Krall considered. A victim much respected at court, a killer who was English and a guest at the palace, yet in its way it seemed simple enough. An attempt at seduction, fuelled by the bacchanalia of Carnival, which turned to violence then an attempt at suicide. Where did the Englishman get the razor from? It was one sold by Kupfel’s in Karlstrasse back in Ulrichsberg. Pearl handle. Perhaps his new wife had bought it for him — but why would he bring it to Carnival? Krall growled softly to himself. It was as if he had a little demon locked in his own mind, always asking these wheedling questions. And why, the little demon continued, did Lady Martesen show no bruising? No clothing torn? Krall came out into the back yard of the Town Hall, then moved slowly along the path towards the main square, where he found His Excellency, Chancellor Swann, waiting for him.
‘This is a bad business, Krall,’ Swann said at once. ‘It was a pity Colonel Padfield found Mr Clode before he bled to death.’
‘Perhaps, Your Excellency.’ He realised the Chancellor was looking at him sideways, eyebrows raised, and cursed his questioning demon. ‘He’s in a strange state. Like a simpleton. Mad. Unless his mind clears, we may need to lock him away for good. We cannot behead an imbecile — even an English one.’
‘Shock, I’d imagine. Guilt.’ The Chancellor’s words came from his mouth spiked and white-hot.
‘Perhaps. He says a masked man led him to the room. That he felt dizzy.’
‘Not terribly convincing,’ the Chancellor said, turning away again.
The moon was young, a fat sickle, but there were still torches guttering here and there along the main thoroughfare, giving light to the street and casting monstrous shadows up the walls. Chancellor Swann was a shadow himself, dressed, as always, in black. It was not surprising the people suspected him of being a Jesuit. Marshal of the Court, President of the Court of the Exchequer and of the Court of Chancery and the Consistorial Court, the thin dry voice in the Duke’s ear.
Only a few hours ago Krall had watched the Fool’s Parade from the balcony of the Town Hall. At its head a figure on stilts, all in black, had led a man on a leash dressed in a peasant’s mockery of royal finery complete with a huge straw wig. The man had danced in and out of the crowd, yapping at the girls and throwing showers of coloured confetti over their heads, then clutching at the collar round his throat when he was yanked back at intervals to the side of the stilt-walker. He thought the Duke would probably have laughed at the spectacle, but that Swann himself would not have been amused.
He had got here damn quick. Krall calculated. His first message would have taken at least an hour to reach Ulrichsberg, even if the rider rode hard. He imagined the messenger, dirty with the road, being shown into Swann’s study, handing over Krall’s message amongst all those gilt flourishes and polished floors. Swann must have been on the road back to Oberbach in minutes. Yet, as always, he exhibited this icy control. Krall thought of what the Chancellor was managing as the wedding of their sovereign approached. Paper mountains of procedure, a squeezing of the last ducats out of the Maulberg Treasury. A series of feasts and celebrations, royal hunts, balls, and contracts the length of the good Bible itself. There would be a hundred visiting dignitaries coming to peer at Maulberg and her sovereign, assessing her strengths and weaknesses. And now this, a much-valued member of the court, murdered by an Englishman. Perhaps it was no surprise after all that he had ridden hard.
‘Lady Martesen was a friend of mine.’ The statement surprised Krall. He had never thought of Swann as a man to have friends. ‘Her loss is … grievous.’
The Chancellor was watching the last of the Feast of Fools revellers stumble and weave along the road, singing as they went. Their costumes were half-undone and most had thrust their masks up off their faces or trailed them from their befuddled fingers. Witches and demons with their thick red papier-mache tongues hanging out, and strange birdmen, still flocking together and singing some inventive obscenity in surprisingly neat harmony. They shed feathers from their backs as they slapped one another across the shoulders.
‘No witnesses, Herr District Officer?’
Krall shook his head. ‘Nothing.’ He paused. ‘The room was fastened from the inside, though the key was not in the lock but on the floor nearby. Nobody saw this man Mr Clode says led him to the room, though no one saw him cross alone either. Not for certain.’
Krall found the Chancellor looking at him, his eyes narrowed. ‘There must have been fifty men in that type of motley tonight, Your Excellency,’ he added.
‘Have you anything useful to tell me, Krall?’
He cleared his throat. ‘When the parade was done, Colonel Padfield and his wife went to the Council Chambers with Mr and Mrs Clode for the Mayor’s Ball. According to Colonel Padfield, Mr Clode appeared drunk. The Colonel took him outside to avoid a scene and went to fetch water. When he returned, Mr Clode was missing. Some half an hour later, during the search, he heard sounds from the haberdashers shop and broke down the door.’
‘Why did the Colonel think to look there?’
‘His party had hired the back room of the shop to change into their costumes.’ Swann nodded and waved a hand. Krall continued. ‘No one can swear to seeing Lady Martesen after the parade. It seems she never entered the rooms where the ball was held.’
A long silence.
‘Do you know, Krall, that Mr Daniel Clode is closely connected with the Earl of Sussex?’
‘I did not.’
‘Lord Sussex holds a number of bonds issued by the Maulberg Treasury that are due to be renewed or paid off before mid-summer.’
Krall frowned. The Duke’s love of opera and show was expensive, and he knew the state owed money to half of Europe. Murder was murder, but how righteous could Maulberg afford to be? Could an English Earl render them bankrupt?
‘Awkward.’
‘Indeed. We were to start negotiations this week. A British citizen, a well-connected British citizen — we must hope his mind will clear and then he will offer a full confession. We cannot execute him with less. And to torture him might be politically unwise.’
‘The Duke outlawed torture three years ago.’
‘He sometimes speaks regretfully of that but, as I say, we cannot do it in any case, even if the ban were repealed. The English would paint us as barbarians, and then they would immediately present the bonds to the Treasury. If that were to happen before the Duke’s wedding … Make your enquiries carefully, Herr District Officer.’
‘What do you wish doing with him, Your Excellency?’
‘Castle Grenzhow, I think.’
Krall turned to go, but something was pulling and twitching in the back of his mind, making him pause. Sussex. Krall read the English papers every month. It kept his knowledge of that language turning in his mind even if he seldom spoke it, and reminded him of the years he had spent in London in his youth. The unruly people, their outspoken press, the way they went charging out from their cold little island and swaggered about the world. He remembered now reading of the scandal of the Earl of Sussex. A young boy, Jonathan Adams, the heir to that great estate, and his older sister Susan, rescued from danger by a woman and a recluse with a taste for anatomy. The papers had told and retold the story for weeks, and each new element of the story made it grow ever more unlikely until the point came when it was so unbelievable, it could only have been true.