The Necromancer: Part Three

      To Emma, this comment seemed so self-evident as to be entirely pointless. Crimes involving a high government official were automatically the jurisdiction of the High Commissioner. There probably hadn't been such a high-profile murder on the Citadel since Kass's reign.

      "Indeed you are correct," was Lockwood's equally cool reply. For just a moment, Emma could have sworn that he was looking at Assander rather strangely, almost calculatingly. But his expression changed almost before she could register it.

      "Then let me know if there's any way I or my department can help. Mr. Lawson was a longtime colleague and close friend of mine, so as you can imagine, I'm very eager to see his killer brought to justice."

      "Is that so?" said Lockwood with thinly veiled amusement. "How excessively kind of you. I will certainly let you know if you can be of any assistance."

      She couldn't imagine what Lockwood was playing at. It was true that all of his words were correct and courteous, but his manner was bizarre. It seemed almost as though he was secretly mocking Assander – which would be highly unwise, since the latter outranked him in every respect. On the other hand, from even what little she knew about him, Lockwood did have a reputation for being erratic and unfathomable. No doubt, once she had spent longer as his assistant, Emma would come to better understand his motives.

      If there was any slight intended, however, Assander did not appear to notice it, or to resent it if he did. "In that case," he answered, with a slight nod, "I'm sure I'll be seeing you soon." He hesitated for a moment, as though about to say something else; but he apparently thought better of whatever it was, because he turned and walked swiftly away across the wet stones.

      Lockwood's eyes did not follow him. They turned instead to Emma, and he said, "Now if you would be so kind, Miss Ward, there is something for you to do."

      "Yes?"

      Somehow she had almost expected something ridiculous, inscrutable, or maddeningly abstract. But the orders he gave were entirely appropriate and familiar. "It would be useful to compile all of the information and evidence into one file, organized at your discretion – which I have no doubt will be excellent."

      "Certainly," she replied. This was exactly the kind of work she liked; nobody could put together a file like Emma Ward. And then since it seemed that Lockwood no longer required or wished for her presence, she decided to leave the dreary scene for her relatively warm office and begin her work. Emma was no investigator; her job lay elsewhere, and she had very little natural curiosity. What was there to see? Crowds of detectives, most likely standing around doing nothing. There was only so much evidence to be found at one scene. Still, feeling that it was in some way her responsibility to see everything at least once, she did venture into Lawson's private office - which opened directly onto the balcony - and took a quick walk around the room. There was nothing very remarkable about it; everything was more or less the way she'd left it three weeks ago. The heavy dark green drapes were there, and the hideous dark red armchair. Emma herself favored a sleeker, more utilitarian style of furnishing - though that mattered even less now than in had when he was alive, if anything could matter less than not at all. Still, she couldn't help feeling that Lawson's office was all of a piece with his personality.

      Even indoors, the chill was sharp. There was a large fireplace on one side of the room, but it was unlit and depressingly full of cold, half-burned logs. How silly, she reflected, that a man who had clearly had no scruples about surrounding himself with luxury should be miserly enough to begrudge himself some extra coal. But then there was something very dreary about this kind of luxury which might, after all, have seemed at odds with a warm crackling fire. Emma was not particularly observant of atmosphere, but this much she felt.

      She caught sight of Nicholas signaling to her from the other side of the room, and immediately turned on her heel to depart. The best thing she could do with his excessive familiarity was to nip it in the bud. They were colleagues now, not only friends.

      She spent the next few hours compiling an account of what exactly had happened in the hours leading to the murder. Lawson had spent a quiet evening in his office. He had seen, by appointment, three people. At 6:00, it had been an army general, presumably in order to discuss the military's public relations campaign. At 6:15 he had spoken with one of his deputy directors and at 6:30, with Mr. Assander of Internal Affairs. Following that meeting Lawson had asked his secretary for coffee - not, apparently, an infrequent request - who had gone down the hall to make him a cup, returned, and given it to him.

      An appointment had been marked in Lawson's book for 7:00, but his secretary had been told nothing about it. She had been dismissed from his office at 6:50 to go and eat her own dinner. Despite all that the entire department of detectives could do, the identity of this mystery visitor remained unknown, and it seemed natural to suspect that he (or she) had been the murderer.

      From that point onward, events could be accounted for: Lawson had been discovered dead by his secretary, who returned at her appointed time of 7:45 and immediately reported the crime. Guards arrived on the scene almost right away, and it was determined that Lawson had been stabbed with an unidentified weapon.

      Even as Emma's mind ran through times, charts, and probabilities, it involuntarily strayed to what she knew Nick would say – that, after all, the foundation of a crime lay in the people involved. And at the moment that was only Lawson. Looking at a picture of the portly, overbearing Skeith with his burning red eyes and his forbidding expression, Emma thought about what Assander had said. Even in her own private thoughts, she would not venture to make a generalization without data; she could not, conclusively, state that Lawson had been widely disliked. Nevertheless, she had personally known many people who disliked him. She had disliked him herself. He was the only employer she had ever had with whom she had not gotten along. In fact, if she hadn't taken the initiative to leave Public Relations herself, she might have stood a good chance of a forcible transfer. The problem had been in the records. Emma did not demand very much from her colleagues or superiors; she was, on the whole, very self-sufficient. But in order to do her job correctly she did insist on meticulous, accurate bookkeeping, and Lawson for whatever reason had seemed categorically opposed to any such thing. There were always odd gaps in the files, and however many times Emma added up the numbers (although she really only needed to do it once to be sure that she was right), they did not add up.

      She was not inclined to speculate about the reason for these irregularities. Speculation had never interested her, and although it seemed a good principle to her that illegal activities were wrong and should be stopped, it was really none of her business to ask questions. There were, in any case, plenty of potential reasons. Perhaps Lawson had been concealing something dishonest, and perhaps he had not – this possibility concerned Emma a great deal less than the fact that the records were faulty. She could not perform calculations with inaccurate numbers.

      Of one thing she was certain: Lawson had been a strange man, and an unpredictable one, who seemed to enjoy leaving people in doubt of his motives. While she would not have ventured to make the generalization that he was widely disliked, Emma was surprised not at all by the fact that somebody had wanted to murder him.

      Since by now she had received and compiled all the evidence, Miss Ward gathered her papers into a very neat stack and made her way up to the High Commissioner's office. There she found Mr. Lockwood, despite the late hour, leaning back in his chair and having an animated conversation with the Usul secretary she had seen before. The Usul secretary, seeing Emma at the door, cleared her throat and hastily began picking up her scattered files. Lockwood on the other hand seemed as completely unruffled as always. "Miss Ward," he greeted her, "how immensely kind of you to come! I imagine you have brought me a present. There are few sights so joyful as a pile of papers."

      Emma ignored his humor, or his maliciousness – whichever it was – and ignored also the hurried, self-conscious exit of the Usul secretary. Her impressions were neither favorable nor unfavorable. Mr. Lockwood could conduct himself however he liked. "The evidence is all in order, sir. You'll need to sign off on the investigation."

      "How tiresome," he said slowly, twirling his pen in his gloved hand. "I suppose that will necessitate my looking through the files?"

      "It would be very difficult to know whether the investigation had been conducted properly otherwise."

      For a moment, he did not reply, as though he could not think of a good counterargument. Then he said, "I would be very much obliged if you would sign in my place."

      "I'm sorry, but I have no authority to do so," Emma told him without hesitation.

      "That is where you are mistaken." With the least amount of movement possible, Lockwood reached down and opened one of his desk drawers, taking out a piece of paper. "There is in fact a procedure for giving you the authority which you currently lack. By signing this, I will give you permission to sign for me."

      She had heard of this, but she had never seen it done. It was a recourse usually only resorted to when the person in authority was very old or unwell, or otherwise unable to preside over an investigation. In Lockwood's case she could see no reason for it at all, and a great number of reasons against.

      Emma fixed him with her rather cold and calculating stare, and adjusted her glasses slightly. "In my capacity as your assistant, I think I am compelled to warn you that this is unwise. This would authorize me to do absolutely anything in your name."

      "Oh, but I trust you absolutely, Miss Ward," he replied indifferently. "I am quite sure you will not do anything which might cause me to regret it." He slid the paper toward her, clearly expecting no more argument about it.

      She could not, personally, approve – or for that matter comprehend – such a blatant disregard for his responsibilities as High Commissioner. But it was not her job to argue with him. So she took the pen and wrote her clear, unusually legible signature on the line. When she handed it back to him, he signed, in his own elegant script, H. K. Lockwood. And that it seemed was an end to that.

To be continued...