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:
Wondering if she’d found Shypoke an unsettling presence, Ganelon asked, “Did you see Shypoke last night?”
“Now you sound like Inspector Flanel.”
“Flanel can make a real shambles of things. When he’s around, a parallel investigation never hurts.”
“I saw Shypoke at dinner,” she said. “That’s it.”
“What did you do last night?”
“I took a walk with Captain Jerome,” she said. “Along the way we met with Ivanov, the Russian pilot. He walked with us for a bit. After that I went to my room. I came down later to Father Boniface’s office. He lets me use his telephone to keep my people in the picture. But somebody else was using it. I believe it was Baron Waldteufel. So I went to bed.”
Having answered his questions, Khalila left the chapel.
Ganelon remained where he was, watching Flanel oversee the loading of Shypoke’s body onto a coroner’s gurney. Then Khalila appeared at the millpond. A moment later Jerome and Timmons came around a corner of the retreat house, standing aside as the gurney trundled by.
Suddenly an excited monk came running out of the woods, shouting and pointing back the way he had come. Flanel and the others followed him back into the woods.
Ganelon came out of the chapel to find out what was happening. As he passed the millpond Baron Waldteufel stepped from behind a willow tree. “Still lurking, are we, Baron?” he said. In aerial action over the trenches the German liked to creep up on an enemy aviator by flitting from cloud to cloud until ready to pounce.
The Baron stared at Ganelon through his monocle before giving a smart click of his heels and a short bow from the neck. Then he said, “Two monks on a work party in the woods discovered a second body in a crashed airplane. The others have gone to investigate.” He pointed to the path they had taken.
“Then I think I’ll join them,” said Ganelon. “Care to come along?”
The Baron shook his head. “It’s the Russian, Ivanov. Yesterday he buzzed the retreat house, no doubt hoping to impress General Massoudi with loop-the-loops and barrel rolls. He didn’t know Massoudi had been held up in Alexandria by a sandstorm. This morning the Prentiss-Jenkins people had us all over at their facility for a champagne brunch and a walk-around to show off some newly arrived aircraft. Miss Assad was invited, too. Ivanov stayed on after we left. No doubt he meant to repeat his aerial display for Massoudi today.”
Then, as if he knew Ganelon’s next question, Waldteufel said, “Inspector Flanel asked when I saw Shypoke for the last time. I said at dinner. But on reflection I think I heard him later that night. I was using Father Boniface’s telephone. I’m pretty sure somebody was outside listening at the window next-door where the Anglo-Persian Oil people and Timmons were meeting. I believe it was Shypoke.”
Striding off into the woods, Ganelon soon caught sight of the others. When Jerome saw him he dropped back. “I hope our dead man isn’t Ivanov,” he told Ganelon. “That would complicate things. Massoudi brought word the Shah favors a Russian team. I rather think he feels the Russians have their hands too full with their tin-pot revolution to pose any threat to his country.”
“And the British would bring too much of an imperial agenda to the task,” said Ganelon. “Which leaves Waldteufel and his Germans.”
Jerome nodded. Then after a few moments he said, “By the way, the old guy you talked to back there by the orchard, I’m sure he was only a fruit farmer. But when I was a boy, they told stories about the Old Apple-Tree Man, a tame tree spirit who warned people when it wasn’t wise to go into the woods.”
“Then he should have warned Shypoke,” said Ganelon. “And speaking of Shypoke—”
“Let’s see,” said Jerome. “I saw him at dinner. Afterwards I went for a walk with Khalila, who had some questions about the feasibility of the Cairo to Cathay Railroad. A very smart girl. And oh, yes, we ran into Ivanov. Later I was standing at my window when I saw Shypoke again. He was coming around the side of the retreat house.”
“Was anyone following him?”
“Not right behind him, no,” said Jerome, adding, “Look, I’m sorry. I still take these drops for my eyes before I go to bed. I chose just that moment to put them in. Remember the story of the blind man cured at Bethesda? At first he said he saw men like trees walking. That’s what I saw, a blurry shape just like a tree walking come out of the retreat house and head off in the direction Shypoke had gone.”
Ganelon sighed to himself. That’s all he needed, a walking tree. He imagined his grandfather laying his oboe aside to give his full attention to so intriguing a development. He saw his father bouncing his fingertips together thoughtfully as he considered the truth hidden behind so unscientific a story. Ganelon found himself wondering where the nearest bar was.
He and Jerome walked on for another fifteen minutes until they reached the crashed Russian biplane. Nicknamed a Pasternaki from its tapered, parsniplike fuselage, it had come down across a clearing and smashed into the base of a large tree. The dead pilot, a round-faced blond young man, wore a green uniform with red markings.
With a nod at his partner standing by the airplane, the monk who’d guided them to the crash explained, “Brother and I had been sent to clean the brush away around what we hope is Saint Magnus’s Tree. As Father Boniface put it, ‘There’ll Be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight’ if we’re lucky enough to hear our founder’s voice speaking to us across the centuries. Anyway, as we were starting back we heard the plane go over. Then its engine cut out and we heard it crash.”
Flanel examined the body and announced the pilot’s neck had been broken in the crash. After walking slowly around the airplane, he stood rocking back and forth on his heels and tugging at his lower lip, doing a fine impersonation of a man deep in thought.
Khalila toured the wreckage. When she reached the gas tank she rapped on it. Then she came over next to Ganelon. “Sounds empty to me,” she murmured.
Ganelon had wondered why there’d been no fire or explosion on impact. Nice detective work. You bet, business was slow at the agency. But having a beautiful junior partner around might make the time go faster.
At Flanel’s signal the monks emptied a scythe and two rakes from their wheelbarrow, loaded up Ivanov’s body, and trundled back to the retreat house with everyone following behind.
Two dead bodies or not, it still wasn’t Ganelon’s case. Maybe that was just as well. He was here to get to the next level in the Happy Way. With that in mind he left the others when they reached a small side path that led to Father Sylvanus’s hermitage.
Ganelon found the hermit sweeping the dirt floor of his galvanized dwelling with a broom of twigs. “Any chance of squeezing in a lesson, Father?”
The priest gave him a sad smile. “Let’s leave that for the new Father Sylvanus,” he said, adding, “Did I ever tell you I was born on Saint Magnus Day seventy-five years ago? I came in with our founder’s prayer and I have a strong premonition that I will go out with it. So I have much to do, including the naming of the new Father Sylvanus from among those I have trained. I had high hopes for Father Carlus before he chose the byway of speed-demonry.”
The old priest looked around at the forests as if for the last time and said, “Saint Magnus was much in awe of trees, the way they stood half in heaven and half deep in the earth, much as we humans do. Meditating on this set him to wondering if the vast underground network of tree and seaweed roots could be used as a long-distance communication system. Stick your head in a hollow tree, shout your message, and someone with his head in a tree at the other end would hear what you said. Imagine sending a message from one end of Australia to the other using the roots of the shady coolabah tree.