Johannes Cabal the Detective (20 page)

As soon as she had gone, Leonie stopped her monologue and smiled, broadly and not without some malevolence.

“What,” said Cabal, somewhat testily, “is going on? What was all that about?”

“Did she ask you about what happened last night?”

“Yes, but she’s hardly the first one to do that.”

“Ah, but did she ask any questions, or just listen very closely?”

“She just listened. What are you getting at?”

“Did she congratulate you on how you handled things?”

Cabal nodded, still confused.

“Did she lean forward a lot? Like this?” She demonstrated, and Cabal had to admit that it was a good impersonation. “Did she touch you lightly on the knee at any point? No? Well, she was certainly working up to it.”

Cabal looked at her, his bafflement lifting. “A witch?” he said, lowering his voice. It wasn’t too surprising, now he stopped to consider it. The upper classes were the embodiment of discretion, and he had certainly heard of members of the nobility who dabbled in practises that would get a commoner drowned in the village pond by her neighbours. “She’s a witch? She needed some sort of direct contact to cast a spell? But why me? What was she after?”

He noticed that Miss Barrow’s shoulders were shuddering with the effort of holding in her laughter. This did nothing to improve his mood.

When she managed to damp down her hilarity a little, she said, “For a clever man, you can be such an idiot. She’s no witch. Not the way you mean it, anyway.” She leaned forwards and gestured him closer. “She was seducing you, you blockhead,” she whispered, and then sat back, unable to contain her laughter anymore.

“She was …” Cabal wasn’t at all sure he’d heard correctly. He had rationally discounted that possibility, hadn’t he? Hadn’t he? “She was
what
?”

Miss Barrows brought herself rapidly back under control, sobering up with a deep breath. “You heard me. And it’s
excellent
.”

Chapter 10

IN WHICH THE LIGHT OF TRUTH IS ENCIRCLED BY DARKNESS

Science and mathematics are wonderful things. They cut like an arc light of truth through the cobwebbed depths of supposition, superstition, instinct, and guile. For the scientific mind, it can sometimes become too easy to ignore these thin, insubstantial threads as irrelevant, but this can be a serious mistake.

“But why?” he asked her as they dined together that evening, his animosity towards her erased by the realisation that in matters of social interplay he was as innocent as a babe in the woods. “What possible reason could she have to want to … you know. Why?”

“Why?” Miss Barrow paused in cutting a morsel from her Spanish omelette, her first victory in the search for something Mirkarvian chefs wouldn’t undercook. She was about to tell him, but then decided that she would be interested in learning a little more about this huge and unexpected area of Cabal’s ignorance. “Why do you think?”

“Well, she wants something.”

“Clearly,” she said, a little archly.

“But what? Money? Information? She’s not really a Senzan agent, is she?”

“Money? She’s an aristocrat who spends more on an everyday dress than you—Herr Meissner—would see in your monthly pay packet. I really don’t think she’s after your money. Information? Bloody hell, you see agents everywhere. I strongly doubt that she represents anybody’s interests other than her own. No, you’re putting far too much thought into this. It’s all much simpler. Our Lady Ninuka has a hobby. Whenever she sees a man who interests her in a certain way, she isn’t happy until that man has joined her for an evening of sport.” It was obvious from Cabal’s face that he was working down a list of possible sports. The slight expression of consternation indicated that he had arrived at cricket. Leonie decided to put him out of his misery. “She’s a bike. A tart. A slut. She’ll be buried in a Y-shaped coffin. A baggage. A hussy. She’s the good time that was had by all. A wanton floozy.” She looked closely at him, but he still seemed to be stuck on cricket. “A nymphomaniac.”

The use of a technical term shook him from his paralysis. Realisation flooded his face and a silent “Oh!” filled his mouth.

“Not that she is, of course. Well, maybe the last one, but all the other terms, the ugly ones, were invented by men. A man sleeps around, he’s just being a man. Not really very fair, is it? Do shut your mouth—you’ll catch flies sitting there like that.”

Cabal shut his mouth somewhat shamefacedly. He’d been prepared to consider almost any eventuality except the one that was evidently true. In his defence, it was a situation entirely alien to him. He could honestly say he’d never had an elegant and attractive woman of high breeding set her cap for him in this fashion. In fact, he’d never had any woman of any demeanour, appearance, or birth set her cap for him in this fashion. He was not unattractive, and his attention to detail extended to how he presented himself, so it was not at first glance so odd that he should be in such a situation. In the normal run of things, however, he kept himself fastidiously to himself and, furthermore, usually carried a faint scent of formaldehyde around with him, which had the effect of depressing any amorous intent by any woman with a working nose. The combination of his long absence from a laboratory, the stolen clothing, and the enforced socialising had conspired to place him neatly in the sights of Lady Ninuka, and he had not realised it for a second.

“So, let me see if I understand this. You’re saying that I was intended to be a diverting interval for her ladyship, to lighten a dull voyage? What’s the matter with her? Aren’t a death and an attempted murder enough to keep the woman amused?”

Leonie shook her head as she finished her omelette. “No, no. You don’t see the whole picture here at all. Yes, you were supposed to be a diverting interval, but note the indefinite article.”

Cabal frowned. “There was supposed to be somebody else?”

“Wrong again. There
was
somebody else. Nothing supposed about it.” She smiled, not altogether charitably. “Sorry, sweetheart, but you weren’t her first choice.”

Cabal fumed. “Just because you’re in a position that currently allows you the liberty of taunting me, you would be ill-advised to actually do so. Nor should you present a lot of half-formed conjecture as somehow significant, when it likely has no more importance than those missing candelabras at breakfast that—Oh.” He looked around and noticed that every table now carried one. Quickly dropping the subject, he said, “You are being obscure for no better reason than your own amusement, just like your magical appearance this afternoon when I was talking to her ladyship. You can be so very—” He paused, a sudden thought filling him first with realisation, then dismay, and then anger. “You knew this was going to happen.”

“Ah,” said Miss Barrow, and took a sip of wine.

“You were lurking around somewhere waiting for this to happen. I was
bait!
”

“
Lurking?
Oh, poor you. How awful to be manipulated. Yes, I could see Ninuka’s had her eye on you. It was just a case of seeing if she was going to do anything about it. And she did. That’s brilliant. Brilliant.” Leonie finished her wine and looked at him. “I have no idea what you’re so upset about. I saved you before the naughty woman could besmirch your precious virtue, didn’t I? To be serious, I really needed to know what she would do. It is very important.”

“Important? Important how, exactly?” Cabal was having difficulty keeping both his temper and his voice down. He was pining badly for his laboratory. Things were so much simpler there. If something proved problematical, he could just drop it in the waste bin and start again. Sometimes, admittedly, whatever proved problematical didn’t especially want to go into the bin and he might have to smite it several times with a retort stand or perhaps shoot it before it would behave, but these were procedures he understood, and used. This great social laboratory within which Leonie Barrow seemed so at home was a horrible mystery to him, and he especially despised being used as an experimental subject.

“You’re a scientist … sort of. You know how important it is to follow a hypothesis with a practical experiment. I thought I knew what kind of person Lady Ninuka was, but I needed to be sure. That’s where you came in. Thank you for that. Your look of gormless incomprehension as the tigress circled you will keep me amused for many years to come, I’m sure.”

Cabal ignored the slight with difficulty. “Are you saying she’s the killer? Or involved somehow?” Ninuka had been wearing long sleeves and gloves, the skin of her arms and hands being far more thoroughly covered than other parts of her body. Could she have been wearing a bandage beneath the material?

“No, of course not. She’s a bored aristo, not Lucrezia Borgia. All she wants in life is new dresses, exciting parties, and to go for the occasional gallop on an obliging member of the bourgeoisie.” She ignored Cabal’s glower. “Just think what she may be instead of a killer.”

Cabal couldn’t. If she wasn’t directly involved in DeGarre’s disappearance or the attack in the vent, then Lady Ninuka seemed entirely irrelevant. Leonie watched his mental wheels spin haplessly until she took pity on him. “She could be a witness.”

“A witness? But DeGarre vanished from a locked room, and there was nobody else in that vent except my attacker and me. How could she have seen anything?”

Miss Barrow looked agonisingly sage, not to say smug. “Ah, there’s more than one type of witness. It’s not what she saw, it’s what she didn’t see.”

And she would say no more, not even when Cabal made several veiled threats of physical violence.

M
iss Ambersleigh answered the knock at Lady Ninuka’s stateroom door. If she was perplexed to find Leonie Barrow there, or dismayed to find Cabal, she showed no sign of it. She asked them only for a moment to see if her ladyship was receiving visitors. When she returned, she ushered them inside.

Lady Ninuka was waiting to receive them in the sitting room of her suite, a far cry from the small if well appointed cabins of Cabal, Miss Barrow, and the late M. DeGarre. She was the very embodiment of reserved politeness, but she plainly expected the interview to go one way, and an awkward way at that. She ordered tea and made small talk until it arrived. When it did, she tactfully dismissed Miss Ambersleigh, who left without rancour, saying that she hoped the young people had a pleasant chat.

Lady Ninuka waited until the door had closed quietly behind Miss Ambersleigh before speaking. “You are doubtless here to discuss my talking with Herr Meissner without proper supervision?” she said in a reasonable tone that carried the message that there was nothing here about which they could not come to agreement.

“Doubtless,” said Miss Barrow, smiling. It was the smile of a large predator just prior to driving its fangs into its prey’s cervical vertebrae. “Actually, no. We’re here to talk about Gabriel Zoruk.”

Cabal endeavoured not to look surprised. Were they?

Lady Ninuka blanched slightly. “I don’t really know the gentleman—”

“Please, please, please. Don’t start off by making statements that you later come to regret.” Miss Barrow shook her head like a governess who has caught a small child out in a transparent lie.

Lady Ninuka was having none of it. “I spoke to him at dinner last night. That is the limit of my association with the man.”

“Oh. Oh, dear,” said Miss Barrow regretfully.

“You see? I’m afraid you’ve wasted your time coming here.”

“Hmm? Oh, no. That’s not what I’m sorry for. I was just feeling sorry for poor Herr Zoruk, thrown into the brig, all alone, and under suspicion of murdering M. DeGarre.”

“Well, of course we’re all sorry—”

“I hadn’t quite finished,” interrupted Miss Barrow, looking steadily at Lady Ninuka. Ninuka shifted awkwardly in her chair. Despite himself, Cabal couldn’t help but admire Leonie Barrow’s handling of the interview. She had found a chink in her ladyship’s armour, driven a stiletto deep into it, and was now slowly turning the blade. “What I was about to say was that I feel so very sorry for Herr Zoruk’s being in such a dreadful situation when he is entirely innocent.”

Lady Ninuka sat very still, hardly breathing.

“Entirely innocent, yet unable to prove it. Because proving it depends on an alibi, and it’s an alibi that the poor, stupid, chivalrous boy refuses to use.”

Lady Ninuka, deciding that outraged morality would provide a suitable high ground, retorted, “What are you implying?”

Miss Barrow laughed, still pleasant, as if they were discussing hats. “I’m not implying anything, your ladyship. I’m stating it. You are Gabriel Zoruk’s alibi. While he was supposed to be off engineering a disappearance and attacking Herr Meissner here, he was in fact … shall I use a euphemism? He was providing you with company through the dark hours. That seems like a gallant way of putting it. I could be far more specific, of course, if you’d prefer?”

It was clear that Lady Ninuka did not prefer. Standing slightly unsteadily on her dignity, she said, “This is an outrage, Miss Barrow. It is a libel in front of a witness. You will regret this vile slur.”

“No, I shan’t. You’re quite wrong, on two counts. First, you mean
slander
, not
libel
. Second, it is only a slander if it isn’t true. We both know it is. Let us not quibble, Lady Ninuka. There is a man in serious trouble, and all it requires is a word from you and the enquiry will discreetely redirect its attentions elsewhere. Isn’t that so, Herr Meissner?” Somehow Cabal managed not to look around. He’d been so attentive to what was being said that he had momentarily forgotten that he was incognito.

“Of course. My lady, we are not journalists looking for something to amuse the hoi polloi. Nor do we travel in your circles. We simply wish to clarify the events of last night. The search for my attacker has stopped because Captain Schten believes he has him in custody.” He decided not to tell her that the search had resumed, not when he could see a way to bring Ninuka’s self-interest into play. “If he is wrong, that means the real criminal is still at large, walking these very corridors. We have no inkling why I was attacked or whether M. DeGarre’s disappearance truly was suicide; it is not inconceivable that the perpetrator has not yet finished his or her plan, whatever it may be. In which case nobody aboard is safe.” He looked significantly at Ninuka. “Nobody.”