Elizabeth Peters - Borrower of the Night

‘So Burckhardt came home from the wars, hale and hearty, and delighted to see his loving wife. She didn’t waste any time. He was taken ill the day after his return.

‘On the crucial night, the night of the steward’s murder, the conspirators decided to move the shrine. We’ll never know why; Burckhardt was dying, so maybe they thought it was safe to proceed with their plans. At any rate, there they were, down in the crypt; I can see Konstanze holding the lamp and Nicolas working on the tombstone. He raised it. The shrine was lifted out, losing a wing in the process. And then . . .

‘Then they looked up and saw, in the lamplight, the face of the man they had robbed and cheated and tried to murder. God knows what aroused him, or how he got the strength to come looking for them. But he was there. He must have been there. He saw the lovers, with the shrine between them, and he knew the truth. You can’t blame him for turning berserk. The theft of the shrine was bad enough, but the knowledge that his servant and his beloved wife had cuckolded him . . . he went mad. By the time he finished Nicolas, who must have put up a fight, Konstanze was gone – with the shrine. I suppose she had someone with her, a servant maybe, who had helped with the heavy work. She could quietly bump him off at any time with her handy store of arsenic. Nobody asked questions in those days about the death of a serf.

‘After stabbing Nicolas and throwing him down at Harald’s feet, like a dead dog, Burckhardt piously closed his father’s tomb. What I can’t get out of my mind is a suspicion that Nicolas wasn’t dead when the stone was lowered. If you remember the position of the body . . . Well, enough of that. It certainly wouldn’t have worried Burckhardt. Having disposed of one traitor, he went after his wife. He would have killed her too, if it hadn’t been for the nurse, who thought he was delirious. She testified to his insane strength and mentioned that his dagger was not at his belt. But Burckhardt was half dead from arsenic poisoning. They wrestled him back into bed, and Konstanze finished him off in the next cup of gruel.

‘Maybe he had time, before he died, to whisper an accusation to a servant or priest. Maybe not; she would have watched him closely, and arsenic doesn’t leave a man particularly coherent. In any case, the bishop got suspicious. He disliked Konstanze anyhow. So she got her just deserts, by an ironic miscarriage of justice – though I think the punishment was worse than the crime.’

‘Death by arsenic poisoning is exceedingly painful,’ said Blankenhagen.

‘I know. But the count had helped torture Riemenschneider and had bashed in the skulls of a lot of miserable peasants who were only trying to get their rights . . . I guess they were all rotten.’

‘So we figured,’ Tony said sweepingly, ‘that the shrine had to be in the countess’s room. The count had the whole castle at his disposal, but she was limited to her own room.’

‘We,’ I said. ‘Yes.’

‘One more thing,’ Tony said, ignoring me. ‘I don’t think anyone else caught this. Remember Irma’s cry at the séance – das Feuer? That was the result of Schmidt’s hypnotic talents and the Gräfins gruesome stories; but what I didn’t think of until later was that Konstanze didn’t know German. She was a Spaniard, and she and Burckhardt probably communicated by means of the Latin spoken by the noble classes in those days. So if she had given a last frantic scream, as she may well have done, it would have been in Latin or Spanish. In other words – no ghost.’

‘Obviously,’ I said.

‘Sooo clever,’ murmured Irma.

‘That’s about it,’ I said briskly. ‘No more questions?’

‘Only my heart’s gratitude,’ said Irma mistily. ‘Now I go to see that we have a celebration dinner. I cook it with my own hands, and we dine together, yes? And a bottle of Sekt .’

‘ Sekt ,’ I said glumly. Sekt is German champagne. It is terrible stuff.

Irma departed, to cook her way into somebody’s heart. I wondered whose heart she was aiming for.

I looked from one man to the other. Neither of them moved.

‘Well,’ I said.

‘I want to talk to you,’ said Tony to me, glaring at Blankenhagen.

‘And so do I,’ said the doctor, staying put.

‘Go ahead,’ I said.

‘If we could have some privacy . . .’ said Tony, still glaring.

‘I do not mind speaking in your presence,’ said Blankenhagen. ‘I have nothing to hide.’

Tony said several things, all of them rude. Blankenhagen continued to sit.

‘Oh, hell,’ said Tony. ‘Why should I care? All right, Vicky, the game is over. It wasn’t as much fun as we expected, but it had its moments. So – speaking quite impartially, and without bias – who won?’

‘Me,’ I said. ‘Oh, all right, Tony, I’m kidding. Speaking quite impartially, I’d say we came out about even. It was partly a matter of luck. You would have fingered George sooner or later – if he hadn’t fingered us first. I solved the murder of Burckhardt, but primarily because I was the one who found the arsenic. Shall we call it a tie?’

‘That’s all I ever wanted to prove,’ said Tony smugly.

‘You’re a damned liar,’ I said, stung to the quick. ‘You were trying to prove your superiority to me. And you did not. I didn’t need you at all. I could have figured out the whole thing – ’

‘Oh, you cheating little crook,’ said Tony. ‘You said you would marry me if I could prove you weren’t my intellectual superior. I proved it. I didn’t need you, either. I could have handled this business much better if you hadn’t been around getting in my way and falling over your own feet – ’

‘Liar, liar,’ I yelled. ‘I never said any such thing! And even if I did, you haven’t – ’ I stopped. My mouth dropped open. ‘I thought you wanted to marry Irma,’ I said in a small voice.

‘Irma is a nice girl,’ said Tony. ‘And I admit there were moments when the thought of a soft, docile, female-type woman was attractive. But now she’s rich . . . Let Blankenhagen marry Irma.’

‘No, thank you,’ said Blankenhagen, who had been an interested spectator. He looked severely at Tony. ‘You use the wrong tactics, my friend. You do not know this woman. You do not know how to handle any woman. Under her competence, her intelligence, this woman wishes to be mastered. It requires an extraordinary man to do this, I admit. But – ’

‘Really?’ said Tony. ‘You think if I – ’

‘Not you,’ said Blankenhagen. ‘I. I will marry this woman. She needs me to master her.’

‘You!’ Tony leaped out of his chair. ‘So help me, if you weren’t crippled, I’d – ’

‘You,’ said Blankenhagen, sneering, ‘and who else?’

‘You can’t marry her.’ Tony added, unforgivably, ‘You’re shorter than she is.’

‘What does that matter?’

‘Right,’ I said, interested. ‘That’s irrelevant. I can always go around barefoot.’

‘Shut up,’ said Tony to me. To Blankenhagen he said, ‘She doesn’t know you. You could be a crook. You could be a bigamist!’

‘But I am not.’

‘How do I know you’re not?’

‘My life is open to all.’ Blankenhagen had kept his composure which put him one up on Tony. Turning a dispassionate eye on me, he remarked, ‘You are somewhat concerned, after all. Perhaps we should hear your views.’

‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘I don’t feel that I ought to interfere . . .’

‘Well,’ Tony said grudgingly. ‘I guess you are entitled to an opinion.’

He was flushed and bright-eyed, and he looked awfully cute with his hair tumbling down over the romantic bandages on his undamaged brow. In the heat of argument, or for other reasons, he had risen to his feet. Blankenhagen calmly remained seated, but he was right about his height. That was unimportant.