“There were three men and a woman standing in the hall outside the room that the management had assigned to Zwinge. Two of the men were wearing the light-blue dress clothing of sorcerers, and so was the woman. The third man was wearing ordinary merchant-class business clothes.

“One of the sorcerers was Master Sean. The second was a tall young man wearing the white slashes of a Journeyman, a Mechicain, by the look of him. The sorceress was one of the most beautiful honey blondes I have ever had the good fortune to meet in a hotel corridor, with a full-breasted, wide-shouldered, wide-hipped, narrow-waisted body and dark-blue eyes. She was only a couple of inches shorter than I am, and she—”

“Pfui—” For the second time, the Marquis of London interrupted the report of Lord Bontriomphe. “While you may enjoy dwelling upon the beauties of women, there is no need to do it, much less to overdo it. Darcy has already met Mary, Dowager Duchess of Cumberland. Continue.”

“Sorry,” Lord Bontriomphe said blandly. “The third man turned out to be Goodman Lewis Bolmer, the manager of the Royal Steward Arms. He’s about an inch taller than Master Sean and looks as though he had lost about fifty pounds too fast. His face and jowls sag and give him a sort of floppy look, as if he were made up of hounds’ ears. He looked both worried and frightened.

“I asked what had happened as soon as I had identified myself.

“Master Sean said: ‘I had an appointment with Sir James at nine thirty, I knocked on the door and no one answered. I knocked again. Then I heard a scream and a sound as of a heavy body falling. Since then, there’s been nothing. The door is locked, and we can’t get in.’

“I looked at Goodman Lewis. ‘Have you the key?’

“ ‘Yes, your lordship,’ he said, nodding and jiggling his jowls. ‘I brought it as soon as Master Netly told me what had happened. But it won’t turn the bolt. It’s stuck. Spell on it, I daresay.’

“ ‘It’s a personalized lock spell,’ Master Sean said. ‘I’d say that only Sir James’ key will open it. But I’m afraid he may be badly injured. We’ll have to get that door down.’

“If you’ve ever been in the Royal Steward, you know how thick those doors are. Very old fashioned oak work — the building dates back to the Seventeenth Century.

“ ‘Can you take the spell off, Sean?’ I asked.

“ ‘Sure and I can,’ he said. ‘But it would take time. Half an hour if I’m lucky and get the psychic pattern right away. Two or three hours if I’m not lucky. That’s not just an ordinary commercial spell; that’s a personal job put on there by Master Sir James himself.’

“I knelt down and took a peek through the keyhole. I couldn’t see anything but the far wall of the room. The keyhole is big enough, but the door is so thick that it’s like looking through a tunnel. Those doors are two inches thick.

“I stood up again and turned to Goodman Lewis. ‘Go get an ax. We’ll have to chop through.’

“He looked as if he were about to object, but he just said, ‘Yes, your lordship. Right away,’ and hurried away.

“While he was gone, I asked some questions. ‘What happened right after you heard the scream, Sean?’

“ ‘Nothing for a few seconds,’ he said. ‘Then my colleagues, here, came out of their rooms.’

“ ‘Which rooms?’

“ ‘Netly Dale has the room to the left of Sir James’ room, and Lord John Quetzal has the room to the right, if I am not mistaken.’

“Netly clasped his hands together to keep from fluttering them and nodded. ‘That’s right. Absolutely correct.’

“Lord John Quetzal just nodded his head in agreement.

“ ‘Lord John Quetzal,’ I said. The name had struck a bell. ‘You are the fourth son of His Gracious Highness, De Mechicoe, I think?’

“He bowed. ‘The same, my lord.’

“Then I turned to the blond vision. I didn’t know who she was at the time, but she was wearing the De Cumberland arms in full on her right breast instead of just the crest on her shoulder, so I deduced—”

Lord Bontriomphe stopped his narrative again as he heard a snort from de London. “Yes, my lord?”

“It is not necessary to inform us of your deductions of the obvious,” said the Marquis with heavy sarcasm. “Darcy wants facts, not the rather puerile thought processes by which you may have arrived at them.”

“I sit corrected, my lord,” said Lord Bontriomphe. “At any rate, I correctly identified the lady.

“ ‘Where is your room, Your Grace?’ I asked.

“ ‘Just across the hall,’ she said, pointing.

“The hallways in the Royal Steward are eight feet wide, and her room was directly opposite Zwinge’s.

“ ‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘Now…’ I looked at the others… ‘Why did you all come out of your rooms? What alarmed you?’

“They all said the same thing. The scream. None of them had heard Sean knocking; the doors are too thick for that to be noticed. I know; I tried it myself later. You can hear a knock on another door only if you listen carefully. That scream must have been a hell of a loud one. The only person to hear the body drop to the floor at that time was Sean. None of the others had opened their doors yet. I couldn’t establish which one of the other three came out first; none of them noticed. There was evidently too much confusion at the time.

“When the manager, Goodman Lewis, came back with the ax, I glanced at my watch. It was twenty-three minutes of ten. Approximately seven minutes had passed since Sean had knocked on the door.

“I used the ax myself. Everyone else stood back, well away from the door. I cut a good-sized area out of the center without damaging either the frame or the lock. I kept everyone else out and squeezed through the hole I’d cut.

“It was an ordinary room, twelve by fifteen, with a bathroom. Across the room were two windows, both shuttered and bolted, but the shutters had been adjusted to let in the daylight. The glass panes were closed and unbroken.

“The body of our Chief Forensic Sorcerer was almost exactly in the middle of the room, more than six feet from the door. He was lying on his left side, in a pool of fresh blood, and there was so much blood on his jacket that it was hard for me to see at first what had happened. Then I saw that there was a rip in his jacket, high up on the left side of his chest, above the heart. I opened his jacket for a look. There was a vertical stab wound in the chest at that point.

“A couple of feet away, lying in the pool of blood, near the edge, was a knife. It was a heavy-handled one, with a black onyx hilt and a solid silver blade. I’ve seen knives like that before, Lord Darcy, and so have you. A sorcerer’s knife, used in certain spells for symbolically cutting psychic linkages or something of the sort. But they can cut physically as well as psychically.

“About halfway between the body and the door was a key, the same kind of heavy brass key that the manager had tried to open the door with. I marked the spot with one of my own keys and then tried the key on the door. It worked; it turned the bolt, but no other key would. It was Sir James’ key, all right.

“I searched the body. Nothing much there — his own key ring; two golden sovereigns, three silver sovereigns, and some odd change; a notebook full of magical symbols and equations which I don’t understand; an ordinary small pocketknife; a cardfolder which contained his certificate as a Master Sorcerer, his license to practice magic — signed by the Bishop of London — his official identification as Chief Forensic Sorcerer, a card identifying him as a Fellow of the Royal Thaumaturgical Society, and a few personal cards. You can look at it all, Darcy; My Lord Marquis has it in an envelope in the wall safe.

“He had three other suits, all hanging neatly in the closet, with nothing in the pockets. There were some papers on the desk, all filled with thaumaturgical symbolism, and more like them in the wastebasket. I left them where they were. The only other thing in the room was his symbol-decorated carpetbag — the kind every sorcerer carries. I didn’t try to open it or move it; it is not wise to meddle with the belongings of magicians, not even dead ones.