Dana Stabenow - Powers of Detection

“Frankly, I’m surprised he hasn’t been done away with long before now,” Borrin drawled. Supercilious, wealthy family background, north-country accent-Borrin does think he’s the most elegant of the wizards, though I’m pretty sure he uses magic to keep his hair silver and his figure trim. I can respect his abilities, which are formidable, but not his vanity.

You will be thinking by now that I dislike almost everyone in my employ, and you would be right. In fact, I am a terrible misanthrope, and my attitude is even worse when it comes to wizards and warlocks. Call me a misosorcerer and be done with it! But I inherited all five senior members of my faculty when I joined the school, and I was under contract to keep them. Trust me, otherwise I would have ousted Morben when I first came on board, and I might have fired the other four while I was at it. Though honesty compels me to admit that all of them, even Audra, are ferociously talented mages.

And all of them have the ability, if not the inclination, to kill a man by magic.

“Well, he’s dead now,” I said. “And it seems obvious that one of the five of us murdered him.”

They all looked at each other and at me, and none of them said a word.

“The students didn’t recognize the spell they described, but I did, and I assume you did as well,” I went on. “It can be found in the Hazelton Grimoire, though a variant without the screaming is indexed in Mortensen’s Spellbook, and only the five of us have the knowledge to unlock either of those volumes, let alone the strength to speak the enchantment. So one of us killed him. Why?”

Dernwerd was on his feet, pointing at Audra. “You’re the one who always hated him!” So much for his usual conciliatory manner. “I heard you! Just yesterday in the hall! I heard you tell him that if he touched you again, you’d turn him to ice and iron!”

“And I would have, but he didn’t,” Audra said furiously. “Aren’t you the one he embarrassed in front of his whole class last week, when you couldn’t recapture the igliat and had to get Morben’s help? He said you had the skill of a Rank Five wizard and shouldn’t be allowed to teach advanced classes.”

Dernwerd’s face was the same gray color as his hair. “How did you know that?”

She shrugged one thin shoulder. “A couple of the students told me. They thought it was funny.”

Borrin was smiling in that detestable way, and Xander gave him a long, thorough look. “You smile now, but you didn’t think it was so funny when Morben called you an up-country upstart with imaginary bloodlines,” he said in his painstaking way. I had no doubt that he had reproduced the quote with shattering accuracy.

Borrin stopped smiling. “My family’s older than the kingdom, and if anyone’s a sorcerer-come-lately it’s Morben with his questionable antecedents and his rough-and-ready magic.”

“And, anyway,” I said to Xander, “you were none too fond of him, either. You were quite public in your hatred for him once he published that paper about the error you made in your Treatise. ”

The bald man glared at me. Borrin was laughing again. “And you, Camalyn?” Borrin said. “Why did you despise the estimable Morben? Because he told the school board that you were an aging spinster with a poisonous mind and a dried-up heart? Because he told them no female should ever be head of Norwitch Academy, but if they were going to make that mistake, they should at least choose one who could claim to be a woman. ”

Audra snickered. Dernwerd and Xander looked embarrassed for me. I looked at Borrin and wished him dead. “So one of us killed him,” I repeated, “and we all had a reason. Now we have to determine who had the chance. I want each of you to write down a diary of where you’ve been since midnight last night, with names of witnesses who can substantiate your claims. I will begin the investigation.”

“What about you?” Borrin said. “You have the skills, and you have the temper. Who will investigate you?”

I pointed at Audra. “Let the womanly woman of the group have that privilege,” I said coldly. “Though you may all give her whatever assistance you desire. I expect your reports by this afternoon. Now you can go.”

–

All four of them were quick to turn in accounts of their recent activities, and I handed over my own schedule to Audra when she came by my office. I spent a little time reading their reports, but in truth I didn’t have much hope that I would learn anything. A good wizard can appear to be in two places at one time; even a bad one can set up a spell in a remote location so that it’s triggered by an action or a phrase. How could I possibly check their alibis and prove definitively that one of them was responsible for this crime? Or even-interesting thought-that two or more of them had been involved?

I shut my eyes and leaned back in my well-padded chair, reviewing the case. Well, to be truthful, I had had more reason than any of them to want Morben dead. He had recently gone to the school board to complain about me-my attitude, my abilities, my age-and to suggest himself in the role of headmaster instead. I don’t suppose any of them knew that I had managed to audit his entire presentation illicitly. I had planted a magical seashell in the council room and linked its listening ear to another shell set up in my office. It was like being in the room with the rest of them without actually having to see their stern and self-righteous faces. I found myself disliking the board members as much as I disliked Morben.

But I hadn’t included that information in the report I gave Audra.

Which led me to wonder what the others hadn’t told me.

Going on pure instinct, I’d have said the likeliest killer was Audra herself. Morben had lusted after her ever since she’d joined the Academy, and being stalked for more than forty years could wear on the patience of the sweetest woman, which we all knew Audra was not. Moreover, she had always wanted to teach his specialty classes in Illusions and Transmogrification, but he was not about to give them up, so she was stuck with Travel and Time Manipulation, which were useful though much less glamorous skills. Distaste and envy could have combined to make her want to see Morben dead.

The men had fewer incentives, I thought. Dernwerd, in any case, was a whiny and ineffectual man who might smolder with hatred for a hundred years before he brought himself actually to lash out at someone. Though I’d seen him level a mountain once, with utter grace and precision, so I knew he had more power than his personality might predict. Xander never seemed to pull his head out of his books long enough to develop any kind of emotional reaction, good or bad, to anyone else alive, so I found it hard to believe he would have nurtured enough animosity to hunt Morben down. Borrin, though. He was smart enough, good enough, and nasty enough to kill a man, and the insult to his family name would probably have been sufficient to send him seeking revenge.

I wrote them all down on a piece of paper, in descending order of probability: Audra, Borrin, Dernwerd, Xander. After thinking about it a minute, I squeezed another name between Audra’s and Borrin’s: Camalyn.

That still left Audra as the most likely murderer.

–

We spent two days canvassing the students and checking Morben’s bedchamber and classrooms for any kind of evidence, but found nothing that incriminated anyone. There was no point in suspending school any longer, so we allowed classes to resume the following day. The school board members were all unhappy that the murder was still unsolved, but frantic to resume the educational process so parents didn’t start pulling students out. Therefore, none of them made a fuss when we opened the classrooms again.