Ganelon introduced himself. The man closed the book on his finger, ready to flee back into it should the new arrival prove unedifying. “Lars Thorwald of Christiania,” he replied, adding, “The great detective? I expected a much older man.”
“You’re thinking of my father,” said Ganelon, as he had so many times before.
Thorwald bowed, then sniffed the air. “I must explain I do not use a scent. Signor Antonio Cipriani, who left aboard the same train which brought me here, spilled the contents of his atomizer onto the carriage floor while fortifying his handkerchief against the journey. The coachman promises to air things out when we’re in the country and he can whip up the horses.”
Thorwald looked grave. “Several days ago, in Milan, Cipriani and I toured Vieux Gaspard’s new bottling works together. Though his cheeks were as hare as those cherubs which infest Italian art and his straw-colored vest dared to match his gloves and his spats, I judged him a superior type of individual. For a Neapolitan.”
For many, Africa began at Naples. Englishmen swore by Calais. Ganelon understood some Scandinavians said at Lübeck.
The carriage started off. Thorwald gripped his bowler as if it were self-satisfaction itself. Was it the prospect of meeting the Nawab of Jamkhandi which made Ganelon think of the Solemn Order of Snarks? This secret terrorist brotherhood worshipped the fabulous Snark in its third incarnation:
Years ago, on the Nawab’s first visit to Europe, a bomb had been thrown into his carriage in a Dresden street. The sputtering device passed through one window and out the other and bounced down some steps before exploding in a pastry-shop basement.
The Dresden police had reason to suspect Snarks. Some months before, the Nawab, dressed in the colorful costume of his native land, chose to dine at Aladdin’s, a London restaurant of an Arabian Nights decor. As his party approached the entrance, an English gentleman emerged and, mistaking the Nawab for the doorman, gave him sixpence and ordered he call him a cab. “All right, you’re a cab,” the Nawab replied. “But it will take more money than this to get me to call you hansom.” The pun became famous throughout Europe. Yes, the Snarks hated the punster worst of all.
The carriage containing Ganelon and Thorwald left the city proper by the Porte de l’Est. Ganelon found something of historical interest to point out to Thorwald whenever his eyes crept toward his hook. Suburban villas soon gave way to prosperous farms. Then they crossed the stone bridge with its ruined water mill and entered Transporpentine San Sebastiano.
In 1860, Sardinia ceded Savoy to France. Reviving Savoy’s ancient claim to San Sebastiano, the French attacked at dawn across the winding Tortue river. The principality’s outnumbered little army drove them back. Then, with San Sebastiano committed militarily on the west, the French cavalry appeared in force across the Porpentine. The bridge’s few defenders barricaded themselves in the water mill, knowing no reinforcements could reach them through streets clogged with morning traffic.
The confident French, giving themselves over to brio, bugle blowing, and rushing about with messages, were astonished when San Sebastiano’s crack sharpshooter regiment arrived, mounted behind the amazons of the women’s chapter of the Club Velocipede, who had darted there through traffic on their dashing penny-farthings. Brissac-Charbonelle’s vivid paintings have immortalized the battle, the women in their broad pink-and-blue-striped jerseys, heads bent over the handlebars, the soldier-marksmen seated behind them firing left and right, the panic among the French horses. After the Half-Day War, as it came to be called, France was obliged to cede territory across the Porpentine which doubled the size of the principality.
Several miles onward, the easy slope of Mont St. Hugues and then the tower of the Sandor château appeared above the trees. The baroness, an attractive woman with an English wild-rose complexion, waited on the steps to greet them. Ganelon judged her several years older than her husband. They had met in England during the Sandor firm’s failed merger talks with its principal rival, Old Father William’s Supplifying Salve. Ganelon understood the baroness had been on the London musical stage.
When he and Throwald stepped down from the carriage, she laughed, “What a smell of lavender! For a moment I thought dear Signor Cipriani had come back to us.” Then she apologized for her husband’s absence. The hunters were still in the field.
The baroness impressed Ganelon as a steadfast wife, one who judges others by whether they can help her husband or harm him. Had he only imagined that she seemed particularly grateful he had come? Ganelon had been taught to expect ulterior motive behind social invitations. Fashionable hostesses used to ask the Founder to their affairs to scare off jewel thieves.
The detective was given into the hands of LeSage, a middle-aged servant with an intelligent face who led him down several corridors. For Ganelon’s convenience, his rooms would be in the tower Baron Justin built to house his collection. “It will also be quieter for you, sir,” explained Le Sage. “The old moat has been excavated around the château proper for foundation repairs and installing the new drains. The masons will be back on Monday.”
Reaching the tower, they took an iron circular staircase. The first two floors housed the plaster heads in cubby holes, the third the grandfather’s old living quarters, which were well aired and bright. The study was dominated by a large marble head marked out phrenologically. A framed daguerreotype on one wall showed two men standing before a horse-drawn caravan.
“If the bald gentleman is Baron Justin, the other must be Gaston, the child-killer,” observed Ganelon.
“Bonhomme Pickle himself, sir. In Paris. Usually they set up shop across from the Prison de la Roquette, where heads rolled like cabbages at harvest time. Their wagon held all they needed to make casts before returning the heads to the bereaved.” LeSage pointed to a thick binder on the desk. “The registry, sir. Whenever you’re ready to begin, I’ll fetch the heads you’d like to see.”
Ganelon got quickly to work with calipers and notebook while LeSage brought up four heads at a time in containers resembling hatboxes. After two hours of slow, careful measurements Ganelon heard the growl of iron on stone in the courtyard and went to the window. Gamekeepers were pushing a handcart heaped with dead grouse across the cobbles. Behind them came the hunters in an array of hats and buttoned gaiters.
Arriving with more hatboxes, LeSage joined Ganelon at the window. “There’s his excellency the Nawab, sir,” he said, pointing to a man with a round, café-au-lait face wearing a knickerbocker suit of the latest fashion. “And there, next to him, is Major Leland Sowerby.”
Ganelon knew of Sowerby, whom the Nawab had graciously asked to join his permanent staff after he’d been driven from the Indian Army for gambling debts.
Next came the baron, his face open and boyish, proudly pointing out an aspect of the new drains to a lanky man in an old fringed-buckskin jacket. “Vieux Gaspard’s North American representative?” guessed the detective.
“Mr. Caleb Hardacre, sir,” nodded LeSage.
“And the duelist?” A slighter man marched behind, one jacket lapel tucked in across his shirt front as if to deny an adversary a white target in the meager light of dawn.