Murder in Black Letter, Poul William Anderson [best ebook reader ubuntu TXT] 📗

off in, uh, 1930. Being an imaginative man, he spent his savings on a schooner, hired a Mexican crew, and we all lit out for the South Seas. For seven years we lived on that schooner."

"Bruce told me you were a sailor." Her eyes were very bright upon him. "But how did you make it pay?"

"Miscellaneously. Sometimes we carried cargo and passengers between islands. The passengers were usually Kanakas, and those who didn't have money would pay us in food and hospitality when we got where we were going. Father wasn't after riches anyway. His main enterprise was to gather and prepare marine specimens, for museums and colleges and so on. Toward the end, he was making a name for himself. Well, we never saw much cash money, but we never needed a lot either."

Kintyre held his glass to the light, tossed it off and followed it with a scalding sip of coffee. Why was he speaking of this? He had barely mentioned his youth to anyone else, except Trig, who was the friend of a dozen years. Trig had led him into the dojo, hoping that its discipline of mind as well as body would strangle the horror. But Corinna had the story out of him in a matter of hours, not even knowing what she did.

He had taken her for Morna last night.

"What happened?" she asked. Her tone said that he needn't answer unless he wanted to.

"A typhoon and a lee shore," he said. "I was the only survivor."

He took out a cigarette. She folded her hands and waited, in case he should want to say more.

"That was in the Gilbert Islands," he continued after the smoke was curling down his tongue. "The British authorities shipped me home. The guardianship was wished onto a cousin of my mother's. So I went to the boarding school I spoke of, and summers I worked at a seaside resort. Don't feel sorry for me, it was quite a good life."

"But a lonely one," she said.

He grinned with a single corner of his mouth. "'He travels the fastest who travels alone.'"

"I understand a great deal now." She held her cup so lightly that he grew aware he was in danger of breaking his. Tendon by tendon, he eased his fingers. "Yes," she said after a moment. "Bruce was always puzzled by you. As I imagine most people are. You don't seem to belong anywhere, to anything or anyone. And yet you do. You belong to a world that foundered in the ocean."

It jarred him. Not given to self-analysis, he had imagined he lived a logical, well adapted round of days.

"Sometime you'll build it again," she said. "Oh, not the physical ship, you've more important things on hand, but a personal world."

And again it was a blow, to be shown himself as alien as a castaway from Mars.

"Please," he said, more roughly than he had intended. "I don't find my personality the most interesting object on earth."

She nodded, as if to herself. The long hair swept her flat high-boned cheeks. "Of course. You wouldn't."

"Perhaps I'd better take you home now," he said, without noticeable enthusiasm. "Are you working tomorrow?"

"Only if I feel like it, my boss told me. I'd planned to, but—Are you in any hurry?"

"Contrariwise." I don't think I would sleep much.

"Then could we go somewhere and talk? I'd like to ask you some things."

"I'd love to be asked. I know a place."

It was small, dark, and masculine, undegraded by jukebox or television. Kintyre led Corinna into a booth at the rear.

"They serve steam beer," he said. "The only really good beer made in this country."

"Oof! I couldn't. Another Irish, if I may. I promise to go slow." Her tone was not as light as the words.

Nonetheless, he needed a little while to sense the trouble in her.

After much time she met his eyes, obviously forcing his own. "Dr. Kintyre," she began.

He was about to ask her to use his given name; and then he thought how little intimacy could be achieved in this American cult of first-name familiarity with all the universe. "Yes?" he said.

"I would—I would have thanked you for a wonderful time, which helped me more than you know. And then I would have gone home. But—"

He waited.

"I don't know how to say it," she stumbled. "I knew you were Bruce's—Bruce's brother, the one he should have had. But only tonight could I feel it." She searched for a phrase. Finally: "I don't believe I could hurt myself by being serious with you."

"I hope not," he said, as grave as she. "I can't promise it."

"Why did you go to the Michaelises last night?"

"I'm not quite sure."

"You want to discover who killed Bruce? Isn't that it?"

"I am not a self-appointed detective. The police can do that job infinitely better than I. But I have been thinking."

"What do you think?" she persisted.

"I certainly wouldn't go accusing someone who—"

"Can you realize what Brace meant to me?" She asked it quietly, as a meaningful request for truth. "We were more than siblings. We were friends, all our lives, in a way they haven't made words for."

"I do know," he said, and he would have told it to few other creatures that lived. "I had a younger sister myself."

"Even after he left home—can you imagine the way he continued to watch over me? How often he stepped in and used a word or two to straighten out a lonesome, confused, unhappy girl whom nobody else liked; how he steered me toward the kind of people I can feel at home with; how he healed the breach with my parents, when I had to get away and they didn't understand; how he got me out of a wretched business office and into the museum, where I can like what I'm doing and believe it has some value. You knew Bruce, did you know that side of him?"

"No," said Kintyre. "He wouldn't have talked about it. Still, yes, I can imagine."

"And he was lured somewhere, and tortured, and murdered," she said. The lacquered fingernails stood white where she caught the table edge.

Kintyre didn't touch her himself, but he held out his hand. She gripped it for a while. Her face was lowered. When she let go and looked up again, he saw tears.

"I'm sorry," she gulped. "I promised not to bawl, and then—"

Kintyre let her have it out. It didn't take long, nor was it noisy.

She said at last, in a wire-thin voice: "Why was it done? Who would do it, to him of all people in the world?"

"I don't know," said Kintyre. "I just don't know."

"But you can guess, can't you? You know everyone concerned. That writer he was having the fight with. That businessman who owns the thesis manuscript. Gene Michaelis. You could be wrong! Even his girl, God help me for saying it. Who?"

"Why must you know?" he asked.

"Why?" It took her aback. "To know! To understand—"

"Do you want to be reassured the murderer won't strike at you next? I hardly think you need fear that."

"Of course not!" she flared. "I want to know so the world can make some sense again."

"That's too metaphysical to be true," he said.

Briefly, she shivered with tension. Then, leaning back, she picked up her whisky glass and sipped of it and asked coldly:

"Where did you go last night after you left the Michaelis place?"

"Home," he said.

"Guido was badly shaken today. He hadn't slept at all, I could see that in the morning. He stayed around the apartment like a hurt animal. I know him, he's terrified." Corinna spat as if at an enemy: "What did you do to him?"

"Nothing!" said Kintyre.

Her lip caught her teeth.

"I didn't think of it till just now," she breathed. "But it all fits. You do know something. In God's name, tell me!"

He said, with an overpowering compassion: "I see. You're afraid Guido is involved."

"Yes," she said dully.

"Why should he be?"

"Oh—I don't know—jealousy? Who can tell? Guido always seemed like the wild, reckless one and Bruce a mama's boy. Yet it was Bruce who left home and Guido never has."

"Let's have no half-digested psychological theory," he said, purposely astringent. "Stick to facts. What leads you to suspect your brother is involved?"

"I might as well tell you," she sighed. "Last week he was dropping all kinds of dark hints about a big job which would take him out of town over the weekend. He's like that, has to sound important, mostly there's no harm in it. But he came back Monday evening with a good deal of money. I knew he was broke before. He had even been forced to sell his car. He came in loaded with expensive presents for all of us, and had a fat roll in his wallet. Of course, when we told him about Bruce, that more or less made us forget it. But then today, how frightened he was—

"What happened last night?"

Kintyre took out a cigarette. "Excuse me while I think," he said. He made a ceremony of lighting it.

"Guido is in trouble," he admitted. "I don't know how closely related to the murder it is."

"Don't misunderstand me." Her face could have been modeled in chalk. "I never thought Guido would—would dream of—no! But he could have been drawn into something. And what would the police think?"

"Uh-huh. The same notion occurred to me."

"What happened, then?"

He told her.

"Oh, no." Her eyes closed.

"You see my dilemma," he said wearily. "I'll protect Guido if my conscience will let me, even though it's already led me into lawbreaking. But I don't know, I can't tell—"

She opened her eyes again. They blazed.

"Thank You," she said, not to Kintyre.

His scalp crawled. "What are you thinking of?"

"I know Guido," she answered. "I can get the truth out of him."

"You can try."

She stood up. "I'll take a cab," she said.

"What?" He rose himself. "You're not going there now?"

"When else? I'm sorry, it's a shabby way to treat you, but do you think something like this can wait?"

"A murderer is hanging around that place," he said. "You can see Guido tomorrow at your parents', but tonight I won't have it."

She grinned. There was even a little humor in the expression. "What do you plan to do?"

"Call the police!" he rapped.

She said like a sword: "By the time you've explained all the ins and outs to them, I'll have taken him elsewhere. And you needn't bother speaking to either of us again."

He took her by the wrist. "Let me go," she said, almost casually.

"Wait a second." Again he knew the night feeling, that he must go, and that that would happen which another force than he had willed. But somehow, crazily, this time he was glad of it.

"Just wait for me," he finished.

14

The doorkeeper-bouncer was the first obstacle. Kintyre wished he had worn a hat. Nothing disguised him except a gray suit; the square of bandage at his hairline felt like a searchlight.

"Follow my lead," whispered Corinna as they went down the stairs.

It was dark in the doorway, and narrow. She contrived to get herself squeezed between Kintyre and the other man; and as she slithered by she threw him such a look that he would have let a rhinoceros enter unnoticed beside her.

The Alley Cat was full tonight. Mostly the cool crowd, Kintyre judged, drawn by the rumors of last night's affair. He could not help himself, but whispered to Corinna: "Where in the hell did you learn to put five thousand volts of raw sex into three motions and one sidelong glance?"

"Theater." Even at this moment, when she saw through a harsh blue haze her brother who might be a murderer singing a dirty ballad, she could have been a female Puck. "Also, it helps to live with a cat."

They threaded their way along the wall until they found a table in shadow. "We can see him at the intermission," he proposed. She nodded. The waitress who lit their candle—Kintyre snuffed it again when she had left—and brought them a demi of