A Matter Of Taste Read online

  Somehow my head, detached as it was, had in the interval of their absence rolled or shifted its position slightly. I have no good explanation of how such things can happen. The one dark eye still visible amid the mutilations was wide open, its fiery glare directed into nothingness. The bloody jaw now gaped more widely than before, the tattered lips that no longer really formed a mouth hanging in a bloody fringe around that silent, shouting grin. At least one of the breathing onlookers, to judge by a remark he muttered later, got the impression that those jaws were shouting, a great bellowing of breathless defiance.

  In fact there was scarcely a sound in the room, save for the quickened breathing of the attendants and a steady, remote dripping. Water, either inside or outside the shed. Outside rain now fell alternately with sleet, making it a dismal night altogether.

  Trembling slightly, but firmly confident in the power of their prayers to protect them against the things of night and evil, the corpse-washers examined the body again to make sure that nothing else had changed, and there was no drip of blood. No, the body of Vlad Drakulya was no longer really bleeding at any point. The raw lips of his many wounds were sealed with clots. When presently, in the continued process of washing, most of these blood clots were dislodged, there appeared beneath them the unmistakable signs of pink, fresh scarring, as if some healing process of near-miraculous rapidity had begun before death supervened. One of the attendants made some muttered comment about this; the other one told her to shut up.

  But the first woman was not finished. “Now you can see both of his eyes,” she remarked when a gory wrinkle of loosened forehead had been tugged and smoothed back into what was more or less its proper position.

  There was some difficulty about getting the eyes to stay shut; in itself this is not uncommon with corpses of a fair degree of freshness. No doubt even the observed movement of the head was not totally without precedent. The traumatized jaw muscles, or what Bogdan’s sword had left of them, might well have spasmed once again.

  “Ought we not to sew up some of these gashes? Would his face look better with stitches in it, or—

  “No time for sewing now.” The face—if the surface they were contemplating was still deserving of the name— was going to look frightful in the extreme, whatever the corpse-tenders did or did not do.

  “I suppose you’re right. No time. Wash him, clothe him decently, put him into a box and underground.” Afraid that my enemies might finally have tumbled to the trick, or that some informer might betray the substitution of another corpse, they were trying to get it all done, including the burial, before dawn.

  And now a priest—he was not the first of his calling to do so on this night—came into the presence of the body from which, all onlookers were quite certain, the soul had permanently departed. Again prayers were recited for the repose of the departed spirit. For a man of notably bad reputation, even for a prince, even in this notably wicked time and place, this one seemed to have no lack of friends who wished to help him—as soon as he was gone. Perhaps some of those who prayed for his soul were afraid not to do so. Ah, would that they had all been so brave and industrious in his defense before he ceased to breathe—but perhaps my protests, particularly at this late date, are churlish and unfair.

  Meanwhile, as we have mentioned, other hands had been at work in the hasty construction of a coffin. The torso with its limbs, garbed in some crude but decent cerements, was now laid reverently within. The coffin-makers had calculated the length to a nicety, avoiding any need to lay the prince’s head in his lap or under his arm like a pumpkin. The severed member fit into its proper place, albeit a trifle snugly, just above the neck.

  My dagger had been picked up on the field and brought along, and now, along with some jewels of moderate value and a crucifix, was put into the coffin. Someone quickly and quietly removed the jewels again, at the last moment before the lid was put on. The wrists were crossed upon the breast, the dagger rested near the hands, and it seemed to one of the attendants that the right hand and arm had shifted position slightly, doubtless because of the bumping around and shifting that the box was getting, and that the lifeless fingers were curving, even tightening noticeably, around the hilt.

  A man’s voice, beginning to grow ragged with strain and tiredness, announced: “His eyes have come open again; the lids popped back as soon as I took the coins away.”

  “Well, let them be open, then.” The elder attendant was more phlegmatic—and not about to send off any real coins for burial. “It will not matter to the soul. Or to the body, either, at the Last Trump. And I tell you we have no time. Bogdan’s men may have discovered that they’re sending the Sultan the wrong head. It’s not impossible they’ll come here searching for the right one. We must have the burial completely finished before dawn.”

  “And I wish we could do something to reattach the head.” One of the younger conspirators, quite a worrywart, still fretting, reached to clasp the skull with both hands to readjust its position slightly. He tugged, and blanched, and snatched his hands back. He opened his mouth to remark on what he had discovered, but then changed his mind, closed his lips firmly, and forebore to say a word.

  Small wonder he kept silent. It wasn’t really possible that head and neck could have knitted themselves together. Instead it was possible, quite possible—in fact it was much more likely—that he was going mad.

  No one else repeated his discovery, or shared his mad delusion. In a few more moments, the last loyal farewells were said, the last formal prayers muttered, and the lid nailed more or less adequately onto the coffin. Then the silent burden was hoisted on shoulders, carried outdoors, shoved into a wagon, and borne joltingly away.

  The journey in the wagon took much less than an hour, and yet the small clearing in a woods where the coffin was unloaded seemed a completely isolated place, quite out of sight of any road or human habitation.

  Two men had been here for some time, digging by the light of a shaded lantern, and the grave by general consent was pronounced deep enough as soon as its intended occupant arrived. The last of the diggers climbed out hastily. The lowering of the box into the grave and the shoveling in of earth were the work of only a few moments; a great deal more time was spent in tamping down the earth, scattering the inevitable remainder of loose soil, and in general concealing the fact that here an interment had taken place. The next snow would hide the remaining traces of disturbance, probably until spring; and doubtless by then the likelihood of a search would be remote.

  But the gravediggers, having taken careful note of certain landmarks, assured themselves that they would have no trouble in finding the grave of their beloved prince again, once things had calmed down and it became feasible to think of moving him to the secret place beneath his castle.

  That relocation was eventually to be accomplished. But not by those who planned it on the day I fell.

  Chapter Three

  In Angie’s dreams the recorded voice of Uncle Matthew continued to hold forth, calmly elegant, just slightly accented, sounding as if it ought to make sense even while it delivered the horrible absurdities of some monstrous and bloody fantasy. When she had turned on the tape in the small hours of the morning she had been in no state to evaluate, to separate fact from fiction. Brandy and weariness had overcome her completely as she listened.

  But now the tape machine had somehow been turned off. Perhaps she’d done it herself before collapsing. She was lying in bed, and someone was knocking at her door. Tapping, rather, at the door of the unfamiliar bedroom where she had fallen asleep.

  Angie sat up, and there was John in bed beside her, just where he ought to be. But they were in an unfamiliar room—

  Her mind cleared somewhat. Yes, this was Uncle Matthew’s place. The dimmer component of the bathroom light was still on, indirectly illuminating the bedroom through the partially open door between. On the other side of the bed, the curtained windows were still dark around the edges, showing that the sun wasn’t up yet. Still night, and someone knocking persistently on the guest bedroom door. Something must be wrong.

  “Just a minute!” Angie called, her voice emerging as an uncertain croak. Climbing groggily to her feet and wrapping a blanket around her, she started for the door. Now, just outside it, a voice—female, low, and anxious— was calling softly, the words impossible to make out.

  Halfway to the door, Angie decided that she required reinforcements, mumbled some kind of a reply to the person knocking, and turned back to the bed to wake up John. His wristwatch lay on the bedside table and she glanced at it in passing. Almost five A.M.

  John was hard to rouse, but in a few moments he had stumbled to his feet, functional though hardly up to speed, and was pulling on his pants. Angie used the interval to throw on a few garments of her own. Together they went to the bedroom door and opened it slightly. Just outside stood Elizabeth Wiswell. The buttons on hex blouse were misaligned, and her clothes in general looked as if they had been hastily pulled on. Down the shadowy hall behind her the apartment was mostly dark; some light was coming from one of the other bedrooms.

  The woman looked pale and haggard, appropriately for the hour. Also she was worried. “Something’s wrong with him in there,” she told them simply.

  John opened the bedroom door a little wider. He rubbed his eyes and massaged his day-old growth of beard. “What?”

  Elizabeth’s voice rose querulously. “I don’t know what. He just looks awful. His eyes are partly open but I can’t get him to wake up. And there’s blood smeared all over his mouth. I’d have thought he was dead, but he moves, a little. Is he subject to fits or something?”

  Angie saw that John was staring at the waitress’s neck. He blinked his eyes and stared again. Angie could feel her own flesh creep. There was a tiny, fresh blood spot visible on Elizabeth’s throat—no, two tiny spots, a couple of inches apart, and around them some dried smears as if the little wounds had been oozing for some time. But the woman seemed completely unaware of the fact.

  John muttered something, pushed past her, and led the way down the hall, to the room in which Uncle Matthew and the waitress must have retired not more than a couple of hours ago. After giving a token rap on the slightly open door, John pushed it open and led the others in. A moment later he had reached for a wall switch and turned on an additional light.

  The single figure now occupying the queen-sized bed was sprawled across it diagonally and concealed up to the armpits by a sheet. The rumpled cover left bare the pale and wiry arms, the muscle-rounded shoulders. Uncle Matthew’s head lifted slightly when the light came on. He turned his face away from the brighter light and toward the visitors.

  Or—was this really Uncle Matthew? Angie, coming closer to the bed, paused suddenly, for a moment doubting whether she was looking at the same man. This face looked altogether too young, and at the same time too unhealthy. The pallor of this face was intense, the features somehow altered. The glossy dark hair, now entirely free of gray, was wildly tousled. Angie saw that Uncle Matthew’s gaze, pointed in the general direction of his visitors, was unresponsive, his eyes glassy, hardly more than half open. If she hadn’t just seen the body move, she might well have thought the face before her now was dead.

  And Elizabeth was right, those certainly looked like bloodstains on his lips and chin and cheeks. As if he had been drinking clumsily, or sucking blood—Angie giggled suddenly, a strained and awkward sound.

  No one took any notice.

  “Uncle Matthew?” There was horror in John’s voice. He was wide awake now. As he leaned forward, closer to the bed, something crackled faintly beneath his hand pressing down the sheets. Puzzled, John shifted his weight and pushed again, testing. The effort produced a renewed crunching sound. “Oh,” he said then, as if he had just remembered something.

  The man who was lying across the bed suddenly rolled over on his back, an abrupt, almost convulsive movement. His eyes opened a little wider, and then sought those of the younger man. The gory lips twitched, revealing stark white, pointed teeth. It looked as if he were trying, so far without success, to communicate something to John.

  “Sir? What is it?”

  A straining, an evident attempt to answer, but no speech, hardly any sound. Angie chimed in, pleading, “Uncle Matthew?”

  The man in the bed gurgled, gasped for air, and murmured something. It was at last a response, but far from intelligible. He made an abortive effort to raise himself, but could get his head no more than a couple of inches from the pillow before falling back.

  Elizabeth the waitress had followed John and Angie into the bedroom and had been hovering uneasily in the background. Now she said: “At first I thought he was just drunk, but—I don’t remember that he even had a drink. We’d better call a doctor. If he’s bleeding like that around his mouth.” She giggled inappropriately. Unlike Angie’s nervous laughter earlier, Elizabeth’s went on for some time.

  But John was shaking his head emphatically before Elizabeth had even finished speaking. “No,” he said decisively. “No doctors.”

  Angie looked at him with a questioning frown, but said nothing for the moment.

  “Well, he’s your relative. Me, I don’t like the way he looks. In fact I think I’m getting out of here. Where’d he put my coat? In the front closet, I suppose.” The woman was obviously growing more and more upset every time she looked at Uncle Matthew in the bright light.

  “I’ll help you find your coat,” said Angie, turning away from the bed. Meanwhile she was wondering whether she ought to try to break it gently to Elizabeth that her throat was bleeding slightly, but before she could decide the doorbell chimed.

  “Who could that be?” asked Elizabeth automatically. Angie thought that after several hours of quiet it wasn’t likely to be the neighbors complaining about noise.

  All three of Uncle Matthew’s guests moved into the living room, approaching the front door and its closed-circuit color video.

  John turned on the viewer beside the door, and all three looked at the little wall-mounted screen. Angie started to speak, then bit her tongue. From the corner of her eye, she saw Elizabeth raise her fingers to her mouth; then the women looked at each other in puzzlement at their shared reaction.

  Before either of them could decide what to say, John made his own comment. “Some young guy,” he muttered. “Whoever it is, I never saw him before.”

  “I think I have,” said Angie timidly.

  Valentine Kaiser, wearing a trench coat, was standing there front and center, posing accommodatingly right in front of the electronic eye so anyone inside could get a look at him. Somewhat vague in the background was the figure of another man, who appeared just about tall enough to look over Kaiser’s shoulder. Angie couldn’t be sure, but she didn’t think the second man was anyone she’d ever seen.

  Despite the hour the celebrity publicist appeared cheerful, clean-shaven, and wide awake, swinging his arms a little, shifting his weight restlessly as he waited. As she watched, Kaiser extended his arm and pressed the chime again.

  John was looking at her now, and she turned slowly away from the viewer, trying to think of how to explain to him who Kaiser was. “I think I—” Angie began, and then was distracted by Liz.

  The waitress had already retrieved her coat from the front closet and put it on. In the act of adjusting a scarf she paused, dabbed with her hand at her shapely neck, then looked at her fingers. “Oh, my God, I’m bleeding too,” she murmured. Eyeing her companions she giggled once more, and Angie wondered suddenly if Liz might be drunk or high on some other drug.

  “Angie,” John was asking, an edge in his voice, “do you know who this guy is out in the hall?”

  Elizabeth, with coat and scarf now firmly on, was holding her right hand stiffly out in front of her. For the moment, as she regarded the fingers marked with pinhead red spots from her throat, she looked completely sober. “I don’t want to meet him,” she muttered. “Is there a back door?” she asked distractedly. “A service door? I’m going to just slip out that way, if…”

  “Wait,” said John sharply. He looked from one to the other with a hard gaze that puzzled Angie, then concentrated on her: “Were you going to say you know him?”

  “I recognize him,” she admitted in annoyance. If he would only give her the time to explain properly…

  “You do? Who is he, then?”

  “Tell you in a minute.” Angie, her anger suddenly flaming because of being barked at, stepped quickly to the door and started to open the locks while keeping the security fasteners in place. Two of these, designed to allow the door to open no more than about six inches, guarded the front portal of Uncle Matthew’s residence. Both were made of thicker steel, were more elaborate in design, and looked much stronger than the usual door chains that served as household protectors in the city.

  John at first moved as if he would prevent her from opening the door, but then stepped back. “All right,” he muttered. “I want to get a look at him directly.”

  In another moment, confronting Valentine Kaiser face-to-face through a six-inch gap, Angie tried to summon up her best skill at vituperation, but found that any talent she might ordinarily possess along that line had deserted her. “What in the world do you want?” was the nearest thing to scathing words that she could think of. “At this hour?” She did her best to make her tone compensate for the deficiency.

  Seen directly, Kaiser looked worried, or at least concerned, rather than jaunty. Not that he was lacking confidence. Sounding almost cheerful, he answered her question with one of his own. “How’s Mr. Maule doing?”

  “What do you want?”

  Their visitor looked grave. “I had an impression that he might be ill. One gets these feelings sometimes, you know, when one has known someone for a very long time. May I talk to him, please?”

  “No. Go away.” Angie paused. “You say you know him?”

  “For a very long time, as I say.” As if in afterthought he pointed behind him with a thumb. “Forgive me, this is my associate, Mr. Stewart.” The trench-coated figure nodded. Kaiser gave Angie a reassuring smile. “Now, may we come in?”