Borrower of the Night

Chapter Ten

MY SLEEPNESS NIGHTS were beginning to catch up with me. I didn’t wake till almost noon next day. I had dreamed that some faceless intruder was tampering with the little chest, but when I stretched out an anxious hand, I found it on the nightstand where I had left it. That had been a stupid place to put it, but I had been too tired the night before to think straight. I tucked the chest into a corner of my suitcase and locked the case.

I didn’t see Tony till lunchtime. I found him alone at our table. George had gone off to Creglingen to see the altar there. Tony seemed vexed by this. His mood was not improved when the Gräfin came in, a royal procession of one, and joined us at our table. I wondered what she was after this time.

‘I wished to tell you again how sorry I am that your vacation has been so unpleasant,’ she began. ‘It is unaccountable. Never, until you came, have we known such violence.’

‘Is that right,’ I said. ‘You surprise me. I would think a place like this had seen a lot of violence over the years.’

‘Many years ago, perhaps. But this is ancient history now. There has not been a prisoner in those horrid cells since sixteen thirty. And on that occasion Graf Otto was severely reprimanded by the emperor.’

I exchanged glances with Tony. Damn her, the woman knew every move we had made.

‘You are well acquainted with the family history for someone who is not a Drachenstein by birth,’ I said.

‘I was forced to amuse myself. To be buried in this provincial spot after Prague, Vienna, Budapest was not easy for a spoiled young girl. My husband loved his home and would not leave it. I painted, embroidered, studied music; but these soon pall.’

‘Especially when one has mastered them,’ Tony said. It was a reluctant compliment, and not an empty one. I too was sure the old lady could master anything she attempted. She acknowledged his courtesy with a chilly smile.

‘So then I turned to a study of genealogy. As a professor of history, you will understand its fascination. Are you making progress with your research into the Peasants’ Revolt, and Count Burckhardt?’

‘I’ve been to the town archives.’ Tony eyed the woman with what he obviously thought was a look of fiendish cunning. ‘I imagine you’ve used them too.’

‘Oh, yes. I know the story of the Countess Konstanze’s death.’

‘Does your niece know it?’ I asked.

‘She does not. She is already sufficiently unbalanced on that subject.’

Tony was turning red – a sure sign that he was about to lose his temper.

‘Irma must know the story,’ he said. ‘How else can you account for what she said in the séance?’

‘Must I account for it? “There are more things in heaven and earth,” as your poet so cleverly puts it.’

‘Rrrr,’ said Tony He turned the growl into a cough. ‘I would be more willing to admit the supernatural if there were some quasi-logical reason for a haunting. Even a spectre has to have a raison d’être. You surely know the classic explanations – unexpiated crime, for instance.’

‘How clever!’ exclaimed the Gräfin. ‘;But what of innocence abused and unavenged? Konstanze was falsely accused – ’

‘Naturally.’

‘Yes, we moderns know the folly of the witchcraft persecution. Yet her fate was not surprising. She was a learned woman who had been educated by a family priest in her home near Granada. His lessons apparently gave her ideas which were, in that day, dangerously heretical. It is said that she was in commumcation with Trithemius, at Würzburg.’

‘That must be apocryphal,’ Tony said. ‘Trithemius died in fifteen sixteen. But that doesn’t account for the lady’s restlessness. She can’t be worried about her reputation; we know she was innocent. And I’m afraid we’re in no position to punish her persecutors, or give her Christian burial.’

He looked at his hostess with the candid wide-eyed stare that had brought out the motherly instinct in many middle-aged ladies. I could have told him it wouldn’t work; the Gräfin had about as much maternal instinct as a guppy. She smiled gently.

‘It is very mysterious.’

After she left, Tony and I discussed the interview. We agreed on one thing: the Gräfin almost certainly knew about the shrine. One of the most common motives assigned to restless spirits is their desire to tell their descendants where the gold is buried. The Gräfin must have been familiar with the whole corpus of supernatural literature; her failure to mention this point was significant.

‘She knows,’ I summarized, ‘but she doesn’t know where. If she had the shrine, she’d throw us out of here. She has every excuse; our snooping has been outrageous.’

‘I don’t know.’ A visit from the Gräfin always depressed Tony. ‘She might let us stay on just for the fun of watching us stumble around. We must look pretty ridiculous, and her sense of humour is decidedly macabre.’

‘She couldn’t risk it,’ I argued. ‘If we find the shrine, we’ll turn it over to Irma – unless Elfrida can lift the loot before we make the discovery public. She’d have to silence us, in that case. Why should she take such a chance unless she had to? I’m sure she hasn’t found it. Not yet.’

Tony looked more cheerful.

‘I guess you’re right. Shall we have a look at Burckhardt’s room?’

‘Right now?’

‘Right now. No more roaming by night. That’s when all the kookie things happen.’

‘Okay,’ I said agreeably.

But when we reconnoitered, we found Schmidt’s room occupied by a buxom chambermaid who was scrubbing the floor. It was clear that the process would take some time, so we retreated. I tried to console Tony – not, of course, by telling him I had already searched the room – but by pointing out an unpalatable fact that had just occurred to me.

If the Gräfin knew about the shrine, she had certainly searched Burckhardt’s room and all the other obvious hiding places. She wasn’t stupid; if she had not located the shrine, it must be concealed in a more obscure spot than we had anticipated.

The idea didn’t cheer Tony much. It didn’t cheer me either. My reasoning was not invalidated by the fact that I had found the secret drawer. Its contents held no useful clue, and the Gräfin would have no reason to remove them. Perhaps the scraps of parchment and the mutilated bag had not even belonged to Burckhardt, but to one of his many successors or predecessors.

Since there was nothing else to do, we went sightseeing. By Tony’s definition, this activity includes frequent stops for liquid refreshment The drinking places of Rothenburg are all charming; you can guzzle beer or drink tea in dark, raftered rooms or sit in a cobblestoned square admiring the view. We tried both, and since we couldn’t decide which ambience was preferable, we tried both several times.

I suppose it was inevitable that we should end up at the Jakobskirche. With our chance of finding the shrine seeming even more remote, we were just torturing ourselves by visiting Riemenschneider’s altar, but we couldn’t keep away.

It is so beautiful that all the adjectives critics and art historians use seem inadequate. The dark wood glows. The bodies breathe, and are just about to move. The central carving depicts the Last Supper, at the moment when Christ makes the statement: ‘One of you shall betray me.’ You can see the effect of the words on every face.

I glanced at Tony, who was standing beside me. He never looked at me that way.

‘Come on,’ I said gruffly. ‘Let’s have another beer.’

We had several more beers before we went back to the Schloss, but the beverage didn’t have its usual effect on our spirits. I knew why I felt so uneasy. For the last thirty-six hours, there had been a strange absence of activity – not even a séance to disturb the peace. It was as if something were waiting for us to move. But it could not wait indefinitely.

I went to bed early that night. Tony gave me the usual lecture about staying in my room, but even that didn’t stimulate me. I had no plans for the night. I was, to use a classic phrase, baffled.

Once in bed I found I couldn’t sleep, or concentrate on the novel I had brought for light reading. The room was very quiet. The single lamp glimmered lonesomely in its restricted circle of light. But as I lay on the bed, smoking one cigarette after another in reckless defiance of every health regulation, I had never felt less sleepy. The sense of something waiting, a mounting pressure against my mind, grew steadily.

From where I lay I could hardly avoid staring straight into the painted eyes of the face that had become an unreasonable obsession. With just a little imagination I could sense a slender presence, just beyond the bounds of ordinary sight and sound, pressing on an invisible door, trying to come through, to tell me something . . .

I sat upright with a profane remark. Going to my suitcase, I took out the crumbling wooden box. Maybe if I tried some logical research on the fragments of parchment, it would brush the cobwebs from my brain.

But the scraps were hopeless. Only a word here and there was legible, and they were common words such as ‘have’ and ‘we.’ I couldn’t even find a name.

Absently I reached into my pocket and took out the small golden frog. I sat staring into the empty pop eyes as if they held some knowledge. And as I stared, the memory stirred again – the dark memory, like fragments of a childish nightmare . . .

My finger had dipped into the peculiar grey-black powder in the box. It was an odd substance, dusty but not dust. It was too coarse for dust, almost crystalline . . .

The monstrous idea struck me like a fist in the stomach. For several seconds I sat gaping down into the box, my finger buried to the end of the nail in the grey powder. When I realized what I was doing, I jerked it out and wiped it against the skirt of my robe.

‘It’s impossible,’ I mumbled.

But the more I thought about it, the more sense it made. It distressed me horribly. It made me sick at my stomach. True or false, the bizarre theory should not have had such a strong emotional impact. It was only a side issue in any case, one which could never be settled.

That last thought was pure wishful thinking. Even as it formed in my mind, my inconvenient memory produced a paragraph from a book I had once read.

I must have stood by my door for almost five minutes, reaching for the handle and pulling my hand back, reaching, pulling back . . . It was a horrible idea. It was crazy.

I knew I would never sleep soundly again unless I found out.

The hour was later than I had realized. Tony was sound asleep. I beat on his door for quite a while before he answered.

‘Come on,’ I said. ‘The game’s afoot.’

I didn’t wait for him. The next victim was Blankenhagen. It took almost as long to rouse him. By the time he opened his door, Tony had joined me, which was just as well; Blankenhagen probably wouldn’t have let me in without a chaperone. A chaperone for him, that is.

They were both furious. After I had talked a while they were still furious – but they were interested. I asked the doctor a question. His face was a sight to behold.

‘Heiliger Gott – I do not know. I suppose it is possible . . .’

‘That’s what I thought. Then . . .’ I spoke softly but urgently. Several times Blankenhagen’s mouth opened as if to interrupt, but he didn’t. I think he was struck dumb. Tony kept making strange strangling sounds.

‘But,’ said Blankenhagen when I had finished. ‘But – but – now, at this hour?’

‘It has to be now. I know it sounds crazy, but I’ve got to find out. If I could do it alone, I would.’

Blankenhagen sat twitching like a hen on a clutch of radioactive eggs. Finally his narrowed blue eyes moved to meet Tony’s. They both turned to stare at me.

‘I am insane,’ muttered Blankenhagen. ‘You understand, I have not the equipment, even if – ’

‘I know. But the first part has to be done now.’

‘Allow me then to assume my trousers.’

Tony and I went out into the hall while the trousers were assumed. He was wide awake now and so torn between anger and fascination that he was barely coherent.

‘Why didn’t you – why did you – I ought to kill you, you – you woman!’

‘I woke you up,’ I pointed out. ‘I needn’t have done that. I’m sorry I did, if you’re just going to stand around and yell.’

Blankenhagen emerged, with trousers, just in time to prevent an undignified scuffle. I led the way down the corridor, stopping in my room to get a coat and some other equipment. Our next stop was at the carpenters’ shack in the south wing. Then we proceeded to the crypt.

As the work went on, I was convinced of one thing. This particular tomb had not been opened before. It was doubtful whether we could open it now. The mortar chipped away easily, but the stone slab on which lay the carved effigy of Count Burckhardt von und zu Drachenstein behaved as if it were reluctant to leave its place. But it was a couple of inches thinner than the first slab we had raised, and this time nobody sat on the floor and watched. Finally we had the slab propped back, and Blankenhagen climbed down into the vault.

The coffin was metal. Even after Blankenhagen had shot the bolts that held the lid in place, he had to score through the corroded joint. I had anticipated this possibility; our tools included a couple of metal files. When Blankenhagen’s hands gave out, Tony took his place in the vault. I followed Tony, ignoring male chauvinist complaints from Blankenhagen. (There were no complaints from Tony, but not because he wasn’t a chauvinist.) To reach the upper part of the coffin I had to sprawl across the lid, and some of my wilder fancies can be imagined. I got the lid loose at last. My hands were raw and so were my nerves.

Lying on the floor of the crypt, Blankenhagen reached down into the vault and grasped one of the coffin handles. Tony took the other. They heaved in unison; and we found ourselves looking down on the face of Graf Burckhardt, who had departed this life in the year of our Lord 1525.

Thanks to a well-sealed coffin, the Count’s body was fantastically preserved, almost mummified. The features were not nice to look at. They had an expression of twisted agony which was the effect (I kept telling myself) of the shrinkage of the facial tissue. The leathery lips were drawn back over yellowed teeth that looked predatory and vicious in spite of the long moustache that half veiled them. The body wore a gaudy court costume which had suffered more from the ravages of time than the flesh itself. The gold lace was black, and the velvet tore under Blankenhagen’s careful hands.

The doctor appeared quite composed. After medical-school dissections, this probably looked like a relatively tidy specimen. He busied himself with the body. I found, to my disgust, that I didn’t want to watch.

‘We are all mad,’ he said finally. ‘But if madness has any method, I have what I require. Shall we . . .’

Tony helped him with the coffin lid. They got it, and the slab, back into place, though not without effort. Blankenhagen tucked his specimens into an envelope.

‘I wonder under what law they will imprison me,’ he muttered, as we climbed the stairs into the chapel.

‘If you get in trouble, we’ll say we forced you,’ I said. ‘But I doubt if the Gräfin will make an issue of this.’

Blankenhagen stopped under a trumpeting angel and looked at me.

‘Professorin . . . ’

I tried not to look pleased. I love that title.

‘I am only flesh and blood,’ said Blankenhagen, thumping theatrically at his chest. ‘I am wild with curiosity. You must tell me the truth.’

‘I don’t know the whole truth myself. How soon can you give me some test results?’

‘lf I give you these, you will in turn give me your confidence?’

‘Well – okay. That’s fair enough. I – what was that?’

Tony whirled around.

‘Nothing. What did you see?’

‘I could have sworn something moved behind the altar.’

‘Nerves,’ Tony said. ‘Mine are shot to hell.’

Blankenhagen thought for a moment and then said decisively, ‘Also gut. I will tell you results tonight. Come, we go to the town.’

‘Not the police,’ I said apprehensively.

‘Ha, ha,’ said Blankenhagen, without humour. ‘I should go to the police with this story? No. I know slightly a man in Rothenburg, a chemist with whom I attended university. He has the equipment we need.’

Blankenhagen’s friend lived in a modern area outside the walls, on a street paralleling the Roedertor. He was a youngish man with quizzical eyebrows and nocturnal habits; there was a light in the upper window of the house, and our soft knock was promptly answered.

Blankenhagen’s explanation of our errand was decidedly sketchy, but it was accepted with no more than a lift of the chemist’s eccentric eyebrows. He ended up doing the experiment himself, after watching Blankenhagen fumble with his equipment for a while. He didn’t even look surprised when the significant dark stain appeared in the test tube.

‘You expected this?’ he asked amiably.

Blankenhagen’s eyes were popping.

‘Amazing,’ he muttered ‘Expected? It is what she expected.’

Tony was staring at me as if I’d grown an extra head.

‘I didn’t think of it,’ he mumbled, as if denying an accusation of crime. ‘Only a real weirdo would think of a thing like this.’

To tell the truth, I was pretty amazed myself. But in view of the general consternation it behoved me to be calm. I thanked the chemist, apologized for our intrusion at such an hour, and led my limp male acquaintances to the door.

The chemist waved my apologies aside.

‘I do not ask questions. I do not ask if it is the Central Intelligence, the Federal Bureau, or perhaps Interpol. You will come for a beer, when it is over, and tell me what you can?’

‘I may not be allowed to tell,’ I said. ‘You understand?’

‘Yes, yes. Foolish, this secrecy; but I know how they are, these people.’

I was tempted to linger; it was rather flattering to be taken for a lady spy.

The streets of the old town were silent under the moon. Shadows clung to the deep doorways and gathered under the eaves. I was in no mood to appreciate it. The past had come alive, but it had not brought the scent of romance or high adventure, only a dirty, ugly tragedy that would not die.

Nobody said anything till we got back to the Schloss. I was heading blindly for the door that would eventually lead to my beautiful bed when two hands caught at my arm. The hands belonged to two different people, but they moved with a unanimity that verged on ESP.

‘Sit here,’ said Tony, indicating a bench in the garden.

‘Talk,’ said Blankenhagen.

‘I suppose it can’t wait till morning?’ I yawned.

‘I can’t wait till morning.’ Tony sat me down and took his seat beside me. Blankenhagen sat down on my other side. I hunched my shoulders, feeling closed in.

‘Also dann, sprich.’ Blankenhagen was too absorbed to realize he had abandoned the formal third-person plural and was addressing me with the familiar form. ‘How did you know that a man dead for half a millennium had been poisoned with arsenic?’

I started out with a complete account of the story of the shrine, for the doctor’s benefit. I was pretty sure by then of Blankenhagen’s innocence, but it didn’t really matter; if he was guilty, he already knew, and if he didn’t know, it would not hurt to tell him.

Blankenhagen listened without comment He didn’t have to say anything; his reactions were mirrored in his face, which I could see fairly well in the moonlight. I stressed the fact that we had no leanings towards larceny. If and when we found the shrine, we intended to hand it over to Irma.

‘But we got distracted,’ I went on. ‘From the first day I walked into this place, I kept losing track of the shrine in my preoccupation with the people who had been involved with it back in fifteen twenty-five. Irma’s uncanny resemblance to her ancestress was one reason for my interest, but it was more than that; as time went on, these people came alive for me. Konstanze and her tragic death; the steward, who had been foully murdered; and the count, Burckhardt.

‘He was no worse than many of his peers, but he was not an appealing character. Nothing we learned about him made him any more attractive – his defence of the autocratic bishop, his participation in the torture of Riemenschneider, his murder of the steward. All these things were perfectly in character – as we saw his character. I was prejudiced against him from the start, and my prejudice kept me from seeing the truth.’

Tony’s face relaxed into a half smile as he listened. I knew what he was thinking. He was thinking that I was also prejudiced against Burckhardt because he was a lousy male. Konstanze was a woman – intelligent, repressed, and persecuted. I would automatically take her part.

It was quite true. But there was no need to say so.

‘I was also biased,’ I continued, ‘by our modern view of the witchcraft persecution. We know witchcraft was nonsense. The countess’s trial was a repetition of the classic features – the curse, the evil eye, the Black Man who came on cloven hooves to lie with his mistress. Bilge, all of it – familiar from dozens of historical cases, but still bilge.

‘But in one sense the witchcraft trials were not nonsense. Many of the victims believed. Most were innocent, forced into false confessions by the agony of the torture. But enough of them went to the stake swearing eternal loyalty to their Dark Master to assure us that the belief was genuine. Witches and warlocks really did try to render cattle and people infertile, cause storms, kill and curse. They failed to do evil, not through lack of intent, but through lack of power. And when supernatural means proved ineffective, they might turn to practical methods. One element in the witchcraft cult was the use of poison.’

Tony’s breath caught.

‘One of the oldest and most commonly used poisons is arsenic,’ I went on. ‘It’s mentioned by Roman authors, if I remember correctly, and in the thirteenth century the proporties of arsenicum were discussed by no other than Albertus Magnus. We found a copy of his well-known work in the library. I think I know now who owned it . . .’

I turned to Blankenhagen.

‘As a doctor, you know that there were no scientific tests for poison till the mid-nineteenth century. Maybe one of the reasons why arsenic was so popular is that the symptoms of arsenic poisoning are identical with those of certain gastrointestinal disorders. I read that in the same book that told me arsenic remains in the body – in the roots of the hair and under the nails – for an indefinite period of time. That’s why I thought we might have luck tonight.’

‘I have never heard of it after so long a time,’ said Blankenhagen. ‘But perhaps no one ever tried. Murders several hundred years old are not generally of interest to criminologists.’

‘Get on with it,’ said Tony, nudging me.

‘The other night I just happened to find myself in Burckhardt’s room.’

‘I knew it,’ said Tony. ‘I knew it . . . We’ll discuss that later. I suppose you tripped and fell and accidentally, not meaning to do any real searching, discovered a secret panel?’

‘I found a box,’ I said haughtily, ‘which contained a quantity of greyish powder. I didn’t think of arsenic at first. The colour put me off, for one thing. I think of arsenic, when I think of it at all, as white. Either the stuff was contaminated by dust and dirt, or it had been coloured, as commercial arsenic is, to keep people from mistaking it for salt or sugar.’

Blankenhagen interrupted.

‘What you found may not be arsenious oxide, the ‘white arsenic’ of popular fiction. Elementary arsenic is grey, metallic in structure. Upon exposure to air it takes on a darker colour and loses its lustre.’

‘You can look at it later, if you want to. It’s not important; most forms of arsenic are intensely toxic. It was not the colour of the powder that alerted me. It was something else altogether.

‘The hidden drawer where I found the box was littered with the bones of dead rats. They had gnawed their way into the box, and – curiosity killed a rat. Defunct rodents aren’t unusual, but it was extraordinary that so many of them should have chosen the hidden drawer as a place in which to die.

‘Dead rats . . . rat poison . . . arsenic . . . the witchcraft-poison complex. I guess that was the way my thoughts ran, but I wasn’t aware of the progression; it just seemed to hit me all at once. And with that came another thought. What if we had been looking at the tragedy of Count Burckhardt and his wife backwards? What if he was not the villain but the victim of a plot?

‘My first reaction was a violent negative. But the more I thought about this new theory, the more things it explained. My assumption of Konstanze’s innocence wasn’t logical. It was based on a number of emotional prejudices which I needn’t go into in detail.’

Tony snickered. I took the golden amulet from my pocket and handed it to him.

‘You weren’t exactly logical about Konstanze either,’ I reminded him. ‘And your emotional prejudices in her favour aren’t hard to understand. Take a look at this. I found it in the box with the arsenic. Then I remembered something you told me when we were discussing the witchcraft cult one time. I think it was the Burning Court affair, under Louis the Fourteenth, that set you off.’

‘Damn my big mouth all to hell and back,’ said Tony calmly. He handed the image to Blankenhagen, who was practically sprawled across my lap in his anxiety to see. ‘Probably of Moorish workmanship – possibly even older. I’ve seen something like it in an ethnological museum. So, when you saw the little frog god, you remembered the theory that the witchcraft cult was a survival of the old prehistoric nature religion.’

‘Right.’

‘Ingenious,’ said Blankenhagen. ‘But there is nothing in the amulet to suggest the countess rather than the count. You found it in his room. Why should he not be the one who worshipped devils?’

‘Where I found it is irrelevant. The countess had the whole castle at her disposal after her husband died, and it would be smart of her to conceal such damning evidence outside her own room. I thought of her; instead of him, because of the suggestion of Eastern design. She came from Spain. The Moors were there for a long time, and cultural traits linger on. That’s weak, though. You’re overlooking the conclusive point.’

‘Bitte?’

‘It was the count who died,’ said Tony.

‘Ach, so.’ Blankenhagen grinned and rubbed his chin. ‘Yes, the symptoms described could well have been those of arsenic poisoning. In fact’ – he looked startled – ‘we know now that they were. But the motive. Why did she kill him?’

‘Maybe he found out about her unorthodox religious beliefs,’ Tony offered. ‘In that day and age it would have been a legitimate motive for murder – although Burckhardt would have called it execution. There’s no reason to suppose he wasn’t a proper son of Holy Church; our theories about his unwillingness to give up the shrine were based on nothing except the necessity to account for behaviour which was otherwise unaccountable.’

‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘But I suspect Burckhardt had a more personal reason for being annoyed with his wife.

‘Remember the maid’s hysterical story about the Black Man? It sounded like pure fantasy; the records of witchcraft trials are full of similar lies. But stripped of its supernatural interpretations, what did that story amount to? The maid saw a man, cloaked and booted, in travelling costume, sneak into the castle in the dead of night and embrace the countess.’

‘Booted?’ said Blankenhagen dubiously.

‘The wench heard his spurs clicking on the floor. That was what suggested cloven hooves.’

‘Du Gott allmächtig!’

‘In short, what the maid gave us was a description of a midnight rendezvous. The count, as we know, was still in Würzburg. So the Black Man must have been – ’

‘Nicolas the steward,’ said Tony, with a groan. ‘Oh, my big swollen empty head!’

‘It had to be Nicolas. The Black Man was wearing travelling costume, hence he was not living in the Schloss. Yet he must have been familiar with the place or he couldn’t have entered it and reached the countess’s room without being challenged. Who but the trusted steward would know the secret passages and hidden stairs? And – this is the most ironic thing, I think – Konstanze couldn’t defend herself from the witchcraft charge by telling the truth. Adultery was a serious crime in those days. And there was the little matter of the arsenic.’

‘My God, yes,’ said Tony soberly. ‘She had to kill Burckhardt; sooner or later he was bound to learn about her and Nicolas. He must have found out the night he killed the steward. Then he went after his cheating wife . . . he was trapped, all right. By the time she came to trial, maybe she didn’t care any longer. Her lover was dead . . .’

‘You’re a hopeless romantic,’ I said scathingly. ‘I can’t see our witch-poisoner-murderess wasting away for any man. The witches took drugs, you know; that was how they got their hallucinations of satanic orgies and visits to the Sabbath. The kindest thing you can hope for Konstanze is that she died believing – that in the fire she felt the embrace of her true lord and lover.

‘I shouldn’t have said that,’ I added, clutching at Tony. ‘I keep hearing things out there in the dark, rustling the bushes. Let’s go in.’

‘But wait,’ said Blankenhagen methodically. ‘We have not finished our deductions. You have solved a mystery which no one so much as suspected for hundreds of years; but you have not yet solved the mystery that brought you here. This story is fascinating, but I fail to see its usefulness.’

I wished he hadn’t raised the point. Because, of course, our chemical experiment had not only solved a crime, it had solved the secondary mystery too. Now I knew what had happened to the shrine. There was only one place where it could be. And Tony, whose mind works the way mine does, saw the truth at once.

‘I’ll be damned,’ he exclaimed, bounding to his feet.

He almost was. Something streaked past his arm, chunked into the tree behind him, and hung there quivering.

I snatched at it – Count Burckhardt’s dagger, which I had last seen lying among the dried ribs of the steward.

Tony was staring incredulously at his left arm. His shirt was slit as neatly as if by scissors, and a thin dark trickle darkened the white cloth.

‘That son of a gun tried to kill me!’

‘What an ungrateful ghost,’ I said. ‘Here we are trying to clear Burckhardt’s name, and he throws knives at us. He’s a practical ghost, though. He must have sharpened this thing recently.’

‘Burckhardt, hell. Stop trying to distract me with spooks, Vicky, I’m already way ahead of you. Blankenhagen was in the crypt alone with the bones and the dagger for a good ten minutes. Hey – ’

Blankenhagen was already gone, presumably in pursuit of the knife thrower. With a few well-chosen words, Tony took off after him.

I followed. I wasn’t anxious to stay in that haunted garden alone. As I ran, I wasn’t sure whom Tony was chasing; he surely didn’t think the doctor could throw a knife like a boomerang. Too many people had had access to the steward’s belongings – including the cloaked grave robber.

I reached the Hall in time to see Tony disappearing through the door which led to the cellars. When I got to the bottom of the stairs, I was relieved to see that Tony had had sense enough to bring a flashlight. By its glow I found the two men in the kitchen. Tony had apparently decided to keep his suspicions of the doctor to himself. The conference sounded reasonably amicable.

‘I lost him when he descended here,’ said Blankenhagen. ‘Where do these doors go? I do not know this place.’

‘That’s a dead end.’ Tony indicated the passage leading to the dungeons. ‘I assume our quarry knows that;. he knows this place too damned well. He must have gone the other way.’

The trail was easy to follow – too easy, though this didn’t occur to us till it was too late. One of the storeroom doors swung invitingly open. The room was empty. The only break in the walls was a ventilation slit too narrow to permit egress of a lizard, much less a man.

Tony swept the floor with his flashlight. One of the paving stones was out of line by a full inch.

Tony handed me the flashlight. Dropping to his knees, he tried to get the fingers of his right hand into the crack between the stones. Meanwhile, Blankenhagen picked up the crowbar which was lying conveniently in a corner and inserted its edge into the crack. He grunted as he put his weight behind the tool; and the stone flew up with a jaunty swing that threw Blankenhagen over on his back and almost decapitated Tony.

‘Balanced,’ said Tony, feeling his chin as if surprised to find it still there.

‘Wait,’ said Blankenhagen, getting to his feet as Tony prepared to lower himself into the hole. ‘Should we not go for help?’

‘And let this guy get away?’ Tony was getting suspicious again. ‘You go first, Doc.’

Blankenhagen shrugged, but complied. There was a streak of romanticism under that stolid exterior of his; by now he was as reluctant to abandon the chase as Tony was.

Tony lay flat, shining his light down into the hole.

‘Vorsicht!’ The doctor’s voice came hollowly up. ‘Careful when you descend. The stairs are of wood, and shaky.’

Tony turned around and prepared to follow. He glanced up at me. I could see his face; it wore a broad grin.

‘Go call the cops, Vicky,’ he said, and started down.

From where I stand now – and even from where I was to be standing an hour later – I can see that this might have been the smartest thing to do. But at the time I had a number of objections to the idea. I was pretty sure of Blankenhagen, but I wasn’t ready to risk Tony’s neck on anything less than a hundred-per cent certainty. If I left the two of them alone down there . . .

Also, Tony had the light. I was still thinking in percentages, and there was a fifty-fifty chance that the clearly defined trail was a decoy. I had no desire to meet the knifethrower in the dark cellar as I groped my way towards my room. I squatted by the opening, trying to make up my mind what to do.

I didn’t have to make the choice. Matters were taken out of my hands.

Blankenhagen had reached the bottom of the shaft. I could hear him cautioning Tony, who was partway down. Tony had the light directed downwards so he could pick his footing on the rickety stairs. It was very dark up there where I was. It got even darker. Somebody dropped a sack over my head, picked me up and – while I was still stiff with surprise – dropped me down the shaft feet first like a clothes-pin into a bottle.

I fell on Tony and swept him neatly off the staircase, which promptly collapsed. Blankenhagen, down below, had no chance to move. We both landed on him, as did the splintered pieces of the staircase. Oddly enough, I remember the noise as being the most hellish thing of all. In that narrow space the echoes of crashes and screams and yells and thuds were magnified into a roaring chaos.

Being on top, I came out best. I didn’t even lose consciousness. I had my lumps; a strategic section of my anatomy had bounced off the wall as I fell, and my whole lower surface was full of splinters. But compared to the two men I was in good shape.

They were both out cold. I discovered that by feel; for all practical purposes I was blind. Tony’s flashlight had gone with him. There was no light from up above. Nor was there any flow of air.

That realization stopped my humanitarian activities for a second or two. I should have suspeced it; if someone had put me down the shaft it was because he wanted me there, and naturally he would make sure I stayed there.

The stone up above had been closed and, no doubt, secured in some fashion.

I went back to my fumbling. There were arms and legs all over the place, and at first I couldn’t figure out which belonged to whom. Then I found Tony’s face, which my hands know as well as my eyes. He mumbled something when I touched his cheek. I was so relieved I might have cried, if I’d had the time. Instead I located his pockets and found what I was hoping to find – two packets of matches.

I lit one of the matches. While it burned I made a quick examination.

Tony was semi-conscious and cursing. That was good. Blankenhagen, on whose chest Tony’s head was pillowed, had a broken arm. It wasn’t hard to diagnose, since I could see the bone sticking out. Both men were dirty and torn and bloody.

The match burned my fingers. I blew it out and went on examining in the dark. Blankenhagen’s face was a bloody mess, but after running my fingers over his head I decided his skull had not been fractured.

At that point Tony woke up completely, and we had a rather emotional session for a minute or two. I lit another match, then, while Tony confirmed my diagnosis of the doctor’s injuries.

‘I don’t dare move him,’ he said, as the match flickered out. ‘Something else could be broken.’

‘See if we can wake him up. Maybe he can diagnose himself.’

We worked over the unconscious man until I started to get scared. Finally he stirred.

‘Don’t move yet, Blankenhagen,’ Tony ordered. ‘You’ve got a broken arm and God knows what else. Can you hear me?’

‘Yes . . . What has happened?’

‘The stairs gave way,’ I said. ‘And the trapdoor above is closed.’

The silence that followed this cheering summary was so prolonged that I began to think I had overestimated Blankenhagen’s stamina and shocked him back into unconsciousness. Finally he said, in a gloomy voice, ‘You are here too? I wish you were not.’

‘So do I.’

‘I will see what is wrong with me,’ said Blankenhagen.

‘I’m glad somebody around here is a doctor,’ said Tony.

I offered to light a match, but Blankenhagen refused. Maybe he didn’t want to see the damage. I didn’t enjoy the following minutes; I could tell by Blankenhagen’s grunts and gasps whenever he found a new bruise.

‘Nothing has been broken,’ he announced, ‘except the arm. You cannot go for help?’

‘I don’t know,’ Tony said. ‘We haven’t explored yet. But I have a feeling the guy who tricked us in here isn’t going to leave an exit open.’

‘Perhaps you would care to look?’ Blankenhagen suggested. I didn’t blame him for sounding sarcastic.

‘Okay,’ said Tony meekly. He stood up; and then sat down again, clutching his head.

‘I am sorry,’ said Blankenhagen, feeling his weight descend. ‘I did not think . . . You are injured. If you will come here, I will try – ’

‘Oh, don’t be so damned noble,’ said Tony grumpily. ‘I’m all right. I just had a thought. Maybe some of this wood might make a torch. We’d have an easier time with a little light.’

‘Without oil or petrol,’ Blankenhagen began.

I interrupted him with a hoot of triumph. ‘I have some oil. I got it so I could oil the locks.’

I fished the almost forgotten can out of my coat pocket and gave it to Tony. He wasted several matches experimenting, but finally a chunk of wood consented to burn.

We looked first at the shaft. One look was enough.

A few stairs remained, at the very top. The lowest tread was five feet above my upstretched fingertips.

Tony turned the light into the passage that led out of the shaft. It was faced with stones cemented together. We could see only a few feet of its length; it turned a corner not far from us.

Tony started down the passage, but he had taken only a couple of steps when he swayed dizzily and fell back against the wall. I grabbed the torch from his hand.

‘Sit down till you get your strength back,’ I said. ‘I’ll have a look.’

He didn’t argue. He looked sick.

The roof of the passage was so low that I had to stoop. I went on around the corner, but I didn’t go far. Just behind the bend, the passage ended. It was not the original end. A mass of loose stones and dirt had spilled down from the roof, filling the tunnel from top to bottom. To me, it looked like a very recent cave-in.