The observatory librarian finally folded his handkerchief and stuffed it back into his pocket. Haidée slid a glance at the flickering flames in the hearth. She was about to take out the round card in her pocket when there was a loud pounding at the library door. She started up in her seat at the sudden noise and looked back at the door.
“Come in!” said Davenport. He shot Haidée a sympathetic glance. “Interruptions are usually few and far between. Hopefully, whoever it is, he is only looking for a book.”
The door itself was flung inward with such force that it nearly hit the nearby bookshelf. Haidée thought it was a wonder that the door wasn’t wrenched off its hinges.
D’Aubigne strolled inside and went straight to Davenport’s desk, ignoring Haidée. He splayed his hands on the table top and leaned toward the librarian to look him in the eye. D’Aubigne was flushed, and with the combination of his mused blond hair, he looked like the human equivalent of a sluttering flame. He raised one arm and pointed behind him to the man who sauntered in after him.
“He is wrong.” D’Aubigne declared. “And I want you to prove it!”
Davenport didn’t seem particularly perturbed by the astronomer’s demand. He simply looked behind him to find one of the older astronomers, Edouard Garnier, standing with his hands in his pockets. Davenport raised an inquiring eyebrow. Garnier simply shrugged.
“Monsieur Garnier.” She glance back at D’Aubigne who had now fixed his angry gaze on her. “Monsieur D’Aubigne.”
“What are you doing here?” D’Aubigne said rudely. But when she didn’t immediately reply, he plowed onward. “Never mind. You wouldn’t understand anyway.” He turned his head to glare at Garnier. “Everard suggested that I ask the esteemed Garnier on the problems I am currently having on my project. But his advice is complete rubbish, I say. I am trying to determine the precise date and location of the last eclipse. He says that the last eclipse occurred over Africa. That is completely absurd because I distinctly remember receiving a letter from an acquaintance of mine who was visiting the Black Sea a few months ago that he observed a solar eclipse there. And I trust my friend.”
“Perhaps your friend only saw a partial eclipse,” Garnier replied. “Or someone else gave him some erroneous information.”
“I don’t believe it. My friend is an intellectual. Of course he knows the difference between a full and partial eclipse.”
Davenport sat back in his chair and steepled his fingers. “Are you sure your friend specified what kind of eclipse he saw? He wasn’t talking about a lunar one, was he?”
“No,” D’Aubigne said vehemently.
“The charts on moon phases and comet observations are along the far wall,” the librarian said. “I am sure that the information about eclipses are there as well.”
As D’Aubigne strolled toward the indicated shelf and began pulling off books, Garnier crossed his arms and headed toward the hearth to briefly look at the flames. Haidée was quite startled to find that Garnier looked quite short from even from her vantage point from her chair. Standing, the poker by the fireplace hardly reached her own knee. But on Garnier, it reached his hip.
Garnier then turned from the hearth and eyed D’Aubigne with a strange expression in his eyes. Involuntarily, Haidée’s fingers clutched at the fabric of her dress near the pocket holding the round card she had found. She suddenly had the disconcerting notion that short men weren’t as benign as they usually appeared.
D’Aubigne exclaimed in triumph as he found the relevant passages. Instead of looking crestfallen, Garnier’s lip twitched upward. “I suppose you take your victories however you can get them, right D’Aubigne?”
The blond haired astronomer frowned. “What the hell are you talking about, Garnier? You’re getting as senile as Roland.”
“What I mean is, now that Legard is gone, you feel free to pick on everyone else. Such an advantage to you, is it not?”
“I’m glad that blowhard is dead—and you are too. But if you’re trying to imply what I think you’re implying…”
“I’m not implying anything, my friend.” Garnier grinned, showing teeth.
D’Aubigne did not appear amused. “You’re just a bad sport because you were wrong and I was right.” He stuffed the book back on the shelf. “And you’re in a bad mood because Ninon failed to show up to help you calibrate your instruments.”
“Oh ho! Look who’s talking about moods,” Garnier mocked. “Yours are more changeable that that of the sea.”
When the astronomers left, Haidée let out a breath that she didn’t know she was holding in. “Are those two always at each other’s throats?”
Davenport shook his head. “All of them snipe at each other like petty old women all the time. Although I must admit that that display seemed particularly pronounced. Of course, now that there is one less of them, I suppose they feel it is their duty to heap even more scorn upon their fellows.”
The marten on her shoulder finally raised its head and chirped sleepily. Apparently, it had slept through all the human ruckus and was only now active. It slithered off of Haidée’s shoulder and padded about the room, examining the furniture. Haidée left the animal to its own devices. She had more important questions to attend to.
“About Monsieur Legard.” She cleared her throat nervously when Davenport’s eyes sharpened at the name of the recently deceased. “Did he elicit more than his share of ill will here?”
“He was certainly an arrogant bastard, if you pardon my language, Mademoiselle,” the librarian replied. “I didn’t like him very much because he looked down on my profession. The other astronomers had even less cause to like him since they had to work with him. Also he had a tendency to try to get the others to do the work for him and then claim the credit.
“Like Monsieur D’Aubigne,” she murmured.
“Exactly.”
“Do you think D’Aubgine may have more cause to see Legard dead?” she inquired. “Monsieur Roland seems to think so.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t be surprised if D’Aubigne did, if he had the opportunity. He was the most recently wounded by Legard. But there are others who carry older grudges—and if they had still kept them, they would have adequate motive as well.”
“The magistrate says that he is looking into Legard’s death, but so far I haven’t seen him doing anything—even coming for a visit at the observatory to look at the scene of death.”
“Hm.” Davenport laced his fingers over his belly and seemed to contemplate the ceiling. “That is unusual. Galliard takes his job seriously. The only possibility I can think of that’s prevently him from paying us a visit is that Everard told him not to come. He looks up to the head astronomer and takes his word with practically everything.”
“Everard doesn’t want an investigation? I had th impression that the head astronomer was the only one who remotely liked Legard. He called him a scientist in his prime. Surely he would want his death to be looked into.”
“Ah, Everard.” The librarian seemed momentarily amused. “He is a strange one. Sometimes he acts like a complete scatterbrain and at other times he is as sharp as glass. I find him difficult to read—like murky water. He could well be nursing a grudge against Legard that we don’t know about. He’s just better at hiding it, if that were true.”
“That doesn’t give me much confidence,” said Haidée. “That means everyone could be suspected for Legard’s death. Even you.”
He nodded. “Just so. But if everyone who knew him disliked him, why try to find the murderer? It would be a pointless exercise.”
“I don’t believe anyone deserves to be murdered because people hated him or even if he did things people didn’t like,” she replied. “It isn’t just.”
Davenport smiled then. “You sound like my little sister. She was terribly keen on justice during the Revolution. Unfortunately, that kind of mouthiness got her killed.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You don’t need to apologize for anything. You believe what you like. But I caution you to be careful of your words. The next person you may talk to might not be an old harmless librarian.”
This time, Haidée managed to slip the round card from her pocket and put it on his desk. “This is the reason I wanted to talk to you. Do you know what this is?”
Davenport picked it up and peered at it through his spectacles. A slight frown appeared between his brows. “Where did you get this?”
“I found it here and there,” she said vaguely. “Is it dangerous?”
“No, it isn’t dangerous. And I don’t think it was dangerous when it was in use either.”
“In use? What is it used for? It just looks like a card to me. With certain strange symbols.”
“Have you been to the observatory’s star gazing chamber on the third floor?”
She shook her head.
“There are a collection of telescopes there,” he explained. “By themselves, they are very ordinary telescopes. One could use them but you can see only so far—say to the moons of Mars.”
“All right. But what does this have to do with it?”
“To see further, you need to activate this,” the librarian tapped the round card on his desk. “And put it in a special slot in the telescope that will help enhance the lens.”
“Do you mean those scientific instruments are powered by aether? Magic?” said Haidée, part way incredulous. “Scientists always say they prided themselves on being observers of nature without enhancements.”
“That’s what they all say. But to be honest, most intellectuals are also trained, partly, as sorcerers. This is to help work their own tools of the trade, of course. They would never use any of their powers to actually manipulate nature.”
“But they could.”
“Yes, they could.”
Haidée had the sudden urge to escape. If they knew about those certain skills, she was almost positive they would discover her if she was to be careless. And women with powers weren’t welcomed. At the very least, they could throw her out. At the most, they could do to her as what was done to witches several hundred years ago. When people confronted something that they feared, they rarely behaved in a civilized manner.
Finally, she asked, “Who is Nicolas Bisset? The name on the other side of the card?”
“Oh, he used to be an astronomer here,” Davenport said easily. “He had more senority than Everard, in fact, when he had been alive.”
Her ears pricked up. “Had been alive?”
“Bisset died about a year ago, of old age,” said the librarian. “He was, believe it or not, one hundred and two. Bisset actually came here first before this place was converted from a monastery to an observatory. He was the one who invented the aether enhanced telescope, you know.”