Doyle After Death (12 page)

“Tish-­tosh! You know perfectly well we're not, Merchant,” Doyle said affably, looking Merchant over the way he'd observed Long and Higgs. “Nor is a police state possible in this world—­or not for long. But see here, are you aware of the malicious traps that your man Higgs has erected?”

“Ah.” Merchant paused on the bottom step, stuck the frip in the corner of his mouth like a cheroot, and put his hands in the pockets of his robe—­more of a long smoking jacket, really. To my amazement, it actually had his monogram on its breast pocket.

“Who is it, Garrett?” came a purring feminine voice. I looked up to see a pretty young woman leaning on the railing. She had a heart shaped face and wore a gold fringed robe-­-­and nothing else. I took notice of her long, prettily turned ivory legs, and her—­

Doyle jabbed an elbow into my ribs and I looked away from her.

“It's . . . Doyle and . . .” Merchant looked at me. “Who would
you
be?”

“Fogg. Nick Fogg, sir.” I figured he'd like the
sir.

“Fogg. Fine. Whatever. “

Okay, he was unmoved by the
sir
.

Merchant looked at Doyle. “I don't know anything about any malicious traps, Doyle. Sounds like some stupid local rumor. A myth.”

He didn't seem very convincing.

Doyle seemed skeptical. “Truly? Well your man Higgs has nearly skewered us. I'll let Long explain. But we cannot have a vicious device so close to Garden Rest. You can put up a fence—­but not a trap. The thing is designed to stab ­people.”

“Oh yes?” Merchant raised his sharply defined jet-­black eyebrows. They looked almost painted on. “And do you have any
other
imperial orders for me, Doyle? I had thousands of laws and regulations and rules skewering
me
back on Earth. I don't want them here. I've
retired
here and I want to be left in peace!”

Retired? In the afterlife?

“Did you give Roscoe Higgs permission to put the trap in?” Doyle persisted.

“I didn't tell him to install a trap! Just . . . something to discourage ­people. A little. Nothing that'd
stab
anyone!” Merchant waved a hand as if to brush it all away. “That's his own fool idea! I'll have a look. That's all I can promise.” He went on, peppering the air with words and pointing the frip at us again. “Has it occurred to you that if you had not trespassed there would be no issue? If you want to do something constable-­like, how about taking on that Bull Moore idiot? He still thinks we're on a planet and he simply won't get a grip! And there's that wretch Bolliver, snooping about!”

“Yes,” said Long, coming into the entry hall. “Bolliver is the other one who's got under Higgs's skin. But hey, I don't like Bolliver either.”

“You ­people have bothered Mr. Merchant enough!” Higgs said, following Long in.

Merchant turned away, started for the stairs. I looked up to the balcony again but the girl had gone. Not much doubt about what we'd interrupted Merchant doing.

And what
was
sex like, in the afterworld? I was feeling increasingly curious.

“Merchant,” Doyle said softly. His voice, though soft, somehow demanded a response.

Merchant paused, turned frowning to him. “
Well?
”

“You went on some expeditions with Morgan Harris, I believe?”

“So?”

“You know that he's . . . that his body has been destroyed?”

He grunted. “By what?”

“We think it was a he or a she, not a what,” I said. “Sir.”

“So ask the old Lamplighter to have a talk with Harris's soul about it,” Merchant said. “I haven't seen Morgan Harris for weeks . . . Wait a damned minute! Is this some sort of investigation about Harris? You have that ‘just a few more routine questions' look. Ridiculous! Come out with it, Doyle, what do you really want?”

“When was the last time you saw Morgan Harris?” Doyle asked, ignoring both of Merchant's questions.

“Last time I saw Harris? Who keeps track of time, around here? I don't know, weeks ago. We went on a botanical hike, of sorts. He told me he might have found something like tobacco. I thought about farming the stuff.”

“See anyone around him who showed him any hostility?” Doyle asked, tugging on one of his mustaches.

“No, no. Didn't see anyone. Except that Bolliver. Saw him once. Don't remember when it was. We avoided Moore's territory, or what he supposes is his territory. I like to go out and work off some excess energy in a hike, and besides the tobacco I thought he could help me with . . . well, I was thinking of getting a tree, a really
big
tree, to grow right here in the house, make a solarium.”

Long sighed, almost inaudibly.

“How do you decide territory around here?” I asked. I thought a guy like Merchant might have issues with property. I was curious to see how he'd react to the question.

“We simply claim property, Fogg,” Merchant snapped. “Long as it's unclaimed already and no one objects. That's the last foolish question I'm going to answer.”

He marched back up the stairs, and Doyle watched him go. Doyle seemed to consider calling Merchant back again, but instead he nodded politely to Long, and turned to Higgs, who was just coming in the front door. “You'll take down those traps, Higgs? All of them?”

Higgs looked sullenly at him and then looked away. “Yes, yes, already deformulated some of them. I'll . . . work up something harmless. Maybe just an alarm or something.”

“Very good. Please make it soon. Is it safe for us to return the way we came?'

“Safe, sure it's safe. It's still standing but it's deactivated. Might leave it as a warning. But without the springs.”

“Good day to you both, then, gentlemen.” Doyle strode out, and I followed, hurrying to catch up as usual.

D
oyle paused at the spike trap outside, hunkering to examine it near the ground. There was afterworld soil clinging to its base. Soil around Garden Rest is somehow different from Earthly earth, less involved with burrowing creatures, and yet subtly alive. Most of the soil I've seen is black and some variant of red-­gold color. The soil here looked like that—­but with silver flecks.

“Roscoe Higgs had this same dirt under his fingernails,” Doyle said. “Same color combination.”

“You could see his nails that closely? You have a microscope with you I don't see, Doyle?”

I thought he might be annoyed with my smart-­ass question but Doyle smiled as he stood up. “Visual acuity comes from use, especially in the afterworld. It appears this trap was put in recently—­or he'd have cleaned himself up since. The rest of his appearance shows a reasonable tidiness.”

I remembered how Doyle and Brummigen had inserted their hands into the dirt to formulate from the ground up. “None of that particular soil on Long?”

“No. Nor on his shoes, so far as I could see.”

“Then the trap was all Roscoe Higgs—­it was his doing. Unless Merchant ordered him to do it.”

“Merchant says he didn't. Not as such. I believe him.”

I looked toward the windows of the mansion, maybe hoping to see the girl looking out. No such luck. “I don't know. Merchant seems capable of violence. Or ordering it. There were rumors, before he died, that Merchant had a guy killed. Story had it that Merchant had financed vote tampering in Florida . . . and someone was going to blow the whistle on it. Guy died in a small-­plane crash. One of those.”

“I do not deal in rumors,” Doyle said. He turned away from the house, and we trudged toward the woods.

“Anyway,” I said, when we reached the trail, “Roscoe Higgs looks good for killing Morgan Harris. He complained of Harris getting in the way around here. He seems fanatic about that. And he nearly skewered the two of us. He seems pretty homicidal to me.”

“Yes. Ostensibly he ‘looks good for it' as you American detectives say. It could be Higgs. But you know, when Long called him, he said ‘get your feuding arse over here.' That was rather a lot of information to load into a summons, don't you think? It was as if he was taking the trouble to divert our attention to Higgs.”

“You think Long's covering something up?”

“I didn't say that. But it's possible. He could be protecting Merchant.”

“You think there could be a woman involved in the Harris killing? You know,
cherche la femme?
Do ­people even fight over women here?”

“Of course they do, though mostly with words. ­People do the usual childish things here. At least, they do for a while. But you weren't listening closely, with respect to Morgan Harris. I never knew Harris to show an interest in women. If anything, his orientation was, ah—­he played for the other cricket team.”

“You mean the Seasiders? Oh!” Slow on the uptake, Fogg. “You mean he's gay?”

“Well he seemed a cheerful enough chap. But I hardly see . . .”

“You really haven't heard that term? Gay? I mean, with respect to . . .”

“Just pulling your leg old boy. Yes, that one I have heard. I know you figure an old duffer like me wouldn't know it. And indeed I don't like the term. Ruins the old usage. So—­Morgan Harris was gay. Many are, here. I've learned to accept it.”

“You don't have any prejudices, Doyle? Not racism, anything? I mean—­back in your time, in the Before, most ­people were biased . . .”

“After a time here, as happens with most ­people under the influence of this world, I gave prejudices up. Largely.” He cleared his throat. “I suppose class prejudice is a little more persistent.”

I'd been thinking that Doyle and Chauncey didn't seem without class prejudice. You could take the Englishman out of England, but . . .

He paused to gaze broodingly into a deep pool. A sinuous brightness slithered near the bottom of the pool, like a living belt of diamonds. It vanished into a hole. “But on this plane one is constantly reminded not to cling to the ways of the Before . . .”

“This
plane
. You mean planet?”

“I do not.”

“Merchant said something about how Moore believed this is a planet. But—­isn't it?”

“Why—­no! Did you think this was a planet you were walking about on?”

I turned to him, inwardly jolted. “How can it not be a planet? I didn't think it was an ‘alien planet' with extraterrestrials, but . . . I mean . . . it's not
heaven.
I thought of it as the Planet of the Afterlife. And—­it's a world. Everyone calls it a world! It has a sun that rises and sets.”

“But you have seen no stars in the afterworld. Where do you think that might be—­a planet without stars?”

“Um . . . I don't know. I just thought . . . it seemed so much like a planet. It has wind and rain and a sea . . . and creatures.”

“It's
something
like one. But it's not
a sphere,
like a planet, although it can
include
a sphere. I'm told it's more like a Möbius strip but an unthinkably wide one; an ineffably long one. Back on Earth, well, Copernicus and friends were right. The Earth orbits the sun, not vice versa. Here, the sun actually rises and passes over us, as in the old Greek myths. Almost like Apollo passing in his chariot.”

“You're pulling my leg again, Doyle.”

“Not a bit of it! This is
not a planet
. Drop a
t
from the word
planet
! This is a
plane
, Fogg. A continuum! I'm told it's located between the fourth and fifth dimensions. Yet it is a world—­a world with its own natural laws.”

“Now wait, the sun . . . if we're not orbiting it, where does the sun come from?”

“If you were to go far enough toward the west or east, you would see the sun rise, or sink, from a land you could not enter.
The sun is emitted by that land.
It is, in fact, a land itself! It is a large sphere, not so very far away, and only twice the size of our old moon. And it is an eventual destination for spirits.”

I was still trying to grasp all this. “It comes from underground?”

“The sun is an expression of what, in some places, is called the Ground of Being. It never loses its form, or shape, but it seems to melt into the land—­and exude from it . . .”

I shook my head. “Doubt I can ever understand that.”

“Stranger yet, there are beings living there . . .” He looked up at the sun, which was beginning to dip between the trees. “And the beings there, who live upon the sun, are aware of the beings here . . .”

“You get all this from Diogenes?”

“Some of it. There are certain books. You'll see them tomorrow.”

We walked onward. It was always Doyle who took the lead in going anywhere. I didn't seem to mind—­which would not have been the case on Earth. It was as if he was the one guy I'd be waiting to trail after. The very first one . . . though if I'd been born at the right time, I'd have followed Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys around on tour.

“So—­Morgan Harris was gay. But . . . what if someone
thought
he was after a girl? Maybe Merchant, say . . .”

Doyle snorted. “You merely wish for an excuse to interview that woman up on the mezzanine in the mansion.”

“What?
That
girl? Me?”

“
Do
try to put on at least a semblance of gentlemanly behavior, Fogg.”

I changed the subject. “Anyway, there are predators here. Someone preyed on Morgan Harris.”

“Yes. Other kinds of human predation do penetrate to this level. I haven't yet learned the why—­if there's a why. No doubt you met a ­couple of our local thugs.”

“Those kids in the town square? Amateurs.”