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Chapter Text

It was a matter of pure coincidence that Benoit Blanc was caught up in the affair at all. Although he was deeply enamoured of a man firmly of English birth and background, the couple rarely journeyed to the British Isles, one finding the climate too cold and the other the relatives by marriage even colder. But unable to be the absolute master of his fate, Benoit Blanc found himself in London, England, with the weather and relatives true to form that March.

This was soon after the conclusion of a case that had crossed paths with a Hollywood star whose identity Blanc had done all he could to conceal but whose residence and retinue had not been as successfully secret. This had followed close after his encounter with Birdie Jay the influencer, his movements into and around London were now of interest, it seemed, to those who clicked on articles on their phone internet browsers. “Vision”, as it was now so ungainly denoted instead of the much more accurate “footage”, had been dramatically acquired of the great detective entering such meagre, everyday things as airports, taxi cabs and hotels, and such information thence broadcast to the world at large under the auspices of a free press and assumed desperate desire to know.

His husband having gone on to meet the aforementioned relatives for a few days and refusing to expose his paramour to more of their disdain as was necessary and also spare him any further media attention, Benoit Blanc had set himself to some time alone. He was quite content at the prospect of a few days in old London Town. He knew a cigar store that had excellent supplies of rare European varieties, and a whiskey provider of a similar reputation. There was also a most amenable hotel bar and cafe with a street view, where he hoped to spend a while listening to music on his headphones and reading the paper. A constitutional to Hyde Park has crossed his mind, and a moment's consideration given toward exploring the existence of any variation in the strengths and pugnacity of squirrels residing on different sides of the Atlantic. Had he set off immediately instead of wondering if the British squirrel had some of the pointed politeness of the human occupants of the isle, he would surely have escaped the coming entanglement.

It was also true that he could have turned down the offer about to be placed before him but Benoit Blanc had one clear, singular vice and that was his hunger for a puzzle. Denied it too long he would become peevish and irritable. Dangle such an opportunity in front of his face and against all his better judgement or desire for a quiet holiday or some amount of squirrel investigation and he would always, always seize upon the chance to confront a mystery. It was in this way entirely his own fault, as so many things indeed were in this life. Fate had brought him into London and given his location to the world and those things had set the bait upon the hook but it was his own mere human character that had caused him, mullet-like, to bite down hard.

No, thought, Blanc later: not a bait but a fly, flickering across the waters surface back and forth like the bioluminescent insect it pretends to be, catching the eye, deceiving it. Everything here, even at the beginning, was deception all the way down.

“Mr Blanc!” came the call as the fly dropped into the water.

“Mr Blanc!” It came again, more urgent, more panicked. If Blanc had not reacted to the tone and looked up, he might again have avoided the whole affair. He could have slunk down in his chair for the man saying his name was only guessing he had the right man. But Blanc was not a natural slinker, and as yet unaware of his appearance in the dailies, and thought it might be a shout of a hotel porter with an urgent telephone call, assuming such things still happened in an age of instant texts and ubiquitous smartphones.

The call did not come from a hotel porter but from a small, sweaty gentleman, in what had once been a good suit. He spotted Blanc across the hotel bar, as Blanc was half standing in response to his name and he swooped towards the detective like a hunting owl.

“Mr Benoit Blanc?” he asked, appearing more owlish by the moment. He had thick lenses across his nose and a small pursed mouth like a tiny beak. It broke open disconcertingly into a nervous smile. “You are him, are you not, sir? The great Benoit Blanc?” His hands were shaking too much to shoot forward for a handshake. Not until he had verbal confirmation he was correct.

“Well, indeed. I am he,” said Blanc, his eyes searching the figure for more explanation, or perhaps even apology. Blanc kindly alleviated the gentleman his nervousness by extending his hand, which was seized with gratitude.

“I’ve interrupted your breakfast, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry,” said the owlish figure but there was truthfully no apology in it so Blanc offered no acceptance of one.

“I do believe you have but I shall continue if it won’t offend.” Blanc lifted a slice of toast as way of illustration.

The beak-mouthed man sat down as if the weight of the world was in his shoulders. “Oh Mr Blanc,” he exhaled. “I am in dire need of your services as a detective. I was so relieved to hear you were in London.”

“I am presently on my holiday, Mr…”

“Trammimg. Oh but call me Toby, of course. And I am sorry to interrupt your holidays Mr Blanc” (again there seemed little apology, only a growing desperation) “but I am a desperate man. I have been all-but accused of a terrible crime.”

Blanc waved his toast as an offer to continue. The man Tramming seemed to take no hint to leave so he might as well let the fellow unburden himself until, like a balloon letting our air, he might be blown away.

Hunching forward, he confesses in a whisper. “My family thinks I murdered my wife.”

“And what’s worse: I can see how they got the idea, of course. I’ve done something very very stupid, Mr Blanc. And my wife has paid the price.” Here Toby’s face became suddenly downcast with a great shadow, as perhaps not just of sorrow at recent misfortune but also terror of things to come. Then from the shadow the anxiety emerged again.

“I can pay you, of course. Name any price. I can pay -“

“Now just slow down there,” broke in Blanc as much to take his turn speaking as to disrupt the bubbling fears of his interlocutor. “I mean no offence to your funding levels, Mr Tramming, but I do not and cannot simply take any case presented to me, although I do appreciate you coming here to offer it to me. My responsibilities at this juncture may lie elsewhere.”

“I’ll double your fee,” the small mouthed man shot back. “And if I may, if you let me present some of the particulars of this case I think it might draw you further into it. You see I am a writer, Mr Blanc and have dabbled in the mystery genre myself. And find myself aware that I am, in a narrative sense, a very likely suspect. I could be the primary suspect! I would even believe myself to have done it, if I were reading the facts.”

Blanc knew now there was little he could do to stop the outpouring he was now firmly in the face of.

“My wife was found at the bottom of the stairs, stone dead. Dead! She was lying under a large heavy object, a statue, that had fallen and cracked her skull in an instant. I was in the house at the time and I was upstairs and I could have easily pushed the object onto her! And I have such a very obvious motive: the world believes that I despise her.”

The wording of this last sentence did not escape the attention of Benoit Blanc, and his searing blue eyes stared with questions. “You see, Mr Blanc, my wife and I have created a fiction. A staged falsehood for the benefit of the media. My wife in all things was my ally, my confidant and the business manager of my writing career. And furthermore, my agent and public relations director. Fearing the large gap between my upcoming novel and my previous one, she saw a need to create some sort of buzz in the press. To create a scandal, even.”

Here the nervous man had begun to shake with what Benoit Blanc thought might be a terrible shame, but at a minor crime: his interlocutor had the appearance of a small boy who had grasped two lollipops instead of one and now feared, by virtue of her dark expression, that his mother might send him to prison for life. With shaking hands Toby Tramming brought forth from his jacket a much-creased and much-twisted gossip magazine. The pages were rolled back over the spine to reveal a two-page spread. The headline was “Spy A-Shout Down!!”

Two exclamation marks, thought Benoit Blanc: a clear confirmation of the intellectual bankruptcy of the publication, which matched its moral bankruptcy. “A play on words regarding my most successful novel, Spy About Town,” Tramming explained. A pun equally devoid in backbone, noted Blanc. “It was turned into a tv series.” Tramming was trembling but not free from vanity. Blanc took the magazine and read:

Yesterday’s target of all of the rage on X/Twitter and BlueSky was Toby Tramming, author of Spy About Town, Spy For DInner and Spy At Large, was caught on video having dinner at Pomme d’Or in Kensington. Tramming is clearly seen calling his wife, Charlotte, of eight years a “cheating bitch” and smashing plates to the ground as he leaves. The internet has been swift to attack Tramming for toxic masculinity and violence by proxy….

The article then degenerated into a series of quotes from posters regarding how men could be violent to women without actually striking or threatening them but directing their misplaced rage onto objects. Much discussion was had about a similar event at a recent awards event. Speculation was laid as to whether the woman was cheating and with whom, accompanied with blurry pictures, much zoomed-in, of her meeting various famous writers and television stars during the premiere of the aforementioned television series.

“You see?” Said Tramming still trembling in voice and body. “We thought we were so clever. In a day or two she would have admitted to a brief affair and apologised while I would explain that I was getting counselling for my anger. The internet would fall about themselves unable to decide who was right and who was wrong. Everyone loves an argument, Charlie said.” Blanc heard pride and vanity creeping back into the man’s voice. Perhaps he even took some strange pride in how he had been so deftly hoisted himself on his own carefully laid petard, mused the detective.

“We had even gone so far as for me to make sure I was seen leaving the house.” Here Tramming produced a further magazine which had a small inset accompanied by an old promotional shot of the couple. The fifty word report indeed mentioned the “troubled couple” in “turmoil” with Tramming seen “leaving his fathers estate in a taxi late at night.”

“And that should stand in my favour of course! Except the day she was killed I had returned, as I said. I was upstairs! I was there to come upon the terrible scene. My poor wife! And then - oh, the irony!” He shivered at the very thought of it.

“Now you can see though, Mr Blanc, that my goose is cooked. Someone has seen all this press and spotted the perfect opportunity to kill my darling wife. And I am left with means and opportunity and this terrible false motive!”

Blanc found a chance to enter again. “And you and your wife left no record that you were engaged in this pantomime?”

Tramming shook his head. “We thought there was no need. A day or two and we’d be done. But someone else must know, Mr Blanc, I am sure of it. Or if they do not, you can surely uncover who really killed her and in so doing exonerate me.”

“Have the police been called, Mr Tramming?”

“Of course. And all the family questioned. Well, except my father - the shock of seeing the crime seems to have put him into a kind of catatonia. He cannot even speak.”

“He was a witness to the murder?”

“We imagine so. He was found by her body! I mean, I found him, and her. He was badly in shock. Poor man hasn’t been able to say a word.”

A silent witness. A series of terrible coincidences to produce a man fairly drowning in the likelihood of his guilt. Benoit Blanc was not easily moved to be convinced against his will but he could not disagree that the man had been right about the appeal of the case. There was a mighty puzzle here indeed.

“If - and it is still an if - I were to take on this case, what are the more mundane particulars? Where did this all occur?”

“My fathers house is barely ten minutes from here. I can drive you - drive us. I will pay your hotel bill for the next few days - which is I’m sure all it will take you to find a solution. It would make sense for you to simply reside here that extra time it takes you.”

Blanc poised and stroked his lips. He was never a man to rush a decision. There was however one item that remained missing.

“You say your wife was killed, sir, but is it possible it was simply an accident? Why is there an assumption of foul play at work?”

“You’re right of course Mr Blanc. But nobody believes it to be! And I have plenty of reasons to believe it was not.” All of a sudden the shadow returned to the man’s face and grew even darker. His voice dropped low and trembled and he shifted his chair closer to Blanc.

“The problem is, Mr Blanc, is that if I tell you my suspicions I am putting your life at risk as well. I feel I am not being over dramatic to say so. So if I proceed I need to give you that warning.”

It seemed to Benoit Blanc that whatever the truth, Tramming believed in his heart a threat was real and present. But Blanc could not reasonably agree without more facts. He weighed his options momentarily and decided that he would indeed seek to know more and indicated as such with his final bite of toast before popping it into his mouth.

Somehow Tramming drew his chair even closer and found an even deeper conspiratorial whisper. “I’m sure you’ve heard of the masons, Mr Blanc. But there are other things such as them. Groups of men who meet in secret for mutual aid and protection but have done much more to keep their orders and memberships secret. Sometimes a great deal more. Because what good is a secret society, ahem, if everyone knows about it?”

Tramming was now shooting glances and twisting his neck to peer around the room as if shadowy figures were already watching. Seemingly satisfied they were not, he continued. “My father and his father were members of such a fraternal order, one with ancient origins and deeply well connected pockets. My brothers have been keen to follow in his footsteps but my wife has slowly convinced me to abandon my membership as unbecoming of a self-made man or a practicing member of the Church of England” Toby Tramming sniffed slightly as his pride returned.

“But when the subject was broached - well, first my intentions were disregarded or dismissed. Then slowly the tone of conversation with my brothers and father turned to something more like threats. To leave this organisation would put the organisation at risk, they implied, and that risk would be intolerable to the safety of the order. Nothing was ever turned to an actual statement of consequence, you understand - but” - and somehow Tramming found yet another micrometer to shift his chair closer to Blanc - “it was said in such a way as that it should be the end of all such discussion. I mean. You know how such things are.” Toby Tramming managed to gesticulate towards the air to indicate how such things were while also keeping his hands close and lowered lest some assassin be keen to remove a stray digit.

“And then I received the letter. An anonymous letter - well, no, not a letter, an envelope. No stamp. Full of news stories about car crashes. People drowning. It was a threat. They wanted me dead. Want me dead still! They came for my wife to make it clear what they could do! I got one, then a second! And on getting the second I rushed to speak to me wife but -oh! I was too late! Too late!”

“You believe your own family would kill and even kill again just to keep you from leaving this here -“ Benoit gestured, momentarily lost for the descriptor - “society? Just on the fear that you might reveal nothing more than its very existence?”

Toby Tramming nodded glumly. “And don’t you see, Mr Blanc? Now I’ve put your life at risk too. You must not tell anyone what I’ve told you. You cannot! Not a hint! I know - it sounds mad - but these are people that take this very seriously. Tremendously so.”

“And I assume, if they were the cause of your wife’s death, they would not take kindly to you hiring a private investigator to exonerate you for the crime? Or to just generally ask questions? To dig up secrets and uncover allegiances they wish to remain covered?”

Tramming nodded. His eyes stared up at Blanc from his conspiratorial crouch like a wounded dog’s.

Blanc continued. “So even should I give no hint of knowing what you have just told me; perhaps if I hide our prior contact altogether, my life may still be at risk here? My very presence a sign that you refuse to be cowed and acquiesce?”

Again Tramming nodded. “It’s why I’m willing to pay any price, Mr Blanc. What I ask you to do is beyond the pale. A terrine thing to ask. And I will not blame you if you say no. I know I’m a fool - I know I’ve made my own bed - and I know what this all looks like. I ask too much.”

Benoit Blanc could be a bit of a Southern cliche - he enjoyed it even at times - but he stopped himself from saying “pshaw”. But his piercing blue-crystal eyes had gained that long-distance rock-solid stare of a man committed. Of a man convinced. Of a man already unable to turn back from the path ahead, already lost in the hunger of a chase began.

For you see, there was one thing Benoit Blanc could resist even less than a great mystery, he would later remonstrate to himself. One weakness he had even above his need for a knot to unravel. Benoit Blanc was addicted to danger.

Chapter Text

The drive to the Tramming house was short but Benoit Blanc insisted it take longer, diverting his driver Toby towards a fictional errand. In truth Blanc had all he might need even for an overnight stay from his hotel room and texted his paramour of his intended location before he rejoined his new client outside the doors of the hotel. Still, he informed Toby Tamming that a short stop to pick up some necessary items would be required. The intent was to gain as much information as possible from Tramming before arriving at the house, where, no doubt, others would begin inserting their own narratives and versions of the facts.

Benoit Blanc had already concluded that Toby Tramming was a nervous man, a fanciful man, most likely an oblivious man, and it soon became clear he was also a boring man. The facts were there to be extracted from an ever-growing soup of mannered mealy-mouth exposition and twitchery that Benoit found cloying to be around and turgid to sort through.

It began with a history lesson about the Order of the Knights Templar Eternalis Brackers Ordo Sinister Close Brackets. Toby Tramming had, like so many of us in a modern world, attempted to thread romantic belief with grim awareness of the banal reality, and was able to provide that history mostly without bias. Despite the legends of direct connection to the knights Templar the organisation was most likely conceived in the late nineteenth century by those unwilling to join the more numerous (and less exclusive) group of arcanists known as the Golden Dawn. Having been declared by some of those sorcerers as a “false order”, they had taken that as their motto and their key identity. Let others flock to the banner of so-called true gods and mysteries, they said; we (the patently wiser) were proud to be heretics in a world that worships high magi. Hence the False Order in brackets: an appellation they applied with the mystery and drama of an elementary school play.

But, Blanc gathered from his co-passenger, their goal of not being like other secret organizations had led them to take secrecy as seriously as a government intelligence agency. Members would be blackballed and worse for even hinting they were in a society. Members could only be added after intense scrutiny and agreement by all. They had balanced the safety of their small membership with making sure only the highest of society were indoctrinated. It was exclusively and explicitly for men, and white men by assumption; fathers could nominate sons but only one scion of each paterfamilias could ascend. This detail was naturally of great interest to Benoit Blanc.

“What is the composition of your family, though?” He asked with amazement. “You said you had brothers?”

“Yes, one older and one younger. They know Father is in this organisation, but I don't know exactly how they feel about all of it. Membership is open to all male heirs but Roger I think never cared for any of it, I mean, he's a very serious person and - .”

“Do they perhaps harbour any resentment to you being chosen for this installment? And a greater rage to see you turn it down?” Toby had indeed rejected the calling when his father had nominated him, and it clearly pained him to talk about it.

"I think Hoight was keen to take over for me, but...I suppose he has a greater role to play now."

Blanc continued. “That assertation leads us to a possibility that the attack on your wife was not a threat by example but a strike of revenge.”

“What does that mean?” asked Toby, his sweaty hands tightening on the steering wheel.

“Well, a threat can be seen as a conversational gambit, as it were. A strike designed to produce a response in the target, who, if they return to the required obedience, can be assured of no further harm. But if your wife’s attacker is driven instead by revenge, well, revenge is a bitter fruit from a tree watered by obsession. It knows no natural end. Which means, sir, that the killer might strike again!”

For a moment the conversation was cut off by Toby driving into oncoming traffic and correcting himself before a truck collided with them.Toby’s breathing got heavier.

“It may be prudent if you do not return to the house, Mr Tramming. Your life may yet be in danger. And I believe you had taken up lodgings elsewhere?”

“I was staying in a hotel but I can’t -“

“No, I think you must return there forthwith. Perhaps you can drop me off and introduce me to the family though. Maybe we can concoct a narrative to explain both your absence and my presence?” Blanc poised to light his cigar, his eyes distant and staring. “Am I correct to surmise that your wife’s life was insured?”

“Of course, yes, both of us -“

“Then it is child’s play, Mr Tramming. I shall announce that I have been engaged by the insurance company to investigate the tragic death of your wife, perhaps even suggesting I think you might be the culprit. To preserve the integrity of my investigation I must ask that you remove yourself from the scene of the crime.” Blanc sucked in the smoke, enjoying his idea.

“Now please,” Blanc said, clamping the cigar in his teeth and returning a pen and notebook to his hands, “do continue with expounding the facts. Your brothers, their names and ages?”

“Roger, my - the elder. He is 45, two years my elder. He’s a doctor and quite successful in it. I’m sure we’re very proud of that. A radiologist. Whatever that is.”

“Someone tasked with the production and interpretation of radiographic medical imagery, a kind of x-ray, but in a larger sense.” Said Blanc absent mindedly. Toby stopped. Blanc looked up. “Do continue.”

“Roger had a wife. Messy divorce about ten years ago. He never remarried. He has a daughter who is at university now I think. Hoight is the youngest, four years below me. I mean, he’s my brother, not Roger’s son. He has four children! Hoight is…what we use to call a traditionalist. Very political. He’s an MP now and his wife Linda, raises the children. He’s, oh, he must be forty now, I don’t think we even had a party. Maybe I wasn’t invited.”

“A highly accomplished family you have” complimented Blanc.

Toby made another complicated hand gesture which would be impossible to explain but contained an element of thanks but also a sense that it was something beyond his control and thus beyond his desire to take credit. He continued: “I suppose he got that from Father - Father is terribly ill, as I said, has been much of his life, and my mother, Diana, she’s always taken care of him. His nurse as well as his partner. She doted on Hoight as a baby too. Well, on all of us! Sorry, when I say he got it - I mean his traditional streak.

“My mother was also of course very traditional, never had a job, no such things were far too liberal for her. And while I say Father is traditional he’s also an artist, so - “

“An artist? In what medium?”

“Oh my, you don’t know? My father is Patrick Tramming, the cartoonist. You know, Ran and Sack?”

Blanc, a seeming expert on medical terminology moments ago, was dumbfounded by popular entertainments.

“Oh of course, you’re American.” There was pity in the word, hanging in the air, and a hint of accusation, as if one should do as much as possible to avoid being born with those particular geographical constraints.

Blanc made a conciliatory gesture. “I am afraid so.”

“Ran and Sack are cartoon Vikings, my father drew them in Beano - a children’s comic magazine. Very popular,” Tramming added with a helpful air. “Also Digger Derrick, the Canal Boys…and political cartoons too, as the nom de plume Tramp.”

Blanc was still at a loss.

“Well, don’t let on! Everyone will be terribly disappointed the strips never made it across the Atlantic. I mean, there wasn’t a movie or anything but there were two tv shows. And my father drew lots of other works as a ghost.”

“It may be that these inestimable cartoons have crossed the seas; it may instead be that they have not crossed the desks of Mr Benoit Blanc.”

This time Tobys gesture was one indicating that this was no great fault in Benoit Blanc’s character. “Well it is children’s stuff, of course, but his political cartoons are well renowned as I say.”

“A cartoonist can be quite the savage critic. Is there any chance that your father had acquired enemies? Enemies that similarly might want to strike close to communicate a threat?”

“Oh dear no I don’t think so.” Toby pursed his lips. “Seems very unlikely. I mean - well, there qre such violent figures on the left these days? I don’t know. You are a suspicious man, Mr Blanc. I never would have thought of such a thing.”

“I have found in matters of murder it is best to be so. I must anticipate some ember of rage in every relationship.”

Toby nodded, “Yes of course, of course. Just like the -“ - and here his voice dropped to a whisper - “the society. There’s always a connection.”

“Well,” said Blanc carefully, “we must not confuse a healthy suspicion of danger somewhere with the fervent belief of danger everywhere.”

Toby made a gesture to suggest Blanc’s wisdom was well said and well taken.

Blanc returned to his questions. “You said your father was ill?”

Toby nodded as they drove past the Natural History Museum on Cromwell road. “Fathers been unwell as long as I’ve known him I suppose - had much worse this last decade. Mother says it’s his nerves but we would say a mental illness. Very easily given to stress and anxiety. Very fragile at times.”

“And he found your wife’s body? At the foot of the stairs you said?”

“Oh detective it was awful, just awful. He - his medicine makes his muscles cramp up so badly. He can barely move sometimes. He must have heard the killer. Or seen then coming. Then with all his strength he pulled himself out of his chair and stumbled or crawled to save her. We found him by her side just inches away, blood all over his clothes, her head cradled in one hand and then his other arm - his hand - his hand pointing -“

“He was paralysed from the effort but somehow in his last moments he pointed as if at the killer himself. His eyes, his face frozen in shock or fear, his whole body rigid but that finger, that finger pointing…”

“He couldn’t speak of course, could not tell us what had happened. His muscles are in some terrible rigour. Oh but it was if he had seen the devil himself, and as if his last gesture had been to point out the monster. To accuse them of their terrible crime! Or to point at them as they fled out the door! As if he could reach out and - “

The car was silent as Toby pulled finally into the street of his family home. “Forgive me, Mr Blanc. I know that I am probably jumping at shadows as you say. But these are frightening days. Someone has come for me and taken my wife and perhaps my father as well.”

Blanc was not a natural comforter but he did his best to indicate with a gesture that in such times of stress nobody could be blamed for a little emotion.

“And it was your brother found him?”

“Yes, Roger. And then I heard him shouting, I had come back to the house hoping to end the charade with my wife early - I think maybe I came from upstairs? And mother came in from the back garden. I suppose everyone was there soon enough. Roger was holding mother, and I think then Hoight called the police. And then his political secretary, because of course. ANd then - ”

Tobys gesture added here was the well known one for “o tempora o mores”. Then he reached for the car door handle.

“One moment, if you please Mr Tramming. There is still one more person we have not discussed.”

“Who?” His brow knitted in a kind of panic as if he had forgotten some crucial detail.

“Why your wife, of course. I’d like to know more about her before I go any further.”

Toby nodded and then became fierce in his stance and tone. “My wife was my angel, Mr Blanc. When she saw I was succeeding with my books she gave up everything to become my agent, my editor, my inspiration, my manager - she came to every book signing, every engagement, organised every part of my promotion and sales. She was a nurse herself you know, but gave it up without a thought. Went on every book tour even though flying made her terribly nauseous. She’d simply take some pills and charge ahead. if I was tired she would stay up making calls or fixing typos…then get me coffee in the morning before I got up. We were a team, a unit, a -“

Slowly, like water trickling through mud, Toby Tramming began to weep. The tears were dry, angry spurts on a desert of a face, and the force of the grief much lower down, in the lungs and diaphragm. Toby folded slowly in half and his forehead descended onto the shoulder of Benoit Blanc. Blanc knew the basic forms of human comfort (though his own upbringing had been scanty with them) and tried his best to place acknowledging touches with his other free hand. He considered several conversational gambits to end his discomfort before settling on the tactic of waiting for the storm to pass on its own. Shortly it did and Toby unfolded himself on the same diagonal arc. He smiled weakly, adjusted Blancs ascot and the two shared a gaze. It was brief and subtle but its meaning was clear: let us never speak of this again.

“Do not fret any further then, Mr Tramming. I suggest you take yourself to the nearest hotel and leave all further pursuit to me.” Blanc produced his card. “Telephone me when you have secured your location and I shall return to you and discuss my progress.”

“But what do you intend to do?”

“We must begin with all the facts and all the suspects, and as much as I appreciate your fear of shadowy agents of ancient knightly orders, the truth is that most murders begin close to us. As close as possible. Close as breathing.”

Blanc was mostly talking to himself as he gazed up at the imposing Chelsea-style house, where wealth and privilege abided and secrets and lies likely to match. He shook Toby Tramming’s hand and bade him go straight to a hotel and talk to no one else, all the while his eyes searching the house. It wasn’t for clues exactly, although Benoit Blanc’s eyes were never not searching for anything worthy of notice. It wasn’t for danger either although the thought of that never left his watchful mind. It was more a romantic impulse that could never die in his heart, a sense that Benoit Blanc would harbour until the day he died no matter how often the world revealed the worst in people and the violence they were capable of. Benoit Blanc believed that many people, maybe even most people were good, or as near enough to it, and that the sickness of murder was a perversion of humanity’s character and a sign of a great shadow upon the world he wished might be erased. So what Blanc was looking for in the house was some sign, some cosmic omen, to indicate the shadow that had fallen on this house among all other houses. If Blanc could see some note in the architecture that marked the house for evil then all would be clear: this house was cursed and naturally grew evil deeds within. Of course there were signs of trouble - wealth and privilege did most always bring out the worst in humans - but there was no clue on the brickwork to appease Benoit Blanc’s restless soul. Evil left no mark.

It was an imposing house still. It was attached to its fellows like so many from the 19th century and beyond, but not with the planned style of later centuries. Its bricks were far redder than its neighbours’ and its roof arced across it unlike the squarer ones beside. It was a face of windows - three on each side of the door and seven above, each as tall as a man, and white like bared teeth. The stairs to the raised oak door were stone and were bedecked with crenellations and statuettes that also ran along the gutters and the roof line. There were dragons and swords and shields that gave Blanc thoughts of knightly orders, and his eyes soon added to that as he saw the motto inscribed on the shield above the door. The ancient concrete read “nil sine fraternitas” - nothing without the brotherhood, Blanc clumsily translated.

There was no sign of activity inside and only faint glimmers of light behind thick curtains. In the cool morning it was easy to be struck by romantic notions of dark figures and secret vows; knights of old striking eternal vows of brotherhood. There were also fearsome beasts among the metonymic devices - dragons, chimera, lions standing rampant, passant, stattna and sejant all. Some looked outwards at the viewer which was known as guardant, and indeed it was not without effect on any visitor arriving at the house. Benoit Blanc was not of a very romantic inclination but he was given to pause a little longer to consider if the house before him was indeed a metaphorical lion’s den, and he stepping idly into the lunchtime menu.

All of a sudden a dark-windowed blue van roared to life and seemed to take off after the disappearing car of Mr Tramming. Weaker minds than Blancs might have concocted fantasies further at such an occurrence but he was not so hungry for danger as to manufacture it with supposition and paranoia. No, thought Blanc, let us see these animals and determine if lions they actually be.

Chapter Text

The inside of the Tramming house was more ominous and intimidating than the outside but for different reasons. Patrick Tramming was a cartoonist of a long career and some fame, and his passion was written on these walls - or drawn. It began with pictures of the family - his own parents, then siblings, children, cousins and grand children, at every age, drawn in various styles and levels of caricature. The opening foyer was dominated with a highly stylised version of the artist himself, all lips and eyebrows, glowering down at the new visitor entering. Beyond, in the hall, there was police tape across the path but Blanc could see larger images, now of the adult children. Amongst them were the occasional historical and political caricature. Then came the characters. Blanc did not know the comics that had entertained British children but the success of merchandising was clear. By the door he had just entered was a five foot tall statue of the viking heroes Ran and Sack, cast in some plastic resin. The pair were then on posters, plates, framed covers and framed sketches, then, stretching into rooms left and right there were clearly more merchandising paraphernalia of a rising cast of characters.

There was nothing especially sinister about the cartoon characters but their figures were also exaggerated; swollen noses under swooping eyes, popping bellies and mountainous muscles. Combined with the effects of the caricatures, it began to produce an effect of altered reality, like rows of fun house mirrors, distorting reality until one thought they were the one misformed, not the images. Perhaps that was the intent. Blanc had not been cowed by imagery in the concrete and he remained resolute here. It was unsettling, but he clenched his jaw and removed its effect on the eye.

To his most immediate left these collections extended to another room, and further ahead they donned the walls of a steep landed and carpeted staircase, with every few steps bearing one large portraiture, except at the very bottom where it seemed tragedy and physics has struck together to damage wall, floor and things displayed upon them. All of this he saw and considered as he also brought into focus the person before him.

The person who had opened the door was revealed to be a housekeeper named Cleo. She had accepted Blanc’s explanation as from an insurance company and asked him to wait with the cold skeptical voice housekeepers so often excelled at. She did not walk far; immediately upon entering the morning room or library to his left she had stopped near the door and now figures were craning into the doorframe to examine him. He removed his hat politely and smiled his warmest smile, and was beckoned forward.

“Benoit Blanc.”

It was all he said. He was not one to offer much by the way of introduction in any case, least of all when he was probing the edge of a mystery. He had been right: the paraphernalia and caricatures continued into this room. It must have been a popular room for the family patriarch; it was designed to show off achievements not just work - trophies, awards, laudations and photographs of shaking hands with other lauded artists. There were three people in the room; one chair was conspicuously empty. The elder of the two men was standing by the window. Judging by his fine tailored suit, this was Roger, the doctor, who no doubt had offices in this rich part of London and patients equally situated. He was the first to speak.

“And what business is that, Mr Blanc?” he extorted.

“Insurance, sir, but I do hope you will not hold that against me. I am a detective, I suppose; an investigator of situations. I am a representative of my parent company, and also of the person that I presume is your brother Tobias, in regarding to the settlement of his dear departed wife’s estate.”

“This is hardly the time, man” retorted the man in the suit.

“I know this is the worst possible moment for any intrusion, but unfortunately this is force majeure: I am required by my employer to come at this time to this place no matter how much I fear it disturbs you. But,” pleaded Blanc, raising his hands a little, “I will try not to take up too much of your time. I just need to ask some questions.”

“What about?” said the younger man. Blanc thought he would be the other brother, Hoight.

“Well, about the death, and whether it was an accident or an act of homicide, and the evidence towards these facts. Which is why I must be here, now, despite the circumstances. I need to ask my questions as soon as possible.”

Hoight stood up into the centre of the small room. “What could the questions be about, though? Are you suggesting this was some accident? A stiff beeeze knocked over the fifty pound statue?”

“Well you see that’s just the kind of detail I don’t have, Mr Tramming - you are Hoight Tramming? And you would be Roger?”

“I am,” said the taller gentleman.

“And you would be Mrs Tramming, the late Patrick Tramming’s wife?”

The thin and austere woman hadn’t spoken. She regarded Blanc like a frog regarding a fly, and gave no response.

“The police have already put us through the wringer, Mr - Blanc, was it?” said the younger man. He moved towards and then beside Blanc, hoping to move Blanc towards the door he had entered. “I’m sure you can get everything you need from them.”

Blanc was tall and impassive and did not allow himself to be moved by officious means. “Sir, I’m sure you’re someone who knows of the many failings of the police force, in their thoroughness and even their enthusiasm.” Blanc was trying to flatter Hoight’s conservative views and it worked; the MP bent at the hips and broke into a smile at the warming suggestion.

“But do you intend to do better, Mr Blanc? To catch this killer?” All of a sudden the mistress of the house spoke. “You are not someone who hunts criminals. You are an errand boy for financiers.”

“Well, you’d be surprised what I can turn up in my proceedings, ma’am. You see I am a private detective who has operated in many capacities, and am here on loan to these insurance agents -“

Hoight smaller his fingers. “That’s where I know you from! There was a Benoit Blanc who solved the murder of that YouTube person. That’s you!” He added a poke at Blancs ribs.

Blanc smiled but not with his eyes. He didn’t like to brag. “Indeed so.”

“Blanc, if you can speed any of this up, of course we’d be indebted to you.” Roger bowed his head but he still hadn’t moved from the window. “But what can we tell you that we didn’t already relate to the police?”

“Oh well, as I say, Mr Tramming, the police do not always record things well nor share things willingly. I would like if I may for you to tell me everything again. Or for the first time for me, that is.”

The two men looked at their mother who gave an almost imperceptible shrug of accession with her chin. Blanc bobbed his head enough to show thanks but not so much he felt would impinge upon his dignity. It was hard not to feel like a Shakespearean clown when those around you acted like kings and queens, but Blanc would resist the casting as much as he could.

Hoight relinquished his hand from Blancs elbow and allowed the detective to enter the concave library room. Blanc declined an offer to sit. He was still very much surveying the room and its occupants and was not ready to descend from his eyrie. “Please,” he said, “if you could take me all through the events as you recall them.”

Roger spoke up. “Well, I found the body. I was coming here after working in the office - the house is closer than my home, I live in Reading you see - “

“Oh get on with it,” said Hoight sitting back down on the couch. He patted his grey linen suit around the breast area. “We - mother and I - were in the garden. We were having afternoon tea. Cleo had prepared it for us.” He craned his neck to look for the housekeeper but she was nowhere to be seen. “She can confirm it,” he sniffed. “And anyway I’m always here on Thursdays for tea, aren’t I mother?”

The steel-eyed matriarch said nothing, and did not even assert an opinion with that powerful jawline. Blanc saw in her a woman who had made a habit of being silent first out of necessity then later as a path to her absolute power.

Roger stared coldly at his brother and continued. “I saw father lying on the ground and Charlie - her body, I mean - she was almost on top of him. I - I called out something, I don’t know what -“

“I heard something like ‘oh god oh god’ and ‘father’” added Hoight, using a pantomime voice for his brother. “We ran inside. Roger was bending over them and Toby came down the stairs screaming.”

“You examined the body medically?” Asked Blanc.

Roger swallowed. He did not enjoy the question. “I - I could see great damage to Charlie - her skull was shattered, Mr Blanc. And father was pointing, pointing and trying to say something, I tried to move him onto his back and relax him, but he lost consciousness. He was still breathing though, so I said to call an ambulance.”

“Yes that’s right I told Cleo to phone an ambulance.” Hoight added, standing to mirror his brother. “Roger and I moved father to the couch. Toby was weeping and wheezing, absolutely useless. But we didn’t move the body - Charlie. Or the, the statue. We’re not stupid enough to disturb a crime scene.” Hoight puffed up, as if his experience watching American crime dramas gave him a unique scholarship.

“What I’m trying to ascertain is the nature of the injuries upon the victim. Did she fall down the stairs or was she struck at the bottom?”

“I’m not a forensic expert, Mr Blanc.” Roger adopted a hostile pose, and Blanc imagined him in a witness box.

“No, no of course. But there was no sense of one or the other?”

Roger made a gesture of annoyance. “I didn’t think she fell far down the stairs, I suppose. But I was distracted by the large, bloody statue that had struck her head and lay beside her.”

“I have no access to crime scene photos. I do not mean to be ghoulish, but I need to know as much about the scene as you found it.” Feeling that Hoight was about to speak, Blanc extended a silencing hand. “And I need to hear it from the first person on the scene.”

Roger looked at his shoes and shifted his feet. The deep white woolen carpet had inch deep imprints from his Chelsea boots. They took a long time to fade. “I can try. I’m sure I’ll not be entirely accurate.”

“Let me return to the exact time. Can you remember when you left your offices and when you arrived here?”

“Well, I left, I suppose, about four. I saw that Charlie was here because she was parked in the drive, and then I suppose I must have I heard a noise as I was getting out of the car. I pushed open the door, and - “

Fate is, most of the time, late to its curtain calls, but in this case it hit the mark perfectly. The door rattled open and a tall blonde woman entered. Older than everyone but the steel-eyed matriach (who thinned her lips ever-so-microscopically at the arrival, Blanc noticed) she had the carriage of a woman much overlooked, and much dedicated to making sure it only happened once per overlooker.

“So you are having a meeting!” she declared, removing her coat. “You said you weren’t”

“We’re not really - “ began Roger.

“It’s just a, well, a family chat,” said Hoight. “And then Mr Blanc came in and insisted on asking us all these questions again.”

“Mr Blanc?” the arrival asked, extending her hand to the detective with an implied question.
“That is indeed me,” said Benoit Blanc, taking the offered palm. “I’m with the insurance company.”

“Oh dear, how sad for you,” said the tall woman. “I’m Myra Mills. I’m well - practically family, really.” It was an insult, and the other members of the room were struck deep by it. Roger scowled at his shoes; Hoight flushed red and tightened his grip on his mother’s shoulder. “I’m Patrick’s partner. Co-creator. The power behind the throne, even,” she joked to Blanc. “They wouldn’t let me see him at the hospital,” she added, turning back to the family. “Not family by their definition! So how is he?”

“Stable for the moment. Weak, unfortunately.” Roger seemed almost to apologise for his father’s condition. “He can’t speak, can’t sit up.”

Myra walked to Roger and awkwardly embraced him. “I’m so sorry. To all of you.” She seemed to internally shift down gears. “You - you know that I don’t mean to tease, about -”

There was a silence. Of grief, of embarrassment, of regret, and an ever-present antagonism. Blanc broke it. “I am please to meet you, Miss Mills. I have not yet mentioned this to the family, but I’m not familiar with Mr Tramming’s work at all, or your part in it.”

“Well, you might be forgiven for the latter, darling,” she laughed. “Patrick had a way of keeping all the limelight to himself. Just a writer, me” she said, miming a coquettish humility. “Oh, there I go again,” she jumped. “I don’t really mean it - I mean - well…”

Blanc saved her more embarrassment. “When you arrived, I was asking Mr Roger to recreate the scene of the crime, for my edification.” Blanc indicated Myra should take a seat and all of a sudden it became a theatre, with Roger once again in the spotlight. “Well, yes, I came after four, and I came in the door, and as I said, I saw them at the bottom of the stairs.”

“I rushed to them. Charlie lay…there was - I’m sorry, Mr Blanc. It was horrible. A lot of blood. God. Frightful stuff. And father frozen stiff. Like - like he’d seen a ghost. But if he’d seen the deed then - ”

“And you confirm that you noticed nothing that would indicate any other wounds. No sign of a struggle, or a fall?”

Roger pursed his lips and looked upwards. “None that I could see or saw. She was face down, man. And I - I looked to my father.”

“Was there something in his medical condition that could cause the kind of a seizure he seems to have suffered?”

“Father was taking a drug called chlorpromazine. One of the side effects can be muscle spasms and seizures. Especially after a great shock.”

“So you believe he was seated in here - “

“He was always in here, in the library, in the afternoon,” butted in Hoight. “Mother would bring him tea than take hers in the garden. I was there when she brought it - maybe half an hour earlier?”

“It was three o’clock.” The voice came from the icy-still throat of the matriach, Diana Tramming. “I always brought his tea at three. And then yes, I would go into the garden.”

“We were in the garden,” chorused Hoight.

“So your father was seated here, in the library. But why was Miss Charlie here, at the house?”

“Oh Charlie lives here. I mean - well, until - Charlie and Tobias. Tobias and Charlie - “ Roger stumbled.

Hoight broke in again. “My father was a most generous man. Tobias’s books don’t always keep him in the pink. Not like a doctor’s salary or that of an MP, like myself. I’ve always done very well for myself. We never needed a hand out. But Tobias, well. Have you met him?”

Benoit Blanc allowed that he had.

“Well you see how he is. Anyway, when times are tough he always comes here. Tobias and Charlie were staying here until, well, who knows. I think he said he was waiting for some TV deal to come through?”

“Yes, he said something like that - “ his brother concurred.

“Or until father dies and leaves him a bundle - oh no, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.” Hoight hid his face. “He will be alright, won’t he? Father?”

There was a silence again. Pregnant, accusatory, and sharp. Blanc did not save it. He was watching how it sat, and who would break it.

It was Roger. “Anyway - I, we assume it was a break in. Someone broke in upstairs or through the door I suppose since it’s usually unlocked when we’re home, and was going to make off with some of Fathers art or the older family stuff… and then Charlie surprised them. So they threw the statue at her.”

“And the nature of this particular weapon?”

“The police took it.” This from Diana, with disapproval. “As evidence.”

“A statue? Could you describe it?”

“Well, it was an orb, really.” This from Hoight, with pointed accuracy. “Quite an old piece. 18th century but designed to imitate medieval style. Bronze I think.”

Roger made a gesture to indicate that he had no way to verify this information but it sounded correct. “Something one of the ancestors bought or had made. It usually sits upstairs in the gallery, I can show you Mr Blanc-“

“In just a moment, thank you. I’m still trying to visualise the tableau. I hope you don’t find it ghoulish of me, but it helps to have the clearest possible picture.”

Blanc got up and move into the area below the staircase. It was not a true spiral but the walls were curved to make it look like they encompassed an arc. Blanc pointed to the upper story then the halfway landing. “So our killer is, we believe, some amount upon the stairs. He fears he has been discovered and sees someone coming, and perhaps does not think he has time to flee. He drops a heavy object onto his pursuer to avoid discovery. And then, one assumes, escapes upstairs? Perhaps leaving the very way he entered?”

There was a general murmur of reluctant affirmation - a reluctance born, Blanc generously believed, from their inability to confirm any of this precisely.

“So now, then, your father, Mr Patrick Tramming, is sitting here, in the library, as he always does on an afternoon.” Blanc crossed back to the chair in question like a dancer crossing the stage. “He hears a heavy thud. He turns, or perhaps looks up to see through the doorway that Charlie lies on the floor,” Blanc said, mimicking each step. “ And he gets up and rushes to her side -“

“Not rushes, really.” This from Myra. Once again she shrugged apologetically. “The man could hardly walk sometimes.”

Hoight sniffed. “He had good days and bad. But his muscles did cramp up.”

“They’re right, Mr Blanc. And if he was having an adrenaline spike from fear - he might have already find his muscles locking up.”

“As you say, Mr Roger. So - his body perhaps wracked with new pain and old infirmity - he makes his way as swiftly as he is able, to the fallen woman lying here.” Blanc danced back towards the stairs asking Roger and the others to follow, which they did in an uncertain trickle.

“Yes that’s right,” said the taller brother.

“And he falls to his knees here at the foot of the stairs, about where you are standing now, Mr Tramming, and this is where you find the two. Is that correct, Mister Tramming?”

“Yes. I mean, I assume he’d tried to turn Charlie over, or - “

“And he was pointing, do you remember? Like he’d seen something, or someone” broke in Hoight.

“Now you may begin to see why I was so curious about his pose because these stairs are very steep and I cannot imagine a view of anyone at the top even - “ and here Blanc dropped himself to the thick white carpet - “from on my knees.”

Hoight bent down to look. “No it was - well like he was pointing at the wall.”

“Or perhaps what was falling off the wall? I can see by the fine outline of dust there was a picture there. You see, it was Tobias Tramming who said to me that also that your father was pointing and I thought perhaps he was pointing not at the killer who might have already fled, but at something else he could see. Something that might be some clue he wished to give. I was given to wonder immediately if it was the thing he might have been indicating was some photograph or artwork or even some other historical artefact, when I noticed the small outline of dust and the incomplete pattern of images following down the stairs.”

“It was one of Philips caricatures.” The clear glass voice cut through the air from the matriarch who had not moved from her chair nor a muscle in her face. “The police also took it, for evidence. It broke in the fall. No doubt Charotte fell back aaginst it, then to the floor.” She said it as if it was obvious to see and folly to think anything else.

“If you’ll forgive me, Mrs Tramming, do you think the contents of the image might have been important? To have been something your husband wanted to indicate when he knew his lungs might not allow him to do so?”

Diana Tramming tightened her lips again. “Well. I assumed Toby would have said. It was a drawing of Roger as a young man - but dressed as a knight. A knight of a holy order.”

Chapter Text

Benoit Blanc was a kind man, and was given therefore to politeness and even delicacy where such things were needed. He did not like to intrude upon, comment about or even judge the peculiarities or peccadilloes of others. Of course, there was great necessity when it came to being a detective: peculiarities were frequently pertinent and peccadilloes a pointer to so many greater sins. And when he saw callousness and carelessness in morality he was swift to condemn. But until such time he withheld critique and curtailed his curiosity. He tried to let live and proverbially do likewise. It was of no matter to him as a person if members of the Tramming family were trying to plot or scheme without the presence of the co-author of their patriarch’s estate. Nor did he as yet feel any strong interest or objection to the male family members choosing to take on membership of any secret members of a secret or semi-secret fraternity, nor did he discern yet if he cared how deeply they cleaved to any strictures of such an organization. As an American, such things were already a mystery to him to begin with. Orders of Garters and Hoods were as foreign to him as the operations of a lady’s brassiere or a SIkh’s turban, and equally, he felt, a private matter.

But he had to pay attention to such things because he was cast as a detective in a case of murder. And so it was as a detective - as a detective, understand - he needed to know all of this and more about the secret order and its members.

He had been escorted upstairs by Roger to examine the small museum of family heirlooms that filled the foyer at the top of the stairs. First Roger had led him through the foyer to a small study where the window had been shattered from its frame. Outside the roof was relatively flat and before it dropped to the yard; the next house was mere inches away. Things had clearly been examined by police and, explained Roger, thoroughly dusted for fingerprints. Above the fine oak desk a solemn elk head stared out unapologetically mute. The laptop has been found on the ground, most likely, all agreed, knocked or dropped as the suspected thief fled fearing discovery. It was all straightforward and correct, thought Blanc as Roger led him silently back to the trophy room. The tall antechamber bore rows of paintings in gilded frames between three simple glass fronted cabinets with steel handles. They were secured by locks but the key was in one of them. “Nothing here is really valuable, you understand, Blanc. It’s old but it’s not ornate. Only valuable to historians.”

Blanc nodded as he examined the shelves. Three of them each containing three levels. It was mostly as Roger had described: cloth uniforms, medals and medallions, soldiers kits from wars two centuries ago, a carved rhino horn, an ebony relief likely purloined from a remote tribe for far less than it was worth and would have been, Blanc imagined, highly valuable to the carver.. A small etching doubtlessly worth tens of thousands of dollars had also clearly fallen beneath the doctor’s definition of ‘valuable’. Most everything else would fetch hundreds of pounds at an auction. Blanc marvelled that the family didn’t even lock their front door.

“The police have been through all of this, I imagine?”

“Yes and they made a hell of a mess dusting for fingerprints. Just got it tidied up.” Roger ran a finger along an edge looking for dust. Then he reached up to the top of one cabinet and came back with a tiny brass key in his fingers.

“It went there,” said Roger, indicating a shelf as he opened a door. “And yes I thought so: there is a picture.” He fumbled into his fingers a greying historical card bearing a black and white photograph. “Steel and brass orb. Cast likely in the 1830s. Gift from the Earl of Stanley. In the 1880s added to a setting bearing the motto of the family…” he trailed off, passing the card over. “Nil sine fraternitas”.

Blanc nodded. “I saw the same sign as I came into the house. Is it an old family crest?”

“No, well, not comparatively. My grandfather and his father were all jokesters. They made up most of this stuff to make us look fancy

“And the meaning? My Latin is a little rusty”

“Well the motto means nil - nothing - ‘nothing without brotherhood’ and the crown has buttercups and snapdragons…which I think grandfather told me symbolise childishness and deceit.” Benoit Blanc was mystified and it showed. “See it’s all a pretence, Blanc.” He grabbed the base that had held the orb and brought it right under Blancs nose. “Under the crown is, well, it’s supposed to be an iron horse shoe and a pile of sulfur. That’s the ingredients of pyrite.”

Blanc knew this one. “Ah! Fools gold!”

“Yes, precisely. We never had any ranks or titles. The family line goes back to the Tudor’s but since great grandfather we were all tradesmen and civil servants. So it was all a joke. See if they could fool the toffs they went to school with and so on.”

“Forgive me, Mr Tramming, but the motto about brotherhood - your brother, when I spoke to him - he seemed to indicate that there was a fraternal order -“ and Blanc felt it proper to lower his voice “perhaps a secret one, to which your father belonged?”

Roger Tramming let out a noise like a horse, bubbling a sigh through his puffed cheeks and tilted at his hips. “Well that sort of depends who you ask, I mean. And your definition of a secret society. Did my father and several patriarchs before him participate in a kind of boys club? Yes. Did it get a bit out of hand when grandfather and uncle John were doing it? I think so. Would I call it a secret society? Not really? It was another joke, see - like the motto - “ and here Roger proffered the large orb again - “no sign of the order, do you see? No sign of the thing. It was a group of pretenders pretending to pretend, I suppose.”

Benoit was going to press further but was cut short. “Did Toby say something about this? He’s always the one who kept up the Order business. He thought it was all very amusing, and I suppose Hoight did as well for a while.”

“The impression I received from Mr Tramming was he took it very seriously indeed, and that he was not alone in doing so.”

“But - you don’t think it’s about this -about Charlotte? You can’t be serious?”

“It isn’t whether I am serious Mr Tramming; only a question if others are.”

Roger took in a deep weary breath. “Mr Blanc, are you man of discretion?” he asked plaintively.

“When called to be, but I’m not sure I know where this is going.”

“Blanc. My father has a health condition as we’ve mentioned. His whole life he he’s struggled with depression, anxiety and low level schizophrenia. Which, in his older years, have all worsened. And all of these conditions have encouraged a fanciful mind - and indeed vice versa.”

Roger Tramming closed the collection cupboard door and stared out the small round window into the distance. “I’m sure you know much has been said about the link between genius and madness, Mr Blanc.”

“Much has been said, yes, and much bad behaviour excused in its name,” said Blanc. Roger waved a hand. “Oh father never beat us, or anything like that, no he was just well, fanciful. He’d tell is stories as kids that it took us thirty years sometimes to realise they were all made up. I suppose I took to cataloguing some of this stuff to find fact from fiction. While Toby I think wanted to confuse them more!” Roger finished with a chuckle.

“Toby was the most interested in the fantastical stuff, and of course father indulged him. I couldn’t imagine what things have been conjured up inside Toby’s head.”

Blanc was not to be deterred. “There are still facts, Mr Tramming, that can be established. With clarity, one way or the other. Such as: did your father tell you he was a member of a society? Was he in fact so? Did he attend meetings and have regular contact with other members?” Blanc put each question on a finger extended from his left hand, pointing to each one with his right pointer.

“Yes, yes, definitely yes but I don’t know how seriously he or anyone else took it. They would gather at the club and get drunk. Talk about the old days.”

“Did the society continue, passed down from father to son? Were you inducted? Were younger men at Oxford following suit?” Three more fingers.

“Yes, yes, but I mean, I never went to any secret meetings or anything. And so I don’t know, really about other men - I assume it’s very likely - “

“Does your father’s portrait represent you in such a form? Was that another joke? And at whose expense?” Blanc was enjoying the triplet rhythm.

“Er, well yes, but it wasn’t a joke. I think he drew that when I got up at college, and there was certainly a sense that I would soon be doing all the same sort of stuff. It wasn’t a joke, more of an affable suggestion?”

“Am I right in saying that you passed on joining this order then?”

Roger made the horse noise again. “I say, it’s a funny line of questions, Blanc, but as a matter of a fact, it all seemed too ridiculous to me. I went to a dinner or two, and then after school - either it felt too cloak and dagger, and thus not my line at all, or it was too ridiculous to pretend otherwise. Toby - “

Blanc cut him off. “Is it possible, then, that some members of the society took its membership, its secrecy and its protection very seriously indeed? Could it have changed over time to become a darker shadow of itself? Could new generations see it as a club that needed to be protected, whatever the cost? Or those who reject its bosom needing to be punished?”

Roger shook his head. “No, no, no, not at all. Not the thing father was involved in. It was all too silly, too self mocking. It

“Then why has Toby Tramming been so keen to tell me of his belief that things are otherwise? Why did he express to me a terrible fear of just such a deeply wound conspiracy, one driven even to murder?”

“Because he’s as mad as my father!” Roger shouted. “Probably,” he added, trying to lessen the blow of the shout.

Roger stared out the window again, his mouth twitching in fury. “This is ridiculous, and I do not see any point in it. You’re pandering to paranoid fantasies. This isn’t some insurance inquiry, is it? We have a burglar come into our house and you are talking nonsense instead of catching the man who, who -“

And now it was Roger Trammings turn to begin to weep. Angry pink tears came from the corners of his eyes, blinked into bloodshot fury. “You’ve had your questions, Blanc, and now I want mine. Who do you really work for? What’s this all about? What fool ideas did my brother put in your head?”

Blanc met fury with his piercing resolute blue eyes. “Sir I do not mean to pester you or waste your time. I will confess that I am a detective and my presence here is not incidental nor financial. But it is instantly obvious to me that no burglar or home invader killed Charlotte Tramming. Nothing about this was a random encounter, and what it is about, sir, is cold blooded murder.”

“I’m sorry Blanc but I don’t believe you,” said Roger, puffing up again. “How can you possibly tell?”

“Sir I asked you if the police had come through this trophy room and you replied that they had made a mess. Now that implies there was no mess before they came, or at least a lesser one. Your house breaker enters through a window, may be so, and then comes past these treasures. And may be so, as you say, he declines to steal them, looking for less traceable goods.”

Blanc had experimented briefly with amateur dramatics at university, like many other men, and then discarded such fancies but just as he had downstairs he began at act out the action. He moved through to the top of the stairs and cocked his head.

“Then, you surmise, he hears a noise below. Afraid of discovery he turns to find some weapon to slow the person coming towards him. He sees a big heavy metal ball -“

Roger was not an idiot. “In a glass cupboard with a locked door.”

“Exactly. He does not smash the glass. He doesn’t take a heavy picture frame or the elk head off the wall. He finds the key that you took from on top of the cupboard and opens it and goes straight for an object he knows will suffice. Only someone very familiar with this room could know what to grab and how to get it. Someone who had spent many many hours here.”

Roger was shaking his head. Blanc barreled on.

“Only, I suspect, Mr Tramming, yourself and the immediate family. Perhaps maybe a close friend or business partner such as Miss Myra Mills. Perhaps a long-installed servant or house cleaner. All the persons here with us in the house at this moment. All of them, and including you sir, are not only suspects in this crime but the only suspects there can be. Unless you can think of anyone else -“

Roger was pale, but he rallied at the question. “Hoight - his wife and kids. They lived here too, for years. Well, when the kids were younger.”

“Then they too are suspects in my investigation, Mr Tramming.”

“Nonsense, Blanc, it’s - you’re talking nonsense! Everyone loved Charlie!”

“Motives may lay hidden behind the rosiest of surfaces. Toby Tramming believed the family resented his wife as she tried to separate him from his family and his family duties. Particularly when she spoke out against him joining the Order. Or leaving its auspices.”

“It’s true there’s some rule about only one son being able to join but it was always going to be Hoight, he’s the ambitious one. But no, no again. Nobody would do that! It’s madness. It’s fairytale.”

“Nobody?”

“Nobody.”

“There is another possibility: someone else who has spent much time in this house, someone perhaps who was privy to this room and its contents, someone who saw the orb regularly as it was part of the paraphernalia of their society. Were all the meetings of your father’s associates conducted at his club?”

Roger was looking sicker with each passing moment. “No, they also met in the house. More and more as my father - ” He swallowed. “I suppose that one of them - that makes more sense to me than one of us…”

Blanc steadily went to his inner coat pocket and produced the news articles he had been given earlier that day. “Leading up to the incident, Mr Tramming was sent an envelope containing these articles. He believed - or came to believe - people might be threatening his life. Or threatening him with consequences if he failed to obey some unseen or unknown directive.”

Roger was now pale. “Blanc, last week, there was someone outside my rooms. I was - with a patient - and I saw someone crouching down in a car, trying not to be seen. I think they had a camera. At the time I thought they were trying to see my patients undress I suppose so I went out to see them off - and they drove away in a hurry. I didn’t think anything else about it at the time.”

Roger looked at Blanc, deeply afraid. “Mr Blanc, what the hell is going on here?”

Benoit Blanc carefully folded the articles up and returned them to his pocket. “Ask your family to speak to me individually, sir,” he said with a dark seriousness, “and I will do everything in my power to find out.”

Chapter Text

Benoit Blanc had spent the next few hours interviewing the Tramming family. He had then walked through the city, and returned to his hotel quite late and slept hard with no dreams. Now, his mind was racing over every conversation as he descended to the hotel pool level for a thorough session in the steam room. Blanc enjoyed a deep warm bath but the hotel room only has a shower, with the terrible water pressure so common on the British isles. A good steam would be sufficient replacement, followed, he mused, with a good swim. He donned a yellow spotted scarf tightly knotted around his aging neck, hotel flip flops and a figure-hugging one piece and flip-flopped down to the sauna. It was blissfully unoccupied. Benoit Blanc enjoyed company on many occasions. A steam was not one of them.

He had asked Roger Tramming to set him up in a private room to conduct his further interviews. Roger had called it the Morning Room. It seemed to Blanc mostly identical to the parlour, the library, and the breakfast room, but he was far from an expert in interior decoration. There had been much grumbling from all present about his request so Blanc was relieved he had got Roger on side first. He also lessened the blow by indicating to Diana, Toby and Myra that he had more questions for Roger to finish first.

Roger did not appreciate this. He had sat opposite Blanc, at a sharp angle in a sharp suit, his legs crossed, his fingers rattling on the table and his moustache twitching with contained frustration. Having been convinced of a murder plot he was insulted to also be potentially convicted as the perpetrator. Blanc smiled his easy-going smile at him in an effort to make the man relax.

“Just a few more questions, if you’ll just permit me.”

Roger gesticulated the common sign for, as younger folk might say it, “I would rather not, but go off, Queen”. The floor was Blanc’s.

“How long have you been a doctor?”

“Twenty three years. I studied medicine at Cambridge then worked at the Radcliffe centre as a surgeon and then specialised in radiology.”

“I believe it is a very difficult profession - hard work. Long hours. Did it have any effect on your marriage?”

Roger rustled his lips like he wanted to eat his moustache. “Irrelevant.”

Blanc smiled. “If you will allow me, Mr Tramming, to decide what is and is not relevant at this time.”

Roger looked away. “Lots of things put stress on my marriage.”

“Your daughter. I take it she has been to the house?”

“Many times. But Blanc, I have already made her life a misery, and also her mother’s. Whatever I can do or say to stop you including them in this mess, I will. I can tell you neither of them are in the country. Margorie is in America, and my daughter has now travelled there to study there as well. The brain drain as it ever was.” Roger shrugged.

“And I can call them and confirm this?”

“You can if you really must.” He began to write down phone numbers.

“And your own whereabouts? I can confirm those with your rooms?”

“I…yes. You can call them. I left at my usual time, just as I said.” Roger’s head dropped. Blanc decided to try something else.

“Tell me again about coming to the house. What you saw that day, coming in the dor.”

“I’ve told you already. I saw Father at the bottom of the stairs. Blood everywhere, all over him. Charlie sort of crumpled over. I’ve been a doctor a long time but it’s been - I don’t work in the ER. I don’t see people like that. Her face was all smashed in, Blanc. And you think one of us - or - “

Blanc deflected Roger’s rising tone. “Can you think of anyone else who might want to harm Charlie.”

“I’ve told you, no. She was …very kind.”

Blanc was familiar in the ways men talked about women. Kind was an ocean of a word, full of currents and depths. “Were you jealous, Mr Tramming, of your brother? Having what you did not?”

“You’re very personal, Mr Blanc.”

Blanc smiled. It was a grim smile. “Murder is a personal business. Especially in the case of motive.”

“But that’s what I’m telling you - nobody had a motive. She was a delight. She loved Toby. She took care of him. She’d rather die than see him have a bad day. She helped type out his manuscripts sometimes. Call his publishers. Get him up and dressed for a book signing or something. She was that kind of person - always helping. She’d walk over hot coals for folks, but him especially.”

“Perhaps you are right. Let us then consider the other possibility we discussed: that this was the act of an intruder, someone who knew the house but entered unseen that day. They snuck up the stairs and waited in secret for their target to emerge - or perhaps called her to the bottom of the stairs into range of the missile -.”

Roger’s knuckles were turning white. “I don’t know. I don’t know. You’ve made me question everything, Blanc. Of course someone could get into the house. It’s too big. We come and go all the time. We would just assume it was one of us.”

“What about security? No cameras? No alarms?”

“There is an alarm system, yes. Insurance company insisted.”

“And yet it didn’t go off when the window in the study was broken.”

“We don’t have it on during the day, most of the time. Unless we’re out. And Mother and Father are almost always in, these days.”

“It seems therefore that we have an ever-widening possible range of suspects. And yet do you know, Mr Tramming, why your brother contacted me in the first place?”

“No - “

“Because he feared he would be accused of the crime.” Blanc motioned to a nearby newspaper. “The press coverage of their argument.”

Roger didn’t look where Blanc pointed. Blanc noticed that was Roger’s way. His eyeline was resolute, no matter how one tried to intrude. It was a practiced mannerism, to stay calm and steady and reasonable.

“I had avoided all that.”

“You told me nobody could have had any animosity towards her, yet you knew she was arguing with your brother. Mr Tramming indicated to me that the marriage might be breaking down. You all come and go here, that’s what you said? You spent a lot of afternoons here, after work. You must have come across them often. It seems to me that long before a man departs his house to sleep elsewhere there are signs, Mr Tramming. There are rows, or perhaps cold silences. It seems to me that a man who knows his family well would not be blind to any of this. And yet you tell me nobody had any objection to the character of Mrs Charlie Tramming.”

Roger said nothing. Blanc nodded and paused for a moment. “The English, so I am told, are well heeled in the art of keeping up appearances. But I am not, sir, an Englishman, and I will say what must be said, if murder is afoot.”

Roger’s stare was icy and deep like a mountain pick-axe. “A marriage is like a black box, Blanc. As maybe you are not aware. What happened inside was not my business.”

In the sauna, Blanc bit his lip. He had not meant to antagonise Roger with his inquiry. He normally left such direct questioning to the police. Lies were the stock of human nature, and he found them tiresome. But with the antagonism, Roger had shut down, and was no longer cooperating. People were like clams on the beach: swift to slam shut and guard their interior fiercely at the slightest hint of danger. A detective had one chance to sneak a probing blade inside before that moment, and he had lost hiss.

Following the idea of someone not in the family entering the house, but a known visitor, Blanc had asked next to speak to Hoight, the youngest son, to at last entangle this mystery of the False Order, or whatever they called themselves. In that regard, the youngest of the Tramming boys was most knowledgable and loquacious - with a price.

“Sign here, and here,” said Hoight languidly presenting a three page legal document. Blanc hesitated as he always did when facing a decision, for a moment doing his fish impression with a slack jaw.

“Just what, exactly, am I signing here, sir?”

“It’s a non-disclosure agreement. Very standard. My lawyer drew it up just in case this happened. Well, it already happened when I joined the party - you know I’m a sitting member, I suppose?, and then when I was vetted for the seat.” Hoight looked at Blanc with both pity and scorn, for the failing and sin of not knowing how important Hoight Tramming was.

Blanc had managed to close his mouth but was still clearly dazzled.

“It’s just saying that you won’t reveal the things we discuss about the Order for a period of twenty five years or until we both agree to terminate the contract. Nothing sinister.”

“Mr Tramming, as I have explained I am investigating a murder. How can I ask my questions if the answers to them cannot be revealed?”

“Well, as I see it you can ask me freely about such events as in this house but for questions relating to my fraternal Order and membership thereof, in those cases, that information must remain our secret. Secrecy must be maintained. That is the first principle, you see, Benoit - may I call you that? May I?”

Blanc started to gesture that he did not consent but could do little to stop it but Hoight barrelled on. “You see, the thing with the masons is it all ended up looking either very silly or very nefarious and there’s no getting away from that sort of thing when the common folk and the media get a hold of things, is there? Everyone thinks - well these days, it’s transparency and openness at every level. It doesn’t matter how much people actually understand that we all need privacy to function, we must pretend that the only possible virtue is letting everyone into all our private business, and any suggestion of the opposite is always seen as proof of conspiracy. If you have a secret, you must be a villain. But secrecy hasn’t got anything to do with nefarious intent but protecting one’s reputation.”

Hoight barely stopped to breathe. Just long enough to touch Benoit Blanc’s arm, to which he also did not consent, but remained silent.

“If I’m going to tell you all about this then you either have to join the Order itself and while Father is alive I cannot induct you, even if I wanted to and I’m sure you’re a good man, Mr Blanc. Or you can sign on the dotted line. I think there is also a provision where I can ask you to swear an oath of loyalty and secrecy, unto death. Oh that does sound dramatic, doesn’t it? But certainly not legally binding!” Hoight thought this last comment highly amusing,

Blanc winced uncomfortably. “There’s no blood letting, is there?” It was only half a joke, but Hoight continued to laugh far too heartily.

“Jolly good, Blanc, you’re our kind of chap. But do sign so we can move on.”

Blanc was a cautious man sometimes but he was also impatient and curious, and he needed to know things. He signed quickly and resumed his questions.

“What I am trying to ascertain is whether anyone within your…” Blanc trailed off, hoping Hoight would provide the right terminology, but Hoight was either too obtuse or rude to assist. “Anyone within your society objects to you talking to me about all of this.” Despite himself, Blanc added a conspiratorial lean to his shoulders. “Your brother seemed to think that a loose word in the wrong place might mean a knife in one’s back. And I’d rather not it be my own back, most of all.”

Blanc unrolled the news clippings again, and explained the fears of Toby Tramming. Hoight sucked his front teeth in an annoying fashion. “Look,” he began, “I don’t know what is going on in his head, or what his wife told him. But the foolishness of all this is that I was keen to play along with father, and that meant it didn't matter what Toby did or didn't do. The membership was being passed to me.” Hoight tapped his thin fingers as if it settled all things.

“Your brother said to me that once one knew of the society, they were therefore a part of it, and could never leave.

“Yes, well, yes, that’s true, yes, and there are…I think they call them members in absentis. They’re still members, but -” it seemed Hoight lacked the vocabulary to explain the actual demarcations of his shadowed academy. Blanc decided to be direct.

“Toby Tramming said to me that his wife wanted him to be done with it all, and he feared that the order took such talk as tantamount to betrayal. He thought that simply saying so had marked him as - shall we say a troublemaker?”

Hoight gathered the papers and tapped them quietly together on the table to line them up. “The order takes its secrets seriously, Mr Blanc. As I’m sure you can see. But once I had got the nod, Toby would have - he was just - well, there was no need for him to leave, as you say.”

“And nobody believed he would reveal the society to others? Would someone in your order view that any word of leaving as a promise to unmask all?”

Hoight waved the idea away. “Someone might, but Toby? To what aim? To hurt his own family? I mean I would be the one with the most to lose! My position in the government has the highest scrutiny. It certainly might be a lot of bad publicity. Toby I mean he’s an author, it would probably only sell more books!” Hoight laughed, mostly free of nervousness. “I would have to do a lot more fancy footwork - I mean you can imagine the headlines in the tabloids, Blanc - Tory MPs in secret society.” Hoight laid out each word in the space in front of him with his large hairy hands.

“But it would hurt Father too. Well - still me the most, though. But why would Toby want to hurt me?”

“I feel that is my question to you, sir.”

“I’m sure I don’t know.” It was a turn of phrase and Benoit Blanc felt the man was not so sure.

“If Toby knew the names of other men in this group, and wanted to hurt them, did Toby have any reason to expose anyone else?”

“I’m sure I don’t know about that!”

“What about his own enemies? Or those of his wife? Who might want to hurt them?”

“I’m sure I don’t know that either.”

“The marriage had become strained, hadn’t it? Toby had moved out -“

For the first time a shadow twitched across Hoight Tramming’s practiced profile. It was extremely brief, but Blanc had seen it and Hoight knew he had seen it.

“I’m sure I don’t know. I don’t pry into my brother's business.”

Blanc pushed. “There was the matter in the papers; they were fighting - “

Hoight returned serve. “I am not someone who judges my brother’s business either. Nor am I someone who implicates my flesh and blood for murder.”

Blanc took a chance. “Was Charlie Tramming having an affair with another man?”

Blanc had felt the clam shut again. Where Roger had stared cold and pointed; Hoight’s eyes were alight with fire. “A cruel accusation towards a dead woman.”

In his sauna, Blanc grimaced. The facts of the man’s alibi were confirmed by his mother - and her alibi confirmed by him. They were both in the garden all afternoon, as they were every Wednesday. They had seen nothing and heard nothing, and had talked of trivial matters they could no longer recall. It offered absolute cover for each of them but was not so practiced as to suggest collusion or rehearsal. Or at least, Blanc mused, no more rehearsal than the average British social performance, which he knew was far more measured than the more loquacious people that had raised him in the American south.

As if proof of his musings, a man joined him in the sauna, sitting significantly further away than he would in the US or Europe. The British would observe propriety even in a hot box.

Like her sons, Diana Tramming had been unwilling to even speculate of any offence the dead woman might have committed, nor contemplate that she was disliked. She had gone to pains to praise the woman as something like a saint, caring for her middle son with a manner and passion approvingly akin to her own maternal instincts. She, too, had been a nurse as a younger woman and knew, she said, of how much the caring instinct of career and domestic life could overlap.

Benoit Blanc saw a dangling possibility. “Roger mentioned that your husband has been treated with anti-psychotic medicines for much of his life. Is anyone else in the family on medication?”

Of course such things were even more impolite to inquire, and Blanc was told so in so many words. Diana Tramming had been the tightest clam of all and bringing up medical infirmity had closed with microscopic sliver she might have yet provided. He pressed on maternal instinct.

“Is there any chance that Phiilip’s condition could be inherited in any of the boys? Perhaps, one supposes, in a less prominent expression?”

Diana could not resist this opening to dote. “Not at all. They are and were all normal healthy boys. These days they put children on all sorts of medication at the drop of a hat, one finds.”

“Like Roger’s daughter?” It was a guess, but Blanc liked the odds. And he was right. He saw Diana shut down further, giving away more as she did.

“That mother of hers - well, she was never someone I felt I could trust with any children, let alone my flesh and blood. And now she has taken away my grandchild.” Diana’s face was like an axe blade, her voice the sharpened edge.

“What about Hoight’s children?”

“Oh Hoight is quite the traditionalist in all manners of his family. His wife insists on working, however, so they have a nanny for the children.”

“You disapprove?”

Diana responded carefully and calculatingly. “I’m sure every woman must choose what’s best for her family.”

“You approved of how Charlie cared for Toby?”

“We shared a sense of knowing what was best for our husbands.”

“It seemed of late that he thought she was not at all knowing what was best for him, Mrs Tramming.”

“Well. Not every wife can be as she wishes.” It was not an answer.

“Toby told me that members of his family thought Charlie was a bad influence, that she wanted him to leave his family traditions. That she even thought his family did not want was best for him.”

It wasn’t a question. Diana provided something that again wasn’t an answer. “A mother always does what’s best for her sons.”

“Did you and your husband ever disagree on what was best?”

“Patrick always chose what was best for them as well.”

Blanc smiled grimly. He knew he was about to take a great liberty, and would likely pay for it, but he was already facing a wall and needed some dynamite. “Forgive me, Mrs Tramming, but weren’t you also your husband’s nurse? Weren’t you at times making decisions about his health?”

“Are you married, Mr Blanc?”

Blanc smiled thinking of his beloved and said warmly “No, ma’am, I am not.”

Diana creased her lips into a victory smile. “If you were, you would appreciate how such decisions are balanced between a husband and wife. My job - as both wife and nurse - was to provide what was best for him.”

There seemed to be no further movement on that issue.

“What did your husband’s treatment usually involve?” He asked instead.

“Regular doses of chlorpromazine administered intravenously, once daily or as needed. If I am not around Cleo can do it, or - well, Charlotte could do it as well. Anyone with experience - it was not a medical procedure.”

With that the matriarch had excused herself, citing the passing hours and the emotional circumstances. Blanc had been cast out into the damp cold day like a stray dog. He had scuttled back to his hotel, bothered and defeated. A lunch and a walk around the park had not shaken his mind free of the things he did not know, and attention an afternoon play had failed utterly to do so also, ruining the dramatic work as well as his mood. His irritation had grown in the night. He had hoped to ease it with the steam or if not that, recall some conversational component that would give him a clue to further his investigations.

He had learned almost nothing of use and the family had one by one turned against him for his efforts. A lesser man would believe perhaps it was all the work of a random intruder, and the overactive imagination of Toby Tramming; another might be lost in their own failure. But beyond such things Blanc had some notion of something out of order, something about the crime itself that seemed askew. He turned the scene over in his mind but he knew he could not tell if it was because the witnesses had lied or misremembered or that there was something they had all seen and reported and yet remained oblivious to them despite striking him as discordant.

He ran it over again in his mind. A woman on the stairs. She is brutally murdered. And the witness sees and runs to help. He sprawled further on the sticky wooden bench to better think and then immediately brought his knees back together in a snap under his towel as a lady’s face appeared at the circular window in the sauna door. Blanc was almost certain it was not a mixed sauna and blushed. tt was Myra Mills, the woman from last night and she motioned the ancient and universal semaphore of people separated by sound-proofed but not opaque material. It was the eternal question of “shall I come in or will you come out here?”

With no dignity whatsoever Blanc seized his towel around his waste and pushed open the door. “Why Ms Mills, I believe?” he grinned trying to grasp what sense of propriety as he could scrape together. Ms Mills, for her part, seemed oblivious to either Blanc’s near-nudity or his unease about it.

“Yes, but do call me Myra. Look, can we have a word?

Myra Mills had slipped away the previous day before Blanc had questioned her so the idea was most agreeable even if he could have wished for more clothing to accompany it. He stammered a request for ten minutes delay and a relocation to the lounge.

“Alright, but hurry up, Blanc” she said. “We have a murderer on the loose, you know!”

Chapter Text

Myra Mills had come out in a suit that had borrowed its shoulder pads from the 1980s, its line from the 1960s and a hat from the 1930s. Her no-nonsense cheekbone bob cut seemed from the far future and her eyebrows dared you to suggest any of this was mismatched. The effect was intense. It invited itself into one’s eyeline like a knock at a sauna door.

She had already inquired as to Blanc’s breakfast coffee order - macchiato - and provided him with one waiting. As fast as Blanc had been in changing, she left him with no uncertainty that he had been too slow. But she smiled an honest, open smile to see him which was more than any of his other suspects had done since things had begun yesterday morning.

“I hope that’s right,” she said, motioning to the coffee with her chin while she shook his hand. Blanc gratefully nodded and lifted it as a gesture of thanks. He was still moving the brown fluid down his throat when she said: “well, to business, Mr Blanc. To murder.”

She lowered her voice as she said it, and Blanc sensed it was not just out of a sense of English propriety.

“I’m sorry I did not make myself available yesterday. But I am here now. Consider that an apology and recompense.” Blanc indicated thanks again. “How is your investigation going, Mr Blanc?”

Blanc smiled and sighed at the same time. He was dispirited but not a person who would put such things on others. “I can say it has been most frustrating and unyielding so far, Ms Mills.” He breathed deeply and looked into the distance. “It seems clear to me that the murder was premeditated and bloodthirsty. But each of the family members has a strong alibi. And what’s more, they have no motive!”

He leaned forward in his chair but his eyes were still elsewhere. “Charlotte Tramming appears to be universally beloved and akin to being a saint. Even a shadowy figure of some lost fraternity might stay their hand if they heard of her deeds or demeanour.”

He shook his head. It made no damn sense, like so many things. Of course if danger had been the hook that caught Blanc, it was the puzzle that reeled him in. Danger was a sparkling lure but he might forget it in time; a puzzle was a hook he could never let go of. He was not sure if he enjoyed the mystery of not knowing or the thrill of clarity more, or the two working together like a near sexual thrill of denial and release.

“I think I can help you here, Mr Blanc,” said Mills simply. “I think perhaps the reason your murder has no motive is the killer was trying to kill me.”

Blanc undaintily dribbled his coffee. “Say again there?”

“Well, do think, Mr Blanc. We are both approximately five foot nine. Blonde hair. I am a little older and a little more slender but from above the mistake would be easy to make. What’s more,” and here she lent in, angling at her waist in a conspiratorial fashion, “I’m sure every member of the Tramming family wants me dead.”

Blanc dribbled more coffee but recovered. “You’re not the first person to tell me this, Ms Mills - “

“Please do call me Myra.”

“Thank you,” stuttered Blanc.

“May I call you Benoit? Or do you prefer Ben? I do know you from the papers, so I feel as if we are already acquainted.”

Blanc was never someone to insist on standing on ceremony, and once again nodded in thanks. “I will say again, you are the second person to tell me that the Tramming family has malfeasance in their heart directed towards an individual. I must say I left yesterday evening doubting that first person’s word. They had nothing but praise for the poor Miss Charlotte, nor a word condemning her husband. Yet he assured me they spurned her and suspect him.”

“Funny how the British close ranks, isn’t it? Family first, and all that. Family first.” The repetition added stress to the first word.

“I take it that you were kept an outsider from those ranks then?”

“Not in any obvious way, Mr Blanc, no. But that is their way, you see? Even more than our British sense of propriety.” She took a sip of her coffee and added: “Everything the Tramming family says and does is some sort of lie. Their house is a tissue of falsehoods.”

Blanc put his coffee down. “I suspect you have some particular examples of this in mind.”

“You’ve seen their ridiculous house, of course - yet they’ve no title or noble heritage of any kind. All those shields and mottos, it’s all made up. And those ‘happy’ marriages. The way they all pretend to like each other, when they can’t stand to look anyone of their blood in the eyes. The way they all try to smile when I come in the door. And,” she said, sipping her coffee, held in both hands, “the biggest lie is the fact that I not only wrote but drew large sections of Ran and Sack comics and other subsidiary publications, for more than fifteen years.”

Blanc had been reaching for his cup again, and nearly threw it off the table. He recovered, smiled an apology, and wiped his hands. “You have a flair for the dramatic there, Ms - Myra.”

“It’s true, Ben, it’s absolutely true. Oh, Patrick Tramming is - was - a gifted cartoonist. A master of the caricature. But his hands have been cramping up for years. And we created the characters together and I wrote all the scripts. But while my name is on some of the books the crafty little bastard had the characters declared his entire creation so every derivative work belongs to him and him alone. And then I found out he was stealing from me as well - hidden royalties and earnings.”

Mills was warming up, talking faster and faster.

“It’s all a bit like a cartoon - a silly little smile, drawn on top. They smile and smile and then they stab you in the back. So for the last nine years I have been fighting for what is mine. And there’s a chance now I might really win - and that, my dear Ben, is why they want me dead.”

“And soon, too,” she said, finishing her cup. “If I win my lawsuit before Patrick dies their inheritance is all in doubt.”

Blanc had had time to recover and leaned back from the table. “Well, now, money is a powerful motivation indeed. But to lead to murder, that requires more than just regular financial anxiety.”

“But of course it was murder! Patrick called me and told me to come to the house, right out of the blue. I thought maybe he was going to tell me he was willing to settle. Everything’s under a gag order, you see, but we were about to go to court which would bring it into the open.”

Blanc said nothing. His chin muscles flexed as his brain ruminated.

“Of course Patrick couldn’t have done it alone, he probably can’t get up the stairs these days although he does still go there to draw sometimes, I believe. But as I said, the family closes ranks. They were probably all in on it. You saw them last night - they were all having a meeting to discuss Patrick dying but of course they didn’t want me there.”

“But you came anyway?”

“I’d been at the hospital with everyone that morning. Then I went to get lunch and they all left, Toby showed up later and said everyone was at the house. I’d told them to tell me if they were having a meeting. I deserve to be there. I mean, lawsuit or no lawsuit, we were colleagues, we’ve worked together for decades. It’s my legacy as well as his.”

“Forgive me, Myra, if I could take a moment to slow things down and, hmm, back things up. I want to go back through the events of the previous day bit by bit to make sure I have them straight.”

Asking Myra Mills to slow down was akin to pulling the reins on a bolting horse but the wheels of her brain responded eventually to command. She blinked, slowly nodded in silence, and he felt he could proceed. Just as silently he asked her to expound.

“Well, I arrived just after the ambulance, so I dont know any more than you do really. Then a second ambulance came. The first one took Patrick to the hospital and Diana and Toby and Hoight went with it. Roger and I stayed until the doctors had taken poor Charlotte…then we went to the hospital. Separately. I mean I took my car.”

“And the thing of it was, was that nobody would say anything or tell me anything, just endless monosyllables, you know. Charlottes dead. There’s been an accident. Father had an episode. We’re going to the hospital. Like it would be the death of someone if they uttered more than five words at a time. And then at the hospital it was worse because of course only family are allowed to know anything there. It was just a lot of waiting and waiting. Endless. Eventually I said I would simply come back tomorrow but to call me if anything happened,”

She sat back in her chair and sighed. “We used to be friends, you know. Great friends. I was there when Toby and Hoight were born. And it wasn’t the money, not really,” she added, staring past Blanc. “It was the fame, it was having one’s name on it. He needed to own it. Even when I was drawing it he would sign it. He would lean down and mark it over my shoulder. He said it was to preserve the illusion for the fans but it was all for him. It had to be his.”

“You never made your own comics?”

Myra Mills laughed a dark, hollow laugh. “Oh Benny, darling, so many of them. But fame is fickle, you know? I can barely even trade on the comics I collaborated on because his name is so large. Always mentioned as an afterthought - if at all.” Her eyes were staring into the distance again and Blanc knew she was not someone he would wish to go against in matters of law or indeed any matters.

She returned her gaze to his and smiled as she folded her napkin in her fingers. ”Anyway, then nobody did call me so I went to the hospital and there was no change so I said we should meet. To discuss the will and the case. And they thought I was being very rude and very ghoulish but - Ben, I am not a bad person. I know a woman has died and Peter could go any minute. But this is my livelihood as well. My legacy.”

“They hate me for it but I won’t stop. Even if - “ and she did stop. “Even if it kills me,” she said with a shake of her shoulders. “Which it just bloody well might!” She laughed with no conviction.

Blanc felt pity, even as he tried to deny it and remain objective. “It’s likely that the scrutiny of my investigation may deter a second attempt from your assassin.”

“Assassins!” she corrected, zuzzing the s at the end. “I think the whole family are in on it, Benny. The only one i can discount now is Patrick himself.”

“You think he had the capacity to -“

“Who knows?” She shrugged and her shoulders waved up and down like the ocean again. “With gravity to help…he calls me and waits up there ready to push that thing over the edge the moment I appear…” she shook again, back to fear.

“And you suspect everyone else?”

She nodded rapidly then sighed again. “God, it’s horrible, to think about it, isn’t it?” She shook her shoulders again. “I helped teach Toby to be a writer. He seemed to understand that I was part of the comics.”

“And what about Charlie?”

“Well, I can’t suspect her, Benny, she was the one mistaken for me!”

Benoit had allowed Ben but he chafed at ‘Benny’. He thought of the clams that had snapped shut and tried not to show it. “I mean to say: what is your relationship with her like? Was it a happy marriage?”

She continued to shrug and now looked bored. “As happy as any marriage, I imagine.”

“Do you think you could be mistaken? About the aim of the killer? That someone wanted Charlie dead?”

She shook her head along with her shoulders. “I can’t imagine that. She was devoted to Toby - almost obsessed. And I know his mother approves of that. So did Hoight. He can’t stand it that Harriet, his wife, works, you know? And insists on keeping her name in her business. He thinks all women should be barefoot and pregnant, I’m sure.”

Blanc felt like a cigar. The air was thick with accusations and he wanted to clear it. “Well, then he surely disapproved of you being part of his father’s legacy.”

“He surely did! He’s the worst at hiding it! Women are supposed to be invisible. Behind every great man there has to be a great woman not being financially compensated.”

Blanc finished his coffe and pondered something. “In terms of the inheritance, who benefits? If your lawsuit is unsuccessful, Patrick maintains control -“

She broke in. “Roger gets the larger share of the money, but the control of the characters and works goes to Mrs Tramming.”

Blanc drew his cigar and ran it through his fingers. He knew a waiter would soon tell him not to light it but he needed to think. “Mrs Tramming - how involved was she in the work?”

“Oh not in the work, no. Not at all. But she believes in running the household and that includes helping manage the financial affairs. I would bet quite a lot of money that it was she who made sure her husband controlled everything in the contracts.” Fear again returned to Myra Mills’ eyes and ran down her shoulders in rivulets. “She is not someone who - “ and she paused to consider the right words - “ever leaves anything to chance.”

Of all the times she had shown fear during their conversation, it was the most intense and most desperate when she thought of Diana Tramming.

Blanc had a thought. Once again he did not need to know the answer to a question for any desire to judge people’s lives or indulge in prurient gossip. Only as a detective did the question occur to him. Only in order to solve the murder did he need to know. Blanc was struck how the art of being a detective was, yet, so close to that of being a voyeur. How many proclivities, trysts and affairs had he bore witness to or revealed, even in his relatively short career? He was not a prudish man, no. But he believed in privacy. He believed in a certain kind of decorum. Just as one did not commit murder, or lie, or cheat, one did not peek into drawers or rifle through love letters. People deserved dignity; the dead as much as the living.

So he considered all this, as he considered his increasing need to light his cigar, and considered his hunch that, over the decades, Phillip Tramming and Myra Mills had had the occasion to be more than just partners in artistic creation. He considered, but he simply said: “There does seem to be a preponderance of reasons for there to be an animus against you in the family.”

She nodded and noticed his cigar for the first time. “Should we go outside?”

“Just one more thing, if I could, before we depart,” he begged gentlemanly. “You honestly believe they will strike at you again?”

“But don’t you see? Now they have no reason to stop! If they have already killed once - and gotten away with it - then there is nothing to fear in adding another body to the score.” She stared into Benoit Blanc’s eyes, fierce and angry.

“Then i suggest you should take precautions. Flee the city. Take a vacation. Find someway to avoid these nefarious plotters -“

“No, no, no, Benny! No! Not on your life, Benny boy! They will simply lie in wait! Wait for me to return and then - !” She made a noise expressing force and finality. “Even if Patrick does die, I’m not giving up my suit and I’m not going away. And that means staying here until their caught and locked up. Until I - until we catch them,” she added with intense collegiality.

Benoit Blanc was not a natural aggressor. He preferred, until all situation made it necessary, to impose his needs only so much, and agree to what others requested. Especially when he found himself out of his depth. He had so far this morning tolerated an interruption to his morning steam, a coffee placed in front of him unrequested if not unwelcome, and a slow slide from Benoit to Ben to Benny and now Benny Boy. It was becoming an imposition. And now the final assumption of making him some sort of bodyguard or defender. It was now absolutely too much.

He stood up, in two staccato movements, to lay his bulwark.

“Now here I must protest, Ms Mills. I am a detective, yes, but I am not a policeman or a bodyguard or a primary coloured superhero. I have neither the power nor perspicacity to guard against your untimely dispatching by forces unseen.”

She stood up to match him. “Calm down, you old hickory nut. You’re making a scene.” She looked at his hand. “Maybe we should go outside and you can smoke that.”

It broke the tension and they walked out side by side into the cool London air. Blanc sucked hungrily on his newly lit cigar. Ms Myra Mills donned her hat against the bright sun in a particularly charming way. She was his elder but took his arm like they were courting. He demurred but remained firm. “Nevertheless, Ms Mills, I am not your man. I am not your huckleberry.”

“I’m not asking you to jump in front of the bullet, Benny.” She touched his arm, and smiled in gratitude at the nobility of his instincts. “I just mean I think I’m safest standing right next to you, where you can see if anyone takes a swing at me. Until you and I figure this out. Besides, I don’t see how you have much of a choice.”

She smiled with this, and Blanc thought it was a pretty smile but also one that hid a subtle but unmistakable desire to forcibly remove anything in her way. Diana Tramming looked at the world like a hawk; Myra Mills he thought more akin to a clever snake, swishing through the grass. He had little doubt she was right about him lacking a choice and that she was about to prove it.

“First of all, Toby probably can’t afford to pay you, and I certainly can. I may not have got my due but I’ve squirreled away everything I had so I can age in as undignified a manner as I please. Secondly, he’s decided to stick to his father in hospital like glue. Refuses to leave the man’s side now. So you need me to make sure you don’t miss out on going to all the family meetings and what not. And thirdly?”

Here the pretty smile showed long teeth. “Benny, I’ve told them you’re helping me. If they want me dead, they’ll be coming for you too. You watch my back. I’ll watch yours.”

It was said with such bold bravado Benoit Blanc had to remind himself that the speaker had just hung the target on his back that she had demanded he work to remove. The jaws of the snake snapped shut on Benoit Blanc.

Chapter Text

Private detective was not a job with a lot of strong regulations or guidelines. There was no handbook to read, nor oath to swear. For the most part, the occupation was nothing at all like the things that most often occupied the time and effort of Benoit Blanc, or the actions that made him in demand, leaving him all the more unmoored in the question of professional conduct. Nevertheless, it was undeniable that his original client was Toby Tramming and his full responsibility must be to that personage until his ethics might direct him otherwise. So it was that Benoit Blanc headed towards his client at the hospital, and would accept no other destination.

Myra Mills was not a woman who easily accepted any kind of direction, and she had baulked at the destination and the insistence that he not transfer his loyalties entirely to her. Blanc would not demur. He had a two-fold approach to the world. As cliche as it was for a man from Tennessee woodlands, he was not unlike the reliable hound dogs so favoured by his hometown neighbours. For the most part, he was quiet, and happy to go along with the flow of an investigation, observing all the while, but when he got the scent he would pull at the leash and charge ahead with all force and little concern for restraint or imminent danger. Now was a time to insist, lest any more liberties be taken with him by the powerful mien of Miss Myra Mills. Myra had acquiesced on the condition that she drive, and she also had further conditions to append.

“There’ll be media there, you see. They’ve got wind of this story, about Toby killing his wife after a fight. Great for headlines - angry violent husband and so on. They might know my face and they might know yours. So I suggest we split up. Divide our forces.”

“That does seem like a strong plan of attack,” he replied, nervously. Myra Mills drove the way she spoke: with a distinct sense that everyone was there to agree with her intent, or had to be watched in case they didnt. She also neither cared nor waited for Blanc to complete his affirmation of said intent: before he knew it she had mounted the curb at a sharp speed and had begun pushing him out of the door of her small green automobile. He collected his coattails and his dignity and arose to fully standing with his grim but whimsical smile greeting the new territory. Marooned he had been, but his target was on the horizon.

Although it was only thanks to the sign high on the corner that he knew this, because the Harley Street Hospital did not look anything like any hospital Blanc had seen, perhaps like no other hospital on earth. Somewhere in the early 20th century, it seemed, the British had decided there was no virtue greater than preserving a beautiful frontispiece along entire streetscapes. As they had preserved the Royal Mile in Bath they had - at least since the Coca Cola ads had captured Piccadilly Circus - determined that if it was at all possible, every cent would be spent to keep London also as it was in the 19th century or earlier. Perhaps in the city proper they might erect gherkins and other monstrosities of glass and modern ideas, but towards the western end of the capital, time would not be permitted to touch the edifices of architecture and design.

Somewhere inside the facade, Blanc was told, there were apparently wards, elevators, theatres and scanners and machines that went ping, but from the outside it was unyielding to anything but the appearance of a series of stately Georgian homes. No doubt the cost to maintain that would be reflected in the medical bills, which also likely provided significant privacy and security. The entry steps were completely bare of journalists, presumably moved very swiftly on by forces now unseen. Two photographers and a camerman lurked, scuffing their shoes, at the other end of the street. Blanc suspected they would not notice him as he made for the door halfway between them and him, but could also see now his co-conspirator pulling up and getting out beyond them, further down. Myra Mills appeared in dark sunglasses and walked briskly towards the photographers before darting down a side street. Just before she passed out of view, Blanc thought, just for a second, that she seemed to stop and glance backwards, as if to ensure she would be seen. Intentional or not, it worked: the photographers moved towards her, needling each other with their elbows; Blanc entered without impediment.

Despite its exterior, the inside of the hospital was as he had imagined. There were the beige corridors marked with coloured signage that delivered him into lifts, onto wards and down towards rooms, where he found himself in a trapezoidal place not quite a waiting room and not quite a hallway.There sat Mr Toby Tramming, looking exhausted, his brown suit coat slowly rumpling into him to reflect every bend and crinkle of his bent and crinkled body. A small stack of polystyrene and plastic cups had collected in the chair beside him like breadcrumbs around a sink drain. His body clearly craved sleep; his wild eyes stared around with fiery denial, as if daring any passerby to accuse him of having his eyes closed, and threatening his own body not to think of betraying him. His lolling eyes caught Blanc’s but as much as they showed recognition they also showed fear - and warning.

Before Blanc could even look for the threat, it appeared: sliding into his vision from some unseen position. The man was the opposite of Toby Tramming: his dark navy suit fit in a way that almost hurt the eyes, accentuating every physical virtue and hiding every flaw, but not drawing too much attention over all. A brown skinned face under perfectly slicked hair smiled in the way that made people both relaxed but helpless. A hand was already too close to Blanc for him to refuse to shake it.

“Hello. Mr Tyler. You are Benoit Blanc, are you not?”

“Hem, well, yes I am.” Blanc shook the man’s hand high up, at chest height. Neither yielded space to make the other more comfortable. Tyler’s smile never broke, and Blanc met it back with his curious but implacable stare.

“Could we have a brief word in private?”

“Well, that would be agreeable I’m sure, Mr Tyler, but I must first insist on speaking to my client, Mr Tramming over there.” Mr Tyler held Blanc’s gaze and kept his smile just a split second longer than was comfortable, then acquiesced.

“Of course. I’ll just remain here until then.” It had the faintest edge of a threat, and a promise. No force on earth, Blanc thought, could prevent the remaining from happening.

Tramming waved Blanc over like a drowning swimmer. “One of the shadowy figures,” he hissed in a completely failed attempt to be both surreptitious and emphatic. “He appeared this morning and will not leave.”

“And what exactly does he want?”

“Oh, he wanted to speak to you, Mr Blanc. Most immediately. And me, too. But his first questions were about you.” He managed to lower his voice and shuffled forward in his now familiar conspiratorial manner. “He works for the Order.”

Blanc smiled and nodded politely. “That much I had estimated. But is there any news of your father?”

Toby shook his head. “Just keeps getting worse, it seems. He has been intubated because he couldn’t swallow.”

“Do they have any idea of exactly how the shock rendered him this way? I do not quite understand your father’s condition. Your mother mentioned the drug-“

“Chlorpro- chlorporo-mazine.” Toby struggled out. “It’s an antipsychotic. I’ve been on something similar although I’m told fathers is an older generation drug. One of the side effects is muscle cramping because it can be dehydrating. When adrenaline is added it multiplies the effect. The muscles literally lock solid.”

Toby looked away. “Mother told us over and over as children not to upset him. They called it nerves back then. And I’m sure the effort of rushing over to see to … well. And a figure in the house, her killer upstairs. You can imagine.”

Blanc nodded again. “On that matter: My investigations last night brought me to an unshakable conclusion that no intruder entered the house, and certainly no stranger killed your wife.”

“Still, Mr Tramming, I must certainly concur with you, as I indicated in my phone text, that some foul play has occurred here. I only believe that rather than some stranger or intruder, a member of your family or close acquaintance did the deed. You were right, it may seem, in their intent against you.”

As these waves of information had cascaded on and down Mr Toby Tramming, his face had kind of eroded like a sandcastle, slipping from confusion to fear and down into blubbering panic. Fearing another eruption and subsequent soaking of his fine twill jacket which had a beautiful salmon pink lining, Blanc poured on more information. He hoped the tide might wash away the tears to some further glum resignation - and he had a final promise of relief.

“As mentioned, in my questioning, I eventually did away with my impersonation as a mere insurance inspector. I made them known of my suspicions, and subsequently I briefly searched the house and interviewed the rest of your immediate family. So far I have learned little and I have eliminated no suspects, and I have much more to inspect. Meantime, Ms Mills has also expressed to me a similar sentiment to your own - that the family is not to be trusted, and has murder as its goal.”

“The difference in her conclusion being that she believes she is the target,” he added. Toby Trammings face broke into a shattered mask of relief and joy. “Of course!” He shouted, then corrected himself to try at a hoarse whisper. “Of course! I knew nobody could truly be set against my sweet Charlie.”

Blanc could almost see muscles in Toby Trammings head moving as thought collided with thought. “It’s because she wants our money, of course. Of course!”

“Ms Mills believes her life still to be in danger and is offering to pay my way to finding the killer, on top of any payment from you, Mr Tramming.”

Toby was becoming more pleased by the moment and his face could barely keep up. “Oh wonderful! Yes! You must! Whatever it takes. We are in your debt - and at your disposal. My family - my family are dear to me, so dear, but now, now I feel we must make every effort, every effort to uncover all these plots and all these lies! Whomever their target!”

“I need to stay here but she can help you with anything you need, I imagine. Well, the hospital wouldn’t allow her in here I suppose, but yes, I’ll stay here and you and she can … “ Mr Tramming was at a loss for the correct verb to describe what a private investigator might do. He settled on “…get to work.”

“Of course,” said Blanc, scratching his chin, “with Ms Mills as the target, it does leave us with no part being played by - by that group of gentlemen that you believed were involved.”

The two men look around over their shoulders. Only six feet away, Mr Tyler was still smiling and staring.

Smiling politely to Mr Tramming also, Blanc shuffled himself across the six foot space to indicate he was now available to speak to Mr Tyler.

Benoit Blanc was not a very large or imposing man, but he was almost six foot tall and of a not insubstantial build. Mr Tyler was an inch shorter and seemed less broad but as soon as he placed a hand on Blanc’s shoulder and another in the grasp of a warm handshake, Blanc found himself being moved against his will. By the time it occurred to him to resist he was already in a small side room containing some kind of technical equipment under plastic wrap. Mr Tyler released his grip and stood between Blanc and the door. It took as long as it did for him to say “if we could just step in here, for a moment,” and indeed they had.

“Mr Blanc,” said Mr Tyler, bowing his head. It was a second greeting. Blanc stared back, baffled, but remained polite, as his grandmother had always taught him. “Mr Tyler.”

“Yesterday evening you asked some questions of Mr Hoight Tramming.” It seemed almost like a question but it absolutely allowed no answer but the affirmative. “You are in the process of investigating the incident at the house two days ago. During your conversation, there was a mention of a certain organisation.” Mr Tyler said the word organisation in a way that made it sound like some delicious yet possibly poisonous exotic fruit.

Before Blanc could confirm or deny, Mr Tyler continued. “Members of this organisation, as you might understand, prefer its existence to remain entirely out of the public eye.” There was another tiny pause that almost made it feel like the sentence had been a question, but was then cut short. Mr Tyler, Blanc realised, was extremely good at keeping his interlocutors off-balance and on the defence.

“I have been tasked with ensuring that this invisibility remains in place.”

“I see,” managed Blanc in the too-short interval.

“Let me express two things regarding my execution of this task. First of all, should you conduct your investigation in a discrete fashion my employers will be pleased to offer you a substantial cash reward. This will be a gift with no attached documentation or requirements but simply an expression of thanks towards a job well done.”

It was not even ten am, thought Blanc, and he was now being paid three times over. A rarity in private detection work where few clients had the means to pay and fewer still wished to.

“But with the carrot comes the stick as I’m sure you will appreciate. Should my employers be unsatisfied they will indeed make that known. You are, through your passport, a guest of His Majesty’s Government, a gift offered by that government, and able to be revoked by that government, leading to the forced and swift removal from our borders.” Again a tiny pause. “This is not a threat, Mr Blanc, in the sense that it is not something that is idle or unfounded. Rest assured it is absolute cause and effect. My employers have the capacity indicated.”

Benoit Blanc said nothing. He was not unfamiliar with threats to his person and livelihood, although one coming via an entire government was a new experience.

“Now as to the matter of ensuring that things do not come to that: from now I will be accompanying you in all further investigations and inquiries. You will ask me if you may speak to individuals and as to the circumstances under which you might speak with them.” One more tiny pause but now Blanc was used to the rhythm and he used it to stroke his chin. “This is not negotiable and begins now. The two of us go everywhere together.”

“More correctly, the three of us,” said Blanc cheerfully. He motioned towards the not quite shut door through which he could hear the nasal tops of Ms Mills’ speech radiating. Mr Tyler turned to see her throw open the door like she was revealing a prize behind it. “What are you doing in the cupboard here, Benny?” she cooed.

“I was just exchanging a quiet word with Mr Tyler here. Like you he is charged with the most swift execution of my inquiries.”

“Then let us be about it, Ben!” ordered Myra. “Where do we begin?”

“Well,” drawled Benoit Blanc, pondering with wry amusement what an odd trio he found himself joined to, “it is customary in any criminal investigation to verify alibis and pry for motives. To this end we might journey to the lodgings of Mr Hoight Tramming, and along the way I have many questions. I know you are not perhaps deeply acquainted with that gentleman, Mr Tyler, but I do believe you might have many friends in common and that may prove most advantageous to my speedy success.”

Blanc left a brief moment for Mr Tyler to object but it was indeed too brief to do so. “My speed and my success being of course the goal we all share, I’m sure you’ll tell me every fact about Hoight that you are privy to.” He let Ms Mills underline this with a knowing stare.

“And of course,” he added, trying as hard as he could to affect nothing but down-home southern whimsy, “the avowals you put to me about secrecy must also apply to Ms Mills, as she insists on being a partner in my discovery. She has already spoken to the press this very morning which might be very pertinent indeed!”

Blanc turned to go with a smile, trying not to grin too broadly at the daggered-gazes now being exchanged behind him. He bore neither Tyler nor Mills any ill-will but as both seemed insistent on having their boots firmly placed upon his neck, he was happy to direct their other foot firmly towards the other. An unhappy trio, each desiring to be rid of the other two, but a trio nonetheless: they set forth into the city of London, hungry for clarity and resolution.

Chapter Text

It was a beautiful shining day in London and everyone was on their phones.

England in high spring is almost Elysium; the light almost as soft as on the French Riviera,s the breeze almost as sweet as the gusts across the American prairie, the warmth of the sun almost as heartening as a Melbourne beachside stroll, and there is no a place to enjoy all three at once combined with the gentle embrace of a soft strong lawn by a stream. Any of the city parks will do; this was Hyde Park and it very much was the paragon example. It is hard to stay angry about anything in Hyde Park: a perfectly ordinary aquatic mammal or tree-dwelling nutivore takes on a kind of dream-like affability, and one can tell a stranger to go fuck themselves and it will feel a pleasant encounter to both of you.

Mr Tyler was on his phone to his superiors, and possibly their superiors as well. After Myra Mills had explained to him that he would be helping with the inquiries of not just Blanc but her as well, he had decided to seek further instructions, but he had not left before expressing a need to know what Ms Mills had said to anyone, about anything, perhaps ever, and indicating that she too was under strict observation and terrible pressure might be applied to her court case should she be found to be sharing any facts that certain groups of shadowy figures might not want shared. She had then sniffed and gone to call her lawyer, if only as a warning that other lawyers might be coming to even the sides. Neither was happy, and that made Blanc happy. He was not a cruel man; far from it. But since his breakfast had been interrupted exactly one day ago, a series of people had been various degrees of unpleasant towards him. He had been insulted personally and professionally, and had been told his life was in danger to boot, and then been subject to various individuals making his choices for him. Some of those people had, it was true, lost a close family member or spouse and were fearing another death in the family; some of them he had effectively accused of murder. But Benoit Blanc was a soldier of the truth and - beneath his gruff interior - a soft-bellied seeker of comfort and ease. He thought he did not deserve all of the opprobrium he had received, nor did he appreciate it. He was, after all, here to catch a killer, a goal which everyone but one person should be very much in favour of, for their own safety and peace of mind even if they had no opinions on justice.

After a moment, Blanc decided there was only so much glee he could take in the suffering of others before it became unseemly or self-pitying, and decided to call his beloved Phillip. They had spoken briefly last night as Blanc had filled him in on the day’s business; this was much more a social call. He declined to tell his husband about threats against his legal ability to remain in the country. He did believe Mr Tyler’s words that such a threat was real, and could happen, but he was mildly confident in both his ability to solve the case promptly and that no matter the power behind such edicts of the state, the wheel of bureaucracy turned with relative slowness. He wished to offer no undue stress to his long-time love, and so chatted amiably about the case and his belief of a reunion soon enough. He didn’t mention it either but a world where spouses could be dramatically removed by family members was the tiniest bit disturbing when he thought of the occasional disapproval he faced from his in-laws, and indeed from certain laws in his home country regarding spouses that did not cleave to the heteronormative form.

The question of partners in law remained on his mind: as yet there was no clear motive for the killing of Charlotte Tramming. By all accounts she was much loved. By all accounts except her husband’s, to be exact, who claimed she was despised. Of course few Britons would admit to disliking anyone, let alone a victim of a violent crime. It was, he surmised, natural that the long-suffering wife of an unremarkable son of a close-knit bloodline would sense undercurrents of disapproval, and confide them solely to her husband. But still, there seemed little reason to disapprove. The inheritance of the membership in the Order was to be abandoned by Roger and removed from Toby, with full honours falling to Hoight, leaving no resistance to Toby leaving the organisation fully. Perhaps Charlotte had made light of it or indicated a casual disposition to observing secrecy. She and her husband were in the media spotlight. That was a threat indeed. And so dismissing for now a case of mistaken identity that Myra Mills believed to be the cause, Blanc turned his mind and observation to Hoight Tramming.

Last night he had spoken to the housekeeper at the Tramming house, after the family had tried to dismiss him, because he knew that they would have the real sense of everyone in the house. She could confirm Hoight had been there on the afternoon that Charlotte Tramming had been killed, but that nobody but Mrs Diana Tramming had spent much time overseeing Hoight’s presence, and that many times one of the pair had broken off their conversation in the garden to enter the house. There would have been plenty of time for Hoight to run upstairs and position himself in the deadly spot above. Although something about that series of events seemed unlikely still, or at least unlikely to the character of Hoight Tramming. Means and opportunity yes. Motive yes. But neither quite rang true. There was something missing. Something he had seen a hint of in Hoight’s flashing eyes the night before.

Motives were simple things, for the most part. People killed for pride; for lust; for greed. If it wasn’t his pride that Hoight Tramming was protecting, then perhaps it was his finances. That was the purpose to which Blanc had now set to Mr Tyler once he had concluded calling his superiors. Running for office and remaining there required not just an unimpeachable character but an unassailable bank balance. If there was some fault found in this area, then pressure might be applied to a man expected to reach great things in his political party. Such pressure might prompt a man to murder. If Hoight Tramming had secrets others wished to be paid to keep then he might kill to keep both secret and the cash.

And of course if the target had intended to be Ms Mills then perhaps it was to guard an inheritance. Not only might Mr Tyler uncover the state of Hoight’s current finances, he might also be able to reach out through whatever invisible web had placed him in the way of Benoit Blanc, and use it to determine if he were more or less likely to receive his father’s full bequest and what figure that might resemble.

Blanc turned to his two companions and caught Tyler’s eye. A slight eyebrow raise was all it took to ask if there was progress. There was a slight nod from Mr Tyler which Blanc took to mean confirmation of the first question, and when he finished the call Tyler voiced that affirmation. There were questions and doubts surrounding the war chest, as the Americans put it, set aside for Hoight Tramming’s next political sortie. But Mr Tyler nor Ms Mills could see any further on the outcome of the court case regarding the rights to the Tramming intellectual properties or the speed at which it might be finalised. That doubt alone however, might be motive enough. Every day the court case remained unresolved was another day of financial opacity for Hoight Tramming. It was time, therefore, for the newly-formed band of three to investigate the youngest brother. Having spoken face to face last night, Blanc decided to seek out his wife. She turned out to be at home, working, and not at all happy to find three inquisitors knocking on her door.

“You know I work, right?” It was the second thing she said to them after waiving them into the tiled foyer of the upmarket Mayfair home. “A lot of women in my position don’t. They spend their whole time running their husband’s social calendar. And of course then get judged for not working too. We can’t win!”

It wasn’t entirely clear who she was addressing but Blanc expressed sympathy and emphasised a curtailed privation upon her.

“He’s not here. He has an office. I work upstairs. Well, I do have an office, or I am supposed to have an office but can I be there today? No. Because Dane is home sick and I need to answer calls from the hospital. I don’t know why he can’t answer calls from his office but apparently only important calls are allowed, and your father at death's door isn’t important.”

“So. I won’t be offering you tea or coffee, Ms Mills, or your two friends. I haven’t the time or even the ingredients, because I haven’t been shopping yet this morning. Can’t go shopping. I’m not taking Dane to the shops again.”

Linda Tramming, wife of Hoigh Tramming, was in a smart purple dress and her blonde hair was carefully styled to points in a retro eighties style to which she added elegance. It was a business look in every sense, and Blanc could see through to the dining room where business was being conducted over internet video conference today. She kept her thin but strong frame between the now-foot shuffling trio and the rest of her house to make it clear they would enter no further and that their best course was to reverse. But Blanc was raised a southern gentleman, and as such had enough wisdom to appreciate the threat and enough aplomb to borrow a few more moments.

“I am very sorry to bother you at home, and we will endeavour to next call upon your husband, but if I could just have a moment of your time, I have just three questions I need to ask.” Linda gestured in acquiescence.

“Firstly, your husband claims to spend his Wednesday afternoons without fail visiting his mother and father at their home, was this indeed the case this week?” She confirmed this was the case indeed.

“Do you know of any reason why your husband might want to harm Miss Charlotte Tramming?”

Linda chuckled sarcastically. “Well if I did, I wouldn’t tell you, Mr Blanc, would I? My husband and I are loyal to each other. But even so, no, of course not. She was a lovely woman, as far as i could tell.” She closed her mouth with a slight defiant smile indicating she would offer no more correspondence on that issue.

“Finally, Mrs Tramming, do you know anyone who did want to harm Charlotte?”

All of a sudden Linda Tramming began to laugh, in long sawing yawls. She laughed more when three confused faces looked back at her.

“But don’t you see, Mr Blanc? She’s here, she’s standing right next to you!”

Blanc did a perfect double take like a pure pantomime star. He was still confused. “It’s Myra!” Linda cried and pointed. “She’s been telling all these lies about how Peter never wrote anything at all, and all the while Charlotte has been at his side the whole time, knowing and seeing the truth? She-“

“Lies? Lies?” Screamed Myra Mills, pushing Blanc aside and pointing a daggered finger at Linda Tramming. “You stupid woman, you don’t know anything about it! Your fancy house and fancy life all built on my words! My characters!”

“Don’t you point your finger at me, in my house,” snapped Linda, grabbing the offending finger and pushing it away. Myra returned her finger like it was on a tight spring and Blanc could see the next events unfolding as indeed they would do so, and leapt into action.

It took several minutes for Blanc and Mr Tyler to get Myra Mills into the back of her own car. There was a brief silent stand off before Myra handed over the keys and they accelerated away from Linda, who was still valiantly giving them the finger at the loudest possible gesticulatory volume. Ms Mills’ fine brown coat was pulled halfway down her back and her fiercely anachronistic hat was gone probably forever. Like all combatants she was stewing in the rage at blows her opponent had landed and the joy of the really sharp kick that had drawn blood on Linda Trammings knee, spiced with the adrenalin of survival instinct.

She would have boasted or protested but she knew two things. One; that Linda Tramming though shorter had thirty years on her and was extremely scrappy and that she therefore owed a lack of bruised and bloodied limbs solely to Benoit Blancs swiftly manoeuvred retreat. Two: Benoit Blancs face was dark as thunder and his jowls twitched with a deep disdain. His eyes flicked back and forth to the rear view mirror with fury, almost daring Ms Mills to speak. Only a lunatic would.

The detente would not last however because Blanc was a bad driver and he was in a city through which only absolute experts could drive. He crashed lightly into a telegraph pole and performed a silent do-si-do with Mr Tyler to allow the latter to take the wheel and it was in this moment Ms Mills found a new spark of courage.

“I couldn’t have done it, you know.” She sniffed. She stretched her jaw, feeling where the punch had landed. “Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t have done it. I was at home when I got a call from Roger to come over, and by the time I got there, she was dead, everyone saw me walk in - “

Blanc was not in the mood. “Madam, it has been assured to me that the door to the house was unlocked and there were no witnesses to who might have come and gone. It would have been a simple matter to commit the crime then return to your vehicle and ‘arrive’ post-facto to all appearances.”

“If you want to assert an impossibility of committing this crime, I shall recommend you find a way to prove it more conclusively.”

“Well!” She exclaimed, honestly taken aback. “All this time, Mr Blanc? All this time? You believe of me these lies while you pretend to be working with me to solve my own murder, attempted though it was,” she sniffed again, self-pityingly.

Blanc brought himself back to his stoic composure. “My role is always to consider all possibilities and all suspects. And I had placed you on that list long before the accusations of Ms Linda Tramming.”

That seemed to strike home. With one last sniff the car again lapses into silence. Blanc continued with some amelioration. “I have also considered that the violence of Ms Tramming’s accusations could be themselves a cover for her own complicity.” Then he showed his teeth again. “But such things are rarely fictions created in wholecloth, which to me suggests that the technical limitations of ownership and creation of the fictional works at the heart of this dispute is not as simple as you might have originally indicated. Now as to how that transforms into a need to kill Ms Charlotte, that I cannot immediately ascertain but I shall, as always,” and here he breathed a final moment of rage at his earlier subornation, “be searching for an answer.”

Blanc shrugged, feeling uncomfortable with the sudden emotion. Silence now hung over the car in equally uncomfortable amounts. It was finally broken a few minutes later by Mr Tyler, like a child piping up in a family argument. “Mr Blanc, I must just ask - where are we going? Where am I driving us to? I’m just circling the park.”

“Well I was going to say we should move to investigate Mr Roger Tramming at his house, but how many times have we circled the park?”

“We just completed our second circuit, and are now on our third.”

“Then I think we may have a more pressing issue, Mr Tyler. Unless they have an unimaginable need to perform some kind of automobile ballet, the blue van behind us is following us.”

Chapter Text

Benoit Blanc was licenced to drive in the state of Louisiana but preferred to leave such things to others. He was not a confident driver. Mr Tyler, it seemed, was an extremely confident driver and Benoit Blanc was extremely terrified.

London traffic moves like early stop-motion animation: somehow faster than it should appear despite all the stopping. But there were few opportunities for flat out speed making it difficult to lose a pursuer. Mr Tyler pushed the small car into a lower gear and roared across Chelsea Bridge. Blanc was anxious behind the wheel and the combination of the speed and close traffic had set him in a panic.

“Shall I call the police?” called Ms Mills from the back, grappling with her phone.

“They can’t do anything,” said Mr Tyler with finality. He bent over the wheel and took a sharp turn. He paused without breathing. After a beat he reversed into an alley and shot back the way he had come. He spun his head around as they skipped over the main thoroughfare. “Ah damn too fast,” he chided himself. “They saw me.”

Blanc had grabbed what was often called the Jesus bar and was hanging on to it and to the thought of a divine redeemer. His face was white, but he managed to offer some assistance. “What about the freeway?”

Mr Tyler merged into a main artery and slammed on his horn hard as he merged over to the opposite side. “I can try but I think we’ve got better odds in the traffic.” The car bunny hopped as Tyler shouldered it into a gap between shuffling cars that was far too small to be an invitation to enter. “Do you know this fellow?”

“Barring other information I had assumed he was one of yours, given the cloak and-“

He was trying to say dagger but a sharp braking bounced his head nearly onto the dashboard. Ms Mills disappeared from view into the foot rests of the back seat. “Sorry, that was a bus,” Tyler explained. “And I have all the information I need on you two,” he added. It was almost conversational and lacked menace because everything else going on was so consuming of attention. Blanc’s shoulder hit the window as Tyler did a u-turn over the median strip. “Apologies to your suspension, Ms Mills” Tyler said, with a squawk from the footwell the only response.

Another acceleration and the small car made an orange light and pulled onto the A3. “That should do it,” he said. “By the time he gets around the block we’ll be back over the river.”

Blanc nodded, breathing deeply. “Can you park near the Embankment?” he gasped.

“Why?”

“Mr Hoight Tramming may have had a death in the family but his duties to another house remain.” Out of the window Blanc motioned to the imposing Houses of Parliament and the famous tower beside it.

Blanc was of course not engaged with any civic authorities but he was damned if he would not make use of Mr Tyler’s seeming connections. He was, as Blanc had guessed, able to get the two of them into the building with ease. Ms Mills declined to accompany them, fearing no assassin if she remained on the open lawn in front of the centre of government; this also gave her a moment to buy a warm cup of tea. Blanc envied her the steadying of nerves but being snooped upon has given him a new fire for the trail. It was still a matter of early days and perfunctory checking of facts but a hound dog he was and a scent he would follow. Mr Hoight Tramming needed money; he was a public figure; he was connected to this secret brotherhood of knights; his alibi was as thin as tissue paper. Here then, was a trail to chase.

For his part Blanc was given to believe Tyler’s denial at being party to their pursuer. Without a drop of pride or braggadocio Mr Tyler had explained that he and his colleagues did not follow cars, they found out where their targets would be and simply went there directly. After all, Blanc was not difficult to find. There are only so many suspects, only so many avenues, in any criminal investigation and with Tyler’s knowledge and access to the family he could easily run down all possibilities if he could not anticipate the correct one.

Blanc found the honesty refreshing and decided it outweighed the veiled threat. As an enforcer Mr Tyler was efficient but also polite and occasionally genial; a rare thing in one used to pushing other people around for their employment. Vaguely Blanc wondered if Tyler was physically capable beyond driving and soon enough the universe proved quite willing to answer that question in the affirmative.

As they left the elevator the sounds of struggle were unmistakable, and grew louder and more panicked as they walked down the corridor towards Hoight Tramming’s office. As they had less than an hour ago, Blanc again watched helplessly as things escalated towards the physical. A young lady in jeans and a t-shirt had decided her only power left in life was to not leave the office of her MP, a fact she was now beginning to scream. A security person was coming from down the hall the other direction from Blanc and Tyler but before they could arrive a bossy young office temp was trying to tip the defiant visitor out of the waiting room seat. The woman naturally clung to the seat and dragged it, her and her assailant to the ground. More panic rose; more screaming followed. A second guard was now closing the distance faster.

The first security guard grabbed the woman’s shoulders and attempted to pull her to her feet but she went limp in fear and obstinacy. A wild kick knocked over the other chair and the glasses off the temp. Another blow would escalate things up a fight and Blanc saw the second guard pull his truncheon and move to flank his fellow official. Blanc knew what came next: a painful disabling blow to the back or top of the knee so the pain would bring compliance. The first guard spun his captive around and Blanc, without thinking, shouted “wait!”-

And then Mr Tyler had the woman on the floor, her neck pinned in his right elbow. His left hand raised in a stop sign to interpose between himself and the falling club. The first guard stared at his hands as the rest of the woman somehow slid out of them.

“I’ll let go when you stop kicking,” said Mr Tyler. Blanc noticed how he never asked questions. The speed and totality with which Tyler had restricted her movement had already shocked her out of rage and she subsided. He loosened his grip a small degree. “Whatever happens after you leave, you can figure out later. Right now there are only two options. These two men behind me can carry you out and dump you on the lawn, or they can walk you out calmly. If you choose the second nobody will consider making charges of assault.” Tyler looked at the two guards, the temp and the rest of the staff gathered around and behind the office door, and got silent assent. “If I were you, I would walk out on your own power. Much more dignified. Make a decision. I’ll let go now.”

With the same speed and grace he was suddenly a few feet away from the young woman and offering her a hand up. She took it with her resentment fading, and then shrugged and scowled away.

“She keeps coming here - “ said a young man who had rushed out from, it seemed, a stationery cupboard, armed, it seemed, with a staple remover. He was now consoling the secretary who was replacing her spectacles. “We told her the minister isn’t here but she wouldn’t believe me!” came another voice. She shot out her hand to Mr Tyler, with practiced form: “Trudie Michaels, I’m the minister's political secretary. Thanks so much for your help. Can I get you anything? Tea, coffee, water? Are you okay? What about you, Donald? James”

Donald adjusted and readjusted his glasses. “I’m fine” he sniffed. James patted Donald like Donald had returned to his corner in a boxing match. Mr Tyler accepted a bottled water and Blanc assured everyone his beverage needs were met. Slowly, like robots losing power, the large security men reduced their muscular stances and led their charge down the hall, while the two visitors were directed to chairs inside the office.

“As mentioned, the member is sitting in the house right now,” said Trudie Michaels, a tall red haired woman, a little too stocky to be called buxom. “Are you in his constituency? We weren’t expecting anyone today?” It wasn’t a question in English grammar, but it was absolutely voiced as one and pointedly. Blanc was always impressed at how the English used such pointed language sheathed in the scabbards of decorum.

Blanc took the lead, confusing everyone as he had until then seemed like Mr Tyler’s secondary; he was pleased to be underestimated in this way. It was his manner always, to be underestimated. This was a habit from his youth: as he had educated himself his accent had made it a simple ruse and it had become his trusty sidearm.He explained, perfunctorily, that he was making an investigation around the death of Mrs Charlotte Trammimg. The staff, as was their lot, expressed perfunctory grief and apologetics.

“We never met, of course, but she sounded like a lovely lady,” said Trudie. “And of course we don’t believe anything in the papers,” she assured them, the room and it seemed the ears of God, shaking off such thought of what was clearly a mortal sin in these halls. “We’ve not spoken on it, of course, and the minister has asked for privacy in this time of grieving.”

Blanc decided to be blunt. “How safe is the member in his seat? Was that an unhappy voter who just left?”

“She’s not a voter,” said Trudi with finality. “Mr Tramming is quite popular in his seat and we remain confident he will be returned at the next election.” It became clear Blanc would not receive anything beyond political defence. He tried a different tack.

“We know he’s a family man. Is he very close to his brothers?”

“Oh I’m sure he loves them dearly, but I wouldn’t say they are close. He’s very busy, with two young children and his responsibilities to the government and his constituents.”

“He does visit the family home regularly though? I understand he spends the afternoon with his mother every Wednesday. That doesn’t seem to be the actions of a very busy man…”

“Oh yes, well, direct family is important, and as I’m sure you know his father is very ill. Caring for his elderly father is very important.”

Blanc noticed something in this phrasing. “Is his father newly sick? I understood that his illness was a long term one.”

Trudie smiled apologetically as if to say she was probably wrong about everything. “Oh well, I know it’s only been the last six months since that he’s been so regularly visiting. His mother insists on it. I’m sure she wants everyone close at hand. It help, doesn’t it, to have family? Close by. In a time of infirmity. Family is so important. In this modern age.” Trudie spoke in chopped fragments, constructing sentences bit by bit on top of each section like a cartoon character building a bridge over a canyon.

“Is it fatal? I mean, before his accident, the other day -“

“Well I’m sure I’m not a doctor, Mr Blanc,” said the secretary, taking up tea cups and Mr Tyler’s water glass as if to close the interview. “But he’s a very old man, and his wife asks Hoight to be close at hand and he is of course dedicated to his family. As we all should be! After all, the family is the key building block in society. Family values. Are the bedrock of everything.”

Blanc wasn’t finished. “Have there been any other unusual visitors or phone calls to this office in the last few months? Anyone asking questions?” He shot a glance at Mr Tyler. “Anyone inquiring about his character? Or making veiled threats?”

There was a chuckle across the office, which Trudie explained. “No politician gets through the week without a threat or two, usually not veiled or even restrained. We just pass such things along to the police, of course.”

Blanc had many skills as a detective but tricking a conversationalist so skilled in defence and politeness into revealing too much was not one of them. He could only be patient and persistent, as much as he was allowed. “I have just one more question for you, then, and then we will alleviate you of our presence. It seems that Charlotte Tramming was the victim of foul play, not an accident.” The office stopped. It wasn’t quite shock, however, that Blanc sensed.

“Well, we did wonder.” Trudie again wielded her full stop like a sea wall, refusing all entry. “Of course we saw the whole thing in the papers.” She nodded to a huge pile on the nearby coffee table; several days worth. Then a thought occurred to her. “Oh you don’t think Mr Trammimg - Hoight - you don’t think the minister. That he could have done this? You haven’t come here to accuse him?”

Blanc raised an eyebrow. He could not trick anyone into revealing things but he could do a lot by closing his mouth, raising an eyebrow, and waiting patiently. “We thought - I thought - you were here to simply get all the facts and statements. We haven’t even spoken to the police.”

“And it’s absurd!” Trudie continued. “It was her husband, of course, Toby Tramming, he’s the one who did it. Didn’t you see? In all the papers. He’s one of those.” Trudie Michaels produced a full stop like a knife slammed into a table. “Violent men.”

The office, like a Greek chorus, murmured agreement. “It was always bound to happen. With those two. I mean with them. Always at each other's throats.” She was lost in sadness for a moment. Then she found her ship of thought crashing into a rocky outcrop of outrage. “So why are you here then? Why haven’t you arrested him?”

Blanc grimaced in apology. “There are still some details to acertain, some possibilities to -“

“Nonsense. We all saw what he called her. And this isn’t the first time. Now he’ll get away with it, like they all do. We need better police. Firmer judges. You know, this government, the policies we represent and embody. This is what we stand for. Justice and integrity. And -“

Blanc saw her breath in and took his chance to prevent a full party broadcast. “You don’t think anyone else could have wanted to do Mrs Tramming harm?”

“Well if there was it certainly would not be the good citizen of the people Hoight Tramming, Mr Blanc!”

He nodded gentlemanly. “Is there any particular reason though that you suspect his brother Toby? Besides what was in the newspapers? Do you think he suspected his wife was unfaithful?”

“Well, who wouldn’t be, with a brute like that for a husband? It’s always the way,” she said again. She seemed as fierce as Hoight’s wife and even more indefatigable with it, and the Greek chorus of staff agreed. “He was always a mess too, by the sound of it. Depending on her.” Everyone Blanc met had theories, unshakeable and unyielding. Everyone was quick to see a murderer in their midst. Only the oldest brother had seemed to find it all so unlikely and disturbing to his view or imagined understanding of the family.

Blanc had only one more question. “Regardless of the real perpetrator, can you think of anyone who benefits from suspicion or even speculation falling on Mr Hoight Tramming? Does he have any political enemies? Anyone keen to use this opportunity for their own means?”

“You mean the Labour pip squeak?” She tilted her head in thought. “I suppose it’s possible, they would stoop. So low. Such a twisted cowardly lot, lefties, don’t you think? No sense of. Self control. Or self respect. And I suppose they might kick up the media. There’s been a lot of press people. Coming around.”

Both Mr Tyler and Mr Blanc leaned forward at this news. “Did they say who they worked for?” Blanc asked. Trudie shook her head in failed recollection. Blanc retrieved his card. “If they come back, can you get their name and employer and call me at the first available opportunity,” he said, with as much charm and presupposition as he could muster into his syrupy voice.

“Aside from political enemies,” he returned, as if the thought had just struck him, “does he have any personal enmity, inside close friends and family?” Blanc leaned forward on the couch staring into the floor as if the thought he was about to utter had only just struck him. “After all, if it was as you say Toby Tramming who committed this violent act, would he be such a monster to frame his brother for the crime?”

It was almost cruel. For a moment a war occurred inside the personal political secretary. She badly wanted to impugn the character of Toby Tramming as far as she possibly could, to tar him with everything short of war crimes and maybe those as well, but she knew her role and duties well and could not suggest anyone, anyone at all, could bear any ill will towards the vaunted candidate or imply any sort of evidence might point towards him. “I’m sure his family loves Mr Hoight as much as he loves them, and would always stand by him,” shem attempted as the second urge won out. “They have always been a very close family and he has an excellent relationship with both his brothers, but of course he would also never impede a criminal investigation. Should there be one. But in the absence of that, he stands by his family.”

As the sentence grew longer it lost its passion and ended, Blanc was sure, in an absolute lie. As if feeling the sting of the falsehood, Trudie helped them find their coats and almost pushed them out the door. The two men walked silently back outside, and back to the car when they had collected their third compatriot.

“Families” mused Blanc quietly to himself as they got into the vehicle. Then he turned to the others, finding a cigar in his left pocket. “It was Leo Tolstoy I think,” he said, lighting up and staring his hundred mile stare into the distance. “He said happy families are all the same, but every unhappy family is different. I don’t agree. I don’t.”

He drew deep, sucking the tobacco into his sorrowed soul. “I’ve seen many unhappy families. Too many. And they all seem the same to me. Secrets and lies. Bad blood and back stabs. Nobody content in anybody else’s happiness.”

Mr Tyler started the car. “Where to, boss?” said Ms Mills with a cackled half-laugh. Slowly, Blanc pulled himself from the depths of his mind. “From one brother,” he drawled, “to t’other. I have some more questions for Mr Roger Tramming.”

It was a short drive by distance but stretched out in time by traffic and stop lights. The pall of Blanc’s sadness hung over the three and they spoke little for a while. Finally Myra asked if they had learned anything.

“I have learned that there is no love lost amongst the brothers Tramming. I have learned that Hoight Tramming has lied to me, though I am not entirely sure of all the reasons. I have learnt that Toby Tramming has equally lied to me, for reasons I cannot fathom. And I have learnt -“

Blanc stopped short. They had pulled up outside the fine Camden offices of Roger Tramming, and there, twenty yards past the house, was a blue van with dark windows. From the house, as if in sympathetic echo to the tension, came a smash of glass; a rising burglar alarm; a short strangled scream. And inside his head Mr Benoit Blanc was thinking about something Mr Tyler had said less than an hour earlier: that he did not follow suspects when it was easier to find out where they were going, and get there first…

Chapter Text

Everything happened very quickly. “Mr Tyler,” Blanc hissed in a sudden whisper: “with your driving skills, I will prevail on you to stay in the car. It may be our time to chase down our pursuer and end this chase by revealing their identity. Ms Mills, if you have the courage, please join me in heading inside to see if we may drive the beast out.”

Without nods, they signaled assent and Blanc’s long loping strides carried him to the small wooden door of the converted house. The handle did not turn, then all of a sudden it did. Hoight Tramming was standing there, eyes wide, pushing a finger up to his lips for silence. He pointed upwards. “Someone’s upstairs,” he said. He grappled for his phone from his pocket, his hand swaddled in an overly large handkerchief. “Dammit,” he swore, too loudly, and Blanc pushed past him and made for the staircase. Mills looked left and right outside, hunting for an assailant that might be running within or from the house.

Blanc was not an elderly gentleman but neither was he young. He had a thoroughbreds strength and speed though, when the hunt brought the sweat to his brow and nostrils; he cleared stairs three at a time. The top floor had been modestly but finely furnished, like a hotel lobby more than any medical establishment, and it was broken into two consulting spaces behind two large glass sliding doors. The one bearing the name and credentials of Roger Tramming was smashed with a deep crack, as the glass had resisted the shatter like thick bamboo resisted a cracking boot. A lightning of tension now rocked the door from top to bottom, but no shards fell and no ingress was offered. A large bust of Hippocrates lay on the floor. To Blanc’s left the landing ended in a window about two foot square, thrust open and the end table beneath it tipped over.

Blanc thrust his eager head out the egress. Below, he saw Hoight Tramming looking up with the same excitement, having burst out the back door downstairs. “Over there - “ yelled Hoight. He pointed at the fence across an immaculate lawn that surrendered around the edges to muddy puddles. “He went over the wall!” Hoight ran towards it across and began trying to scale the brickwork in pursuit into the next garden. Blanc pulled back into the room to meet the eyes of Myra Mills now atop the stairs. Suddenly they heard a car starting up, and turned and ran back down. They reached the wide-swung front door in time to see Tyler driving off in pursuit of the van. Blanc stared at nothing, wild-eyed, then swung his gaze back to Mills.

“Stay here for when he comes back,” he staccatoed. “I’ll see if I can come around and catch them in the main road.” He set off, his long loping strides making a half run and then a full one. Behind him, he heard Tramming coming back into the house and he poured on the speed. Around the corner and another block and he was in the high street. He looked left and right. It was too busy, anyone could blend in, and there on the corner were stairs down to the tube: Ravenscourt Park, a delightfully gothic name for an undistinguished set of concrete stairs. Blanc got there in what he thought was probably time enough to stop anyone coming from the surgery but then with a quick glance around, he dove down the stairs, found the next train and leapt aboard.

He had had a friend once who had raced sled dogs: huskies and malamutes, who had told him an old saying about breed temperament. If you tell your dog to turn left, a husky will turn left. A malamute will look for a break in the trees. Blanc had no reason to suspect ill intent of his two companions that morning but he also knew that they presented consequences that, if unabated, might hinder his pursuit. He had all of a sudden found his escorts occupied and had seen his chance, making for the break in the trees.

He changed trains at Hammersmith, and went around the central line pondering his next move, and if he had one. As was so often the way, the world of the rich and powerful was alien to him and impervious to much exploration. He could keep up with celebrity in the arts and tabloids - he was no dolt there. He had recognised the great Birdie Jay on sight that time on the island; read the works of Harlon Thrombey once in a while; dallied in fashion enough to recognise the heads of Vuitton and Gucci at the star-stuffed weekend at the Bernini mansion that had led to a murder most styled. But the rich that were out of the spotlight, the old money of these British isles, even if they had actual monetary value much less than the dazzling wealth of someone like Miles Bron, had protection he could not pierce. And more: they operated in a world he barely understood, with a language he did not speak. He needed context if he was to find clarity.

Stopping at Paddington station he purchased every paper he could find in the newsagent and three tabloid magazines. He also crossed to a Waterstones and purchased a copy of Ran and Sack: the Early Years, and Along Came A Spy, a novel by Toby Tramming. Blanc loved a puzzle but he also disliked research: he felt a good puzzle should contain all the elements to its own solution within itself. But murder rarely kept to such neat and tidy rules as a crossword or a tangram; and as such he would avail upon his new reference books to learn more of the lions into whose den he had wandered.

He had time to read: he returned to Paddington and arranged a train to Oxford, less than two hours north.

It was still quite astounding to him that such a short travel time could give lead to a new city with new architecture and a new landscape. Oxford, like most of England in the spring, was abloom with nature’s graces and welcoming to the foreign traveller. He found the tourist centre on Broad Street with ease and eventually found the college that the Tramming men had called home. Blanc knew, from a conversation with a friend of Philip’s long ago, in an uncomfortably small cafe in Bari, that the key was not to speak to the masters but the scouts. The scouts were a combination of doormen and batmen to the young men and women of privilege and knew every private dalliance and weekend distraction that would occupy the students who had “digs” on the stair that the scout occupied.

Blanc was blocked from entering the ornate sandstone gate of the college the Tramming men had called mater but he had prepared a story. He explained he was writing a book about Patrick Tramming and Myra Mills and their collaboration, and wanted to talk to anyone who remembered the patriarch. Amazingly, there was one still working who did. Blanc poured coffee and offered whiskey or hobnobs to go with it and spent an hour learning what he needed. He had enough time in the city to do some reading in the college library to confirm his suspicions and his Latin translations. Finally, with the help of a call to Phillip he rang a friend of a friend who was a doctor to confirm what he’d been told and able to guess about Patrick Trammings condition.

It was a soft pink tilted afternoon that found Blanc sitting by Merton fields idly eyeing the clouds, the cricket match and the cuckoo-wrens between them. It was excellent to be without his pursuers, but he knew it could not last much longer. When he had turned on his phone to make the calls there had been 58 angry texts from Myra Mills and several left messages. Mr Tyler had sent one text message that simply said he would see Blanc the next morning at his hotel. As usual, there was no hint of questioning.

The escape let him think, which he needed space and freedom to do. Things always happened quickly in the ways of murder, he well knew, and his mind was piercing but took time to get up to speed. A moment's respite in another beautiful park, an echo of this morning's interlude in London, would provide just that. But all the thinking in the world could not change the fact that he did not have all the facts. As usual, he was being lied to; as usual he could as likely persuade his suspects to tell the truth as he could fit himself inside a hickory nut. As Tobys client or as Myra’s he was seen as allied with those forces, which coloured the responses he received. As an American he was an outsider and not to be trusted; as a pursuant of scandal doubly so; meanwhile he was so inside as to be seen as taking a side in at least two family squabbles, The portcullis was lowered, the drawbridge drawn, and the guard doubled and he knew not nearly enough - except that the killer was within those walls.

What he needed was a stealthy approach. To find those who were outside the family circle but close enough to know more than he. He took our pen and paper and wrote down each member of the family. Then he carefully added Myra Mills to the bottom. He chewed the end of his pen, thought better of it, and retrieved a cigar. Then he made a new heading on the page and with a satisfied suck on the cigar, wrote the word STAFF.

The sky was growing a smudged red purple when he returned to London, boiling a yellow egg of a sun into orange. Normally his next line of questioning would have to wait until the next day, but Blanc had got lucky again. This Friday evening the charity called Great and Grand was hosting a musical recital and money raising event in Bayswater. It was open to the public from five pm and Blanc arrived a little before six. He thanked Phillip silently for his great satorial taste; he was, under his tweed overcoat, just suitably dressed enough for the performance - a choral selection from Elijah. He had just enough time to circle the room before it started: Blanc loved music in many forms, but not this one.

Great and Grand was a charity, so the a-frame at the door and their promotional brochure read, dedicated to “supporting the continuing presence of grand mothers and great grandmothers” in the lives of “our daughters and the women of tomorrow”. The brochure did not give any great specifics of what funding was needed and where it would be spent, but donations were encouraged for “more events such as these” to continued to “raise awareness of the cause”.

Blanc was an ungainly, even gangly figure at most fancy parties but he was gifted with some folksy charm. In fact, at times he could be a most charming southern gentleman when his smile brought in dimples and his blue eyes blazed. He also knew all too well the boredom of working the check-in desk and the joy most people have at explaining their passion. He thus turned his natural wallflower status from a flaw to an asset as he expressed his bamboozlement at the brochure to the two ladies in black taffeta gowns behind the red tableclothed entry desk.

Passionately although without great certainty Dolores and Lois explained that they arranged cross-generational events for women with schools and artistic societies, and presented evidence of two recent examples. Blanc was astonished, honestly, at the complexity in arranging something so mostly unnecessary and he let his genial appreciation of the strange shine out as admiration. He then turned his attention to the organisation management, for that was why he was here. He was also not above turning up the jowly swagger of his native accent to add to the image of a befuddled beginner, keen to be taken in hand and made an apt pupil. Blanc could not always inveigle through the barricades of secrets and lies with piercing cuts, but he could dig under such battlements just as effectively through appearing to be one blinking in the newfound light, like a mole emerging from the earth of ignorance and poor breeding.

“I hunderstand that this horganization,” he intoned, “is led by Ms Linda Tramming, is that right? Is she your boss?” They nodded. “I was at Oxford with Hoight Tramming - is that her husband? Same family?” They excitedly confirmed the connection. “What is she like as a boss - not that I want you all to go tellin’ tales, of course. Oh I won’t report back to hanyone.” They were effusive about her skills and her passion, and Blanc smiled happily.

“The truth is, I always thought Hoight would never allow any wife of his to work - not that I agree with such things hof course. Hoight was an absolute ass in school-“ and he was already cut off with gossip about the terrible chauvinism of Hoight Tramming. Dolores and Lois were quite sure Linda’s husband was a beast, a troll, a Neanderthal, and, with a conspiratorial whisper, a follower of men’s rights activism. The ladies couldn’t be sure about that but there had been that controversy, hadn’t there, where Hoight had liked and shared social media posts of the unacceptable stripe, suggesting women belonged in the home and the greatest meaning a woman could bring to her life was raising her children. And of course, Blanc was assured, Linda adores her children, and the family is so important but it was so old fashioned to think women could not do both in this modern age, wouldn’t Benoit Blanc agree? And he assured them he did, and encouraged women to whatever extent that Dolores and Lois felt appropriate. He even went so far as to suggest that not having children at all could hardly be considered a sin, which caused the two women to thin their lips and look away.

Blanc rallied with the suggestion that Linda might leave her husband, but was assured that her status would suffer and her husband's power would make it punishing. “Of course for his position and her charity they make it work,” said Dolores. The two ladies then expressed that marriage was always difficult, and a balance of needs. Blanc drew the two women into his conspiracy: “but now their children are older, what if he was the one who decided to end the marriage? Maybe he thought his reputation could survive it?” He was assured not. “No, Mr Tramming is a rising star in his party and part of that of course is the perfect wife and perfect family,” said Dolores.

“Yes that’s why he’s so keen for her not to work I suppose,” said Lois, “although of course most MP’s wives work nowadays, which is why it’s so silly.” Dolores agreed and began to list all the conservative MPs she could think of who had working wives. Blanc cut her off by suggesting that men could never be trusted not to trade wives like cars. That caused Lois to begin listing MPs who had indeed divorced and remarried. Dolores picked out exceptions to the list where widowing had occurred or the wife had been unfaithful or worse, unsuitable. That led them to talk about marriages that might have well been over or which everyone knew were a sham, which was the particular interest of Benoit Blanc. It was a long time fishing but finally he was getting the fish he was after.

He went and got himself a drink and one each for the ladies and put himself in his best “dish it, girl” pose. Soon the conversation grew ever more pregnant with useful material. Does Linda have any suspicions about Hoight? No, no, but well, who knows. Does she have a man on the side herself? Oh chance would be a fine thing. Does Hoight get around town? Well tongues have wagged. But then they always do, of course was a counter from Lois, Dolores was not about to be found lacking and brought out her trump card: that the thing about Toby Tramming shouting all those horrible things at his wife was because he caught her sleeping with his brother…Lois said she could believe it, because of course where else does the eye wander but closest to home.

Blanc knew it was gossip but it was useful all the same. Something was ill at ease among the brothers, he knew that. Jealousy was a powerful motivator. Dolores and Lois had been everything he hoped and that and their fierce schoolgirl demeanour in ladies of a certain age had endeared them to him. He felt he could not let them down and leave the choral performance early. It was not nearly as bad as he imagined: it was astoundingly well performed and not as dreary as he imagined in its subject matter. Elijah yelled at Baal and Baal at Elijah, and Blanc thought long about stories and belief in them. That was what all of this was wrapped up in. Too many tales, too much supposition, too much belief. It might not matter in the slightest if Charlie and Hoight were lovers; but it might matter deeply if someone believed them to be - or convinced others it was true.

The clock was ticking for Benoit Blanc, however. Mr Tyler had given him 48 hours that morning and he had now spent too much of it in contemplation. He could lope like a wolf when needed but he was all too slow like molasses to fit into the damned timetable ordained from above and with a threat behind it. He had discovered many motives that day in both love and money. But motive was, he suspected, common in the Tramming family. And so he had more fishing to do.

He had been busy on his train journey back to London. He had first called Roger Tramming. It transpired that nothing had been stolen in the attempted burglary. The police had suggested it was likely the work of someone who knew the surgery would be closed on Fridays, but since that fact was advertised on the outer windows that was practically anyone. Likely they were after drugs as were the common goal of surgery break ins. Blanc said that he knew Roger was busy and asked if he could put the rest of his questions to his secretary or administration staff - and since the business was closed that day, if he could have a home number. But he had waited until after work hours to make the call, because he thought it polite to let Joshua (such was the name of the major domo of Roger’s practice) to finish their day off, and also because his hound dog nature was kicking in. An exhausted quarry made more mistakes. It might just be that after nine pm on a Friday night a loyal secretary might reveal something more than they intended by mistake.

Blanc stayed until the last note rang and the applause began, then feigned a text alerting him to an emergency and slipped out into the cool spring evening. He dialed the number; it did not pick up the first time but it did the second. Blanc explained who he was and that he was acting for the family in investigating the death of Charlotte Tramming. Joshua asked if he was with the police; Blanc dissembled that he was a legal investigator working for Toby Tramming, which was true. He assured the reedy-voiced young man that he knew it was late, he was sorry to bother him and had only a few questions.

“I understand,” he said mustering his most official-sounding voice, “that there was an attempted break in at the office today. Was anything taken?”

“No, thank goodness.”

“Are there any medical records kept on the premises?”

“No,” came the answer again. “Our records are uploaded to the Radcliffe Hospital Records Archive, we don’t store anything non-digitally any more. If doctors have any films they take then home.”

“I see and what about any personal records?”

Joshua hummed and harred. “I suppose the doctors can use the computers for personal correspondence? But it’s not, like, standard?”

“I see, and has there been any changes or updates to the computer or data security recently?”

“Umm, no? It’s all very secure -“

“I’m sure it is. This is all just a routine check. Mr Roger mentioned to me that he had seen someone lurking outside the building as if observing the place. Did he make you aware of this?”

“Oh yeah, yeah, he said he saw someone…last week.”

“Did you see this person?”

“No, but I told everyone on the staff if they saw anyone like that, that they should, like, immediately, let me know.”

“Just one more question: did Roger Tramming receive a call from any of his family members on Wednesday?”

“No? Well, not through the switchboard. I mean like with personal records - I assume such calls would come to his mobile.”

“Of course!” said Blanc as if the idea had just occurred to him. He thanked Joshua and wished him good night but added that if he could also alert him if he had any more sightings of anyone lurking outside, observing the place, he would be grateful. He hung up and was already walking.

Blanc’s thoroughbred strength and speed had been established that morning. His stamina was nothing short of phenomenal. He was a warhorse, and the long day of sleuthing and research only made him hungry for more. He sipped from his hip flask for inspiration not warmth; he was plenty warm enough as he feet and the dutiful tube system of London took him back to Roger Tramming’s city office. It was a long shot but it paid off. He found the item he was looking for in the outdoor garbage bin with almost no effort.

It was the back and forth of the tube that made the night long; had he been in London longer he would have found the overland routes that are so often faster than descending down into the tunnels only to climb to the surface again less than a kilometre away. It was quite late when Blanc found his way back to his hotel where he had begun with his steaming ponderings so many hours before. He thought a better drink at the hotel bar would end things nicely and took long eager steps to the front door, looking hungrily through the wide window at the bar area within and the warmth it promised.

And there he saw it, with the black back of a bar booth making a mirror of the glass: a single figure in a hood, lurking just outside the building. And staring straight at Benoit Blanc.

Chapter Text

He turned like lightning, and the figure was gone. Had he imagined it? No - there was movement to his left. He spun again, sending messages down to his legs to catch up. They finally did, propelling him down the step and towards the busy corner but the figure was already lost in the crowd. By the time he pushed through and reached the lights, the figure was streaking across traffic. Blancs eyes, though blue as icebergs, were not as sharp in the dark as they once were. He lunged onto the road, craning his neck but already feeling like the battle was lost. A car honked. He took his eyes off his target, and when he looked back they were gone. He recalled the blur of a pink - or perhaps orange - coat, the hood pulled up over the head, but now there was nothing.

His heart was pounding and not just from the sudden exertion. He stooped and apologised gentlemanly to the driver of the car he was blocking and shuffled back off the road. He thought back to his first plan of getting a drink and decided it was even more pressing now. He cleared his head until he was thinking of nothing but a rich Kentucky bourbon and how to get it, and waited until the waiter passed him the chilled glass before he unleashed his mind again.

Roger and Toby Tramming had reported figures watching their movements. They might have been mistaken, embellishing or lying. This was different, because Blanc had seen it himself. Or had he? If that, first of all, he must be certain. And yet he wondered if he ever could. There had been a figure but had it really been staring at him? Had it moved when he chased it or had he mistaken simply the fast moving Friday night youths, jostling and pushing each other? Had he concluded more than the sum of individual parts?

After all, Roger and Toby Tramming had suggested a pattern - and of course that very morning Benoit Blanc had had his own shadowy figure announce itself and stand by his side in the form of Mr Tyler. Was he now too chased by the shadow of imagined conspiracies, of cloaks and daggers, of third men seen in rear windows? Such was rarely the way reality occurred but Benoit Blanc did not deal always in what most would call reality. He had travelled to the island playgrounds of the rich and into the dark heart of many souls and found reality hard to keep his footing upon in both places. In murder, anything was possible. Once someone considered the ending of a human life, every dark dream became accessible, every insane act conceivable. And here this heady aromatic feast of blood was already cut with the soporific narcotic of fancy and fantasy.

His conversations in the Oxford college had convinced him to agree with Roger Tramming: there was no real “false order”, no secret group of knights, no occult conclaves and secret rituals. There was however a group of men who had grown out of century-old in-joke to be a loose college of friends and associates that passed membership down from father to son. As time had gone on, it seemed, the bonds of loyalty and secrecy had hardened while the parody mysticism had fallen away. And even those bonds were just an artifice for allegiance and support, of a half-hearted social club of old college friends.

But like infidelity, something did not have to be real to be believed in, and once believed in deeply enough, a belief could drive one to obsession or derangement. Toby Tramming had come to believe he was being targeted by sinister figures and it was perhaps not entirely his imagination at play. He had received threats and perhaps turned them into a conspiracy.

Now, more than ever, Blanc knew he must not do the same.

He turned to his phone to distract his mind from such flights of fancy. There were more texts from Myra Mills going from frantic to angry to despairing to cruel to plying, and then culminating in a direction to check his email. Blanc kept one professional email attached to his simple detective services website so it was no surprise she had found it. The email was long, more than a thousand words and grew more depressing with each paragraph. Ms Mills had taken his disappearance as an insult to their earlier forged camaraderie and as such a sign that he was convinced she was of bad character and likely a murderer. There the tone became defensive and hostile, directed at Blanc, at Patrick Tramming, the Trammings as a whole and the cruelty of existence in general. Belief, he thought again, was what mattered here the most, and it soon became clear that Myra had hidden behind her politeness to the family a vast and deep umbrage for their sins against her.

The sins had begun long in the past it was hinted, with Patrick at the beginning dominating her in their working partnership and in their appearance to the world. Here Blanc reached into his bag and withdrew the collection of Ran and Sack he had purchased. At the back of the volume was a historical tour of the works production and collage of “behind the scenes” photos. After the childhood picture of Tramming came the photo of him at his desk working for a newspaper, then at a cartoon magazine. In the staff photo he could clearly see a young Mills and a young Diana, labeled with her maiden name in the caption. The text beside said Mills had been a secretary at first; by the look of the clothes and posture so had Diana. Though the latter woman was maybe a decade older, they clearly had once shared the same rank and stature.

In the entire time Myra Mills had been inside the house the previous morning, Blanc recalled, Diana Tramming had neither spoken to her or looked at her. Roger in fact might have been the only one who had addressed her at all. Toby had been cordial to her at the hospital, he recalled. It was not therefore a collective family disdain.

Again, it came back to belief, or even just suspicion. It didn’t matter if Patrick Tramming had had an affair with Myra Mills. It didn’t matter even if not once had his gaze lingered too long on the bend of a leg or curve of a dress. It was enough for Diana to wonder if it had. Or to simply resent the time lost, the hours spent working hand in glove with any woman not herself. How much, Blanc wondered, had Diana ignored? How much resentment and suspicion and simple wishing things were otherwise had she swallowed as he had joined someone else in his study day after day? How deeply had she resented the discovery that in the end, after all her swallowings, Ms Myra Mills rejected this gift, spat in their faces and said it wasn’t enough?

Meanwhile, might not an angry young student resent the other woman in her partners life? Might she suspect that all his jealous guarding of their work and its legacy was promoted by another, uglier jealousy from his other companion? It was ironic, perhaps, thought Blanc: there was clearly no love lost between the brothers and they feared Myra’s legal grasp and she in turn might have so many reasons to hate them, as the email implied…it was ironic that the murder he was being called to investigate was not of any of them.

He dangled that thought a little further into the fishpond of his thoughts. Could the murder have nothing to do with the victim? Could it have been simply a means to hurt another? It would be a huge risk to take, and a violent urge, but sometimes the rage of murder, he knew, could sublimate, fester, and strike in proxy or with misdirection. Perhaps even the well-liked Charlie discovered something about which she could not keep silent, so she required silencing altogether?

Blanc sighed. He had begun his day with no removal of suspects. Now, he was magnifying not just those into conspiracies deep and shadowy, but also adding new targets and new crimes. This puzzle was spreading like a crack in a windscreen, bifurcating over and over, from a clear vision into a thousand mysteries. Somewhere was the stone that started all the trouble, but all he could see was cracks upon cracks.

He had at least uncovered the truth in some areas. Reaching back into his bag he retrieved the tabloid magazines. He had read through them on the train and followed the stories of note further online. Now, in the dark bar, he folded each page carefully to the pertinent articles. The previous night Hoight Tramming had assured Benoit Blanc that, like his brother Roger he had neither insight nor interest in the status of quality of the marriage of Toby and Charlotte Tramming. Yet without prompting his political secretary had denied believing the stories in the media. Toby had presented a picture of perfect marital bliss but the tabloid magazines had spoken of the most recent bust-up with a sense of it happening before. Hoight had presented the same, and so had Roger. A lie agreed upon in the face of absolute contradiction: there were few in the whole of England who might have honestly been ignorant to said marital strife.

Both men had insisted nobody could want to harm Charlotte Tramming, but this possibility had sprung quickly to the minds of Hoight Tramming’s wife and political secretary. The former believed it had to be the work of Myra Mills. Not one of the brothers nor the matriarch had thought to mention Mills’ threat to the family, or that Charlotte might hold the proof against Mills’ claims.

Whatever her motive might be, Myra Mills did not have an alibi for the crime. Her emailed assured Blanc she had been home and been called to the house by a text from Roger. She had included screenshots but, Blanc knew, such things were easy to fake. Slowly he brought out the item he had found in the dumpster outside Roger’s consulting rooms which might explain everything: the shattered ruins of a mobile phone. If he had not texted her, then the phone could show it but there was little he could do here. He moved his hands over the crumbling screen and the flat back, now altogether too close together. A car perhaps had been used to crush it. Now it was a black box of secrets. The cloud might of course contain everything but he would need personal details to get to that. He might have been able to guess a six digit passcode or get Roger to unlock this; he had no way to do anything more complicated. The one friend he knew skilled in such things was far away in the United States and might object if Blanc could not convince them of the legality of the act.

Like so much in this case, he thought, it was evidence of murder, of secrets, of a need to hide, but not who. Anyone could have taken the phone and smashed it to pieces, for a lot of reasons. But Roger would know about it, no matter what. That would be his first move in the morning: Roger had lied to him more than once already, and Blanc was not about to let this continue.

The universe was not without a sense of dramatic irony and theatrical flair so as he was putting away the broken phone he was startled to hear it ring. Then he collected himself: it was his own phone ringing angrily in his pocket. He was startled again after pushing accept to hear a serious, heavy voice suddenly asking if they were speaking to Benoit Blanc.

“That is correct,” he managed, finding a smile and hoping it carried to his voice. Deep down, though Blanc hated evil men and women, he always strove to keep others happy in his gentlemanly way. He would never step on anyone’s toes unless life and liberty depended on it.

“Haversian is my name. Deputy Commissioner Haversian of the Metropolitan Police of the City of London.”

“Well, sir, I am honoured you would call me. And so late on a Friday night.” Blanc kept almost every single drop of sarcasm from the reply. Almost every single one.

“And I am honoured to have you in our green and pleasant land, Mr Blanc. I’m someone who has followed your career with great interest and, well, admiration.”

“It is a great thing to be known in one’s field,” said Blanc neutrally. He felt he knew there was another shoe waiting to drop, probably on his head.

“So this is really just a social call. A courtesy call. I’m sure as I say you’ve done amazing things over in America, of course. But of course things are different here. Different indeed to how you do things over the pond, yes.” Blanc stayed silent. He found it useful so often. “We have a proper detective force here, of course. Proper detecting gets done. Which is to say, there’s no need for you to be fooling around with this Tramming matter. We’ve got our very best on it, of course.”

Blanc smiled down the line. “I am hof course ready and willing to work with any and all British police,” he said. “I too am a great fan of your work, and that of the whole metropolitan force.”

There was a slightly too long pause. The voice grew colder. “Leave this one alone, Blanc. Go back to America.” There was another pause. And then came another threat using a word Blanc would not repeat and mentioning his husband. Then the line cut out.

Blanc ordered another drink and reminded himself once again not to jump at shadows and go down rabbit holes and even not to chase waterfalls although he still wasn’t clear on the meaning of that particular idiom. From the waiter he also asked if he could order breakfast in bed. Yesterday he had been accosted before breakfast; it would not happen again. Too many liberties had been taken. A man had to draw the line, and breakfast was the place to do it.

The phone call was one of several impositions and ultimatums he had received in the last fourteen hours; far more than he was willing to bear. It was the second time he had been threatened. That was unacceptable. Blanc was used to being disregarded and poorly treated: it was the lot of the private detective to be underestimated, undermined and under appreciated, and to be lied to was his trade. He didn’t like it but he could tolerate it. He didn’t appreciate the dismissal, but he could bear it. He was used to threats. They always came. They did get his goat though and by this late hour of a very trying day Benoit Blanc had found his goat had been gotten far more than any reasonable man should be given to expect. His goat may as well have been gotten, packaged for post and sent across the sea, never to be seen again.

He was angry; he had been angry much of the day. But now something else was present. The vice commissioner had been not just violent but crude. He had threatened not just him but his beloved. Blanc was used to being angry. He was used to wanting to throw everyone involved with his case into the sea and be done with them, and all their vainglorious egoes and pathetic pettiness. That kind of anger now sat in him for the whole country he inhabited. More than anything he wanted to snatch Phillip and run away from it all. It was so stupid and so small yet insisted on putting its claws near him and making him cautious.

Behind that anger though was a new emotion. People had tried to kill Benoit Blanc once or twice in his life. He knew that cold steel feeling, a panic that turned slowly into pure force. But until today, until his time in England, nobody had threatened Phillip, and now that force was turned to a fire; a cold fire that was nothing like anger. It was almost joy.

Blanc had been tasked to stop a murder from under the shadows of a secret society, but now he was newly resolved. He would unmask the killer, tear down the secret society and perhaps even rip to shreds the British aristocracy along the way. He was Benoit Blanc. And he was the fury of all the sea, and woe betide the boats that set their sails against him.

Chapter Text

The ravages of gravity and time upon the male body were not as savage as they were upon the female form, but they were still a fact of life. For the most part, Blanc had been blessed with a body that grew more taught and stretched over his tall skeleton than sagging or bulging. He had had a fitful night, dreaming of being chased through endless tunnels, with sirens blaring. He had woken far earlier than he intended and now sat naked on the end of the bed in a rangy effigy. His ice blue eyes burned out the window as he tried to calm a fury which had only built during the night. When he failed he took to the shower, blasting his skin with cold and hot to at once scrub off the feeling of yesterday night and shield himself for more.

Drying, he caught himself in the mirror. He flexed and posed a bit, as all men do; highlighting muscles, hiding hollows. He was not an old man but he was older; much of his body hair turning a musty grey nothing like silver. He looked like a brawler; but a brawler of an old man. If it ever came to such things, Mr Tyler would undoubtedly fold him into a suitcase without breaking a sweat. So might Myra Mills.

He was not, it was safe to say, feeling his rage to be accompanied by a confidence that he might carry out its urgings, mor withstand the slings and arrows of his enemies. He wished, deeply, that the room had a bath. The steam room or the hot tub could not be considered. Only here, in these four walls of his hotel room, was he safe from the calumny of the Trammings and their connections and entanglements. In lieu of a soak, he wrapped his body and hair in the fluffy salmon robe and towels provided, and lay on the bed.

Breakfast arrived with a dainty and dutiful knock at six am. Blanc didn’t move. Opening the door, even a crack, would allow the outside world in. He looked over at his phone, still switched off. He’d told his closest friends he was off line but there was still the small hint of panic that someone needed to talk to him. Perhaps he should have blocked everyone’s phone numbers instead, he mused. Now, on the other side of the on button, the words and worlds of Mr Tyler and Ms Mills must surely wait with hungry mouths.

The paper then, was the lesser evil, and it came with coffee and a two thirds English breakfast (no sausage or bacon). Blanc positioned the plates and cups daintily on his breakfast table, put up his feet, took an invigorating sip, and lifted the fearful document. He had chosen the Times. He was not unaware to its arch conservative tendencies, of course, but he found the tone and style most bracing. Nothing like his home grown press. So much of the American media demanded you scream and shout out loud; the Times was quite clear its readers should shut up and stay that way unless instructed otherwise.

Big news was afoot on the front page. A scandal amongst the conservatives leaders; a stepping down imminent; a reorganisation certain. Following the leading story to deeper analysis, Blanc saw Hoight Trammings picture among a rogues gallery of young and hungry rising stars that might get places in the new cool kids club being feverishly constructed inside the heads of the newly anointed. A banner day, then, for Hoight Tramming and his staff. An increase in press attention might follow; a need for things like murder and conspiracy to be fast forgotten would certainly rise.

Blanc finished his breakfast, savoured every drop of his coffee and dressed himself methodically in his favourite linen pants, with a knitted vest and blazer. He added a smart yellow tie and brown Windsor boots. Then, slowly, carefully, he turned on his phone.

Data came all a-tumult. Rage, alarm; demands and supposition. Slowly, carefully, Blanc sat back down in his chair so he could scroll through things all the way to the top to make sense of them in true chronology. The first fact of most importance was that Roger Tramming had been attacked early that morning: mugged on his morning jog. He had been able to get himself to hospital but apart from some scratches, bruising and a pair of broken glasses he had been declared fit to go home. So too, had Patrick Tramming been sent, and a long series of communications had followed, tagging Blanc in as a legacy, about who would be responsible for taking whom, to where, and when. The family had decided to all help Patrick settle in, it seemed and were now planning to all head to the house. Blanc put his phone down and pushed it away from him a few inches. That was quite enough indeed.

There was no more coffee, however, so there was nothing for it but to open the door and head downstairs for a second cup. He opened the door with a sudden lunge, expecting Mr Tyler to be standing opposite. Instead he was waiting near the elevator in the lobby, also reading the paper. His suit, Blanc noticed with some jealousy, was far nicer than his own. Steel grey with a faintly powder blue shirt and a golden necktie and pocket square. Whomever employed Mr Tyler, their taste in goons ran expensive.

They shook hands. “No hard feelings, I hope?” offered Blanc with real geniality and Tyler returned a warm smile. “Not at all, Mr Blanc. And I do hope you enjoyed your time in Oxford.”

Blanc swallowed. Behind the genuine warmth was a genuine threat. Blanc was no stranger to diplomatic language and veiled threats but here, as in haute couture, Mr Tyler had bested him again.

“I was successful in my pursuit, you will also be happy to know. Shall we exchange information or do you want to wait for Ms Mills?” There was a slight pause between the to and the wait to indicate a slight disdain to the idea, and perhaps a hope the disdain was shared. Blanc did not want to wait but he also did not want Mr Tyler to allow himself to believe that he was somehow the “good one” of his two hangers-on, bullies and commandeers that they were.

Blanc checked his phone to confirm. “Ms Mills has gone to see to the health of Roger and Patrick Tramming so she will not be joining us yet.” Blanc sat down, relieved but resentful. In another world he would have loved to be Mr Tyler’s partner in pursuit. He also would admit the dark features over a sharp chin, perfect teeth and fine frame were attractive as well. It would be nice to work as friends. But they still were not and could not while Mr Tyler held threats over him. His better nature wanted him to forget that and enjoy shrewd-minded and capable company. His honour would not permit it.

“What has happened to Mr Roger?” asked the handsome young Mr Tyler, ordering them coffee. “Is he ill?”

“Someone mugged him on his morning run about an hour ago.” Blanc suspect Mr Tyler knew, but he would not be the first to drop the facade.

“How dreadful. Is he badly injured?”

“It seems not,” Blanc reassured. “Just bruised. But it does seem like it was not a coincidence, given the attack on his premises last night.”

“This is true.”

“I would ask you to put pressure upon the police for more information, but last night I received a call that makes it clear they may not be on our side.” He related the phone call’s contents. Mr Tyler sipped his coffee and remained stoic, neither approving nor disapproving of the strong-arm technique or the language used within it.

“As for my trip to Hoxford, Mr Tyler, it was entirely fruitless. The scouts and fellows of Christchurch College remember several generations of Tramming boys and the secret society the original patriarch invented, but swiftly agreed with Roger Tramming that it was all a matter of school boy pranks - nothing more than a foolishness, a mockery of the other students and their masonic tendencies, and so forth. I was hable to confirm, however, that Mr Roger Tramming played as much a part in them as his two brothers did. And no, Mr Tyler, I did not reveal hany part of the purpose of my hinvestigations or give any cause for rise of suspicion or indelicacy. Their secret, the one you so fiercely protect, remains safe.”

Benoit Blanc’s southern aspirations in voice were mostly under his control, applied at his discretion, but they rose when he was indignant or insisting, or building to a point.

“Roger Tramming indeed seemed at one point to have been the obvious choice to receive the anointing of admittance into its ridiculous but lofty membership upon the death of Patrick Tramming. None could recall any such thoughts of it being passed to any other but the eldest child in any other circumstance. I even have a photo here of some ceremony.” He drew from his pocket one of the prizes of his journey, a faded 1980s photo with too much flash flare and fuzzy edges.

“The gentleman there, wearing the crown and what appears to be a tablecloth and well, very little else, is, I think you will agree, Mr Roger Tramming, taking the sacred orders of the False Knighthood, or whatever the latin translates to. I wonder if perhaps a sudden reorganisation has indeed taken place, and I do not wonder at all about whether your masters can confirm or deny this information.”

Mr Tyler munched thoughtfully on a poppyseed bagel with apricot jam. “Mmm. Well, I can certainly enquire -“ and he reached for the photo. Here Blanc pulled it away and delicately placed it in an internal pocket. “We are not, Mr Tyler, despite appearances to the contrary, entirely allies, are we? I would prefer if I could hold onto that item. You did after all promise me my full Hinvestigation. And I will of course continue not reveal anything untoward that I discover. But I will also insist, as I did yesterday, that you equally share all of your intelligence and discovery with me.”

Mr Tyler bowed his head, like they were duellists across swords. He reached into his coat pocket and produced his phone. He opened some photos. Blanc stared blankly at the young woman on the screen until, after scrolling through a few shots, he remembered her from Hoight’s office - where Mr Tyler had swiftly held her to the floor. Here she was crossing the street in an orange hoodie, the next was a police report.

“I do not think she is of importance but her name is Janyn Cuthbert. She’s 23 years old. She is currently living in Soho. She has dropped out of her course in graphic design and the physical arts at the University of the Arts, London, and is currently unemployed. She has no arrests on record but there are two police complaints against her. One lodged by Hoight Tramming himself, claiming she was harassing him. I did not speak to her directly but we spoke briefly on the phone. She declined to explain the complaints. If you wish to visit you could do so today.”

Tyler flicked the phone album forward perfunctorily. Blanc instantly recognised the blue van with the dark windows. The next few shots were of a thin, straw headed man carrying a camera. Blanc recalled having seen him outside the hospital.

“His name is Vernon Napp. 33 years old. No criminal record or history of violence. He is a freelance journalist and photographer. I followed him to his house in West Ham. We had a brief conversation where he indicated he had already been threatened not to pursue his inquiries; I presented myself as a fellow journalist but to my chagrin I am not skilled in the art of impersonation. I was able to glean that he is working on a story about the true provenance of the cartoons that Patrick Tramming created or co-created I should say with Ms Mills. I gather the media spotlight on Toby Tramming and the murder piqued his interest even further. And now this-“ Mr Tyler used a single finger to indicate Blanc's paper - “well, it could be a bestseller.”

“With Mr Hoight Tramming being considered for a possible ministry, the clients I represent have ever more reason that his privacy be protected and this matter be concluded as speedily as is possible.”

Blanc grinned, showing his teeth. “Oh I am sure they do. I must say though I am extremely tired of being ordered around like a stubborn old mule. You have your orders, Mister Tyler. But I have a duty.”

“I believe the police suspect Roger Tramming, his assault notwithstanding, and with now greater evidence of his motive thanks to your journey.”

“I’m sure they do suspect this, but in truth this case is not what anyone suspects. I am not Hat all convinced of anyone’s guilt at this time. Oh yes” - Blanc waved away disagreement with his espresso - “the brothers clearly have something to hide, and have lied to me several times. But what and why remain outside my grasp.”

“But the police -“

“Are nothing but a gang of thieves and busybodies, I find. And whatever their or your orders I have a duty I remind you again. One from which I shall not shrink.”

Mr Tyler raised an eyebrow like a blade. “To whom, Mr Blanc? To the contracts of Toby Tramming and Myra Mills, both of whom you know are hiding things?”

Blanc slammed his cup down hard. “To the dead! To the dead! My duty, first and always and ever more is to speak for those who cannot! Even if they might be terrible people, or the world better off without them, the dead cry out none the less! For a reckoning. For a record. For the right to not be extinguished without care, or consequence!”

Blanc drained the cup to nothing but brown dust. “Forty height hours, Mr Tyler. I perceive you as a man of your word, and I shall hold you to it. That gives me another 25 of them - up until tomorrow morning in fact - to uncover all these shades and shadows, and I’ll thank you to keep any friends you have in the police from making any sudden conclusions or from beating my mule behind until then!”

Blanc was the cold fury of the sea. Mr Tyler nodded. His opponent's sword had struck home and he was cowed by the touch.

“Our next move must be to find out why Roger Tramming lied. And while this item may not have anything to do with that fact, it also occurs to me that I have neglected perhaps the most obvious source of evidence towards solving many other mysteries.” Blanc tapped the pocket of his coat, mirroring where Mr Tyler had tucked away his mobile seconds earlier. “By which I mean the personal phone of Mrs Charlotte Tramming.”

“I suspect the police have taken it,” said Mr Tyler. Blanc nodded. “And as I recounted, last night I was told quite clearly that the police do not want me continuing to investigate. But I suspect you, Mr Tyler, may have more luck in this regard, as an outside agent? Perhaps some of the aforementioned clients of yours might be able to apply influence, and gain access to the item.”

Mr Tyler shook his head. “They will suspect instantly that I would give it to you, Mr Blanc. It is my client’s desire that none of this investigation ever leave the circumferences of the police.”

Blanc mulled this over. “I am not by any means a technologically gifted person but I am assured by others that in these times all of our phones are backed up on something called the cloud. And therefore it might be that the contents of her phone are accessible by remote means.” Mr Tyler agreed that it might indeed. “I am outside my element here in this country. I imagine though that a man possessing the talents common in your profession, you might know of a person who can access such information without the knowledge or permission of the police.” Mr Tyler acknowledged that he did. With a little more prompting, he acknowledged that he would contact said person and see that it was done.

“Something else I believe you may help me with: I want to know exactly the state of Ms Mills lawsuit. What it's built on. What she wants. If she’s likely to receive a satisfactory outcome. Here again, I think I might not know where to look, and which forms I require, but you will have a head start.” Once again, Mr Tyler agreed that he would, and could readily begin.

“And thirdly, I wish to know about the financial status of the three Tramming sons. If all of this mess is about inheritances, mystical or otherwise, then it may be that one of the brothers does not simply want a large fortune, but is desperately in need of one.” For a third time, Mr Tyler assented, with caveats that he would not reveal anything his employer felt too delicate or unnecessary. Benoit Blanc made the point that this left him still very much in the dark; Mr Tyler expressed an emotionless sympathy that this was so.

“I will also not be leaving your side, of course,” Mr Tyler added. Another of his trademarked absolute statements. Blanc nodded slowly, nobly. “I hope that will not include using the facilities as I must do at this time,” said Blanc. Mr Tyler smiled gently. “No indeed. We are civilised men, are we not?” Blanc nodded to say he was, but nodded only slightly, because he did not know how civilised Mr Tyler might be when push came to extremely well placed shove at the top of a staircase.

Blanc stood and turned to head towards the hotel restrooms, but Tyler stopped him with a word. “Blanc -“ and he had dropped the title for the very first time - “if you are thinking of slipping out through the kitchen,” and here he stared meaningfully into Blanc’s eyes, “do not.”

Blanc nodded and smiled his abeyance of such thoughts. Inside the gold and apricot bathroom, his smile dropped and he gagged once into the sink. It was far too early to cross swords with Mr Tyler and his nerves rejected the coffee and hash browns he had hoped would fortify him. He had his duty and he had his fury but he still felt all around him his enemies and the rapidly ticking countdown. He felt the fear of Phillip at risk, and the need to punish those who made him feel it, and how terrible it was that only the brain and nerve of Benoit Blanc was left to save the former and vanquish the latter. He was just one man, with but one half of his two thirds English now still inside him.

Still, he thought, cleaning his face carefully, he had won the first match decidedly. When Mr Tyler had spoken those last two words ‘do not’, Blanc had noticed a microscopic change in tone. For the first time since meeting Mr Tyler, his certainty had been shifted. For the first time he had given an order he was not rock certain would be followed. Deep underneath the words had been a murmur of one word left unsaid:

“Please.”

Chapter Text

Blanc was buttoning his jacket and applying his sunglasses and woolen trilby with authority as he stood before the hotel doors. He supposed that the person who had seen him arrive last night was trying either to accost him or follow him or both. Some factor last night may have prevented an assault: Blanc had too rapidly reached the aegis of the hotel's front lights, or there had been too many people around. It stood to reason however that the fox would wait outside the burrow for its prey to reappear. Blanc was ready for the fox this time, and nodded back at Mr Tyler to signal so.

He took a large stride onto the concrete steps and stopped dead suddenly. He scanned the general wash of people. Left and right up the street. To the left, the intersection was busy and the morning crowd might hide an observer. But no flicker of movement.

He took three quick steps down into the sidewalk, then again stopped and turned fast. It was a ridiculous pantomime, but it would flush prey. But still nothing. He checked again, watching each way back and forth. Then he took another, faster step towards the corner and there, somehow suddenly: a figure caught his eye inside the coffee shop across the intersection. A moment of each figure seeing and realising they were seen. And Blanc seeing: an orange hoodie. Dark hair. Hesitating. Running.

She was fast: fast with youth; fast with fear. She had twenty metres head start and there was a road of cars and lines of pedestrians between them. Blanc could not close the distance but he could just about keep pace parallel. Until that is she turned right up the high street and across another road, and there into an arcade. Within there was an escalator into a shopping complex. Blanc made it across the road with no sight of them; he would surely lose them in the indoor mall.

Mr Tyler was fast: fast with youth, fast with training. He had of course left by the side door and had crossed the road to the cafe while Blanc had been craning his neck. He was inches behind the target when Blanc had started running. As the orange blur vaulted up the escalator, Tyler appeared like a darting dagger. He had made a choice and leapt high, grabbing the collar of the hoodie as he came down onto the arm rest. He grabbed again but the target was shedding the hoodie faster. He got nothing but sheepskin. He fell into the moving stairs as the coat pulled him among, and so his next grab got only coat again, moving, struggling and then suddenly disanimated and limp. Hands and bodies tipping onto him stopped him rising while the now unhoodied fox sprinted in panic through gaps in the crowd.

Mr Tyler breathed through his nose as he rose. His suit was rumpled. He would have shot off again towards the other exit but Blanc shouted from the bottom of the stairs to let it go. Tyler raised the hoodie as an apologetic consolation prize as he let people brush him down and the escalator carry him to the top. He stepped down the down escalator two at a time, and threw the hoodie at Blanc in disgust at himself. Blanc withered in sympathy, with a gesture to suggest that no honour was lost in losing such a nimble quarry. Clearly, she was frightened. Just as clearly, they had won a prize.

Blanc carefully checked the pockets. Empty. But he had a theory instead. The two men walked back to the hotel. At the front desk Blanc carefully folded the coat and left it at reception. He slowly wrote a note and added it to the item. “It’s a cold day,” he said kindly. “I expect our friendly follower will want this back.”

As Mr Tyler drove them to the Tramming house Blanc explained his theory. “We are now aware, thanks to your efforts, that Ms Janyn Cuthbert has been previously pestering Hoight Tramming. My suspicion is that she now has shifted her attention to me. So, while I was proving inadequate in my bodily fitness back there, I asked myself what Hoight and I might have in common. Having only recently met it cannot be many things; indeed there is only one thing we share: we know the Tramming family.”

“My hunch then is that this pursuer is not part of the Tramming family, but trying to pierce its veil. Ms Cuthbert is trying not to attack Mr Hoight Tramming or myself or she would have approached me last night or this morning. So she must be then attempting to, through us, locate someone else in the family. Roger’s home address is unlisted, being a doctor. Patrick Tramming’s fame long ago led him to seek anonymity. But Hoight Tramming is an MP with an office. And I am also famous enough for the local papers to reveal my current accomodation. That was how I was roped into this very business in the first place.”

“Soon enough, Ms Cuthbert hoped that Hoight or us might lead us to the address she seeks or the person she truly wishes to reach. But who that might be, and why, I do not know. I left a note indicating I was ready to lead her to the target, if she would be so kind as to speak to me first.” Blanc shrugged and lit his first cigar of the day. “A long shot, but I find one must play every shot one is provided.”

Mr Tyler was a student in appearing stern and unmoved by anything, and a very good student indeed, but he was having increasing trouble hiding his admiration for the mind of Benoit Blanc. Seeing the tiny twinkle in the eyes of his companion, above a finely manicured and thick moustache over a delectable pair of dark brown lips, Blanc felt some deep urgings and had to remind himself he was a married man. It was a look he had acquired often in his college days but he had been a younger man and in another country, and besides, the mensch was wed.

Soon enough the house of the Tramming family came into view. The street was bursting with cars and they were forced to back track several streets to park. An ambulance was at the lead, no doubt bringing Patrick Tramming home in style, and the cars and taxis of every other family member made up its entourage. If Patrick Tramming was to be at home, no member of the family would allow it to go unnoticed or without ceremony.

The two men walked past the vehicles in silence. Blanc was contemplating the last time he had arrived, only a day and a half ago. He had trembled a little at anticipating ancient historical secrets and had found, as usual, only flawed people and bitter rivalries. He had come at the behest of a desperate man and faced a panicked family who tolerated his inquiries; now, he suspected, he would be far less welcome. Indeed, it was Roger Tramming who first saw Blanc striding up the driveway and he turned and entered the house with no welcome or acknowledgement, only a despairing gesture and resentful grunt.

The housekeeper Cleo let them in and things were as cluttered inside as on the drive. The stairs where the crime had occurred so recently were now overrun with foot traffic. It became apparent that the ambulance attendants had been directed to put Patrick Tramming in what had been Toby and Charlotte's room as it was made up and ready. This had caused a cascade of conversation over whether Toby could withstand the displacement into the spare room or the emotional imposition on his dead wife’s space. A three-way argument was breaking out upstairs: Diana insisting she had chosen the room correctly due to the health needs of her husband and his continued frailty, Toby insisting he did not object and Roger insisting that Toby was right to object should he do so and perhaps should be more inclined to do so; perhaps even that Toby was lying about his lack of objection. Hoight was hovering at the top of the landing, unsure if he wanted to join in on the argument with the helpful addition that the argument was a stupid one. By doing so from afar, he clearly thought, he could appear aloof and cynical and not actually in the argument itself and thus absolved from his own critique.

Myra Mills was seated primly, knees carefully together, in the parlour. “I’m afraid they’ll be like this all day, Benoit,” she said simply. She sniffed slightly, as if indicating unseen hurt and wanting it acknowledged. Blanc owed her nothing but he never felt good about hard feelings and he was always a southern gentleman. “No hard feelings about yesterday, I do hope, Ms Mills,” he said extending a warm handshake. She took it with a vanishing grudgingness and a final sniff.

“I do hope we can learn to trust each other, Bennie,” she said with some chastisement. “We can’t do anything if we can’t do that. And I’m sure you now know they certainly don’t trust you.” She was pointing upstairs. A door slammed and a lacuna of silence followed, suggesting an end to the discussion.

Soon enough Roger and Toby appeared at the top of the stairs. “Mother has locked the door,” said Toby wringing his hands and shrugging his shoulders at the same time. “Hoight of course thinks she should let him in, because he’s so special.” Roger stroked his beard and tried to maintain decorum. He was limping slightly and his eye was badly bruised. “Ah Blanc,” he said apologetically, trying to pry both eyes open.

“I gather you heard about this?” He pointed to the damage in his face. “Blinder hit me with a cricket bat I think! At least that says he was British!” It was a joke he had practiced and performed a few times already.

Blanc offered great sympathy and a chair; Roger waived both away. “It will be all fine…but it surely did give me a thought about what you said yesterday, Blanc, about someone having it out for us, for the family.”

“And yet Hoight remains unscathed somehow,” said Toby nervously. “As always.”

Blanc explained that Hoight had gained a mysterious stalker who had to be removed by force. Roger frowned. “Someone indeed seems set against all three of us, then. Determined to give us a fright or a warning -“

“Charlotte was more than a warning, brother!” squeaked Toby.

Roger bit his lip. “I meant - if it were a mistake, Tobias -“

“Or maybe,” said Toby, through a crack in his voice and tears coming, “they’ve done all that to throw off suspicion for the real murder. It’s what - it’s what they do in books.” He trailed off miserably. Then he clicked his fingers like he had forgotten something. “Mr Blanc, I meant to tell you yesterday. The police took it at first but they’ve given me back all of Charlie’s things. I thought you might want to look at her phone. I - it’s upstairs, I think -“

Another door opened and quickly slammed above. Diana Tramming descended the staircase with gesticulations of frustration. “He’s asleep, of course he's asleep, he’s still highly medicated. But of course your brother insists he needs to see him too.” There was a chorus from the two older brothers to suggest their shared and ongoing despair at their brother. Roger strode to the stairs. “I’ll get him out of there. The old man needs his rest.” They passed at the bottom of the stairs. Her gaze floated over Blanc and decided he was not worth acknowledging, nor his companion, but then she realised she did not recognise the latter. “Who have you brought to our house, Mr Blanc?”she demanded.

“Oh, I’m sorry, Mrs Tramming,” he said, bowing slightly. “This is Mister Tyler, an associate of mine and your youngest son. He’s helping with my investigations.”

“I see.” Mr Tyler had begun to extend a hand but Diana had already turned away and chosen a seat. “And why have both of you come here? It is most inconvenient.”

“Well, Mrs Tramming, there is still a matter of the murder -“

Diana waved a hand as if dismissing a wasp. “I’ve no time for that now, my husband is in great need of my care.”

The door slammed again, and all eyes turned to the top of the stairs, clearly visible to most from their seats. Hoight appeared this time. “Roger knows best,” he said with a sarcastic flourish. “Roger always knows best!”

“He is a doctor, dear,” his mother chided.

“Yes and thank you for reminding me, mother. Why it’s been a full five minutes since you last did so.”

Diana tutted and her son flinched slightly. Toby edged towards the stairs, motioning skyward. “Like I said, Mr Blanc, the phone, Charlie’s phone, I’ll - I’ll just run up and get it - “

Nobody stopped him or said a word and he scuttled away. It wasn’t until he had vanished that Diana spoke.

“What is he blathering about?”

Myra answered: “He wants to give the detective Charlotte's phone, it’s in their room.”

Diana pointedly did not turn her head towards the speaker. “What a load of nonsense, what does Blanc want with her phone? What do you want with her phone?” The latter question was directed at Blanc like an arrow at his heart.

“I am still engaged by your son, Mrs Tramming, to solve the terrible murder of his wife, and I believe there may be some evidence, perhaps highly pertinent, sealed within its digital memory.”

“What a load of nonsense. The police are handling all that. Roger? Roger, tell him, the police are handling all that.”

Roger had indeed appeared on the stairs, looking as distracted as ever. “What’s that, mother?”

“The police, Roger. They’re handling this thing with poor Charlotte now.”

Blanc sallied into the fray. “I am a private agent, Mrs Tramming here at the request of your son and that of Ms Mills -“

There were glances across the sons and their mother. Roger nodded. “Look, Blanc, you’ve seen - you can see how Toby is. He’s - “

“Excitable,” said his mother.

“A moron,” said Roger.

“Under a lot of stress,” suggested Roger. “I mean maybe someone is having a go at all of us -“ he gestured apologetically to his shining eye - “but either way this feels more like a job for the police, Blanc. You understand. Toby he’s -“

“He’s lost it” Hoight added again, unhelpfully.

“Found it!” That was from Toby at the top of the stairs. He flinched and reduced his voice volume. “Found it.” He stumbled down the stairs. “He’s definitely snoring now, which seems good,” he added as he arrived. He wobbled the phone in the air towards Blanc. Hoight immediately snatched it out of the air. “I’ll take that, I think”. Blanc hadn’t moved and silently pursed his lips.

“Give - Hoight, give it back,” whined Toby.

Hoight waggled a finger, pocketing the phone. “Uhuh, this is over. This -“ he now motioned his fingers back and forth between Blanc and Tyler, “is over. The police can handle it.”

“The police will bloody send me to bloody damn prison! You know that!” Toby was advancing on his brother but Hoight had the practiced step of a brother who had played this game often - and one who knew his greater height gave him a strong advantage. He weaved behind the couch.

“I don’t know that! I didn’t kill anyone!!”

A surge of anger seemingly shot down Toby Trammings spine, and he grabbed his brother's arm, trying to drag him over the couch. Instinctively Roger moved between them, but a flailing, falling Hoight slapped Rogers face and he bellowed in pain from his previous injury. Instantly Toby turned to apologise only for Roger’s blinded batting to clip his chin. This Hoight found hilarious, and he laughed mockingly as he danced away behind his mother. Toby yelled with rage, dived at his brother, and hit the ground hard, causing more giggles from the youngest brother.

“Enough!” It was Diana. She slowly rose to scowl at the three, the two in front now frozen in place: Roger, bent and squinting and blinking, Toby nursing his ribs and moaning from the fall. She turned to her son capering behind her, who froze as well and became downcast under her terrible gaze. “Give it to me” she said simply, and there was nothing in Hoight but self pitying obedience. She took it from his miserable proffered hand. In one smooth motion she threw it to the floor and drove a spiked heel through the screen. The screen seemed to go a rainy wet grey then fade to black. A roar of protest erupted and even Blanc made a grunt of frustration and balled his fists. Diana raised a hand to silence them again.

From nowhere the housekeeper appeared and picked up the phone with gloved hands. “I will not hear another word!” said Diana Tramming with a voice of a sharpened axe. “You will all sit down and apologise! Not you, Mr Blanc“ she added fast as lightning. “You and Mr … Tyler are leaving.” Blanc knew she remembered the younger man’s name and was pretending to struggle to recall it. It was almost an instinctual insult. She might not have even noticed she had done it.

“And you.” She flicked her eyes at Myra Mills. “We have nothing more to discuss without lawyers present. Right now, my husband certainly needs no more of your … interruptions.” Something deep in Myra Mills hindbrain caused her to do a tiny curtsey under the pall of that voice. Her voice, when it came, was cracked and dry.

“If I may, I’d - I’d like to say good bye. To Patrick.” Myra found a way to meet Diana’s eyes and hold her chin high. “Since I may not see him again.” Diana stared long enough to indicate that Myra Mills would not be permitted to see her husband again should he live another thousand years. Then she gave a minuscule nod, like an emperor granting the kindness of a swift execution.

As she left, Blanc swept around to face the family. He despised them all and he wished nothing so greatly as to be spent of their pettiness but there were matters that still had to be settled here. “Mr Toby Tramming, sir, if I may make one last appeal to you and your good sense - to all of you - that this goes far beyond your reliance on propriety, your need for this veneer of false order: it comes down to something far more real and clear and meaningful. There is a murder among us, who remains uncaught and may yet strike again. Your very lives are at stake, all of them, and maybe mine as well, heaven knows. Where there is a killer who has killed once, he has no reason not to kill again if he feels he must!”

Benoit Blanc's rage was a force of nature and nature occasionally paid attention, and played accompaniment. Which is why it was at that exact moment the screaming began.

Chapter Text

Patrick Tramming was dead. Dead as a doornail, a phrase only satisfactory in its certainty. His skin was ice cold to the touch and losing colour fast. There was no weight in him, no resistance. A person had become an object and that was always a terrifying moment, a disquiet to the soul even when they were a stranger.

To Myra Mills it was a moment that had shattered her demeanour like a brick through a window and by the time Blanc reached the room she was collapsed against the far wall babbling and gasping.

It was a ghoulish gothic tableau. She, crouched in the corner; he, impossibly upright and his arm firmly held and pointing, pointing again. This time across the width of the room to the dresser in the corner at the framed picture of Toby and Charlotte Tramming on their wedding day: she in a gorgeous array of lily-pinks over white with lace, he behind her in a ghastly deep blue tuxedo trimmed with lilac.

“He was asleep,” Myra managed to gasp as Blanc lifted her into a chair. “He was asleep and I was leaving and then he said - he said Charlie! Oh he said Charlie! And I turned!”

Roger was bending his father back onto the mattress, leaving the rigid arm now pointing to the ceiling like it was accusing God. He took the man’s pulse and quietly closed his eyes. By then Toby and Hoight had barged in as well. Toby clutched his wife’s picture. Hoight patted Myra’s hand in an old fashioned and foolish way. “He must have - he remembered! And he had another shock!” Toby babbled.

“Why was that picture even there?” Hoight yelled hopelessly to nobody. Toby now fell past his older brother, collapsing into his fathers breast, making sounds not words. For the first time, Blanc saw Roger struck to stillness, half way to reaching to take off his glasses and then stopping, his fingers somehow no longer knowing why they were touching the rims. Hoight was now being swallowed in the grasping hands of Myra Mills, clawing him further into an embrace as her gasps became tears. And still between them, the arm of Patrick Tramming, pointing, pointing -

And then another hand was pointing. Diana Tramming had silently arrived at the door and raised her left hand in a disturbing sympathy to the dead. But her finger was not reaching to clasp her husband’s. It was pointed like an arrow at the heart of Myra Mills. And then more screaming began.

“Out!” cried Diana Tramming. “Get. Her. Out!”

Then the fury broke into smaller pieces she could give voice to.

“What did you do. What have you done.” They were not questions, but they also demanded an answer. Roger moved to try to grab his mothers shoulders and she shook him off like a shawl, without taking her eyes from the terrified gaze of Myra Mills. Blanc saw violence at hand perhaps, and once again swept Myra Mills by her hand towards him. Arcing around the outside of the still pointing finger, he dashed for the door. His disappearance broke the strange strangled moment and the screaming became wild clamouring sobs.

Benoit Blanc’s thin arms were as strong as Tennessee mustard vines but his heart and chest could not carry even Myra Mills petite form for more than a few seconds. He was relieved to find Mr Tyler at the bottom of the stairs and relieved his burden on to the younger man. The three, united again, beat a hasty retreat from the sorrow-stricken house of Tramming, into the unrepentant sunshine, which was refusing to add even a touch of grey to a morning of cold irrevocable death.

The Americans have always had a suspicious relationship with alcohol after Prohibition and bars are only found in seedy parts of town. The Australians treat it like a seaside holiday: a temporary madness tied far too heavily to machismo and patriotism. The British on the other hand treat alcohol as a stalwart friend, as reliable and traditional as an old bobby, and just as ubiquitous on every street corner. The trio had found, directly, the nearest pub and were putting scotch inside Myra Mills as rapidly as they could until she began suffering more from scotch and less from shock. Soon enough the ratio shifted and she began a quiet weeping that trailed into a silent stare. Neither Mr Tyler nor Benoit Blanc were au fait with weeping women, but they shared a gentleman’s sense to stay close and hold fast. With these besuited men propping her up on each side like manful bookends, she began to tip forward and the whiskey met her coming the other way. It being only just beyond 9 am, they switched to a pint of dark beer not least because the pint glass made a better third leg of the tripod.

She still drooped, however, and when Blanc spoke it was mostly to Mr Tyler and also entirely to himself. “It would seem possible that we have just witnessed a strange and unbelievable thing:a man literally scared to death.”

Blanc trailed off to a murmur of agreement of his summary of things. Of course he had other thoughts of what might have happened to Patrick Tramming but he felt it best to keep them to himself. And there was something else beyond that, behind those thoughts, that he felt he had seen in the last frame of Patrick Trammings face. It was not fear, exactly, but what it was he could not tell. Warning, perhaps?

Instead he turned his mind to what he might yet discover. “Things will be difficult now,” he mused, again mostly to himself. “I believe Mr Toby Tramming has been or will be entirely convinced by his own mother to remove me from his employment. And even if I am still tasked by you, Ms Mills,” (here they exchanged a nod which seemed to confirm so) “the police will not let me near the case and the Tramming family will insist likewise. And of course your supervisors want me to leave immediately, or sooner.”

He sipped the large pint he had ordered out of habit and found it altogether too bitter. “I am, Mr Tyler, beginning to have the shape of these incidents and yet it seems my avenues for forward progress are being rapidly closed.”

“It would be best for everyone, Mr Blanc, if I put you on a plane home tonight,” intoned Mr Tyler. “Whatever your beliefs about the police, you have no more discretion to take action here.”

Blanc acted like he hadn’t heard. “The life and work of a private detective is precarious. I am no law man, no man of state. I have no power to search a pocket, to visit a crime scene, to charge a man stop in the name of the law. At times, I am lucky enough that the law and I have common goals or parallel pathways through the fog, and I find they can aid me. But such times, Mr Tyler, are rare, and I have learned well that I must make do with my wits and my cunning where access is denied and force of law not provided. I am not accustomed, whatever you may suspect, at turning tail at the first fence across my path.”

“You gave me forty eight hours, did you not, Mr Tyler? Then I shall hold you to it if I may. Tomorrow at ten am you may put me on a plane, train or helicopter as you so please, but until then I am here and I remain as altogether dedicated to finding the murderer as I ever was. The only question is one of passing through, or over, or around the barriers that the forces of evil have set before me.”

“I am a stranger in this country, and that makes my position tenuous. I have my darling husband’s wherewithal to protect, and there I am also vulnerable. I have no power to compel the police nor the family to aid me. These are all facts, undeniable.”

“Now then, having considered our constraints, let us make a list of our assets. The brilliant kind of Mr Benoit Blanc, and all the knowledge it has gleaned so far. The testimony and memory of Ms Myra Mills. And, if I may be so bold, the many and varied skills possessed by you, Mr Tyler.”

Mr Tyler smiled slightly and shook his head. “My orders are simply to contain and control your investigation, Mr Blanc. And my loyalty to my superiors is absolute. It is my entire reputation, even more than my ability or even my success.”

Blanc gently leaned the now quietly morose Myra Mills back against the booth and leant forward to face Mr Tyler. It was the second time they had crossed swords in as many hours.

“I believe you were charged with assuring a swift and tidy end to these inquiries, Mr Tyler -“

“And the police can certainly arrange that. That, as you know, is their forte.”

Blanc nodded. “Swift, tidy and wrong. But I do believe I can provide my own take at the first two items if you will lend me your assistance.”

“I will not stand in your way Mr Blanc. Until tomorrow morning, I am at your disposal - “ Blanc tried to interfere but Mr Tyler was like a velvet train charging into a cushioned tunnel - “but I will not act against those with a shared interest in closing this case. My superiors share that goal with the Tramming family and the police.”

Blanc smiled his ghostly, humorous smile. “Oh I do not think that last statement is the truth, Mr Tyler. I think that if you examine the parties closely, the goal those three share is not closing the case at all. The goal those three share is secrecy. Keeping the little folk from seeing too much of the dirty laundry in the fancy cupboard. Keeping the press from rooting through messy things like secret affairs and secret societies.”

“For my own part, Mr Tyler, I truly do not care what or whom you personally serve, but I can guarantee you your masters only care about preserving their towering spires. In that regard, I guarantee to you I will not put that goal at risk, or ask you to stand against it. I give you my word in this. I ask you, in turn, to trust me a little longer - and go with me just a little further.”

Blanc paused and sipped his terrible beer. “Mere hours remain, mere hours is all I need for you to trust me, and mere hours is all I need to put this to bed.”

“What would you have me do, Mr Blanc?” It was odd to hear Mr Tyler ask a question. It had clearly been a transformative morning.

“I still need the things I mentioned this morning,” and Blanc motioned very subtly with his eyes towards Ms Mills, “but more than anything I need the coroners report on Patrick Tramming. I assume the family will have such things done at home.”

Myra Mills had been listening all along, and managed to nod in response. “Oh yes. I’m sure they’ll call Doctor Farmer. He lives quite close.”

“Then we will need to visit him once he has performed his duties. We also need to return to my hotel to see if our fox has returned to collect her fur. Before that, I need to call Roger Trammings ex-wife in America.” Blanc rose and pulled Myra Mills gently to her feet. “But first of all, I must get Ms Mills into a taxi.”

She let him get her arm over his shoulder, almost pulling her off her feet but allowing a ragged diagonal shuffle to the doors and onto the street. They left Mr Tyler nonplussed and considering his superiors and his instructions.

Outside Ms Mills found her feet again. “I’m still watching you, Bennie,” she said, looking down her nose at him even as she sagged beneath it, Benoit Blanc smiled thinly. “I am still watching you, Ms Mills.” The return of serve was not what she expected and she stumbled upwards out of his support. Without words she hailed a cab and slid inside it. When Blanc turned, Mr Tyler was right beside him.

“You still hold her as a suspect”. A non-question, so Mr Tyler was clearly restored in mood.

“She was in the room alone with Tramming. They all were, one by one. It is the lot of private detectives such as myself, Mr Tyler, to find ourselves facing the unsolvable case. They were all present and had the opportunity. Killing a dying man, a man so full of chlorpromazine he could die from a game of peek a boo or a particularly tight hat, that is no difficult thing, so they all had the means and the opportunity. The same is true of the death of Ms Charlotte Tramming. They all were close by, with no alibis; they all knew where the keys were to the presentation cases. A drop from above is a means available to all, even dear old Diana Tramming or her diminutive housekeeper.”

“That leaves us with motive, Mr Tyler, and I believe from my reading last night she may indeed have that as well. So I have not ruled her out.”

“What if they all have motive?”

Blanc shrugged and stared into the distance. A faint smile played on his lips. He disliked being backed into a corner, he despised those who would threaten him and his loved ones, but he was indeed here of his own doing and he could never deny the joy of the puzzle.

“In that case, Mr Tyler, all we have left is the mind of Benoit Blanc. And a key accounting of who has told the truth when they tried not to, and who has lied to me when they most assuredly should not have.”

As the two men made their way back to their table, Mr Tyler had that same look on his face from this morning. “Yours is a formidable mind, Mr Blanc.”

Blanc smiled, warmly, for the first time in days. “It is a great thing to be gifted in any capacity, and I do not doubt your own formidable abilities, Mr Tyler. Indeed, if you ever find yourself in need of more challenging employment, you might find yourself an excellent detective as well. Or an assistant to one,” Blanc added with real affection.

Mr Tyler raised his glass to that. Blanc returned the gesture. “To the silent dead,” he added as a toast. Mr Tyler smiled with real warmth also for the first time in several days. “To a swift and tidy resolution, Mr Blanc.” It was enough, and Blanc drank out of habit and immediately regretted it again. “It’s called bitter! I mean, the name is right there, like, like an advertisement. A warning!” He placed the foaming pint down and grabbed a glass of water. “Where I come from, our alcohol has words like sweet and honey in the name. Smokey, too.”

Mr Tyler had pulled out his phone. “As with yesterday, I shall have to make some phone calls, Mr Blanc, to fetch the information you asked about.” Blanc nodded. “If you could call our friend Mr Napp as well, I would be greatly appreciative. I feel he may be our eyes and ears into all that has come before my arrival upon this case.”

Mr Tyler rose to seek a quieter corner, then stopped. “A swift and tidy conclusion, Mr Blanc,” he repeated, then reached into his jacket pocket and placed an object on the table. It was Charlotte Trammings phone, with the deep stiletto hole driven into it like a crater from a bullet. “I retrieved this while you were upstairs.”

Before Blanc could say anything, Mr Tyler had moved away with the velvet silence and uncanny speed he so effortlessly possessed. Blanc stared a little too long at the item then scooped it into his pocket, and felt a deep happiness at the connection between two men of passion and integrity, even if they were opposed as well.

All of a sudden, a phone rang in Benoit Blanc’s pocket, causing him a moment of panic and confusion as it seemed the dead phone had come alive. It was just as it had been the night before and it was again Blanc's phone that rang, and it was Toby Tramming on the other end.

“Oh Mr Blanc. Oh Mr Blanc.” Toby seemed almost as hysterical as Myra Mills. Heavy breathing fuzzed over the microphone. Benoit Blanc held the phone at a different angle and asked his interlocutor to repeat himself.

“Mr Blanc, Mr Blanc, I know who killed my father.”

Chapter Text

“It must have been Roger.”

Benoit Blanc slid out from the booth and wove through the pub conspiratorially, hunting for privacy.

“Now hold on-“ he got out before Toby bubbled over again.

“Don’t you see, Mr Blanc? It has to be him. It has to be. He’s a doctor. He would know exactly how to make it look like natural causes, or, or an accident. He’s the eldest and he’s always going to inherit the most of father’s money, and the comic probably.”

“Hold on, there-“ Blanc tried again.

“And oh, what if what if he was trying to kill Father and Charlie caught him, saw him doing something to Father’s meds and she had to die oh Mr Blanc it’s so sinister! He’s still here! He’s still in the house…”

At this point Blanc leant against a door frame and simply let Toby Trammimg continue to gush. It was easier than fighting the tide. He was now extemporising a larger conspiracy that supported his brother as the true and most deserving scion, anointed to not just receive the family fortune but the knightly title of the False Order as well. Sniffs and tears crept in and then finally, bobbing on the ocean of words, Blanc saw the outcrop of a question: “oh Mr Blanc, whatever are we to do.”

Blanc took a deep breath and toed the waters.

“Well now. I suppose the first question I must ask, Mr Tramming, is is it still we? Are we a concomitant unit? Am I still in your employment? Because less than an hour ago I do believe you relieved me of my duties.”

There was a slight pause and a slighter hiccup. “Don’t you see?” wailed Toby when the moment passed. “It was Roger who said I should release you from my services, he and mother said it was a police matter and it was clear that you were - “ Toby swallowed the insult - “no longer … needed. But you see how it is! They want me to be scared! I bet it was Roger who sent me those clippings, Mr Blanc! And then of course said it was all nonsense when I called you in to help! Oh I’m sure it was Roger. He -“ and here Toby’s voice dropped an octave - “he had a way of looking at my Charlotte, you know. Indecently. Oh, in hindsight now I see it! He probably tried to seduce her, and when she refused - pow!”

Toby put a lot of force and volume into the culminating onomatopoeia. Pow indeed, thought Benoit Blanc. Then he tried again.

“So am I then entirely restored into your employment, Mr Tramming? I must say I had already added an abrupt termination fee to my invoice-“

“Name your price, sir. Name it. He killed my Charlotte and he killed my father when he thought he might tell the world. And I’m sure the proof of it is on Charlotte's phone…or Roger’s I expect! Yes! We must find Roger’s phone! Or … the data is on the cloud these days. We should call the phone people, and so on, I’ll get a legal injunction or some such, I’m sure my lawyer knows how to do that…”

Benoit Blanc breathed in deeply. A chicken with its head cut off might run anywhere it could find, spurting blood all the way to the living room rug. Mr Toby Tramming was perhaps more unpredictable and dangerous to more than just the rug.

“Well I shall now recommence my billable services, Mr Tramming, and give you my first piece of advice: you must leave the house immediately. After all, if Roger suspects, even for a moment, that you know he is guilty, well…’pow’ as I think you said.”

At this news Toby Tramming began to blubber with tears anew. There was a sudden thump on the line and Blanc was fairly sure the poor man had run into a wall. After a moment of recovery Toby asked where he should go. “I do not advise you go far, as you will surely be needed to answer more questions and your absence will be noted by your family as arrangements are made regarding your father’s death. Perhaps as you were before: just a nearby hotel. Tell nobody but me which one. I shall contact you as soon as I have more to tell.”

Blanc had thrown that last bit in as a performance. If so many around him wanted to play games of cloak and dagger, he would take a moment to oblige where it helped his peace of mind. He hung up with equal histrionics and waved at Mr Tyler to indicate to whence he had wandered off. Tyler waved back and gave the international signal of being on the phone, as indeed he was. Blanc suddenly felt a little silly, as if he had been found talking to himself. His peace of mind was a fragile thing today and he doubted it would visit him often on this case. A moment later it was conclusively disturbed again when the phone in his hand buzzed aggressively again. This time it was Hoight Tramming.

“Blanc? Have you got time to talk? It’s Hoight Tramming.”

Blanc replied into the affirmative and slunk into a nearby booth. This was clearly going to be a long day of dealing with the Tramming boys.

“Listen, Mother doesn’t want you sticking around of course but I need to talk to you. I think I know what this is all about. It’s Roger - Roger must have killed Father.”

“I can’t say anything publicly, you understand. The police also - well they can be indelicate. You know what I mean. But I’m almost certain Roger was having an affair. And I think someone might be blackmailing him about it. He’s been asking Father for money. Lots of money.”

Blanc paused for a moment. “And how is it that you have come to know these things, Mr Trammimg?”

“I can’t really say, Blanc. Mother has dropped hints. I think she’s afraid too. The other day she said Father was thinking of changing his will. Roger would know how to do it and make it look like an accident, you see? I bet he used some drug he has access to, or something like that.”

There was a sensation in Benoit Blanc's mind not unlike the satisfying clunk of a cog wheel advancing a notch. He said nothing but a grunt that he aimed to be encouraging towards the continued speech of the other participant but not necessarily agreement.

“I know you’ve been sniffing around, Blanc,” Hoight said with a new disgust in his voice. “My wife told me you came by yesterday and I know you went to my office. So consider this a warning too: if you don’t expose my brother and leave me alone, I’ll report you for hindering an investigation, or something. I’ve done nothing wrong! And you didn’t even come back to Roger’s office yesterday.”

A simper is not something usually able to be heard but Blanc heard one come through the phone line. “You made Mother and I sit through those ridiculous questions, but then you immediately take the side of that horrible Mills woman. And I could tell you some things about her, too! It’s really not good enough, not by half, Blanc.”

Blanc again tried to insert a lever of redirection. “Now what exactly could you tell me about Ms Mills, Mr Tramming?”

This seemed to stop the man’s building momentum. “Well. I think you’d better ask Mother about all that. But you can just rest assured she’s a nasty woman. All she wants is our money - Father’s money. She might have got it too if all of this horrible business hadn’t happened. But here we are, and here you are, Blanc, wasting peoples time! Buggering about!”

“I’m sorry, but feels like one of your English expressions that I cannot quite -“

Hoight cut him off. “It means Blanc that you are running out your hours without achieving anything whatsoever.”

Blanc paused for a moment and pursed his lips. “Well now, Mr Tramming, the fact is that as much as I am a servant of truth and justice, I am more a literal servant here of Mr Toby Tramming, who I believe you saw dismiss me from said duties just an hour ago. So I have no impetus to achieve anything.”

There was a sound something like a kettle steaming. Blanc imagined Hoight Tramming's face, and allowed himself a tiny smile.

“Blanc, you’re impossible! If you- if you persist - I just suppose I will call my brother then and get him to tell you what’s what, see if I don’t!”

A violent terminating click assaulted Blanc’s ear. He half wondered if he should have tried to get Hoight to pay him as well, but then thought things were confused enough already. He didn’t walk immediately back to his table. He was expecting perhaps that Hoight would call Toby and Toby might call him back in the next few seconds. He inquired if the pub might replace his terrible beer with a black coffee. Fortification was needed and it was still too early for whiskey.

While he waited he placed his phone on the bar gingerly. Sure enough, it rang within thirty seconds, and this time it was Roger Trammimg.

“Ah Blanc.” It was not quite a greeting and an approximation of an apology but Blanc wasn’t sure what the apology was for. His dismissal and ejection from the house, or for Roger calling him at all?

“Good to have caught you. Listen, listen, I’m sorry about Mother. We’ve all had a nasty shock. It’s - it’s been a lot. But I do agree with her. This business has to stop. I was worried Toby would change his mind and panic and call you back into things.”

“Sir, it would be a private matter with my client if he had,” said Blanc, diplomatically.

“Oh Goddamn it Blanc, he has called you hasn’t he? You know what I said, what we said - Toby jumps at his own shadow. There’s no mystery of what killed Father, of that I am sure. It’s stress. Simply stress, on an old weak man. And I’m just as to blame for that as anyone.”

Benoit Blanc clenched his fist in anticipation. Roger continued: “I’m really the one to blame. It was I who really killed him.”

Three for three, thought Benoit Blanc and he almost let out a guffaw of triumph. It was rare to get three accusations in a row, of a morning, within the same half-hour. Unheard of for them all to accuse the same person.

Roger was struggling to find the right words. “Look, Blanc. I didn’t say anything before but I’ve been, well, a fool, there’s no other word for it, a fool. My practice has been falling apart. My divorce cost me a lot of money. I’ve not been seeing enough work and lost a lot of clients and I…made some indelicate decisions. I hadn’t told anyone except Father, he even promised not to tell Mother - I needed money. A lot of money. He was helping but I think- I think I asked too much of him. Right? Not just the business I mean - asking him to lie for me. Making him worry about me.”

The thick birch branches of Roger Tramming’s backbone were beginning to bend, splinter and crack. There was a catch in his voice and a shudder of shame. Blanc pitied him: it seemed increasingly clear that the family had no time for weakness and would punish it severely.

“The thing is, Blanc, you’ve got to let this go. Leave it alone. It’s too much now. Too much on Mother. She’s not used to all this stress. You’ve got to tell Toby you’re done, you won’t do any more. Let the police take care of it.”

Blanc had to ask, even dreading the answer. “And if the police decide you are guilty? What then?”

“Then I will call my lawyer and let the system go to work, Mr Blanc. You see, you live in a world of mystery and suspicion. Puzzles and answers. That’s a convenient luxury. Some of these things they have, well, no simple answer.”

Blanc thought for a moment. “Sir, if you believe you know who killed your sister-in-law, I emplore you to tell me. Or tell anyone. Someone.” The response was only a click of the phone call ending.

A sombre-faced Blanc collected his coffee and lent against the bar. In just a few minutes three fingers had been pointed at Roger Tramming. Those could be added to the finger of Patrick Tramming who had, in his last fully cogent moments days earlier, chosen to point a finger at the cartoon of Roger also. Benoit Blanc knew something of being the black sheep of the family. He also knew how such status would eventually be attached to all sorts of wrongdoing or failure, imagined or suspected. He wondered what litany of things Roger Tramming had assumed responsibility for over the years, perhaps with no prompting at all.

Mr Tyler walked over. “I thought it prudent to track down the police report of the attack on Roger Tramming but he did not make one.”

“I am not surprised to hear it. I suspect he knows who attacked him. And knows them very well.” Blanc sipped his coffee. Mr Tyler spotted the theatrics. “Blanc, if you’ve worked something out -“

Blanc waved his hand dismissively. “The pieces are coming to me. I suspect that the person who struck Roger was the same person who tried to break into his surgery yesterday.”

“Oh? Why so? The police believe it was a failed robbery.”

Blanc nodded with doubt. “I do not believe that to be the case. No drugs are kept on the premises and nobody but a fool would believe a radiographer would do so. No money is kept there either and there are several shops nearby absolutely stuffed with cash. The only things worth stealing that are contained inside that building are records and I have ascertained that the medical data is stored off site.”

“My conclusion therefore is that what they were seeking was personal information. Something that is most likely some evidence to do with this case. An email or text message, perhaps, that might reveal a motive or circumstantial evidence. Suspecting as much I returned to the office last night and made a search in the garbage and found this.” With a tiny amount of theatrical flourish, he placed the phone on the table. As an afterthought he placed Charlotte Tramming’s phone next to it. Their implacable black-shard screens stared up at them, tauntingly.

“It has, as yet, resisted my attempts to switch it on again and access anything upon it, but I would bet a large amount of money this is the phone of Roger Tramming. Smashed most likely by him, so as to avoid its discovery, and further examination.”

Blanc picked up his coffee and held it aloft to add emphasis. “I assume whoever it was who was trying to break into his office was frustrated by the sudden arrival of myself and others, leaving them no option but to try to steal Roger Tramming’s phone by force the next morning, in a staged mugging. That too, of course, failed, as Roger had thrown the phone away as soon as he possibly could.”

“Now, leaving aside perhaps for the moment Diana Tramming using an outside agent, I can only presume it was Toby or Hoight Tramming who is in search of this information. So, one of the two brothers performed the robberies. They believe that Roger has information that either incriminates Roger, or incriminates themselves. Of course,” said Blanc with a shrug and a half smile, “the information might be incriminating or embarrassing without having any pertinence upon the murder we are endeavouring to solve.”

“It seemed extremely unlikely to me yesterday that Hoight Tramming was simply at Roger’s offices seconds before we arrived at Roger’s rooms. In fact, nobody was there at all to let Hoight in; Roger was not working that day. My guess therefore is that he broke in, tried to smash the glass in his brother’s glass door, and ran downstairs in time to appear as if he was not the culprit when we arrived. The backyard was quite muddy, and yet no trace of footpaths led away to the fence where he claimed he saw someone escape.”

“We have then a case of two brothers. One with a secret he is desperate to hide, and one who is desperate to uncover that secret. But as to what the secret is that Hoight Tramming seeks and that Roger Tramming holds, I could not yet guess. But it is one that I think Roger Tramming is willing to go to any length to protect. Even if it means going to jail.”

Chapter Text

The two men sat together on the underground. Blanc: a coppery white skin under rusty blonde hair. Mr Tyler: warm brown skin, a perfectly manicured moustache. Blanc who smiled with his dazzling blue eyes; Tyler who smiled with pinking cheeks. In another world, they might be lovers on a first date; in another time, teacher and student becoming friends. The space between them here and now remained tense however. Enmity remained; challenges persisted. But for now: allies, and Blanc happy to have the help at unlocking the technological impasse.

“Were your employers able to shed any light on the anointment of Roger Tramming as the chosen scion to enter their ridiculous conclave?” asked Blanc, conversationally.

“There was a conversation not three months ago to move the appointment from Roger. Hoight was considered the next best candidate. It was unusual but there were no objections.”

Blanc pondered this but then was distracted.

“I must ask,” he began, “how does one find themselves a hacker in the first place?”

“This person I know works with a telecommunications company, in security.”

“And he owes you a favour?”

“They owe someone I know a favour. Or rather, someone I know has the ability to grant them something they need. I called that person, who is friendly to my employers, and that person expressed their desire to further this person’s career if they would be so good as to offer their skills to me.”

Blanc nodded among, fascinated almost despite himself. “I find myself wondering then, how one becomes…what word would you use to describe yourself?”

“A consultant.”

Mr Tyler approved of the word. “A consultant. A fixer of problems to the rich and powerful.”

“I trained as a lawyer, and before that a priest. I gained some skills in pursuing those degrees for dealing with people, and I met many people to whom I could apply those skills.” Mr Tyler could see Blanc was hungry for more now. “My father was a localisation expert for businesses in Pakistan. He was very keen for me to follow in his footsteps so as a teenager I did the exact opposite and almost joined the Church of England. Fortunately I swiftly came to my senses and slowly worked my way back to my father’s shadow.”

“And I am right that you have no connection to this False Knights business or any other such nonsense?”

Mr Tyler raised an eyebrow, then returned it to more conservative heights. “My affiliations are not important. I am but a loyal instrument.”

“But of any client, Mr Tyler, or only of this shadowed conclave?”

“I think, Mr Blanc, you want me to name my employer. Whatever might have led you to believe I would do that.”

It was almost a question. Mr Tyler must have been feeling the gaiety of spring.

Blanc tilted his chin and waved a hand as if to say it was just a random whimsy that had crossed his mind. His jaw and jowls moved in time with the cogs of his thoughts. “It is more that it occurs to me that the answer to that question has several implications. Let’s say that you are are - for the most part - a free agent. Then there are events that have occurred to spur you into service as my shadow. And there are events that might occur that would see you removed from your current employment. If there was no longer any need for your services, say. Such as if the police were to arrest Roger Tramming and my services to all involved be terminated. As we discussed at breakfast, that keeps us very much set against the other.”

Mr Tyler did not respond, and Blanc did not let him fill the air with a lack of response. He leant back and smiled. “Now as well as that, I must ask myself how you came to be involved in these events in the first place. I am sure that somewhere - in some very fine office filled with mahogany and leather - some member of the esteemed brotherhood for whom you so diligently work, there a person was stirred to act, and they called you and directed you towards your duty.”

Mr Tyler shrugged to acquiesce that it must indeed be so. Blanc chewed his lip. “But you see, Mr Tyler, that only moves the question backwards one step: who told that person? Who alerted the False Order to the threat made against it? Hoight had already presented me with a contract to sign, a contract fierce enough to preclude an additional agent. Roger considered himself dismissed from the auspices of the order, and felt it irrelevant. He also seemed to have no interest in protecting his family’s name from outside agents; he was more ashamed of his financial troubles being revealed to his siblings and mother. And Toby Tramming was terrified of uttering their very name. And we may discount Ms Mills: she has no connection in this regard, and is legally restrained from implicating the family in any impropriety. Which leaves only Diana Tramming as your employer.”

Mr Tyler was a picture of practiced impassivity. Blanc spread his arms out and absent-mindedly felt for a cigar, then put it back, because he was still on the tube. In America one could still cling to a last freedom and smoke on some of the older trains.

“Now of Diana Tramming, I have come to no particular conclusions except that she is most formidable and most feared. I said to you Mr Tyler that I try, in my simple way, to see who has inadvertently told me the truth or unwisely told me a lie. Mrs Diana Tramming, now, has told me almost nothing at all. But if I measure her correctly, I suspect she could arrange for her sons to do anything she wished. Up to and including confess to a murder they did not commit.”

It was a meaty thought and Blanc wished he could chew on a cigar to cogitate upon it. Thankfully there was a dull tone that indicated their stop at Tottenham Court Road.

The “hacker” of Mr Tyler’s acquaintance turned out to be a tall cylindrical dark-skimmed woman with bouncing red dyed hair, almost like a bunch of electrical chords springing from her scalp. She was waiting patiently by the station but her chin wobbled as they approached, seemingly anticipating their request and her denial.

“No I cannot hack into a phone account, you damn fool,” she began before an introduction, adding a noise that indicated contempt and annoyance at several distinct levels. “They are onto that shit.”

“Isobel Jaha, meet Benoit Blanc,” said Mr Tyler. Blanc nodded and extended a hand cordially. Isobel gave a cursory nod. “Sup.”

“I’m sure that we have no intention for you to break the law of the land, Miss Jaha,” he said, retracting his handshake. “And I’m also sure you can find some way to help us.” He fetched the two broken phones from his pocket. She glanced at them as if they were an unwanted burden. “I have heard nothing but Hamazement regarding your skills in this Hhharea.”

Isobel fetched a hand from deep in her parka pocket and inspected them. “Yeah nah this one is proper fucked,” she said of Roger’s flattened one. “Maybe there’s something left but it’ll be a bitch even getting it open to find out.” She shrugged in a way that could mean almost anything. “I can give it a try.”

She switched her gaze to the other. “This one is just likely the screen, yeah? I can crack it open and run in another screen from a spare; I think I got one on my desk somewhere but you still won’t be able to log in unless you like know the code.”

There was a pregnant pause. Both men thought there was much more that could be done but without a technical grasp of the subject matter they could not be sure or see how to encourage more force be applied. Mr Tyler began a volley of assurances of the reach and power of his confederates and the deepness of their pockets. Blanc looked around in thought. It seemed to him that it was not a need to assauge her fear but ignite her aspiration. By them on the road was a magazine store. Toby Trammings face appeared in the corner of an oversized magazine cover acting as advertisement. “Spy About FROWN” the headline crowed, sickening Blanc with its insipid wordplay and churlish viciousness, and it got worse below: “Death house not dog house for author this time??”. Blanc could never vouch for any moral superiority regarding his country of birth but his minuscule introduction to the British tabloids had shown him a media more savage and deranged than he might have believed possible. The Americans were far too swift to elevate celebrities, but the British preferred to eat them alive.

It did however give Blanc an idea and he coughed to interrupt Mr Tyler. “Madam, if I may. It hoccurs to me that you have been presented with no details as to the context of our requests upon your skills. These phones, either one of them, are artefacts in a case of cold blooded murder. A woman named Charlotte Tramming was brutally struck about the head by someone or someones close to her. This-“ and here he held it aloft - “is her phone. Likely containing the very last messages she sent. It might indeed reveal who killed her.”

His gambit worked; the lady bent her head anew and spun the phone in her hand. “Android has a thing…” she began. “Since like 2015, Android has this thing in their phones that detect where you use them most. It’s so people can recall their passwords and stuff.”

Blanc blinked. “You mean the phone knows where its owner lives?”

“Yeah exactly. So you can turn it on - when I fix the screen - and just ping a tower and it’ll check if it’s at its house and if it is they just turn it back on. You can just ring android up and they’ll reset it or reconnect the cloud to a new one.” Isobel shrugged. “You might have to say you’re Charlotte Tramming or something. That’s always the easiest way to hack something, you just pretend you lost it.”

She paused again. “I might be able to spoof it so it will just unlock as soon as you’re back in wherever it thinks is home. You’d just need to be there like five seconds or so.” Isobel pursed her lips. Motivated now by the puzzle as well, she began to spin the phone in thought. Blanc smiled. He knew the look of a fellow puzzle solver lost in the first moments of breaking down the path to solution. He was also personally tickled by the image of the phone knowing where it lived.

Isobel promised them results soon; it was then arranged they should return to collect the device and transport it back to the Tramming house. Once again the two men set off before Blanc received a call. It seemed to be the day for people keen to confess things to Benoit Blanc.

“Mr Blanc?” they asked and he vouchsafed it was he.

“This is Vernon Napp. I’m a reporter. I’m investigating - well, I’m investigating the Tramming family for a story. One of my sources gave me your number.”

Blanc’s mind searched rapidly and remembered the name from Mr Tyler’s report that morning. Blanc made a warm reply, devoid of any affectation. “There’s some things I need to show you. Can you come to my house?”

They could indeed and Blanc said so. It was still a small exotic pleasure for him to ride the tube, such a novelty in its accessibility and convenience. One could, with the addition of an acceptable deprecation of shoe leather, reach near any part of the city of Greater London and its some nine million inhabitants. Soon enough they were tunneling down staircases. shooting across the city and arising again like clever prairie dogs on the Arizona plains. Napp's apartment was near a hilly park, in a block of six square similarities. Blanc saw the dark blue van parked on the road, and nodded to himself.

Napp opened the door a crack. He was beareded and long-haired, in the reminiscent Viking style of the day. Both ran down into his rumpled jacket and perhaps even into his jeans. Blanc could not guess his age; there was a world-weary nature to his movements but no wrinkles by his eyes or mouth.

“Hello,” he said simply, acknowledging with his eyes that they had seen each other before. He let them into a dingy but comfortable flat; the couch disappearing under a massive furred rug that soon tried to swallow Blanc and Tyler as they squashed onto it. Napp looked as if he was going to offer them tea but was afraid to do so. Blanc thought of yesterday's chase. Had Mr Tyler cornered the blue van as it had sped away from Roger Tramming’s offices, and then applied his unique form of persuasion to the young gentleman, or had he simply run the licence plates? Blanc was not in the mood for sympathy: the man had stalked his movements nearly as much as Tyler. This was, like the first meeting that morning, not a cordial meeting of minds or a detente among equals. Blanc knew better than to ask for apologies; that was a long wait for a train that never comes. But he still wanted them. It was a question of honour.

Napp gave up on not making tea and began not making sense. “Look, I started all this as human interest really. Tramming is old, the comic is coming up to fifty years, I figured I could sell a retrospective. But nobody would give me an interview. Colleagues made noises like they all had somewhere else to be. I made some more calls and then I had lawyers calling me.” Napp pushed the tendrils of his fringe from his face. “I know a shakedown when I see it.”

Napp sank back on his chair. “Of course, it doesn’t mean that there is a story. Rich people are always jumpy. They like to throw their weight around. Then I got a source that said that Tramming had cut his co-creators out of their share. I was following that when - well, you know.”

“People started being murdered,” completed Blanc.

“Right,” said Napp, swallowing. “And this tabloid stuff - I don’t do that. Ok?”

Blanc lit his cigar without asking. Without apologies, he was unwilling to offer absolution.

“And yet you were outside the hospital for photos.”

“Yeah. But look,” Napp said again. “I don’t know who you’re working for but like you said - people are dying here. And - so - look.” Napp turned his phone on and presented it face up. Once again it was a parade of photos.

“These were taken in the hospital yesterday.” Napp zoomed the picture in. “That is Diana Tramming going into the pharmacy supply area. And there she is being chased out by a nurse. And here -“ he flipped a few photos forward - “here she is in the downstairs pharmacy again.”

Blanc took the phone and passed it to Tyler. Napp pushed his hair aside again. “It’s not much. But she is in charge of his medication, isn’t she?”

“I believe these were taken by someone else, Mr Napp,” said Blanc simply. “The family have been very strict about access inside the hospital.”

Napp half-shrugged. “I have a source -“

“Which I assume you will not name,” completed Blanc. “But it has to be Myra Mills, doesn’t it?” Napp couldn’t hide his response. “There is noone else who knows Patrick Tramming is dead and has a reason to tell you.”

Napp went to take the phone back but Mr Tyler resisted. “Who else has these?”

Napp shook his head and went for the phone again. “Just me and -“

“Myra Mills” Blanc and Tyler said together. Tyler held the phone tightly.

“I assume she returned to the hospital yesterday - “ Blanc began and then Tyler eagerly took over. “She did indeed. But moreover - “ and Blanc could see Mr Tyler’s brain ticking, his excitement building as he followed Blanc's example in deduction - “she told you yesterday we were going to Roger Tramming’s rooms. That’s why you were able to get there before us. I knew I had lost you.” Mr Tyler almost removed every trace of pride in his voice as he stroked the side of his moustache. Almost.

Napp looked hunted. “Regardless - this is, well, evidence -“.

“But not strong evidence - nor of anything in particular, unfortunately,” said Blanc.

“She has no business going into the hospital supply -“

“I think,” said Mr Tyler, “that your best option is to delete the images and pretend you never got them.” He handed Vernon Napp the phone expectantly. Napp took it but continued. “But there’s more. She has motive. There’s the legal case being made against the comics. My source - Myra has a strong case. Tramming’s wife has every reason to make sure she inherits the comic before that case is heard, or -“

Mr Tyler cocked his nose. “In any case, the images are more prejudicial than probitive, Mr Napp. I do suggest you delete them immediately.” There was a moment of silence. Then Mr Tyler smiled in his way, that revealed no warmth. “Excuse me, now my phone is ringing,” he said. With a brush of movement, he pointedly returned Napp’s phone, and stepped out the front door into the sunlight. Sinking further into his seat, Blanc inhaled deeply on his cigar.

“Mr Napp, may I ask you something? As a confidant, perhaps, of Ms Myra Mills?”

Napp nodded.

“Do you think Ms Mills truly has a case? Is there a case to be made of her losing earnings? I have made a few inquiries. As far as I can tell she has made plenty of money, and her name still appears in the books. But,” said Blanc, staring into the middle distance as was his wont, “I have not had a chance to peruse any paperwork nor am I skilled in this area of the law.”

Napp shook his head. “I don’t know either. The lawyers won’t - can’t tell me.”

“I suspect, however, that a resourceful man like yourself has other means in this regard.” Napp shrugged. Much like Mr Tyler, he tried not to answer questions unless he absolutely had to. Blanc could respect that.

“How do you judge the lady herself, then? Is she credible?”

Napp shook his head again. “That’s not for me to say. There’s a story here; two sides making a claim, and that’s the story. The public needs to know that the question is being put to the courts.”

“It does seem to me that anyone might bring a claim that fits those requirements, Mister Napp, and seek to do great damage as a result. Even if the court were to throw it out, it could damage to a man’s reputation. And a man at the end of his life cares a great deal about his reputation. And so does his family.”

Napp shrugged once more. Blanc raised an eyebrow and sucked on his cigar. There were too many mysteries, and each man was helpless to solve them. As Blanc had observed the other night, it did not truly matter what the facts were. Only what they were believed to be. That was enough to destroy the mind, devour lives and drive people to take them.

“But that wouldn’t give Myra a motive to kill -”

Blanc cut him off. “Unless she thought the courts would never give her the satisfaction she wished, or the publicity she needed. Wouldn’t she then perhaps feel a desire to seek some last revenge?”

“You don’t really think -“

“I try not to think too much,” Blanc said mostly to himself. “Causes all sorts of trouble. What I might do is ask questions, such as why Ms Mills is so very keen to get my attention upon those photographs.She met you outside the hospital the morning I was engaged, and made sure to point you towards my investigations, no doubt suspecting I would not reveal everythign I found to her. I think Ms Mills has gone to great lengths to know my mind, and in some cases, control it.”

Blanc sucked deep on his cigar. “It’s funny,” he mused. “I’ve had a lot of people very keen to help me solve the murder of Patrick Tramming today and that alone makes me full of questions. Nobody could tell me very much at all about the death of Charlotte Tramming yet everyone seems to be overflowing with information about the death of her father-in-law.” Napp sulked behind his fringe and beard; Blanc realised that both of them felt used.

Mr Tyler announced his return to the room. “We need to go, Blanc,” he said simply. “The police picked up Janyn Cuthbert and I can arrange for us to speak to her.” Tyler looked at Napp. “Stay here and don’t show any of this to anyone for now.”

Blanc raised his eyebrows as he swung himself out of the devouring couch. “Once again into the fray, it seems, Mr Napp. I do appreciate your candour in these matters, but from now on please simply ask me if you wish to know where I plan to go next.” Blanc said it with warmth and kindness and meant it. Apologies aside he would rather have Napp as an ally when he had none inside the family and no reason to trust Myra Mills either. She too had lied to him. It was, as always, the depressing but inescapable nature of his work. Even Mr Tyler was lying to him, by his omissions and evasions.

And he knew right now, Mr Tyler was lying, outright lying, to his face.

Chapter Text

The sun was rising high but the day was cold and the passing of hours added no warmth. Blanc and Tyler emerged from the elevator and through a short entryway into that cold whist day and Blanc immediately grasped for his pockets with the hand still holding his cigar. “I seem to have forgotten my lighter,” he apologised and went back to push the lift button.

“Leave it,” said Tyler, with an unusual haste. “I’ll buy you another one.”

“The police will hold her, won’t they?” responded Blanc. “Besides, it was a gift.”

Mr Tyler fussed for a moment but did not stop the lift doors from closing around Blanc. Blanc had left the lighter deliberately so he could talk to Napp alone but he was equally interested in Mr Tyler’s response. Something about their new appointment was making the man nervous, in a way Blanc had never seen. He had against all reason and self preservation seen something collegial in the one holding his leash and had no wish to cause him unnecessary pain, so he decided to be as swift as he could.

In fact, Blanc had only one question, after his apology and explanation for returning. He stowed the lighter and asked if Napp had been threatened off the story.

“Twice,” he said. “Phone calls. Late at night. There’s a story here, see? That’s how I know.”

“And did they ever identify themselves?”

“Last night it was the Vice Commissioner himself, and he was very clear to make that point.”

Blanc nodded. “I also had the pleasure of making his acquaintance last night.”

Napp hesitated again. “Blanc - look, am I - are we in danger? I’m used to people mouthing off at me but the Vice Commissioner - this is -“

“As if a shadowy cabal reaches to the highest echelons? A secret order is at work to cover up some great secret? I feel it too.” Blanc pointed at Napp's phone. “You have my number. If you see anything - any strange men in bowler hats and dark suits - you can call me.”

Blanc wrestled with a need to say more. “As much as I resent your earlier methods, Mr Napp, I do believe we are very much in the same business.” Blanc stared at the man with his cold blue eyes. “We want the truth.”

Napp nodded, slowly and seriously. Then the two men shared a disheartened shrug as if to say that the ways and means of shadowy conspiracies were theirs not to ponder. Blanc swirled to put the door between the two of them but Napp stopped him with a word.

“Wait.” He turned and grabbed some files. “I don’t trust - the other guy.” He rummaged with the file half under his chin and produced a scrunched up note page with a name, address and phone number. “This is my source on the legal case. She’s a law student. She might talk to you.”

There was a moment of silent thanks then Blanc turned through the door with finality. He made his way down in the elevator where he was met by an anxious Tyler. “We need to go, Blanc,” he said. Blanc nodded in a way that suggested he had heard this sentiment but was only just beginning to come round to the idea. A big black sedan pulled into the driveway as they left and for a moment Blanc pondered shadowy conspiracies once more. But Mr Tyler was fussing for the first time since they had met so he sped up slightly to return to him and once again take the tube across the metropolis, or rather one short stop away.

And yet it turned out they need not have hurried. By the time they reached the station there was no news to report but failure. Tyler had Blanc to wait outside lest his presence raise any hackles from a police force happy to hold grudges against meddling detectives. Only a minute later he reappeared, crestfallen.

“They had to let her go, it seems,” said Tyler. Blanc sucked away the last of his cigar and said nothing but a commiserate murmur. “She may yet turn up at the hotel, I suppose,” he eventually added. “But I do believe we are now not far from the source that Mr Napp mentioned to me. Assuming I have interpreted my phone correctly.”

They were indeed in Holborn, near Grays Inn, which was their target; the brisk walk helped them keep the sharpening winds from boring through their coats. Blanc had marveled at the connective tissue that made the city walkable but now he found he was beginning to tire of it. Most of his cases had a much more minute locus of traffic and his homeland’s love of the automobile was well established. He might normally break up his car journeys with music on his headphones but he remained shackled to his companion as well as to the requirements of good manners, so they pressed on without entertainment but also in mostly silence. Blanc was adroit at most social occasions but he was not fond of small talk. He had a habit of being uneasy or making others uneasy, even without accusing people of murder which he was forced to do on occasion. He explained Napp’s provision of a legal source and they discussed how to get there and how to find her and then smiled a little hopelessly as the walk wore on.

As if to his rescue his phone began to buzz. It was not, as he hoped, Phillip, but Myra Mills. First he was alerted to voice mail messages she had left (he had switched to do not disturb at Napp’s) and then she clearly switched to text. Like the night before there was a torrent, swiftly gaining a narrative. Defensive denials gave way to assertions of conspiracy and hints of accusation. Blanc could not finish reading one, let alone reply, before the next appeared. He eventually surrendered to the tide and put the phone back in his pocket without any response.

“Miss Mills seems to be taking things hard,” he said to nobody in particular. Tyler nodded. “She has no one to turn to; the family have each other.” Blanc nodded. Although they had all seemed to blame Roger there was an even greater unity in ostracising Mills. No matter what, he was family; no matter what, she was not.

The City Law School turned lawyers into barristers and appeared to approach this process like it was horticulture: like so much of modern London architecture its exterior was predominately glass and mirrors, knifing into the sky with geometric perfection like a futuristic space prison. One hesitated to get too close lest the sharp edges cut the skin. Blanc had texted his request but knew it would not be replied to until the hour was up as lectures kept a horological precision to match the architecture. They sat awkwardly again in the foyer. Something of the last hour tickled at the back of Benoit Blanc’s brain. He knew Mr Tyler has lied about something but he did not know what. He had wanted a reason to leave the reporter’s apartment but that haste seemed justified. Unless -

And then his phone beeped again and it was a thin voiced young lady promising them only five minutes. She appeared out of the lifts, darting swiftly as true to her word. Blanc and Tyler stood up in unison to introduce themselves.

“Jacqueline Wang,” she said, extending a thin-armed handshake. She pulled it back. “You’re not police? Or press?”

“You are quite correct there. My name is Benoit Blanc, and I am a private detective. My services have been deployed in the matter of murder; murder that has occurred to a member of the Tramming family. In the process of my inquiries I have discovered that Ms Myra Mills was in the process of legal action against Patrick Tramming, her erstwhile collaborator for many years. I am seeking information regarding the case. I spoke to Vernon Napp who, rather than risk misremembering, directed me to you, as the proverbial horse’s mouth. You observed the case in court, I believe?”

“I did, Mr Blanc.” She looked nervously at Mr Tyler but he had returned to his usual impassive silence and offered her no explanations. She turned back to Blanc. “I have to observe several cases as part of my studies.” She smiled. “I got full marks for my report on that case.”

Blanc smiled back. “Well that is certainly an inspiration to hear, in this next generation of lawyers. But what I am trying to understand is whether the case has merit.”

“The prosecution would not and in fact cannot put forth a case they think has no merit, Mr Blanc. The judge agreed to hear the case as well. There were distinct questions of owing returns on derivative works.” She smiled a dazzling smile at the two men.

Blanc smiled back but was trying to tease something out on his head. “Thank you Miss Wang. I wonder though why there was no attempt to settle the matter. Something like this could cause bad publicity, and when it is purely a matter of economics -“

“Oh, well,” said Jacqueline as if her exam question had turned out to be exactly the one she’d hoped for. “The defence had an easy case to make that the plaintiff was making unreasonable claims for punitive reasons.” The men stared at her blankly. “She was demonstrably mentally ill. Paranoid. They had her psychiatrist listed as a witness. There was a claim she had even assaulted Tramming although there were no charges laid.”

Wang watched the two men take all this in. “I doubt her lawyers would want her on the stand. She would have made an unsympathetic and unreliable witness. Hard to establish she was arguing in good faith and not as a desire to punish. She might even have…well, she could be unpredictable. She might have made threats or accusations. I’d seen her once or twice outside the court, talking to the press: she thought the British aristocracy was out to get her. Or at least the Tramming family.”

Ms Wang continued but Blanc didn’t hear her. There was a thing tickling his brain again. Mr Napp had felt afraid of conspiracies too. Mr Tyler had urged him to delete the photos, something a reporter would never do of course. Unless he was forced to do so. Who was a threat to Mr Napp? And to Ms Mills?

“Of course, it doesn’t matter now,” she said, commanding Blanc’s attention to whip back into focus.

“Why not?” he asked, his mouth not quite closing in bafflement.

“Well, I checked the listings when you rang. The case was dropped. By the plaintiff. I suppose her lawyers convinced her she had no path to success.”

“When was this?” Blanc asked.

“I suppose in the last few days?”

“Today, even?” Blanc asked. Ms Wang agreed it could have been today.

Blanc’s vision swam for a moment. He was, he knew it, a quixotic soul. He had more than once fallen victim to a sob story or a damsel in distress. He believed in justice, the more poetic the better, and it sometimes made him foolhardy. The last person to see Patrick Tramming alive had been Ms Myra Mills. Ms Myra Mills who had made threats and then this morning dropped her lawsuit. Who had hungered for so long for some of her own justice.

Suddenly his phone spoke again. It was a text from his hotel. The concierge he had paid handsomely for assistance confirmed swiftly that the girl Janyn Cuthbert had been seen in the nearby cafe. Blanc stared for a moment, then snapped his head up. The hound dog had caught a new scent.

“Well, thank you, Ms Wang. That’s very helpful. I’ve just been informed I must return to my hotel to receive a guest. We won’t bother you any longer.” He turned away then turned back as if a thought had struck him. “Oh but Ms Wang, I’m a stranger to this city. Could you be so kind as tell me the fastest way to get to my hotel. It’s the Cumberland. Near the Marble Arch.”

Ms Wang could have directed him to his own phone but was well mannered enough not to do so. She deftly pulled hers out and brushed back her long black fringe as she slid beside him. “Central is the direct line. But lots of lines will work.” She showed Blanc the options. He checked his watch, and thanked her kindly. She smiled a disarmingly bright smile again as they left.

Mr Tyler wondered why Blanc was walking so fast, and Blanc asked him to trust him, if only for the next half hour. Timing, he indicated, was important here. As they strode back the way they came, he asked for more horological clarity.

“Mr Tyler, what time did Ms Cuthbert leave the police station? It is a custom usually for such things to be recorded, I believe.”

Mr Tyler shrugged. “In this case, she wasn’t being held.”

“But you could approximate?”

“A few minutes before we arrived, they said.”

“Just a few? How many minutes, do you think?”

Mr Tyler shrugged with his whole body. “No more than five?”

Blanc checked his watch. “Will you indulge me, Mr Tyler, in an experiment?” Mr Tyler said nothing but did not object. Benoit Blanc took ten more steps until they reached the very front of the police station they had previously visited. He waited until the second hand clipped twelve, then said “go!”

It was an undignified thing, when Benoit Blanc hurried, and he tried to do it as little as possible, but needs must, he thought, when murder was at stake, it wasn’t quite a run but it bordered on it; a frantic, haphazard kind of speed walk that propelled him like a man late for his flight down the street, a bewildered Mr Tyler in his wake.

Down the stairs they went at the station, double time. The Circle line train they had just missed. Blanc changed direction and launched himself for the other side as the Picadilly train shuttled in As they boarded, Blanc breathlessly observed that “she might have gone via Covent Garden” the other nearby station. At Picadilly Circus Blanc hurled them back to the surface, up the stairs two at a time. It was 700 metres to Oxford Circus, a distance they covered in one minute and forty five seconds. Tumbling down those stairs they got the Central train. They had to wait just over a minute for it to depart, then three more minutes to get to Marble Arch.

Blanc was gasping a bit as he lunged to the top of the stairs. Tyler was showing only confusion. He could easily match Blanc’s speed without a single bead of sweat or crease in his jacket. Blamc beckoned him in pantomime fashion to keep up as he lurched into the street. Over, across and down a block he led his companion, their coats billowing behind them, the cold wind forgotten until it hit cold patches of sweat. They made a strange silhouette, jerking like shadow puppets: Blanc's body slowly collapsing but being willed on in jack-knifes and jerks; Tyler careening around behind, upright but lost and trying to follow. And then abruptly, Blanc stopped dead.

“Nineteen minutes…. And …. forty……four…. seconds,” exhaled Blanc. Even Tyler was a little puffed now, but he went again to raise an inquiry. Blanc stopped him with a raised hand, his index finger pointed up like a starting gun.

“You said no more…. than five minutes, correct, Mr Tyler? No more…. than five minutes… before we arrived?” Blanc’s furious passion borne down on his cardiovascular system, demanding it yield.

Tyler breathed heavily. “Yes.”

“I make that fourteen minutes flat then…”

Tyler stretched his back in an arch. “What are you on about?”

“It took us approximately four minutes to walk from the police station to the School of Law. We were waiting for eight minutes and then talking to Ms Wang for less than one minute when I received a text. A man from my hotel had sent me a text to inform me Janyn Cuthbert had returned to this cafe.” Blanc pointed at the establishment and the effort made him suddenly bend terribly low at the knee.

“When my man asked the waitstaff there, they said she had come in about five or ten minutes earlier. Let us say she arrived but one minute only before the staff saw her. Nineteen minutes forty seconds is about as fast as anyone could make the journey, agreed?”

Mr Tyler helped Blanc avoid falling over. Blanc leant back against the wall of the house behind them. For a moment he did nothing but suck in vast amounts of air. Blanc felt his temples pounding and a stitch building in his belly but he could not stop. Blanc noticed that Tyler was just slightly puffed. He had been hiding it until they stopped moving.

“Agreed,” panted Tyler.

“So if she arrived just one minute before I received my call, she arrived there fourteen minutes after you entered the police station. It could have been much less.”

Mr Tyler made the universal gesture for “get to the point, old man”.

“If she had left the police station five minutes before we arrived, and travelled for nineteen minutes and forty seconds, then she would arrive at cafe fourteen minutes and forty seconds later. If she ran most of the way and made every single connection, and the waiters at the cafe somehow did not spot her when she entered, even though she would have had to pass the busy counter, she could have dashed past and reached the cafe…and still be not quite there in fourteen minutes.”

Mr Tyler said nothing but was clearly still puzzled. “You mean you don’t think she could have gotten here? Is that what all that - “ he pointed over his shoulder - “infernal running was about?”

“I find it substantially improb -“ Blanc had to stop because the word substantially had taken a lot out of him and he was bending over again. “Substantially improbable.” He coughed, exhaled, sighed and laughed.

Tyler shrugged. “So someone got the time wrong, Blanc. She left a little earlier.”

Blanc put his hands in his pockets. He wanted a cigar but knew it was a terrible idea. “Maybe they did. Maybe they did,” he nodded. “But you know, it also seems unlikely to me that a friend of yours in the police could not find an excuse to hold Ms Cuthbert a little longer. Knowing you were coming, and we being just a few minutes away. The police are very good at doing that.”

“In fact, if she had been let go five minutes earlier, then their call to you would not have occurred. Your public transport got us to the police station very promptly.”

Tyler stood up straight, saying nothing. Blanc stared at him, now fully upright once more. “I think what’s likely is the police never picked up Ms Cuthbert. They have no reason to do so, even if Hoight was trying to insist upon it, because they did not know her name or appearance, unless you gave it to them.”

“I think perhaps it is more likely that you invented that story to get us out of Vernon Napps apartment.”

Blanc carefully took his hands out of his pockets now holding his phone. He typed in a number as he spoke. “I think I was right on the train, Mr Tyler. You do not, in fact, work for some shadowy order of pretend knights. You do not work for Hoight Tramming, or you would have warned him he were coming to his offices. You do not work for Roger Tramming or you would have known about him being mugged. You work for Diana Tramming. And so when you saw that Napp had incriminating photos of her, you found yourself compromised. You could not take the phone and destroy the photos while I was there. So you pretended to get a phone call and called someone else to come there and do it in your stead. Then you rushed us away so we wouldn’t be there when your colleagues arrived. Probably in the large black sedan that arrived so promptly.”

“Am I right, Mr Tyler? When I call Mr Napp, will he be unable to answer as your associates have perhaps kicked in his teeth? Or is Mr Napp going to answer his phone now and tell me everything is fine, and I have made a terrible mistake?”

Blanc pushed dial.

The phone rang, and rang again. And again.

Chapter Text

The phone rang again. Mr Tyler, for the first time in his life, faced a small but significant dilemma. But he knew there was no more point in trying to obfuscate or deflect.

“You are correct, Mr Blanc. If it matters, they were instructed not to harm Mr Napp in any way.”

Benoit Blanc shut off the ringer. “Speak of the devil,” he said.

Mr Tyler looked behind him, then back, confused.

“Speak of the devil and you will see his tail,” Blanc said, staring off to one side. “That is the complete phrase. The Native American tribes that live near New York, I’ve been told, would call the wolf “round foot”. It was the same idea: speak the name of something and it might hear it. It might be called up. I always thought it was something more than just superstition. More like a social observation.”

Blanc looked at Tyler, deep into his eyes and soul. “I believe the kind of person who keeps talking about evil is the kind of person who invites it in.”

“Money back guarantees. Everyone wins a prize. No purchase necessary. These are warning signs.” Blanc continued. “The same goes for careful instructions not to cause harm. Those make my hairs twitch, Mr Tyler, and my skin crawl. That makes me believe some harm has indeed been perpetrated. What have you done, Mr Tyler? What has been done in your name, to Vernon Napp?”

Mr Tyler drew himself up to his full height. “No harm will come to him,” he said but there was no full stop at the end of the sentence.

“The men you called, they will do everything they can. They will ask so very nicely for his phone. They will demonstrate so very carefully the consequences they can bring. But they can’t leave without his phone, can they? When he holds it tightly, will they break his fingers, Mr Tyler? Will they wrestle him to the floor and apply pressure behind his neck until his shoulders drop? Will they apply a short sharp bootheel to the elbow, causing the hand to unconsciously spasm?”

Blanc moved his thumb over his phone again. “If I dial 999 and send over the metropolitan police, will they find Vernon Napp unharmed? Will he answer his door with his hair untussled, his clothes undisturbed, his home neat and tidy?” Blanc typed 999 and hovered a digit over the dial button like a finger on a trigger. The phone was the gun and Mr Tyler was in his sights. “I’ll call them, shall I? I’m sure they’ll tell me I must have been mistaken.”

Blanc looked at Tyler with all his fury. “Or will you try to stop me? Here, in public? Do you think you can? Without being stopped? Without being filmed?”

There was a long moment. A hard moment; a steel moment. Blanc was aware all of a sudden of how old he felt, how his body sagged in the mirror that morning, how he was not quite far enough away from a man he felt certain could kill him where he stood and make it look like he had fallen down. He had thought the public space was enough but he was angry, so angry, and he was foolish, so foolish when he was angry. He had spent the last two days fearing conspiracies of some high order when a simple troubleshooter had been purchased over a phone call by Diana Tramming. No terrifying knightly order held Mr Tyler’s dark and sacred loyalty; he was a soldier of the dollar, bought and sold likely by some legal firm that was as shadowy and secret as a Pret A Manger. But mundane as it was, it was certainly enough to make a man break fingers and stomp on elbows and if it came to it, slam an aging detective into the pavement without a second thought. No mystique necessary.

“No.”

It was Tyler, his voice choked.

“I will go. I will go and see - I will go and confirm that Mr Napp is unharmed.” He was holding his lips together so hard that the words crawled out like water through an earthen dyke. “I will go.”

There was another moment, a steel moment, a cold moment, and for years later Blanc would wonder what either man might have said or wished was said. There were a million things Mr Tyler might have done, and somehow Blanc had pricked his conscience hard, and he wished perhaps he’d been magnanimous in victory. But then Mr Tyler swiveled in place and disappeared down the street. He hailed a cab and Blanc was alone.

But not, he knew, without duty. With each passing second, Janyn Cuthbert might leave the nearby cafe and slip away into the anonymity of the teeming city. He knew her name but, he cursed himself, it was Mr Tyler who still had her address. He could not lose her now.

He sidled up to the window and saw her inside, at a small table by the windows. Her long sandy red curls hung down her back like a tail, and that back curved over her hot beverage in a tight arc, leaving her hunched and furtive. She would, he knew, bolt for the door if spooked. No doubt Mr Tyler’s act of strength yesterday had frightened her, as had the two of them almost grabbing her this morning. Only her hunger to know something was stronger than her instincts to run and hide. Blanc thought long and hard and made a guess. On thinly lined note paper he wrote two sentences. Then he tipped a waiter extremely generously: he was after all asking for the delivery of a note to a girl who could almost be his granddaughter.

Janyn Cuthbert had her eyes fixed on the door of the hotel across the road. She could not, from here, see every person that walked in and out clearly. She also did not know what she was looking for. None of this was what she wanted, but her only lead was Benoit Blanc. She feared if she moved to try to see better she might miss him somehow, or worse, expose herself again to attack. It was not perfect but she hunched and waited, unwilling to yield, hoping for an answer.

A waiter, unseen, put a plate beside her. She took a moment to glance at it; by then the man was gone. On the silver platter was a hand-written note in copperplate script. It read:

ARE YOU THE DAUGHTER OR GRANDDAUGHTER OF D TRAMMING?

DONT RUN (PLEASE)

Blanc had added the please as a careful afterthought. He was quite happy with it. He stood now in the door, like a nervous high-schooler on a first date, but also braced hard to intercept a flying tackle. Janyn’s head flipped up, and they locked eyes. Something in her clearly was screaming at her to run. But something else - perhaps the dark and serious blend of pleading and command in Blanc’s ice blue eyes - told her to stay.

“Can I buy you a coffee?” Blanc said as he approached step by step. “I think we should talk.”

She held up the note, reversed. “How did you know?”

Blanc smiled gently. “It was a guess, mostly. I often guess; I am almost always correct. You had to be trying to find one of the Tramming family that couldn’t be easily tracked down to an address. It wasn’t Hoight, because you could have spoken to him at his office. Toby has in the past had public books signings. That left Roger, who has recently divorced and seems to have many secrets, but although his personal residence is unlisted, you likely could have tracked him down at his consulting rooms, or a hospital. That left the parents, Patrick and Diana.”

“It had to be something personal. Something you needed to ask face to face. It was possible you were a deeply passionate fan of Ran and Sack and trying to get started in the comics industry, but you seemed afraid of retribution or attack, which suggested a secret. And so,” said Blanc, spreading his arms in conclusion and a little humility, “I guessed.”

Janyn rolled her eyes a little; overwhelmed. “I coulda been Particks granddaughter though?,” she mumbled. Blanc nodded, and pointed gently to the letter on the paper.

“I made the D look a lot like a P.” The downstroke indeed extended quite below the curve of the capital D. You then just now told me which letter was correct.”

Janyns mouth stuck open, like she had been taken by a confidence trick or cheap illusion. Anger mixed with amazement. Eventually she said: “Can I have my anorak back?”

It was later, and it was approximately lunch time, as it so often is. Dinner and breakfast have limited windows beyond which both respectability and gustatory strength could not persist, but lunch was an affable companion who could arrive to suit any schedule. Blanc was treating Janyn to lunch at the hotel; she was explaining herself more.

“My mum said that back in those days everything was kept secret. Hospitals would just take the baby away and make sure the new parents knew nothing. But grandma said she knew - she always told my mum she knew.”

Janyn sighed into her club sandwich and fries. She seemed just as curled up as she had been before. “Three months ago my grandma died. Well, hang on. The first thing is my mum died two years ago. It was lung cancer. It was quick, they said, but it didn’t really feel quick. And the NHS, you know, they don’t cover anything, not these days. My dad mortgaged the house. I had to work extra shifts and come home and look after her. I reckon it killed grandma just worrying about it.”

Blanc thought about what Roger had said that morning, of how stress could kill a person.

“I’m not greedy, you understand, Mr Blanc? But when grandma was dying she said she knew all along that mum had been given up by, she called them “that cartoon man”. Mum was a fan growing up, I guess Grandma encouraged her? I never saw the movie, or maybe the old one as a kid? I don’t remember.”

“After the new movie made all those millions and there was things in the news, I figured if they had so much they could help out me and my dad. I didn’t - I wasn’t going to blackmail them or nothing. I was just - just going to ask.”

Blanc patted her gently on her arm. “I have no reason to believe you have committed any crimes, Ms Cuthbert.” He thought for a moment. “And I am sorry we frightened you,” he added.

She smiled. Benoit Blanc had a rare quality in him that although he found people often difficult, he saw them very deeply. He saw their weaknesses and their cruelties but he also saw their vulnerability and, in those who had it, their worthiness. For much of her life, Janyn Cuthbert had been offered no consideration or concern. In one moment, Blanc had done more than nearly anyone else in her life: he had seen her feelings without being told, and valued them without being urged. And so she smiled.

“I guess - I’m sorry if I scared you too! I just thought you would know. I heard you say you were a detective. And you’d come from their house.” She looked at him up and down, then sighed. “I bet you cost a lot of money.”

Blanc gave a half-smile. He was not entirely beyond egotism. “The rarity of those skilled at my vocation and the fact that we are so seldom called to act means we can and must charge a premium when we do.” Here Blanc withered. He hated himself when he did, but some situations call for it. “But all of this is ridiculous. It is not a deep or confounding mystery you seek to answer, and it is highly unfair that you ever had a need to know. So I also see no need to stand on financial ceremony. I believe we can solve this more simply - as colleagues, perhaps.”

Janyn heard the tone of friendship but wasn’t sure what he meant. He shuffled his chair closer. “Simply put, we can begin to find the answers you seek, right here and now. Or at least eliminate possibilities. When was your mother born?”

She told him the date and he wrote it down carefully in his notebook. “I do not know the birth dates of the Tramming sons but the tabloid magazines have led me to believe that Toby Tramming was born in 1981 or 1982. All we have to do is confirm that date, and we can know if there is time for your mother’s birth in 1981. Then, well, we, or rather you, Ms Cuthbert, can make a plan of attack based on a firmer foundation. And my assistance, at the very least, in providing an address and phone number.”

The withering had turned to a babble, but Janyn Cuthbert understood the offer had been made to complete her quest. She smiled a smile she hadn’t smiled in several years.

“If - when we have finished our meals - you wish to accompany me, we might go and see Ms Myra Mills. She was a friend of the family for many years and I’m sure she will have the information we require.”

Ms Cuthbert indicated she would like that very much, and for a few moments they shared a happy munching. Blanc called Mills but got no answer.

“The family,” Blanc breached after the moment, “no longer thinks of me as an ally. I might be able to act as an intermediary in presenting your case but it would likely do more harm than good. In this area again, Ms Mills might be an ally. Although she too has gained the enmity of the Trammings.”

Cuthbert nodded. “They seem like a bunch of jerks. Not sure I want to be related to them really.” Blanc laughed at the simple truth.

“You are right on target there, it seems. They have a knack of creating enemies without and within. I think the only reason they stick together is the outside world has less tolerance for their petty squabbles than they do.” Blanc realised then that Janyn had no idea of the business going on over the last forty eight hours.

He explained it all, beginning with the violent death of Charlotte Tramming, the silent rictus of Partick Tramming, his last conscious act seeming to point to the portrait of Roger Tramming as some final accusation or clue to what had happened in the house that day. He told her how Toby Tramming had tracked him down at his hotel and brought him into the affair, whence he had deduced that one of the family or a close confidant must have committed the act. He skirted the details of the nefarious threats perhaps from a secret order. He did explain that Roger had destroyed his phone and that Hoight long suspected his brother of having an affair, and that Roger was in deep financial distress and in debt to his father, who had now also died. By the end of it all, he found himself rather coming around to the popular point of view and he could see in Janyn’s face the same conclusion: it must have been Roger Tramming who killed his father and was forced to kill Charlotte Tramming when she caught him in the act. He ended saying that he was sure the police would indeed arrest Roger at any moment. The only reason the family might delay is to ensure all publicity was avoided so as to not harm Hoight’s chances at a minor cabinet position.

Set against all that was what, Benoit Blanc pondered. A hunch? He was not someone who truly believed in such things. A feeling had to come from somewhere. Perhaps it was the sense that it was what everyone in the family seemed to want. The Tramming family united against outsiders, and Roger was the black sheep of the family, somehow, despite his respected career and the vagarities of Toby’s and Hoight’s characters. But would a force unite them so perfectly on the same target within their ranks? Such neatness and such unison seemed to be rare in the experience of Benoit Blanc. Certainly very rare when the culprit also fell so perfectly in line.

It has a sense of arrangement to it. And when it came to arrangement, that had a sense to it of Mrs Diana Tramming. She had, he was certain now, been the client who had hired Mr Tyler to protect her family’s name in all regards, not just from implications of shadowy conclaves and memberships. She might have even arranged her husband’s death to tie up the loose ends. Without knowing or caring who did it, she might have simply chosen the scapegoat and set about to ensure the evidence was incontrovertible and obvious. She had also most likely been the one to call the deputy commissioner who had threatened him last night when Mr Tyler had failed to stay by his side. Said police were now no doubt speeding off to make the final arrest. Roger Tramming would confess within minutes. Toby would recover from his grief and write a new best seller and Hoight would continue to climb the ladder of political acclaim. And a certain lawsuit brought by Ms Myra Mills would be whisked away now the estate was in a trust. Diana Tramming had tidied everything away with the aplomb and confidence of the vastly powerful and life-long rich. He wondered what else she had tidied away over the years. He wondered if she thought she had tidied away Benoit Blanc.

The rage from last night was still there, but slowly, steadily, it clarified like boiling butter.

There remained other possibilities. Ms Mills had motive, means and great opportunity. Diana may have acquired some medicine from the hospital, but Ms Mills had given those images to her ally knowing they would go to Benoit Blanc and direct his attention away from the sender. Ms Mills who had made threats and feared retribution. And even too, there was Hoight Tramming. He was very much his mother’s favourite. He might have been her emissary, or she might be tidying up his indiscretions. He was trying to blackmail or expose his older brother, so he might just as well turn on his father. Or perhaps the smashed phone he had attacked his brother for contained the final piece of evidence that proved his guilt. In an age of constant surveillance, so much power and memory was vested in our devices, and he could not compel them to reveal their secrets. As Janyn Cuthbert had to put all her faith in him, he was now entirely resting his pursuit upon the talents of Isobel Jaha. And she was someone upon whom he had no hold or influence: she was an agent of Mr Tyler.

As usually happened when he was deep in thought, his phone rang. Speak of the Devil, he thought: it was Mr Tyler. And it was a video call request. Blanc excused himself from the lunch table and stepped into a quiet corner.

“Mr Napp,” pronounced the very close image of Mr Tyler, “in the flesh. The slightly damaged flesh.” Mr Tyler tilted the phone to reveal more of the scene. He was standing in Mr Napp's kitchen. The rotation revealed Napp nursing a bruised nose under a packet of frozen peas. Another bag was on his wrist but he curled a thumbs up at the screen.

“Bastards smashed my phone to bits, Blanc,” he growled. “I was handing it over, too.”

Mr Tyler appeared back in frame. “I have apologised to Mr Napp and have seen to his medical care. And I apologise to you, Mr Blanc. My duty to my clients is expected to be absolute and unwavering but you have convinced me of late that this is entirely unacceptable.”

“Therefore and hereafter, I have resigned. You, Benoit Blanc, are on your own.”

Chapter Text

Mr Tyler liked to appear businesslike but he had a theatrical streak. In this he was not unlike Benoit Blanc. Blanc was not impressed or concerned about the pronouncement. It was not strictly speaking true, nor did he find it relevant.

“It is so often the case, Mr Tyler, in my line of work,” he said with exhaustion. “I began this case alone and I shall likely finish it alone.”

“You may find, Mr Blanc, that the forces against you are magnifying. The Trammings do not want you to investigate any further and I am sure that my employer will take further steps to block you if you persist in doing so. I can fail to alert them that I have ceased operating in their employ for a brief period but if you come to their attention they will replace me forthwith.”

Mr Tyler looked at the gold watch on his wrist. “Shall we say an hour?”

Blanc shook his head. “I have asked you for very little, Mr Tyler, and that is not about to change. You must do what you must do.” Blanc thought for a second and then added: “If you feel obliged to me in some way, I will ask you to do one thing, and only this:”

“Go and buy Mr Napp a new phone.”

Blanc hung up as forcefully as he could on a flat screen. It was one thing to have enemies. It was another thing entirely for them to pretend to be your friends for a limited time only.

He composed himself and shuffled back to the table. “Ms Cuthbert,” he said, sitting down with his eyes gazing away in thought. “I do believe this case is rapidly coming to a head, one way or the other. Danger may be afoot. Regardless, I could use an assistant and companion in my hinvestigations. Along the way we might be able to unravel the true nature of your parentage.”

“I can afford to only pay you a small amount - “ began Blanc, before Janyn leapt up and threw her arms around him. Blanc was at heart a shy man. He would dress himself in furtive privacy even in his own home and would blush if his husband so much as touched his hand in public. He almost fell over in surprise, awkwardness and momentum as the red haired girl launched herself at his neck. He managed to find the strength to pat her gingerly on the arm before, after what to Blanc felt was an eternity, she finally let go.

“Nobody - all this time Mister Blanc - nobody has helped me. Or even believed me. About any of this. Sorry. Sorry about that,” she added, brushing imaginary lint from his waistcoat. “I’ve just been so turned around in all this. And everyone keeps telling me I’m crazy, or I’m lying!”

“Skepticism is thought of as a virtue,” Blanc observed, “but too often we deploy it with just as much suspicion as our faith.”

With that she moved to hug him again but he waved it off. One hug he could withstand but a second was altogether too much. He went to drink the last of his coffee instead, and then directed them both towards the door.

It was still cold and gloomy outside. Rain threatened in the distance and the sky seemed closer than usual. A brisk walk helped, and the walk gained impetus from Blanc explaining ever more of the case as it was so far to his new assistant. He began with the meeting of Troy Tramming in the hotel, Troys desperate plan for more media coverage, and how it became his undoing. He wanted to get to his journey to Oxford to investigate the secret order of father and son, but it was a long story and the public transport was very efficient.

Once again Benoit Blanc did descend below the earth to explore the London Underground. This time the line was a dark purple colour and named Elizabeth. It took them far to the east of the city. There was an East Village here but nothing like the one he knew from New York. Not far away was the inexplicably titled West Ham, and between the two was a stately but unremarkable high rise that was home, on the fourteenth floor, to Ms Myra Mills. Her royalties for her years of work had bought her fancy hats and earrings that had caught the sun and Blanc’s eyes, but it was a long way from the polished forecourts and statued gables of the Tramming’s neighbourhood.

One thing carried over however: as they approached up the street they saw the shape of Roger Tramming shuffle out of the glass-walled lobby, pulling his coat close around him to break the cold and perhaps line of sight. Blanc remembered the pain of his earlier running, the stitch almost knifing again through his diaphragm at the memory alone. But he knew luck was so very rarely on the side of the detective. And now he had an ally again.

“That’s Roger. That’s Roger Tramming! Don’t let him get away!”

Janyn Cuthbert was not a natural athlete but she was strong and had the reflexes of youth. Roger Tramming was a hundred yards away but just as he was hailing a cab at the street side, a ball of orange-anorak-and-red-curls collided into him. Janyn smiled a wide open grin at him below mad eyes. Roger Trammings face went from the shock of sudden danger to the pale apoplexy of confusion, wondering who this person was and how they could possibly know him and why he could not seem to place them and if, indeed, there were several critical pieces of information he suddenly desperately lacked but might somehow acquire. He was equally desperate in his relief to see Benoit Blanc trotting up behind his assailant.

“Blanc!” He shouted. “Good lord, man! What are you doing?”

“My apologies, Mr Tramming,” Blanc yelled back congenially. “I didn’t want you to slip away there, and I’m afraid Ms Cuthbert was rather more enthusiastic at gaining your attention than I intended.”

Roger looked sunken, like he had been caught stealing. “Well, what the devil do you want, man?”

“Oh I was just very curious to find us both here at the same time. I assume you were just visiting our friend in common, Ms Myra Mills?”

“What? No, I mean, yes, I was, of course, yes, but it was just a brief conversation. Not a social call.”

Blanc commiserated. “Oh that’s too bad. A business conversation then?”

Roger was slowly recovering. “Well, it’s no business of yours, Blanc. But yes, business of sorts. I also came to tell her that I’m also going to the police - to, well, confess. Yes.”

Roger had presaged as much not much earlier that day but Blanc was still taken aback to hear it said out loud and with such decisiveness. He blinked and stared like an azure-eyed iguana.

“Sir, I know I am likely not someone to which you feel particularly friendly or likely to seek for advice, but I must ask why you are so determined to do that.”

“It’s my fault, Blanc. I don’t know anything about Charlie, of course, but while there’s an issue of foul play hanging over the family, well, nobody can move on. Father is dead and what needs to be done is to bury him and begin to grieve properly. We know his medicine made him at risk of seizures, made all the worse under stress. I was the primary source of that stress. Once the police hear everything they’ll see there’s nothing suspicious here, the case will be closed to their satisfaction, and to ours. Then we can move on.”

There was a long silence. Blanc put his hands in his pockets and pulled out a cigar.

“Move on. Move on. I’ve heard that phrase a few too many times.” Roger edged away slightly, his hand raising towards a taxi hailing pose but Blanc wasn’t done. “It seems the Tramming family wants nothing so much as to move on. From two murders in two days. But that’s not a problem. No. You will put it aside. You will move on.”

“I am sure, Mr Tramming, that notifying the police of your fathers condition is sure to be a help to their investigations, but everything else you have just said is the most nonsense I have heard since I met Miles Bron. Move on! What nonsense. Two people are dead, and their deaths leave a gash in the psyches of everyone who knew them, and the world at large. Move on? Sir, there is a killer on the loose! In your own house, among your own family!”

Blanc was bellowing at the street now but he did not care. “Move on. As if the killer has moved on. They killed Charlotte Tramming in cold blood and when your father regained the consciousness to say who did it, he was likely killed to stop him doing so. That’s two murders and I will tell you that in for a penny, in for a pound, Mr Tramming: this killer will strike again if anything gets in their way. Is that why you want to move on? In the hope you will be spared? Because that is by far the most stupid of all your pronouncements.”

“Maybe you even know who it is? And you think they have finished? Murder is never finished. It calls for more. And the only solution, the only way to stop it, is justice. Justice - for Charlotte.”

At that name, Roger Tramming turned and stared daggers at Blanc. A fury bubbled through his body, and Blanc softened. “More than anything, I believe that you are in danger, sir. And I would hate to think I did not warn you of the precipice on which you stand.”

Tramming caught the eye of a taxi and also softened his axe-sharp expression. “Blanc,” he sighed. “I do believe you care. I do believe you are a decent chap. And I think that you are also in danger. Maybe far more than I. You may want to take after me - and move on.”

And with that final stab, he leapt into the black cab to be whisked back across London Town. Back to the world of the Trammings with their fine stately houses and consulting rooms. And Blanc was left throwing that parting threat around in his head. Tyler had warned him too. It was the business of detectives to face down killers and madmen, and so was always dangerous work indeed. But he thought of the dark timbre of the vice commissioners voice over the throne last night and wondered if this was more than just a killer he was facing. And that more than just his own flesh and blood might be at stake.

He was brought back to the present by the grinning Janyn, full of purpose and success, still half crouching from her tackle. “An excellent job, Ms Cuthbert,” he cheered. “And now we must press upward.” He offered her his hand up and the two held on a little longer than propriety might suggest was sensible, until they let go with a moment of self-conscious apology. In a world of people trying to destroy him, Blanc was glad to have one last remaining ally.

There was a long pause after Benoit Blanc announced his name (in his affirming baritone) into the tiny grey speaker by the door where he had rung number 307. It was perhaps that Ms Myra Mills was deciding if she should let him in. Silently, eventually, a button must have been pushed to indicate the affirmative, and a magnetic click came from the door.

The lift smelled of cleaning chemicals and the corridor at their floor smelled of fire-retardant foam. The sense of ominous cleaning of the past hung in the dust that scattered the tiles and hung in the sunbeams. At the end of the corridor was an open door, held by Myra Mills, waving them to come in. She had a despairing, worn out manner and a withering gaze.

Entering the narrow entrance was made all the harder because of the large suitcase propped against one wall. “Going somewhere?” asked Blanc with genuine curiosity. Myra shook her head. “No, not any more.”.

“I can offer you tea, or something stronger.” The coffee table was scattered with the ruins of an increasingly passionate dalliance with somethings stronger. Both Blanc and Janyn felt the offer was made unwillingly and waved it away. Myra Mills sank into her chair with relief, and then gestured they do the same.

“It has been a trying day, Bennie,” she exhaled. “The times that try men’s souls. And women’s souls.”

“We passed Roger outside,” said Blanc without inflection. Ms Mills made a noise between a harrumph and a deep sigh. “And who is this young person you have brought along, Bennie? My competition? A paramour? She’s far too young for you. What a scandal.” Somewhere in that flirtatious silliness Myra Mills found a footing on firm soil again. Blanc blushed, against his will, and she rallied to see it. Janyn blushed too, and demurred, unable to explain to the stranger. Blanc stepped in and illustrated the question of Ms Cuthberts parentage and the timing of the birth of the Tramming boys. In a moment, the spirit in Myra Mills was gone anew. She sank back down and stared out the window for a few seconds before she replied.

“Troy Tramming was born in August.”

The timeline was impossible with that date. For a moment, nobody said anything. Then Janyn laughed and it turned into a sudden, coughing sob. A worked hope of over a year had hit a dead end and a brick wall, and the jolt broke the girl's spirit like a deadwood twig. She rushed into the bathroom as tears began to fountain.

“I’m sorry,” Ms Mills whispered to the still standing Blanc. “Some things - just never go how we wish they do, do they, Bennie? If - if this were another life - “ Blanc cut her off.

“What about Patrick Tramming? Could he have -“

Myra Mills made a noise like a laugh and a shriek of torture. “Oh Ben Ben Ben. It’s like you’ve come into the play in the last act, really! I tried to warn you. Secrets and lies.” She gestured out the window as if to encompass every woman in the city. “Who didn’t he have? Me, his ingenue assistant? His faithful secretary? Although at least she was smart enough to get him to marry her. And so many more, though. So many more.” She tilted her chin. “You know, I think the Tramming men think sex is like a petition- they were all busy adding names. That’s why Roger is divorced and I’m sure Hoight has some private secretary in his cabinets that she doesn’t know about -“

Myra Mills belched in a way Blanc wished he didn’t find unladylike, but he was still burdened with some chivalric ideation of the other gender. “And you know about Toby! The papers are full of it! Poor sweet Charlie. Poor Linda. It never stops!”

“Is it because he’s a cartoonist, do you think, Bennie?” She laughed a dark chuckle and poured herself another drink. “Always splashing his ink about.”

Benoit Blanc smiled non-committantly, which she misinterpreted. “You get it, Bennie. I know you do.” She leant over and forward in a way she definitely intended to be seductive, but was distorted like an inked message dripped with water. “We could have been something, couldn’t we, my Bennie. In another life. Before all…this.” Her hand reached out then dropped like a stone. She pushed it forward as if trying to take his and then dropped it again. She stared out the window again. “And now it’s too late.” It was a sad sentence in a tiny voice; the smallest Blanc had ever seen her. The first thing she had spoken of to him was that she feared the Trammings were her sworn enemies and she was ready to fight them to the last. Now it seemed the last was here already.

Blanc tried to steer her back to topic as a way to distract her from her despair. “So you don’t know if, if Patrick had a daughter -“. Myra Mills cut him off with another dark chuckle. “Oh ask me tomorrow, Bennie,” she said. “Ask me tomorrow.” And she stared out the window once more, as an end to it.

Benoit Blanc worked hard to be a warm and social man even though such things did not come to him naturally. He would much rather be at home in the bath than a fancy party or a bustling restaurant. Facing down romantic insinuations, despair and drunkenness, he was increasingly lost and unmoored. In a sudden jag of desperation he excused himself to check on Janyn.

He knocked without hesitation and in a bold but gentle voice asked if he could enter. He was almost as afraid of having to comfort a weeping woman as face a filtratious one. But Janyn opened the door and greeted him with her tears dried. She shuffled into a one-sided hug, the two of them trapped between the two rooms, stuck in the door frame. Eventually Janyn shuffled back and sat on the closed toilet. She sniffed and apologised. Blanc wasn’t sure if it was for the tears or the hug. Behind him he heard dim murmurings from the couch that were a kind of self-pitying sobs. They might not be her blood, but both women seemed to have been done poorly by the Trammings, he thought.

He could offer consolation but he had a better treatment: action. “The Tramming family doctor has been the same for forty years - since the children were born. If Patrick Tramming had a love child, he might know.”

The doctor might also, Blanc realised, be even now examining Patrick’s body and have knowledge he needed. He popped back into the living room and asked Myra the address and phone number. “I’d appreciate if you could come with us, or at least call him. He will not give intimate family information to a stranger…” Blanc trailed off. She seemed in too much despair to respond.

He sat down next to her and took her hand. “Myra,” he said quietly. “Whatever the Trammings have done to you, whatever you think they might do to you - I promise you, we can stop it. We can keep you safe. If I can get justice without breaking your confidence, I will do so, I will keep what secrets you need me to keep -“

All of a sudden she kissed him firmly on the lips. “Oh my sweet Benny,” she breathed, cradling his chin. “It is too late, don’t you see? It’s all coming out. And then it’s too late. What’s done is done, and everyone will know. And who knows what you will think of me then?”

A noise from the corner - a shuffle of Janyn - broke the intimate moment. Blanc gently took her hands away from his face and put her phone into her palm. “Then let it all come out, every bit of it. Every terrible secret. Help me expose them all.”

Myra Mills stared one last moment into his eyes and then nodded with mock seriousness and a breaking smile. “I shall, I shall, for you I shall,” she chimed. “His name is Dr Farmer and I will tell him to tell you everything.”

“Just promise me,” she added as he began to stand up - “promise me, Benoit Blanc, that you’ll remember me like this.”

He didn’t understand, but he nodded, and he and Janyn left without a word. The silence continued as the lift slowly took them downwards.

Janyn broke it. “What…what was all that about.”

Blanc blushed slightly. Again, he did not like to pry where it was unwarranted, and was loath to embarrass others for intimate secrets or revelations he invariably came to possess. He prevaricated. “I believe Ms Mills wants to confess something, but she will come to tell me in time whatever she could not quite tell me now. Perhaps she will tell me tomorrow. There’s hope in that.”

“I know,” said Janyn.

Blanc smiled, despite his mood. “I’m glad you have such confidence in the future. We must indeed hope everything will become clear, and justice will out.”

“No, I mean, I think I know what she was talking about. I think,” she added, but she seemed very sure. “I was looking in the bathroom cabinet for tissues - and - and - it was right there, open -and - well, you told me that this was important -“

She broke off and tugged at his sleeve. In her hands was a full box of something called Compazine. Its chief ingredient, said the smaller text, being 5% chlorpromazine.

Chapter Text

Benoit Blanc said nothing. He closed his hand over Janyn Cuthbert's prize and pushed it back in her pocket. Seeing her worried expression, he broke the frozen ice of his face.

“You did the right thing to take it,” he reassured her. “This is a case with all together too many clues, in too obvious places, but I would rather we had them all in view than anything else.”

“Was she trying to say she did it?” Janyn broke in. Benoit Blanc bit his lip. And once again he fell back against the wall. Against the rage railed his confusion, and his exhaustion. “What do we do, Mr Blanc?” Janyn asked. “Do we go back?”

The world swayed beneath Benoit Blanc. He was the fury of all the sea but shadows darted across the sky above him; thick cloud banks clouded the horizon. With each passing minute, the fog grew thicker. There were too many lies, too much betrayal. And he was, he knew, running out of time. Soon enough the powerful engine of the Tramming family would come for him and block his every move.

From deep within his mind came a single clear thought. “This is an unusual case. A very unusual one indeed. Because from the very beginning there have come accusations and then right behind them have come confessions, or near as dammit! And if one thing occurs to me, it is not to trust any of them. Each accusation is a confession, and vice versa. The pathways are twisted, but all pointing at themselves.”

“This,” he added, pointing to the box, “has a ring of falseness to it. It’s too neat. Too perfect. Like a false door, on a movie set or in a play. Or a dying witness pointing to his killer. A false door in a false house. Leading nowhere. Do I believe, on this alone, that Ms Mills is our murderer? No. But is this important? Is it some key clue to unlocking the false house? I believe so.”

“It might be enough for the police to convict, of course. But nothing but the truth will satisfy me. There must be no mistake.”

“What do we do then? Where do we go?” she asked in return.

“Shepherd’s Bush,” he said, pointing at the name and address he’d written down thanks to Myra Mills. Silently she led him back to the tube station.

This was another long journey. Nearly an hour of stations whizzing past. Bow Street. Whitechapel. Medieval names like Barbican and Saint Pancras. In these dark rattling tube journeys, clanking between stops like pinball bumpers did Benoit Blanc measure out his future, his course, his fate.

At first they said nothing. It had already been a long day and it had started with murder.Such was the business of the murder detective. But Benoit Blanc was also a southern gentleman, and his business was courtesy, and - though he knew it was a kind of sexism - particularly courtesy to young women. He unconsciously reached for a cigar to make things easier, remembered he was on the tube, and started with that disappointment. “It is times like this that I do wish we could still smoke on the trains,” he grumbled, half performatively. “Which I suppose shows how old I am.”

She laughed politely. Blanc properly examined his new erstwhile companion in crime-solving. Much had been hidden behind a desperate mien and physical exertion; now he could see her more clealrly. Her red curls defied management and added a sense of disarray that she did not deserve. She was younger than he had estimated, maybe not yet eighteen, her skin unmarred by any creases, her eyes wide with hope that life was more than disappointments. Her youth made him stumble in his reach for conversation topics, but she has a teenager’s patience for everyone older than her. Blanc, in turn, adopted the best approach with the youth: assuming that his failings in being irreparably an adult could be overcome by finding someone not stained by the same condition. He asked with genuine curiosity what the young people thought, did and cared about, and there was jollity again.

Before Shepherd’s Bush they had another stop. Back to Tottenham Court Road they went and indeed, the phone was ready. Blanc introduced Isobel Jaha to Janyn Cuthbert.

“Oh hey,” said Isobel, bemused by Blanc’s new companion and showing it. “What happened to Mr Tyler, lol.” Blanc explained his showdown with Tyler and filled in Isobel on the movements of the case since last they spoke which was, he marveled, only hours earlier. He was extremely relieved when she offered to accompany them to the station on her way home. The young folk could, he reasoned, talk to each other.

“They all dogs, I reckon,” said Isobel after she had mulled over the evidence. “Like I reckon that he smashed his own phone cos he was doing dirty with someone. And that other one, the writer - “ she gestured with her body to suggest remembering these villains’ names was beneath her when she had more important people to care about - “he was gonna cheat on his wife, too, right? Or did already. I say he’s a dog. He says it’s all pretend but like you know. And probably their dad too right? That’s gotta be why she killed him.”

Blanc was having a bit of trouble keeping up. “You mean Ms Mills?”

Janyn broke in. “She’s ,like, she was his assistant -“

“Co-author,” corrected Blanc.

“Yeah, that and he probably slept with her and stole her work like you said.” Blanc went to comment then stopped for the two were gaining steam.

“Yeah he stole her work and done her dirty so she poisoned him with those meds I reckon. Wasn’t she there when he died?” Isobel expanded.

“Orrr,” exclaimed Janyn, “his wife got sick of him sleeping around with everyone so she did it. Oh! Maybe he was even sleeping with the other lady, Charlie.”

They were strong theories, Blanc had to admit. And an affair between Patrick and Charlie would account for both deaths at once. It might allow for ever more motive. As he had mused the night before, even the belief of such a thing might be cause for bloody acts. Diana might seek vengeance, her sons might have reason to fear or resent their father’s infidelity, or losing their inheritance. And there again was something scratching at Benoit Blanc’s brain, demanding to be heard but he could not grasp it. Something about infidelity. Something about cheating spouses. It would not resolve, and slipped away again. But it was nearer, clearer, sharper than before, and he knew, soon enough, he would grasp it -

“The doctor is our next stop,” he said out loud. “If someone went into the room with Patrick Tramming and injected him with chlorpromazine this morning, or a few days ago, then it would have left a trace.”

His twin audience agreed that this was so. He replayed the morning's events in his mind, wondering how much time a person might need to perform the act. He tried also to call to mind the face and voice of Ms Myra Mills as she had screamed and cried and slumped damply on his shoulder. An enormous amount of shock and grief had been unleashed and he had taken it at face value. Benoit Blanc was in the business of scrutiny and skepticism and he was good at his job but he was not perfect. That same southern hospitality he had brought to mind might have blinded him when he most needed his eyes. So he sought and sought the palace of his memory for tell-tale signs. For traces unknowingly left. For mistakes the killer had made. There again was the thought, behind shadow, and there again, it slipped away.

Meanwhile the conversation had skipped ahead with the speed of youth, and Benoit Blanc was being asked a question. He apologised and asked to have it again.

“I said how come you know that Tyler guy? My boss was well scared of him, he seemed dodgy and all.” Blanc explained what he had deduced about Tyler’s employment. Isobel made a snorting noise. “Yeah like maybe he did it, too. I mean if the old lady thought her man was screwing around. Calls in some shady rando to clean house. Boom boom, kills the girlfriend then her mister, stone. cold. bitch.”

Blanc was listening but found Isobel’s swinging emphasis and rhythm hard to fully take in. Her theories came thick and fast. However she was not wrong: he had already considered the long reach of Diana Tramming. Anyone might be her agent be they loyal son or helpful attaché. They might even be working for her unwittingly. Maneuvered from afar. Which led to another possibility: a murderer driven to such things by the pressure of another. Myra Mills had been an emotional mess in court and he had watched her collapse that very morning. What fingers might have drawn her further to the edge? Was one murder an accident, with the fear of facing the facts calling up another?

Blanc pondered again how difficult it just have been to be the young Myra Mills. There was a model in front of him: Myra had been maybe three or four years older than Janyn Cuthbert when she began writing for the magazine where Patrick Tramming was already a rising star, and ten years her senior. All of a sudden Janyn laughed heartily at something Isobel said, and then another part of her caught the laugh and restrained it, and Blanc saw how much she kept herself small. It wasn’t just poverty and illlness that had given Janyn Cuthbert her hunted look, he knew. There had been the same look in Myra Mills when she had described the Tramming family: a look of hunted prey.

Thinking on this more, on Myra Mills and Janyn Cuthbert, Benoit Blanc and an idea, which became a theory, which became a guess. A good guess, though. A strong estimate, as his old math teacher would say, which was in truth nothing like a guess. But he knew he could say nothing until he could test the idea further.

Isobel left them at Marble Arch. In some small way he had hoped the two would go off together so he felt less awkward and less responsible for his new charge but of course that was ridiculous. It was also ridiculous to feel duty bound to his new companion. They had only known each other a few hours. As a detective, his friends were few and his clients came and went. Yet in this hour he felt indebted to have her with him. He tried to smile to say so. She looked away, uncomfortable, and they spoke little more until they arrived.

The doctor’s rooms were once a modest Victorian house, now likely worth a fortune. He was a grey haired man with sharp-edged features, like a statue made over centuries by running water. He was more tanned than one might expect, which spoke, Blanc imagined, to holidays in the Mediterranean. He shook their hands with an iron grip at a steady elbow.

“Peter Farmer is my name,” he said with an equally iron voice. “I take it you are Blanc, eh?” It wasn’t a question but an assignation. “I was only expecting you. This isn’t a borstal.” The word was lost on Janyn but she got the gist and sank into a chair in the waiting room. Appeased, he waved Blanc through office, surgery and finally an examination room.

“Most improper of course, showing you. But I feel I should, and you’ll soon see why.” And there, flat, lifeless, empty, was a body. Patrick Tramming had been a tall man with thick grey hair who had managed to appear domineering in a chair or even a sleeping pose. Now he was left with nothing, as the dead are. With the loss of muscle control went identity. The soul, Benoit Blanc decided, was in the bicep, not the eyes. With no need to hold any weight at all the muscle was flabby in a way it never was in the living.

It was obvious what the doctor had meant about showing Blanc something: the body was purple with bruising. The right shoulder joint was going to black and swelled like a baseball as if the joint has been wrenched . Under the chin a bruise had flowered into deep blue. The ribs were a contour map of green and yellow.

“Cracked ribs. Sprained elbow.” The doctor pointed them out like he was teaching a class. “Also a good knock on the back of the head. Now I don’t think any of them killed him. At least not on their own.” Blanc looked up at the doctor’s sunworn-face, not understanding. The doctor realised he was leaving out too much.

“Listen, Blanc, you’re a detective, am I right?” Blanc admitted the truth of this. “You see, the thing is, his wife has been here, obviously. She’s next of kin. She has the right of patient privilege as the body belongs to her. So what I’m showing you - what I’m going to tell you - I could be struck off for this. I was asked to send the body for cremation. I am duty bound of course to talk to the police if I believe a crime has been committed but everything you see here certainly has an alternative explanation, which Diana Tramming provided for me. So my medical responsibility is to follow her wishes.”

Doctor Farmer moved around the body and stood extremely close to Benoit Blanc. “If anyone asks me, if anyone asks me anything about visit here, I’ll deny it. I’ll swear on my bible I turned you away at the door. Understand? I’m a stone, Blanc, don’t try anything with me, I’m not giving up my profession and my reputation for anything. Right. I think you understand me. You know I don’t say things lightly. About anything.” The doctor threw down the clipboard he’d been holding.

“But someone needs to know, Blanc. Someone like you. So come into the office and I’ll show you how I think Patrick Tramming was murdered.”

Chapter Text

Blanc pressed along into the room and tried to press the doctor immediately, asking about signs of extraneous needle marks or higher levels of the chemical in his bloodstream. The doctor waved away his questions. Blanc knew his hours were ticking away, but the doctor was resolute. He was a river of speech, and Blanc would have to wait patiently to see what his net might catch as the waters flowed on.

“Patrick and I met at Oxford, you know. Debating, I think, first? Then it was theatre maybe. Chased after the same girls, ran in the same crowd, went to the same parties. Not the closest of friends, you understand. But it made sense for me to become his doctor when his first child was born. So that was some near fifty years ago and I’d known him, what, some ten or twelve years already? I might know him as well as anyone might. As a doctor, you understand.”

Soon enough they were sitting in the office in leather-backed chairs. Doctor Farmer was holding forth and Blanc was leaning in.

“I think he would have been diagnosed with the anxiety at college. Nerves, we would have called it back then. But it was me I think who put him on the chlorpromazine. It’s an old drug! Yes, absolutely. None of these fancy SNRIs they have now. But you know the rule, Blanc, if it isn’t broke don’t fix it. Been on the stuff for forty something years now, or near as dammit. No side effects. Well tolerated. Of course as he got older we were watching for things to get worse. Of course yes. Chlorpromazine can cause high blood pressure and a lot besides. But of course you know what else can put pressure on rye blood and heart?” Doctor Farmer talked like he was lecturing his medical students, including pop quiz questions.

“Heavy living! Good living, we used to say. Beer and beef. Wine women and song and all that. And oh yes, Patrick Tramming enjoyed those. Women. My word yes. Not that they do much to the blood pressure outside of the bedroom. My point is, well, the man was on rest. From things of the bedroom as well! But work the most. He was a workaholic. Well, one had to be to be an Oxbridge boy, you know. I was the same. Still working at my age, too, you see! And I know he kept on drawing. Did that movie publicity. And if he kept working I assume he kept up the wine, and the women I would suppose. Not sure about the song, eh”

Blanc ignored the joke. He very much wanted to inquire further about the women in the statement but the lecture was not to be interrupted.

“Whats that Dickens quotation? Old Scrooge says of Jacob Marley, there’s more of gravy than of grave in you!” The doctor laughed and sighed. “What I’m trying to say, Blanc, is he had a weak heart and a weak system and it makes it very hard indeed to know precisely - precisely - what the man died of. Well, in terms of causes, you see. Medically speaking he has a myocardial infarction! Blood pressure and adrenaline caused his heart to malfunction! Then it burst like an old balloon. It was quick yes, thank goodness. But how did he get there? How much was gravy? Yes. Tough to say, Blanc.”

All of a sudden the doctor leaned low across the desk. “Have you, in all your detective life, heard of a man being literally scared to death?”

Blanc was not permitted time to reply.

“I’m not joking! An old man, on chlorpromazine? A good start might, well, give a good stop indeed. The right kind of fear, though. Or the right kind of panic.”

The doctor began searching his desk as he spoke. “Funny old drug, chlorpromazine, as I said. Muscle rictus is an uncommon side effect. Makes the body hard as iron in some cases. But he tolerated it well, as I said, yes. But as a man gets older, it becomes more of a problem.”

For a moment the Doctor gave up his search and stabbed a pen at Blanc. “Look, here we are sitting here, not doing much of anything you might imagine. But in fact we are doing a great deal. Thousands of tiny muscle movements along our back and our posterior - the gluteus maximus! - to keep us comfortable and share the weight around. If we can’t move - if the muscles lock up - we become exhausted. And the muscles lock up for many a different reason. We can bruise ourselves by staying still, you see. Because the muscles aren’t working. Or they’re failing to cushion things. We can sit down without any muscles able to hold us up properly. And that’s another bruise.”

The doctor withered at Blanc, who he could see was looking questioningly. “Bear with me, Blanc,” he admonished. “This is important. Just as many things could have killed Patrick Tramming, many things could explain those bruises on him. The simple act of sitting, of getting up, of lying down, of going to the toilet - these things could all cause a terrible bruise! Or even breaks! And then there’s the care of others - helping him in and out of bed. Up and down the stairs. Getting into a sitting position.”

The doctor had found what he had been searching for: a diagram of the human body. “This here, for example,” he said, pointing at the shoulder, “that was done by the paramedics. Couldn’t get his arm back down! He was pointing at something as he died, Blanc, and stiff as a board. So they pushed down hard. But under it? An earlier bruise. And underneath the arm. And here, the elbow. The ribs. The knees. The chin, the neck, the ankles.Each one at different times! Each one needing explanation.” He was pointing them out on his map on the desk.

“We doctors are detectives too, you know. Of course you know! But we are also always careful to look for the most obvious solutions. A long period of muscle stiffness could produce many of these. But it is excessive. The knees, yes, a common place to take the brunt of a fall. But the ankles? Unusual. The wrist and elbow would also be a natural place for stress in a fall. But the elbow bruise shows a hyper extension. A fall forwards might have bruised the ribs, yes, and so might have a rough nurse turning the man over in bed. But with the suggestion of the wrist and elbow? A fall, yes, was likely. Even a nasty one. My first thought, do you know Blanc? Was that he’d fallen down the stairs. Or out of his hospital bed. A moment of confusion, or panic - but of course we now have bars to protect against exactly this. I called the hospital. No incident reported. Client showed some bruising on arrival.”

“Of course Diana explained everything. Patrick had witnessed a murder. A violent attack. A young woman’s skull crushed by a heavy object. Shocked to his feet, his body reacts, he collapses to the ground.” Now the doctor had begun acting it out on the surface of the desk with his fingers. “Seeing the woman might still be alive, he crawls across the carpet despite his bruised knees and arms and ribs, to reach the woman and see if he can save her. Even as his joints become more locked, more immovable from the adrenaline! And then he uses the last of his strength to raise his arm, it finally locking in some grim accusation.

“All is accounted for. Any other bruises might be explained by being strapped into a stretcher, and out again, and on again, and out again, and onto a wheelchair and off to bed. The flesh is old. It bruises easily. Everything seems explained!” The doctor paused. “Or so it seems, Blanc. So one supposes.”

“The blow to the neck bothered me, you see. The chin, yes, in a fall, certainly. But here,” - he pointed on his own body - “under the chin? Most unlikely. Unless he really did fall down the stairs. Or was pushed! Yes! Then, yes, I would believe that. Lucky his neck wasn’t broken. That’s what I thought. So I took an x ray. Maybe it had broken. Maybe he’d been in agony, unable to talk because of some blockage, barely able to breathe. And what did I find, Blanc?”

The doctor slammed his fist on the table. “A fracture! To the fourth vertebrae! Not a break but a significant source of pain! And with it, distortion and bruising to the larynx. And there’s more!” Here the doctor pushed himself up to his feet. He grabbed an image plate and all-but threw it onto the desk. “I examined the muscles, Blanc, around the throat. Under a blue light. And there it was. Four deep impressions with three light lines between them.” With a stabbing finger, Doctor Farmer drew Blanc’s to the three bright white lines in the close up of muscle tissue.

“What’s that, eh? Eh Blanc? It’s a hand print! A hand print!!” The doctor placed his meaty right hand around Blanc’s throat before he could back away. It was unmistakable, and Blanc nodded. Four thick fingers pushing down deeply. Three slivers of light marking the gaps between the digits.

“The killer almost got away with it, Blanc! But she left her hand print behind! On the body! Oh no - “ the doctor chuckled, releasing his grip and putting his hands on his hips like a showman. The long white beard made him look for a moment like a demented Santa. “That’s not what killed him directly. Not a broken neck or strangulation. That would take more pressure.”

“No, Blanc, my guess is this. The last person to see Patrick Tramming alive was Myra Mills. I have that from Diana and the boys and yes, you are nodding to confirm it. I know she had reason to hate him. Maybe he deserved it! I imagine on returning home he woke up and reminded her of it, or she feared he would escape some mortal justice she was seeking. And so, Blanc, in a rage, she grabs him by the throat.” Calmly, coolly, the doctor demonstrated again on Blanc’s exposed neck.

“Perhaps she shakes him into consciousness! Shouting at him! Demanding her money and her justice! And he wakes to this, to see his erstwhile killer? Trying again? Or in medias res; trying to finish her dark deed?”

The doctor stared into the detective’s eyes. For a moment it was a brutal tableau; an echo of killer and victim. The doctor dropped his arm.

“And he wakes in that fright, Blanc, and it causes his high blood pressure to spike. Adrenaline surges through him. His heart cannot take the strain and tears apart. He is quite literally frightened to death. Yes! That is my diagnosis, sir!”

The tableau held still for another moment, then the doctor’s dreadful mien fell from his face. All of a sudden they were just two old men, one standing, one sitting, in a too-cold office with too-aged furniture. Benoit Blanc swallowed.

“And the dosage, the drug - “

“As far as I can tell he had no more in him than was usual. Not that we’d be able to tell without a tox screen, really, but it’s not what would have killed him. A deadly dose, we would have seen it - well, his heart would have stopped in a far more quiet fashion, I dare say! Stopped like a car running out of petrol, rather than a car hitting a brick wall.”

“And the death of Charlotte Tramming-“ he began.

“There I have no opinion. The police have that body. I cannot even confirm the cause of death.” Farmer spread his arms. “Perhaps she witnessed an earlier attempt upon the poor man. Had to be silenced, or some such.”

Blanc swallowed again. He felt as if he was drinking in information, and needed to let it settle. There was something odd in the last thing the man had said, but he couldn’t place it amongst everything else. “And Myra Mills - what is her motive, do you think?”

The doctor sighed. “Like I said, I’ve known Patrick my whole life, Blanc. A friend and a doctor: that’s a whole conversation of knowing, yes indeed.” The doctor sucked on his moustache in a most unappealing fashion. “Look,” he continued, “Tramming was an artist and they have their muses, what. A drawer must dip his brush in the ink! That’s what I was always told, you know. We men, we have our needs. And Tramming was a man who took them often. And always, always let me stress! From ladies most willing. Most willing.”

“Look, I - I pulled this out earlier today.” He reached down and slid open the bottom drawer of the desk and took out something that was certainly placed on top. “Kept it god knows how long. Gave me a chuckle! We used to always get great pictures from Pat in those days.”

The postcard he handed Blanc showed the San Francisco Bay and the postage stamp showed a blurred date in the 1970s. On the back was an address, a signature and a caricature in swift, long strikes on the page. Blanc recognised a comic convention booth signing, with a long line serpentining into the distance. Signing the comics, with his head comically enlarged, was unmistakably Patrick Tramming but on top of the desk was not comics alone but a massively oversized phallus, larger than the man himself, squirting ink on happy autograph-seekers. Crawling beneath the cock, propping it up across her back, was - easily recognisable even after forty years - a likeness of Myra Mills. It seemed even then she had liked to wear scarves loosely around her neck.

“He was always drawing those kind of things! They were quite a thing, too, back in my youth. Even in the papers and such. I suppose now it’s improper. Of course this one was just for private consumption. Between friends.”

Blanc showed no reaction. He kept to the important questions. “I must ask, sir: did he… impregnate Myra Mills?” He blushed at the word. But he also fekt it was important to use the active verb.

“Oh yes. Most definitely!”

“What happened to the child?”

The doctor told him. Blanc nodded. He had guessed as much. He did not like to guess such things. Just as he did not wish to know the things others kept secret, he also took no joy in seeing their darker sides. As angry as he was at the family Tramming and their coldness, their vindictiveness, their deceptions, he also felt the tragedy of things they had wreaked upon others.

The doctor rummaged some more. “Yes. Here. That’s the original birth notice. Of course then the names were changed by the Trammings. Nobody would ever know or need to know. Probably only I and the parents know, of all the world.”

“And you assume she resented this, all these years later?”

The doctor made a huffing noise. “You know, women, Blanc. Never coming out and saying what they mean.” The doctor shifted his weight. “I mean, a man, he might punch your eyes out, and it would be done with.”

“What about Mrs Tramming? Might not she resent it, too? Her husband - “

“Mrs Diana Tramming would barely hurt a fly. Certainly she’d never strike anyone. Not that I can imagine. I know her too, Blanc. She was always…well, she made do, you know. She understood who he was. And she knew who she was! She always had that, you see: she got him to the marriage altar! None of his other girls managed that feat! What more could she want?”

Blanc thought there might be much more, but said nothing.

“But listen, Blanc, I actually don’t hold with the philandering, what. Not once he was married, you see. I told him at the time, no good would come from it, not once he was married, and then when he had children. I have a dim view of men not doing their duty. But he was what he was, and” and he huffed again, swelling his chest, “I have a much dimmer view of murder. Even if it was unintentional. Even if she just meant to give him a piece of her mind, or a damn good scare. Well, a damn too good one was what he got! And it’s not right, no sir. Not right by me.”

Blanc said nothing again. For a moment they were just too too-old men, again. Then his blue eyes blazed.

“Well I think sir, that you hold very much with some things, and hold very much not with others, and I think the things that men do are very much more likely to in the former, and the things that women do, in the latter.”

The doctor sniffed, dismissively.

“Whatever you think of me or him be damned, anyway. What matters here is justice for an innocent man. Justice against his killer. Can you seek it? Will you seek it, sir? Or have I misjudged you?”

Blanc thinned his lips. “Seeking justice is always my calling, sir. You may have no doubt about that. But here,” and Blanc crosses his legs, pondering, “I am momentarily at a loss to my next endeavour. You have, doctor, been quite unequivocal in your inability to provide proof of any of these accusations. Proof to me is not proof to the metropolitan police. And we have a motive I do not believe I can substantiate. Patrick Tramming is dead. Diana I imagine will not reveal any of this, under any circumstances. And if you are correct, then Myra Myrtle will never incriminate herself for her own crime. She too, I think, would take this truth to her grave, then face the shame.”

“So then? Are you saying she gets away with it?” Blanc thought about the box of pills in Janyn Cuthbert’s small hand. He thought of Myra Mills bleating on her phone to her lawyer that Blanc must not impede her path to justice. And how she had sent a reporter after him and played him as a fool, perhaps from the very beginning.

“I must be sure,” he said at last. “If I am to present anything to the authorities it must be absolutely watertight. Or she really will get away with it. I need - I need some actual piece of evidence. Something concrete.”

“You saw her enter the man’s room with your own eyes, didn’t you? You and five other people? You’re an eye witness, for gods sake, man.”

Blanc withered and smiled his dreamy smile. Now it was his turn in the spotlight. “Forgive me, doctor. I am not the police.” His southern drawl on the last word made it rhyme with Matisse. “If I had some proof, then maybe I could confront Ms Myra Mills with it.” Blanc pointed to the desk. “Something physical, you understand. Something that, in the face of it, she cannot deny what it says. And so is forced to confront the truth. Not something I would ever show the police, but -”

Doctor Farmer was frantically shaking his head, lips and beard; an entire face-ful of rejection of the idea. “Not at all. I’ve told you, Blanc, my reputation is at stake, my career, my livelihood, my legacy, what. I’ve found you your killer but it’s up to you to figure out how to prove it.”

Slowly Benoit Blanc put his finger down on the postcard with the scatalogical drawing. “What about this? There’s nothing medical here. It only confirms what Ms Mills feels too afraid to say. And,” Blanc said, shifting his shoulders, “if I should be questioned, which I might never be, I can honestly say I simply purloined it from your desk when you were distracted by my persistent questioning.”

Benoit Blanc was not without charm and it worked on all genders. Doctor Farmer sucked on his lips and moustache again in the same horrifying manner and nodded. Blanc snatched the paper up. “I’m sorry I cannot be more help,” he broke in. “I realise I am belling the cat, as the old Aesop fable goes. If you need - if you need more information, I shall endeavour to provide it. I can hold the body forty eight hours at least - “

“I believe I have now gathered everything that I need from you, Doctor Farmer,” said Benoit Blanc, and he nodded his head and tipped his hat as he left the office. In his speedy wake he called Janyn behind him. He did not slow down one tiny bit, lest the doctor or any other unseen or imagined eyes see that he was clutching not just the postcard, but the unaltered birth certificate of Myra Mills’ child.

Chapter Text

The clouds were low now. Rain was falling in great but sporadic dawbs. London drew in on itself, seeking cover in coats and clenched corners. Crouched in a bus stop, Benoit Blanc was restoring lost hope to a woman who had given it all away, through a name typed on a piece of paper.

“We believed that in 1981 Diana Tramming could not have given birth to your grandmother because that year she was giving birth to Troy Tramming. Except she was doing no such thing. Myra Mills was giving birth to Troy Tramming. And then a careful little swap was performed, perhaps to please her husband: his wife’s bastard child removed, his bastard child installed. Now that does not prove the positive of your parentage -“

This was as far as he got before Janyn embraced him again. It was a firm hug; a deep hug. A hug that gripped the way tree roots grip the earth. Blanc resisted it, then tolerated it, then accepted it, and finally, worn down at last to feeling, returned it as well as he could. It was not a mystery solved but the hope was alive with the trail. And Blanc was in the mood to hunt.

“Now we know and can prove Ms Mills’ secret we finally have leverage. A reason for these people to talk to us - Myra or Diana. We can finally find the missing pieces of this puzzle in the secrets they’ve been keeping. The only question is: where should we begin?”

The we was not conscious; Benoit Blanc was naturally a kind man and welcomed confederates by instinct. It was of course all the better to have a partner in postulation. Benoit Blanc solved crimes mostly inside his head; a lonely and walled off place most people feared and dared not to contemplate. He was therefore, most often alone in the rest of his work. He was quite content in this; he would rather however to be more than content.

Janyn was less sure of her inclusion or his triumph. “But doesn’t - doesn’t this mean she did it? She killed - “ Janyn blanked on the name of the Tramming patriarch.

Blanc moved his jaw and cheek muscles the way he did when he was thinking but also when he didn’t like where his thoughts were leading. “I think certain people believe she did, and they wish everyone else to believe it too. But there are things about that story that seem to not make sense.”

“She certainly was the last person to see him alive this morning, and may have attacked him in some rage. But if so, why not leave the room as quietly as she entered? Why the pantomime that only draws attention to herself? Did she grab his arm and raise it to point at the photograph, hoping to frame the dead woman? Was all of that some act of panic? She sees him die and invents a story to redirect the blame? I find it unlikely. Slipping away and letting a sick man be found a few hours later, without suspicion, seems to me a much easier, clearer choice.”

“Let us also remember that there were many bruises on Patrick Tramming when he arrived at the hospital the day before. Let us assume Ms Mills was trying to assassinate her co-author in his study chair, then is surprised. She arrives at the house when she knows that at any moment Toby or Charlotte may encounter her or Diana or Hoight come in from the garden, or the housekeeper or who knows who else walks in. She hears someone coming and has time to rush up the stairs and hide, but then decides to come back and brain the witness? Then Ms Mills, in her sixties, rushes across the rooftops so she can later appear to enter via the front door? That too is a series of increasingly unlikely events, I find.”

Janyn nodded, hoping it helped.

“The alternative is that she attacked him because he saw her brain Charlotte Tramming to death - and then also escaped out the window. A very limited amount of opportunity. And an entire absence of motive! Dr Farmer,” Blanc mused, “seemed extremely keen to solve one murder and had no interest in solving the other.”

“But you see, there too,” Blanc said, spreading his hands, “I am equally bereft. I now know something of the slippery past of the Trammings, and the secrets they keep. But there is still the distortion in this case that prevents me from solving it. The strange pantomime of it all. From the very beginning: a person falling to his knees, pointing his finger straight at the portrait of the man who killed him! Ridiculous! Like some foolish tableau in a movie. A performance! And I think not just for me, but for everyone.”

Janyn rallied in response. “But, you said we have leverage? So we go and make them - um, tell us more things?”

Blanc nodded with all his chin muscles, hungry for knowledge and justice. They pondered their next move. In response, the vast size of London roared back: another near-hour journey was required to go back to Myra Mills. That left the Tramming family as a better choice. Toby’s hotel was nearby, but more of them would be found at the house. It was, they decided, time for Blanc to make his third visit to the dark castle. They began to look for a taxi to avoid the rain, but as Blanc moved out to hail one, his phone buzzed insistently. He pulled it out, his fingers rain-slicked and struggling with the screen. In a moment he dropped his arm and waved the taxi on.

“It is a message from my erstwhile companion Mr Tyler. He says Hoight Tramming is making a speech on the television and we should watch.”

They drew back into the bus shelter. Janyn showed Blanc how to find the video on a news site. Hoight was standing near the House of Commons in a posh suit and beside his posh wife and polished assistants. And there, also, Roger, smiling for once, or trying to. Toby beside him, puffed up and pleased with himself. Hoight was smiling the most of all. Smiling, Benoit Blanc thought, rather like the cat who got the cream. Or, even more accurately, the wolf who got the lamb.

“- to make a comment at this time. Obviously if I am called by my party to serve in the new cabinet it would be my honour and my privilege to serve, and an enormous matter of prestige for someone as young as I. It is of course a matter for the party leadership to decide who will make up the cabinet. There however have been some questions raised in the press regarding the tragic death of two of my close family members, so I would like to just state at this time that my brothers and I have long been the target of a malicious blackmail campaign. We are now working with the London metropolitan police towards the idea that these deaths are related to this blackmail directed against my family. These attacks, while deeply traumatising for me and my loved ones, are a private matter and will hopefully be swiftly resolved to the satisfaction of the police, and then my family and I will be able to grieve. None of that will not in any way affect my capacity and my readiness to serve -“

Blanc drew back. Janyn stopped the recording. He perched on a seat in the bus shelter. His mind was racing. The wind blew rain splotches on his coat and skin, but he stared passed them.

“If this case is a pantomime, then I would say this is the finale. I think Diana Tramming has made another perfect portrait for everyone to see. Just several hours ago that woman assured me her son had killed his father and that too, I imagine, was all for show. Whatever seems likely, or the most neat, that is what suits Diana Tramming”

“Do you think she did it then?”

Blanc shook his head and wobbled his jowls. “I am still formulating the final pieces of my hypotheses so I am sure of nobody’s true role in these circumstances as yet. But I am sure, sure as I have ever been, that what Diana Tramming arranges is whatever suits Diana Tramming, and whatever suits her she will arrange. And what that might be is as likely to be true as whorehouse gossip!”

Blanc caught himself and blushed, really blushed, like a schoolboy. “I apologise for my language, Ms Cuthbert.” Janyn looked away, unable to respond. Nobody had apologised to her for anything in her entire life, let alone a mild impropriety. “This family have little to recommend them at the best of times, and they have been misusing me since the beginning. But before I entangle all of that we must consider the plight of Ms Myra Mills. I fear the great force of all of the Tramming family’s connections will soon be coming down upon her. And upon us as well.”

Janyn agreed. “If they can threaten me with deportation, they may even have ways to ensure you never knock on their door again. And Ms Mills likely has some pressure points they can ply to make her confess. The police - on their own - have a terrible way of doing that as well. Perhaps this is what she was trying to tell us: that she knew all of this was coming and had made some daft peace with her fall. That must be our first step then: to get her some legal counsel. To make sure she does not say one word to the police.”

Janyn looked terrified, and Blanc remembered she was poor, and the very idea of affording legal protection was likely a traumatic thing to ponder.

“I know some folks in these isles; certainly some who can recommend others. Perhaps I can call the legal student I met earlier today but first I will call Ms Mills.” As he spoke he seized his phone up with his hand. His long coat billowed around him, catching the green of the rainy afternoon. There was a distant flash of lightning. There was no thunder. It was, instead, building inside Benoit Blanc.

“Ms Cuthbert once again I must prevail upon you to take me back across this city in the most expeditious of manners.” Without a word, Janyn leapt up and ran down the high street. Before he could follow, his phone rang. Blanc recognised the number: the commissioner from last night who had tried to frighten him with words he had shrugged off as a teenager. Slowly, carefully, Blanc denied the call. Let them chase me, he thought, if they have so much time.

He rang Ms Mills instead. The phone buzzed and buzzed again. No answer. He turned into the spitting rain back and forth. Janyn was now a block away. He lurched after her, a twinge from his previous running shooting up his thigh. As he reached the corner he saw what she was doing - she had grasped one of the new e-scooters that now dotted the pavements of the city like so many lost children on a city excursion. He shook his head instantly.

“I absolutely can not ride such a thing,” he extolled. The phone in his ear rang and rang. He hung on it, waiting for the tell-tale click. Janyn was not yet deterred: she was showing him how easily one could propel oneself and remain upright. “I would be too heavy as a passenger and too clumsy as a pilot on my hown,” he explained. His southern h-s sometimes came out as a defence mechanism. “We can get a taxi.”

As if weary, the ringing died in his ear. He stabbed the redial button as if the phone was at fault. It really is, he thought. A proper phone would ring until answered. Blanc found Janyn now standing beside him showing him there was room for two. He grimaced. He did not like to insist on anything, especially where it might cause him to appear ungrateful or indeed cowardly. “Surely the tube will be just as fast?” he parried. Across the inner city, Janyn said, this was much faster. And no chance of delays, she stressed, should the trains falter.

The ringing died again. Caught between two annoyances, Blanc scowled, and began typing a text, his fingers now hammers of frustration. RECOMMEND DO NOT TALK TO THE POLICE MS MILLS UNTIL I ARRIVE he typed and hit send.

Janyn pointed across the road. “Look,” she said, “if you prefer that place down there rents mopeds and motorcycles! I can ride.” Blanc did not prefer. It seemed slightly less likely he might topple off a larger vehicle, but the speed was much greater if he did. Janyn was however in her element and gaining confidence and urgency by the second. Blanc could not contain her while trying to make his phone calls. He was dialing Myra Mills again when his phone rang, buzzing almost out of his hands. It was the police commissioner again. He stamped on reject call. Suddenly he thought of Phillip.

DONT ANSWER PHONE IF NOT ME he typed to his husband. Then he realized how vague and unsettling that sounded. So he added I AM ALL FINE HERE. And then I WILL CALL SOON. With a shrug and a worried scowl he decided that would suffice. And now another text was coming, from Myra Mills; his heart leapt.

NOT PICKING UP SORRY BENNY

and then

SORRY ABOUT EVERYTHING

and then

I WONT TROUBLE YOU AGAIN

Benoit Blanc’s life was a closed book that he opened to few and rarely looked at himself. Long ago he remembered being at a fine academic institution in Montgomery, Alabama, and another student had written him a letter, sensing in him a shared secret, with the same numb tone, a sense of shrinking from all existence towards a final, total reduction. The boy had not returned to school next semester and then word had come that the boy had had some accident at the lake, he remembered. It was a tone he had brushed up against then, and felt in it a sense of similar cold despair that had gripped him then too. A feeling of aloneness, beyond any remedy. A sense of finality, with nothing beyond.

Blanc swallowed slowly. It seemed likely Ms Myra Mills might be about to take her own life. And he might be in need of stopping here. And there, in the middle distance was Janyn Cuthbert, pointing at a moped. And there were no other choices.

The rain had stopped but the glassy grey sky pressed down low over them like a microscope slide. Blanc felt watched, controlled and flattened. Railing at that broke up the great apprehension he felt. And then of course there was the sheer primal fear.

Benoit Blanc had been thrown from a motorcycle during his time at the same Montgomery college and it had been the last time he had ever needed to experience out of air acceleration. He did not attend theme parks or local agriculture fairs. He did not ride roller coasters or dodgem cars. Benoit Blanc was one of the great carousel riders of the world: extremely content to go around and around, happily satisfied by seeing the same people appear every single time. In cars he preferred not to drive; in planes he would wait until the cloud line before risking a glance out the window. But now, all of a sudden, he had taken leave of all his senses and was moving extremely fast in a forward direction, combined with far too much leaning left and right.

He could feel his phone buzzing occasionally, jammed as it was hard in his tight embrace around his forward pilot. He had, as he had mounted the vehicle, considered that he might check it as they went along. Now he knew no force on earth would lead him to unlock his hands from around Janyn Cuthbert’s torso. For a split second he had been gentlemanly about applying force to a young woman’s abdomen and then the sudden arrival of physics and white-hot terror had utterly changed his mind. He thought dimly that his helmet must be about to fly off and wished for three hands or four - one to hold onto his hat, one to check desperately for texts and two, of course, for the essential role of holding on.

Let us pause for a moment, as Benoit Blanc and Janyn Cuthbert go rnn-rnn-rnnnning down the A5, to consider the motorcycle, a device primarily designed to locate one’s eyeballs at the back of one’s skull. It was natural human ingenuity that would lead the decision to do to the simply bicycle what the engine had done to the horse buggy, and it was natural human stubbornness to never at any point consider the downsides. The Kawasaki Ninja 400 can propely a human at 195 kilometres per hour with a touch of a button while providing absolutely no protection to that human. The probability of a forced dismount reaches one if a person rides for five years or more, and one’s life expectancy, most doctors agree, drops below that benchmark. None of these facts have yet deterred sufficient humans to abandon or outlaw the motorcycle, but surely one day they will, and it will be regarded as likely a form of useful transport as the human cannonball.

Benoit Blanc did not have all of this information to hand and their determined moped could only reach 65 kilometres per hour but he knew that was way too fast for the human body to come into contact with concrete or asphalt. He also knew it was raining, and traffic was busy, and Janyn had just made an illegal turn into Duke Street, going the wrong way down a one way street. In his growing terror of a roaring truck blaring its horn and looming enormously in front of him, he contemplated the irony of a murder detective about to be murdered by something so obvious as deceleration. Then the truck disappeared to the right as the bike mounted the pavement and then lent raggedly into a sharp turn. With relief he noticed the traffic was now moving the same way as them but still insistently much much slower.

“You have. To lean. With me.” Janyn yelled.

“What?” bellowed Blanc.

“When I turn! Lean your body! The way I do! Same side! Or! We fall over!”

By now she was half twisted around to explain it so Blanc nodded, white-faced and mute. It seemed that the last thing he wanted to do was lean off balance but in this situation only one of them was remotely qualified at the skill at hand. She stuck her right arm out to indicate a turn and Blanc nodded again. He clung tighter and willed his body to ignore everything but simple instructions. Down they went in a swooping bob. Up they came, Blanc reopening his eyes. They zoomed between two cars so close together he heard his jacket buttons rattle on their wing mirrors. Then a sudden stop. A red light soared above.

“How many more?” Blanc shouted, too loudly.

Janyn didn’t understand. “How many what?”

“Turns!”

She still didn’t know how to answer. “We should be through the city in fifteen minutes, I reckon get the tube at Aldgate?”

Fifteen minutes might be - would likely be - hundreds more terrifying swoop-bobs and button rattles. He could not count them or he would go mad. But fifteen minutes? He could last fifteen minutes. He thought that thought again. And once more, hoping he would believe it.

The light went green.

Benoit Blanc closed his eyes. It was easier that way. He had to drive them back open to follow Janyn’s back in the leans and swoops, but then decided he could stare fixedly at the back of her head. Through these means, Benoit Blanc could control the terrible information entering his mind. He could still hear the honks, the clunks of gutter-mounts, the clatter of his buttons, and above it all the roar of engines and wind that confirmed their velocity but small mercies must be seized. He absolutely could not, would not, see the slalom dodges they made between the cars or how very very close one particular cement truck had come.

Now the only thing remaining was to prevent himself from thinking about it. He could give into the cold ball in his stomach that wondered if Ms Myra Mills was even now seeking a knife or a bottle of pills, or if a policeman was knocking on Philip’s parents door while he desperately tried to call Benoit to find out why.

Another time, on the slopes of Kilimanjaro, Benoit Blanc’s deductive skills had caused the killer to grab a pistol and fire it at the detective, catching instead the brave young biologist beside him. The lady had bled through all the bandages while they waited and waited for a helicopter. Blanc had thought then that the time between calling for help and help arriving was the longest time in the world. It was a kind of stasis of fear and apprehension when nothing could be thought or felt besides the ticking seconds. Today, however, it was layered over with much more rage. In Tanzania, the local police had been firmly on his side and the killer had been swiftly taken away. Here and now justice as well as help felt far away.

There had to be something else to think about. Sudden death and terrible doom had a way of intruding so very hard upon him, but there must, there must be something, he thought. He delved down into his gut, and found a spark in the simmering coals of anger. He thought about the Trammings being so cavalier at forcing the young assistant to simply relinquish her newborn child and no doubt sign a contract never to speak of it again. Another great wrong done, on top of the seduction by her boss and partner. The three sons had many faults: they were all craven and selfish in their own ways, and all unhappy, and all uninterested in other people. They had inherited a legacy of a father who had no concern for anyone beside himself, even as they gathered around to care for his every need. The distorted cartoon faces of the family portraits flicked across Blanc’s steel-shut eyes: great dagger noses, sunken eyes, swollen foreheads. Patrick Tramming saw the world the same way: a carnival of distorted monsters that he kept in his zoo. Cartoons for him to capture, mock, and keep on the wall. His wife might frame them behind glass, in a gilded frame, all the better to show them off. He realised that only in the children’s bedrooms had there been photos, apart from the old memorabilia in the museum.. Everywhere else in the house was cartoons and caricatures, giving way to the emblems and grotesques on the cornices and lintels and gateways. Nothing but metonymy, thought Blanc; people reduced to their most overt traits, their most ridiculous weaknesses.

If you could be turned into a cartoon you might be turned into anything. You were always vulnerable to the cartoonist’s stroke. Your flaws were waiting to be caught and magnified. Your feelings flattened into whisps of ink. Myra Mills had been flattened out over and over again until she had become a cartoon in real life to survive the constant assault. And maybe she had killed because of it. To be real for once. It made sense. He thought again about cartoons on the walls, with Roger dressed as a knight, Toby as a dancing harlequin one step up the stairs, then Hoight in a caricature of a jockey, riding his own wife towards a polling booth. All the cartoons, he now realised, were of the boys. Diana was nowhere to be seen, and the only time any women appeared they were beasts of burden, accessories, or impedimenta. Ran and Sack were two Viking warriors who carried home their wives from a raid on British shores, which led to much of the recurring jokes of the strip.

The world was turning, and sometimes, Blanc felt, it was getting better, and sometimes he felt a terrible old fool to not see how bad things have always been.

Lean, swoop, bob back up. Almost running to a stop in front of an Audi sedan. Janyn kicked out her legs, pushed around the stoppage and down a narrow lane. Lean swoop bob for a ninety degree turn back into Regent. Small lean around the bus and then a triumphant roar passed Tottenham Court Road, past the British museum and into the heart of the city. Blanc peeked open an eye past his fixed focus point to see St Paul’s rushing up. Tourist busses and tourists fell behind them. The Shard rose in the distance, ever ridiculous. A cartoon itself. A cartoon building in a city of caricatures and grotesques. Blanc was doing it: he was staying on and he wasn’t going mad.

From his rage, he wandered to self-recrimination and doubt. Perhaps Myra Mills was guilty. He had spent two days with the Trammings and felt contempt for most of them. Fifty years of exclusion and disdain would motivate anyone to murder. So would watching your child be raised to share their disregard for you. But why choose now? When the man was dying and the press might finally be on her side? What final indignity had driven her over the line? Was it hearing her case was never likely to be heard, or that he might die in a way that would deny her watching him squirm?

He ran over his objections again. It would have been easy for her to acquire the drug in question, to slip across the city and administer an overdose. She knew the house was open and often empty. Perhaps Roger was wrong when he said she had arrived through the front door that day. The house would have been chaos with a dead wife and a dying husband. Who would notice Myra Mills descending a staircase? Who would notice a tiny elevation in the chlorpromazine? Everyone loved Charlotte Tramming, that seemed true. So the only possible motive for her death was she had seen too much. And then Patrick Tramming had woken up and known too much as well. It was plausible. It was maybe even likely.

Blanc held his eyes fixed and played out the events as they must have happened, Lean swoop bob. Myra Mills leaving her house, crossing the city, making her plan. Lean swoop bob. Arriving at the house, preparing to deliver her final revenge. Lean swoop bob. And he saw a doubt. The same doubt he’d seen just a few hours before. The same problem with this city. And the same way perhaps to prove it. It didn’t fit. It was a cartoon, a distortion. It only worked if you thought it was flattened out and all too simplified. Which mean Myra Mills might be innocent. Until she was dead at which point it would not matter and the matter would be closed. The police and the press would agree with the picture being painted.

The cold ball came back into his stomach and he willed Janyn to go faster, faster, faster, against all his terror. Two desperate heroes racing against the world.

Chapter Text

There were things that Benoit Blanc did not know, but could surmise. He did not know that Hoight Tramming and Diana Tramming had both called friends in the metropolitan police, and people above them, urging the speedy arrest of Myra Mills and the insistence that the meddler Benoit Blanc be told to stand down or threats would be made more concrete and overt. He did not know, and had not surmised, that his refusal to answer his phone had led the Vice Commissioner to tell several of his officers to personally handle both of those missions, and that the insistence of Blanc to not be told had caused the latter mission to be stressed above the former. Police heading to Ms Mills and the Tramming estate had been sent a photo of Benoit Blanc and told to watch out for the American troublemaker.

Benoit Blanc was hurrying, but he was hurrying into a trap.

As they passed into the eastern side of the city they finally abandoned the terrifying vehicle and switched to the tube. They were keeping good time, Janyn had shouted as the engine had ticked down to quiet. Mobile phones were an amazing thing, thought Blanc as they half-tumbled down the steps to jump on the train, and half-tumbled his phone from his pocket. Until twenty years ago all his investigations had been like this: the endless expenditure of shoe leather. That was the detective’s lot. Walking routes, searching gardens, knocking on doors, shuttling across towns and cities to make conversations nobody would have over the phone. More and more over the last two decades he’d been able to supplement this with phone calls, or at least do two things at once. Today had been like old times, and his body and mind were a wreck. As his lungs heaved in his carriage seat, he almost missed the moped ride.

Two missed calls from Phillip. Three more from unknown numbers. He was shaking but he managed to text WILL CALL SOON. By the next station he’d regained his ability to speak. But he knew his first call had to be to the ambulance. He should have done that twenty minutes ago.

It seemed to take forever to pick up and forever to explain the situation. No he wasn’t family, no he did not live in the location, no he had no contact since the text, no he could not be there to let the officers in, yes it might be a police matter then, yes he wasn’t injured, yes he could be transferred, yes he could wait, yes he could give his full name and phone number again.

Blanc had worked with the police many many times in his detective career. He had learned there were a few - very few - good cops and an enormous pile of bad cops, from plain lazy, to incorrigibly violent to pathetically corrupt. Those bad cops made him respect the remaining few good ones a little more. Even they, he knew, bent to rule and regime over justice, and conviction over compassion, convenience over complication, simple solutions over difficult questions. He knew he was now rolling those dice when the odds were very much against him, so he passed the phone to Janyn and got her to give her details instead. Now he didn’t have his phone so he couldn’t call Phillip. He couldn’t take Janyn’s phone because he’d told Phillip to ignore other numbers..

That was what Benoit Blanc would call a right cattywampus, a phrase his grandmother had used for when all things were set askew or awry. Sure enough, his phone rang during Janyn’s conversation and he shook his head so she would stay on with the police. They had reached their stop when the call finally ended and Blanc could snatch the phone back and finally phone his husband.

“Benny.” Phillip, somehow, layered calm onto Benoit's panic. “What’s happening? Take a breath.”

Blanc was thinking this was very good advice as he almost tripped on the stairs. “The Trammings, the ones I told you about - this case. They’ve decided they don’t want me sniffing around. They might -“

“Yes, I’ve had a text from one Roger Tramming asking me to call. And -“ he paused to check “- six messages from two different police stations. Are we in trouble?”

Blanc grimaced but his heart was swelling with every calm syllable. Phillip was extremely easily bemused; it was almost his constant state of being. But he was almost never rattled.

“They have some very powerful friends. Including in border security. Whatever you do, don’t -“

Benoit Blanc had charged ahead of Janyn but whey came out of the train station he came to a sharp stop and trailed off to see police cars piling up down the street and blue and white plastic cordons being erected. Somewhere an ambulance wailed. It was an impenetrable wall of police between him and the tower and he knew without looking why they were there. There was a single silhouette perched on the outside of their balcony. Teetering in the wind.

“Phillip, I need to go, you should -“

He was going to say “call your lawyer,” of course, and maybe Phillip would have guessed but feeling the word knocked out of him with the wind in his lungs and seeing his phone spinning out of his hands was like feeling all the separation of the last hour hit him again in a single second. Then the pain hit him, hard, his lungs suddenly empty, his diaphragm seizing. The second blow hit the exact spot on the back of the knee that causes the legs to collapse inward. Still in agony, he failed to break his fall. His chin sung as it hit the tile. He tasted blood.

Benoit Blanc was tough as old hickory and as ornery as a mule but he was 61 years old and 5 foot ten inches tall. The policeman who had just caught him by surprise was 26 years old, 6 foot three, exceedingly strong and armed with a steel-core truncheon. And he was giddy with excitement.

“Hell blazes!” spat Blanc, trying to get his arms underneath him, his hands to his bleeding chin. He soon found more vile invective to spit back too, but each one cost a desperate breath. He heard Janyn scream his name and he managed to turn his head to see the policeman step slightly behind her and use his truncheon just as he had a second before. Janyn also doubled over with a sound like a mouse being snatched by a hawk. Blanc lashed out, grabbing the man’s boot, more to punish him for hurting his young confederate than any defence. The cop stepped back once more and delivered a kick that felt like it broke Blanc's elbow.

“That’s attacking an officer in the course of his duties for both of you,” the cop guffawed. With practiced menace he lowered both knees onto Benoit Blanc’s back. Blanc lost his breath again but he croaked insults regardless. “You dirty fucking fucker! Coward shit weasel fuck.” It was quite a ways from a cattywumpus now. His grandmother would have called it a double fucked coon carcass jamboree.

“Sir, you will address me as Sergeant Kinsel,” he snickered. Then he bent closer, so only Blanc could here him and used a different swear word at the end of a very particular, intimate threat. The same word had come from the Vice Commissioner. It was a word Blanc had heard many many times, and never ever without terror. “Boss told us you might be coming,” said the policeman, whose breast pocket displayed several honours. Blanc thought about how he had rolled those dice and how he seemingly had thrown a snake eyes. And the stakes were not just his. He swiveled his head back and forth, trying to see Janyn or Myra Mills.

Janyn made a kind of gasping whimper and was scrambling to get up. The cop barked at her to remain on the ground then returned his attention to Blanc.

“I am now placing you in restraints for your safety. Do you understand?”

As a young boy Benoit Blanc had read books of war heroes and cowboys and spacemen. In times of great stress, at the climax of their stories, they had always been able to summon something they called the reserves of their strength and find heretofore unfound power. Blanc felt the fury of all the sea and channeled every part of it into his arms as the policeman shifted his weight off Blanc’s spine to pull his wrists together. It was no good. Those were only stories. There was no power in his whole body that could shift against that iron grip. It pinned his wrists at his tailbone and then he felt the truncheon firmly in the back of his neck.

“I said DO YOU UNDERSTAND?”

A wise man would have nodded. A wise man would have picked their battle for one they had a chance of winning. Would not have made things worse.

“Eat my hickory smoked ass,” Blanc growled. He tended, expecting a blow to the head or shoulders. He was beyond caring for his own safety. He felt the truncheon rise up.

Then nothing.

The iron grip left his wrist. The weight on him vanished. He could move. He forced his left hip downward to flip himself over. And there was Sergeant Kinsel, his truncheon dropped to the floor, his body bent into a S-shape, his neck and wrist lightly but firmly held by Mr Tyler. Blanc guessed it was some kind of aikido hold and it looked painful. The sergeant was surprised and baffled at the pain and paralysis which made it easy for Mr Tyler to tip him over onto his knees. He pulled Kinsel's arm inwards into a very sharp angle.

“If you try to move,” said Mr Tyler, “your wrist will break.” As is traditional in these circumstances, Sergeant Kinsel tested this statement and found it very likely.

“In a moment I will release you,” Mr Tyler said, his breathing slow and calm, “and then two things can occur. Number one, you can attack me and my friends - a brown gentleman, an old man and a defenceless young woman - while our backs are turned and we are unarmed, while my associate to your right - just there, you see - films you and streams it directly to the internet via YouTube and twitch…”. There was indeed a young lad eagerly in position, holding the camera out and high and grinning from ear to ear.

“Number two, my friends and I can walk away down the street, where your colleagues can no doubt arrest us or detain us as they wish, and you can tell everyone at the pub tonight that some devious little Paki surprised you from behind in an unfair fight and you will one hundred percent be ready for me next time.”

Mr Tyler moved his gaze to Blanc and Janyn who were helping each other up. He jerked his head in the universal sign for “hop it, now.” Blanc took Janyn’s hand and jerk-walked-ran loping, painful steps away.

Mr Tyler asked the boy holding the phone to grab Blanc’s phone off the ground. Then in one smooth motion he propelled Sergeant Kinsel forward into a splayed fall, grabbed both phones and set off after Blanc. His swift motion caught up with them easily.

“Keep moving,” he said. “The further away we are, the less he will think about changing his mind.”

“He will make you pay for that, I believe,” said Blanc.

“Yes. And unfortunately the favour I had with a high ranking police minister has already been spent. But that is tomorrow’s problem.”

That favour was clearly a large one, because the moment Mr Tyler mentioned his name, suspicious looks and steady paces towards suddenly stopped being levered at Benoit Blanc. The police stopped advancing towards them and the trio were waived through the cordon. “Also, for now Ms Cuthbert, you are Myra Mill’s daughter,:” said Mr Tyler with neat finality. Blanc smiled.

“I’m what?!” she squeaked.

A crowd of police and ambulance workers had formed a wide circle inside a barrier of cars and cordons. The centre of the circle was wide and empty, like, thought Blanc grimly, a stage, waiting for the star to enter rapidly from above. There was no cushion or net ready. He wiped blood from his chin and lips. He stared up and down the building, then saw what he was looking for.

“The lie is extremely expedient, Mr Tyler.” He turned to Janyn. “She will have no desire to see me. And I need to verify something.” He snatched a bullhorn from a nearby cop and thrust it into the girl’s hands. “Mr Tyler, I need your help. Ms Cuthbert, I just need five minutes.”

“What?” she said again. All of a sudden it appeared the stage was set for her, to give a solo.

“What do I do? I barely know her! What do I say?”

Blanc stopped for a split second. Given the urgency in his body, this seemed a titanic effort, but he held still and held her eyes. “Tell her about your mother.” Then he was gone. Mr Tyler gave everyone a steel-eyed look to say that Ms Cuthbert was not to be interfered with. Then he too vanished.

For the last few years Janyn Cuthbert had been invisible. In his fear and then his grief her father had forgotten everything, and then the debts had swallowed all his present moments. Behind all that she had gone to work, cleaned the house, fed her father, and become the kind of invisible that the person who turns the wheels of life so often is. Unable to stop, she had disappeared herself, behind a face of keeping calm and carrying on. A statue behind the counter at work. A mute at home. And shadow: hunting down the ghost of an idea for a sliver of a chance. Staring into the windows of Roger Tramming’s office. Hovering outside the Houses of Parliament. Too scared to do anything but too scared to give up. And invisible in that stasis too. Until Benoit Blanc had seen her out of the corner of his eye. And now everyone was looking. Her stomach ached.

“Miss! We’ve got your daughter here!” someone yelled through another bullhorn. The lie was surprising enough it caught Myra Mills’ attention. Twelve stories up Janyn could see her very clearly. She was over the barrier, facing i[ into the sky. One foot had kicked out, unable to find a grip. She seemed teetering between wanting to fall to end the fear of her position and just letting go out of terror. Something in her clung to the iron railing still, with icy terror. And it was keeping her alive, just barely, just for now.

Drum roll. Raise curtain.

“I’m not really your daughter,” she croaked only half into the machine at first. “They got that wrong, I’m not your daughter, I’m Janyn.” She swallowed on a dry throat.

“I don’t think you might want to hear this because I guess you had worse right but I am having a very bad day.”

For the moment, the world held its breath and indeed raised an eyebrow. Inside the foyer, Benoit Blanc grinned like a tiger.

“I know that sounds dumb but I think you’ve had one like mine. Today I found out that this stranger, Diana Tramming is my real grandmother. Maybe. I mean we’re not totally sure, right. But I think she is, and I think my grandmother and you had a pretty similar day like forty years ago and all.”

Janyn sighed and started mostly talking to herself. “My mother died two years ago and that’s when I found out she was adopted. Or not really because it wasn’t done legal, properly. My gran couldn’t have babies and I don’t know if my grandpa was sleeping around but one day they were given my mum to take care of and I’m pretty sure now it was the Trammings that did it.”

“And now - well Mr Blanc said - about that time Mr Tramming - he, well he also got you knocked you up and all. And then they took your baby and they raised it as theirs. I don’t know why they did that. Maybe to explain why she, Mrs Tramming, was pregnant. Or maybe they just wanted a boy. Or something.”

“They just swapped us back and forth like we were dolls or like furniture they took back to the shop. I don’t think they should have done that.” Janyn’s voice grew louder. “I don’t think you should be allowed to just swap people around like that. Any people. Because we’re not dolls. We’re not furniture. I mean, I think there’s laws now, yeah? But they did it then, and it wasn’t okay that they did it. And somebody needs to say that. I need to say that.”

There was a long pause. Silence held everyone. Janyn stared at the ground and then she raised the bullhorn again.

“Maybe we can’t change anything about it and maybe it won’t do anything about it but I think we should tell people about it. I think people should know what they did, and since my mum and my gran are dead I think you and I might be the only one who can do this. So please, please don’t jump, please don’t.”

“I mean, also? I think you’re the only person who I can talk to about this? And I just really need to talk to someone about all this.”

There was another long pause. Then it was broken by slow, barely perceptible sobs coming from above. Then a loud, angry bellow, lost in the wind.

“What? I can’t hear you!” Janyn shouted back, the bullhorn lowered.

“They’ll get away with it! They always do!” shrieked Myra Mills, with a lifetime of experience thick in her voice.

Janyn swallowed again, feeling tears coming. She felt very small again, on a very large stage. And then Benoit Blanc, all of a sudden, was standing beside her.

“No, ma’am. No they will not.” His southern baritone sounded fearsome through the bullhorn, bouncing off the concrete edifices around them. “They will not be able to get you for this murder. And I can prove it.”

“The first thing you told me was that you were at home when someone called you to go to the Tramming house. The security camera footage clearly confirms the time you left. I would wager your phone also recorded your location when the call was made. You were here. And the one thing I have done all this long day is go back and forth across this devilish city, and I am sure as steel you just could not make the trip in time. Not to get there before Roger says he arrived.” At this point Blanc was holding up a piece of paper covered in rough notes. “I have the calculations here, written down - you didn’t have time, Ms Mills! Don’t you see? You didn’t have time! Not with the fastest car or the speediest train! You didn’t have the time!”

Now the sobs of Myra Mills broke through the last dam of fear, and tears of relief fountained out at high pressure. Maybe it was relief that caused her muscles to relax, or just exhaustion, or a wave of final despair but her body sagged, and both feet left the barrier and suddenly the iron was gone from her fingers and she tried to hold on, and realised the railing was slick with rain, realised she was falling, falling -

And then Mr Tyler grabbed her hand out of the air in a steely grip. A moment later a policeman was there grabbing the other hand and in one move they pulled her back over into safety, and as she melted into tears in Mr Tyler’s arms, the disaster was ended.

Chapter Text

For the second time that day Benoit Blanc passed Myra Mills a stiff drink. The ambulance staff did not approve but she snatched his flask and gulped down two big lungfuls before they could stop her. She was dressed, as was customary at these times, in a shock blanket and having her vitals checked on the interior stretcher of the white vehicle.

For a while, a paramedic had examined his chin and managed to get an alligator bandage across the wound before he had fought them off. Blanc was in no mood to be fussed over. Nor was he ready to rest. He had eliminated one suspect but the crime was not solved and evil remained unpunished.

Police were doing the thing they hate most, which was completing reports on the incident about what they had done and if they had done everything correctly. The safe recovery of Ms Myra Mills had been added to Benoit Blance’s line of credit, under whatever vouchsafing Mr Tyler had arranged, and the total was one that put him into the black as far as the officers around them were concerned. That meant they were not actively trying to detain him. They had dismantled the perimeter around the street without in any way moving themselves away or apart. They were no longer preventing people reaching the street. Instead they were preventing the departure of Benoit Blanc. And unless he had slunk off to lick his wounds, Sergeant Kinsel was surely still among them, keen to see that net tighten further and further until he could get them alone again.

Benoit Blanc sighed. It was a problem but it was a problem for ten minutes from now. This was going to be a day won by inches. He instead focussed on the next battle and dialled Phillip’s number, turning away from Ms Cuthbert and Mills to speak to his counterpart. It did indeed seem that some friend of the Trammings had decided to mention to the head of the UK Border Agency that Blanc was an undesirable. Speedy were the well-greased cogs of politics and his visa was in the process of being rescinded pending an investigation. But Phillip had called an excellent lawyer who had recommended an expert in immigration law, and who was even now on the phone putting as much grit in the grease as any man could muster. The lawyer was on his way to Phillips parents’ house, whereupon the two would journey back to London tonight to attack the problem in person, and brief Blanc on their progress. Benoit Blanc was a streadfast hunter, but he had a weakness for circling his prey carefully. He was not a man of swift, decisive action which is why he thanked all the gods every dawning day that he had married one.

He hung up to see Mr Tyler, mooching. He had adopted the widely recognised posture of one aware they were superfluous to needs, or superfluous to moral standards. Blanc looked him in the eyes.

“Why did you come back?”

“Well, Blanc, I found myself out of employment and happened to be in the area…”

Mr Tyler rarely allowed himself to use a question mark. Blanc understood the power of the man being brought down to the level of an ellipsis.

Blanc reached out and they shook hands. For men of any age, in their cultures, it was as intimate moment as theye might imagine.

“Thank you for what you did, Mr Tyler. But what will you do now?”

Mr Tyler rocked back on his ankles. “As I remarked to you, my employers and those like them emphasize loyalty and discretion and I have failed to provide either, making me quite unemployable. On the other hand, my skills remain useful. Do private detectives need personal assistants?” He was only half joking.

“Well, sir, they might and they may, from time to time. Right now, however, I am working for Ms Janyn Cuthbert in a gratis arrangement.”

Mr Tyler pondered this. “She might need a lawyer and assistant right now as well, in a similar arrangement.”

Benoit Blanc smiled and went to arrange it. There was much still to be done but some things were falling into better places, and that was good.

“You silly old goose - you lied to me!” Myra Mills was sitting up and trying to leave her stretcher, but her tone was softer than her words. “I couldn’t have been there on Tuesday, when - but I was there this morning - I could have - I was alone with him, Benny. You can’t disprove that!“

She stopped short and sank back into her the stretcher, much to the relief of her carers. “I didn’t kill him.” She said it like a prayer or a mantra. “He really was very kind to me, you know.”

The paramedics removed her blood pressure pump and there was some nodding between them. They passed Myra Mills a tiny plastic cup and three little pills. She grabbed them both like drinks from a counter and gesticulated afresh. “You believe me, now, don’t you, Benny? You do. Please say you do. But oh, you can see why I couldn’t tell you all this? Please forgive me for that - for all of this.” She gestured in a way that suggested the last thirty minutes has been something more like a social faux pas or emotional outburst. Janyn patted her kindly on the shoulder.

“I didn’t kill anyone,” she mumbled. “Like I told you this morning, Benny, when I found him he was dead already. Staring and pointing like he’d seen a ghost, and oh, it must have been one of them, it just must have, oh, who was in that room before we left? We were all saying goodbye.”

Blanc remembered what Doctor Farmer had said: that Patrick Tramming had seen the face of his killer and been frightened to death. All of them had been in the man’s room, one after another. A line up for a dead man - a man who had pointed out his killer before! Blanc had thought that a kind of pantomime, a false presentation; it was all too convenient for a dead man not once but twice to point at the picture of his killer. But if one was false, could the other be true? What if it was all true? If both times a dying man had spasmed at a final moment, pointing at the guilty party, or their picture - or their picture -

Sometimes Benoit Blanc could swear his mind was like an actual clock, that there was a some metallic mechanism, with a weight on a stick or a chain that would drop down and mark the hour or turn the cogs. It was almost like he could hear the ticking, and feel that heavy clonk of brass on wood as everything ticked over, and clarity arrived. Clonk, went his brain, and the cogs clicked over, and everything turned around the other way, and he knew who killed Patrick Tramming.

Not everything was quite clear yet, but it was falling, turning, clicking, clinking, whirring. And he didn’t have time to waste. The police were not entirely satisfied. If they had to fill out reports, they would be keen to add company to their misery. He was sure that soon they intended to put him and his three companions in tiny rooms and ask them all hours of questions.

“Ms Mills, I know I did deceive you there, but do you trust me? There is something I must do to bring all of this sordid business to a final conclusion. And for that, I require your assistance for one more scene in this dramatic performance, if I may? Mr Tyler, I shall also require the same.”

Myra Mills was a tear-drained mess, and she sank inwards at his intensity, but she nodded. Tyler glanced back and nodded. And Blanc nodded. His eyes were blazing. Like the arctic ice on a summer day, Like a wave about to break. Like the fury of all the sea.

“Detective Lewisham,” he said, loudly, commandingly, theatrically. “I Himagine it has not escaped your notice that in no manner is the matter of the Tramming murders solved. Hyes, Ms Myra Mills could not have been in the Tramming house during the murder of Charlotte Tramming, but she was present at the death of Patrick Tramming. She had the opportunity and the means and the motive.”

Myra Mills gasped and began to fight her way out of her stretcher but the paramedics held her down.

“And I Hunderstand that many high-ranked members of your constabulary are very interested in asking me a series of probing questions as to the legality of my visit to these isles and perhaps whether I have been harassing the fine upstanding members of the Tramming family, but you are also, are you not, keen to ask some questions of Ms Mills regarding the aforementioned untimely death?”

Detective Lewisham was not a good cop. He was an average cop, and he possessed the most common attribute of a policeman: laziness. Every aspect of the occupation bar one was miserable and thankless and fruitless, and thoroughly got in the way of doing the one good part, which was making assuredly awful people have assuredly awful days. Right now, Benoit Blanc was making him think and listen and consider his options and that was not impressing him at all. He gave a look with one raised eyebrow to suggest Blanc get to something very point-shaped or he would swiftly stop appreciating Blanc’s assistance in the rescue of an elderly civilian minutes earlier.

“I now believe that if I am Hallowed to ask one or two more questions, of the family and of Ms Mills, I will be able to prove, without question, who killed Patrick Tramming and who killed Charlotte Tramming, and bring all of today's events to a satisfying conclusion. If you would simply be so kind as to transport myself and the lady to the Tramming house - under your full guard and observation at all times - I can provide this solution in just a minute or two. And,” said Blanc as if the thought has just occurred to him, “there will be then also be half a dozen witnesses, along with your good self, Detective, that I have indeed been harassing the members of that esteemed family and making wild and unproven haccusations. And you can take us in for charging while collecting said witness statements, saving you all the trouble of coming out again Hanother day.”

Blanc’s voice dripped every inch of southern charm molasses he could muster. He smiled like a polite old shoe shine man or a avuncular playgoer. The kind of person a policeman liked to be photographed helping and felt just slightly uncomfortable hitting with a baton or hauling away in cuffs. And the effect was perfected when Ms Myra Mills hit Blanc in the face with her overcoat, yelling blue murder. Nothing is more endearing and trustworthy than someone in trouble and Blanc’s trouble was armed, angry and indefatigably devoted to smacking him on the head.

For the second time in two days Benoit Blanc had been bustled into a car next to a dishevelled Myra Mills. The police had found it even sweeter to agree to Blanc's suggestion when they realised they could put the two newly-made enemies together in a tight space. Police are lazy, and the easiest way to get a confession is usually to put angry frightened idiots close together; plus the added benefit of causing suffering.

Blanc had sent Mr Tyler away on an errand, instructed to meet them there; he had taken Janyn with him. That just left the two of them: Blanc nursing a new bruise on his bitten lips and trying not to brood on his long-suffering existence; Mills with her hair a wild birds nest and her blouse askew from her recent exertions. They sat in silence, like naughty children, aware of the scrutiny from the two officers in front.

“I did ask you to trust me,” mumbled Blanc. Myra Mills scowled and twisted her lips. “Well.” was all she said, and she meant “as if she could have expected that or been asked to trust such an accusation. Blanc sighed and took a new tack.

He glanced ahead and as quietly as he could he said, “I need your assistance.”

Myra Mills remained askance. The rain had changed to a steady damp drill that fell with the darkness, swift and enclosing. In the sharp headlights outside and the steam of their breath the world besides them disappeared.

“I lied when I said I knew the full body of this affair’s solution. When we reach the house,” he said, whispering now, “I need you to buy me time.”

“What?” Myra Mills liked being the centre of attention. Like a parrot, she used colourful headwear and a loud shriek to achieve this. The eyes of a policeman caught Blanc’s in the rear view mirror.

“And you were right, though. I cannot prove you didn’t kill Patrick Tramming. You absolutely could have, even if I think it unlikely. I can only exonerate you if I am able to provide the true culprit.”

“What?” said Myra Mills again. She grabbed her handbag and began battering him once more. The policemen in the front scowled and she stopped. Blanc gave up explanations for now. In the quiet dark, weighing up what to come, he felt small and alone again. The rain came down even heavier. He closed his eyes like he had on the motorbike and counted the minutes.

The money and influence of the Tramming family could still force him out of the county. They could ensure Mr Tyler would need to follow suit to ever find employment. They had plenty of allies in a blood-hungry press to paint Janyn Cuthbert as a con artist and make any lawsuit she tried to wage intolerably expensive and exhausting. They could do the same to Myra Mills, leaving her broke and alone and back under suspicion of a crime - a crime they might even be still able to prosecute her for. What was more, they could get away with murder. Two murders, in fact. And the only thing standing against them was him and a hunch based on the phone of Charlotte Tramming - a phone now in the hands of Mr Tyler.

And with that he remembered Mr Tyler and Ms Cuthbert were not just standing on the same landmine as him; they were also helping him diffuse it. And Philip would soon be arriving at the hotel, ready with lawyers and kisses, which, when applied together, could restore all his strength. He was betting everything on one roll of the dice against a house that always won, but he was far from alone.

And - one more thing - he was Benoit Blanc.