MURDER IN THE MINSTER

Short story by RAFE McGREGOR

Bauer watched the short motorcade halt outside Hofbau Minster.  He glanced at his watch – half an hour before midnight – then back through the binoculars.  As always, the king travelled with only a small bodyguard of Secret Police.  The men were crisp and economical in their movements, and two of them disappeared through the main entrance, a set of monstrous wooden doors.  It appeared as if they had been swallowed up in the maw of a skeletal stone beast.  Bauer rested the binoculars in his lap and waited.    

            He stared at the Minster, a compact, misshapen cross in the middle of a snow-covered graveyard, but had to lean closer to the window to see the tops of the spires and tower.  They rose so high into the heavens that they seemed unsteady, as if on the brink of toppling over.  The thought amused him.  He leant back and scanned the road below.  Deacon’s Lane was empty.  So was Deacon’s House, except for Bauer upstairs and the corpse of the custodian downstairs.  Sister Antoinette had been a nun in life, and although he despised everything that Roman Catholicism stood for, he hadn’t wanted to kill her. 

But the stakes were too high to leave anything to chance. 

Bauer brushed his knuckles over the ridged, oily flesh on the left side of his face.  The burns were over ten years old, courtesy of Brigadier Rassendyll, the Englishman who was head of the Secret Police.  Bauer had shot him in the throat in return, but the bastard had survived.  The luck of the devil.  He’d been hunting Bauer and his Resistance ever since, each seeking to exterminate the other.  But Rassendyll wasn’t here tonight.  Tonight Bauer would end their long, grim duel all on his own.     

            He lifted the binoculars as one of the bodyguards returned to the motorcade.  Two by two, the rest took up their positions, covering all three entrances to the Minster.  A man in a grey cape, with dark red hair and a black eye patch, debussed from the middle car.  Rudolf Elphberg, or King Rudolf the Sixth of Ruritania as he was known to the world.  Bauer watched him stride into the great, gaping mouth alone.  A few seconds later, the other bodyguard joined his colleagues outside the Minster, closing the huge door behind him.

            Bauer moved quickly.  He dropped the binoculars and headed for the stairs, touching the butt of his pistol for luck.  Down past the corpse, and down again to the wine cellar.  He had already raised the flagstone in the middle of the floor, and a torch and crowbar lay on either side of the square of darkness under the raw, sodium light.  He knelt, took hold of the torch, and lowered himself into the narrow excavation.  The uneven walls were slick with moisture and the tunnel was so low he had to crouch down.  Later, he would have to crawl for about twenty feet. 

He knew this because he’d already made the journey once, last week. 

Bauer groped his way along through the belly of the earth: under Deacon’s Lane, under the graveyard, under the chapter house, and then under the north wall of the Minster.  He was shivering and caked with grime when he arrived at the end of the passage.  Rusty iron rungs were riveted to the foundation blocks, and he used them to climb up into a priest’s hole.  It was so small that there was only half a flagstone of floor space.  He squeezed into it, switched off the torch, and was immediately enveloped in a complete and impenetrable darkness.  He shuddered, feeling the weight of the tons of stone pressing in on him.  The icy hand of fear closed around his heart and he forced a cough to get his lungs working again.

Bauer squatted and very carefully set the torch down between his feet.  He placed both of his hands flat on the stone in front of him and felt for the small indentation.  He found it a minute later, and pushed hard with two stiff, dirty fingers.  The door rasped as it opened, revealing shadows dancing and twisting on the limestone wall.  He could hear a voice echoing from the right – the bishop.  He stood, drew his pistol, and screwed the silencer onto the end of the barrel.  Then he stepped out into the niche, leaving the concealed door open behind him.  Everyone knew about the priest’s hole and the three hundred year old emergency exit.  They also knew that the tunnel had been impassable since part of it collapsed in 1877. 

They were wrong.

Bauer looked out from the niche, at the tomb of Marshal Strackenz – Ruritania’s greatest soldier – sitting stolid under a decorative canopy.  The sanctuary was illuminated by a faint light filtering through the quatrefoils, and the flickering of candles beyond the choir screen.  He couldn’t help gazing up the thin, needle-like columns opposite, to their teetering capitals, and the great ribbed arches of the ceiling.  He felt his balance start to go, and averted his eyes as he steadied himself.  He poked his head out from the niche.  To his left, the apse was small, dark, and empty.  To his right, the choir screen effectively blocked his view of the nave.  More importantly, it blocked the views of the king and the bishop on the other side.  Bauer slipped out into the sanctuary, and stole towards the nave, using the aisle formed by the clustered columns. 

It had taken him two years to find out where Elphberg attended Midnight Mass.  Two years and three of Rassendyll’s men tortured to death.  The first had been brave, incredibly so.  He’d screamed like a pig, but he’d told them nothing.  His death was slow and painful.  The Resistance had bungled the second interrogation.  It was Bauer’s fault for leaving it to one of his lieutenants.  The man was determined to extract the information, but his brutality proved counter-productive when he killed the prisoner by accident.  Bauer had taken charge of the third himself.  The policeman parted with the location after five hours: a private ceremony conducted by the Bishop of Hofbau in the country’s smallest cathedral.  Then a fast drive to Zenda, where the king issued his Christmas message to the nation at one o’clock precisely. 

Not tonight.

As Bauer passed the north transept, he flexed his fist around the butt of his pistol and smiled.  The weapon was a product of their Czech neighbours, the most reliable handgun in the world.  He had already killed five men and one woman with it, and he knew it wouldn’t fail him.  He glided past the choir screen and into the nave.  The hundreds of candles cast more shadow than light, and the stained glass windows only increased the effect.  Bauer looked up at the clerestory.  The richly moulded ribs supporting the ogive-arched vault looked like the bones of a leviathan seen from the inside.  He couldn’t help feeling small and insignificant – just like the priests intended – until he caught sight of Elphberg, kneeling before the bishop at the high altar.

Tonight Bauer was neither small nor insignificant: he was the instrument of the destruction of the Royal House of Elphberg.    

He eased behind a column, keeping to the shadows.  He held his pistol loosely in both hands – ready for the kill – and examined Elphberg, now only a dozen feet away.  Unlike most of Europe’s parasites, Rudolf dressed simply.  He wore the scarlet tunic, white breeches, and black cavalry boots of the King’s Royal Cuirassiers – of which he was Colonel-in-Chief – with only two decorations.  Around his throat, the Order of the Red Rose of Ruritania, worn by all the aristocracy, and on his chest, a lone medal; a memento of his military service in Britain, where the Elphbergs had chosen exile over the new People’s Republic.    

Like most of his ancestors, Rudolf had a shock of dark red hair and a prominent, elongated nose.  But it was the eye patch that now dominated his features.  Bauer recalled the ambush, three years ago, as if it was yesterday.  He and five of the Resistance had launched a rocket-propelled grenade at the royal limousine.  Prince Rupert, the nine year old Duke of Strelsau, had been killed instantly, along with everyone else – all except Rudolf.  Like Rassendyll, he had the luck of the devil.  But the attack hadn’t been wasted; it had deprived him of his only heir and his right eye.     

In the land of the blind the one-eyed man is king. 

Not for much longer.  Once the Elphbergs were gone, the darkness would lift, and the people would embrace socialist democracy again.  Bauer eased back the hammer of his pistol, and rested his right forefinger on the trigger.  Elphberg stood and the bishop blessed him a final time.  He offered his hand to the bishop and they shook.  A modern king indeed, but still a throwback to the oppression of the absolute monarch.  He turned to leave the Minster. 

Bauer stepped from the aisle and raised his pistol.  Elphberg stopped dead.  The bishop – startled – clasped his hands tight under his violet maniple.  Bauer focused on the bridge of Elphberg’s nose through the front sight of his pistol. 

Something was wrong. 

The eye patch was on the right hand side.  Bauer’s right, Rudolf’s left – but that wasn’t right.  Bauer lowered his pistol slightly and squinted in the half-light.  The nose was fake.  So was the red hair. 

Rassendyll.

“I tortured three of your men for this.  How did you do it?”

Rassendyll spoke softly, “Only three men knew about tonight.  His Majesty, me –”

“And the bishop,” Bauer glanced up at him.  But it wasn’t the Bishop of Hofbau, it was someone else, and that someone had produced a pistol from under his maniple.

“…And Reverend Father Sapt, Chaplain-Major of the Royal Defence Force.”

“Drop it, Bauer,” said Sapt, “it’s over.”

“I thought priests were forbidden to kill.”

“In your case, I’m prepared to risk eternal damnation.”

Bauer saw a flash of movement from Rassendyll and when he turned back, the policeman was pointing a small pistol at him.  “The eye patch.  I should’ve realised.”

“A necessary risk.  My left eye isn’t good enough for a clear shot in this light.”

“Did you know I’d use the tunnel?” Bauer asked.

“What tunnel?”

Bauer was tempted to kill Rassendyll anyway, regardless of the consequences.  It would be suicide.  Satisfying, certainly, but ultimately pointless.  On the other hand, he’d already escaped from the Secret Police once before, and he knew he could do it again.  He lowered his weapon, dropped it, and raised his palms.

Sapt covered his pistol, and began reciting, “Our Father, who art in heaven,

hallowed be Thy name.  Thy kingdom come.  Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven…” 

Rassendyll said, “God save the king.”

“…Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses…”

Bauer had his second revelation of the night an instant before the bullet

penetrated his skull.  He fell, his head hit the hard stone, and he knew no more. 

Sapt made the sign of the cross over him, “As we forgive those who trespass against us.  And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil…” 

Rassendyll knelt down and placed two fingers on Bauer’s throat.  He felt the pulse and the life slowly ebb away.

“…For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever and ever.  Amen.”  Sapt stepped down from the dais and stared at the body, and the blood pooling on the stone.  “At last, it is over.” 

Rassendyll waited until he was sure.  He checked his watch as he rose, “Come along, Major, we can just make it to Zenda before the His Majesty goes on the air.”

As they walked through the nave to the western doors, Sapt clapped him on the back, “You’re quite right, Richard.  I wouldn’t want to miss delivering our Christmas present.  I suspect His Majesty will be especially grateful, not to say generous.”