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‘Right.’

‘Ingenious,’ said Blankenhagen. ‘But there is nothing in the amulet to suggest the countess rather than the count. You found it in his room. Why should he not be the one who worshipped devils?’

‘Where I found it is irrelevant. The countess had the whole castle at her disposal after her husband died, and it would be smart of her to conceal such damning evidence outside her own room. I thought of her; instead of him, because of the suggestion of Eastern design. She came from Spain. The Moors were there for a long time, and cultural traits linger on. That’s weak, though. You’re overlooking the conclusive point.’

Bitte?

‘It was the count who died,’ said Tony.

Ach, so.’ Blankenhagen grinned and rubbed his chin. ‘Yes, the symptoms described could well have been those of arsenic poisoning. In fact’ – he looked startled – ‘we know now that they were. But the motive. Why did she kill him?’

‘Maybe he found out about her unorthodox religious beliefs,’ Tony offered. ‘In that day and age it would have been a legitimate motive for murder – although Burckhardt would have called it execution. There’s no reason to suppose he wasn’t a proper son of Holy Church; our theories about his unwillingness to give up the shrine were based on nothing except the necessity to account for behaviour which was otherwise unaccountable.’

‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘But I suspect Burckhardt had a more personal reason for being annoyed with his wife.

‘Remember the maid’s hysterical story about the Black Man? It sounded like pure fantasy; the records of witchcraft trials are full of similar lies. But stripped of its supernatural interpretations, what did that story amount to? The maid saw a man, cloaked and booted, in travelling costume, sneak into the castle in the dead of night and embrace the countess.’

‘Booted?’ said Blankenhagen dubiously.

‘The wench heard his spurs clicking on the floor. That was what suggested cloven hooves.’

Du Gott allmächtig!

‘In short, what the maid gave us was a description of a midnight rendezvous. The count, as we know, was still in Würzburg. So the Black Man must have been – ’

‘Nicolas the steward,’ said Tony, with a groan. ‘Oh, my big swollen empty head!’

‘It had to be Nicolas. The Black Man was wearing travelling costume, hence he was not living in the Schloss. Yet he must have been familiar with the place or he couldn’t have entered it and reached the countess’s room without being challenged. Who but the trusted steward would know the secret passages and hidden stairs? And – this is the most ironic thing, I think – Konstanze couldn’t defend herself from the witchcraft charge by telling the truth. Adultery was a serious crime in those days. And there was the little matter of the arsenic.’

‘My God, yes,’ said Tony soberly. ‘She had to kill Burckhardt; sooner or later he was bound to learn about her and Nicolas. He must have found out the night he killed the steward. Then he went after his cheating wife . . . he was trapped, all right. By the time she came to trial, maybe she didn’t care any longer. Her lover was dead . . .’

‘You’re a hopeless romantic,’ I said scathingly. ‘I can’t see our witch-poisoner-murderess wasting away for any man. The witches took drugs, you know; that was how they got their hallucinations of satanic orgies and visits to the Sabbath. The kindest thing you can hope for Konstanze is that she died believing – that in the fire she felt the embrace of her true lord and lover.

‘I shouldn’t have said that,’ I added, clutching at Tony. ‘I keep hearing things out there in the dark, rustling the bushes. Let’s go in.’

‘But wait,’ said Blankenhagen methodically. ‘We have not finished our deductions. You have solved a mystery which no one so much as suspected for hundreds of years; but you have not yet solved the mystery that brought you here. This story is fascinating, but I fail to see its usefulness.’

I wished he hadn’t raised the point. Because, of course, our chemical experiment had not only solved a crime, it had solved the secondary mystery too. Now I knew what had happened to the shrine. There was only one place where it could be. And Tony, whose mind works the way mine does, saw the truth at once.

‘I’ll be damned,’ he exclaimed, bounding to his feet.

He almost was. Something streaked past his arm, chunked into the tree behind him, and hung there quivering.

I snatched at it – Count Burckhardt’s dagger, which I had last seen lying among the dried ribs of the steward.

Tony was staring incredulously at his left arm. His shirt was slit as neatly as if by scissors, and a thin dark trickle darkened the white cloth.

‘That son of a gun tried to kill me!’

‘What an ungrateful ghost,’ I said. ‘Here we are trying to clear Burckhardt’s name, and he throws knives at us. He’s a practical ghost, though. He must have sharpened this thing recently.’

‘Burckhardt, hell. Stop trying to distract me with spooks, Vicky, I’m already way ahead of you. Blankenhagen was in the crypt alone with the bones and the dagger for a good ten minutes. Hey – ’

Blankenhagen was already gone, presumably in pursuit of the knife thrower. With a few well-chosen words, Tony took off after him.

I followed. I wasn’t anxious to stay in that haunted garden alone. As I ran, I wasn’t sure whom Tony was chasing; he surely didn’t think the doctor could throw a knife like a boomerang. Too many people had had access to the steward’s belongings – including the cloaked grave robber.

I reached the Hall in time to see Tony disappearing through the door which led to the cellars. When I got to the bottom of the stairs, I was relieved to see that Tony had had sense enough to bring a flashlight. By its glow I found the two men in the kitchen. Tony had apparently decided to keep his suspicions of the doctor to himself. The conference sounded reasonably amicable.

‘I lost him when he descended here,’ said Blankenhagen. ‘Where do these doors go? I do not know this place.’

‘That’s a dead end.’ Tony indicated the passage leading to the dungeons. ‘I assume our quarry knows that;. he knows this place too damned well. He must have gone the other way.’

The trail was easy to follow – too easy, though this didn’t occur to us till it was too late. One of the storeroom doors swung invitingly open. The room was empty. The only break in the walls was a ventilation slit too narrow to permit egress of a lizard, much less a man.

Tony swept the floor with his flashlight. One of the paving stones was out of line by a full inch.

Tony handed me the flashlight. Dropping to his knees, he tried to get the fingers of his right hand into the crack between the stones. Meanwhile, Blankenhagen picked up the crowbar which was lying conveniently in a corner and inserted its edge into the crack. He grunted as he put his weight behind the tool; and the stone flew up with a jaunty swing that threw Blankenhagen over on his back and almost decapitated Tony.

‘Balanced,’ said Tony, feeling his chin as if surprised to find it still there.

‘Wait,’ said Blankenhagen, getting to his feet as Tony prepared to lower himself into the hole. ‘Should we not go for help?’

‘And let this guy get away?’ Tony was getting suspicious again. ‘You go first, Doc.’

Blankenhagen shrugged, but complied. There was a streak of romanticism under that stolid exterior of his; by now he was as reluctant to abandon the chase as Tony was.

Tony lay flat, shining his light down into the hole.

Vorsicht!’ The doctor’s voice came hollowly up. ‘Careful when you descend. The stairs are of wood, and shaky.’