Chapter 3: The Automated Suspects

The estate's head of staff was a compact, precise man named Fenn who had served the Farquhar household for twenty years and who clearly found the suggestion that one of the automata might be a suspect offensive in a way he was too professional to express directly. "Inspector, they are machines," he said. "Machines that were alone with Mrs. Farquhar from eleven in the evening until she was found at seven the following morning," Crane replied. "The doors were locked from the inside. The windows were latched. The only other inhabitants of this room were mechanical." "The doors were locked from the inside," Fenn repeated, emphasizing the point Crane had already noted. "Yes. Which means either someone left through a passage I haven't yet found, or the mechanism that locked the door was operated after the fact, or —" he let the pause do its work — "something in this room has capabilities beyond what is publicly known." Fenn's expression shifted. Slightly. The particular shift of someone who knows more than they've said. Crane turned to the automated chess player — a figure in the image of an Ottoman sultan, seated at a board, one hand raised as if mid-game. He examined the base carefully. The modifications were subtle and very skilled. A secondary mechanism beneath the primary one, its purpose not immediately obvious. "This," Crane said, "did not come from the manufacturer." "Mrs. Farquhar had her pieces... customized," Fenn said carefully. "By a specialist in the field." "What kind of customization?" Fenn hesitated for long enough to confirm that what he was about to say was the beginning, not the whole, of what he knew. "She was involved in correspondence with a collective of engineers," he said. "They were working on something she called the next step. She was very excited about it. In the months before her death, she became — less excited. More guarded." "And frightened?" "I would not have used that word while she was alive," Fenn said. "I would use it now."