Mortal Mischief

Braun.

The police had wanted to know why he had been to see Herr Uberhorst the previous evening.

'I have enemies,' he had said, pointing at his bruised eye. 'I wanted to consult Herr Uberhorst on a matter of security.'

'You wanted him to supply a lock?'

'Yes. A good one for my front door.' The Inspector had looked at him sceptically. 'I lost some money at cards . . . to a gentleman. It is my understanding that he is anxious to get it.'

'Why did you not come to the police for protection?'

'The gentleman in question is from my homeland. We have our own way of doing things.'

And so the questions had continued – a relentless inquisition.

That irritating, fat Inspector!

As the morphine took effect a gentle warmth spread through Zaborszky's body. His eyelids became heavy and a blurred impression of the world flickered for a few moments before giving way to shadow. The day faded and magical colours began to coalesce out of the infinite darkness. He saw a great house sitting on a wall of rock and heard the sound of a foaming river, rushing through a deep valley.

'Zoltan.' The voice was female and sounded distant. 'Zoltan?'

Was it his mother? One of his sisters?

He tried to open his eyes but found it difficult to do so.

'Here, let me take that.'

Slowly, his lids lifted and he saw the vague shape of a woman kneeling beside him.

His hand was still holding the depressed syringe and the needle was still in his arm. She carefully placed her thumb and forefinger on the glass body of the syringe and tugged it from his weak grip. Zaborszky watched a bead of blood well up from the dermal puncture. It grew, and finally trickled along the crease of his elbow joint. He was fascinated by its brilliance – a bright scarlet.

The woman's feet appeared in his field of vision.

She was wearing a pair of small leather boots with high heels – the laces crossing between two columns of silver-edged holes. He could not see the hem of a dress or any evidence of an undergarment. She was wearing black cotton stockings, and as he raised his eyes he noticed that her legs were slim and shapely.

It wasn't his mother.

The woman's stocking tops were heavily embroidered with a complicated floral pattern, and were supported by green garters that bit into thighs of luminous white flesh.

In order to continue his examination Zaborszky had to raise his head – a task that seemed to require an extraordinary amount of effort.

Struts of whalebone fanned out from a tiny waist, supporting sails of shiny red silk. Zaborszky became engrossed by every detail – the dangling ribbons, the threads of green and gold, the hook-and-eye arrangement that kept the corset tightly closed. The woman's statuesque breasts were pressed together, and were powdered. For the first time Zaborszky became aware of her perfume – which reminded him of night-scented stock.

With one final Herculean effort, Zaborszky tilted his head back and looked up at her face.

'Well.' Her lips were moving, but there seemed to be no correspondence between the motions of her mouth and the sounds that she produced. 'Do you want some katzchen?'

She opened her legs and sat on his lap – straddling him as though he was a horse. She pulled his face on to her breasts, and without thought he began to kiss them. The flesh was firm and remarkably cool.

Her hands were in Zaborszky's hair. She pulled her fingers together and jerked his head back.

There was something about her face that made him feel uneasy. She was curiously familiar.

'What's the matter?' Her words had a shifting, liquid quality. 'You look scared.'

Those green eyes . . . those spirals of blonde hair.

'You mustn't be scared.'

How could this be?

'I've got something for you.'

'Lotte,' he whispered. 'Lotte?'

Szepasszony. Fair one. Demonic seductresss.

His hands slid up the woman's bare arms, over her smooth shoulders and settled in the hollows beneath her lower jaw.

The witch had said: She will get you.

'What are you doing?'

Zaborszky's fingers closed around the woman's neck.

Those green eyes. Storms and showers of hail.

The woman tried to move but discovered that the Count's grip was resolute. His expression betrayed the kindling of a strange passion.

'Please . . . let me go,' she said.

Squeezed through the passage of a constricted windpipe, her voice was suddenly very thin.

51

COSIMA VON RATH seemed entirely out of place in Rheinhardt's office: too large and too colourful for such a functional space. She shifted her weight on the hard wooden chair, her capacious haunches spreading and bulging over its edges. Rheinhardt would have found her presence less disconcerting had she been held aloft in a palanquin, supported on the shoulders of eight Nubian slaves.

Waving a fan in front of her round face, she continued her account: 'Herr Uberhorst did behave strangely. He wanted to ask the spirit a question, and he was quite adamant that he should receive a definitive answer – a yes or a no: I recall that quite clearly.'

Rheinhardt twisted the tip of his moustache between thumb and forefinger: 'And the question he wanted to ask was?'

'Should I tell . . . them.'

' 'Them' being who?'

'I have no idea, Inspector – he wouldn't say. We assured him that he was among friends and had nothing to fear, but nothing would induce Herr Uberhorst to provide us with an explanation. He said that it was a private matter.'

'Did he say anything else?'

'No.'

'Please, Fraulein, think harder – it might be important.'

Cosima stopped fanning herself and paused. Rheinhardt could see that his request had been taken seriously. Her brow became corrugated with deep lines as her lips puckered.

'Well,' she said finally. 'He said it was a private matter . . . but he also mentioned honour. Yes, that's right – he couldn't explain himself because it was a matter of honour.'

'And what do you make of that?'

Cosima closed her fan and tapped it against her protrusive lips.

'I imagine he supposed that if we learned who he intended to communicate with then it would reflect badly on Fraulein Lowenstein. I suppose he was trying to protect her reputation. Which suggests that he was in some way implicated in her scheme.'

'Scheme?'

'To subjugate a higher power. Given Herr Uberhorst's fate, I am now even more convinced that this was the case.'

'So, you think that Herr Uberhorst too was killed by a supernatural entity?'

Cosima dropped her fan and clutched the ankh that hung around her neck.

'Yes, I do.'

'Would that be Seth – again?'

Cosima's eyes widened and her knuckles paled as she clutched the talisman.

'He is a great god, and a mischievous god . . . Yes, it is possible.'