Harriet dropped her eyes and curtsied.
‘Thank you, Mrs Westerman. Glance to your right as you leave. There is a little Caravaggio of St Catherine there of which I am quite fond. Find who is responsible for the deaths of the women, and it is yours.’
The doors were opened for her, and she paused in the anteroom for a moment, realising her breathing was uncomfortably rapid. She wondered if the Duke had been teasing her when he called her a diplomat. She had just lifted her chin again when the door behind her opened and closed once more and Chancellor Swann emerged. Without preamble he took hold of her elbow and led her into a quieter corner of the room. The waiting gentlemen harrumphed into their collars and stared about them.
‘Chancellor Swann?’
‘Krall has spoken to me of the Major,’ he said simply. Harriet looked up into his face; he seemed to have aged in the last days. There were shadows under his eyes, and they flicked from side to side as he spoke. ‘It is my habit to take a walk in the garden between the hours of four and five o’clock. Perhaps you and Mr Crowther would like to meet me there.’
His manner surprised her, but she nodded. ‘Certainly, Chancellor.’
He hesitated as if about to say something more, then retreated once again into the Duke’s audience chamber.
Harriet found that Crowther had taken her advice, had served himself from the warming plates and begun to eat. He had been joined by Krall. The contrast between the two men made her smile. Crowther took no pleasure in his food, and whatever was put in front of him seemed to regard it as a necessary inconvenience. Krall had filled his plate and was busy trying to empty it again. Harriet waved them back to their seats as she entered. Crowther looked at her, but she only slightly shook her head. Krall had already returned to his food.
‘The District Officer has spoken to Major Auwerk,’ Crowther said.
‘Meetings were held in the room from time to time,’ Krall said, dabbing at his mouth, ‘between some friends of the Duke who wished to meet away from the public gaze. However, the Major never attended himself. Countess Dieth would ask him to leave the room unlocked, and clean it afterwards. He was willing to hold the key, but must have thought the cleaning below him, so employed Wimpf and put in a good word for him from time to time.’
‘What friends?’
Krall pushed away his plate. ‘The Major says he did not know, but that he trusted the Countess absolutely.’
‘And do you believe him, Herr District Officer?’
‘I do. I sense he would have loved to know who met there with the Countess — ’
‘Seven glasses,’ Harriet said. Krall ignored the interruption.
‘- but that he did not. He was glad to hold the key though. The Countess had great influence and I am sure she helped his rise through the ranks. He is young to be a Major. I have called on the Countess’s servants in town. They did not seem altogether surprised that she had decided to spend some time at her country estate. Her maid said they expected as much when she returned to the palace last night. She told them a servant had arrived with a summons. She then instructed Auwerk to leave the door unlocked after supper.’ He stood. ‘Forgive me. I must make the arrangements I spoke of earlier. I fear I shall be of no use to you for some hours.’
They watched him go and Crowther told her how the murder of the Countess was to be concealed. She wrinkled her nose, but said nothing. ‘What news from the Duke, Mrs Westerman?’
‘The Countess wore a ring with an owl on it. Lady Agatha wore a necklace with one too. And Chancellor Swann wishes to speak to us. What is it, Crowther?’
‘The owl. Fink had a fob with an owl design — it went missing when he died.’
Harriet frowned. ‘Good Lord. Can it be coincidence?’
Crowther shook his head. ‘I doubt it, Mrs Westerman.’
V.8
By early afternoon frustration and hunger had driven Pegel down the stairs and out into the streets of Leuchtenstadt, leaning heavily on a staff his diminutive manservant had filched for him from one of the neighbours’ woodpiles. He was beginning to doubt his ability to break the code. Pegel was used to excelling, and had come to enjoy it. If he left now with the names he had collected, his belief that the man in green, Dunktal, was Spartacus, leader of the Minervals he had come to hunt, then he would be praised and rewarded. If he rode into Ulrichsberg with the coded messages made readable he would impress a man thought unimpressible. He would be able to ask anything. But he was not sure he could do it. He kicked at a pebble and it danced into one of the gutters that ran along the street.
He stared into the water; it was one of the many channels that ran along the streets of Leuchtenstadt. It was an aspect of the old town that appealed to him, these little rivers flowing in the gutters. He was told by his landlady, with a wink, that if he stepped in one he’d marry a Leuchtenstadt girl. He doubted it. He chewed a pastry still warm from the oven and, to avoid seasoning his food with his disappointment over the coded messages, he began wondering idly if it would be possible to describe the motion of water in the language of mathematics. A thing so simple, that was also so complex — was there a key? A way to unlock? His thoughts became wordless and he looked up from the water to the cathedral spire. Dark red, yet so light, so apparently delicate was the structure, it seemed to lift away from the earth and take the body of the cathedral with it into the air. Pegel liked the earthy sense of humour of the stonemasons who had carved the waterspouts around the flying buttresses, the frogs and demons, the spitting woman and hanging arse, what private revenges or jokes had they built into the stone? Was the woman the wife of the man who carved her? His mother-in-law? Pegel was sure that no one could resist folding themselves into their work. It was another reason he preferred mathematics to literature. Less personal. He dusted the last of the pastry from his hands then became still. Surely it could not be so simple? Would they use a phrase so readily bandied about as a key? It was certainly memorable. In his excitement he leaned on his right ankle, and the joy of inspiration gave way to a stream of curses.
Swann was waiting for them by a shallow pond, surrounded with high beech hedges. In its centre stood a statue of a young boy, one stone leg bent, pouring water from a giant conch into the pool below. Harriet was glad of her cloak. The naked statue made her feel cold. She thought of the new Duchess, wondered what her life had been up to now, which of these many statues would become her favourites, or if she would claim the right of a new bride and have them replaced with her own fancies.
Swann did not greet them. He had been seated on a stone bench examining the boy, and now he stood slowly and came towards them.
‘The Duke has enjoyed this winter,’ he said as he joined them. ‘There was an ice fair once a week, with skating on the grand lake, and each of these little garden rooms was made into a grotto where the guests could retire to warm themselves. We burned enough fuel each evening to warm a village for a month.’
Harriet frowned. The straight-backed servant of the Duke had never spoken to them in this way before, and there was something strange in his tone. Something lost and floating. A sheen of sweat lay on his brow.
‘Chancellor, do you know of this group who met in the secret chamber?’ Crowther’s voice was quiet. He sensed something out of joint here too. Swann was carrying a cane. He placed it in front of him and leaned on it, swaying a little forward and back. His eyes were unfocused, looking up over the fresh-clothed beech hedge into the solid grey sky.