Unidentified Funny Objects 2 (31 page)

“Yes, madam.”

“From assassin to bodyguard to private detective all in one day. Who knows what’s next?”

“My inner parts shudder to think, madam.”

“Now, now. That’ll be enough cheek out of you,” I warned, donning my working jacket.

Humbert spread out the portable weapon’s pack on the bed.

“Just a single concealed knife for the time being,” I instructed. “No need to frighten the domestic staff—or at least, not without due cause. We can always return for the WMDs if things get sticky.”

“Very good, madam.”

WE SPENT THE AFTERNOON interviewing: the house staff, the gardeners, the stable hands, the farm hands, all the sentient A.I. on the premises, his close friends, and the neighbors. Anyone and everyone who might be able to shed even a little light on the fate of poor Wiggy and his friend Hornsby. We made little headway in turning up any useful information, but all-in-all I thought I did rather well as a first time investigator, and Humbert only had to remind me twice that waterboarding is not generally considered an acceptable canvassing technique. The one small tidbit we did glean was a hint at some recent hostility between the two of them. They were in a quartet together—Wiggy played the violin and Hornsby the cello—and a bit of friendly rivalry may have ballooned into something nastier.

We arrived back for dinner at precisely six bells, and without wishing to sound ungrateful I would not have served the meal spread before us to the worst of condemned prisoners. The hors d’œuvres were smoked salmon—or possibly salmon that had a prior smoking habit given their uncanny resemblance to small bits of dried up lung. The entree, Cornish hen with new potatoes, stared at me like we were long lost relatives, and I privately questioned the wisdom of leaving the eyeballs in as a matter of presentation. The pistachio cannoli for dessert would actually have been passable had its particular shade of green not reminded me strongly of Wiggy’s toupee. Finally, we drank a toast in memory of dear Wiggy with the cheapest of watered-down wine and then shuffled off back to our rooms.

“That was the worst meal in the history of all meals,” I grumbled. “I dare say God himself would have sent back the soup.”

“There was no soup course, madam,” said Humbert.

“Which tells you just how bad it must have been, if they couldn’t even bring themselves to serve it. Wherever did Wiggy find those two and please reassure me that we didn’t just eat him.”

“My condolences to your stomach, madam, but it was not ‘all for naught’ as I believe the saying goes.”

“Come again?”

“There is this,” he said, and brought forth a silver butter knife, one from the place settings at dinner.

“Dear boy, if I’m not paying you enough just say so. No need stooping to petty thievery.”

“My molecular scanner detected some organic residue on the cutlery, and I matched the DNA pattern to that of your acquaintance, Mr. Turpin. The sample cannot be more than twelve hours old.”

“Stabbed to death with a butter knife? That harvester is downright brutal.”

“Actually, the residue is not blood, merely the normal microscopic deposits secreted by all living creatures. It indicates that he held this knife sometime earlier today.”

“So, not as dead as we were led to believe, eh?”

“Perhaps, madam, if I may be so bold, some after-hours reconnaissance would not be amiss?”

“Just so long as it’s followed by an after-hours snack. My stomach is threatening litigation.”

I’VE ALWAYS LIKED SNEAKING about. It’s so… sneaky.

We checked everywhere. Both wings, the library, the dance hall, all the unoccupied bedrooms, the baths, the inner gardens, the outer gardens, the stables, and the multi-level garage. Humbert maintained a continual scan for any further signs of our missing host.

“Still nothing?” I asked some hours later.

“I’m afraid not, madam.”

“Well, do one final sweep around the main compound and then meet me in the kitchen.”

“You believe we will discover some further link there to the knife?”

“No, I’m merely starving.”

Humbert lumbered off with the weapon pack and I made my way down to the lower levels. I was delighted (and not a little surprised) to discover they maintained a well-stocked larder with perfectly edible foodstuffs. Why they felt the need to torture fresh vegetables and prime cuts of meat into disfigured semblances of an actual meal was beyond me.

I was halfway through a mouth-watering cold meat sandwich when hurried footsteps echoed down the stairwell. In a flash I was up from the table and behind the door, remembering too late that I’d left my knife lying next to the bread loaf. A man in a tuxedo descended quickly into the kitchen and began randomly opening cupboard doors.

I stepped out. “Howard Hornsby, I presume.”

He swung around.

“Who are you?” he asked, wide-eyed.

“A friend of Mr. Turpin’s.”

“Oh, yeah? Tell me where he’s at then.”

“You haven’t heard? I’m afraid to say he’s passed on.”

“Poppycock. He’s here. I can smell his wig glue.”

He sniffed around the stove and the spice racks.

“Might I inquire as to the reason for your visit?” I asked, as I casually began to maneuver myself toward the knife rack at the other end of the counter.

“Oh, you know, just wanted to catch up, is all.”

“You mean on the local gossip and such?”

“Precisely. Nothing wrong with that, is there?”

“Not at all. It’s only, I’m having a difficult time reconciling that with the fact that my knife is clutched ever so firmly in your hand.”

He looked down with an expression of genuine surprise. “Hello, where did this come from?”

“You picked it up off the table as you flew past.”

“Now why would I do that?”

“Perhaps so you could run at me like you are right now.”

I leaped nimbly to the side as he made a rather unsuccessful (and might I add, poorly balanced) lunge at me. A hapless rack of ladles were scattered across the floor instead.

“I suppose,” he said, “there is a certain logic to what you say. But why would I rush at you with a knife?”

“I don’t rightly know,” I said, as he continued to make various jabs at my person. “Although I’d venture a guess—and I grant that it is mere speculation on my part—that you might be attempting to kill me.”

He pinned me against the counter but I managed to grab his knife hand at the last second, the blade mere inches from my chest.

“The evidence would seem to be pointing in that direction,” he agreed.

I did a quick reverse and jerked him forward, allowing his own weight to drive the knife home. He staggered back, blood soaking his shirt, the knife hilt now protruding neatly from his own chest.

He looked up at me. “That was… rather… impressive,” he gurgled.

“Yes, it’s a little trick I learned in school called ‘not dying’.”

He slumped to the floor, dead as the proverbial doornail. And let me add that that was my
professional
assessment. None of this dead person with no body business. This one was absolutely certified.

More footsteps echoed from the staircase, so I quickly dumped the body into a nearby broom cupboard (mostly out of habit) and ducked behind the door again.

“Hello? What’s all this mess?” said a strangely familiar voice.

I peeked out and found myself staring at none other than one very much living and breathing Howard Hornsby, now wielding a cricket bat.

I stepped forward once more. “I say, aren’t you supposed to be dead?”

“Who are you?” he demanded, raising the bat tentatively.

“Forgive my lack of manners, but I could have sworn I just killed you and stuffed you in this cupboard.”

“Well, am I in there?”

I cracked open the door and peeked in. Sure enough, Hornsby’s body was still there.

“Yes,” I said.

“Perhaps it slipped my mind then.”

I shrugged. A single karate chop to the neck rectified the oversight before he could get a swing in. The fit in the cupboard was considerably tighter this time. They’re not designed for bodies, of course, but I find you can stuff a corpse into just about any available space with a little imagination. And, if necessary, a chainsaw.

“Can I assist you, madam?”

I turned around to find Hornsby once again staring me dead in the eye—or, in fact, not so much dead. Another swift survey of the cupboard confirmed the first two Hornsby bodies were still very much present and accounted for.

“By any chance did your mother have quadruplets?” I asked.

“Die, troll witch!” he screamed as he brought up a pistol and fired wildly in my direction.

Now a hotheaded assassin is usually a dead assassin, and I was not, generally speaking, one to lose my temper. Nevertheless the evening’s activities were beginning to wear severely on my patience. When I kill a man I usually prefer he stay that way, and quite frankly I’d had one too many Hornsbys take a run at me. And all that on a still mostly empty stomach.

Once he’d emptied the clip—to no avail, I should add, otherwise this tale would be ending more or less right here—dispatching him was a simple matter of beating him to death with the breadboard.

Once more into the broom cupboard I went, and after some fair bit of pushing (and not a little snapping) I finally managed to shut and latch the door. I did a quick survey of the connecting rooms and gave a hard listen up the staircase to ensure there were no other Hornsbys lurking about.

A few minutes later Humbert appeared, and while rearming myself more properly from the pack, I caught him up to date on the Hornsby family reunion.

“Most remarkable,” said Humbert. “I myself encountered two more on the grounds.”

“It’s all very unusual to say the least,” I said.

“I suspect clones, madam.”

“You think clones put the Hornsby family up to this?”

“I believe these
are
the clones, madam.”

Across the room the door to the pantry flew open and out stormed one Wiggy Turpin.

“Why that lying, good-for-nothing cheat-bag!” he shouted.

“Wiggy, how nice of you to show yourself,” I said, a pistol suddenly in my hand and aimed directly at his head.

Wiggy stopped in his tracks but continued his tirade. “I specifically asked Howard if he knew anything about cloning techniques and he assured me he was a complete dim-bulb when it came to any of that genetics business.”

“And hasn’t he just been made the fool. I don’t suppose, Wiggy, that you would like to catch us up on anything yourself? Recent events? Rumors of your untimely death?”

“Oh, you know full well that was all a sham,” he scoffed. “I had to go into hiding.”

“From the Hornsby clan?”

“How many more of them can there be?”

“Impossible to say. They’ve certainly taken poorly to your ‘accident’ though.”

“Yes, well, er,” (he cleared his throat) “Howard always was a little contrary-minded.”

Humbert reopened the broom cupboard and my collection of life-sized Hornsby figurines toppled out. He bent over and examined them. After a few minutes of mechanical humming and hawing, he reached down and wrenched the head clear off the top Hornsby.

“Lord have mercy, Humbert,” I gasped, “I know we’re in a cruel business but we can still show a modicum of respect for the dead.”

Humbert held the head high and let us see what had caught his attention. Dangling from the neck hole was a large cluster of wires, and the skull was clearly some metallic compound with an overlay of synthetic skin.

“It’s a clone
robot?
“ I asked.

“I believe that technically, madam, the correct term would be robot clone,” said Humbert.

I glanced at the remaining bodies.

“Wiggy,” I said, “if you have any light to shed on the matter, now would be the time.”

Wiggy crossed his arms defiantly. “I haven’t the foggiest.”

“Well, we’d best check the house again, I suppose.”

Back up the stairs we went, only to stop short at the main level. The sparking bodies of Jeevz and Greetta lay on the floor before us, and behind them the entire dining hall was filled to the brim with Hornsby clone robots. Or robot clones. Or—well, there were an awful lot of Hornsbys in there was the heart of the matter. Certainly more than a proper fire marshal would allow. And every single one with a murderous gleam in his eye.

“I do believe I’m going to have to charge extra for this,” I said.

“Indeed, madam,” agreed Humbert.

Wiggy took cover behind a statue of Napoleon riding a gazelle while I dove in wielding a twin pair of ancient Roman gladius replicas, superb for close quarters fighting. I swung and sidestepped and stabbed my way through the mass of synthetic core bodies. The noise was incredible, mostly because they were all screaming and trampling one another in an attempt to get away from me. It turns out the clones of a classically trained cellist, even robotic ones, are no match for the Guild’s “Advanced Level Multiple Opponent Room Clearing Tactics” class.

“Humbert,” I yelled over the din, “see if you can find out where they’re all bloody coming from.”

“Yes, madam,” he said, and he plowed his way to the north exit, dispatching a few clones himself in the process.

I have to admit I was actually having a real bit of sport; as it turns out, robot clones are a good deal crunchier than I had imagined. But despite the fact that it was a little like having Christmas and my birthday all at once, my arms were slowly beginning to tire and there is something about overwhelming odds that reminds you why assassins prefer slipping in and out quietly through the back door.

Gradually, though, and much to my relief, the numbers did thin out. I caught the last two cowering under the grand piano, but a single serrated boomerang to the instrument’s legs completed the job with a rather cacophonous boom.

Humbert re-entered.

“Any luck?” I asked.

“Not specifically, madam, though I have developed a
theory
as to their origins.”

“Do go on.”

“The particular model of combine harvester in question is fitted with a genetic scanner which analyzes moisture, bacteria, and mineral content. It then modifies the next crop of seed so that it can thrive better in its immediate environment.”