Читать онлайн «Murder at the Kinnen Hotel»

Adamat trudged through the slush and snow of the streets and onto the shoveled walkway that led up to the home of the Viscount Brezé. The four-story townhome in the Samalian district was surrounded by a ten-foot wrought iron fence, the tiny yard blanketed in snow.

Half a dozen constables swarmed the street in front of the townhome, and there were probably twice that number inside. Two large police wagons were parked in the street, creating a blockage that only encouraged the growing crowd of onlookers.

Subtlety, Adamat reflected, was not a quality of the Adopest police of the First Precinct.

His old precinct would never have been so sloppy. He’d have to mention it to the captain. A word to the drivers, instructing them to park out of traffic, was all it would take. He stepped inside and removed his overcoat and hat, shaking off the melted snow before handing them to the butler.

“Who are you?” the butler asked, more than a little hostile. “No one else is allowed. Everyone is already tramping in and out and the lady of the house-”

“My name,” Adamat cut him off, “is Special Detective Constable Adamat. I’m here at the bequest of the captain of the precinct. Kindly point me to the crime scene. ”

The butler’s mouth snapped shut and formed into a hard line. He took Adamat’s hat and cane and pointed down the hall. “The dining room.

Adamat cursed himself for a fool as he proceeded onward. He should have let the butler finish his sentence. The lady of the house was in a rage? Grieving? Ambivalent? It would have given him more information to go on, even if only to give him the slightest sense of the politics of the household. And politics there would be. For every noble that plays his or her games in the greater arena of Adran politics, there was an entire household where similar games played out every day on a smaller scale.

Sometimes, as was the case this morning, they led to murder.

He blamed his short temper on the weather and slipped between two constables gawking at the dining room entrance, pausing just inside to slip the handkerchief out of his pocket and hold it over his nose.

He’d seen worse crime scenes in his young career with the Adopest police, but not many.

Viscount Brezé had been a tall, slender man in his thirties, prematurely bald with a mustache grown long to cover a protruding upper lip. He lay near the cold fireplace, sprawled facedown in a dark red splotch on the rug. Blood, brain, and bits of his skull were scattered across half the dining room.

Adamat examined the scene, casting the entire thing to memory in the blink of an eye using his Knack-a minor sorcery that allowed him to remember absolutely everything-and wondered how any police investigator got on without such a tool.

He noted the bloody frying pan discarded in the corner and the gore-slick candlestick next to the body.

A middle-aged man with a narrow waist and square shoulders knelt over the viscount’s body. Like Adamat, he wore a brown suit jacket and matching vest and pants instead of the black and silver of the Adopest police, but his presence and the scrutiny with which he examined the body was enough to surmise his identity.