Murder in Black Letter
Copyright© 2025 by Poul Anderson
Chapter 8
Bruce had shared an office with four other assistants, but they were gone now. Bare of people, it had a hollow quality.
Kintyre went through the desk a final time. There was so little which was personally a man’s. A few scrawls on the memo pad, a scratch sheet covered with intricate doodles, Margery’s picture, some reference books, and a fat folder of notes relating to his research: no more. It could all be carried away in a single trip.
Kintyre attacked the remaining student papers. That was a mechanical task; few freshmen nowadays ever showed much originality, except in their spelling. Most of his brain idled. It occurred to him that one common element bound together everyone who seemed to figure in this affair. The Italian nation and culture.
Angelo, Maria, Guido Lombardi: All born in Genoa.
Bruce Lombardi: Born over here, but oriented toward the old country, writing his master’s thesis as a critical exegesis of a medieval Italian manuscript, corresponding with an uncle in the Italian secret service.
Corinna Lombardi: Well, Bruce’s sister; spoke the language too.
Margery Towne: Bruce’s girl. Admittedly a weak connection.
Himself, Robert Kintyre: Postgraduate studies of the Renaissance, on a fellowship which kept him in Italy from 1949 to 1951; took his Ph.D. at Cal with a study of those lesser known sociological writings before Machiavelli which had influenced the Florentine realist; returned overseas for a year ending last summer, on another grant to continue his researches; now teaching and working on a book which only specialists would ever read.
Jabez Owens: Visited Europe, including Italy, many times. Claimed, as a semiamateur scholar, to have unearthed some lurid Borgia correspondence, which he had turned to his own profit.
Gerald Clayton: Officer in the Army Quartermaster Corps in Italy, during the latter part of the war. Returned there immediately after his discharge, came back in a couple of years with the American franchise for a new line of Italian motor scooters. Since then he spent half his time abroad, pumping a steadily larger flow of European goods into the United States market, everything from automobiles to perfumes. Also interested in manuscripts. Had several tracked down for him by Italian scholars, bought them, sent them home. He obtained the Book of Witches in Sicily, and carried it along when business took him to San Francisco last fall. Found Kintyre was the man to see, looked him up, asked him to examine the volume for whatever value it had. Kintyre had turned the project over to Bruce; it would make a good M.A. thesis. Clayton had pungled up a couple of thousand dollars as a research grant: a graceful way of making it financially possible for Bruce to give some time to the task. Since then Clayton had frequently seen both Bruce and Kintyre, and shown a real if not very deep interest in the boy’s progress.
Gene Michaelis: Served his Navy hitch in the Mediterranean theater. Yes, Bruce had mentioned that. What might have happened during Gene’s Italian shore leaves was an intriguing question.
Peter Michaelis: Gene’s father, as embittered as he toward the Lombardi tribe.
Terry Larkin: No connection demonstrated, but it was quite possible in this land of many races.
“Holy Hieronymus,” muttered Kintyre, “next thing I’ll be looking for a Black Hand.”
But melodramatic and implausible facts were still stubbornly facts.
He completed his task about noon, turned in the papers and reports, and got the Book of Witches from the department safe. He wanted a better acquaintance with this thing.
Bruce’s office was too empty. He took the manuscript and the folder of notes to his own room. It was just as bare and quiet between these walls, but more familiar. He could look out the window to lawns and blowing trees and sunlight spilling over them—without thinking that Bruce lay frozen under a sheet.
He put the book on his desk with care. It was almost six hundred years old.
The phone rang. He jerked in surprise, swore at himself, and picked it up. “Hello?”
“Kintyre? Jabez Owens.”
“Oh. What is it?”
“I called your home and you weren’t in, so I tried—How are you?”
“I’ll live. What’s the occasion?”
“I wondered—I’d like to talk to you. Would you care to have lunch with me?”
“No, thanks.” Kintyre had better plans than to watch Owens perform. “I’m busy.”
“Are you sure?” The voice was worried.
“Quite. I’ll be here for some hours. I’ll just duck out for a sandwich.” Maliciously: “I’ve some work to do on Bruce’s project. Afterward—”
What? Well, he hadn’t called Margery today. He supposed, with a faintly suffocated feeling, that he ought to see her. “I have an engagement,” he finished.
“Oh.” Hesitantly: “Do you think I could drop up to your office, then? It really is urgent, and it may be to your own advantage.”
“Sure,” said Kintyre, remembering his wish to play sleuth. “Walk into my parlor.” He gave Owens the room number and hung up. Then he returned to the Book of Witches.
It was a thick palimpsest, a little over quarto size. The binding, age-eaten leather with rusted iron straps, was perhaps a century newer than the volume itself. He opened it, heavy in his hands, and looked at the title page. Liber Veneficarum—
Book of Witches, Their Works and Days, Compiled from Records and the Accounts of Trustworthy Men, Done at the Sicilian Abbey of St. John the Divine at the Command of the Abbot Rogero, for the Attention and Use of the Authorities of Our Holy Mother Church.
When Clayton first brought it around, Kintyre had only skimmed through the black uncials in a hasty fashion. He knew there had been considerable Satanism in the Middle Ages, partly pagan survivals and partly social protest, but that had not seemed to be in his immediate line. A man has only time to learn a few things before the darkness takes him back.
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