Johannes Cabal the Detective

to me. Miss Ambersleigh is not young. Frau Roborovski is married. You — ” He considered in silence for a moment. “You, I may have to move up the rankings.” Then, to quickly quench her outrage, he added, “Based purely on your age, but you are still a country mile behind the Lady Ninuka in my mind. Consider: she is demonstrably manipulative, mendacious, and self-centred to the point of sociopathy.” He noticed a faint smile on Miss Barrow’s lips. “What?”

“Nothing,” she said. “I’m finding this very educational. Please, continue.”

“Furthermore, she is a member of the Mirkarvian gentry, and they seem to be very political creatures. I’m sure they are read Machiavelli in the nursery, and practise by setting their dolls against one another. Nor are they above acting as their own agents. If you want a Senzan spy dead, sometimes you just have to do it yourself.”

“You might have something there,” she said, now sober. “I heard that her father is somebody big in the government or the military.”

“It will be both. It’s very hard to tell the two apart in Mirkarvia.”

“I overheard the purser gossiping with the chief steward, because she’d given one of the stewards a hard time over some stupid little thing she found to complain about. The purser said the steward should just grin and bear it, because if Lady Ninuka went running to her ‘daddy the count’ things could get very sticky for him.”

This time it was Miss Barrow’s turn to be jerked to a halt. “This count,” said Cabal slowly. “Would he have a name?”

“Yes, but I don’t remember it. I didn’t think it was important.”

“Could it have been Marechal?”

“Yes! That was it. I remember thinking it was quite a French-sounding name for a Mirkarvian, but that’s just the name of his fiefdom. Oh, that would be a county, wouldn’t it? I’d never really thought about that before. Anyway, the land used to belong to a neighbouring state until some war ages and ages ago, and they kept the name for the title, but the family name is actually Ninuka. Thinking about it, I’m a bit surprised that a country that’s so influenced by the German language doesn’t use Graf instead of Count. ‘Graf Marechal.’ Hmm.”

She looked closely at Cabal, but he had clearly stopped listening somewhere around “Yes!”

“Ohhhhh,” she said, the smile coming back again. “Friend of yours, is he?”

“Not in any recognised sense of the word, no. This puts a markedly different complexion upon matters.”

Miss Barrow’s smile slipped. “How?”

“My main interest in getting to the bottom of the affair has been partially curiosity but mainly a sense of reactive self-preservation.”

“What? Get them before they get you? Well, that’s lovely. How about to bring a murderer to justice?”

Cabal glanced at her, frowning slightly at such foolishness. “What a quaint idea. No, I can honestly say that was never in my thoughts. The possibility of Marechal’s involvement, however, puts a new emphasis on matters, which is to say, upon my life, and extending it beyond, say, tomorrow.”

Miss Barrow was taken aback. She had come to expect the unexpected with Cabal, but cowardice seemed out of joint with the architecture of his personality as she understood it. “You’re scared of him!”

Cabal raised an eyebrow at this impertinence. “I would not characterise it as fear. Simply a desire not to be cut to bleeding chunks by a maniac with a cavalry sabre. More of a rational concern, really.”

“But the deaths — ”

“Unfortunate, but we shall just have to congratulate the killer or — far more likely — killers on some murders well done, and bid him, her, or them a fond farewell. Bon voyage, ma chere Hortense, and try not to let your body count get any higher. We’re well rid of the whole sordid affair.”

“Not we, Cabal.”

“Eh?”

“I’m rejoining the ship. I’ve decided to go all the way to Katamenia.”

“What? But why? Why rejoin the ship, that is. Any reason for wanting to go to Katamenia is already beyond my understanding, but why put yourself in harm’s way?”

“I can’t just let whoever did this go, Cabal. I can’t. To answer your question, because it’s the right thing to do.”

Cabal’s face tightened with ill-concealed anger. “What your father would do, you mean.”

She smiled, a little wanly. “It’s the same thing. It usually is.”

“Your father’s a busybody.”

“My father,” replied Miss Barrow, gently disengaging her arm from Cabal’s, “is a good man. But he’s at home, back in Penlow on Thurse, so I shall have to do this.” She started to walk away, back towards the aeroport, but paused after a few steps. “I doubt we’ll meet again.”

“I doubt it, too. You’re playing Mirkarvian roulette, Miss Barrow. Much like the Russian version, but with only one empty chamber.”

They stood in the gas-lit street alone, the other evening walkers already at their tables speaking of love and life and happier subjects than a lowering death. Miss Barrow’s face was difficult to make out in the shadow of her hat, but Cabal could see the skin of her cheeks, pale and sickly in the flickering yellow light. She was scared, just as she was brave, just as she was doomed. He could almost see the chain of events that would surely follow: she would ask questions, she would make somebody nervous, and she would die. “Miss Barrow, whatever else you think of me, know this. I abominate death. I deal in it, but I loathe it. Your intentions reek of it and, if you return to the ship, the path of your life will be a short one, I am sure.”

“You want me to stay here in Senza.”

“It would be wisest.”

“Whoever’s behind these crimes would go free, in that case. The captain seems a good man, but he’s out of his depth. If Ninuka is behind all this, he can’t do anything anyway. She could stand in front of him with blood on her hands and he’d trot off to get her a basin to wash them in. It’s more than his career … it’s more than his life is worth to do otherwise. I can make a fuss, because I’m a foreigner, and I have my country behind me.”

“If you imagine your country would go to war just because some silly girl gets herself killed, you are a fool.”

“Perhaps I am. But God looks after fools and little children, doesn’t he? Auf Wiedersehen, Herr Cabal” He stood and watched as she walked away.

“Goodbye, Miss Barrow,” he said to himself with a heavy finality.

CATALOGUE NO.: 00 153 342

AUTHOR: UNKNOWN (vide infra)

TITLE: Principia Necromantica

EDITION: C. 1820, demy 4 to. Printer & publisher unknown.

GENERAL CLASS: Restricted (under absolute interdiction)

NOTES:

Other known editions:

John Rylands Library, Manchester, Great Britain. Incunabulum, with marginalia. Earliest known, C16, Latin. Subsequent editions have textual fidelity to this edition (cf. McCaffey). Vatican Library. Index Librorum Prohibitorum file copy, restricted collection. C. 1860, French.

General:

The Principia Necromantica is a rare surviving artefact of the notorious “Whitely Scandal” of the early nineteenth century. Captain Horace Whitely’s initial attempts to publish the Principia — presumably copied from the volume that ultimately came to reside at the John Rylands Library — resulted in the enactment of byelaws to prevent its publication in three boroughs of London. He went on to the continent and brokered a deal with a French print shop known primarily for producing pornography. Only twenty copies had been produced when the master printer was made aware of the book’s contents and ceased work, burning most (accounts suggest seventeen) and attacking Whitely. Whitely escaped with the surviving sheets and returned to Britain, where he had them bound at a bindery where no one spoke Latin.

The cover is of black leather, assumed to be calfskin. It bears no title, author, or maker’s mark. The front cover bears the motto “Fais ce que tu voudras” embossed in silver leaf. The content of