Chapter 24
Hilus Plormot Sits Back and Thinks
It was quiet for over a quarter of an hour before anyone spoke.
Mr. Douqh and Dr. Suric did their best to try to consider the case afresh, having now reviewed the evidence available to them. They attempted to sort out and disentangle the mess of conflicting particulars and find a fitting solution.
Douqh's train of thought largely ran thusly:
'How are we to sit and think our way out of this? I know Hilus has done it many times before, but those times, he presumably had the ability to verify alibis and identities and the like, giving him a better idea of who lied and so forth.
'He obviously thinks that small human girl is mixed up in all this. I cannot help but think how unlikely that is. I cannot imagine her stabbing a man, no matter how hateful, that many times. If there is one thing about her I am sure of, it is that she would be consistent about it. She would have overdosed him on something or other and been done with it.
'It seems the orion man, Zraevetsol couldn't have done it. I deeply wanted it to be him, but he's really grown on me, I must say. I don't picture him doing it, either.
'It also sounds as though the big human, Stills, couldn't have done it. Seems the steward is sure about it. Pity, because I could definitely see him doing it, no matter how nice he seems.
'I wonder when we'll finally be done with all this. A rescue vessel from Pordd must be on its way to find us by now. They're so slow about it in this region… its so frustrating sometimes. And I don't even want to think about how the Pordd authorities will handle all this if we don't have it solved. They'll make a grand affair out of all of this. They'll want to talk to the news, they'll leak sordid details to the press and bookings aboard the Orion Express will plummet. Agate Incorporated will never hear the end of it..."
From there, Douqh's thoughts meandered through the old stomping ground of whether the big green orion man Zraevetsol's nature had fooled him, and whether it could have been the formidable Stills. His two favorite culprits to the crime.
Dr. Suric leaned back and let his mind wander. The Daquvah's thoughts were decidedly unhelpful for the case:
'He's such a strange little man. What sort of name is Hilus Plorot, anyway? I can't figure out whether he's a genius or a crank. Will he solve this case? Even if he doesn't, can it be solved at this point? It's impossible, I can see no way around it. It's all to confusing. Everyone seems to be lying, but even then that doesn't help us.
'If they're all lying, it's just as confusing as if they're all telling the truth.
'Those wounds baffle me. I don't understand. If he'd had the normal phase pistol burns, we might be able to take samples and determine the specific frequencies and hopefully narrow it down to a certain model, if not a specific pistol. But a knife? What is this, the fifty-fourth century? Such a backwards place, Earth. The entire Sol system is a basket case just waiting to be quarantined and studied...'
From there, Dr. Suric's thoughts ran into other, distracted matters.
Hilus Plormot sat very still.
One might have thought he was asleep.
Then, after perhaps fifteen or twenty minutes of stillness, his brows began to slowly furrow and raise and lower. He began to murmur:
"But, why not? After all, why not? And if so, well then it would explain so much. Everything."
His eyes opened.
"I have thought. And you, my friends?"
Both men started, having lost themselves in their own internal monologues. They both took on expressions of guilty embarrassment, and admitted having come to no conclusion. Plormot nodded amiably at their failure to produce a sound result.
"Then, I shall go ahead and begin. I have reviewed the facts in my mind, and I shall share just a couple of my thoughts with you.
"I have found an explanation – it is still shrouded in uncertainty, mind you – but it is an explanation that would account for all the facts as we know them. It is a fantastic explanation, and I cannot be sure that it is correct or true. To find out for sure, I will need to undertake certain tests.
"I would like to first mention certain points which stick out to me as important:
"Mr. Douqh mentioned to me earlier, the unique setting we find ourselves in. He commented on the fact that we are surrounded by people of all classes, of all ages, of all nationalities. This is something brought about by travel, yes, but this season, it is quite rare. This vessel was booked solid, remember. But then we must remember the passenger, the Mr. Harris, who failed to turn up in time.
"Then there are some other points of issue. The whereabouts of Captain Hernandez's mother, Lillian Aldana, the identity and whereabouts of the Archer's friend who placed his daughter with them. Does he live? Of course, the whereabouts of the semi-adopted daughter herself, the operational methods of Zraevetsol, the suggestion by Qozz that Evered himself destroyed the data chip we found." He finished off his list and looked to his friends. "Do they suggest anything to you, these issues?"
"Nothing to me," Douqh said flatly.
"Nor me," said the Daquvah doctor.
"I will be accused, perhaps, of jumping to conclusions," Plormot said primly. "But, I am inclined to suspect Countess Kyrth of being more than meets the eye in this matter."
"What?" Douqh burst out. "Never mind the fact that it can't be her – she is a diplomat's wife! She is Andorian nobility! She is far to young to be involved – It couldn't be her! She takes sedatives in the void. You yourself found them!"
Plormot politely left silent the observation that Douqh was decidedly biased in the matter, due to his interest in the Orion Express's well-being.
"Let's look at it from a different angle, shall we? How was this murder intended to appear to everybody? Do not forget that the phal has upset all of the murderer's original plans. Let us imagine, for a moment, that there is no phal, that the ship proceeded on it's normal course. What would have happened?"
A beat while the two companions waited for the answer to be given to them.
"The murder would have been discovered, likely around the same time, but by then the Orion would have reached, say, Phixulis. Certainly, the Orion Express would have been very close to Federate space. Much of the same evidence would have been given to the Phixulian police, many of whom are educated and practice the same methods as in Federate territories. The threatening letters would have been produced by Mr. Qozz, Zraevetsol would have told his story, Mrs. Valy'r would have been just as eager to tell how a man passed through her compartment.
"I imagine the only one or two things would have been different. The man would have passed through Mrs. Valy'r's compartment just before one in the morning, and the Orion Express uniform would have been found stuffed into one of the hallway toilets."
"So, you mean?"
"I mean the murder was planned to look like an outside job. The assassin would have been assumed to have left the ship during it's stop at Pordd. Someone might have passed by a strange Agate Inc crew member in the hallway. The uniform would be left in a conspicuous place so as to clearly show just how the trick was done. No suspicion would have been attached to the passengers. That, my friends, was how this affair was intended to appear to the outside galaxy.
"But the phal that leaves the Orion dead in the void changes everything. Doubtless that is the reason the man remained in the compartment with the victim so long. He was waiting for the ship to arrive at Pordd. But at last he realized that the ship was not going to arrive. Different plans would have to be made. The murderer would now be known to still be aboard."
"So they used the escape pod as a blind – to explain the murderer's escape." Dr. Suric breathed.
"Yes. And here, we have another example of the cosmos undoing best-laid plans. With the pod released into space, authorities would have eventually found it, with the knife inside. But they would not have found it until after the Orion docked at Pordd and after the authorities launched to search for it, and presumably after some delay, owing to the pod swirling around in the phal. By then, they would assume the assassin made good their escape with the help of an accomplice who picked them up, knowing the knife would not trace back to them. But the escape pod was sent drifting right back to the Orion, thereby scuttling an otherwise sound backup plan."
"Yes, yes," Douqh hurried along. "I see all that. But where does Countess Kyrth come into this?"
"I'm getting there by a somewhat meandering route. To begin with, we must realize that the threatening letters were a blind. A red fish, as a human like Evered might say. They might as well have been copied and pasted over from a cheaply written crime novel. They are not real. They are simply intended for the police.
"What we must ask ourselves, then, is whether these letters fooled Evered? On the face of it, I think not. His instructions to Zraevetsol indicate he was aware of a private enemy whom he knew well enough to have a description. That is, if we accept Zraevetsol's story as true.
"But Evered certainly received one letter of a very different character. The letter that was largely destroyed, with mention of the Archer child. In case Evered had not yet realized sooner, this was to make absolutely certain he understood the purpose of the threats against his life. That letter, as evidenced by it's damage, was never intended to be found. The murderer's first care was to destroy it. This, then, was the second hitch in his plans. Data chips can be wiped, but the information on them can almost always be reconstructed unless one has ample time to conduct several consecutive wipes. Our murderer did not have this kind of time, so the only other way to erase it was by manual destruction, also a time consuming project."
"Why didn't they take it with them?" Dr. Suric asked.
"Because their goal was to be unattached to this crime. A murder is discovered, and a passenger is caught destroying a data chip? No, abandoning it was the smarter move, but for the drill. It's common for them to chatter and bounce if they're used on smooth surfaces, so it left just enough intact to be reconstructed. But this is all ancillary.
"That note being destroyed was a matter of premeditation. Who warns their victim ahead of time? No one who truly wants someone dead, let alone a professional, would ever do such a thing. And yet, threatening note aside, this murder bears signs of professionalism. This is a crime driven by revenge, then, because someone wanted the victim to feel the fear of being hunted. Who travels with a hand drill? It can only mean one thing. There must be on this ship, someone so intimately connected with the Archer family that the discovery of that note would immediately direct suspicion on that person.
"Now we come to the end of my wandering point. The sweet countess and her husband provided only her diplomatic passport as proof of her identity. What person would offer that one, and not their original, personal passport? Two possibilities come to my mind. One might take this action if they wish to intimidate us into refraining from asking difficult questions. I do not see Countess Kyrth acting in such a manner, but I do indeed see her husband taking it up without a second thought. The other possible reason for providing only the diplomatic passport is if they want to conceal some manner of their identity. To my mind, her husband might prefer the first reason, but I think the Countess wishes to only be known as Countess Kyrth."
"What else would she be known as? I don't follow you." Douqh wallowed in mental agony.
"Her given name is Talla." Plormot said simply.
A beat.
"So?"
"So, if my memory serves me, the Archers agreed to a friend's request to take custody of their daughter."
"So? That's common enough. Such arrangements are unfortunate, but if a child's parents are sent to war or work for the war effort, of course they'd be placed somewhere else far from regions of conflict."
"Yes, that much is true. But such an arrangement was downright revolutionary at the time. I remember it made informal headlines by word of mouth. A famous and decorated Andorian war hero leaving his only child in the care of 'pinkskins,' as he famously called humans? Such a thing had never been done. And yet, it was. Countess Kyrth would be about the right age."
"You don't mean…?"
"Yes, I believe Countess Kyrth was previously known as Talla Shran, the daughter of Thy'lek Shran, a commander of the Andorian Imperial Guard."
"But how can you be so sure? Talla is such a common name for girls in her generation. How can you accuse us of jumping to conclusions when you yourself use such circuitous and unsound logic?"
Plormot gave a casual shrug.
"Why else would she hide her personal passport from us? If she is the Talla Shran who lived with the Archers, and I believe she is, then that's motive enough right there. Her mother had died when she was a very young child, perhaps as a baby. Her father was to be sent to yet another war. With no other living family, he elects to send her to the people he trusts most to safeguard her – a pinkskin family, of all people. He goes and, if I remember correctly, he dies.
"Now little Talla's only family is with the Archers. Jonathan Archer is like a second father to her, Erika Hernandez is the only mother she has ever known, or at least remembers. Daisy is a little sister to her. She even has two women who fill the role of grandparents to her, the great Lillian Aldana, and the imposing Princess Nehn."
"Come now," Douqh broke in. "Surely… But this is fantastic. Princess Nehn playing grandmother to her?"
"Why not? The princess and the actress were famously close friends. I see no reason why the princess would not follow suit with the Archer and Hernandez family by doting on her. She is beautiful now, but can you imagine what she must have been like as a child? So innocent, and sweet, and far too young to be left an orphan in a strange place.
"But back to the present, now. She has hidden who she was prior to marrying Count Kyrth. Why? I should think the answer is simple. Because it would cast suspicion on her. Her entire family was destroyed by this one man. That is ample motive."
"But she says she hadn't married the Count yet when he was posted on Earth. Her diplomatic passport supports this. There's nothing to suggest she has ever been there."
"Nothing? She speaks broken English, she exaggerates a foreign accent and an alien appearance. But I posit to you that she was the adopted daughter of the Archers and that she later married Count Kyrth when he was posted to San Francisco."
"But Princess Nehn says she married and stayed near the Sol region, nowhere near here."
"Whose name she cannot remember! I ask you, is that really likely? Princess Nehn loved Lillian Aldana she was an aunt of sorts to Captain Hernandez, and would have therefore been an astutely present grandmother figure to the young Daisy Archer and their foster daughter! And once the Archer Affair transpires, she simply, what? She loses track of the last vestige of her friends? Absurd. No, the very idea is absurd.
"I think we can safely say that Princess Nehn was lying. She knew Talla was on the ship, she had seen her. She realized at once, as soon as she heard who Evered really was, that Talla would be suspected. And so, when we question as to the other daughter, she promptly lies. She's vague, she cannot remember but she thinks she married and has moved around in a general region far from here."
"This is fantastic, truly." Douqh lamented. To have a diplomat's wife pegged for such a sordid affair would do great damage to the Orion Express's reputation.
"There is more," Plormot continued. Douqh slumped further. "The Count himself gave part of it away. He noted that he and his wife played chess before going to bed. He said he thought it was from the Sol system – he couldn't very well lie which kind. We found the chess set in among his possessions. He mentioned his wife is teaching him. How might such a young Andorian girl struggle with English pronunciation and still play this game well enough to teach the rules to others?"
One of the attendants came through the door at the end and approached them. He addressed the dead-eyed Mr. Douqh.
"Shall we serve dinner sometime, sir? We've been holding it, but time gets on."
The three nodded and the attendant retreated and others entered to set the tables for dinner.