Circle of Shadows

PART V
V.1

5 May 1784

Krall did not know why he had been summoned to the Mirrored Hall of Ulrichsberg Palace, but when he found Chancellor Swann there in his shirt-sleeves, grey-faced and alone with a candle in his hands, he began to suspect.

He had been woken, dressed and then guided to the Chancellor by Wimpf, who had taken the role of his personal servant while he was in the palace. As they approached, Krall found the Chancellor surrounded by a hundred broken images of himself. Together they filled the room like a crowd.

Swann wasted no words on greeting Krall, but only nodded and swung open a hidden door on the wall behind him, sending their gathered images dancing among each other in the candlelight till they were legion. Wimpf disappeared back into the shadows.

‘This way,’ Swann said. The hidden door led to a long corridor, unadorned, and crimped and bent by the rooms between which it snaked. Krall had a sense of being lost in the entrails of some great beast, or finding himself cast suddenly in an abandoned mine. Even in the light of the travelling candle he could see doors and panels to his left and right. From here surely all the court could be observed, reached, secretly. He wondered about his own rooms. After some minutes Swann came to a halt with his hand on a latch to his left. The candlelight made him look a great deal older; his shoulders seemed to have acquired a stoop since they had seen each other a few hours before. There was a light grey stubble across his chin, and his cravat was only carelessly tied.

‘Krall, are you loyal to the state you serve?’

‘Yes, Your Excellency,’ Krall said, frowning and irritated by the pantomime.

‘And your sovereign?’

‘My sovereign is the state I serve.’

Swann seemed to consider this a moment before he continued. He handed the candle to the District Officer and, pushing open the door, gestured for him to enter.

It was one of the smaller guest chambers. Krall stepped forward. Countess Dieth was seated in the middle of the room on a straight-backed armchair in a full court gown of plum silk, her chin down like someone sleeping over their book. Her left hand hung loosely, pointing towards the floor. Her stillness. In his first confusion, it took Krall a moment to realise she was dead. ‘Huh …’ he said and crossed slowly towards her, his steps heavy and awkward. Her dress pooled out around her feet. Krall lowered his candle and with his right hand gently lifted her chin.

Her face was white with powder, her cheeks rouged, but around her mouth was a flurry of dark specks, coal dust on snow. He brought the light closer. Her lips were covered in what looked like soil, loose dry soil. Krall looked about him, but the room was clean. Her eyes were open, bloodshot, empty.

‘When was she found?’ he said, resting his palm on her cheek. Quite cold.

‘Half an hour past,’ Swann said, his voice rather thick. ‘A maid had cause to enter the room. I was summoned, and on seeing the body, ordered that you be awakened.’

‘What cause?’

‘District Officer?’

‘What cause did the maid have to enter this room in the thick of night? Countess Dieth has a house in town — why is she not there?’

‘I do not know.’

Krall tilted the Countess’s face back and carefully opened her mouth. It was full of dirt. He breathed in deeply and with great gentleness closed her jaw and let her head tip forward again. There was soil caught in the bodice of her gown and in the folds of her skirt. He struggled with the impulse to clean it away, to make her neat again. Then he held the candle to cast some light upon the lady’s wrists. The left had been slit and the hand was bloody. The candle moved back and forth. There might have been some blood on the dress, but he could not be sure, given the deep colour of the material. The polished floor was apparently quite clean, no signs of drop or spray. He frowned.

Krall lifted the candle above his head and walked slowly round the body. The room was very much like his own, one of the apartments provided for the favourites of the court when their sovereign wished them near at hand. Not large, but luxurious, the wood all polished or gilded. Thick hangings tied round the bedposts. The fire had not been lit. The basin and ewer on the wash-stand were empty. He thought of his own chamber in the palace. Every night he had spent there, when he entered the room, the coals had been burning in the fireplace, fresh water to wash in. Normally wine and a little something to dull the appetite under a cloth. There was a small table set up to the body’s right, with decanter and glass set upon it. Both empty.

‘Mr Crowther and Mrs Westerman?’

‘Retired early and have not left their rooms since. Neither has Mr Graves, nor Mrs Clode.’

‘Forgive me, I meant to suggest they should be summoned.’

‘I see. You think this is the work of the same person who killed Lady Martesen?’

‘And Herr Fink. And possibly Raben and Warburg as I mentioned to you this evening — no, yesterday, I suppose it was.’ It felt natural to speak low. ‘It seems likely, don’t you think, Your Excellency?’

Swann turned away slightly and put his hand to his forehead. He was trembling a little, Krall noticed. He had never seen Swann display any kind of emotion before. ‘But those crimes were concealed. The madman provided us with a suspect for Lady Martesen’s death, and made the others appear accidental.’

‘Perhaps he was not so mad then as he is now,’ Krall said. He caught sight of something and the candle moved quickly through the air, fluttering in the draught, then steadying again. On the back of the door to the west wing corridor was chalked a design in red. A circle with lines through it, drawn over a triangle.

‘Do you recognise that, Your Excellency?’

Swann did not look, but remained with his chin tucked low. ‘Death has come in at our window, into our palaces,’ he mumbled; ‘it strangles our children in the alley, our youth in the street.’

Jeremiah, was it? Krall thought. So the Chancellor had developed a talent for quotation along with his stoop. ‘It is almost light, Chancellor. Will you wake the Duke and tell him?’

‘It is my duty. First I must dress.’

‘The Duchess arrives tomorrow. You will wish to keep this quiet a day or two.’

Swann looked up at him. ‘We might wish it, but I fear it will be impossible.’

‘There might be rumours, but it is not impossible surely — for you, Chancellor? Unless the Duke wants this known too.’

Swann straightened his back, something of his old manner managing to reassert itself. ‘He will not. The servants can be threatened into silence. Countess Dieth’s people in town will be told that she has retired to her country estate. People might assume, given the relations the Countess once had with the Duke …’

‘Mr Crowther will not be able to examine the body here.’

Swann’s mind, it seemed, had woken at last. ‘The Lady Chapel is being redecorated in honour of the new Duchess, but it is not yet finished. The works have been halted while the craftsmen complete her apartments and the preparations for the theatricals. It can be sealed and guarded.’

‘Good.’

‘I have two men awaiting orders.’

Krall stroked his chin. ‘Let her be carried there then while it is still dark, and have the men that carry her guard the chapel. Then send Wimpf to collect Mr Crowther and Mrs Westerman. If that seems fit to you, Your Excellency.’

‘A sensible idea.’

Krall returned to his study of the strange diagram on the door. ‘How many people sleep in the palace, do you think, Your Excellency?’

‘Perhaps a hundred or more. Certainly more if you include the quarters of the coachmen and stablehands, and the Ducal Guard.’

Krall set his candle down on the mantelpiece where its light sent the shadows of the room’s fine furnishings, its gilded mirrors and moulding, skipping and dancing. ‘The palace is not in my jurisdiction, Your Excellency.’

‘Nevertheless, given the similarities, I ask you to investigate.’ Krall did not answer at once. ‘We are united in our wish to know the truth, Krall.’

‘I am glad to know that.’ Krall had been feeling like an old man these last years, but staring at the design on the wall he realised he was enjoying a sensation he hadn’t felt in some time. He was curious. ‘You may call your men, sir,’ he said. ‘Then, with your leave, if you will send the maid to me who discovered the Countess, and ask Wimpf to wake Mrs Westerman and Mr Crowther. Perhaps he might take them their coffee and something to eat before telling them what is afoot. I will wait for them.’

‘Whatever your wish, District Officer.’ There was an edge in Swann’s voice again, but Krall made no move to show he felt it.