The Pearl Crucible - A Dardana Fenek Mystery - SCYROS (part 3)

(Chapter 8, part 3)

(Some edits from this selection’s first appearance, tho’ I like the image, and I’m using it again. — Ed)

The palaco at Herkeniad Placo, Number Three, looked more lively by day. Birds swooped in and out of the plane tree branches hanging over the wall, and pigeons strutted and turned, fanning their tales, on the terracotta tile roofs of the mansion or circled the cypress trees. The flame on the gas lamp was almost invisible by daylight, and the red door at the porter’s lodge responded at once when I banged the knocker by swinging open with a slightly unshaven face behind it.

The porter was a younger man than I expected, but he was missing a leg and looked a touch rough: retired out militia conscript, I guessed, and he confirmed it when I introduced myself and asked.

“Yah,” he said, “the Mist’ had a friend who was my officer and my patron now, and he found me this position.”

“Sorry about Mist’ Fortunato,” I said.

“Terrible it was, Miss.”

“Yah. You all were out that night. Usual thing?”

“Yah, every Sixday,” he said. “But it was earlier than usual that night.”

“How so?”

“There was a music hall performance, and the Miss bought us all tickets for the nineteen o’clock show.”

“Generous of her.”

“Miss is generous,” he agreed. “And didn’t want us out all the night, so she didn’t get tickets for the twenty-one o’clock show. Bought us a round ahead of time with the tickets, too, bless her.”

“When did you leave?”

“Eighteen o’clock,” he said. “Or, really, a few minutes earlier. Fair walk down, and we wanted good seats, and look at me!” He rapped his peg on the flags. “I walk slow. Pty we went, we’d have saved him”

“What will she do with the house now?”

“Not her house, Miss. It’s her mother’s.”

“True, I forgot about her. Will her mother come to the city now?”

“I’m sure I don’t know, Miss Fenek.”

“Why were she and her husband living apart?”

“Didn’t get along, I hear, and she didn’t want a divorce, or he wouldn’t permit one. There was,” he lowered his voice, “another man.”

I had Barsina tip him two kvaras, and the Majordomo, meeting us at the house door, took my card.

“I see you remembered the correct way in this time,” he said sourly as Barsina slipped her sandals into her girdle.

“Thank you, yes,” I said, smiling.

“I cannot imagine Miss Fortunato will be interested in speaking with you.”

“I understand,” I said. “She is in mourning.”

“The entire house is, Miss Fenek.”

“Please also tell her that I have brought something to her from Miss Zenithar, which I am supposed to give her personally.”

The majordomo didn’t react, so whether he knew Miss Zenithar from the Queen of Penesthelia, I don’t know. He didn’t look like he did anything of a Starsday night but read tracts he picked up at the temple in the morning, but men could surprise you. “I’ll tell her,” he said.

I curtsied without remarks, and he disappeared for a while. We waited at the house door until he returned to say that we were allowed to enjoy the cool of the Rose Room and, if Miss Fortunato chose, we would be summoned further in later.

The Rose Room looked out onto a Rose Garden, which made sense. The windows, made of little lozenge- or diamond-shaped panes, pivoted out like doors and latched inside about halfway up. They were closed now to keep out the heat, but I opened one and looked out curiously at the blooms—thick, heady pink ones with white and red mottles.

Barsina slipped next to me, and we stood heel to heel, leaning out and looking at the winding rose limbs. It was a nice place and sweet-smelling, but I looked idly about and took heed of things that were interesting, as is my wont. The sill wasn’t a meter and a half to the soft soil. The center pair of windows happened to be the only ones one could climb in and out of without being caught by thorns. If I were a young man—or a young woman with no sense of dignity—I could have leaped in and out and avoided the trouble of the doors.

Barsina touched my hand and pointed.

On the sleek finish of the windowsill was a scuff and a trace of dirt. I looked outside at the ground and leaned further and looked at the wall. Some ivy was hanging onto the plaster face, and a branch of it was torn away, hanging loose.

Immediately, I knelt and looked at the carpet as Barsina stepped back. There was a very faint mark of dirt in a small horseshoe or semicircle shape as if laid by the heel of a sandal. Barsina immediately produced my folding ruler. I laid it across the dim mark. “Six centimeters,” I said.

I sat back on my own heels as she wrote that down. “Interesting.” I pulled out a metal probe and disturbed the grains of dirt on the carpeting. They were dark and loamy, and matched the dirt on the sill.

“A wonder this hasn’t been cleaned.”

“The house is disturbed because of the death,” Barsina said. “Tank-girls will keep up our duties, but we will do only what we are ordered. Former citizens,” she said primly, “are lazy.”

I had to agree this was entirely true. “A six-centimeter sandal heel,” I said. “What’s that suggest?”

“A woman,” she answered.

“Rather,” I agreed, standing and looking out. “The dirt is dried in place, so it was damp when put here off a sandal heel. So … last night?”

“It would have surely been cleaned before, Miss.”

“So a woman entered the house last night by climbing in. She expected to find the window unlatched, and it was. She struggled slightly to clamber in, damaging the ivy and leaving traces on the sill she did not expect to leave behind. To what end?”

Barsina looked very grave. “Murder, Miss?”

I nodded. “Murder.”

( … This way to Chapter Eight part 2 … ) ( … This way to Chapter Nine part 1 … )