An Aukward Situation
“Freddy’s been murdered, Ludwig, and the police refuse to do anything about it!”
The countess of Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt flung herself into an armchair and glared at her husband, as if he were somehow responsible for the nefarious crime and the subsequent refusal of Magdeburg’s police force to do their sworn and bounden duty. Luckily, given the force of her arrival in the piece of furniture in question, it was one of the new stuffed armchairs based on up-timer design. A traditional seventeenth-century “armchair”—even ones owned by royalty—were made of wood and had nothing more in the way of cushions than quilted padding on the seats.
“It was horrible!” Emelie continued. “He was strung up by the neck—left to hang from a post! And then the murderer disemboweled him!”
She shuddered. “I hate to think how poor Freddy must have suffered.”
Count Ludwig Guenther of Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt studied his young wife for a moment. The count was well known for his prudence and good judgment. Now in his mid-fifties, Ludwig Guenther was more than three decades older than his spouse. All things considered, they got along quite well and there was a great deal of affection in their marriage. Still, there were moments when the emotional distance between a woman of twenty-one and a man of fifty-five was considerable.
This, he judged, was one of those moments. Caution was called for.
“That sounds dreadful indeed,” he allowed. “Disemboweled, you say—in addition to being hanged? What reasons are the police giving for their refusal to investigate?”
“They say he’s just a bird! It’s ridiculous!”
The count took a moment to examine the situation from an unexpected direction. Re-orient himself, as an up-timer might put it.
“Ah . . .” In his mind, he ran through the names Emelie had given him of her charges. “Would you be referring to Kleine Friedrich? The—ah—junior of the three grand auks at the aviary?”
“They’re great auks,” Emelie said. “And yes. He’s the one who was so horribly murdered. The poor creature—and he was so young.”
She crossed her arms, shivering a little. That was not due to cold. It was a warm summer day. “I feel terrible about it, Ludwig. Freddy was so friendly—not at all like his parents. He was one of my favorites.”
The feeling in the count’s belly was now a sinking one. More like plunging, really.
“Yes, that’s dreadful.”
“Well, do something!”
* * *
“For Pete’s sake!” exclaimed Gotthilf Hoch. The police sergeant threw up his hands. “It’s just a bird!”
“Who is ‘Pete’?” asked Simon Bayer.
Sitting at the basin Gotthilf had designed and made for her to use when she did kitchen work, Ursula Metzgerin broke off from plucking the chicken. “It’s just an expression Gotthilf got from his partner Byron Chieske. Up-timers use it to avoid blasphemy.”
Simon frowned. Like most youngsters—smart ones, at least—he had a tendency to ponder issues more thoroughly than they usually needed. “I didn’t think up-timers worried about blasphemy at all. I’ve heard even their parsons take the name of the Lord in vain.”
Gotthilf throttled his exasperation, lest he vent it on Simon. For that matter, he didn’t want to vent it on Ursula either. The relationship among the three of them was somewhat fragile. He and Ursula were betrothed and it was agreed by all that as soon as they married they would adopt Simon. The orphan had been taken in by Ursula’s brother Hans before he died.
But, for the moment, they did not have the long-established and well-buttressed family situation that allowed a paterfamilias to occasionally vent his spleen without causing undue alarm or producing badly hurt feelings.
“The up-timers have a history too, Simon,” he said in a calm tone of voice. “In the world they came from—not even so long ago, by their reckoning—blasphemy was just as disapproved of as it is among us. So they developed—invented—words and phrases to circumvent the problem. They call them ‘euphemisms.’”
“Yu-fa-misims.” Simon rolled the word around on his tongue. “Yufe-am-issims.”
Most of the difficulty he had with the pronunciation was caused by the fact that the word was English, not Amideutsch—and of Greek origin, to boot. Within a few years, of course, it would be absorbed into the new dialect of German emerging within the USE and would come trippingly off the tongue of lads his age. Those with some education, at any rate.
“Euphemisms,” Gotthilf repeated.
Inspiration came to him, then. “Such as the euphemism”—he pointed at Ursula, now back to her work with the chicken—“of saying that Ursula is ‘dressing’ the chicken and ‘preparing’ it for our supper. When what she has actually done and will be doing is wringing the poor bird’s neck, tearing out all its feathers, disemboweling the wretched creature and breaking many of its joints. That is to say, more-or-less exactly what was done to the bird in the zoo’s aviary.”
Here, a look of great and histrionic surprise came to his face. “Yet, imagine! No one proposes that the police investigate the horrid crime perpetrated on this chicken!”
Ursula smiled, but didn’t look up from her plucking. “It’s not the same, Gotthilf, and you know it. For one thing”—she held up the chicken by its neck—“this does not belong to an endangered species.”
“Neither did the great auk in the aviary,” said Gotthilf crossly. “I talked to one of the men from the expedition that brought the birds to the zoo. He told me the Faroe Islands are swarming with the things. They don’t go extinct for another two or three centuries.”
He threw up his hands again. “Up-timers! Sometimes I think they are downright mad! Here they are, in Magdeburg—a city whose population was butchered not five years ago—and they fret over the fate of some ugly birds!”
Too late, he spotted the pinched expression on Ursula’s face. She and her brother Hans had been part of the city’s population during the siege. They’d managed to escape the slaughter committed by Tilly’s troops, but in the process of doing so Ursula had suffered the injury that had left her partly-crippled to this day.
“That’s one way of looking at it,” she said, a bit tight-lipped. “But there’s another way to look at it also, Gotthilf.” She broke off from her work for a moment and lifted her head. “A folk that worries over the fate of birds is perhaps less likely to slaughter people too, wouldn’t you think?”
Gotthilf made a face. “They’re no saints,” he protested. “I’ve learned a lot of their history from Byron. In the world they came from, they committed worse slaughters that we ever have.”
“Than we ever have yet,” Simon qualified. His expression was now very solemn. “We’re the same people that they are, just separated a bit by time. I know some of that up-time history myself. Pastor Gruber told me that the worst slaughter ever done was done right here in the Germanies. He said we Germans killed—would kill, however you say it right—millions of Jews. I didn’t even know there that many Jews in the whole world.”
“This conversation has become morbid,” complained Gotthilf. “How did we get from one dead bird to millions of dead Jews?”
“There is a connection,” insisted Ursula. She’d finished plucking the chicken and moved the basin aside. Cleverly, Gotthilf had designed it with wheels so she could continue to work without having to get her cane. She now reached for the cutting board that he’d also designed and made so it could be wheeled to and from her chair. He’d even built in a case to hold her cutting knives.
Ursula was quite in love with the man. But he could be obtuse, sometimes.
“And the connection is . . .”
“It’s not that a crime was committed,” she said. “Crimes happen. It’s that nothing was done about it. Not at the time, anyway. That’s the connection.”
“I agree with her,” Simon said stoutly. “You should do something about it, Gotthilf. That’s what policemen are for.”
Gotthilf looked at the chicken that Ursula was now spreading across the cutting board. In preparation for being disemboweled, mutilated . . .
He wondered what a great auk would taste like. In his exasperation, he was tempted to find out. The dead bird—excuse me, the murdered avian—was still in the police station, in a box filled with ice. Captain Reilly had wanted to just throw the thing out, of course, being a sensible man even if he was an up-timer. But there’d been enough of an outcry from the public—more precisely, that small but well-off and well-connected portion of the public that had financed the aviary to begin with—that the captain had decided to keep the carcass on ice for a while. Not because he expected he’d do anything about it, but simply so he could claim he might.
Fortunately, Ursula was an even-tempered woman. After drawing out a knife from the case, she turned her head and gave her betrothed a smile. It was a sweet smile, in a slightly sarcastic sort of way. “Since the horror of the deed itself doesn’t move you, Gotthilf, you might want to consider the matter from a practical standpoint.”
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning that you’re always complaining that the police department doesn’t have enough money in the budget to afford a full-time medical examiner. Which you need in order to be able to promptly investigate and solve crimes—murders, especially—for which there are no witnesses and no evidence beyond the remains of the victims themselves.”
She went back to her work of “dressing” a chicken.
Gotthilf stared at her. His mouth was perhaps a bit ajar.
“You’ll get flies in there,” Simon warned.
* * *
“My dear, I’d like to introduce Sergeant Gotthilf Hoch, from the Magdeburg Polizei.” Count Ludwig Guenther gestured toward the short, stocky man who’d come into the salon behind him.
Countess Emelie placed a slip of paper in the book she was reading and set the book on the side table next to her chair.
“Please have a seat, Sergeant.” She nodded toward a chair across a low table from her. The piece of furniture was what up-timers persisted in calling a coffee table—rather to Emelie’s annoyance because she detested the beverage. If she wanted to savor acidity and bitterness, she could invite any one of several relatives and acquaintances over for a chat.
After the policeman took his seat, the countess cocked her head sideways a bit. “Aren’t you the one betrothed to the boxer’s sister? The one with the orphan. I’m sorry, I don’t recall their names.”
“Ursula Metzgerin. Yes. I am. The boy’s name is Simon Bayer.”
There seemed to be an air of approval in Emelie’s tone of voice, Ludwig-Guenther was relieved to note. The count had been afraid that his wife would prove hostile. At the moment, policemen generally ranked in her pantheon of virtue and rectitude somewhere on the same level as swindlers and considerably below fishwives.
“I heard the story from Lady Simpson.” She bestowed a smile on the sergeant. “She quite approves of you, it seems.”
“I’m pleased to hear that. Especially since it bears on the reason for my visit.”
He cleared his throat. “You are of course aware of the unfortunate events at the gala opening of the new zoo. The, ah . . .”
“Murder,” Emelie provided. Her smile was now a bit strained.
“Well . . .” Hoch seemed to come to a decision and squared his shoulders. “No, Your Ladyship,” he said firmly. “The killing of the great auk known as Freddy does not constitute ‘murder’ under the laws of the USE. Or the laws of any other nation that I know of.”
The countess’s brow was lowering. Stoutly, the sergeant pressed on. “Nonetheless, it was a crime and it should be solved and the culprit or culprits brought to justice.”
The brow paused in its fearsome lowering. “I distinctly recall your Captain Reilly telling me that there is no law against killing an animal in the USE.”
“Well, no, there isn’t. But there are laws—quite a few of them; some with severe penalties—governing the destruction of property. If you will detach yourself from your . . . ah . . .”
“‘Personal and emotional involvement’ is perhaps the phrase you are looking for,” the countess supplied. Her tone of voice seemed considerably older than her actual years of life. And the brow was starting to come down again.
Slowly, though. Count Ludwig Guenther still had hopes this might turn out well.
“Ah, yes,” said the sergeant. “Look at it for a moment from the standpoint of a magistrate. The death of a bird, in itself, is nothing to the law. But the death of a bird which cost a great deal of money to acquire for the zoo’s aviary and whose loss will undoubtedly cause further pecuniary losses from lowered paid attendance at the aviary . . . Well. That’s a different matter altogether. If there’s one thing a German magistrate understands perfectly well, it’s the loss of money.”
The countess’s brow began to rise and she leaned back in her chair, her expression now becoming pensive. “I . . . see. But then—why have you policemen been unwilling to investigate? Surely you don’t refuse to do anything about burglary or swindling?”
“No, we don’t. But this case, well, to be honest it caught us off-balance. Crimes against property don’t normally take the form of—of—”
“A poor harmless innocent bird being foully done to death in a cruel and vicious manner.”
“Ah. Yes. Usually it takes the form of thieving or perhaps arson.”
The sergeant raised his hand. “But there’s more to it, Your Ladyship. The other—and much bigger—problem is that we simply lack the resources we need to properly investigate the crime.”
Down came the brow. But slowly, slowly.
“How so? You investigate other crimes against property. You just said so yourself.”
“Yes, Your Ladyship. But with most crimes against property the motive is either greed or, in the case of vandalism, animosity against the owner. Usually it’s greed, at least in part. So we investigate by following the money. Who gains from the criminal act? More often than not—far more often than not—that question will lead you directly to the culprit.”
Hoch shrugged. “It’s not much different with acts of vandalism. People don’t usually destroy or deface someone else’s property unless they are gripped by strong anger, hatred, jealousy or resentment. Such powerful emotions usually leave plenty of traces. Footprints of sentiment, you might call them.”
He spread his hands. “Perhaps now you can see the problem we policemen face. No one seems to gain anything from the death of the bird Freddy. And while I suppose it could be an act of vandalism, who hates or resents the new zoo that much? No one that I can think of.”
The count decided he could risk a small intervention. “Me, neither. You, Emelie? Perhaps an enemy of Lady Simpson’s?”
He was pleased to see that the frown had completely left his wife’s face. Her expression was now simply one of puzzlement.
“No . . . no.” She smiled faintly. “Mind you, the dame of Magdeburg has plenty of enemies. You can start with the not-so-small horde of Freifrauen and Eminent Lutheran Ladies who resent Mary’s informal title of ‘Lady Simpson.’” She chuckled. “There being no such rank in the German nobility—but it doesn’t matter, because she gets more respect than most margravines do.”
She paused for a moment, thinking. “But . . . You have to understand the nature of the enmity and the sort of weapons and tactics it elicits. We enter a realm full of backbiting, gossip, calumny—oh, there’s enough malice there to float a barge—but I can’t imagine any of them slaughtering a bird. And for what? Yes, Mary was one of the chief fundraisers for the zoo, but it’s not as if the aviary is especially associated with her. If it’s associated with any prominent person in the capital, it’d be associated with me, since I volunteer to work there. But . . . but . . .”
Ludwig Guenther felt quite safe making another intervention. “How many bitter enemies could you have possibly made at your age? I won’t even mention your cordial disposition.”
His wife gave him a quick smile. But her attention was instantly back on the sergeant.
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “I really can’t see Freddy’s murder”—here she made a quick exasperated gesture—“or call it whatever you will, being an act of vandalism. But then . . .”
Hoch nodded. “You see our problem. There were no witnesses. There seems to be no motive. That means the only avenue we could follow would be a careful examination of the physical evidence. First and foremost, the carcass of the bird itself.”
“Yes. That makes sense. So why haven’t you done so?”
Count Ludwig Guenther thought Hoch’s ensuing sigh was overly theatrical. But, all in all, he was quite pleased with the sergeant’s performance.
“Because, Your Ladyship, the Magdeburg police force does not have a medical examiner on our staff. True, the city has a coroner’s office, but they are understaffed and we can only get their help on a few cases. We have asked for a medical examiner several times, but”—here he displayed an impressive frown of his own—“in their wisdom the city’s authorities have refused to provide funds for the post in our budget.”
But the frown that came now to the countess’s brow was a wonder! Truly splendid.
“Why ever not?”
“Because—insofar as we humble policemen can follow their exalted logic—it seems they don’t believe having a medical examiner will be of much assistance to the task of apprehending criminals and miscreants. One of the authorities involved went so far as to call it a frivolous request.”
Emelie came to her feet. Very energetically. “We’ll show them!” Just as vigorously, she rang the little bell on the side table. When the servant came into the room a few moments later, the countess said: “Never mind, Dorothea. I was going to have you send a message to Lady Simpson but I’ve decided just to walk over myself. It’s not that far and it’s a pleasant day.”
She was already heading for the entrance to their town house. “Come with me, Sergeant Hoch.”
The maid barely managed to get ahead of her and open the door. As he followed Emelie, Hoch gave the count a thankful look.
Ludwig Guenther nodded solemnly in response. This was going quite well. So far, anyway.
* * *
After the countess of Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt finished her tale of woe and wonder at the folly of officialdom, Mary Simpson nodded.
“I’m glad you brought this matter to me, Emelie. I think we can use it to solve two problems at the same time. The despicable act against poor Freddy and the recalcitrance of modern—I use the term very, very loosely—society when it comes to gender affairs.”
She looked up at Sergeant Hoch, who had remained standing while the countess explained the situation. Mrs. Simpson’s brow carried a rather formidable frown of its own.
“I trust the police department does not share in the sexism of so many members of what is laughingly called ‘proper society.’”
Hoch kept his face impassive while he tried to decipher the meaning of the term “sexism.” The word was English, not Amideutsch. But, by now, as was true of any speaker of Amideutsch, Gotthilf had gained considerable fluency in his understanding of the complex permutations of English.
So, within seconds, the meaning of the term seemed clear enough. Misogyny—what Germans would call Frauenhass or Weiberhass—elevated to a philosophical plane. So to speak.
But he didn’t see how the term applied in this context. Clearly, though, prudence was called for here. Not to mention adroitness.
“Ah . . .” Without thinking in time to stop himself, he scratched his head.
Mrs. Simpson snorted. “Baffled much? I swear, there are times I really miss my own century.”
She sat up straighter in her chair, as if delivering a lecture. “What I am referring to, Sergeant, is that I have a protégée—a splendid young woman from Halle by the name of Ilse Vogler—who recently completed her medical education at the University of Jena. Against considerable resistance and animosity on the part of some members of the faculty, I might add. Now she’s trying to find a job where she can use her newly-acquired skills. And—my, what a surprise!—she is encountering even more resistance and antagonism than she did at the university.”
Things were becoming clearer. Gotthilf felt a hollow sensation in his belly. He did not like the direction this seemed—
“You understand where I’m going with this, I’m sure,” said Mrs. Simpson. “I think it would be splendid if the police of our nation’s capital and premier city were to make a woman its medical examiner. An example to encourage the others, as a French general might say.”
The reference to French generals was meaningless to Gotthilf, but the rest was as clear as day.
“Ah . . .”
“If it’s the budget problem you’re concerned with . . .” Mrs. Simpson made a dismissive gesture. “You needn’t concern yourself with that. Within a day—well, better give me two—I can have enough funds to provide Ilse with a year’s salary. I am by no means the only prominent woman in this town who is displeased with the treatment Fräulein Vogler has received.”
“What a superb idea!” the countess of Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt exclaimed. “We could call it the Freddy Fund.”
Simpson nodded, but her gaze was still on Gotthilf. “Surely you don’t object, Sergeant Hoch? I assure you, Ilse got excellent marks at the university.”
There was nothing for it but to acquiesce. At least Captain Reilly and Byron Chieske probably wouldn’t make a fuss. Unless . . .
Gotthilf kept his expression bland and unreadable. Unless the two American police officers decided Mrs. Simpson’s proposal was an instance of that dreaded syndrome they called political correctness. A term whose heretofore murky meaning was becoming clearer to Gotthilf.
But all he said was: “By all means, let’s see what she can do.”
* * *
Ilse Vogler proved to be quite a formidable young woman. Thin to the point of being gaunt; intense; inquisitive blue eyes peering from behind thick glasses at everything that drew her interest.
It didn’t take her more than a few hours to solve the crime, after she began her examination of Freddy’s carcass. Generically, at any rate. The police would still have to place a specific name on the villain, but the nature of the crime—its motive; its aim; all of it—was now quite clear.
Less than an hour examining the bird. Half an hour or so traveling from the police station to the zoo. A little over an hour examining the scene of the crime in the aviary.
“The bird’s neck was broken further down than the ligature mark would indicate. See?” She pointed to details of the vertebra exposed by her scalpel. They meant nothing to Gotthilf.
“Ah . . .”
“Isn’t it obvious? First, the bird’s neck was broken. Then, the cord was tied around its neck and it was suspended where it was found.”
“You’re saying the bird was hung to disguise the real cause of its murd—ah, killing?”
“Precisely. Now take a look at this.” Vogler held up the bird’s feet. Looking closely—which he now realized he’d never done when the bird’s carcass was first brought to the attention of the police—he could see stains on the great auk’s talons and the webbing between them.
“Is that . . . ?”
“Yes, of course it’s blood. We will test it to be sure, but I think it’s obvious it must be human blood. No other birds were found injured—I asked already—and no other animals are allowed into the aviary. Then there’s this. Follow me.”
She moved over to a bench against one of the walls of the aviary. It was a nicely carved and decorated sitting bench, not a work surface. Gotthilf presumed it had been placed there to provide the patrons of the aviary with a place to sit and admire its feathered inhabitants.
“Look at this,” she said, pointing to more dark stains on the surface and legs of the bench. “Here also.” Now she indicated stains on the stone floor.
Her thin face was tight with aggravation. “The idiot cleaning staff obviously tried to remove the stains—you have to put a stop to that in the future, Sergeant Hoch! a crime scene must be inviolate until my examination is done—but blood is not so easy to remove.”
She straightened up. “As you can now see, everything is clear. The bird was not the victim of a murder, except incidentally. No, it was the murder weapon. Well . . . assault weapon, rather. I don’t think homicide was intended.”
Gotthilf was still trying to catch up with her. “In other words, you’re saying . . .”
“Oh, pfah! It’s obvious. Emelie—the countess—told us the young bird Freddy was of a friendly disposition, didn’t she? Always approaching people without fear or hesitation. So.”
She looked around the aviary. “Picture someone sitting here on the bench. The opening gala is well underway and refreshments have been served in the zoo’s central . . . whatever they call that thing. Square, plaza, whatever. Almost everyone has gathered there to eat and drink.”
Abruptly, she held up a cautionary finger. “But not all! Two people—perhaps there were more, but I see no evidence of it—have remained here in the aviary. They are quarreling over something. One of them becomes enraged. Sadly for Freddy, the incautious bird has waddled over. The enraged party seizes Freddy by the neck and uses the bird to bludgeon the object of its fury.”
She paused, her face growing momentarily pensive. “The great auk—he wasn’t quite full-grown—weighed a little under four kilos.”
Kilos was another term creeping into Amideutsch. Gotthilf translated the amount into familiar German weights. About as heavy as a grown cat.
“Easy to pick up, but not heavy enough to cause serious harm,” he said.
Vogler shrugged. “Not unless it was as hard as a hammer. But, no, you’re right. The bird’s claws obviously inflicted some wounds, but they would have been superficial. There’s not enough blood spilled here to have been life-threatening—but!”
Again, the abrupt cautionary finger came up. “There’s still quite a bit more blood here than you’d expect—except from head wounds.”
It was all finally coming into focus for Gotthilf. He was now getting excited, in his own phlegmatic way. “Yes. Yes. The sort of weapon a furious person might use to punish someone, or express great anger. But they didn’t intend to commit murder. Well, except on the bird, and that’s not legally murder. Then . . .”
He looked over to the post where the bird had been strung up by the neck and disemboweled. The aviary’s cleaning staff had removed the entrails and scoured away what they could, but there were still bloodstains evident in the vicinity.
Not spread far, though. The blood had pooled below the carcass rather than being splattered all about.
“The rest of the bird’s wounds came after it died,” he said.
“We call it ‘posthumous.’ Yes.” For the first time since they’d met, Vogler gave him an approving look.
Gotthilf looked back at the bench. “So, after the enraged party beats the other with the bird—killing Freddy in the process—the two of them conspire to disguise what really happened as a bizarre act of purposeless mayhem.”
“Exactly.”
The sergeant was now on familiar ground. “This was a domestic quarrel,” he said confidently.
Vogler nodded. “Yes, that’s what I think too. And with head wounds like that, he or she must have sought medical treatment afterward. They would have claimed it was an accident of some sort. You’ll have to interview the city’s doctors.”
“Won’t need to.” Gotthilf used his thumb to indicate the passageway that connected the aviary to the rest of the zoo. “That’s the only way out. Someone in the central—they call it the ‘gallery,’ I think—where the refreshments were being served must have noticed them leaving. One of them would have some sort of bandage on their face. I’ll find out who it was soon enough.”
He looked back at the new medical examiner. “Welcome to the Magdeburg police.”
It was the first time he’d seen Vogler smile. Her lips were so thin the smile reminded him of a snake examining a nearby rat.
Which was all to the good, so far as Sergeant Gotthilf Hoch was concerned. Magdeburg was full of rats, a goodly number of them two-legged.
* * *
When his investigation was over, Gotthilf decided it would be wise to give Mary Simpson a full (though private and informal) report.
When he was finished, she gave him a shrewd look. “I notice that you avoided any names.”
“It was part of the settlement that we would keep the matter from public display, Mrs. Simpson.”
His own smile probably had a serpentine flavor to it. “Though I admit it pleased me—Captain Reilly and Lieutenant Chieske also—that one of the perpetrators was the same official fellow who pronounced our request that a medical examiner be provided for in our budget to be ‘frivolous.’”
With her resources, if she chose to do so, Simpson could find out who that was. But, technically, Gotthilf had maintained the discretion agreed to in the final settlement.
Simpson leaned back in her chair, sipped from her cup of coffee, and shook her head. “A crime of passion, then. A wife infuriated by her husband’s infidelity.”
“Um. I wouldn’t call it a crime of ‘passion,’ exactly. Countess von Mans—ah, the lady in question—seems to have been infuriated over the large sums of money her husband was showering on his mistress rather than—ah—”
Simpson smiled. “Yes. Quite, as an old English friend of mine would have said. There are still ways I haven’t fully acculturated myself to the seventeenth century.”
She set down the cup. “I take it you’re pleased with Ilse Vogler.”
“Oh, yes. Byron is starting to positively dote on her. That was part of the settlement we made with the count and—the persons involved. We agreed to keep the matter private, since the person physically injured chose not to file charges and the institution which suffered a monetary loss from the bird’s death agreed to a settlement out of court. The aviary gets an annual stipend for the next twelve years and”—he couldn’t help but grin—“the police department gets a medical examiner’s salary paid for out of a special fund contributed by an anonymous donor. It’s a bit irregular but quite legal.”
Simpson chuckled. “I’m pretty sure I know who this unnamed count and countess were. Detestable people. And if I’m right, the countess must have protested loudly and bitterly before she finally succumbed to the inevitable.”
“Oh, yes. She issued what you might call a great auk.”