Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 128, No. 6. Whole No. 784, December 2006

At Willow-Walk-Behind by James Powell

Shortly after this issue goes to the printer, James Powell will be receiving the Grant Allen Award, reserved for Canadian crime-writing pioneers, at the Wolfe Island Scene of the Crime Festival in Canada’s Thousand Islands. Mr. Powell has had more than 75 stories published in EQMM. A longtime resident of the U.S., he has invented his own sub-genre of the mystery, mixing fantasy, crime, and humor.

On a windy March afternoon in 1929, a piebald day, now cloudy, now sunshine, Ambrose Ganelon III drove his white Terrapin convertible with the top up along the narrow, twisting road that tunneled through the Old Forest, the dense stand of trees covering much of Transporpentine San Sebastiano. His destination was Willow-Walk-Behind, a religious retreat house run by the monks of Saint Magnus.

As the trees hurried by, Ganelon recalled his father saying that when Hannibal’s elephants crossed the Alps people thought they were seeing a forest on the march, a Birnam Wood in search of some southern Dunsinane. And, speaking of trees, he remembered reading somewhere that even the oldest of families seldom outlive three oak trees. Grim food for thought, he being the third of his name to operate the principality’s famous detective agency. True, his archrivals, the descendants of the evil Dr. Ludwig Fong, were in their third generation, too. But they had prospered since the War, particularly the English branch of the family led by Dorian Fong-Smythe, while the private detective business had never been worse.

The sudden slapping of rubber interrupted Ganelon’s gloomy musing. He had a flat. An impatient frown crossed his battered, street fighter’s face as he pulled off the road beside some ancient apple trees. In a clearing behind them stood an orchard of younger trees in full blossom, their trunks wrapped in white cloth like the legs of racehorses. He got out his jack and spare and changed the tire. Then he leaned against the car and lit a cigarette.

Suddenly a cloud crossed the sun and a voice close-by said, “Some say it was this time of the year when Adam and Eve were created.”

Ganelon swung around. An old man was leaning against one of the dotard apple trees. Brown and gnarled, he might have been carved from its wood. “I didn’t mean to startle you,” he apologized. Then, glancing back at the apple blossoms, he continued. “Let’s hope Paradise lasted longer than just the time between the flower and the fruit.”

“You said it,” agreed Ganelon.

The old man smiled. “Came to help you with your tire. Can’t move as quickly as I once did. Are you going far?” When Ganelon said Willow-Walk-Behind, the smile vanished. “Be careful in those woods, brother,” said the old man. “Something has gotten into the trees.”

With a smart beep-beep, a low-slung bright blue roadster with an attractive young woman behind the wheel rushed past them. Ganelon watched the driver disappear around a corner. “Maybe it’s only the wind,” he answered absently, his mind still with the pretty lady.

“Something strange, I mean,” insisted the old man.

The retreat house was an ancient stone mill to which substantial additions had been made. The parking area in front was crowded. Ganelon noted the bright blue roadster whose registration number said it was from northwestern France.

Father Boniface, the portly, red-faced retreat master, came out to welcome Ganelon, who was a frequent visitor because his friend and teacher Father Sylvanus lived in a nearby hermitage. “Looks like business is booming,” said the detective.

“Not the religious retreat end of things,” the priest told him. “No, but Prentiss-Jenkins Aviation draws a lot of people who need a place to stay.”

Ganelon recalled that a large area of woods in the neighborhood had recently been cut down to provide a runway and a storage area for the British company, which was buying up surplus fighters and bombers from the War, flying them here, and storing them under canvas for resale.

“Yes, it’s all ‘Come Josephine in My Flying Machine’ around here,” said Father Boniface, who’d been a song plugger and a ballroom dancer — some said he was the original “Willie” in “Waltz Me Around Again, Willie” — until the carnality of the Turkey Trot and the Grizzly Bear drove him to a late religious vocation.

“As if things aren’t hectic enough,” continued the retreat master, “one of our guests wandered off after dinner last night. Probably got himself lost in the woods. We only discovered him missing at breakfast. We’ve had people out looking for him all morning. I’ve called the police. All this on the feast of Saint Magnus, our founder. And a very special Saint Magnus Day, at that.”

Before Ganelon could ask what was special about it, Father Boniface winked and held out his hand. “I’d better put it in our safe,” he said, cocking his head apologetically.

Ganelon had forgotten to leave his Hrosco automatic at home. Now he unstrapped holster and weapon and handed them over. As they disappeared inside Father Boniface’s habit, one corner of the monk’s mouth turned downward and the other up in a perfect replica of Ganelon’s trademark cockeyed smile.

Picking up Ganelon’s suitcase to take it to the detective’s usual room, the priest turned back to say, “When you see Father Sylvanus, ask yourself if perhaps he’s been alone in the woods too long.”

As Father Boniface entered the retreat house, Ganelon’s old friend Captain Alain Jerome came out the same door. Jerome possessed an aviator’s confident air and a dashing moustache. During the War he commanded San Sebastiano’s tiny air force with its cabbage-rose roundel, operating from an airfield just behind the lines where Ganelon’s regiment saw action. Jerome’s unit had taken “Love in the Clouds” as their theme song, a melody dating back to the giraffe craze of the 1840s when Anatole and Natalie were the most popular animals in the San Sebastiano zoo. His pilots even painted giraffe markings on their sturdy little Prentiss-Jenkins Hedgehog IIIs as a kind of ur-camouflage.

The last time Ganelon saw Jerome was three years ago as the man set out on a surveying job for something called the Cairo to Cathay Railroad.

“Your march through Syria, Arabia, Persia, and beyond, you said it sounded like fun. Was it?” asked the detective.

Jerome laughed. “As far as it went. When I reached Teheran I found a telegraph telling me I was let go. My employers had run out of money.

“As luck would have it, Riza Khan, who had been Persia’s Minister of War and had just become the Shah, heard of my arrival and invited me to dinner to discuss the railroad project. I found him a down-to-earth and ambitious leader.

“When he told me he meant to bind his unruly country together by increasing the army three-fold, I recalled the words of the British staff officer in Constantinople when I described my surveying trip. The Brit said they couldn’t guarantee my safety. But if the Bedouins did capture me, he promised to send out planes and bomb the beggars until they let me go.

“I heard myself suggesting that the Shah might do the same job with an air force and at a fraction of the cost. How better to put down tribal revolts and maintain order in remote corners of the country? With warplanes a glut on the market he could buy all he needed for next to nothing. And there were plenty of aviators who’d jump at the chance to fly them.

“The Shah said he’d study the idea,” said Jerome. “But I could tell he liked it. Now for the long and short of it. A month ago I received his letter authorizing me to put together a Persian air force. Needless to say, there’ll be a tidy commission for yours truly when I do. So here I am, looking over what the Prentiss-Jenkins people have in the way of aircraft and interviewing pilots. My old friend Wing Commander Timmons is here representing a British team. Not to mention our old nemesis Baron Waldteufel on behalf of his German flyers. Even the Soviets are interested.” Jerome looked at his wrist watch. “An hour ago the Shah’s man General Massoudi arrived in San Sebastiano by British flying boat from Alexandria to see what I’ve put together.”

As he spoke, an old open touring car turned in at the retreat-house gate. It made a complete circle of the parking lot as though Father Carlus, the driver, who was done up in motorcycle goggles and a white duster, was reluctant to end the journey. Three visitors and their baggage sat behind him fresh from San Sebastiano’s old port where Imperial Airways had a quay-side hangar for their giant amphibious aircraft.

“That’s Massoudi, the one in the military uniform,” said Jerome. “The other two are my old Cairo to Cathay employers, Major Ibrahim and Mr. Wang.” He indicated the tall man in a white suit, with a long jaw and a red tarboosh, carrying a horsehair fly whisk, and an Oriental gentleman who seemed uncomfortable pent up in western dress. “They’re here to discuss fresh financing for their railroad with Miss Khalila Assad.” With a nod toward the blue car, Jerome went to greet the passengers.

Waving to Father Carlus, who had stopped to admire the Terrapin, Ganelon continued on his way to the back of the retreat house where a flagstone walk and a dozen sturdy willow trees circled a good-sized pond. Centuries before, a stream on the property had been dammed up, creating the pond and a millrace to drive the mill’s waterwheel, long since fallen to ruin. The unharnessed overflow still found its way down to the sea, where its brown water vanished like chimney smoke into the sky-blue Mediterranean.

It was Friday. Two young monks were out on the pond in a rowboat trying to net carp for dinner. Ganelon recalled Father Boniface’s complaint, “English monks always chose salmon rivers when they built their cathedrals. We must do with carp.”

Suddenly a monk gave a shout and jumped into the water. His companion followed. Wading across to a large willow, they struggled, trying to extricate something from the submerged tangle of the tree’s roots. As Ganelon reached them they were dragging the body of a man in a dark suit up onto the grass. One monk hurried off to fetch Father Boniface.

Ganelon knelt to examine the body, noting the wound from a heavy blow to the back of the head. The other monk said they’d seen the dead man’s heels floating beneath the willow branches. The detective found that the most interesting thing, the torso and head floating below the feet, so deep in the water.

“It’s Mr. Elmer Shypoke, the missing guest,” said a woman’s voice.

Ganelon looked up. The beautiful driver of the blue roadster was standing there. He was sorry he’d surrendered his Hrosco. The cockeyed grin it gave him charmed the ladies.

“Strange the way he was floating,” she added, pushing her black hair out of an alert and intelligent face.

“You’ve a good eye,” said Ganelon.

A male voice with an English accent said, “A shoulder money belt filled with gold guineas will do that to you.” The speaker was a tall, fair-haired man wearing a blazer and a Royal Flying Corps tie. He had a twisted chin and an indentation like a deep thumbprint low on one cheek. A casse-gueule, as the French called those who brought face wounds out of the War. The man introduced himself. “Timmons,” he said.

Ganelon opened the dead man’s jacket to reveal the bulging shoulder money belt. Well, the killer’s motive hadn’t been robbery. “You the one who led Jerome around in the hospital when he couldn’t see?” he asked Timmons. Jerome had been caught on the ground during one of Baron Waldteufel’s aerial gas attacks. Temporarily blinded, he’d been led away in a crocodile of like-injured. During his long recuperation in a San Sebastiano hospital, Jerome and Timmons had become fast friends.

“My jaw was all wired up,” said Timmons. “It was the dumb leading the blind. Have you met Miss Khalila Assad?”

“So you are the famous private detective,” said the young woman. “Please call me Khalila. May I help you in your investigation? I am not without experience in such matters.”

Ganelon remembered something from one of the magazines he subscribed to — was it P.I. Tidbits? — about a Levantine religious youth group solving crimes in the city of Nancy. “Better leave this to the police,” he said. He could tell she was disappointed. But he had his reasons.

Jerome and Father Boniface came hurrying down the path. While the priest knelt to pray beside the body, Khalila told Jerome, “Mr. Ganelon says this is a police matter. That’s fine with me. I don’t work well with men who talk to trees.”

“You were driving fast,” protested Ganelon. “This old man came out of the orchard to help me change a tire.”

Khalila frowned at him, put her arm in Jerome’s arm, and led him away. As he went the pilot shot Ganelon a puzzled look over his shoulder.

Ganelon watched the woman go. “Something of a coquette,” he said to Timmons.

“Don’t ask me,” replied the Englishman.

“The money belt, how come you knew about it?”

“We flew over from Croydon to Paris together, Shypoke, Baron Waldteufel, and I. Shypoke bragged about the gold and showed off what he called his shooting iron to keep it safe.”

Then he added, “If you ask me, Standard Oil sent the man to fish in troubled waters. Anglo-Persian Oil’s agreement is with a local warlord. The Shah could invalidate it.”

“I hear the country’s oil production could one day equal that of the U. S.,” said Ganelon.

“So they say,” said Timmons. “Perhaps Shypoke thought the gold might help him with the Shah’s man Massoudi. Shypoke’s arrival certainly spooked the Anglo-Persian people. Instead of waiting for Massoudi, they left this morning for Teheran to deal with the Shah directly.”

“And Waldteufel was on your Paris flight, you say?”

“Yes, our plane was a tri-engine Prentiss-Jenkins Gladiator, the ‘box kite,’ as they call them. A noon takeoff followed by a leisurely lunch on a wide table in a spacious cabin made it a very popular flight. Waldteufel was on board, but just barely. We were powering up when a chauffeured Daimler drove out onto the field to deliver him and his baggage.”

“The Daimler driver, did he have a club foot?” asked Ganelon, describing Eustace, Dorian Fong-Smythe’s chauffeur. Timmons hesitated. “I didn’t notice,” he said.

Ganelon set out for Father Sylvanus’s hermitage again, taking a path beside the nearby retreat-house chapel which led deep into the woods.

It was perhaps ironic that a private detective of the two-fisted school would be a student of the art of nonviolent self-defense called the via felix, the Happy Way. Invented by Saint Magnus for his monks’ use in protecting the holy places of Europe during the early Middle Ages, it involved a hip lift and the redistribution of an adversary’s body humors (blood, phlegm, choler, black bile), changing him temperamentally, from, say, a homicidal maniac into a hail-fellow-well-met sort. An adept practiced using a heavy wooden planchette grooved with elaborate channels and four colored balls. Ganelon had just mastered a very difficult maneuver called Navigating between Presumption and Despair which was the door to a higher level of the Happy Way.

The detective followed the narrow path for some distance before he reached a small clearing where a fat blue-green cedar tree built of galvanized metal stood. During the War, Fong Armaments manufactured these sniper boxes and observation posts for the German army. Ganelon remembered the festive note they added to the forward saps and no-man’s-land at Christmas. After the Armistice, the Fongs sold some off as outhouses, toolsheds, and, in Father Sylvanus’s case, a hermitage.

Ganelon’s father once described Father Sylvanus as the very image of El Greco’s famous portrait of Saint Ildefonso, the patron saint of dart players. Curious, Ganelon had looked the painting up in an art book. The saint had been sitting at a small table reading his breviary. As El Greco captured him, he is holding up a dart which probably served as his bookmark and is about to let fly at a dartboard somewhere off the canvas.

Father Sylvanus certainly had the saint’s high forehead, long aristocratic nose, and whimsical smile. But today he was solemn and preoccupied. He invited Ganelon in and congratulated him after watching his work with the planchette. “Your father had not come this far.” Then his eyes went to the open door. “The trees are restless,” he observed.

“You’re the second person to tell me that today. It’s the wind.”

The hermit shook his head. “I grew up near woods like these. When I was a boy people used to say: ‘Elms do grieve. Oak he do hate. Willows do walk if you travels late.’”

“Willows walk?”

“Indeed,” said Father Sylvanus. “Uproot themselves at night and stalk unwary travelers muttering all the way.”

“Then Willow-Walk-Behind didn’t take its name from the willows and the walk behind the retreat house?”

“It was called that and shunned locally long before our order bought the old abandoned mill and ancient willows around the millpond. We wanted the property because our founder and his early followers lived as hermits hereabouts.”

In a voice as casual as he could make it, Ganelon said, “Father Boniface thinks you have been in the woods too long.”

“And he may be right. When the winter wind works their twigs and branches I’ve started to believe I can read something of what the trees are dreaming. They are not happy dreams. The willows may be the unhappiest, though I haven’t yet learned the cursive script of their branches. The trees fear for something. I think it is the Cairo to Cathay Railroad.”

“I don’t understand.”

“The Chinese say a train journey of a thousand miles begins with a single wooden railway tie,” said the priest. “Railroads devour forests. Oh, trees are as innocent as children. When they saw their first woodman’s axe they said, ‘Look, look, part of it is one of us.’ But like children their anger, when it comes, can be a terrible and mindless thing.”

Father Sylvanus stopped. “Leave me now,” he said. “I have much to do.”

On the threshold of the hermitage Ganelon turned back to ask, “What did Father Boniface mean when he said this was a very special Saint Magnus Day?”

“Our founder rose from his deathbed, went outside, stuck his head in a hollow tree, and shouted a last prayer. Ever since we’ve had stories of monks meditating alone in the woods on Saint Magnus Day hearing a muffled voice speaking to them. From records kept we have discovered that this phenomenon occurs once every seventy-five years. Today is such a special day.”

As Ganelon approached the retreat house he saw a man in a tweed suit and hat, leather gaiters, and a narrow Malacca cane under his arm hunkered down examining Shypoke’s body as Father Boniface looked on. Inspector Nestor Flanel, a third-generation policeman, had a personality so grating his superiors gave him every suburban assignment just to get him as far from the prefecture as possible. This explained the gaiters and cane, useful for investigating crime scenes in long grass. Flanel saw Ganelon and made a cold what-the-hell-are-you-doing-here face.

Ganelon’s two-fisted image would suffer if Flanel suspected he was a student of the Happy Way. The detective decided to pretend he’d come to Willow-Walk-Behind for spiritual refreshment. He turned abruptly and entered the retreat house chapel.

The little church was famous for its unusual windows. The one toward the retreat house depicted Saint Magnus Preaching to the Trees of the Forest in bright stained glass. The window’s mate on the forest side was of clear glass, as if inviting the trees to peek in.

Ganelon paused as he had many times before to admire the stained glass. There was the saint shaping his fingers into the twiglike runic characters the forest understood. Crowded around him were trees of every size and description. Even the oak had come and brought his friend the pine. Conveniently, the window had an inch-wide border of clear glass so he could also keep an eye on Flanel at the millpond.

When Ganelon’s eyes grew accustomed to the chapel’s dim he discovered he was not alone. Khalila stood nearby, staring up at the stained glass.

“Sorry to intrude,” he said.

“My people told me to be sure not to miss seeing this famous window,” she said without turning. “It’s very impressive. And, oh, I know now why you didn’t want to get involved in Mr. Shypoke’s murder. Inspector Flanel is a very unpleasant person. He made it quite clear he didn’t want amateurs or private detectives interfering with his investigation.”

“There’s more to it than that,” said Ganelon, explaining how, over the years, his family had driven every competent criminal from San Sebastiano. So its police force no longer attracted minds of high caliber. Men like Flanel blame their lackluster careers on the Ganelons and spurn their help. He didn’t tell her that his family’s reputation had driven his own business away as well. Sometimes, after reflecting on his father’s and his grandfather’s brilliant achievements, there was nothing left for Ganelon to do but visit some low bar and pick a fight with the biggest and meanest guy in the place.

Then he heard himself say, “I’m surprised your people would trust the Cairo to Cathay business to—” He hesitated over the right words. “—someone so young and good-looking.”

She laughed. “I thought you were going to say to such a flirt,” she said, using the word allumeuse, which went back to gaslight days. Then it meant a female lamplighter. Today it was a woman who lights the boys up and walks away.

“Being friendly does help me with my task,” she admitted. “I’ve been sent here with a tentative proposal for the Cairo to Cathay principals. But my people also want to know if Persia is stable enough for a railroad to be built across it. I think the guests here at Willow-Walk-Behind can answer that question. Being friendly helps.”

“Why the interest in the railroad?”

“My people are reclusive, industrious, and astute in the way of business. They must think it a solid proposition,” she said, adding with a smile, “though China has always fascinated my people. If I repeated some of the China stories our elders tell you’d have to laugh.”

Wondering if she’d found Shypoke an unsettling presence, Ganelon asked, “Did you see Shypoke last night?”

“Now you sound like Inspector Flanel.”

“Flanel can make a real shambles of things. When he’s around, a parallel investigation never hurts.”

“I saw Shypoke at dinner,” she said. “That’s it.”

“What did you do last night?”

“I took a walk with Captain Jerome,” she said. “Along the way we met with Ivanov, the Russian pilot. He walked with us for a bit. After that I went to my room. I came down later to Father Boniface’s office. He lets me use his telephone to keep my people in the picture. But somebody else was using it. I believe it was Baron Waldteufel. So I went to bed.”

Having answered his questions, Khalila left the chapel.

Ganelon remained where he was, watching Flanel oversee the loading of Shypoke’s body onto a coroner’s gurney. Then Khalila appeared at the millpond. A moment later Jerome and Timmons came around a corner of the retreat house, standing aside as the gurney trundled by.

Suddenly an excited monk came running out of the woods, shouting and pointing back the way he had come. Flanel and the others followed him back into the woods.

Ganelon came out of the chapel to find out what was happening. As he passed the millpond Baron Waldteufel stepped from behind a willow tree. “Still lurking, are we, Baron?” he said. In aerial action over the trenches the German liked to creep up on an enemy aviator by flitting from cloud to cloud until ready to pounce.

The Baron stared at Ganelon through his monocle before giving a smart click of his heels and a short bow from the neck. Then he said, “Two monks on a work party in the woods discovered a second body in a crashed airplane. The others have gone to investigate.” He pointed to the path they had taken.

“Then I think I’ll join them,” said Ganelon. “Care to come along?”

The Baron shook his head. “It’s the Russian, Ivanov. Yesterday he buzzed the retreat house, no doubt hoping to impress General Massoudi with loop-the-loops and barrel rolls. He didn’t know Massoudi had been held up in Alexandria by a sandstorm. This morning the Prentiss-Jenkins people had us all over at their facility for a champagne brunch and a walk-around to show off some newly arrived aircraft. Miss Assad was invited, too. Ivanov stayed on after we left. No doubt he meant to repeat his aerial display for Massoudi today.”

Then, as if he knew Ganelon’s next question, Waldteufel said, “Inspector Flanel asked when I saw Shypoke for the last time. I said at dinner. But on reflection I think I heard him later that night. I was using Father Boniface’s telephone. I’m pretty sure somebody was outside listening at the window next-door where the Anglo-Persian Oil people and Timmons were meeting. I believe it was Shypoke.”

Striding off into the woods, Ganelon soon caught sight of the others. When Jerome saw him he dropped back. “I hope our dead man isn’t Ivanov,” he told Ganelon. “That would complicate things. Massoudi brought word the Shah favors a Russian team. I rather think he feels the Russians have their hands too full with their tin-pot revolution to pose any threat to his country.”

“And the British would bring too much of an imperial agenda to the task,” said Ganelon. “Which leaves Waldteufel and his Germans.”

Jerome nodded. Then after a few moments he said, “By the way, the old guy you talked to back there by the orchard, I’m sure he was only a fruit farmer. But when I was a boy, they told stories about the Old Apple-Tree Man, a tame tree spirit who warned people when it wasn’t wise to go into the woods.”

“Then he should have warned Shypoke,” said Ganelon. “And speaking of Shypoke—”

“Let’s see,” said Jerome. “I saw him at dinner. Afterwards I went for a walk with Khalila, who had some questions about the feasibility of the Cairo to Cathay Railroad. A very smart girl. And oh, yes, we ran into Ivanov. Later I was standing at my window when I saw Shypoke again. He was coming around the side of the retreat house.”

“Was anyone following him?”

“Not right behind him, no,” said Jerome, adding, “Look, I’m sorry. I still take these drops for my eyes before I go to bed. I chose just that moment to put them in. Remember the story of the blind man cured at Bethesda? At first he said he saw men like trees walking. That’s what I saw, a blurry shape just like a tree walking come out of the retreat house and head off in the direction Shypoke had gone.”

Ganelon sighed to himself. That’s all he needed, a walking tree. He imagined his grandfather laying his oboe aside to give his full attention to so intriguing a development. He saw his father bouncing his fingertips together thoughtfully as he considered the truth hidden behind so unscientific a story. Ganelon found himself wondering where the nearest bar was.

He and Jerome walked on for another fifteen minutes until they reached the crashed Russian biplane. Nicknamed a Pasternaki from its tapered, parsniplike fuselage, it had come down across a clearing and smashed into the base of a large tree. The dead pilot, a round-faced blond young man, wore a green uniform with red markings.

With a nod at his partner standing by the airplane, the monk who’d guided them to the crash explained, “Brother and I had been sent to clean the brush away around what we hope is Saint Magnus’s Tree. As Father Boniface put it, ‘There’ll Be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight’ if we’re lucky enough to hear our founder’s voice speaking to us across the centuries. Anyway, as we were starting back we heard the plane go over. Then its engine cut out and we heard it crash.”

Flanel examined the body and announced the pilot’s neck had been broken in the crash. After walking slowly around the airplane, he stood rocking back and forth on his heels and tugging at his lower lip, doing a fine impersonation of a man deep in thought.

Khalila toured the wreckage. When she reached the gas tank she rapped on it. Then she came over next to Ganelon. “Sounds empty to me,” she murmured.

Ganelon had wondered why there’d been no fire or explosion on impact. Nice detective work. You bet, business was slow at the agency. But having a beautiful junior partner around might make the time go faster.

At Flanel’s signal the monks emptied a scythe and two rakes from their wheelbarrow, loaded up Ivanov’s body, and trundled back to the retreat house with everyone following behind.

Two dead bodies or not, it still wasn’t Ganelon’s case. Maybe that was just as well. He was here to get to the next level in the Happy Way. With that in mind he left the others when they reached a small side path that led to Father Sylvanus’s hermitage.

Ganelon found the hermit sweeping the dirt floor of his galvanized dwelling with a broom of twigs. “Any chance of squeezing in a lesson, Father?”

The priest gave him a sad smile. “Let’s leave that for the new Father Sylvanus,” he said, adding, “Did I ever tell you I was born on Saint Magnus Day seventy-five years ago? I came in with our founder’s prayer and I have a strong premonition that I will go out with it. So I have much to do, including the naming of the new Father Sylvanus from among those I have trained. I had high hopes for Father Carlus before he chose the byway of speed-demonry.”

The old priest looked around at the forests as if for the last time and said, “Saint Magnus was much in awe of trees, the way they stood half in heaven and half deep in the earth, much as we humans do. Meditating on this set him to wondering if the vast underground network of tree and seaweed roots could be used as a long-distance communication system. Stick your head in a hollow tree, shout your message, and someone with his head in a tree at the other end would hear what you said. Imagine sending a message from one end of Australia to the other using the roots of the shady coolabah tree.

“Fortunately Saint Magnus confided this wild idea to no one. Otherwise he might have been judged mad and unfit for canonization.

“But my predecessor and teacher, Old Father Sylvanus, as they called him, found the saint’s secret diary among some ancient manuscripts in our library. By translating it he was able to calculate the precise hour when the saint’s prayer, having circled the world, would return to where it had started. Tonight we will find out if his calculations were correct.

“Of course, the original tree has long since fallen to dust. But any hollow tree of the same kind would surely do. Though reasonable men may disagree on what kind of tree it was.”

Father Sylvanus returned to his sweeping for a moment. Then he said out of nowhere, “Some say the next great battle between Christianity and Islam is nigh. I hear some Germans are telling the French that when that day comes their Mr. Hitler will be the new Charles Martel, the hero-warrior who will defeat the Arabs once and for all.

“Be that as it may, a small religious group called the Druze believe that when this conflict ends and the victorious side, whichever it is, stands bloody and exhausted, then a vast Druze army will march out of China, defeat the victor, and rule the world.”

“A Druze army in China?”

Father Sylvanus nodded. “The Druze believe that for centuries their male dead have been reincarnated in China for just this purpose.”

“And how better and faster to move such an army than by rail?” added Ganelon.

“Indeed, so you may live to see exciting times. Well, I leave all that to you. Goodbye, Ambrose.” Ganelon went down on one knee to receive the old priest’s blessing. Then Father Sylvanus went back into his metal hermitage.

Ganelon returned to the retreat house with a troubled mind. Since the death of China’s president Sun Yat-sen several years ago he’d heard rumors that Fong-Smythe had forged an alliance with the country’s most powerful warlords, for what purpose he hadn’t discovered. If an army did come out of China, would it be Fong-Smythe’s?

Ganelon started dressing for dinner early. Knotting his tie at the window, he noticed Timmons and Massoudi below him on the flagstone walk in animated conversation as the twilight deepened. He couldn’t hear anything. But then he saw Timmons hold his hand out, thumb and fingers pointing down at the knuckles, making the Dragon’s Claw, the sign of the Fongs, the thumb buried deep wherever the clan leader was and each finger in one of the world’s four corners. Massoudi shook his head at the claw in disbelief. But clearly it left him unsettled. If Timmons connected the Baron with the Fongs he’d have gone a long way to disqualifying Waldteufel for the Persian job.

Ganelon watched as Massoudi and Timmons went their separate ways. Then he saw Waldteufel, ever the lurker, step from behind a nearby willow and glare in the direction the Englishman had gone.

As the detective finished dressing there was a knock. Timmons stood in the doorway with a bottle of scotch under one arm, a gazogene under the other, and carrying two glasses. “What’d you say to a drink before dinner?” he asked.

Ganelon invited the Wing Commander in.

As he made the drinks Timmons said, “You know, there’s much more involved here than jobs for redundant aviators or the sale of surplus aircraft or how a Persian strongman controls his trackless empire.” He passed Ganelon his drink and gestured at the wall as if it were a map of Asia. “They used to call it the Great Game. Persia lies athwart Britain’s road to India and it keeps the Russians away from their long-sought-after warm-water port.” He lit a cigarette. “The British have much history in the area. And the Russians. Before nineteen seventeen the Persian army was officered by Russians who trained the Shah himself.”

“Sounds like you know what you’re talking about,” said Ganelon.

“A friend in high places filled me in on things when he heard I might be heading to that neck of the woods.”

Ganelon nodded as if he accepted Timmons’s explanation. But all it did was convince him that the man was British Secret Service. “By the way,” he asked, “when did you see Shypoke for the last time?”

Timmons shrugged. “Last night I met with the Anglo-Persian Oil people. I hoped they might persuade General Massoudi to favor my people for the flying part. I thought I heard someone outside the window. When I looked I saw Shypoke listening at Father Boniface’s window. Why, I don’t know. It was none of my business.”

As soon as Timmons left, Ganelon hurried off to the dining room hoping to get the chair next to Khalila at the Cairo to Cathay Railroad table. The four of them made a jolly bunch. When different nationalities gather they often find common ground by telling humorous stories about the English. When Ganelon’s turn came he quoted Alphonse Allais’ remark, “Queer people, the English. Whereas we in France name our public places after famous victories — Rue de Rocroy, Place Iéna, Avenue de Wagram — the English insist on naming theirs after famous defeats — Trafalgar Square, Waterloo Station, and so on.” Khalila’s laughter rang silver in his ears.

Then he saw Jerome at a corner table throw down his napkin and leave the dining room and noticed for the first time that the pilot’s friend and table companion Timmons wasn’t there. Excusing himself, Ganelon rose and went after Jerome.

As he fell in step with him the pilot said, “I went by Timmons’s room on my way to dinner. No answer. I figured he’d gone down ahead. When he wasn’t at our table I decided he’d been sidetracked. But not for this long. There’s one man who really likes his rations.”

At Timmons’s room Ganelon turned the knob and the door swung open. The Englishman lay stretched out on the floor amid a wreckage of bottles and glasses, dead from a blow to the back of the head. The killer must have been waiting behind the door when Timmons returned from Ganelon’s room.

Noticing something odd about the dead man’s large aviator’s wrist watch, Ganelon checked it, hoping it might have stopped during the assault, giving a clue to the time of death. But the watch was still running. It had just lost its crystal.

Grim-faced, Jerome looked down at the dead body. “My friend deserved better than this,” he said.

Inspector Flanel arrived quickly, gaiters and all. He interrogated Ganelon and Jerome. Then they left him hunkered down viewing the crime scene from multiple angles and turning things over with his stick.

After compline, a procession of monks carrying fat candles set out for the hollow oak Father Boniface had decided was St. Magnus’s Tree. Those guests who wished to come along fell in behind, dressed for the cool night air. They included Khalila and her Cairo to Cathay people, the Baron, General Massoudi, and Ganelon and Jerome, who arrived at the last minute.

They entered the woods and proceeded to Father Sylvanus’s hermitage. After a bit, when no one appeared, the retreat master said, “I guess the good Father still doesn’t believe my tree is the kind our founder used. He may regret not joining us.” Then he ordered the procession to continue.

They started out on the same path they had taken that afternoon to the crash site. But for Ganelon the trees loomed larger now on either side and seemed to fall in behind them as they passed. He chalked this up to the darkness, the candlelight, and Father Sylvanus’s stories. But he didn’t remember so many tree roots in the path. The stumbling monks uttered gentle appeals to this saint or that as their candle flames sketched abrupt patterns on the darkness. More forceful expletives came from the guests in a Babel of languages to which an owl or two uttered replies. Just beyond the wreckage of the Russian airplane a breeze sprang up, guttering the candles. Protective hands cupped the flames, dimming the light even more.

At last the procession reached a place where the bracken had been scythed and raked away around an ancient oak standing alone some twenty feet off the path. It had a large waist-high hole in its trunk. The monks turned in and gathered in a semicircle about the tree.

Father Boniface produced a pocket watch. “The hour of our blessed founder’s prayer approaches,” he said. “Forgive us if we of his order listen first.” Then he directed the monks, in alphabetical turns, to put their heads in the hollow oak, tapping each on the shoulder when his time was up. So the minutes passed. None heard the expected voice. Pulling his own head out of the tree, Father Boniface shook it sadly and signaled the guests to take their turns. Ganelon went last. The hollow in the tree was silent as a tomb. Then the hour had passed.

The downcast procession returned, more strung-out and stumbling than before. As the lights of the retreat house came in view they discovered that Baron Waldteufel had gone missing somewhere along the way. Arming himself with a candle, Jerome volunteered to go back and try to find him.

When the others reached the millpond they found a monk with his head and shoulders inside a hollow willow near the one in whose roots Shypoke’s body had been entangled. When Father Boniface touched him and said Saint Magnus’s hour had passed, the body slid from the willow and onto the grass. It was Father Sylvanus. The dead priest’s face wore a smile of final contentment.

Ganelon asked, “Does the smile mean he learned Saint Magnus’s prayer?”

“Oh, the prayer is no secret,” said Father Boniface. “No, his joy must mean he heard it spoken in our founder’s very voice. You see, late in life Saint Magnus turned mystical in an attempt to discover the unknowable side of the Almighty, the deus abscondus, the hidden God. He rose from his deathbed and had a disciple help him to a hollow tree nearby, and in a ‘Hello, Central, Get Me Heaven’ kind of thing, he stuck his head inside and shouted: ‘God, Whoever You are, I love You.’”

The monks carried Father Sylvanus’s body into the chapel. The guests returned to the retreat house, except for Ganelon and Khalila. Ganelon followed the body out of respect for his teacher. Khalila came, too, saying, “The Cairo to Cathay people have accepted our terms. I leave for home in the morning. But I’d like a chance to see the famous window by candlelight.”

Half an hour later Ganelon and Khalila left the monks to their vigil over Father Sylvanus’s body. As they came outside they saw Inspector Flanel heading in their direction.

“I hear Baron Waldteufel wandered off and Jerome’s gone back to find him,” said the policeman. “When he does I intend to arrest the baron for murder. He was killing off his rivals for the Persian air force job. He had the motive and the opportunity to siphon off Commissar Ivanov’s gasoline. And I have proof positive he killed Wing Commander Timmons. During my careful examination of the broken glass in Timmons’s room I found this, the baron’s monocle.” Flanel opened his hand triumphantly to reveal the crystal from Timmons’s watch.

Just then Jerome emerged from the forest darkness. He was alone. “I went as far back as the last spot I remembered seeing Waldteufel with the procession. No baron.”

Examining the night, Flanel decided it was too late to start a search. He promised to return in the morning.

Ganelon walked Khalila back to the retreat house. “Flanel’s a very lucky man, being right for so wrong a reason,” he said. “He may make Chief Inspector yet.” Then he added, “We have to ask ourselves, what’s so important about the Persian air force job to make it worth killing two people?”

“Three, counting Shypoke,” said Khalila.

“Shypoke was a mistake all round. The man wanted to eavesdrop on the Anglo-Persian Oil people’s meeting but got the wrong window. The baron thought Shypoke was listening in on his telephone call to England. That’s why he killed him. Know the name Dorian Fong-Smythe?”

When Khalila shook her head, Ganelon told himself she soon would if she came into partnership with him. Then he said, “He’s Waldteufel’s employer. So why’s it so important to Fong-Smythe that the baron gets the Persian job?”

Early the next morning Ganelon and Khalila led Flanel on the route the procession had taken and described the events of the night before. On the way the inspector looked for traces of the baron’s wandering off. They had not expected to get as far as the hollow oak. But that was where they discovered Waldteufel dead next to the tree, the blade of a scythe driven through his body.

Flanel waved them behind him and studied the scene, stroking his chin.

As Ganelon looked at the wooden-handled scythe he suddenly remembered Father Sylvanus’s remark about what the trees had said about the woodman’s axe: “Look, look, part of it is one of us.”

After a bit Flanel said, “Here’s what happened. On the way back to the retreat house the Baron got separated from the procession. In the dark and half blind — for let us not forget, I found his monocle at the crime scene — he was beset by his guilty conscience and panicked. He started to run. As often happens in these cases, he went around in a circle and came back to the hollow oak, plowing headlong into a lower limb. See the mark of a blow to his head. Stunned, he accidentally fell on the scythe a careless monk left behind after clearing the bramble around the tree. Case closed.”

“A wound toward the back of the head is tough to come by running full tilt into a tree limb,” observed Ganelon.

Flanel gave a dismissive laugh. “As he ran he heard one of the owls you spoke of. Wild-eyed, Waldteufel looked back over his shoulder toward the sound. Bang!”

Ganelon and Khalila exchanged glances. Then, promising to send two monks back with the wheelbarrow, they left Flanel hunkered down examining the scene of the crime.

They walked in silence for a long distance, neither wanting to bring up the terrible murder. At last Khalila said, “I can’t imagine Jerome a killer.”

“That scythe sure didn’t walk back there on its own,” said Ganelon. “I saw it at the crash site on our way to the tree. It was right where the monks left it when they emptied their wheelbarrow to load up Ivanov’s body. Look, when the procession started back Jerome got Waldteufel to hang back on some pretext and hit him a good one, leaving him for dead. On the way back Jerome had second thoughts about whether he’d killed him or not. He volunteered to find the baron so he could finish the job, picking up the scythe on the way.”

“Still—” protested Khalila.

“Waldteufel and Jerome spent the entire war trying to kill each other off. Those are things you can set aside in peacetime. But it’s something else when an old enemy kills your best friend.”

Later that morning Ganelon was waiting, suitcase in hand, beside the blue roadster when Khalila came out of the retreat house dressed for travel in a cloche hat and a coat with a fur collar. A monk followed behind carrying her suitcases.

She was surprised to see him. “I thought we’d said our goodbyes,” she said while her baggage was being loaded.

They had. But Ganelon had something he couldn’t ask her until he’d gotten his Hrosco back from Father Boniface. He gave his cockeyed grin. Would she, as a professional courtesy, one private detective to another, give him a lift back to San Sebastiano? “I promise you a good lunch, a tour of our little city, and a business proposition you might find interesting.”

“But what about your big white car?” she asked.

“I’m leaving it here,” said Ganelon. “Tomorrow’s the feast of Saint Fiacre, patron saint of taxi drivers, when the monks do the Blessing of the Automobiles. Afterward Father Carlus will drive the Terrapin into town for me. His assistant will follow in the touring car to make the Imperial Airways pickup. Carlus will go back with him.”

“Isn’t Saint Fiacre patron of gardeners?” asked Khalila suspiciously.

Ganelon grinned again, a bit more urgently this time. “Some saints wear two halos,” he said. “So is it a deal?”

She raised an amused eyebrow. “A deal,” she said and slid behind the steering wheel. Ganelon got in on the passenger side, stowing his suitcase behind the seat.

As they sped off toward San Sebastiano, Ganelon said, “By the way, I spoke to Jerome just now. He asked General Massoudi to let him put together the Shah’s air force using the San Sebastiano pilots he’d led during the war. Massoudi agreed.”

Talk of Jerome still bothered Khalila. But Ganelon knew that any army coming out of China on the Cairo to Cathay Railroad would need control of Persian airspace. Intentionally or not, Jerome had frustrated Fong-Smythe’s grand design. And anyone who could do that, Ganelon considered his friend.

As the roadster passed the new orchard an old man working among the trees waved a brown arm at them. When Khalila pretended not to see him and smiled down into her fur collar, Ganelon leaned over and gave the horn a smart beep-beep.

Copyright © 2006 James Powell