Murder in Black Letter by Poul William Anderson (classic novels to read txt) 📕

sunlight spilling over them—without thinking that Bruce lay frozen under a sheet.

He put the book on his desk with care. It was almost six hundred years old.

The phone rang. He jerked in surprise, swore at himself, and picked it up. "Hello?"

"Kintyre? Jabez Owens."

"Oh. What is it?"

"I called your home and you weren't in, so I tried—How are you?"

"I'll live. What's the occasion?"

"I wondered—I'd like to talk to you. Would you care to have lunch with me?"

"No, thanks." Kintyre had better plans than to watch Owens perform. "I'm busy."

"Are you sure?" The voice was worried.

"Quite. I'll be here for some hours. I'll just duck out for a sandwich." Maliciously: "I've some work to do on Bruce's project. Afterward—"

What? Well, he hadn't called Margery today. He supposed, with a faintly suffocated feeling, that he ought to see her. "I have an engagement," he finished.

"Oh." Hesitantly: "Do you think I could drop up to your office, then? It really is urgent, and it may be to your own advantage."

"Sure," said Kintyre, remembering his wish to play sleuth. "Walk into my parlor." He gave Owens the room number and hung up. Then he returned to the Book of Witches.

It was a thick palimpsest, a little over quarto size. The binding, age-eaten leather with rusted iron straps, was perhaps a century newer than the volume itself. He opened it, heavy in his hands, and looked at the title page. Liber Veneficarum—

Book of Witches, Their Works and Days, Compiled from Records and the Accounts of Trustworthy Men, Done at the Sicilian Abbey of St. John the Divine at the Command of the Abbot Rogero, for the Attention and Use of the Authorities of Our Holy Mother Church.

When Clayton first brought it around, Kintyre had only skimmed through the black uncials in a hasty fashion. He knew there had been considerable Satanism in the Middle Ages, partly pagan survivals and partly social protest, but that had not seemed to be in his immediate line. A man has only time to learn a few things before the darkness takes him back.

Now he opened Bruce's folder and began to read the notes. Some were typewritten, some still in pothooks harder to decipher than the fourteenth century Low Latin. But they were in order, and their own references were clearly shown. Bruce had been a good, careful scholar.

Well—Kintyre turned to the first page. It was very plain work, unilluminated. The opening sentences described the purpose: to set forth exactly what the witchcraft movement was, how widespread and how dangerous to the Faith and the state. Sources were given, with some commentary on their trustworthiness. The Middle Ages did not lack critical sense. The monk wrote soberly of witchcraft as a set of real activities in the real world; he wasted very little time on the demons presumed to be the object of worship.

Kintyre struggled with his memory, brought back an approximate recollection of a later passage, and hunted for it again. Yes, here, near the middle: an account of a thirteenth century witch hunt in northern Italy, a follow-up to the Albigensian Crusade. The author said that since then there had been no covens worth mentioning north of Abruzzi, and cited proof—statements by Church and secular investigators, a couple of confessions extracted by torture.

Bruce's notes at this point gave confirming cross references. A penciled afterthought occurred: "If there were no organized Satanists in the Romagna in 1398, it hardly seems reasonable that Cesare Borgia could have joined them a century later!" Evidence was marshaled to show there had been no revival in the meantime. Rather, the cults had been on the wane throughout the fifteenth century, as prosperity and enlightenment spread.

Well, thought Kintyre, that does pretty well sink Owens' boat.

Something caught his eye. He leaned over the sheet. A fifteenth century "discourse," an official report, in the state archives of Milan was quoted to support the claim that there was no contemporary local Black Mass. In the margin was scribbled "L.L."

Private abbreviations could be weird and wonderful, but Kintyre found himself obscurely irritated. So much was unknown about Bruce's final destiny, even an initial might tell something.

He found the letters several times more in the next hour, as he worked his way through the volume and the notes. They seemed to mark findings which could only be made in Italy: by going out and looking at a site, or by reading in ancient libraries.

The telephone interrupted him again. He glanced at his watch. Two o'clock already! He grew aware that he was hungry.

"Hello. Robert Kintyre speaking."

The voice in his ear was low. It stumbled the barest bit. "Professor Kintyre. This is Corinna Lombardi."

"Oh." He sat gaping into the mouthpiece like a schoolboy, feeling his heartbeat pick up. "Oh, yes," he said stupidly.

"I wanted to apologize to you."

"Hm?" With an effort, he pulled himself toward sense. "What the dev—What in the world is there to apologize for?"

"Last night. I was horrible."

Habit took over, the smoothness of having known many women; but his tone was burred. "Oh, now, please don't be silly. If you won't mind my saying so at a time like this, I thought you were quite extraordinarily pleasant to meet."

Did he catch the unsubstantial wisp of a chuckle? "Thank you. You're very kind. But I did pull a regular Lady Macbeth. It was nerves. I was tired and miserable. I hope you'll believe how sorry I've been all day. I've spent the past half hour at the phone, trying to track you down."

"If I'd known that, I'd have laid a paper trail—Blast!" Kintyre checked himself. "Now it's my turn to ask your pardon. I wasn't thinking."

"It's all right," she said gently.

"No, but—"

"Really it is. Now that the requiem Mass has been held, the solemn one Mother wanted—it was almost like a real funeral. Everything looks different now."

"Yes, I saw the announcement. I couldn't come, I had to finish his work."

"I could envy you that," she said. Then, with a lifting in her tone: "I came back and slept. I woke up only an hour ago. It's like a curtain falling. Bruce is dead, and that will always hurt, but we can go on now with our own lives."

He hovered on the edge of decision, wondering what to do, afraid of the ghoul she might think him. A line from The Prince came: "... it is better to be impetuous than cautious, for fortune is a woman—" All right, he told himself.

"There's one thing, Miss Lombardi."

"Yes?" She waited patiently for him to sort out his words.

"I haven't forgotten what you did say last night. I went ahead and looked into it, your ideas, I mean."

"Oh?" A noncommittal noise, not openly skeptical.

"I can tell you something you may feel better for."

"What?" Caution, now, not of him but of the thing he might say.

"The phone is hardly suitable. Could we get together in person?"

"Well—" It stretched into seconds, which he found unnaturally long. Then, clearly, almost gaily: "Of course. Whenever you like."

"This evening? You're at your parents' home still, aren't you?"

"I'm going back to my own place today. But this evening will be fine."

He said with careful dryness: "Bearing in mind that I am a somewhat respectable assistant professor of history and more than a decade your senior, may I suggest dinner?"

She did actually chuckle that time. "Thank you, you may. No references needed; Bruce told me enough about you. And it's a good deal better than sitting alone brooding, isn't it?"

He had gotten the address and a six-thirty date before he wholly realized what was going on. When the phone was back in its cradle, he sat for some indefinite time. Oh, no! he thought at last. Impossible. I'm too old to be romantic and too young to be tired.

He decided to eat before going back to the manuscript.

While he went out for a sandwich and milkshake, while he walked back again, he twisted his attention to the problem of the book. It could have wrought a man's death, or it could only be a stack of inked parchment. Most likely the latter; but then who or what was L. L?

The building was gloomy when he re-entered it from sunlight. Even his office seemed dark. It took his eyes a few seconds to register the fact that the book was gone.

9

Kintyre stood for a little while more, scarcely thinking.

Then, during an instant, he had a vision of tiny black devils fluttering through the half-open window, lifting the volume and squeaking their way out on quick charred wings. But no, no, this was the twentieth century. We are rational, we don't believe in witchcraft, we are scientific and believe in vitamin pills, Teamwork, and the inalienable right of every language to have a country of its own. Also, the phase of the moon was wrong, and—and—

His mind steadied. He whirled about the desk, to see if the book had somehow slid off. No. He snatched up the phone and called the main office. Had anyone come into his room in the past twenty minutes? We don't know, Dr. Kintyre. No, we did not pick up your book. No, we didn't see anyone.

He put back the instrument and tried to start his thoughts. It was curiously hard. He tended to repeat himself. Someone must have come in. Yes, someone must have come in. It would be easy to do, unobserved. Someone must have come in and taken the book.

What the hell had Margery's apartment been burgled for?

That snapped him back to wakefulness. If, as Clayton had suggested yesterday, the burglar was after this volume and hadn't found it, the University was the next logical place to try.

Owens! I told him I'd go out to eat. He could have watched the entrance.

But where was he now?—Wait. Close your eyes, let the mind float free, don't strain too hard—memory bobbed to the surface. Owens had mentioned taking a room in the Bishop, a hotel conveniently near campus.

Kintyre forced himself into steadiness. If Owens had copped the book, Owens would want to get rid of it. Permanently. But leather and parchment don't burn easily. Dumping it meant too much chance of its being noticed and recovered. Owens would take it to Los Angeles with him, to destroy at leisure.

He was probably packing at this moment.

Kintyre tucked Bruce's notes into a drawer which he locked: not that they had any value without the physical evidence of the book. He went down the hall fast, a pace he kept up on the outside. His brain querned until he brought it under control. Damn it, Trig was right, there was no reason on God's earth ever to tense any muscle not actually working; and the same held true for the mind. An emotional stew would grind him down and get him to the Bishop no sooner.

It was a hard discipline, though. Kintyre had no urge to embrace Zen Buddhism, or any other faith for that matter; but he would have given much to possess the self-mastery it taught.

He entered the modest red-brick building a few blocks from Sather Gate and asked for Mr. Owens. The clerk checked the key rack and said: "Oh, yes, he came in a few minutes ago."

"I'll go on up, I'm expected," said Kintyre. It was probably not a lie.

When he knocked on the writer's door, he heard himself invited in. Owens had one suitcase open on the bed and was folding a coat into it. Another stood strapped on the floor.

He looked up (was his color a shade more rubicund?) and said, "Hullo, there. I'm glad you came by. I'm leaving tonight."

The voice was level. Perhaps too level. Kintyre closed the door and said: "I thought you were going to come and see me in my office."

"Well, I was," said Owens. "I wanted to get my packing out of the way first." He felt in the suitcase and brought out a pocket flask. "Care for a drop?"

"No," said Kintyre.

He leaned in the doorway, watching. But he saw only that Owens stood