Borrower of the Night: The First Vicky Bliss Mystery (11 page)

“I agree,” I said, before Tony could object. “The countess won’t call you, Doctor; she made that pretty clear.”

Blankenhagen nodded.

“Come, then. I understand none of this; but some of it I must understand if I am to help that girl. She has need of help, I think.”

We went down the stairs, through the Hall, and out into the night-shrouded court. There was enough moonlight to let us see the arched door of the chapel in the north wing. Tony’s first key fit the lock.

The interior was a blaze of tarnished gilt in the rays of Tony’s flashlight. I blinked, and mentally discarded one possible hiding place. The chapel had been redecorated in the baroque period; twisted marble columns, sunbursts of gold plaster, and stucco cherubs by the cartload filled the long, narrow room. The remodelers would have found any treasure here.

“The entrance to the crypt should be near the altar,” I said.

Blankenhagen hesitated.

“I am wondering — should we not wait until daylight?”

“You aren’t scared, are you?” Tony grinned weakly.

“The dead are dead,” said Blankenhagen.

In broad daylight it might have sounded sententious. In the baroque gloom, with the memory of the stance fresh in our minds, it had the ring of a credo.

“Thanks for reminding me,” said Tony. “This way.”

The entrance was behind the altar. It was barred by a grilled iron gate, which yielded to Tony’s second key. He turned the flashlight down into the black pit of the stairs, and he wasn’t the only one who hesitated just a bit before starting to descend.

The crypt extended the full length of the chapel. Rough square stone pillars supported the vaulted roof. There was none of the dampness I had expected, but the air had a musty smell that struck at the nostrils, and the imagination.

Across the floor, row on row, lay the tombstones of the Drachensteins. Those nearest the stair were simple marble or bronze slabs, with a name and a date: Graf Conrad von u. zu Drachenstein, 1804-1888; Gräfin Elisabeth,
seine Frau
, 1812-1884.

“That must be Irma’s father,” said Tony, pointing to a bronze plaque bearing the dates 1886-1952. “He was succeeded by his younger brother.”

“They are a long-lived family,” said Blankenhagen thoughtfully.

We moved forward.

Graf Wolfgang. Gräfin Berthe. 1756-1814. 1705-1770.

As we approached the far end of the crypt, the simple stones were replaced by more elaborate ones. Tony flashed his light on a sculptured form clad in armor, with hands clasped on its breast and the remains of a four-footed beast under its feet.

“The first of the effigies,” he said in a low voice. “We’re getting there.”

Against the wall we found the sixteenth-century markers.

Graf Harald von und zu Drachenstein, Burckhardt’s father, looked in gray marble much as he might have looked in life. His face, framed in stiff stone ringlets, was stern and dignified. The hardness of stone suited his harsh features. His left hand rested on his sword, and his right held the banner of his house, with its crest of a dragon on a stone. Beside him lay his countess, her face set in a pious simper, her hands palm to palm under her chin. The ample folds of her best court gown were frozen for all eternity.

Tony moved to the next monument. Upon it also lay a knight in armor, encircled by a long epitaph in twisted Gothic script. It had been carelessly carved. The letters were not deeply incised. But there was no traffic or weather here to wear them down. Tony translated the essential data.

“Graf Burckhardt von und zu Drachenstein.
Geboren
fourteen hundred ninety-five.
Tot
fifteen hundred twenty-five.”

“Thirty years old,” I said.

There was an empty space next to Count Burckhardt, presumably because the old family had died out with him. The stones of the cadet line began beyond the next pillar.

Tony returned to Burckhardt’s effigy and waved his flashlight wildly about.

“What is it?” Blankenhagen asked. “What do you search for?”

“Don’t you see? All the counts have their wives laid out beside them — in rows, when they wore them out too fast. There’s room for her there by his side. Where is the Countess Konstanze?”

Six

THE COUNTESS KONSTANZE WAS DEFINITELY not in the crypt. Tony checked every stone, stalking up and down the dim aisles like an avenging fury. Blankenhagen saw some of the implications; when we finally left the chapel, he burst out.

“What is the meaning of this folly? Do you suggest that because this dead woman is not in the crypt, she is…
Ach, Gott
! You are encouraging this madness! No wonder the child believes… What does she believe?”

Tony scowled malevolently at a smirking plaster cherub, and then slammed and locked the door of the chapel.

“Three guesses,” he said. “And I’ll bet you’re right the first time.”

We crossed the moonlit court in a silence that could be felt. No one spoke till we reached our rooms.

“
Gute Nacht
,” said Blankenhagen stiffly.

“Hah,” said Tony.

I waited till I heard the other doors close. Then I waited a little longer. I had no intention of going to bed. Sleep would have been difficult, after our bizarre discovery, and anyhow I had work to do. The dead countess was turning out to be as distracting as the two living females of the Drachenstein blood; I was spending too much time on them, and not enough on the shrine. But I carefully avoided Konstanze’s painted gaze as I found my flashlight and slipped out the door. My journey along the dark halls was not a pleasant experience. I went straight to the library and opened the
Schrank
.

The roll of maps was gone.

Locks and keys were no hindrance to the unknown creature that walked the halls of the
Schloss
by night. I had the
Gräfin
’s set of keys to the
Schrank
and the library. There might be other sets of keys; but in the midnight hush of the room I found myself remembering ghoulish legends instead of facts. “Open, locks, to the dead man’s hand…” How did the poem go? The necromantic night-light, made of the severed hand of an executed murderer whose fingertips bore candles concocted of human fat, was popularly supposed to open barred doors, and induce slumber on the inhabitants of a house. Not a happy thought…Tony had told me that story, blast him.

I snatched up the metal box, which was where I had left it, and retreated precipitately. I didn’t draw a deep breath until I was back in my own room with the door locked. (I was aware of the illogic of this, but I locked the door anyhow.) Then I sat down at the table with my prize.

The papers in the box appeared to be undisturbed. The one on top, bearing a blob of red sealing wax, was the one I had left there. It was a deed of sale, referring to fields in the valley once owned by an eighteenth-century count.

The papers were a miscellaneous lot, ranging in age from the nineteenth century back to the fifteenth, including household lists, the moldy diary of an early countess, and the like. I went through them methodically; one never knows what unexpected source may provide a clue. But it was not until I got near the bottom of the box that I hit pay dirt.

It was part of a letter, in a beautiful Latin hand, and something about the delicacy of the strokes suggested a woman’s writing. I knew, with a queer sense of fatality, who had written it.

Rats or mice had gnawed the parchment. There was a big hole right through the center of the sheet. The damage had occurred before the letters were put in the metal box, of course. I wondered absently where they had been, until they were gathered together by a historically minded Drachenstein. The ink was faded; the language was difficult. But I understood enough.

“I have returned from the chapel,” the scrap began, “where I gave thanks to Christ and his Blessed Mother and to Saint George, patron of our house, who preserved you from harm in the battle. My dear lord, I implore you to care for your health, which is so precious to me. I gave a receipt for a remedy for the stomach….”

The receipt was forever lost; the ink faded out at this point. I suspected that modern pharmacy hadn’t lost much, but it was strangely touching to see evidence of the countess’s housewifely concern. After a fold in the parchment the writing regained legibility.

“I pray also that God will soften the obduracy of that wretch who tries to keep from you what is yours, thus sinning doubly, since he hinders your carrying out your sainted father’s will, and prevents Holy Church from claiming its own….”

I couldn’t stand it any longer. I turned the sheet over and at the bottom found the name I knew would be there:

“Your wife, Konstanze von Drachenstein.”

The letter contained nothing more except domestic details, and questions about—Tony had not exaggerated—Burckhardt’s bowels. I scrabbled through the remaining documents in the box. At the very bottom I found two more fragments.

It was obvious why these scraps had not been given to the author of
The Peasants’ Revolt
. Not only were they void of details about the rebellion, but they were in bad condition. The first one I had found was the best preserved. The other two were only scraps, each bearing a few disconnected sentences.

“…send this by the hand of our loyal steward Nicolas,” said one of the two. “I beg your return. The Bishop came again today, to ask when the shrine will come to him. God knows I do not oppose him, for this was the desire of your blessed father. But I feel he regards me with coldness….”

I’ll bet he did, I thought. A sixteenth-century chauvinist cleric, and a woman who was both foreigner and scholar. The impeccable Latin was evidence of the countess’s intelligence. No doubt she had been educated by a family priest, as a few rare women were in those days. I thought I knew who had owned the volume of Trithemius in the
Schrank
.

I picked up the last scrap of parchment. It was written in a hasty scrawl that was very unlike the neatness of the earlier letters. I deduced that it was, in date, the last of the three.

“…anxious. No news has come since you wrote you were sending it here, in the care of Nicolas the steward. It is too long, he should have arrived a week since. In God’s name, my husband, come home. The Bishop…”

The rest was gone, presumably into the interior of an ancient rat. I sat there staring at the dusty little bit of paper that had knocked my theories into a cocked hat.

Our second possibility had been the right one. The shrine had never reached Rothenburg. The caravan must have been ambushed after all—the steward killed, the shrine stolen. I felt tired enough to die. I tossed the papers haphazardly into the box and staggered to my bed.

I woke next morning to golden sunlight, the singing of birds, and a balmy breeze from the open window. I felt terrible. After a second I remembered why.

I was late to breakfast, but Tony was still there. After one look at me, he shoved a cup of coffee in my direction and remarked, “You look like hell. What’s the matter, did our little expedition last night scare you that much?”

“It didn’t scare me at all. But it was odd, not to find her there.”

“It kept me awake for a while,” Tony admitted. “Konstanze may not be haunting Irma, but she’s beginning to haunt me. If it weren’t for the shrine, I’d be tempted…”

“To pack up and leave? Go ahead. The shrine isn’t here.”

I told him about the letters.

“The roll of maps is gone too,” I concluded glumly. “I don’t suppose you took them? Okay, okay, I was just asking. I’m upset.”

“Things are getting confused, aren’t they? Sorry you came? Willing to admit this is too much for your poor little female brain?”

I sneered at him over the coffee cup, and he grinned.

“Then start using those brains you keep bragging about. You haven’t been thinking, you’ve been reacting intuitively and emotionally. The letters are only negative evidence. Our reasoning still stands. Why haven’t the jewels turned up, unless the shrine is hidden somewhere?”

“Oh, I had no intention of giving up. I haven’t even begun to search yet. I just wanted to give you an excuse to cop out.”

“I’m staying, whether the shrine is here or not.”

I stared at him in surprise. His voice was grave and his face sober.

“That girl needs help,” he went on. “I don’t know why the old lady hates her so, but she’s slowly driving her crazy. I can’t walk out on a situation like that.”

“Sucker,” I said. “Softhearted chump. Easy mark.”

“Uh-huh,” Tony agreed. “I talked to Blankenhagen at breakfast. He thinks Irma needs to get away from this place. She ought to be amused and distracted. So I told him you’d take her shopping this morning. Isn’t that the universal panacea for disturbed females?”

“You have your nerve promising my services. I have other things to do this morning. I’m going to—”

“Take Irma shopping. Don’t put it that way; tell her you need her to show you the best stores. You’re a paying guest; the old lady can’t object if you ask for Irma’s services.”

“Huh,” I said.

“I knew you would. Sucker, chump…We’re meeting Blankenhagen at the Architect’s House for lunch. One o’clock.”

“And you, my knight in shining armor? Are you coming along to carry our parcels?”

“Not me. I have other things to do this morning. I’m going back to the archives. I’ll meet you at one.”

But Tony didn’t appear at the Architect’s House at one, or at two, or at two thirty, when our party rose to leave.

The excursion had done Irma good, and it hadn’t hurt me either. This nonsense about shopping being good therapy doesn’t apply to
me
, actually, but…I bought a loden cloak. I love cloaks, they are one of the few items of dress that look better on tall people than on cute little short people. My cloak wasn’t gray or dark green, like most of the loden material; it was creamy white, trimmed with bands of red and green, and fastened at the throat with big silver buttons. It was divine.

I also bought a carved wooden reproduction of a Gothic saint, and didn’t even wonder how I was going to get it in my suitcase. It was three feet high. I also bought…Well, we could have used Tony as a carrier. But I wistfully declined peasant blouses trimmed with lace, and rose-printed dirndl dresses with white aprons, and stuff like that. I love it, but on me it looks the way a pinafore would look on Tony.