While the elevator car made its stately ascent, Charlotte tried hard to collect herself and focus her mind. Please let him be guilty! she prayed. If not of the murder, of something—something far more serious than programming his silver to block official phone calls. Beneath the silent prayer, however, was an uncomfortable feeling that she might be out of her depth. She was only what Lowenthal had called a legman, after all. She knew that Hal Watson wouldn’t like this new turn of events one little bit. Having an expert witness turn up in the flesh before he’d even been contacted by phone added yet another item to a growing list of things that simply didn’t make sense.
When the newcomer emerged from the elevator car Charlotte felt a curious sense of deja vu. He was by no means Michael Lowenthal’s twin—his hair was russet brown and flowing, his eyes were green, and his bodily frame was much more abundantly furnished with flesh—but he was exactly the same height, and he had something of the same air about him. Like Lowenthal, he was one of the most beautiful men—handsome would have been the wrong word—Charlotte had ever seen, and like Lowenthal, he was well aware of his beauty. He was wearing a green carnation in the lapel of his neatly tailored jet-black suitskin, whose color was a perfect match for his eyes.
Oscar Wilde bowed to Charlotte with deliberate grace and favored Michael Lowenthal with a slight nod of the head. Then he glanced up, briefly, at the place where a discreet eye would normally have been set in the wall to record the faces of everyone emerging from the lift. The eye in question was in the bag Charlotte was holding, along with all the others, but Wilde couldn’t know that.
Charlotte was puzzled by the glance. Public eyes and private bubblebugs were everywhere in a city like New York, and all city dwellers were entirely accustomed to living under observation; those who had grown up with the situation took it completely for granted. In some WG-unintegrated nationettes it still wasn’t common for all walls to have eyes and ears, but within the compass of the World Government everyone had long since learned to tolerate the ever-presence of the benevolent mechanical observers which guaranteed their safety. Most people ignored them, but Wilde obviously did not belong to the category of “most people.” Might his reflexive glance toward the eye be a tacit admission of guilt? Wilde smiled broadly—and Charlotte realized, belatedly, that she had jumped to the wrong conclusion. Wilde hadn’t glanced at the place where the eye should have been because he resented its assumed presence, but because he welcomed its attention. He had actually adjusted his stance as he moved out of the elevator so that he might better be observed, not merely by her and Lowenthal but by the cameras he supposed to be recording the encounter.
Posturing ape! Charlotte thought, remembering Gabriel King’s muttered aside.
“Mr. Wilde?” she said tentatively. “I’m Detective Sergeant Charlotte Holmes, UN Police Department. This is my, um, colleague, Michael Lowenthal.” “Please call me Oscar,” said the beautiful man. “What exactly has happened to poor Gabriel? Something nasty has happened, has it not? The orotund gentleman downstairs left me in no doubt of it, but would not tell me what it was.” “He’s dead,” Charlotte replied shortly. “I understand from Carnevon that you had an appointment with him. Will you tell me what the purpose of the appointment was to have been?” She winced at the unintentionally clumsy phrasing of the question.
“I’m afraid that I can’t,” Wilde told her smoothly. “The message summoning me here came as text only, with a supplementary fax. I received it about two hours ago. It was an invitation—although it was, I fear, couched more in the manner of a command. I suppose that it was sufficiently impolite to warrant disobethence, but sufficiently intriguing to be tempting. Dead, you say?” “That message wasn’t sent from this apartment,” Charlotte told him, ignoring his teasing prompt.
“Then you must trace it,” Wilde replied affably, “and discover where it did come from. If Gabriel was already dead when it was sent, it would be very interesting to know who sent it in his stead—and why.” Charlotte hesitated. She was not entirely certain what to say next but she wanted to say something lest Michael Lowenthal should decide to step into the breach. She was saved from the hazards of improvisation by Hal Watson, whose image reappeared on the screen by the apartment door.
“What’s going on, Charlotte?” he asked sharply.
Her heart sank. She felt as if she were at infants’ school and had been caught doing something naughty in the playground.
“Oscar Wilde arrived here a few moments ago,” she said. “He has an appointment to see Gabriel King. I’m just trying to find out—” “Of course,” Hal said, brusquely cutting her off. “Dr. Wilde?” Having been effectively instructed to surrender her position in front of the beltpack’s camera to Wilde, Charlotte reluctantly handed it over.
“I’m Hal Watson, Dr. Wilde,” Hal said politely. “I’ve been trying to contact you, but your silver refused to interrupt your journey. We need your services as an expert witness. I’m required to inform you that you will henceforth be acting under UN authority, bound by the duty to report honestly and fully on everything you may see, hear, or discover. Will you affirm that you accept that duty and all that is implied thereby?” That’s what I should have done! Charlotte thought, mortified by the error of omission.
“Of course,” said Wilde. “I shall be delighted to assist you in any way that I can, and I hereby affirm my willingness and intention to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Will that suffice?” “It will,” said Hal grimly. “Now, Dr. Wilde, I’m going to display a videotape on the screen. I’m sorry the picture quality is so poor, but time is of the essence. I want you to look at it carefully, and then I want you to tell me everything you know, or are able to deduce, about the contents of the tape.” Charlotte stood to one side, quietly fuming, as Wilde casually handed back her beltphone and took up his own instead, plugging it in beside hers. The tape began to run, beginning with a pan around the crime scene.
The reception room where Gabriel King had died was furnished in an unusually utilitarian manner; the gantzer’s tastes had obviously been rather Spartan.
Apart from the food delivery point, the room’s main feature was a particularly elaborate array of special-function telescreens. There were VE-mural screens on two of the walls, but they displayed plain shades of pastel blue. There was no decorative plant life integrated into either of the remaining walls, nor was there any kind of inert decoration within the room—except for the vase containing the golden flowers that King’s last visitor had given to him, which had been set on a glass-topped table in the center of a three-sided square formed by a sofa and two chairs.
On the sofa lay all that remained of the late Gabriel King. The “corpse” was no more than a skeleton, whose white bones were intricately entwined with gorgeous flowers.
The camera zoomed in on the strange garlands which dressed the reclining skeleton. The stems and leaves of the marvelous plant were green, but the petals of each bloom—which formed a hemispherical bell—were black. The waxy stigma at the center of each flower was dark red and was shaped into a decorated crux ansata.
Charlotte watched Oscar Wilde lean forward to inspect the structure and texture of the flowers as closely as the wallscreen permitted. The camera followed the rim of a corolla, then passed along a stem. The stem bore huge curved thorns, paler in color than the flesh from which they sprouted. Each thorn was tipped with red, as if it had drawn blood. There were other embellishments too—bracts of intricate design, like little lace handkerchiefs, arrayed beneath each flower head.