Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 128, No. 6. Whole No. 784, December 2006
- Автор: Пикард Нэнси, Пронзини Билл
- Год: 2006
- Язык: английский
- Год: Dell Magazines
- ISBN: 0013-6328
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 128, No. 6. Whole No. 784, December 2006». Краткое содержание книги:
Ganelon set out for Father Sylvanus’s hermitage again, taking a path beside the nearby retreat-house chapel which led deep into the woods.
It was perhaps ironic that a private detective of the two-fisted school would be a student of the art of nonviolent self-defense called the via felix, the Happy Way. Invented by Saint Magnus for his monks’ use in protecting the holy places of Europe during the early Middle Ages, it involved a hip lift and the redistribution of an adversary’s body humors (blood, phlegm, choler, black bile), changing him temperamentally, from, say, a homicidal maniac into a hail-fellow-well-met sort. An adept practiced using a heavy wooden planchette grooved with elaborate channels and four colored balls. Ganelon had just mastered a very difficult maneuver called Navigating between Presumption and Despair which was the door to a higher level of the Happy Way.
The detective followed the narrow path for some distance before he reached a small clearing where a fat blue-green cedar tree built of galvanized metal stood. During the War, Fong Armaments manufactured these sniper boxes and observation posts for the German army. Ganelon remembered the festive note they added to the forward saps and no-man’s-land at Christmas. After the Armistice, the Fongs sold some off as outhouses, toolsheds, and, in Father Sylvanus’s case, a hermitage.
Ganelon’s father once described Father Sylvanus as the very image of El Greco’s famous portrait of Saint Ildefonso, the patron saint of dart players. Curious, Ganelon had looked the painting up in an art book. The saint had been sitting at a small table reading his breviary. As El Greco captured him, he is holding up a dart which probably served as his bookmark and is about to let fly at a dartboard somewhere off the canvas.
Father Sylvanus certainly had the saint’s high forehead, long aristocratic nose, and whimsical smile. But today he was solemn and preoccupied. He invited Ganelon in and congratulated him after watching his work with the planchette. “Your father had not come this far.” Then his eyes went to the open door. “The trees are restless,” he observed.
“You’re the second person to tell me that today. It’s the wind.”
The hermit shook his head. “I grew up near woods like these. When I was a boy people used to say: ‘Elms do grieve. Oak he do hate. Willows do walk if you travels late.’”
“Willows walk?”
“Indeed,” said Father Sylvanus. “Uproot themselves at night and stalk unwary travelers muttering all the way.”
“Then Willow-Walk-Behind didn’t take its name from the willows and the walk behind the retreat house?”
“It was called that and shunned locally long before our order bought the old abandoned mill and ancient willows around the millpond. We wanted the property because our founder and his early followers lived as hermits hereabouts.”
In a voice as casual as he could make it, Ganelon said, “Father Boniface thinks you have been in the woods too long.”
“And he may be right. When the winter wind works their twigs and branches I’ve started to believe I can read something of what the trees are dreaming. They are not happy dreams. The willows may be the unhappiest, though I haven’t yet learned the cursive script of their branches. The trees fear for something. I think it is the Cairo to Cathay Railroad.”
“I don’t understand.”
“The Chinese say a train journey of a thousand miles begins with a single wooden railway tie,” said the priest. “Railroads devour forests. Oh, trees are as innocent as children. When they saw their first woodman’s axe they said, ‘Look, look, part of it is one of us.’ But like children their anger, when it comes, can be a terrible and mindless thing.”
Father Sylvanus stopped. “Leave me now,” he said. “I have much to do.”
On the threshold of the hermitage Ganelon turned back to ask, “What did Father Boniface mean when he said this was a very special Saint Magnus Day?”
“Our founder rose from his deathbed, went outside, stuck his head in a hollow tree, and shouted a last prayer. Ever since we’ve had stories of monks meditating alone in the woods on Saint Magnus Day hearing a muffled voice speaking to them. From records kept we have discovered that this phenomenon occurs once every seventy-five years. Today is such a special day.”
As Ganelon approached the retreat house he saw a man in a tweed suit and hat, leather gaiters, and a narrow Malacca cane under his arm hunkered down examining Shypoke’s body as Father Boniface looked on. Inspector Nestor Flanel, a third-generation policeman, had a personality so grating his superiors gave him every suburban assignment just to get him as far from the prefecture as possible. This explained the gaiters and cane, useful for investigating crime scenes in long grass. Flanel saw Ganelon and made a cold what-the-hell-are-you-doing-here face.
Ganelon’s two-fisted image would suffer if Flanel suspected he was a student of the Happy Way. The detective decided to pretend he’d come to Willow-Walk-Behind for spiritual refreshment. He turned abruptly and entered the retreat house chapel.
The little church was famous for its unusual windows. The one toward the retreat house depicted Saint Magnus Preaching to the Trees of the Forest in bright stained glass. The window’s mate on the forest side was of clear glass, as if inviting the trees to peek in.
Ganelon paused as he had many times before to admire the stained glass. There was the saint shaping his fingers into the twiglike runic characters the forest understood. Crowded around him were trees of every size and description. Even the oak had come and brought his friend the pine. Conveniently, the window had an inch-wide border of clear glass so he could also keep an eye on Flanel at the millpond.
When Ganelon’s eyes grew accustomed to the chapel’s dim he discovered he was not alone. Khalila stood nearby, staring up at the stained glass.
“Sorry to intrude,” he said.
“My people told me to be sure not to miss seeing this famous window,” she said without turning. “It’s very impressive. And, oh, I know now why you didn’t want to get involved in Mr. Shypoke’s murder. Inspector Flanel is a very unpleasant person. He made it quite clear he didn’t want amateurs or private detectives interfering with his investigation.”
“There’s more to it than that,” said Ganelon, explaining how, over the years, his family had driven every competent criminal from San Sebastiano. So its police force no longer attracted minds of high caliber. Men like Flanel blame their lackluster careers on the Ganelons and spurn their help. He didn’t tell her that his family’s reputation had driven his own business away as well. Sometimes, after reflecting on his father’s and his grandfather’s brilliant achievements, there was nothing left for Ganelon to do but visit some low bar and pick a fight with the biggest and meanest guy in the place.
Then he heard himself say, “I’m surprised your people would trust the Cairo to Cathay business to—” He hesitated over the right words. “—someone so young and good-looking.”
She laughed. “I thought you were going to say to such a flirt,” she said, using the word allumeuse, which went back to gaslight days. Then it meant a female lamplighter. Today it was a woman who lights the boys up and walks away.
“Being friendly does help me with my task,” she admitted. “I’ve been sent here with a tentative proposal for the Cairo to Cathay principals. But my people also want to know if Persia is stable enough for a railroad to be built across it. I think the guests here at Willow-Walk-Behind can answer that question. Being friendly helps.”
“Why the interest in the railroad?”
“My people are reclusive, industrious, and astute in the way of business. They must think it a solid proposition,” she said, adding with a smile, “though China has always fascinated my people. If I repeated some of the China stories our elders tell you’d have to laugh.”