Стефани Баррон - A Flaw in the Blood

He dismounted, and tied his nag to a post near the tavern door. His pulse quickened in his temples, and his hands trembled slightly; he felt for the repeating pistol he had carried in his coat ever since Shurland. He could not hope to recruit the publican; he could not demand the police. He would have to bluff his way through.

He pulled open the door and stepped inside.

The taproom was full at five o'clock; at least seven men, farmers by the look of them, were clustered in small knots drinking and talking. He stood in the doorway, waiting for the dead silence to fall, for the heads to turn and stare. “Der Gastwirt?” he demanded, summoning the German word for innkeeper from the sea of words he'd heard that week.

A bearded fellow with iron-grey hair and a withered arm pushed back his chair from one of the tables.

“Ich bin der Gastwirt. Was wünschen Sie?”

“Mein Kamerad,” Fitzgerald said with a smile. “Graf von Stühlen.”

“Nein,” he said stonily. “Keine Gäste.”

Fitzgerald held up a coin; it was his last gold sovereign. It glinted in the firelight as he tossed it to the innkeeper.

The man caught it in his good hand, and jerked his head toward the stairs.

Fitzgerald left them to their drink.

There were only four rooms giving off the hallway above. One was closed and occupied; a thin line of lamplight seeped over the threshold.

Quickly, he glanced at the open doors lining the passage: old-fashioned affairs that closed with a latch. Possible to lift with a penknife. If no one heard him coming.

He crept silently toward the room where Georgiana must be. And caught the sound of clapping.

A writhing mass of naked flesh. Blood throbbing in his head, clouding his sight.

She saw him standing in the doorway before the two men did. Her eyes widened desperately as she met his gaze and she might have shaken her head in warning; von Stühlen assumed she was fighting the gag, as he brought it down over her mouth.

“If I'd known you were such a fighter,” he said in amusement, “I'd have taken you myself.”

Fitzgerald's gun butt smashed into the side of Heinrich's head as he crouched on the mattress; the valet fell into von Stühlen with a grunt, knocking him off balance. The Count stumbled to the floor, Heinrich's full weight on top of him. The valet lost consciousness with a sigh.

Fitzgerald thrust his pistol in his coat and seized von Stühlen's neck with both hands. A bullet was too clean a death for such a man; he wanted to feel von Stühlen's pain. He began to pound the Count's head ruthlessly on the floor. For an instant the only sound in the room was the hideous gurgle of a man whose windpipe was rapidly being crushed. Then von Stühlen's fingers locked in his hair and they were grappling together, Fitzgerald's mind singing with the primal joy of it all. Revenge.

“Patrick!” Georgie screamed. “Patrick! Stop it! You'll kill him! Patrick! ”

“It'd feel grand to kill you,” he muttered, as the two of them rolled across the floor, coming up hard against the valet's inert body. “It'd feel grand to cut your bowels from your gut and throttle you with 'em.”

“Patrick! Kill him and you kill us all—”

Fitzgerald rolled upright, the miasma clearing. Georgie. He pulled out his pistol and laid it coldly against von Stühlen's remaining eye.

“Don't move,” he said. “Or I'll blind you, sure as look at you. My bullet might even find that lump you call a brain.”

Von Stühlen's jaw clenched; Fitzgerald knew he was reckoning the odds. Could he dislodge the gun, and reach for his own? Could he run the risk of failing—and die because he failed?

Fitzgerald pushed the dead weight of the valet to one side, his gun within inches of von Stühlen's occipital bone. He patted the man's coat in search of a pistol, found it, and tossed it behind him on the bed.

“He has a knife,” Georgiana said clearly. “He keeps it in a sheath at his hip.”

“On your feet.” Fitzgerald grasped the Count's collar and hauled him upright, felt for the knife. “Don't bother shouting for the innkeeper. I paid him to play deaf.”

With his foot, he drew forward the room's sole chair and pushed von Stühlen into it, the pistol trained on his head.

The Count smiled up at him. The black canvas patch over his eye was flecked with sweat.

“You shot my boy,” Fitzgerald said. “My beautiful Theo, with the life bled out of him. I ought to finish it now, and leave by the window. I'd like your blood on my soul. It might help me sleep of nights.”

“But you won't, will you?” Von Stühlen was studying him. “You have it, too. That look of Albert's. You can't do violence to another man, simply because it serves your ends. You're nothing like me—either of you.” He leaned toward Fitzgerald, ignoring the angle of the muzzle. “Pull the trigger, Paddy. It's just Fate, having its final laugh at Wolfgang's expense.”

“Sure, and I wouldn't give you the joy.”

“You think I'm afraid to die?”

“Lord, no.” Fitzgerald shifted his pistol deliberately downward, so that it was trained on the Count's crotch. “But I imagine you've the Devil's own dread of maiming. I can think of several ways to make life a burden to you.”

He stepped backwards a pace and cut Georgiana's right wrist free. Then he dropped the knife beside her. As Georgiana cut the rest of her bonds, he drew a shuddering breath.

“As you're not afraid to die, von Stühlen,” he said brusquely, “I have a confession for you to sign.”

The paper was a square Fitzgerald had kept in his wallet; on the reverse was a list of train times and destinations he'd jotted absentmindedly in pencil. The pen was his; the ink Georgiana found in a drawer in the room. She stripped a sheet from the bed and wrapped it around herself; her own bonds—cut from the bedpost—she used to tie the valet's wrists. He was groaning now, on the verge of consciousness; they did not have much time.

Georgie was dead calm, Fitzgerald thought, but it was the insensibility of shock; it would pass, and the reaction could be frightful. He had not had enough time to look at her. He was terrified of what he might see.

In his lawyer's neat hand, he drew up the words:

I, Wolfgang, Graf von Stühlen, second son of Wilhelm, twelfth Landgrave of Stühlen and Count of Tauberbischafsheim, do hereby declare that I am of sound mind and body, and do confess before the eyes of God and at the mercy of the Queen of Great Britain, Victoria Regina, that I did with malice aforethought and without provocation, kill and murder Theodore Fitzgerald, subject of Great Britain. Also that I did order the assault upon one Septimus Taylor, barrister of the Inner Temple, which assault resulted in said Taylor's death. Also that I did falsely accuse Patrick Fitzgerald, Esquire, of the murder of his son, Theodore Fitzgerald, and of the assault upon his partner at law, Septimus Taylor. Finally, that I did perform these acts at the implied wish of THE QUEEN, Victoria Regina, whose confidence I hold.

Signed by me this second day of January in the year of our Lord 1862.

“Sign it,” Fitzgerald ordered, holding out his pen.

“Do you seriously think a confession like this has any value? If you try to use it, I'll deny every word.”

“Sign it.”

“I'd rather you shot me now.”

Fitzgerald thrust his pistol against von Stühlen's thigh and pulled the trigger.

The Count gasped and clutched his leg as the bullet ploughed through his flesh; his shin jerked convulsively. “You filthy Irish—” he breathed.

“That's flesh, look you. The next one will hit bone. Or your gut—a particularly nasty way to die. Sign the paper.”