Jonathan Howard - Johannes Cabal the Detective

Miss Barrow, however, was not going to be spoken for, no matter what passed for etiquette in Mirkarvia. “Leonie Barrow,” she said, and held out her hand. That she held it out thumb upwards, for shaking, may have been lost on the Roborovskis, for they both shook her hand with polite smiles and the ghost of a curtsey from Frau Roborovski.

“You’re English, aren’t you?” she asked Miss Barrow. “I’ve always wanted to visit England, but Linus is so busy, we never seem to get the chance to have a holiday.”

“Oh? Why, what do you do?”

She addressed the question directly to Herr Roborovski, but he just looked blankly at her like a rep actor who was considering what to have for supper instead of watching for his cue. After a moment, Frau Roborovski said, “He’s a cabinetmaker.” Her husband jumped slightly, like a rep actor who has finally decided to have Welsh rabbit for supper and returns to the here and now to discover a stage full of his fellow actors glaring daggers at him.

“Oh, yes,” he said, as if the statement was so astounding that it required confirmation. “I’m a cabinetmaker.”

“And that keeps you busy, does it?” asked Cabal, seeking to reconcile cabinetmaking, extreme busyness, and journeys on luxury aeroships to his satisfaction.

“Ah, um. Yes?”

“Linus,” interjected his wife with the mildly acidic tone of someone who suspects that they’re being made sport of but isn’t quite sure, “is very successful. He runs one of the most respected workshops in the country!” The end of the sentence was punctuated with a sharp nod of the And don’t you forget it, buster variety.

“Running a cabinet manufactory.” Cabal activated the muscles that careful research had revealed would create a supercilious smile. It was one of his more convincing ones. “How fascinating.”

Herr Roborovski beamed, a happy hamster. His wife did not. “What do you do, Herr Meissner?”

“Me? Oh, I’m just a cog in the Mirkarvian civil service, I’m afraid. I neither sow nor do I reap, in all but the most figurative way. Making things with your hands, though, that’s something to be proud of.” To illustrate the point, he held out his own hands, palms upwards. They hadn’t seen any serious manual work in the past four months, at which time they had been calloused from unofficial nocturnal exhumations — the necessity of bludgeoning several recalcitrant revenants back into an inanimate state, and then the resulting unofficial nocturnal cremations. Now they looked like the hands of a pencil-pushing administrator who might occasionally do a little gardening in a window box.

Herr Roborovski unconsciously mimicked Cabal’s action, holding up his hands. Cabal noted that they showed some signs of labour but, like his own, not recently. While coming to the conclusion that, boringly enough, the little man and his irritating wife were just what they appeared to be, Cabal distractedly added, “I mean, all that arcane business with G-clamps, shellac, dovecote joins, lathes, and suchlike. Always nice to actually make things with your hands.”

“It is nice,” he agreed, a little mournfully.

“In your own time, of course.” The wan Frau Roborovski seemed to take exception to building anything that was not for profit. “You have your company to think of.” Deciding that her husband was clinically incapable of self-promotion, she said to Cabal and Miss Barrow, “We are hoping to expand into Katamenia. Linus’s designs are popular there, but having to transport things through Senza when those brutes insist on dismantling everything — as if one is likely to hide a cannon in a credenza — is costing us money. The intention is to open a workshop in Katamenia and cut out all that Senzan nonsense entirely.”

“Why would you … why would one want to hide a cannon in a credenza?” asked Miss Barrow.

“Military aid. The Katamenians are barbarians, of course, but they are our historical allies. The Senzans fear a war on two fronts and use some silly treaty or another to prevent Katamenia rearming.”

“ Rearming? How did they lose their last lot of weapons?”

The Roborovskis looked uncomfortable. “I’m sure Herr Meissner can — ”

“No, no,” Cabal assured Frau Roborovski. “You’re doing a good job.”

Cornered, she admitted, “There was a war. More of a border dispute, really” — Cabal, listening, thought of the many invasions that had started with a trifling “border dispute” to provide a casus belli — “that the Senzans blew out of all proportion. The next thing you know, the Katamenians are expected to demobilise all their armed forces and melt down their weapons. Just enough for police actions, that’s all they were allowed. A disgraceful affront to a nation’s sovereignty! A calculated insult to a proud martial tradition!”

Or a wise victor drawing the teeth of a mad dog, thought Cabal, accurately if uncharitably.

“Those Senzans think so much of themselves, going around behaving like they own the whole region! They’ll even check the records of everybody travelling through their precious territory who hasn’t been blessed to be born Senzan to make sure they aren’t a threat to national security. They’ll search this ship when we reach Parila, you know? To make sure we’re not desperate anarchists and that none of the crew have been in the military, because they’ve decided to make that illegal, too! Because, obviously, we’re going to invade them with a luxury passenger vessel, and we’re carrying a load of deadly explosive potatoes that we’re going to drop on them. They are so stupid !”

Cabal felt obliged to raise both eyebrows. “Potatoes?”

“Calm yourself, my dear,” said Herr Roborovski, dismayed at his wife’s outburst. Indeed, such was the depth of her passion that a very, very faint pink the shade and intensity of a drop of blood on crushed ice had coloured her cheeks.

“Yes. Yes, of course.” She reined herself in from the towering heights of fairly annoyed to a simmering peevishness. Eager to change the subject, she said to Miss Barrow, “What part of England do you come from, Miss Barrow? The north?”

“Yes,” Miss Barrow said, laughing. “I know, it is a distinctive accent, isn’t it? I’m from the northwest, to be exact.”

The tension broken, the four made small talk (strictly speaking, only three made small talk, Cabal confining himself to the occasional grunt) until the Roborovskis made their apologies and went off to make more new acquaintances.

Cabal watched them go, the polite smile he had been keeping on his face by sheer force of will finally allowed to lapse into a faint sneer. Miss Barrow, noticing it, murmured, “Now, that’s more like the Johannes Cabal I know.”

“You know, by conspiring to conceal my identity from the Mirkarvians you’re probably committing some heinous crime, according to the comedic document they call a judicial code.”

“Is that concern for my welfare I hear?”

“It isn’t, no. It is a suggestion that, since we both have a lot to lose if my real name is exposed, it might be wise if you could stop blabbing it every few minutes.”

Stung, she glanced at him. “Why couldn’t you have decided to be something a bit less troublesome, Herr Meissner ? A butcher, or a doctor — ”

“There’s a difference?”

“ — or a children’s entertainer, or … just something else. For God’s sake … Mr. Meissner, why do you do what you do?”

“That,” said Cabal, “is my business.” At which point, with the sharp ringing of a small gong, dinner was announced.