Read Games of the Hangman Online
Authors: Victor O'Reilly
"Rudolf
had a tattoo?" asked Fitzduane.
Buckley
rebuttoned his shirtsleeve.
"If
you've ever been tattooed yourself, you tend to be more interested in such
things.
They often have great
significance.
For a time I used to
collect photos of unusual tattoos off the cadavers as they paraded
through.
I built up quite a
collection.
Gave it up
years ago, though.
Well, Rudolf
had a tattoo, a very small one but unlike any I've seen before.
It was more like a love token or a unit badge
or some such thing, and it was positioned where it couldn't be seen unless the
wearer wished."
"The mind
boggles," said Fitzduane.
Buckley
smiled.
"Not that
dramatic but clever all the same.
It was on his outer wrist, just under where you would wear a watch.
It was very small, about a centimeter and a
half across, and it showed a capital ‘A’ with a circle of what looked like
flowers around it."
"So maybe
Rudi had a girlfriend whose name or nickname began with 'A,' said Fitzduane.
"Could
be," said Buckley, "but you had better widen your horizon to include
boyfriend in your search.
Rudolf may
have swung both ways, but he had the unmistakable physical characteristics of
someone who engaged regularly in homosexual activities."
"You'd
better explain," said Fitzduane.
Buckley
drained his brandy and replaced his jacket.
He remained standing.
"The small matter of a somewhat dilated and keratinized anal
orifice.
There isn't much privacy
on a pathologist's slab."
Fitzduane
raised his eyebrows.
"I'll keep
that in mind."
"By the
way," said Buckley, "there was a second postmortem in
agreed with my findings.
Suicide, no question."
"Looks
like it," said Fitzduane, "but if I run across something, would
It
be practicable to exhume the body and run more
tests?
How long has one got in this kind
of situation?"
Buckley
laughed.
"You're back to witch
doctors," he said, "because conventional pathologists won't be much
use to you.
The remains were
cremated."
6
Fitzduane's
Land Rover splashed through the town of
A few miles further on he stopped at a hotel
to stretch his legs and phone Murrough on the island.
He heard the news about the second hanging
with a sense of shock and forboding.
He
remembered Toni Hoffman from the inquest.
She had been a close friend of Rudi's and had been summoned to give
evidence about his state of mind.
When
she had been called by the coroner, she hadn't been able to speak.
She had just stood there, ashen-faced, shaking
her head, tears streaming silently down her cheeks.
The coroner
had been sympathetic and had dismissed her after a brief, abortive effort at
questioning.
Fitzduane had thought at
the time that she looked as much petrified with fear as grief-struck, but then
they had moved on to another witness with more to say, and he had put the
incident out of his mind.
He tried to
avoid thinking what she must have looked like at the end of a rope with her
head half off.
He wasn't successful.
*
*
*
*
*
Pierre
Danelle, principal of
pleased.
It was a not uncommon state
with him, since he could not, even charitably,
be
described as a happy man.
The word
misanthrope
would be closer to the
mark.
He was, in the view of most of his
students, a miserable son of a bitch.
On this
particular day Danelle was even more miserable than normal, and he was also
annoyed.
He read the school charter
again.
It incorporated various clauses
taken from von Draker's will, and unfortunately the founder had been quite
specific in his instructions, which for greater clarity were expressed in
French, German, and English.
The trouble
lay with the tree.
Common sense dictated
that it should be cut down.
A tree from
which one of your students had hanged
himself
was not
the sort of thing one wanted to keep on the school grounds.
It would provoke memories and impinge on
school activities, and it would be a no-no on parents' day.
And it might tempt someone else to experiment
with the blue rope and a short jump.
Danelle shuddered at the thought.
One hanging was a tragedy.
Two
hangings would knock hell out of his budget.
The Draker tuition was not small.
Three sets of fees would be missed.
The hanging
tree had to go — but then again it couldn't.
Von Draker had gone to the most elaborate lengths to establish his
little forest in the first place, and he had clearly stated in his will
that under no circumstances whatsoever were any trees on the estate
to be cut down
.
The whole clause
was then repeated in more extreme language to make sure that the trustees of
the Von Draker Peace Foundation got the point, and to demonstrate the founder's
faith in human nature, a relationship with their remuneration was referred
to.
Danelle got the point.
Even in his grave, von Draker liked
trees.
It was infuriating.
He was being dictated to by a dead man.
Danelle
decided that he would write to the trustees in
Surely they would understand that you
cant
have
a freshly used gallows hanging — growing — on campus.
Like fuck
they'd understand.
Those hollowheads in
principal from embarrassment.
He racked
his brains, and then an idea blossomed, an idea that was dazzling in its scope
and simplicity.
An
accident.
Lightning,
a forest fire; a maverick what a chain saw; a pyromaniac Boy Scout.
The mind boggled.
The possibilities were endless.
He decided he
would take a walk over to the old oak tree to see what could be arranged.
He pulled on his
It was raining.
*
*
*
*
*
"St
Patrick's Day apart," said Kilmara idly, "people tend to forget about
March in this country.
I mean, everyone
knows about January.
It's the month when
the first bank statement arrives after Christmas and bank managers decide to
cut off your overdraft.
Everyone remembers
February.
It's the Toulouse-Lautrec of
months, and all the tennis club set go skiing with each other's wives.
Everyone likes April.
People skip around and procreate like mad and
pick daffodils and eat chocolate Easter eggs.
But March — March sort of sneaks in and hangs around and confuses the
issue.
I'm not sure I approve of
March.
It's a month with a lot of cold
puddles — and it's too bloody long."
He switched
off the computer terminal and the screen went dull.
Elsewhere, in air-conditioned, dust-free
isolation, the mainframe's brain was still actively following its instructions,
fine-tuning the unit.
"Günther," said Kilmara, who had been thinking laterally about
his manpower problems and then about Fitzduane's proposed trip to
Guards at the
The pay would have been better, the uniform more colorful, and no one
shoots at you — though anything is possible in
"Ah, but I'm not Swiss," said Günther, "and I am not
celibate."
"You
amaze me," said Kilmara, "but what has celibacy got to do
with
it
?"
"Well,"
said Günther, "to qualify as a Swiss Guard, you have to be Swiss, have
received Swiss military training, be Catholic, be of good health, be under
thirty, be at least one hundred and seventy-four centimeters in height — and be
celibate and of irreproachable character."
"I can
see your problem," said Kilmara.
*
*
*
*
*
Pierre Danelle
decided — too late — that the waning afternoon was the wrong time to be wandering
around in a forest.
He should have
postponed his little expedition until the morning despite the fact that it was
blindingly clear that the sooner that damned oak tree met with an accident, the
better.
He cursed von
Draker for choosing to build his eccentric construction in such an
out-of-the-way location as the west of
Marvelous scenery, it was true, if you liked
a fickle and eerie landscape, but the weather!
It was enough to choke the Valkyries.
When an Irishman said it was a nice soft morning, he meant you didn't
actually need an aqualung to keep from drowning in the rain.
And apart from
the weather — not that you could ever get apart from the weather in
were the Irish, an odd lot who didn't seem to speak English properly and their
own tongue not at all.
Irish English
seldom seemed to mean the same thing as English English.
So often there seemed to be nuances and
subtleties and shades of meaning he failed to grasp, most of which seemed to
end up to his financial disadvantage.
Thinking of
financial disadvantage reminded him of the alimony he'd been saddled with, and
then of his mother-in-law in
On reflection, perhaps he was better off in
all.
*
*
*
*
*
"Do you
ever miss the mercenary life, Günther?" asked Kilmara.
He decided to light his pipe.
It was that hour of day, and he was in that
sort of mood.
"I'm not
sure the Legion qualified as mercenary," replied Günther.
"The pay was terrible."
"I wasn't
referring to the Legion," said Kilmara.
"I was thinking of that little interlude just afterward."
"Ah,"
said Günther, "we don't talk about that."
"I merely
asked you if you missed it."
"I've
matured, Colonel," said Günther.
"Before, I fought purely for money.
Now I have higher ideals.
I fight
for democracy and money."
Kilmara was
busy for a few moments with pipe cleaners and other gadgets.
Pipe smoking is not an impetuous
activity.
"What does democracy mean
to you?" he asked when order was restored.
"Freedom
to make more money," said Günther with a smile.
"I like a
committed idealist," said Kilmara dryly.
"Pearse would have been proud of you."
"Who was
Pearse?"
"Padraig
Pearse," said Kilmara, "Irish hero, poet, romantic, and dreamer.
He was one of the leaders of the 1916
uprising against the British that led to independence in 1922.
Of course, he didn't live to see the
day.
He surrendered after some bloody
fighting and was put up against a wall and shot.
He had company."
"Romantics
and dreamers tend to get shot," said Günther.
"Good
evening," Fitzduane broke in from the doorway.
"Speak of
the devil," said Kilmara.
*
*
*
*
*
Danelle did
not like to admit, even to himself, that he felt uneasy.
There was no good reason for a highly
educated, rational, cosmopolitan twentieth-century man to be prey to such a
feeling so close to home on land he knew well.
Nonetheless, there was a certain atmosphere in the wood that was, at
best, unsettling.
Oddly, there were no
bird sounds, and indeed, everything was quite remarkably silent.
His boots made no noise on the thick
mulch.
It was ridiculous, of course, but
it was as if he could hear his heart beating.