“And the Governor is one of those?”
Hilary nodded. “He has too much mana. He has too much of everything. Haven’t you ever noticed how Fate loves a shining target? It’s dangerous to be too lucky. Wasn’t the Greek symbol for Nemesis a measure pressed down and running over?”
At the door of her own office Tash looked carefully at the array of alarm buttons. One glowed red. That meant the alarm system was working. She switched it off by pressing numbered buttons in the numerical sequence of the combination based on her birth date, and then opened the door.
“Hilary! Come here, please!”
“What’s the matter?”
Tash had left her typewriter open. Now, something yellow lay on the keys where she could not miss seeing it the moment she opened the door.
She had no words for what she felt as she stood looking down at the body of the dead canary.
Its neck was broken.
6
IT WAS HILARY who found a piece of brown wrapping paper in the closet and made a parcel of the dead bird. It was Hilary who remembered to check the alarm button after she had locked the office door behind them with Tash’s key.
“The alarm’s working now. Was it working when you unlocked the door?”
“Yes. I switched it off before I used the key.”
Hilary led the way down the corridor to the door that opened into the rest of the house.
“Could it have been a cat?” Tash could not quite control her voice.
“Would a cat leave a dead bird on a typewriter? And then go out of a room, shutting a door and resetting an alarm system? Whoever did all that walked on two legs.”
“But why would anyone do it?”
They were crossing the broad front hall to a door Tash had not noticed before. Hilary opened it without knocking. A man in uniform was sitting at a switchboard with earphones on his head. He pushed the earphones aside as Hilary began to speak.
“Tell Captain Wilkes that Mrs. Truance must see him at once. Priority. I’ll wait here in the hall until he comes.”
“Shouldn’t we tell Mrs. Playfair?” said Tash.
“She’s resting,” said Hilary. “She skipped dinner, too. I think we should let her rest.”
The hall was empty and shadowy as they sat down to wait for Captain Wilkes.
“I didn’t realize there were so many policemen here,” said Tash.
“It’s the Governor’s guard, detailed from the state police. There are a dozen of them, but sometimes I think that’s not enough. Obviously, it wasn’t enough today.”
“Why are you so sure this was someone from outside? Couldn’t it have been an inside job, a wanton joke? One of the pages perhaps? Or somebody in the kitchen?” Hilary shook her head. “I doubt it. They’re all handpicked. They’re all civil servants. They’re well-paid and they’ve always seemed proud of their jobs.”
“What is Captain Wilkes like?”
“He’s hand-picked, too. Command of the Governor’s guard, is the plum job for state policemen, and Captain Wilkes is not a stereotype. He’s a West Point graduate who took degrees in law and criminology after he left the Army. Bred to be a soldier, he believes that war is a collective psychosis, epidemic in the twentieth century, and that civilian crime is merely one phase of the disease.”
“Do you think he’s right?”
“I don’t know, but if he’s wrong, I hope no one ever tells him so. Captain Wilkes would take it hard, and—” She was cut short by the front doorbell.
An usher crossed the hall and opened the door to two men in uniform.
The cavalry breeches and boots reminded Tash that when the state police service was founded there were no cars. The men had patrolled on horseback, like Canadian Mounted Police from whom their uniforms were copied. There had been a lot of resistance to taking them off horses, but it finally became apparent to everyone that they could not gallop after modern cars in a state that comprised ten thousand square miles. Their first cars were big sedans, and their first radios took up the whole back seat. Now they had small, fast cars and two-way radios they could carry in their pockets, but they still wore cavalry boots and breeches and officers still called their men troopers.
“Captain Wilkes!” Hilary almost ran to the older of the two men. “Look.” She opened the brown paper parcel. “It was in Miss Perkins office, on her typewriter. We found it a few moments ago. Before we went into the office, the door was locked and the alarm system was working.”
“Miss Perkins?” He bowed to Tash. “You’re assuming this is Mrs. Playfair’s canary?”
“I know it is.”
“Let’s make sure.” He turned to the younger man beside him. “Lieutenant Pulaski, you know where the Florida Room is. If the cage is empty, bring it here.” He turned back to Hilary.
“Does Mrs. Playfair know?”
“No.”
“Then let’s wrap this up again.” He folded the paper around the dead bird. “I wouldn’t want her to come downstairs and see it suddenly, without any warning.”
Pulaski came back carrying the cage. There was still sand on the floor and pieces of lettuce and cuttlebone. There were still bowls of seed and water, but the door stood open and the cage was empty. No bright-eyed, little ball of feathers mopped and mowed before the scrap of looking-glass or poured out his heart in song.
“Be careful how you handle that cage,” said Wilkes. “I know it’s mostly wicker, but there’s some smooth wood in the frame. There just might be a fingerprint. Send it down to the lab with this parcel, mark both Immediate Attention, and send four men to search every room in this house. It’s barely possible that whoever did it is still here, though
