The Médoc Peninsula features a gravelly soil, which the winter wind, coming off the Atlantic Ocean, flings into the swells of rolling lowlands. Salt and grit, then, imbue themselves into the vine. The summer sun cooks the salt and grit after long, soaking rains drench the soil and the vines. The vines while away the summer by sucking everything that might be considered a nutrient into itself, the sun, the wind, and the sucking clasping hands together in a common effort to cause pollens of every sort of weed to be infused into the grapes, which are trampled and pressed, dumped into great vats to be left to the ravages of yeast consuming the sugars, then stored in wooden barrels in musty basements.
The Continuation of The Adventures of Sigegard Ainsworth, a pastiche of Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot.
An excerpt:
“Our journey was slowed considerably by the thaws and storms of June. New grasses covered over many sinkholes in that vast, abandoned land, but by the grace of Sofia, we completed the trek in only a number of days.”
“In June!” Ivan protested. “You do test God himself!”
“Indeed, by many fervent prayers to Sofia and to the Blessed Virgin Mother, who guided our horses in their way.”
“In June,” Ivan repeated, staring at Fyodor. “And you are returned here in August.”
Fyodor bowed his head, then he continued. “We arrived in Stephen’s city Suceava and made our foreheads hard as flint to gain an audience with him. Andrey forthwith knelt before Stephen, raising his head only enough to be heard by the court, whereupon he declared, ‘Ivan, my lord, has commanded me to come to you, O Stephen, in the name of his sainted wife, to sue for a new treaty between our houses, and that we might at last complete the mission of God which was begun in his marriage to Constantinople. The Holy See has long desired to heal the schism which was brought about by Satan, and during Zoe Palaiologina’s life, becoming a Mother of Russia as Sofia was necessary, issue from Constantinople through which Orthodoxy and Rome might reincarnate. As her heavenly Lord brought a unity in his body through his death, so also is her death a unifying tragedy, if only you would acclaim Vasili as the true heir to Muscovy. Through him shall a bond against the enemies of Christ be born, a bulwark, as it were, linking Suceava to Kiev and to Moscow.’ He stopped his oration here.
“Stephen caught the glint of the pendant as it hung from the wrist of Andrey. Rising from his throne, he demanded it as the price to seal any negotiations. Andrey made gentle protestations, but acceded without much hesitation, to my great horror. ‘Only let it be thou only,’ Andrey declared, ‘who might touch this heirloom of Ivan’s empire.’ ‘Empire?’ Stephen cried, and he veritably spat. ‘I shall buy this empire with a single wagonload of horse manure.’ With that, he reached out his hand and touched the pendant.
The Continuation of The Adventures of Sigegard Ainsworth, a pastiche of Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot.
Chapter Four: In which the thief is revealed as a friend of Tsar Ivan, and the ruby reveals its power to heal.
An Excerpt
“With my eyes, I swear it,” said Fyodor. “Andrey Shemyaka appeared in the marketplace, and after making himself known, he made his way to the entrance to the convent, where sat an elderly widow with a hunched back. He produced a leather pouch. Before he unrolled its cover, he made the sign of the cross and kissed it three times, genuflecting before the image of the Blessed Virgin Mother. He began to weep. Indeed, Great Tsar, I saw him weep, as a man might who is grieving the loss of a son.”
“This I have seen,” Ivan said.
“He unrolled the leather pouch and pulled forth from it the ruby pendant. It was unmistakable. Its silver did shine. When he snapped it open, a flash of light burst forth. ‘Make haste!’ he cried. ‘Make haste to touch the pendant of Sofia!’ He held it out to the old widow, whose face did take an aura of wondrous light, and she did reach out, and she no longer stooped, but she stood, upright, her youth returning to her. A great shout went up from those who saw—including from my own mouth, O Tsar—and they hastened to bring their lame and their sick.
“Indeed, the widow uttered forth a prophecy. She said, ‘She is like our Blessed Virgin Mother! Saint Sofia, pray for us!’
“Before the light from the pendant faded—”
“It faded?” Simon the Metropolitan asked. He was out of breath, having been hurried by Ivan’s attendant.
The Continuation of The Adventures of Sigegard Ainsworth, a pastiche of Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot.
Chapter Three: In which the sacrilege of the desecration of Sofia’s grave is committed by a graverobber, a deacon standing secret guard rescues the pendant, and then is murdered in the abbey that very night.
An excerpt:
When it was reported to Simon that Ivan had set a watch, he nodded, but his ministers witnessed a twitch in his eyebrow, that they rose a bit in evidence of some minor alarm. He called for Pyotr, the chief minister, the man overseeing the guard. “Pyotr, my son,” Simon said, “The tsar has confirmed with the thieves of his realm that something valuable is buried with Sofia.”
“Indeed, your Eminence,” Pyotr replied. “Ivan, my most trusted eye and arm, is resting even this afternoon that he might rise at dusk to take his station outside the convent.”
“Ah, yes, Ivan,” said Simon, and he leaned back into his chair. “He has the mind and heart of a tsar himself, along with the name, if only he had the family. At compline I will pray for him.”
Thus it was in the very darkest hour of the night, shaded darker by the turmoil of the heavens, as cloud fought cloud for supremacy over the land, sending their winds in blasts, like the volleys of warfare, bending trees and shrubbery, who rustled loudly in every kind of protest against this disturbance in what should have been the quiet hours of rest. The many watchers of the convent strained to discern one movement of shadow from another, to distinguish one sound of nature from a human footstep.
The Continuation of The Adventures of Sigegard Ainsworth, a pastiche of Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot.
Chapter Two: In which Ivan argues with Simon concerning the provenance of the ruby, but despite his protestation, his wife Sofia dies and the pendant asserts its power.
An Excerpt:
The ministers saw that Ivan’s eyes now burned red, and at first they saw the wrath of a king, but tears rimmed his eyes, and he began to weep. “O Father!” he said to Simon. “Father! My beloved priest! I have sinned and brought misfortune to my bride and to Russia! I would have my wife die a blessed death.”
The Metropolitan cocked his head. “A blessed death is granted to all Orthodox, my son. For your wife, at stake is beatification. Moreover, I assure you, not my will, but God’s will, granted to her on the basis of your penance.”
Ivan wept.
Simon continued, “Nevertheless, the same curse that you have wrought by putting your hand around the ruby of blood shall overcome all who do the same, but none shall be great, Ivan, as you are great. And Russia shall never be counted as a great nation.”
Ivan said, “I shall bury the pendant with her, and end this horrible curse.” The Metropolitan nodded, rose, and when Ivan rose, the two embraced, as brothers who have experienced the sting of battle together might embrace.
Sofia was stricken and lay dying on her bed, her face growing ever paler as the ruby drew her life away from her. Ivan never left her side. On the seventh day of April she succumbed. As Ivan wept over the corpse of the Mother in Russia, some witnesses claimed that her last words were to Ivan, a whisper that said, “I am being received into the bosom of Our Blessed Mother.” Other witnesses were adamant that her dying whispers could not be thus deciphered, but all agreed that she died peacefully, apart from much pain.
When she died, Ivan unclasped the pendant from around her neck and entrusted it to no one, preferring instead to tie it to his body next to his skin, beneath his undergarments. This he did in plain view of many witnesses.
The Continuation of The Adventures of Sigegard Ainsworth, a pastiche of Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot.
Chapter One: In which Ivan the Great gives his wife a gift to acknowledge her sanctity and, more importantly, her power.
An excerpt:
With those words, he presented her with the pendant, opened, cradled in both his hands, not yet fitted with chain, but already of such brilliant craft that jewelers all over Asia and Europe clamored to be chosen for such a menial task. With her hand upon his, and with her eyes within his, she said, “No, you shall be my lord, as you have been faithful husband to me since I was a child. The blood you shed you shed for me, a Mother in Russia, a mother of Russia, O merciful father, O Tsar of Moscow and all Russia.”
Those witnesses standing near the window of the throne room, which was situated to receive the rising sun at the Vernal Equinox, reported what they saw to the people. Even without a command from the Great Tsar, a feast was proclaimed, and that very day, many fine beasts were slain and prepared for banquets throughout Muscovy, and the next day news of the feast began to spread, until all the lands of the Great Tsar feasted in honor of the Bride of Asia, Mother Russia, Sofia, the wife of Ivan the Great.
Those witnesses standing near the door to the throne room, which was shaded by shutters, blinds, and guards, reported what they saw to the Offices of Simon the Metropolitan. When he heard the news, he sighed, saying, “This is a portent that more heresies shall be born of this age. Error shall creep into the hearts of the people. Satan himself is responsible for the finding of this blood ruby, a token given to the Tatar chiefs in exchange for the burning, raping, and murder of countless Orthodox martyrs. Now this ‘Mother of Russia’ wears it with pride. What a foolish thing Ivan Vasilyevich has done!” He grew silent for a moment. His ministers stood, quavering, and shuffling away from him, yet they said they saw his face radiate a light brighter than that cast by the lamps. He spoke again: “The life of Sofia is even now drawn into the ruby. Men shall grasp the pendant and thereby accomplish great deeds, but they shall never be great.”
A mystery serial presented as a contemporary homage to Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot.
Chapter Ten: In which we make our narrow escape from our prospective murderers.
An excerpt:
“Do you have your pistol, my dear John?” he asked, looking at me. I patted my right pocket. “Good man,” he said.
I objected. “It is illegal in the State of New York to act offensively with a firearm. You must be cornered; otherwise, a jury will convict you of manslaughter for not attempting to escape mortal danger—or even murder. A jury will convict you of murder!”
“Listen to me,” he said. “This is dangerous business. I don’t want any bodies lying around, either. It attracts unnecessary attention. It’s one thing to have friends, but it’s another thing to explain corpses to those friends when the media smells fresh blood.” I stared at him. “Listen to me,” he said again. “It’s the French. The French! Oh, if only I had a better understanding of what was happening!”
“The French killed Mrs. Ciminelli?”
“No! The Russians!”
“The Russians? What? Why the French? What are you talking about?”
“No time!” he said. “Look alive with that pistol!”
I pulled out my .380 and prepared myself. I realized I’d never practiced firing a pistol at a moving target from a moving vehicle. “This is probably illegal,” I muttered.
A mystery serial presented as a contemporary homage to Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot.
Chapter Nine: In which we reason our way through our shock, finding truth in fiction, and also finding a sinister self-evident truth about the murderers of Mrs. Ciminelli.
An excerpt:
“Liars and thieves,” Sige said. “And now murderers. That world is at once very true and also pure fiction. I wonder if there’s anything in that aesthetic which might be considered true: murderers born of lies and thievery. Would it be that such careful thieves created a logic within their lies which is not true, and yielded murder, such that Mrs. Ciminelli is no longer a real-life character? She now descends into the Hades of fiction, doesn’t she? A paragraph in the newspaper, and, even worse, a web page on a poorly-run funeral home website. She is the quickly fading figment of a few imaginations; whereas Sherlock Holmes is reinvigorated more than a century after his creator has set him free.”
“They’ve erred, you said,” I said.
“They have erred,” he replied. “She lied to them somehow, whether directly or by employing me—she signaled lies to them, and one of them—wait a second…” He paused and stared at me.
“What?”
He continued staring, but his eyes became blank, looking inward.
“You’re creeping me out,” I said, after a time.
“I’m such an idiot,” he said. “I’ve erred. They’ve erred and I’ve erred. Fortunately, I’ve erred in the realm of truth. They’ve erred in the realm of lies, and that’s just the break we were looking for.”
“It is?”
“Don’t you see it, John? Thievery and lies: it is their mode, how they exist—no, no, that will never do. It is their mode in that the world encounters them blinking on and off in their rhythm of lies. Does that make sense? If I, a denizen of the realm of truth, having so engaged and encountered them, immediately made them out as liars, clever as they were, wouldn’t it follow that other liars would discover them?”
“Yes,” Sige said, “She was scheduled for termination; that was the secondary reason for the weekly visits to the clinic: first, to get her away from her home so that they could examine it or dig on it or otherwise manipulate it or something within her view; second, to kill her when they were ready—I wasn’t going to allow it, of course. I never intended her to die—I never intended her to die, I mean.”
My blood ran cold, and I told him so.
He remarked, “This is the sort of thing into which I have involved myself. My usefulness to law enforcement is mainly a sort of preventive care, which, as you know, the Constitution forbids, and science fiction examines—”
I interrupted, “And anime.”
“Yes, and anime—you’re an anime connoisseur? Never mind that now. I have in this case failed my client, obviously, and law enforcement. Now my job, instead of intersecting with the police, now runs parallel to it, which I do not favor, but…” and he paused, searching for the word. “But circumstances now dictate.” He rubbed his forehead with the butt of the magnifying glass.
“Do you know why she was murdered?” I asked.
“Not a clue. That’s why I requested these maps. I am convinced it has something to do with what she possessed—and it seems like such a rushed error. They have committed an error of judgment, even after such careful planning. Why did they rush? Yet she texted me, revealing me to them.” He mused further, silently. “Throw me an apple, would you?” he asked. I did so. He continued, saying, “Yes, and revealing you to them, by extension. In a way, they have acted cleverly. But they are not from here, I do not think.”
I replied, “What makes you think that?”
[1] I still laugh when I recall the look on your face, as morbid as it may seem for me to do so. –SA.
A mystery serial presented as a contemporary homage to Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot.
Chapter Seven: In which I encounter Johnny Law and we thereby learn that Sige has a formal relationship with state law enforcement.
An excerpt:
In a lovely baritone, and full of the plenipotentiary authority of the law itself, he intoned a few introductory passages, according to form, looked over my paperwork, then asked ineluctably, “Do you know why I’ve pulled you over?”
“Drinking and driving?” I proffered.
“What? No, I pulled you over for failing to signal,” he replied. His flashlight came into the car, and in a moment he had discovered the open case of Canadians and the empty bottle on the floorboard. A moment later he discovered that I was barefoot. “Wait here,” he said. He returned to his car while I waited according to his command.
The temptation to drink another beer began to take possession of me. I couldn’t believe my own will. I reached for the open case, felt for the next available bottle, and began to pull it out. “What’s wrong with you?” I said to myself. “What is wrong with you?”
The trooper took his time getting back to me, which made the urge to pound another beer all the more…urgent, but I managed to suppress that which I did not want to do. Another police car arrived, parking in front of me. The first trooper then approached my car, saying, “You drank that beer coming out of the parking lot just now, right?”
“Yessir, I did.”
He followed up. “You know that’s illegal in the state of New York, right?”
“Yessir, I do.”
His flashlight re-entered the car. “You’re not wearing socks and shoes.”
“I’m in training, sir,” I blurted out.
“In training?”
“Yessir.”
“In training for what?”
I hesitated. I didn’t know how to answer that question, and I realized I wouldn’t know how to answer that question if I were being asked without being under the flashlight of the law.
A mystery serial presented as a contemporary homage to Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot.
Chapter Six: in which Sige makes practical the case of ethics versus morals, causing a bit of a personal crisis.
An excerpt:
He finished my sentence nearly as I was formulating it, saying, “—to formulate a network of laws within a society in order to preserve the greater good. Indeed. If we don’t have laws like that, then truly dangerous drunks will murder with impunity, yes, yes. But I’m asking about you: where is your heart in the affair? In doing good or in doing right?”
The question had never been posed to me so directly, even though in this case it was something of a non-sequitur to the occasion. I suppose I had heard it as a question establishing a philosophical framework or in some random preacher’s homily, but no one had ever asked me personally whether I could put together the will to distinguish good from right; and knowing what the interlocutor meant, too. My life had been a series of exams and tests, especially lately, and the ones I had passed were the ones I could get right without much in the way of moral expenditure, the energy of wondering just what made those compliance questions on the securities exams a question of good versus evil in contradistinction to legal versus illegal. Ethics. Ethics overlapping what we all know is the right thing to do. Ethics overlaid on what we all know is the good thing to do. Since I didn’t know how to answer, I said as much, “I don’t know.”
John David Duke Jr 