Pulp Fantasy Library: A Case of Identity

I've written about Randall Garrett's Lord Darcy series before, but I like these stories well enough that I think it worth doing another post on them, this time dedicated to "A Case of Identity," which first appeared in the September 1964 issue of Analog. As I explained in my previous post, the Lord Darcy stories are, among many other things, homages to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's tales of Sherlock Holmes, albeit homages set in an alternate universe where magic works along scientific lines and has thus resulted in a very alternate 20th century -- one where an Anglo-French Empire ruled by the Plantagenet dynasty is the world's greatest power. Admirers of Doyle's works will no doubt remember that "A Case of Identity" is also the name of a Holmes mystery published in 1891. Other than the title, the similarities between the two stories are superficial, relating to the fact that, in each case, the detective protagonist is attempting to determine the whereabouts of a missing person.

In Garrett's story, finding the missing person is of such importance that Lord Darcy, chief investigator to Richard the duke of Normandy, is summoned to a meeting in which he is introduced to the Bishop of Guernsey and Sark, the elder brother of the Marquis of Cherbourg. 

The four men settled themselves, and the Bishop began his story. "My brother the Marquis," he said after a deep breath, "is missing."

Lord Darcy raised an eyebrow. Normally, if one of His Majesty's Governors turned up missing, there would be a hue and cry from one end of the Empire to the other—from Duncansby Head in Scotland to the southernmost tip of Gascony—from the German border on the east to New England and New France, across the Atlantic. If my lord the Bishop of Guernsey and Sark wanted it kept quiet, then there was—there had better be!—a good reason.

Darcy's instincts are indeed correct, as he soon discovers.

 The Bishop fiddled a bit more with his pectoral cross, then plunged into his story. Three days before, on the tenth of January, the Bishop's sister-in-law, Elaine, Marquise de Cherbourg, had sent a servant by boat to St. Peter Port, Guernsey, the site of the Cathedral Church of the Diocese of Guernsey and Sark. The sealed message which he was handed informed My Lord Bishop that his brother the Marquis had been missing since the evening of the eighth. Contrary to his custom, My Lord Marquis had not notified My Lady Marquise of any intention to leave the castle. Indeed, he implied that he had intended to retire when he had finished with certain Government papers. No one had seen him since he entered his study. My lady of Cherbourg had not missed him until next morning, when she found that his bed had not been slept in.

It is those "Government papers" that make this mystery potentially problematic, as the missing Marquis had been working agents of the King-Emperor in tracking down a ring of Polish agents provocateurs operating within his domain. In the alternate universe of Lord Darcy's tales, Poland is the Anglo-French Empire's main rival for world supremacy, employing a large number of spies and hidden operatives to achieve by stealth what it cannot achieve through either diplomacy or outright conquest. A significant number of the Lord Darcy stories revolve around the Empire's rivalry with Poland, which gives them a "James Bond-ish" quality (or perhaps something similar to the World War II era Sherlock Holmes films like Sherlock Holmes and the Voice of Terror, where Holmes and Watson battle Nazis).

"A Case of Identity" is not the best Lord Darcy story by any means, but I have a fondness for it because Garrett makes good use of the scientific magic of his alternate universe to present -- and solve -- a conundrum. There are, however, large digressions into the history and politics of the setting, digressions that, in truth, bog the story down, but, speaking as someone who enjoys the world Garrett has created, I don't find them as tedious as some might. Ultimately, I think "A Case of Identity" is most interesting as an example of clever world building rather than of clever drama or characterization. I recommend it wholeheartedly on that basis alone; I hope others might be able to look past its flaws to appreciate the magnificent world Randall Garrett has created.

Pulp Fantasy Library: The Eyes Have It

I'm a big fan of alternate histories. What I expect of them is not necessarily plausibility so much as believability. By that I mean that I don't generally worry too much about how likely the point of divergence from the real world's history is so much as whether the author uses that point of divergence to create a world that I can accept as a logical consequence of it. It's a fine distinction, I'll grant, but I mention it because one of my favorite alternate histories is the one presented by Randall Garrett in his "Lord Darcy" series, whose point of departure is the existence of magic, which is used to save the life of Richard I, who returned to England and ruled justly, paving the way for a united Plantagenet empire reigning into the 1960s.

Professional historians would no doubt take much issue with Garrett's alternate timeline. I myself probably know enough about English history to be able to argue convincingly against the likelihood of this setting ever coming to pass, but I won't, because I think that's beside the point. For me anyway, a good alternate history is one that's so well realized that I want to believe in it, regardless of whether it holds up to academic scrutiny. And the alternate history Randall Garrett introduced to us in his 1964 short story, "The Eyes Have It," is one I want to believe in.

The story opens in the Castle D'Evreux in Normandy, where "Sir Pierre Morlaix, Chevalier of the Angevin Empire, Knight of the Golden Leopard, and secretary-in-private to ... the Count D'Evreux" came to his lord's private suite only to find Count Edouard

lay[ing] flat on his back, his arms spread wide, his eyes staring at the ceiling. He was still clad in his gold and scarlet evening clothes. But the great stain on the front of his coat was not the same shade of scarlet as the rest of the cloth, and the stain had a bullet hole in the center.

Sir Pierre looked at him without moving for a long moment. Then he stepped over, knelt, and touched one of the Count's hands with the back of his own. It was quite cool. He had been dead for hours.

"I knew someone would do you in sooner or later, my lord," said Sir Pierre, almost regretfully.

This murder comes to the attention of Richard, the Duke of Normandy, and brother to the "Most Serene Lord, John IV, by the Grace of God, King and Emperor of England, France, Scotland, and Ireland, New England, and New France, Defender of the Faith." In a letter to the King-Emperor, the Duke writes the following in reference to recognizing the murdered nobleman's wife, Alice, as his legal heir:

"Dear John, May I suggest you hold up on this for a while? Edouard was a lecher and a slob, and I have no doubt he got everything he deserved, but we have no notion who killed him. For any evidence I have to the contrary, it might have been Alice who pulled the trigger. I will send you full particulars as soon as I have them. With much love, Your brother and servant, Richard."

To get to the bottom of this mystery, Duke Richard sends along his Chief Criminal Investigator, Lord Darcy, and his assistant, Master Sean O Lochlainn, who is a "forensic sorcerer," which is to say, a magician skilled in using his art to uncover information useful in criminal investigations. As central a character as Darcy is to both this short story and those that follow in the series, magic itself plays as important a role as Darcy, though not quite in the way one might expect.

Isaac Asimov famously wrote his 1954 novel, The Caves of Steel, as a refutation of John W. Campbell's belief that one could not write a science fictional mystery, since SF authors can easily invent new "facts" based on future science or technology that the reader could not anticipate. A science fiction mystery can thus "cheat" in a way that contemporary stories could not. Asimov disagreed and I can't help but wonder if Randall Garrett didn't similarly disagree regarding magic. Like Asimov's future world, Garrett's alternate historical magic has laws and strictly abides by them. Magic has limitations as well. Its study and practice is akin to a science and this makes it possible, once one understands it, to see how and when it might be used in the commission -- or discovery -- of a crime.

Lord Darcy himself has no magical ability. Instead, he possesses a keen mind and an eye for observing small details others, even magicians, overlook. His magical assistant is useful to his investigation in the same way that a crime scene investigator or medical examiner might be in the real world. Master O Lochlainn's sorcery can uncover clues certainly, but it does not obviate the need for deduction. Indeed, the fundamentals of investigation remain the same in Lord Darcy's alternate 1960s as they do in our own, which is, I think, the greatest virtue of this story and its successors: despite the presence of magic, they present "real" mysteries that can be solved by the reader. Garrett plays these mysteries straight -- the magic and the alternate history are just set dressing for some cleverly done detective stories. If you've never had the chance to read a Lord Darcy story, do yourself a favor and seek one out. You won't regret it.