not to dwell on what Morley had said without saying it in so many words. There are things you just don’t want to believe.

Kaid and Cook came in, Cook grumbling steadily about the interruptions in her schedule. Morley said, “Sit down, please. Garrett?”

I knew what I had to do. I didn’t want to, for some reason that seemed almost outside me. But Garrett’s got willpower. I looked at Jennifer. Too bad Garrett don’t have a little more won’t power.

“Snake Bradon was a remarkable artist but it seems he never showed his work. Which is a damned sin. He was able to capture the essence of what it felt like in the Cantard. He painted people, too. With a very skewed eye. This is one of his portraits. I managed to save it from the stable fire. It could be the key to everything. I want you all to look at it and tell me about it.”

Morley brought a lamp closer so there’d be more light. I lifted the painting.

Damn me if Jennifer didn’t let out a squeak and faint. And Cook, who hadn’t deigned to seat herself, collapsed a moment later.

“Hell of an impact,” I said.

Doc Doom stared at the blonde. He got the look Morley had last night. He shook himself loose, said, “Lay it down again, please.” Once I had, he said, “The man who painted that had one eye in another world.”

“He’s got both of them there now. He was murdered night before last.”

He waved that off. It was irrelevant.

Morley asked, “You see what was in the background?”

“Better than anyone with an untrained eye, I suspect. That painting tells a whole story. An ugly story.”

“Yeah?” I said. “What is it?”

“Who was the woman?”

“That’s what I’ve been trying to find out since I got here. Nobody but me ever sees her. The rest of these people say she doesn’t exist.”

“She exists. I’m surprised you’re sensitive . . . No. I did say she’d manifest frequently. Sometimes they will attach themselves to a disinterested party, gradually trying to justify themselves before an impartial court.”

“Huh?”

Morley said, “I get it. I was wrong, Garrett. She’s not the killer. She’s your ghost. She didn’t need secret passages to get in and out.”

“Morley! Morley. You know damned well that’s impossible. I told you about . . . ” Some sense wormed through my confusion. There was a crowd here. Was I going to be dumb enough to tell them all I’d fooled around with a spook?

Was I dumb enough to believe it myself?

“She’s the haunt,” Doom agreed. “There’s no doubt. That painting explains everything. She was murdered. And it was the culmination of a betrayal so immense, so foul, that she stayed here.”

I had it. “Stantnor killed her. His first wife. The one he got rid of. Supposedly he bought her off and sent her away. He murdered her instead. Maybe there is a body in the cellar, Morley.”

“No.”

“Huh?”

That was Cook, getting up off the floor. “That’s Missus Eleanor, Garrett.”

“Jennifer’s mother?”

“Yes.” She moved to the table. She lifted the painting. She stared. I was sure she saw everything Snake Bradon put there, maybe stuff Morley and I missed. “So. He did it hisself. He’s lived a lie all these years because he can’t give up that alibi. It wasn’t no fumble-fingered doctor at all. That lousy bastard.”

“Wait a minute. Just wait a damned minute—”

“The story is there, Mr. Garrett,” Doom said. “She was tortured and murdered. By an insane man.”

“Why?” My voice was in what you’d call the plaintive range. I wasn’t calming down any. I couldn’t get last night out of my head. That hadn’t been any spook . . . Well, if it was, it was the warmest-bodied, friskiest, most solid spook there ever was. “Doc, I need to talk to you in private. It’s critical.”

We went into the hallway. I told him. He went into one of his reflections. When he came out a week later, he said, “It begins to make sense. And the child? Jennifer? Did you sleep with her, too?”

Well, hell. They say confession is good for the soul. “Yes. But it was kind of her idea. . . . ” Stop making excuses, Garrett.

He smiled. It wasn’t a salacious grin; it was a eureka kind of grin. “It falls together. The old man, your principal, whose life she’s been leeching slowly as she sets his feet upon the path to hell, is drained this morning. She’d have had to do that to assume solid form with you. Then the other—her own daughter?—wounds her by taking you to her bed. You, the focus she’s chosen to justify. You’ve been tainted. That has to be punished.” He got reflective again.

“That’s crazy.”

“We’re not dealing with sane people. Living or dead. I thought you understood that.”

“Knowing it and knowing it are two different things.”

“We have to talk to the troll woman. It would be wise to know the circumstances of those days as well as possible before we take steps. This isn’t a feeble haunt.”

We went back inside. Doom asked Cook, “What reason would General Stantnor have had for doing what he did? From what Mr. Garrett tells me, she was frightened of everything, had almost no will of her own. It would take great evils to animate her to the point where we’d have the situation that exists here now.”

“I don’t tell no stories—”

“Cook. Can it!” I snapped. “We have the General nailed here. He murdered Eleanor, evidently in extremely traumatic fashion. Now she’s getting even. That doesn’t bother me too much. I kind of like the idea of retribution. But now she’s started on Jennifer. I don’t like that. So how about you just puke up some straight answers?”

Cook looked at Jennifer, who hadn’t yet recovered.

“I kind of hinted at it but I guess not strong enough. The General . . . Well, he was obsessed with Missus Eleanor. Like I told you. But that never stopped him from rabbiting around hisself, tumbling every wench who’d hold still while he threw her on her back. He wasn’t discreet about it, neither. Missus Eleanor, naive as she was, figured it out. I can’t tell you what she felt for him. She wasn’t never one to talk or show much. But she had to be his wife. She didn’t have nowhere to go. Her parents was dead. The king was out to get her.

“She was hurt bad by the way he done. Real bad. Maybe, because she was the way she was, lots more hurt than a deceived wife ought to be. Anyway, she told him if he didn’t straighten up, she’d see if what was good for the gander was good for the goose. She wouldn’t never have done it. Not in a million years. She didn’t have the nerve. But that didn’t make him no never mind. He thought everybody worked inside like he did. He beat her half to death. Maybe would’ve killed her if I hadn’t of got between them. Anyway, he just went crazy after that. Poor child. Only time she ever stood up to him. . . . ”

I wanted to tell her to make the long story short, but it might not be smart to interrupt while she was puking her guts.

“Well, the poor child was pregnant with Miss Jennifer. She didn’t know it yet. Naive child. Once she did figure it out, it was a day too late. I like to pounded his head for him but he wouldn’t believe he was its dad. Not till she was gone. Him thinking that poor child was as loose as him! With who? I asked him. Was there anybody around the house? Hell, no. Not but him. And the child never went outdoors. Half the time she didn’t even come out of her room. But try to convince a fool with logic.

“He put her through hell. Pure hell. Tormented her. Tortured her, I think. She had bruises all over. Trying to get her to tell him the name. I done what I could. That wasn’t never enough. Only made him worse when I wasn’t looking. And it got worse when the old General passed.” She looked at me. There were tears in her eyes the size of larks’ eggs. “I swear, though, I never thought he killed her. I never believed that even when there was some whispers. If I’d of known it then, I’d of plucked off his fingers and toes and arms like plucking feathers off a chicken. How could he of killed her?”

“I don’t know, Cook. But I’m going to ask.” I looked at Doctor Doom.

He asked, “You intend to confront him?”

“Oh, yes. I sure do.” I grinned like a werewolf. “He hired me to unravel his troubles no matter how much he didn’t like what he learned. I’m going to give him apoplexy.”

“Take it easy,” Morley said. “Don’t get so upset you can’t think straight.”

Good advice. I’ve been known to gallop around like a beheaded chicken when I’m excited, doing more damage to myself than to the bad guys. “I’ve got it under control.” I glanced at Jennifer. She’d begun to recover while Cook was talking. She looked a little goofy, still, as she stared at the portrait of her mother. She seemed amazed and puzzled. She mumbled, “That’s my mother. That’s the woman in the painting in father’s bedroom.”

I looked at Peters. “Why didn’t you tell me that last night?”

“I didn’t believe it. I guessed, but this painting doesn’t look anything like that one. I thought I had to be wrong. That it was just a coincidence. Snake never saw her, anyway.”

Cook said, “That’s not true.”

“That’s right,” I said. “He came from the estate, didn’t he? I should have thought of that. Did he know her at all?”

Cook shook her head. “He never came in the house even back then. She never went out. But he would of seen her from a distance.”

Peters just shook his head. “I didn’t believe it.”

I recalled him and Kaid arguing after Morley and I left. Now I knew why. They’d been trying to make up their minds. “What do we do about the ghost, Doctor?” At the moment I was on her side, despite what she’d done to Jennifer.

Not hard to understand. Last night she’d added adultery to the punishments visited upon Stantnor, twenty years after he’d convicted her. Then Jennifer and I had . . . But why shouldn’t she consider Jennifer my victim, the way she’d been Stantnor’s? Was there more to it than I knew? I supposed Doom could explain but I couldn’t ask.

I shrugged. Go try to unravel motives and you’ll drive yourself crazy. In my line you’re better off dealing with results. That’s much more straightforward.

Doom said, “She has to be laid to rest. Her staying here and walking the night . . . That’s far more cruel. That’s more punishment that’s undeserved. She needs peace.” He paused, apparently expecting comment. When he got none, he added, “It’s not my place to be judgmental. I suspect the man who killed her deserves all he’s gotten and more. But my own ethics don’t let me let the victimization go on.”

He was starting to look like a right guy despite his clown show. Most of the time that’s the code I follow myself. Most of the time. I’ve been known to get involved and consequently stumble into some home-grown justice sometimes. “I agree. Mostly. What next?”

Doom worked his ugly face into a smile. “I’m going to work a constraint on the shade that will keep it from draining any more substance off the living. The principal will begin to recover immediately. Once he regains some strength—this is just a suggestion—I’d like to call her up to confront him. A direct confrontation will leave her less reluctant to go to her rest, I think. And I have a feeling that an exorcism against a hostile shade would be very difficult here.”

“Yeah.” I reckoned he knew what he was talking about. And a confrontation sounded good to me.

“You can’t do that,” Jennifer protested. “That might kill him. He might have a stroke.”

Nobody else much cared if he did. At the moment there was very little love for Stantnor around that place. Cook looked like she was considering ways she could help him across to the other shore. She’d raised him like her own but she was less than proud of him.

She said, “I got to get back to work. Lunch is going to be late as it is.” She stomped out.

“Keep an eye on her, Sarge,” I suggested. “She’s pretty upset.”

“Right.”

40

Doom didnt need help doing his constraint thing. In fact, he wanted to be alone. “There are always risks in these things. I have a tendency to underestimate ghosts. It would be safer for everybody if you stayed away till I finish.”

I said, “You heard him.”

The party broke up. Nobody said much to anybody else. There was a lot of thinking going on.

Peters went to the kitchen to ride herd on Cook. Kaid went up to take care of the old man, probably with severely mixed feelings. I had them. It was hard to reconcile the General Stantnor of the Cantard War with the vicious monster we’d uncovered here.

Morley went outside to talk about old times with Dojango and his big green brothers. I took Jennifer up to her suite and put her back to bed, alone, to rest. She was badly shaken, seemed to want to curl up and make the world go away.

I didn’t blame her. I’d be the same way if I found out my father murdered my mother.

I didn’t tell her why she was in such bad shape physically. She had enough troubles. And I still wasn’t sure I could accept that myself.

Nothing much to do till Doom was ready to go. I put my coat on and walked out to the Stantnor graveyard. I stared at Eleanor’s marker awhile, trying to make peace with myself. It didn’t work. I noticed a shovel leaning against the fence. Wayne had left it behind, as though he’d known there would be more graves to dig and why bother lugging tools back and forth? I found a spot and started digging, trying to lose myself preparing Chain’s resting place.

That didn’t work very well.

It especially didn’t work when, after I was about three feet down, I noticed Eleanor by her tombstone, watching me. I stopped, tried to read something from features that were none too clear in daylight.

She’d been pretty substantial last night—because she’d sucked so much life out of Stantnor. Had she taken on substance at other times, to attack him by eliminating his servants? A ghost could make murder put of even apparently accidental deaths, by maddening a bull or maybe causing heart attacks. “I’m sorry, Eleanor. I never meant to hurt you.”

She didn’t say anything. She never did, except that once, when she found me outside Peters’s room.

She seemed to gain substance. What was taking Doom so long? Was she giving him more trouble than he’d expected? I tried to think about that, the grave I was digging, lunch, the killer still to be caught, anything but the sad, futile, brief life this woman had lived.

It didn’t work.

I sat on the edge of the grave, in the muck, and cried for her.

Then she was sitting opposite me wearing that look of concern, the same one she’d worn when she’d found me hurt. She didn’t have enough substance not to be transparent. I told her, “I wish it could have been different for you. I wish you could’ve lived in my time. Or I in yours.” And I meant it.

She reached out. Her touch was like the impact of falling swansdown. She smiled a weak, sad, forgiving smile. I tried to smile back but I couldn’t.

There are evils in this world. It’s the nature of things that there are, though it’s a struggle accepting that. Because what Eleanor Stantnor had suffered, through no fault of her own, was an evil beyond ordinary evils. It was the kind of evil that goes beyond Man and rests squarely on the shoulders of the gods. It was the kind of evil that had left me an essentially godless man. I can’t give allegiance to sky-beasts who’d let things like that happen to the undeserving.

General Stantnor would suffer in turn but the guilt wasn’t all his. Nor did it belong to Eleanor’s parents. Her mother had tried to protect her. Nor did it belong to the world as a whole. If there are gods at all, they deserved equal pain.

I looked up. Doom must have been finishing up, maybe getting an edge because she was distracted by me. She had little substance left. But she smiled as she faded. At me. Maybe the guy who had been best to her, ever. And you can guess how little that made me feel. I said, “Be at peace, Eleanor.”

Then she was gone.

I dug some more, in a fury, like I was going to open a gate to hell and shove all the evils of the world down that hole. When I had a grave a foot deeper than necessary I came to my senses, sort of. I hoisted myself out and headed for the house. I had so much mud on me I feared somebody might mistake me for a draug.

41

I stopped and chatted with Dojango and the boys but my heart wasn’t in it. I gave up after five minutes and headed for the house. Morley watched me go, worried. About the time I reached the head of the steps he said something to Dojango, trotted after me. Dojango sighed one of those sighs I recalled meant he felt immensely put upon, hitched up his pants, and started running down the drive.

What the hell?

I went inside. As I passed the dead Stantnors I told them what I thought of them and their ways and especially the last of their line. Morley caught up when I was halfway through. “Are you all right, Garrett?”

“No. I’m feeling about as bleak as I can and still be breathing. But I’ll be all right. Just frustration over all the mindless wickedness in the world. I’ll come back.”

“Oh. Pure essence of Garrett. Wishing he was triplets so he could straighten up three times as many messes.”

I smiled feebly. “Something like that.”

“You can’t take it all on your own shoulders.”

You can’t, no. But it’s a hard lesson to learn. And knowing that doesn’t keep it from getting to you.

A tremendous metallic crash came from the main hall, punctuated by a high-pitched scream like a rabbit’s death cry. We charged through the doorway, bouncing off one another.

Kaid lay six feet from where Chain had died, smashed by a suit of armor. He wasn’t dead. Not yet. He made me think of a smashed bug. His limbs still moved.

They stopped before we got the armor off him. The light went out of his eyes as I knelt beside him.

“And then there was one,” Morley whispered.

“And I know which one, now.” I hated myself. I should have known sooner. It was there to be had. Doctor Doom had been right. I’d looked at it from the wrong angle all along. But we all miss what we don’t want to see. I’d just concentrated way too much on motive, blinded by the one motive I could see. Sometimes the motive doesn’t make sense to anybody who isn’t crazy.

“Yeah.” Morley had it, too. Pretty obvious right now. But he didn’t mention it. He said, “Can’t do anything for him. Can’t do anything about it this minute. You go get yourself cleaned up.”

“Where’s the point? I’ve got to dig another grave.”

“That can wait. You need to get clean. I’ll keep an eye on things.”

Maybe he was right. Maybe he knew me too damned well. A bath probably wouldn’t help, but it would be symbolic. I went to the kitchen. Cook and Peters had lunch almost ready. They hadn’t heard the crash, amazingly. I didn’t tell them what had happened. I just swiped all the hot water and headed for my suite. They didn’t ask questions. I guess I looked too grim.

I didn’t feel any better when I came back down, clean and changed. Some things won’t wash off. “Anything?” I asked Morley.

He shook his head. “Except Doom wants to see you.”

I went to the room where I’d left the Doctor. He had heard but still was startled when he looked at me. “You look bad.”

I told him. He said, “I suspected it. I’ve done everything I can here, till we bring her up to face her husband.”

I told him about my parting with Eleanor. He was a kind soul under that ugly exterior. “I know how you feel. I’ve been there a few times. Your business, mine, they have their painful sides. You’ll get another chance to say good-bye.”

“Let’s do it.”

“Not yet. You’re not ready. You need to calm down. Your state is too emotional right now.”

I started to argue.

“I don’t tell you your business. You don’t tell me mine. I’m not thinking about you. We can’t operate properly if there’s too much extraneous emotion. There’ll be plenty involving the key characters.”

He was right. I need to learn to separate myself more from my work. “All right. I’ll get myself under control.”

Morley stuck his head in. “Lunch. You’d better take time to have some, Garrett.”

Great. Everybody was looking out for Garrett’s mental welfare. I wanted to scream and holler and carry on. I said, “I’ll be right there.”

I guess I looked a little less ferocious now. Black Pete watched me gobble whatever it was I wasn’t seeing or tasting. He asked, “Did something happen?”

“Yeah. Something did. A suit of armor jumped off the fourth floor and squashed Kaid. Dead.”

“Huh?” He frowned. He looked at Cook. She looked at him. It took them maybe five seconds each. Then Cook started crying quietly.

I told them, “Soon as we’re done here, we’re going up to see the old man. We’ll wrap it up.”

Peters said, “It’s almost not worth the trouble anymore. And I’m almost sorry I ever came looking for you.”

“I’m sure sorry you did.” I finished stuffing my face, never having tasted a bite. Nobody else was in as big a hurry. Morley watched me like he was afraid I was going to blow. I told him, “I’ve got it under control. Iceberg Garrett. Cucumber Garrett.” I’d turned off everything inside. But I didn’t look it outside yet. Like the heat going out of a corpse, it would take awhile for the fury and frustration to radiate away.

They ate slower and slower, like kids knowing they were going to get taken to the woodshed after supper. I told Morley, “I’m going up to the room. Be back in a minute.” I’d forgotten something, one of Snake’s paintings.

When I returned, everybody was done eating. Doctor Doom was there with his tools, Snake’s masterpiece under his arm. He was ready to go. He checked everybody over, seemed satisfied with my emotional control. He asked me, “You want to get the girl?”

“Sure. Morley, you carry this.”

We trooped across the hall, past Kaid, averting our eyes. We climbed stairs. I broke away at the third floor and went to Jennifer’s room. The door was locked but I had my skeleton key this time. I went through the big room into the sitting room where I’d found her during the night. She was there again, in the same chair, facing the same window. She was asleep. Her face was as untroubled as a baby’s.

“Wake up, Jennifer.” I shook her shoulder. She jumped.

“What?” She calmed down quickly. “What?” again.

“We’re going up to see your father. Come on.”

“I don’t want to go. You’re going to . . . It’ll kill him. I don’t want to be there. I couldn’t handle it.”

“I think you can. And you have to be there. Things won’t work out unless you are.” I took hold of her hand, led her. She hung back, making me pull her, but she didn’t fight me.

The rest were in Stantnor’s sitting room, waiting. As soon as Jennifer and I arrived, Peters pushed on. The next room was a private sitting room like the one in Jennifer’s suite. We trudged through into the bedroom.

42

The old man looked like a mummy that hadn’t gotten the word and kept on breathing. His eyes were closed and his mouth was open. Some kind of slime bubbled out and dribbled down his cheek. Every third breath sounded like a death rattle.

We got to work. I collected paintings. Morley planted himself beside the door. Peters wakened the General and sat him up. Cook started feeding the fire.

The old man looked like hell but his eyes were bright when they focused. His mind hadn’t deserted him. He saw how grim everybody looked, knew I’d come with my final report.

I told him, “No point you wasting strength talking, General. Or arguing. It’s final report time. Won’t take long but I warn you, it’s worse than you dreamed. I won’t make recommendations. I’ll give it to you and you can do what you want with it.”

His eyes sparked angrily.

I said, “The man you don’t recognize is Doctor Doom, a specialist in paranormal activities. He’s been a big help. You don’t see Wayne because he quit. He left this morning. Chain and Kaid aren’t here because they were taken suddenly dead. Like Hawkes and Bradon. By the same hand. Doctor.”

Doom started doing his part. I gave him a little time to get rolling. Lips tightened into a colorless prune, Stantnor watched. Only his eyes moved. They weren’t filled with gratitude when they turned my way. There was something behind the anger in them, too. He was worried.

I told him, “First we’ll talk about who’s been trying to kill you.”

Doom let out a howl. Everybody jumped. A flash filled the room. I’m no pro but that didn’t feel right. “You all right?” I asked.

He gasped, “It’s fighting me. But I’ll get it here. Stay out of my way and don’t bother me.”

It took him a few minutes more.

Eleanor materialized at the foot of Stantnor’s bed. But not as Eleanor. Not right away. First she did a good Snake Bradon, then a less credible Cutter Hawkes before surrendering to Doom’s will. I compared her to the portrait they said Stantnor stared at all the time. It didn’t look much like her and nothing like the woman in Bradon’s painting.

Stantnor’s eyes got huge. He sat up straight. “No!” he squeaked. He threw up an arm to shield his eyes. “No! Get her away!” He started whimpering like a whipped child. “Get her out of here!”

“You said my job was to make you face the truth no matter how unpleasant that truth might be, General. One truth I’ve uncovered is this. I’m going to enjoy making you face it. The woman you tortured and murdered—”

Jennifer burst out, “He killed her? My mother? It wasn’t a doctor?” She staggered.

“Keep her under control, Morley.” Morley left the door, moved to support her. She started blubbering. Words dribbled out but none of them made sense.

Stantnor sputtered like he was going to run a bluff. Spittle ran down his chin. He couldn’t talk. He was too rattled. He looked like he might have the stroke Jennifer had predicted.

I faced Eleanor. “Go now. Rest. You’ve done enough. It doesn’t become you. Don’t darken your soul any more.” Our eyes locked. We stared at one another till the others grew restless. I said, “Please?” And wasn’t quite sure what I was pleading for.

“She’ll rest easy, Mr. Garrett,” Doom said, gently. “That’s a promise.”

“Turn her loose, then. She doesn’t need . . . ” I shut my mouth before I said something that might cause me more trouble than I could handle. I closed my eyes, got myself under control. When I opened them Eleanor was little more than a wraith.

She smiled for me. Good-bye.

“Good-bye.”

I took another minute before I faced the old man. He was gasping and wheezing but less distressed. “I brought along a little something for you to remember her by, General. You’ll love it.” I took down the junk portrait of Eleanor, flipped it away, replaced it with Bradon’s masterpiece. “Isn’t that better?”

Stantnor stared at it. And the longer he stared the more terrified he became.

He screamed.

I looked at the portrait.

I damned near screamed.

I can’t tell you what it was. It hadn’t changed in any obvious way but it had changed. It told Eleanor’s story. You couldn’t look at it and not be crushed by her pain and her fear of the thing that pursued her, that mad shadow that wore the face of a young Stantnor.

I tore my gaze away just before Doom did it for me. He told me, “You still have work to do.” His voice was soft and calm. It reached way down inside me, like the Dead Man’s can, and gentled that part of me about to stumble over the brink.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“I want him to know he has to spend the rest of his life looking at that.”

“Not now. Let’s go on.”

“You’re right. Of course. Peters, get his attention away from the painting for a minute.”

Peters turned the old man’s head. I watched madness fade from Stantnor’s eyes . . . No, it wasn’t madness. Not exactly. He’d just been focused on something far away, that only he could see. On his own vision of hell. He was back now. For a few minutes, at least.

“I have another present for you,” I told him. “You’ll like this one, too.” To make sure he paid attention I turned Eleanor’s portrait to the wall. I replaced it with Snake’s last portrait of Jennifer. “Your lovely daughter, so like her father.”

Jennifer screamed. She threw herself forward. Morley caught her in a painful comealong. She didn’t notice the pain.

Cook stopped feeding the fire, elbowed Morley aside, took Jennifer into her arms, took the knife away from her, controlled her, held her, wept over her, murmured, “My baby, my baby. My poor sick baby.” Nobody else said anything. Everybody knew. Even the General knew.

“There’s why your stable burned. That painting. She sat for Bradon several times. But Snake Bradon had an eye that could see the true soul. Which is probably why he retreated from the world. A man with his eye would see a lot of awful truths.

“I look for truth but this time I didn’t see it soon enough. Maybe I didn’t want to. Like so many of the darkest evils, this one came in a beautiful package. Maybe the painting of Eleanor preoccupied me too much. Maybe I should have studied this one more closely.”

Stantnor interrupted.

“Eight murders, General. Your baby killed eight mostly good men. Four she lured to the swamp on the Melchior place.” Once I’d accepted Jennifer as the villain the pieces had fallen together. “Took a while but I finally figured what they had in common. They were all chasers. She pretended she was catchable. She got them out there and killed them and dropped them in. That got her past the stumbling block I came up against whenever I wondered if she might be the killer. How did she move the bodies? I missed the obvious answer, that she got them to move themselves. The heaviest work she ever did was shove Chain off the fourth-floor balcony and drop a suit of armor on Kaid.

“Maybe I was slow because the murders weren’t the kind you associate with women. I just didn’t face the fact that in a house full of Marines everybody might think like Marines and be straightforward and bloody. Who’d picture a woman being daring enough to take on a trained commando with a Kef sidhe strangler’s cord?”

I looked at Jennifer, thought of our stroll to the graveyard. She’d planned to kill me out there, I knew now. I’d offered her an unexpected moment of kindness. That had saved my life and had cost her her chance to get away with everything.

“I know who and how. But I sure as hell don’t understand why.”

She cracked. She laughed and wept and talked a yard a second and never made a lick of sense. It seemed to have to do with a fear that, if there were any heirs but her and Cook, parts of the estate would get sold off and once it was dismembered she’d be forced to leave for that deadly world she’d visited only once, when she was fourteen.

I was wrong about one thing. She hadn’t committed eight murders. She’d committed eleven. She’d done in the three men whose deaths had seemed natural or accidental. She admitted it. She bragged about it. She laughed because she’d made fools of everybody till now.

Stantnor stared at her the whole time, aghast. I knew what he was thinking. What had he done to deserve this?

I started to tell him.

“Garrett!” Morley took hold of my arm.

“What?”

“It’s time to go. The job’s done.”

Doom had gone already, his part complete, Eleanor laid to rest. Cook was trying to comfort and control Jennifer and to work out some separate peace with herself. The girl wasn’t the daughter of her flesh, but . . . Stantnor had become fixated on his daughter’s portrait, seeing deeper than anyone but Bradon had. Maybe seeing the hand he’d had in creating a monster. I had no pity for him. I did try to find it. It just wasn’t there.

Then he had one of his fits.

This one went on and on and on.

“Garrett. It’s time to go.”

The old man was dying. Rough. Morley didn’t want to stay for the show.

Peters just stood there, numb, doing nothing. He didn’t know what to do. I did pity him.

I shook off the hold emotion had on me. I told Morley, “Stantnor owes me. I spent my whole fee and then some getting him his answers. It don’t look like he’ll hang around to be billed.”

He looked at me weird. That kind of cold remark wasn’t in character. “Don’t,” he said, though he had no idea what I was going to do. “Let’s just go. Forget it. I won’t charge you for my time.”

“No.” I snagged the painting of Eleanor. “My fee. An original Bradon.” The General didn’t argue. He was busy dying. I looked at Peters. He just shrugged. He didn’t care.

Morley snapped, “Garrett!” He was sure I was going to do something I’d regret.

“Wait a damned minute!” I still had a responsibility here. “Cook, what’re you going to do?”

She looked at me like I’d asked the dumbest question possible. “What I always done, boy. Look after the place.”

“Get hold of me if I can do anything.” Then I followed Morley. I didn’t think another thought about the old man. If there’d been a doctor outside who could have saved him, I doubt it would have occurred to me to mention his distress.

Peters was at the vestibule door when Morley and I got there, carrying paintings and my stuff. He was staring at the great hall the way I’d stared at Bradon’s painting of the swamp and hanged man. He had a shovel in one hand. He had graves to dig. I wondered if anybody would bother giving Stantnor a marker. He said, “I don’t think I can say thanks, Garrett. You came when I called, but I don’t think I’d have visited you if I’d known—”

“I wouldn’t have come if I’d known. We’re even. What’re you going to do?”

“Bury the dead, then go somewhere. Maybe back into the corps. They’ll need veterans with Mooncalled running amok. And it’s all I know, anyway.”

“Yeah. Good luck. See you again someday, Sarge.”

“Sure.” We both knew we’d never see one another again.

A terrible scream came from upstairs. It went on and on till it seemed no human throat could have produced it. We all looked up. Peters said, “I guess he’s dead.” He said it with a complete lack of passion.

The scream came again. Now it was filled with mad rage. Cook boomed, “Miss Jenny, you come back here!”

The girl had cracked completely. She flew out of the fourth-floor hallway carrying a dagger, screaming. Shocked, I realized she was yelling my name.

“Get moving, Garrett,” Morley said. He’d seen berserkers before. Even a ninety-five-pound woman could tear me apart.

She was so far out of her mind, she didn’t know where she was. Realization hit her too late. She hit the balcony rail full speed.

The heroic knight caught her in his lap. Broken, she dribbled down off him, wound up at one of the dragon’s feet. She looked like the monster’s prey. The hero had come to her rescue moments too late.

But this hero had been way too late to save anybody.

I turned and walked. Morley stayed behind me, just in case I did some damnfool thing like try to go back.

Morley and I didn’t talk much on the way home. Once I muttered something about finding another line of work, and he just told me not to be a damned fool. I asked if he’d filled his pockets while he was there, or planned to drop back in some midnight. Usually if I ask something like that he just looks at me like he hasn’t got the faintest idea what I’m talking about.

“I wouldn’t take anything out of that place if you paid me, Garrett. Not if you begged me. There’s a darkness in every stone, every thing, in there.”

We didn’t talk again till we were coming up Macunado Street toward my house. Then he said, “Go in there and get roaring drunk. Falling down, puking drunk. Get the poison out.”

“That’s the best idea you’ve had in years.”

43

Dean let me in. He looked older and leaner, though it’d been only a few days. “Mr. Garrett. We were concerned, not hearing from you for so long.”

“We?” I grumbled. He was going to fuss over me.

“Him.” He jerked his head toward the Dead Man’s room. “He’s been awake since you left. Expecting you to ask for help.”

“I handled this one alone.” Boy, did I handle it.

“Oh.” He’d gotten the sense of my mood. “Guess I’d better draw one.”

“I might drink a whole barrel.”

“That bad?”

“Worse. Find me a hammer, too.” I eased into my office, checked the spot where I meant to hang Eleanor.

Dean went. He moved with a swiftness I should remember next time he went at his customary snail’s pace. He was back with a beer, a hammer, and a cup of nails in less than a minute. I drained the beer mug. “More.”

“I’ll start a meal, too. You look like you could use one.”

Old sneak. Going to get something on my stomach before I started my serious drinking. “I did miss your cooking where I was.” I drove a nail into the wall. Dean brought beery reinforcements before I unwrapped Eleanor. This time he brought a pitcher as well as a mug.

I unwrapped the lady and hung her, stepped back.

It wasn’t the same picture.

Well, yes, it was. But something had changed. The intensity, the passion, the horror weren’t there. But it looked the same. Except Eleanor seemed to be smiling. She seemed to be running to something instead of from something.

No. It was the same. Nothing had changed but me. I turned my back on it. Snake Bradon hadn’t been that great a painter.

I glanced over my shoulder. Eleanor smiled at me.

I downed another mug.

Dean scurried off to get something cooking before I downed enough to pass out.

The Dead Man dragged me into his room almost against my will and dragged the story out of me. He didn’t criticize, which was unusual. We didn’t get into an argument, despite my best efforts. Instead of climbing all over me for my mistakes, for not having recognized that Jennifer was crazy and a killer earlier than I had, he made thoughtful sounds in my mind. When I finished he meandered off on an extended review of the latest news from the Cantard.

I got interested despite myself.

Glory Mooncalled had attacked Full Harbor. He’d postured and threatened too much. He’d had to prove he wasn’t all wind. He’d done his damnedest, launching night attacks from the sea and air, using Cantard creatures. He’d tried to capture the city gates so he could get his ground troops inside. And he’d gotten his ass whipped. Just as I’d predicted.

“There goes the myth of his invincibility,” I told the Dead Man.

He responded with a huge mental chuckle. Not at all. Now they will chase after him, to finish him off. Into his country.

“Oh.”

So. If he whipped them out there, there wouldn’t be enough defenders to hold the city next time he attacked. Maybe. And our boys would chase him. In a mob. We don’t have enough competent commanders. Our last really capable man retired three years ago.

I am curious, Garrett. Why would the woman hit you in the head in the sergeant’s quarters? You had rendered yourself immune by plying her with your adolescent charm. He couldn’t resist getting in a small needle here and there.

“I don’t think she wanted to kill me. She just wanted to get the copy of the will before I did.”

Why?

I had the feeling he’d figured it out and wanted to see if I had. “For exactly the opposite of the reason I assumed at the time. She wanted to destroy it. If she could get rid of the copies, she wouldn’t need to kill people. There’d be no evidence there were any other heirs. The law would pass the estate to her. No dismemberment, no need for her to leave.”

And how did she know where to find the copy?

“I think she was behind the wall listening when I talked to Peters. I think a lot of the time she was supposed to be in her rooms, she was creeping around in the walls, listening in. Look, I really don’t want to talk about it. . . . I have one for you. Why did Eleanor pretend to be Morley? And how could she do it so slick that I never suspected a thing?”

She did it because she wanted to know more about you. Your fatal charm again. You had caught her eye. How is quite simple. Especially for one with her antecedents. She simply opened your mind and made herself a mirror. She did not have to know a thing about Mr. Dotes, she just had to make you think she did. You did all the work. Almost like a dream.

There was an implication, remote, that I didn’t like. If Eleanor had been inside my head, she knew all about why I was there. She probably could have told me about Jennifer any time. She could have saved . . . I didn’t want to think about it. “That’s a little much to swallow.”

Watch.

Suddenly that fifth of a ton of dead meat was gone, and in his place was a guy named Denny Tate who was so real, we talked about things the Dead Man couldn’t possibly know.

Solid proof. Rock solid. Denny Tate had been dead more than a year. A good choice by the Dead Man. I couldn’t call it a trick. He wasn’t somebody who could be sneaked in for a little sleight of eye. And Denny was one of the few people important to me who’d died untimely without violence. The silly sack had fallen off a horse and broken his neck. “Enough, Old Bones. I’m a believer.”

Denny Tate vanished. What replaced him was ugly as sin but I didn’t tell him so. Not today.

My mood hadn’t vanished. I almost asked him to conjure Eleanor.

Man, a guy could set up a hell of a racket faking calling up the dearly departed.

Think about something else, the Dead Man suggested.

“I’d love to, Chuckles. But it isn’t that easy.” Hell. I couldn’t do anything right. Not even get drunk. I was barely light-headed.

You need a distraction.

“Right.” So conjure me a miracle, Old Bones.

Somebody hammered on the front door.

The Dead Man is dead. In the flesh, anyway. But I swear he looked like he was smiling.

Dean hollered, “Can you get that, Mr. Garrett? I’m right in the middle, here. I’ve got both hands full.”

Muttering, I stomped down the hall and flung the door open without bothering to look first. “Maya?”

“Hi, Garrett.” Bright, perky, like she’d never been gone, except maybe to step around the corner. She walked in like she belonged. Which she did.

As I started to close the door I caught a glimpse of Morley Dotes holding up a wall down the street, smiling.

That slick bastard. He’d sent Dojango ahead to set this up. I bet he knew where Maya was all along. Maybe they all had.

From the kitchen Dean called, “Welcome back, Miss Maya. Dinner will be ready in a minute.” He never looked to see who it was.

Set me up good, they did.

Maya took my hand and led me down the hall. For a second I resented everybody ganging up on me. But I didn’t spend a whole lot of time worrying about it. Maya was there.

I was distracted.