Johannes Cabal the Detective

CHAPTER 2 in which a speech is delivered and there is a falling-out

“I should like my own clothes back,” said Cabal. “And my cane.” He was setting up an odd device consisting of a small diamond-shaped mirror on an armature over the recumbent emperor’s head. Cabal spun it experimentally with the tip of his finger and the reflected light flickered rapidly across the emperor’s eyes. The eyes, which had shown no inclination to cooperate, or even an acceptable job of tracking objects individually, twitched crazily before finally settling their gaze on the mirror.

Count Marechal watched, his arms crossed. “Your cane?” He remembered seeing it among Cabal’s possessions: an elegant ebony stick topped with an ugly silver skull headpiece, the high sheen of the smooth surfaces contrasting strongly with the tarnish in the eye sockets and between the teeth. “Sentimental value?” he said, sarcastically.

“As it happens, yes.” Cabal walked over to the count and took the emperor’s speech from him. “I bludgeoned my first failed experiment back to death with it. Thank you.” He returned to linking the mirror to a small electrical motor.

The count walked over to where Lieutenant Karstetz waited. “Get him what he wants, Lieutenant,” he said. Then he added softly, “We won’t have to put up with him for very much longer.”

“Good thing, too,” whispered Karstetz. “The people are getting very troublesome. We’re having to put down little demonstrations almost constantly.”

“That will all change in a few hours when the emperor gives his greatest — and last — speech.” He nodded in Cabal’s direction. “It would be a useful trick to be able to trot dead people out when necessary. Has any progress been made on Cabal’s notes?”

“All a bit technical for me, I’m afraid,” said Karstetz, who found getting dressed unassisted all a bit technical for him. “The cipher boffins are very impressed that he does it all in his head, though. They said something about a rolling key, but they lost me after that.”

“What’s a ‘rolling key’?”

“That’s the bit that lost me. Sorry.”

“It hardly matters if they take a little while to break it. Anybody who’s going to be dying in the next week or so can stay that way with my blessing.”

Cabal folded his legs under him into a corrupt lotus position beside the emperor and flicked through the speech. “Your work, Count?”

“Yes, as it happens. Yes, I wrote it. Why?”

“No reason,” said Cabal, holding the paper with his fingertips. “Very … rabble-rousing. Very appealing to the mob.”

“All the best speeches are,” said Marechal, scenting dissent. “The intention is to get the hoi polloi behind a little healthy expansionism, not dazzle them with a philosophical discourse.”

“No danger of that,” said Cabal. He leaned over and flicked the mirror with his finger. It started spinning rapidly, powered by the motor. The late emperor’s gaze settled on the glittering object and stayed focussed there. Cabal leaned forward and read in an intense whisper, “People of Mirkarvia. Friends. I come before you today to share a vision I have of the future. Not just the future of our own great and noble country but also that of our neighbours …”

Marechal gestured curtly at Karstetz and the two men tiptoed noisily out, their boots clacking and squeaking in the great echoing room. When they were gone, Cabal paused. He looked at the emperor, then he looked at the door through which the two officers had just left. Then he smiled a smile that had no intention of getting anywhere near his eyes.

* * *

Brocade, Your Imperial Majesty, your favourite!” It is always a little disappointing when somebody fulfils a stereotype to several decimal places. Prezof, the emperor’s tailor — more of a costumier, really — would have been laughed off the stage if he’d ever played his job. Tired, dull cliches, the critics would have said. Isn’t the playwright living in the present? Surely no respectable theatre would dare turn out a production of anything other than farce in which a personal tailor is a flouncing, pompadoured, powder puff? A pathetic, simpering, mincing … and so on and so forth. Prezof was all these things. He lived alone but for an obese cat that he called Felice. He had a well- thumbed copy of The Castle of Otranto, with his favourite passages underlined in green ink. He had an impressive collection of embroidered antimacassars on all the armchairs in his house which he changed daily whether anybody had sat there or not. There was nothing more important than the creation of fine clothes for His Imperial Majesty and not an hour went by when he wasn’t actively pursuing the muse. The materials were of the finest, the workmanship superlative, the design execrable. For Prezof may have been dedicated, hardworking, and diligent, but he was not in the least talented. It summed up Mirkarvia very nicely that nobody noticed. Even Cabal, whose artistic eye had been allowed to atrophy, found it painful to be too close to the exquisite robes in which the emperor was due to make his speech. As Prezof bustled the unusually silent emperor into his new clothes, Cabal took his blue-glass dark spectacles from his pocket, polished them on a small piece of chamois that he kept handy, and put them on. That was much better.

Prezof favoured him with a sour glance. Cabal’s black suit had been returned to him, repaired, cleaned, and pressed. A new white shirt, cravat, and shoes made him feel like himself again. His cane lay across his lap. He’d stunned Karstetz by thanking him for its return and almost sounding as if he meant it. All Prezof saw was an unexciting, conservative ensemble. Still, black was always good — but as a cloak? Yes, a cloak! Cabal tended to stride — a cloak would look marvellous billowing about him as he did so. So far, so obvious. Then Prezof demonstrated that he hadn’t lost his knack by mentally adding mauve galoshes and a tall fez with a feather. Cabal was not a vain man but he did stand upon his dignity, and if he had only been able to see that image in Prezof’s mind he would certainly have considered murder.

“Your Imperial Majesty is very quiet today,” said Prezof. “And a little pale, if I might make so bold. You are well?”

Antrobus looked down at Prezof and his eyes were black ports into an empty pit where a soul used to live. His lips slowly formed the words, “People of Mirkavia … Mirkarvia …” Prezof prided himself on being a sensitive person but, then again, he prided himself on being a great artist, and he was deluding himself there, too. He smiled at the dead man and told him there was a bit of mild flu going around and that was certainly the problem.

Cabal was getting bored waiting. He had one last syringe to inject just before they presented the imperial carcass to its public which would give the grey, marbled flesh the semblance of humanity. After that — well, he would have to see. The Count Marechal was clearly a career soldier, a political meddler, and an ambitious aristocrat, and any of these occupations in itself would have boded ill. How he managed to be all three simultaneously without tearing down the seams, and the mendacity and ruthlessness with which he was stuffed leaking out, was a small miracle. Cabal briefly wondered what mendacity and ruthlessness looked like as stuffing and imagined something like wet poppy seeds before his personality turned up and quashed such frivolous whimsy. He had to remain focussed if he were to stay alive.

Lieutenant Karstetz came in and stamped to attention because he liked it. “The Count Marechal requires your presence, Herr Cabal, at the imperial balcony. Oh, and take the corpse with you,” he added as an afterthought.

“Corpse?” said Prezof, appalled, stepping out from behind Antrobus’s bulk, where he had been brushing nap. Then he looked up at the pale emperor and a penny audibly dropped. He gasped and stepped back.

“Oh,” said Karstetz, miffed, “I say, the dressmaker. That’s a bind. This is all supposed to be terribly hush- hush. The count will have my guts for garters for letting the cat out of the bag.” He walked over to Cabal. “Be a brick and take his Imperial Deadness to the balcony, will you?” He looked at Prezof without rancour and drew his sabre. “’Fraid I’ve got a bit of cleaning up to do here, don’t y’know?”

Cabal took the emperor by the elbow and guided him to the door and out into the corridor. As he turned to close the door behind him, he saw Karstetz bearing down on the terrified Prezof. He loathed unnecessary killing but, then again, he loathed Prezof. Still, he felt it was necessary to at least register his disapproval. “You can’t go around killing people to cover up your mistakes,” he said. “You’ll kill off half the country at that rate.”

Karstetz paused. “You’re right, of course,” he admitted, apparently missing the implication. “I think that’s a