Borrower of the Night - Elizabeth Peters [74]
‘Right.’
‘Ingenious,’ said Blankenhagen. ‘But there is nothing in the amulet to suggest the countess rather than the count. You found it in his room. Why should he not be the one who worshipped devils?’
‘Where I found it is irrelevant. The countess had the whole castle at her disposal after her husband died, and it would be smart of her to conceal such damning evidence outside her own room. I thought of her; instead of him, because of the suggestion of Eastern design. She came from Spain. The Moors were there for a long time, and cultural traits linger on. That’s weak, though. You’re overlooking the conclusive point.’
‘Bitte?’
‘It was the count who died,’ said Tony.
‘Ach, so.’ Blankenhagen grinned and rubbed his chin. ‘Yes, the symptoms described could well have been those of arsenic poisoning. In fact’ – he looked startled – ‘we know now that they were. But the motive. Why did she kill him?’
‘Maybe he found out about her unorthodox religious beliefs,’ Tony offered. ‘In that day and age it would have been a legitimate motive for murder – although Burckhardt would have called it execution. There’s no reason to suppose he wasn’t a proper son of Holy Church; our theories about his unwillingness to give up the shrine were based on nothing except the necessity to account for behaviour which was otherwise unaccountable.’
‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘But I suspect Burckhardt had a more personal reason for being annoyed with his wife.
‘Remember the maid’s hysterical story about the Black Man? It sounded like pure fantasy; the records of witchcraft trials are full of similar lies. But stripped of its supernatural interpretations, what did that story amount to? The maid saw a man, cloaked and booted, in travelling costume, sneak into the castle in the dead of night and embrace the countess.’
‘Booted?’ said Blankenhagen dubiously.
‘The wench heard his spurs clicking on the floor. That was what suggested cloven hooves.’
‘Du Gott allmächtig!’
‘In short, what the maid gave us was a description of a midnight rendezvous. The count, as we know, was still in Würzburg. So the Black Man must have been – ’
‘Nicolas the steward,’ said Tony, with a groan. ‘Oh, my big swollen empty head!’
‘It had to be Nicolas. The Black Man was wearing travelling costume, hence he was not living in the Schloss. Yet he must have been familiar with the place or he couldn’t have entered it and reached the countess’s room without being challenged. Who but the trusted steward would know the secret passages and hidden stairs? And – this is the most ironic thing, I think – Konstanze couldn’t defend herself from the witchcraft charge by telling the truth. Adultery was a serious crime in those days. And there was the little matter of the arsenic.’
‘My God, yes,’ said Tony soberly. ‘She had to kill Burckhardt; sooner or later he was bound to learn about her and Nicolas. He must have found out the night he killed the steward. Then he went after his cheating wife . . . he was trapped, all right. By the time she came to trial, maybe she didn’t care any longer. Her lover was dead . . .’
‘You’re a hopeless romantic,’ I said scathingly. ‘I can’t see our witch-poisoner-murderess wasting away for any man. The witches took drugs, you know; that was how they got their hallucinations of satanic orgies and visits to the Sabbath. The kindest thing you can hope for Konstanze is that she died believing – that in the fire she felt the embrace of her true lord and lover.
‘I shouldn’t have said that,’ I added, clutching at Tony. ‘I keep hearing things out there in the dark, rustling the bushes. Let’s go in.’
‘But wait,’ said Blankenhagen methodically. ‘We have not finished our deductions. You have solved a mystery which no one so much as suspected for hundreds of years; but you have not