A Curious Beginning

“We have more considerable problems than the softness of Mornaday’s hands,” he said tightly. He thrust the newspaper into my hands. “Read.”


I skimmed the article, horror mounting in a cold wave. I read it again, slowly this time, but the facts did not change. The verdict in the inquest had been murder by person or persons unknown. That much we had expected. We knew the baron had been murdered, and it had been an unlikely hope that the authorities had already apprehended his murderer. But the rest of the article revealed a far greater calamity. Besides reporting the verdict—and the fact that the baron had instructed via his will that he was to be privately interred with no formal ceremony—the newspaper seemed to relish relating that in a related matter, the Honorable Revelstoke Templeton-Vane, youngest son of Lord Templeton-Vane, was currently being sought by the Metropolitan Police to assist them with their inquiries into the murder of the Baron von Stauffenbach.

“Stoker, they cannot possibly mean—”

“They do,” he said grimly.

He was right, of course; there was only one possible interpretation to the article: I was traveling with a man wanted for murder.

I skimmed the rest of the article, but it gave few details. “How do you think they came to connect you to the baron?”

He thrust his hands into his hair. “I rented the warehouse from him. There would be a record of the payments in his ledgers.”

“You mean the baron owned the warehouse where you live?” He nodded in the affirmative, and I carried on. “The police would have discovered this when they looked through his papers. They must have called upon you only to find you missing.” He groaned, and I knew I was on the right path. “Naturally, it would seem suspicious to them that you should disappear at the same time the baron was murdered. And with the inquest verdict of ‘murder by person or persons unknown,’ they have settled upon you as the likeliest candidate. This article gives only your name, but it is simply a matter of time before they circulate your photograph and description.”

He lifted his head, his expression one of abject misery. “Why? Why did I not think of this when I left London?”

“Not to be critical at a difficult moment,” I put in hesitantly, “but why did you not seek out the police as soon as the baron was murdered? It does seem the most logical course of action, doesn’t it?”

“Not helpful,” he said sharply.

“You did not answer my question then, but I should very much like an answer now.”

He paused, and I realized he was making up his mind whether to trust me at last.

“Because in the eyes of polite society and no doubt those of Scotland Yard, I am already a murderer.”

I stared at him, and he gave me a bitter smile. “Well, well. I have managed to render you speechless at last. I should think that calls for a drink.”

He reached into the basket for my flask of aguardiente and took a deep draft. I held out my hand and took a hearty swallow of my own.

Then I gave him a level look. “Why do they believe you to be a murderer?”

He did not flinch. “Because I am.”

It was a long moment before I could speak again. “I suppose I ought to thank you for being so forthright. As a matter of curiosity, whom exactly did you kill?” I thought for an instant of the wedding band I wore—a ring that had once graced the hand of his wife. He had mentioned his marriage as one of the casualties of his disastrous expedition. Had she been the victim of a homicidal impulse? I found that impossible to believe.

“A man who deserved it, and I would do it again, and that is all you need know,” he said flatly. Not his wife, then, I reflected, but I was no less intrigued by the possibilities that remained. Had she had a lover Stoker had revenged himself upon? Was it a business arrangement gone terribly wrong? Unpaid gambling debts? He went on. “The police in this country cannot touch me for it, but they know my name well enough. I am sorry to say that my first thought when I learned of Max’s death was not for the loss of my friend, but the certainty that they would eventually settle on me as the likeliest culprit. And it appears I am correct,” he added with a nod to the newspaper.

“You can hardly blame them,” I said mildly. “You are a policeman’s very dream, are you not? Connected to the baron by ties of business and friendship and burdened by an unsavory reputation. It would not be difficult to draw inference of motive somehow. A lazy policeman would be your undoing.”

I meant to continue on in that vein, but he was staring at me, his expression one of frank disbelief.

“Stoker, you look like a carp. Whatever is the matter with you?”

“I just admitted to you that I am a murderer. I have taken a man’s life, and you have nothing more to say upon the subject?”

“You have no wish to elaborate, and I have no wish to make you. What would you have me do, pry confidences from you like pulling teeth from a horse’s mouth? Besides, I am not entirely blameless in the matter of withholding information.”