Then Alexei Cacon — Arturo Rovetta — died for the second and final time.
Ten minutes later, Cabal was sitting in the upright chair that Miss Barrow had been using. He could hear her pacing back and forth upstairs. When Cacon died, she made a sound in her throat somewhere between a gasp and a sob, and fled the room. Cacon lay still and cold on the floor, covered with a sheet from the bedding cupboard. Cabal sat with his hands in his lap, fingers interlaced, and stared at the body, thinking. False names, safe houses, shadows, and murder; it seemed he had been right all along about Cacon’s being an agent, but with a true name like Rovetta Cabal had evidently put him in the wrong camp.
All of which raised the question: why was Cacon — Cabal found it impossible to think of him as Rovetta — aboard the
Cabal cupped his hands over his mouth and nose and sighed heavily. As a scientist, he was used to evolving his knowledge by developing a hypothesis and then building a bridge of experimental and evidential proof that got him from where he was to where his hypothesis suggested he could go. Sometimes the hypothesis was flawed and the bridge could not be completed, but even that failure was potentially useful in itself. Here, however, he lacked the most basic things; he had no hypothesis that linked everything together. He had a retired engineer, a feckless and naive student of politics, a Senzan secret agent — all dead — and himself, the victim of an attempted murder. He could not escape the likelihood that politics was behind all these, and that each killing or attempted killing might have different motives, but that took him no further.
He was still sitting in a dismal brown study when Miss Barrow came quietly down the stairs and reentered the room. She couldn’t help but glance at the sheet-covered body on the floor before saying to Cabal, “Sorry.”
“Sorry?” Cabal lifted his head. “Sorry for what, precisely?”
“For — ” She tried to find words, failed, and gestured vaguely in the direction of upstairs. “I was a little upset. I can’t say why. I was upset the first time poor Mr. Cacon … died. But the second time, that was so much worse. I don’t know why.” She looked sideways at him, unhappy at confiding in the foul Herr Cabal, and unhappier still to ask him, “Why would that be so?”
“Because you saw hope.” He got to his feet. “We should go. His colleagues are bound to wonder where he is, and they will surely come here first. I do not think I care to explain all these interesting piles of burnt chemicals and chalk markings on the floor to them. They will doubtless show a lack of imagination for my aims and a lack of sympathy for my methods. And then torture and kill me.” He walked past her into the hall. She heard him putting on his jacket and hat as he added, “It’s only to be expected. Occupational hazard.” He reappeared in the doorway, straightening his cravat. “I think we shall go out by the other exit. It’s always nice not to have to traipse through a crime scene. Coming?”
To anybody who hadn’t seen a man die twice in a room stinking of blood and burning Dolly Blue, it was a lovely evening. The sky was clear, the pavement cafes were doing a quickening trade as people came out to follow their evening meals with more evening meals, and lovers walked arm in arm, whispering secrets.
Miss Barrow, who had taken Cabal’s arm for the purpose of blending in with the evening crowd, was whispering secrets in his ear, but of a nature that would have disappointed Cupid. They were murmurs of murder and murderers, daggers and death, necromancy and necessity.
“But you see the efficacy of my methods,” replied Cabal. “Imagine if every murder victim had a chance to name his or her murderer. Think what a boon it would be.”
“No,” she said, quietly. “It’s monstrous. Dragging souls back into their bodies for the convenience of the living, for a few muddled moments before sliding off into the shadows. Isn’t dying once cruel enough?”
“Oh, you mustn’t judge from that little display. That was just a party trick thrown together from easily available components and a few rarer items from my bag. If Cacon had died more quickly, or been poisoned, or a dozen other variables, it would not have worked at all. Even with a near-perfect subject to work with, there is only perhaps a one in three chance of the Asyrinth ritual you witnessed taking effect. We were lucky we got as much from him as we did.”
“Listen to yourself, Cabal. He wasn’t a subject. He was a human being.”
Cabal’s jaw tightened. “I would ask you not to lecture me on morality. I don’t take it kindly. Besides, you say ‘human being’ as if it’s something special. There are a lot of them about, you know, and few are worth the price of the calcium in their bones.”
“Most of us don’t measure a person’s worth in calcium!” she said, a little too hotly, as she drew some confused glances from other walkers.
Cabal smiled quietly at suchlike — a smile he had spent painstaking minutes in front of the mirror bringing to a high finish, a smile that said,
Unperturbed, he murmured to Miss Barrow, “And perhaps that’s why there’s so much wrong in the world. Calcium’s quite my favourite alkaline earth metal. It should be more highly regarded.”
They walked in silence for a little while then, while Cabal wondered who Cacon’s murderous “viperess” might be, and Miss Barrow wondered if Cabal was serious about the ethical qualities of calcium. With anybody else it would have been a joke, but with Cabal she couldn’t be so sure.
“It’s a small pool of suspects,” said Cabal, changing the subject from preferred elements. “In the case of Cacon, at any rate. A woman, and I think, given his comments, one from aboard the ship. Just four possibilities.”
“Lady Ninuka, Miss Ambersleigh, and — I suppose — Frau Roborovski. That’s three. Who’s the fourth?”
Cabal did not answer, but continued to promenade down the road, looking straight ahead. She finally understood, and it did not please her.
“Me? You suspect me? Oh, you’re a piece of work, all right, Cabal.”
“There you go, thinking like a civilian, Miss Barrow,” Cabal chided her. “Your father would be most upset to hear you talk like that.”
“Not nearly as upset as he would be to see me walking arm in arm with a bastard like you.”
Cabal nodded thoughtfully. “That’s a fair point. To return to the matter at hand, however, I cannot eliminate you as a subject, not least because you were in the area, and you did seem to be following me.”
“I just saw you lurking around that street! I followed you a hundred yards at most, and I didn’t take a short break from following you to do in Cacon, the poor swine.”
“So you say.”
The suddenness with which Miss Barrow came to a halt jerked Cabal almost off his feet. “Look, Cabal,” she said, glowering at him. “I didn’t do it. The only criminal act I’ve committed on this trip, to my knowledge, was not handing you over to the authorities and, God knows, I’m regretting that.”
“It’s not as if you’re a prime suspect,” said Cabal, checking his shoulder for possible injury. “But I cannot eliminate you — there simply isn’t the evidence available that would allow me to do that. I do, however, admit that I think you’re a less likely murderer than, say, Miss Ambersleigh, who is also low on my list.”
“Third place?” said Miss Barrow, somewhat mollified but working hard not to show it.
“Joint second, which puts you at fourth. She only makes second because I think she’s as unlikely a candidate as Frau Roborovski. I can’t draw a line between them.”
“Ah,” said Miss Barrow, starting to walk again. “So you’ve plumped for the voyage’s very own femme fatale, Lady Ninuka.”
“And you haven’t?”
“I’m not even convinced that Cacon was killed by a fellow passenger. The way he spoke, it could have been somebody he knew from elsewhere.”
“No,” said Cabal with finality. “Remember, he talked about ‘young love.’ That implies it was somebody known
