'You should have told us, Rod.'
Hightower raised an eyebrow tiredly. 'You should have told us about your succubus, but you didn't. We all have our secrets, Gaunt. Some of them are just easier to live with than others.'
Gaunt nodded slowly. 'Why did you kill William, Rod?'
Hightower laughed soundlessly. 'I didn't,' he said quietly. And then he died.
Gaunt slowly straightened up and looked at the others. 'I don't understand,' he said slowly. 'Why should he lie about it? He knew he was dying.'
'He didn't lie,' said Hawk. Everyone looked at him sharply, and he smiled grimly. 'All along I've been saying this case didn't make sense, and I was right. The evidence didn't tie together because there wasn't just one murderer. There were two.'
Chapter Seven
A HIDDEN EVIL
The parlor seemed somehow larger, now there were so few people left to sit in it. The chair with Katherine's body had been pushed to the rear of the room. The still, sheeted figure sat slumped in its chair like a sleeping ghost. The two Guards and their suspects sat in a rough semicircle around the empty fireplace. They sat in silence, looking at each other with tired, suspicious eyes. Hawk and Fisher sat side by side. Hawk was scowling thoughtfully, while Fisher glared at everyone impartially, her sword resting across her knees. Dorimant sat on the edge of his chair, mopping at his face with a handkerchief. The heat was worse if anything, and the parlor was almost unbearably close and stuffy. Gaunt sat stiffly in his chair, staring at nothing. He hadn't said a word since they left the laboratory. Stalker handed him a glass of wine, and the sorcerer looked at it dully. Stalker had to coax him into taking the first sip, but after that Gaunt carried on drinking mechanically, until the glass was empty. Stalker noted Hawk's disapproving frown an leant forward conspiratorially.
'Don't worry,' he said quietly. 'The wine contains a strong sedative. Let him sleep off the shock; it's the best thing for him.'
Hawk nodded slowly. 'You must be very skilled at sleight of hand, sir Stalker; I didn't see you drop anything into his wine.'
Stalker grinned. 'I didn't. It's a variation on my transformation trick with the alcohol, only this time I used the spell to change some of the wine into a sedative. Simple, but effective.'
Hawk nodded thoughtfully, and Stalker sank back in his chair. He glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece, and then looked sharply at Hawk.
'Your time's nearly up. Captain. In just under half an hour it will be dawn, and the isolation spell will collapse. If Hightower was telling the truth, you don't have much time left to find your second killer.'
'I don't need any more time,' said Hawk calmly. 'I know who the second murderer is.'
Everyone looked at him sharply, including Fisher. 'Are you sure, Hawk?' she said carefully. 'We can't afford to be wrong.'
'I'm sure,' said Hawk. 'Everything's finally fallen into place. I'd pretty much worked out the who and why a while back, but I still couldn't work out how it had been done; and without that, I couldn't make an accusation.'
'But now you've got it?' said Fisher.
'Yeah,' said Hawk. He looked unhurriedly around him, letting the tension build. Stalker was watching him interestedly, his hand resting on the sword at his side. Dorimant was perched right on the edge of his chair, leaning eagerly forward. Gaunt watched quietly, sitting slumped in his chair, his eyes already drooping from the sedative Stalker had given him. Fisher was glaring at him impatiently, and Hawk decided he'd better make a start.
'Let me recap a little to begin with,' said Hawk slowly. 'This has been a complicated case, made even more so because right from the word <em>go</em> there were two killers, working separately, with completely unconnected motives. That's why the truthspell didn't work. I asked everyone if they killed Blackstone <em>and</em> Bowman. And of course each killer could truthfully say no; they'd only killed one man, not both.
'The first killer was of course Lord Roderik Hightower. Under the influence of the full moon, his killer's rage drove him to become a wolf and kill Edward Bowman. The choice of victim was pure chance. If Hightower hadn't found Bowman on the landing, he would undoubtedly have found someone else to attack. He killed his second victim, the witch Visage, while his wife was out of sight in the bathroom and Visage was left alone on the landing. I think he probably killed her deliberately. She'd smelt something strange on the landing after Bowman's murder, and given time she might have been able to identify what it was. So Hightower killed her, while he had the chance. By the time he killed his wife, the Lady Elaine, the werewolf in him was too strong to be denied. The killing rage must have been overpowering. It's a wonder he was able to fight it off and stay human as long as he did.
'But while all this was going on, another killer was moving among us, the man who killed William Blackstone and his wife, (Catherine. Again, the case was made more complicated by outside factors. To begin with, we were distracted by the door having been apparently locked from the inside. Once Katherine admitted her part in the deception, and in the stabbing of the dead body to mislead us as to the cause of death, the situation grew a little clearer. The wineglass in Blackstone's room intrigued me. The wine had to have been poisoned, but Gaunt swore that it was harmless. He even tasted some of it himself, to prove it. But then someone secretly removed the wineglass from Blackstone's room, proving that the wine had in some way contributed to Blackstone's death. If it hadn't, why go to all the trouble and risk of removing it?'
'So William definitely was poisoned?' said Dorimant.
'In a way,' said Hawk. 'The poison killed him, but he really died by magic.'
'That's impossible!' snapped Gaunt. He struggled to sit up straighter, and glared at Hawk. 'William was still wearing the amulet Visage made for him. It was a good amulet; I tested it myself. As long as he was wearing it, magic wouldn't work in his vicinity.'
'Exactly,' said Hawk. 'And that's why he died.'
Gaunt looked at him confusedly, and some of the fire went out of his eyes as the sedative took hold of him again. Hawk looked quickly around at the other listeners. Dorimant was leaning so far forward it was a wonder he hadn't fallen off his chair. Stalker was frowning thoughtfully. And Fisher was looking as though she'd brain him if he didn't get on with his story.
'It was a very clever scheme,' said Hawk. 'Since there was no trace of poison, if it hadn't been for Katherine's interference, we'd probably have put Blackstone's death down to natural causes. So, how did he die? It all comes down to the amulet and the glass of wine. The killer took a glass of poison and worked a transformation spell on it, so that it became a glass of perfectly normal wine. He then gave the glass to Blackstone. However, once Blackstone raised the glass to his lips, the amulet canceled out the transformation magic, and the wine reverted to its original and deadly state. Blackstone must have died shortly after entering his bedroom. He fell to the floor, dropping the wineglass. It rolled away from the body, passed beyond the amulet's influence, and the poison became wine again. Which is why Gaunt was able to taste it quite safely. Later on, the killer went back to the room and removed the wineglass. He knew a thorough examination would reveal the wine's true nature. If everything had gone according to plan, and Blackstone's death had been accepted as a heart attack, he would probably have switched the original glass for another, containing normal wine, but as things were he was no doubt pressed for time.'
'Ingenious,' said Gaunt, blinking owlishly.
'Yes, but is it practical?' said Dorimant. 'Would it have worked?'
'Oh, yes,' said Gaunt. 'It would have worked. And that's why Katherine had to die! Just before Visage's death, Katherine was trying to remember who had given William that last glass of wine. She was sure she'd seen who it was, but she couldn't quite remember. She had to die, because the killer was afraid she might identify him.'
'Right,' said Hawk. 'So, we've established how William Blackstone died. Now we come to the suspects. Gaunt, Dorimant, Stalker. Three suspects; but only one of you had the means and the opportunity and the motive.
'Gaunt could have worked the transformation spell on the wine. He knew about the amulet, and he is both a sorcerer and an alchemist. But he also had a succubus, with all the power and abilities that granted him. If he'd wanted Blackstone dead, there were any number of ways he could have managed it, without any danger of it being traced back to him. He certainly wouldn't have committed a murder in his own house; an investigation might have
