Sweet Silver Blues

22

Starting from the cemetery I was able to find the Kronk place with only one miscue. From the lane the place next door looked more like the one I remembered than the correct one. We were partway up the flagstones when I spied the peacock cages under the magnolias.

"About turn and march," I said. "One house shy of our mark." I recalled how, if Kayean was not very careful sneaking in and out, those peafowl would raise six kinds of hell and there went the evening if it happened on the sneak-out side. Her old man knew what was going on but was never quick enough to catch her. She had been fast on her feet.

I explained that to Morley as we retreated to the lane.

"How the hell did a slob like you ever meet a quail living in a place like this?"

"I met her at a party for bachelor officers the admiral put on. All the most eligible young ladies of Full Harbor were there."

He gave me an overly dramatic look of disbelief.

I confessed, "I was there waiting tables."

"It must have been animal magnetism and the air of danger and forbidden fruit surrounding an affair with a member of the lower classes." He said it deadpan. I could not decide whether I should be irritated or not.

"Whatever it was, it was the greatest thing that had happened in my young life. Hasn't been much since to eclipse it, either."

"Like I said, a romantic." And there he let it lay.

"Lot of changes since I was here," I said. "The place has been completely done over."

"You sure it's the right one?"

"Yeah." All the memories assured me that it was. We had walked these grounds under the watchful chaperonage of a patient and loving mother who had seen the whole romance as a phase and would not have believed her eyes if she had walked in on us in the cemetery.

Morley took my word for it.

We were still fifty feet from the door when a man in livery stepped outside and came to meet us. "He don't look like he's glad we dropped by."

Morley grunted. "He don't look like your average houseboy, either."

He didn't. He looked like a Saucerhead Tharpe who was past his prime but still plenty dangerous. The way he fisheyed us said that, fancy clothes or not, we were not fooling him.

"Can I help you gents?"

I'd decided to go at it straight ahead, almost honest, and hope for the best. "I don't know. We're down from TunFaire looking for Klaus Kronk."

That seemed to take him from the blind side. He said, "And just when I thought I'd heard all the gags there was."

"We just a little bit ago found out he was dead."

"So what are you doing here instead of heading back where you came from if the guy you want is croaked?"

"The only reason I wanted to talk to him was to find out how I could get in touch with his oldest daughter. I know she's married, but I don't know who to. I thought maybe her mother or any others of the family who were still around might be able to point me in the right direction. Any of them here?"

He looked like it was getting too complicated for him. "You must be talking about the people who used to live here. They moved out a couple years ago."

The changes all seemed recent enough to support his statement. "You have any idea where she is?"

"Why the hell should I? I didn't even know her name till you told me."

"Thank you for your time and courtesy. We'll have to trace her some other way."

"What you want this machuska for, anyway?"

While I considered his question, Morley said, "Throw it in the pond and see which way the frogs jump."

"We represent the executors of an estate of which she is the principal legatee."

"I love it when you talk dirty lawyer," Morley said. He told our new buddy, "She inherited a bundle." In a ventriloquist's whisper, he told me, "Hit him with the number so we can see how big his eyes get."

"It looks like around a hundred thousand marks, less executors' fees."

His eyes did not get big. He didn't even bat one. Instead he muttered, "I thought I heard every gag there was," again.

So I repeated myself for him. "Thanks for your time and courtesy." I headed for the lane.

"Next stop?" Morley asked.

"We ask at the houses on either side. The people who lived there knew the family. They might give us something."

"If they're not gone, too. What did you think of that guy?"

"I'll try not to form an opinion till I've talked to a few more people."

We had a less belligerent but no more informative interview at the next house down the lane. The people there had only been in the place a year and all they knew about the Kronks was that Klaus was killed during the last Venageti invasion.

"You make anything of that?" I asked as we turned the rig around and headed for the peacock place.

"Of what?"

"He said Kronk was killed during the Venageti thing. Not by the Venageti."

"An imprecision due entirely to laziness, no doubt."

"Probably. But that's the kind of detail you keep an ear out for. Sometimes they add up to a picture people don't know they're giving you, like brush strokes add up to a painting."

The peacocks raised thirteen kinds of hell when they discovered us. They crowed like they hadn't had anything to holler about for years.

"My god," I murmured. "She hasn't changed a bit."

"She was always old and ugly?" Morley asked, staring at the woman who observed our approach from a balcony on the side of the house.

"Hasn't even changed her clothes. Careful with her. She's some kind of half-hulder witch."

A little man in a green suit and red stocking cap raced across our path cackling something in a language I didn't understand. Morley grabbed a rock and started to throw it. I stopped him. "What're you doing?"

"They're vermin, Garrett. Maybe they run on their hind legs and make noises that sound like speech, but they're as much vermin as any rat." But he let the rock drop.

I have definite feelings about rats, even the kind that walk on their hind legs and talk and do socially useful things like dig graves. I understood Morley's mood if not his particular prejudice.

The Old Witch—I never heard her called anything else—grinned down at us. Hers was a classic gap-toothed grin. She looked like every witch from every witch story you've ever heard. There was no shaking my certainty that it was deliberate.

A mad cackle floated down. The peafowl answered as though to one of their own.

"Spooky," Morley said.

"That's her image. Her game. She's harmless."

"So you say."

"That was the word on her when I was here before. Crazy as a gnome on weed, but harmless."

"Nobody who harbors those little vipers is harmless. Or blameless. You let them skulk around your garden, they breed like rabbits, and first thing you know they've driven all the decent folk away with their malicious tricks."

We were up under the balcony now. I forbore mentioning his earlier response to a gardener's bigotry. It wouldn't have done any good. Folks always believe their own racism is the result of divine inspiration, incontestably valid.

My dislike for rat people is, of course, the exception to the rule of irrationality underlying such patterns of belief.

The Old Witch cackled again, and the peafowl took up the chorus once more. She called down, "He was murdered, you know."

"Who was?" I asked.

"The man you were looking for, Private Garrett. Syndic Klaus. They think no one knows. But they are wrong. They were seen. Weren't they, my little pretties?"

"How did you... ?"

"You think you and that girl could sneak through here night after night, running to that cemetery to slake your lusts, without the little people noticing? They tell me everything, they do. And I never forget a name or a face."

"Did I say they were vermin?" Morley demanded. "Lurking in the shadows of tombstones watching you. And probably laughing their little black hearts out because there is no sight more ridiculous than people coupling."

Maybe I reddened a little, but otherwise I ignored him. "Who killed him?" I asked. "And why?"

"We could name some names, couldn't we, my little pretties? But to what purpose? There is no point now."

"Could you at least tell me why he was killed?"

"He found out something that was not healthy for him to know." She cackled again. The peafowl cheered her on. It was a great joke. "Didn't he, my little pretties? Didn't he?"

"What might that have been?"

The laughter left her face and eyes. "You won't be hearing it from me. Maybe that machuska Kayean knows. Ask her when you find her. Or maybe she doesn't. I don't know. And I don't care."

That was the second time that day I'd heard Kayean called machuska, and only the second time I'd heard the word since I had gotten out of the Marines and the Cantard. It was a particularly spiteful bit of Venageti gutter slang labeling a human woman who has congress with members of other species. A word like our own kobold-knocker is a like nickname.

"Can you tell me where she is?"

"No. I don't know."

"Could you tell me where I might find some of her family?"

"I don't know. Maybe they all went to join her. Maybe they went somewhere to escape their shame." She cackled but she didn't put much heart into it. The peafowl didn't, either. Their feeble response was pure charity.

"Is there any way you can help me?"

"I can give you some advice."

I waited.

"Watch out who you play with among the headstones. Especially if you do find Kayean. She might show you one with her name on it."

"Time to get out of here," I told Morley. "In case it's catching."

He agreed. I thanked the Old Witch. We backed away in spite of her efforts to cling to our company.

"Was that worth it?" Morley asked.

"Absolutely."

A little fellow in green and red jumped into our path. He removed his cap and bowed, then rewarded Morley with a grandiloquent obscene gesture. He raced into the bushes giggling.

This time I didn't interfere with Morley's rock throwing. Lurk behind tombstones, would they?

The giggles ended with an abrupt "Yipe!"

"I hope I broke his skull," Morley growled. "What're we going to do now?"

"Go back to the inn and eat. Check on the triplets. Guzzle some beer. Think. Spend the afternoon trying to turn something up in parish or civil records."

"Like what?"

"Like who she married if she was married here. She was a good Orthodox girl. She would have wanted the whole fancy, formal show. It might be easier to trace her through her husband if we knew his name."

"I don't want to be negative, Garrett, but I have a feeling the girl you knew and are looking for isn't the woman we're going to find."

I had the same sad feeling.