Ghosts of Columbia (3 page)

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Authors: L.E. Modesitt Jr.

Tags: #Science Fiction, #Science Fiction & Fantasy, #Alternate History, #United States, #Literature & Fiction

BOOK: Ghosts of Columbia
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A
fter my eleven o’clock class on Monday, Environmental Economics 2A, I crossed the upper green from Smythe Hall to stop by my office before lunch.
Gertrude, a blonde zombie who worked for the university’s grounds staff, was carefully clipping the dried marigolds at ground level and putting them in her basket. Snip and place, snip and place, snip and place—I stopped and watched, almost mesmerized by the dreadful and precise rhythm.
“Do you enjoy your work, Gertrude?”
“I like to work, sir.” As she spoke, the continual smile remained on her clean and clear face, young looking, for all that she was probably well over thirty. Snip and place, snip and place …
I repressed a shiver, offered her a smile in return. “Have a good day, Gertrude.”
“Every day is a good day, sir,” she answered unfailingly.
Another zombie—a gray-haired man with the same cheerful smile as Gertrude’s—was digging small weeds from the cracks between the walkway bricks. I smiled, but did not address him, since he was new and I did not know his name.
I stopped by my office, ignored the university mail—all circulars and announcements—dropped my leather case on my desk, and walked out into the coolness and down to Delft’s, the café a half block below the eastern end of the
university. The café smells like a cross between a
pâtisserie
and a coffeehouse, more French than Dutch, despite the name, and that might have been why I liked it. Dutch food is like everything else Dutch, heavy as lead bricks, if tastier.
As always, I got there before Llysette and found a table on the covered porch that overlooked the square. I was seated not all that long after the clock in the post centre rang out the noon hour. The single Spazi steamer remained in the lower car park, looming over the smaller steamers used by the locals and the few students well-off enough to afford private transportation.
The breeze swirled more leaves from the trees in the square. Several women leaving McArdles’ Produce fastened their broad-brimmed hats with scarves, and Constable Gerhardt retrieved one young woman’s hat with a flourish and a broad smile under his sweeping mustaches. I’d never be a good burgher. I like my hair short and my face clean, and that will always mark me as an outsider in Vanderbraak Centre, even if the house has been in the family almost a century.
While I waited for Llysette, I sipped my iced tea, something I enjoy all year round. After a year back in Vanderbraak Centre, Victor, the owner of Delft’s, had condescended to make it for me, even in October. We’d see about December.
As usual, Llysette was late, and her wine waited as I started on a second iced tea. Delivering lectures is a thirsty business. I rose to seat her just as the post centre clock struck half past twelve. Monday was the only day we both had free for luncheon.
“So nice to see you this afternoon, Doktor duBoise.”
“You are kind, Johan.” She settled herself in the oak chair, its light finish glistening. “That Jaccardy girl stopped me. Complaining she was about her recital preview. Why do they not understand that singing is true labor? To sing, it does not just happen.” Llysette carefully pushed back a strand of hair that had escaped from the tight bun she wore when she taught, piled up on top of her head to make her that much taller. She paused, took a sip of the red wine, and made a slight face.
“It’s just a New Ostend wine,” I reassured her. In Vanderbraak Centre, you did not have to worry—I hoped—about knowing the exact bouquet of whatever you drank. East Coast wines, even I have to admit, aren’t that wonderful. But I applaud their spirit, especially given the cost of Californian or smuggled French vintages.
“That I can discern.” She set the glass down for a moment, and I half wondered whether she had a lithograph strip to test for poison, but it wasn’t twenty years earlier when I had had to worry about such matters.
“What have they found out about Miranda?” I asked.
“They have found little. The piano studio is closed off, and the technicians come and the technicians go.” She shrugged. “The ghost, it is sometimes there, and sometimes not, but it says little. At times, when it is quiet, and when I leave the studio and it is in the hall, I can hear the screams. So I must stay in my studio or depart. It is most disturbing. Some of my students will not come.” She took a sip of the wine. “Doktor Geoffries, he says that the studio may not be used for some time. It is a pity.”
“How did she die?”
“She was stabbed, many times. The person who murdered her wore a large overcoat from the prop department. They found it with blood on it.”
“Did they find a knife?”
“I do not know. Doktor Geoffries thinks it was a prop knife, but no one has said.”
“That makes it sound like someone familiar with the building.”
“One would think so.”
“Still … there must have been two hundred people in the building. Why didn’t anyone hear anything?”
“In the studio, Johan?”
“Oh.” I understood. The reason they insulate all the studios is so that no one can hear students and performers practicing. So poor Miranda could have been screaming her lungs out, and no one would have heard. “It had to be someone who knew that.”
“Most certainly.” Her lips quirked after she sipped her wine.
I understood her expression. Although the music faculty was not large, there were still a good dozen full- and part-time professors and lecturers, and that didn’t include nearly a hundred music and theatre students. It also didn’t include another few hundred people around the university and Vanderbraak Centre who also knew the Music and Theatre building. Besides, anyone with a motive could have scouted the building during the week when classes were ongoing. Just wear a dark coat and cravat and walk around looking preoccupied.
“You would like?” asked Victor, appearing at Llysette’s elbow and winking.
“La même, comme ça,”
she answered, offering him a smile but not a wink in return.
“Oui, mademoiselle,”
he answered, except he pronounced it “mam’selle.” He turned to me. “And you, Doktor Eschbach?”
“The soup and cheese, with the shepherd’s bread.”
Victor bowed.
“You like Victor?” I asked after the owner had departed.
“His French is not that good, but it is a help, Johan. The others, except you, for them France is an embarrassment.”
“People don’t like to admit their weaknesses.”
“Not for us poor French. Your government did not wish to lose a single ship to Ferdinand’s submersibles. Nor one of your few precious aircraft carriers. Not in 1921. Not in 1985.”
“That was after my time in service.”
“You do not talk much of it.” Llysette downed the rest of her glass, and Victor appeared to refill it. He also set a small salad in front of Llysette and a side plate with the shepherd’s bread in front of me. Behind her back, he shook his head sadly at me, as if to say that it was a pity she did not savor the wine.
“What is there to talk about? I flew reconnaissance for several years during the time Ferdinand did nothing.” My throat was dry, somehow, and I swallowed the
rest of the iced tea and signaled for a third, hoping Llysette would drop the subject, but she continued as if I had never spoken.
“And the English and the Irish? What could they do? Now they must wait for the inevitable. You Columbians will wring your hands. You will talk in the League of Nations. You will not act.” She took a forkful of greens and glanced toward the square, where Constable Gerhardt was admonishing a hauler for bringing his twelve-wheeler into the square, either that or for the plume of unhealthy black smoke from the steamer’s burners. “His panzerwagens, they rolled down the Marne road and through Troyes, and you did nothing. Even at the gates to Versailles, nothing.” Llysette sniffed.
“Speaker Colmer was not known for his love of overseas adventure, and Europe is still far away, even with the new turbojets. As for Speaker Michel …” I had to shrug.
“Did not the pictures—” Llysette broke off. We’d had the discussion before, and nothing we said would change the past. Finally she said, “I prefer the comfort of the dirigibles. They are less stressful on the voice.”
“And far less crowded, but expensive.”
“Once I would not have had to worry,” she pointed out.
Victor’s son set my soup in front of me and a cup of chilled consommé before Llysette. I nodded, and he departed.
“Still … Johan, when will you Columbians act?”
“When it is too late.” I laughed, not without a bitter undertone. “We believe in letting each man go to the devil in a coffin of his own making. Or each nation.”
“And women also?”
“That is becoming more popular, although some still suggest that women’s coffins be made by their fathers and husbands.”
“My own coffin I must make. For alas, I have no husband, and Ferdinand’s regiments killed my father, old and ancient as he was.”
There was little I could say to that, not at the moment. So I took a small spoonful of the soup, a properly flavorful Dutch broth. The cheese was a white New Ostend cheddar, extraordinarily sharp, the way Victor knew I liked it. I nodded at the tang, then broke off a piece of the crusty bread. Llysette took the consomme in precise spoonfuls, interspersed with the red wine.
“Johan, why is it that you showed no interest in Professor Miller? She always wished to talk with you.”
I finished chewing the bread before answering. “I could not say, not exactly. But she seemed to show a certain lack of discipline. In any case, she appeared far more interested in Gerald Branston-Hay.” The first part was certainly true—I couldn’t say exactly why I hadn’t been attracted. The second part was a polite way of saying that she was a lazy and round-bottomed widow who was required to support herself in any way she could, but who was really looking for a husband. My background and hers certainly would not have fit.
“Considering that the good Doktor Branston-Hay is thoroughly married,” Llysette laughed, “you retain the manners of a public servant.”
“At your service, my lady.” I gave her a head bow. Like Llysette, I had wondered about Miranda’s more than passing interest in Gerald Branston-Hay, as conveyed by Llysette. The man must have had some charm, although I had seen more manners than charm in my assorted conversations with him. I refrained from mentioning that I knew Llysette had spent more than a luncheon or two with him. “Professor Branston-Hay is indeed a gentleman of the old English stock.” I finished my soup.
“Ah, yes. He is very polite.” Llysette’s voice was measurably cooler.
“And far more reserved than Professor Miller, I presume.”
“She is, she was, not reserved, I think.”
I glanced at my watch, my father’s old Ansonia that still kept perfect time, and rose.
Llysette glanced at the clock on the post centre. “Do you not have a half hour before your two o’clock?”
“Ah, yes, dear lady, but duty calls. I must stop by the post centre before class because I must attend a meeting of the curriculum review committee after class.”
“This is the committee which nothing does?”
“The very same.”
“Yet you attend when nothing will be done; is this not so?”
“Absolutely. Then we can claim that we have met, and that the best course of action was to do nothing.”
“Like your government.”
“Exactly. Except it appears that people get killed at universities, while I cannot recall the last time a public servant was murdered, not when it was apparent. Will I see you for dinner?”
“Not this evening, Johan. I must complete previews for student juries.”
“I had hoped …”
“You always hope, Johan. One of your best traits.” She smiled.
“Thank you.” I bowed and turned.
Although I had hoped that the monthly pension cheque had arrived, the only item in my postbox was a long, narrow brown envelope, the type I had seen too many of in Columbia. Of course, it had no return address. I took a deep breath and locked the box.
“Ye find anything interesting?” asked Maurice from behind the counter.
“You know better than I would. You saw it first.” I grinned at the post handler. He grinned back.
I hurried back to my office, grateful for the cool breeze.
I smiled toward Gilda as I passed the front office, but she was engaged in a conversation about nouveau-Dutch painting with Andrei Salakin, and with his accent, listening alone was a full-time occupation. Once back in my office, I closed the door firmly.
Except for the clipping from the
Columbia Post-Dispatch
, the brown envelope was empty. I laid the short clipping on the desk.
COLUMBIA (RPI)—Representative Patrice Alexander (L—MI) announced a shadow investigation into charges that the Austro-Hungarian Empire has infiltrated Columbian universities. “Through such blatantly transparent ruses as the Austro-Hungarian Cultural Foundation and the Global Research Fund, Ferdinand VI is encouraging the dissemination of pro-Hapsburg values.” Congresslady Alexander also disparaged “so-called scientific research aimed at undermining traditional Columbian values.” She claimed the investigation will bring to light a de facto collusion between Speaker Hartpence’s “trained liberals” and Ferdinand’s “pandered plunderers.” Neither the Speaker nor President Armstrong was available for comment, although the president is known to have received a visit from Ambassador Schikelgruber shortly after Congresslady Alexander’s announcement.

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