Chapter 33: He was sobbing (2)

Kerrass nodded and handed over a waterskin and I drank several strong swallows before I realised what I was drinking.

“Peach schnapps?”

“Yeah, I bought it off the barman as it seemed unfair that we had chased all his custom away. He refused the money but I imagine his wife will make him see sense in the morning.”

I offered him the bag back but he refused.

“You finish it. Drink as much as you can anyway and save the rest. You wanna talk about it?”

“What's to talk about?” I replied quickly.

Kerrass thought about this for a moment. “Plenty I, thought.”

“You're not wrong. Did you know what story he was going to tell us when we stopped there?”

“No. I knew the name, the place and the date but I didn't know what had happened. Then you always ask the barman first as they are the gossips of the world.”

“How did you find out about her?”

Kerrass looked at me for a moment. I thought he was considering something, but then he nodded.

“Your father had a set of notes that he had been adding to for some time. It was in one of the locked cupboards in his study. I don't think even Barnaby knew it was there. It was just a list of names, rough locations and dates. It was one of the things that I was going to look into while we were here as a good portion of them happened around the Oxenfurt area. Barnaby warned me that the watch are likely to be uncooperative and to rebel by making us wait, so I wanted to check a few of them out. As a side project I was going to use it to tire you out physically.”

“Now though?”

“I'm resorting to other methods. Drink your Schnapps.”

I obediently took another large drink.

“Interesting brew this.” I mused, “Doesn't taste like any schnapps that I've drank before.”

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“That's because I've drugged it to help you sleep. It should get us to your quarters before you start to feel drowsy though.”

I thought about it for a long time.

“Fuck it,” I said and took a more cautious swallow. “Remind me to get some extra stuff though before bed as it almost feels like it's coating my throat in goo.”

“Fair enough.”

We walked on.

“It's just....” I began. “I've been on the road with you for what, a little over a year now?”

“More than that I would have thought.”

“Yes but we took a break over winter.”

“You're right then, just over a year.”

“I've changed so much from the person who I was when we first met and don't get me wrong I like most of the changes. Then I go home and I'm there for a week and already I need to check my noble privilege. I'm stomping around, yelling at people and generally getting cross but at the end of the day, people die all the time in horrible horrible ways. I'm no different than them but I feel as though I should get some kind of special treatment. He was right you know. If it had been a noble-man's daughter or a rich merchant's daughter, the killer would have been found ages ago.” Thanks for reading on ManaNovel!

Kerrass considered this.

“No they wouldn't. I've seen far too many of those kinds of cases. Give it another fifty years or so when those people who remember Eloise start dying and I come back here, there will be a notice somewhere for a Witcher to come and remove the girls spirit. The Watch, led by the Sheriffs and the under sheriff's of this world are not there to catch criminals. Their job is to preserve the peace and if that involves catching and prosecuting the criminals themselves then that is a bonus. Even if they know who the killer is the likelihood of that person being brought to justice is relatively small. If it would cause more of a problem to arrest, try and prosecute the killer than it would to arrest say, a vagrant, the town drunk who can be persuaded that he saw and did anything with enough vodka in his belly or another local ne'er do well then that's what's going to happen.

“I'm a Witcher and I don't have to abide by those truths or these guidelines of, heh, modern society so I can just go and investigate without strings attached. We would make good private detectives it's just that's not what we're for and no society would accept us as a mutant branch of law enforcement. Correctly too in my opinion as I think people should police themselves so they can understand themselves. But I look at that circumstance and I think differently.

“Without assuming anything else given how we found out about poor Eloise, I would look at that and I would think “Young, pretty, no real family to speak of, regularly unattended. I would expect that she had been watched for some time for this purpose. I expect that if we were to look into it with any kind of depth that there would have been a stranger or three that had hung around on the lead up to her disappearance, who would have hung around afterwards for a bit before moving on and more importantly, they would have a cast-iron alibi for the time where she was missing. This person would have been hired by someone to find someone like Eloise. That would be the way that I would investigate it. That drink kicking in yet?”

“A little,” I slurred the words and was minorly horrified at the fact that I was getting drunk so quickly.

“Good, well we're nearly here,”

I don't remember much after that. I do remember waking up the following morning to find a large pitcher of water with just enough wine in it to be drinkable. Kerrass had left a note on it saying “Drink. All of it. You'll feel better.”

I did as I was told and I really did feel better.

I found Kerrass at the tavern just over the way from where I keep my rooms. He was tucking into one of those giant breakfasts that he seems so fond of and he waved me over.

“I really don't know how you can eat that stuff.” I said ordering one of the meat buns and some coffee. Coffee was expensive at the moment but I felt that I needed it.

“Sets me up for the day,” Kerrass commented, “And it looks like it's going to be a long day. Barnaby's already at the Watch house. I offered to turn a few tables over for him but he declined saying that he was too used to playing bad watchmen to suddenly switch to being a good watchman. He's promised that he would leave word here when we can go see your brothers rooms.”

“Why can't we go now?”

“Sealed and guarded. Especially since they know that I want to see inside them. It was one of the first things that I did when you gave me the case but it was still guarded then and so they've kept it guarded. We could murder the two watchmen guarding it I suppose?”

One of the women sat next to us, who was optimistically suggesting that the man next to her should buy her a drink, gasped at Kerrass in horror. He grinned at her showing all his teeth and she fled.

“Probably not, I do want to come back here at some point.” I tried not to laugh as the man next to us shot a grateful look at us.

“But in other news we are meeting someone here while we wait.”

“Who's that?” My food came. It was a roasted pork that had been mixed in a spice mix that I didn't recognise. Food prices hadn't gone down much since the war but at least the supply and quality had improved.

“Retired Watchman. All Watches have a guy like this if they're lucky. Especially the big cities. He's the guy that gets sent to all the murder cases to try and figure them out.”

“I thought you said that the Watch only keep the peace rather than actually solving the crimes.” The Pork was gorgeous and I ate it far too quickly.

“They do, but they still need to solve the odd one. For the look of the thing more than anything else. I'm being cynical but you'd be astonished how many times I've been accused of murder just to say that they have someone in custody.”

I grunted at that.

“But anyway,” Kerrass continued. “I asked a bored looking Sergeant about some of the names and dates in your Fathers journals and I was told to contact a retired Captain Wyber.”

“I know him. Nice guy, gets maudlin when you get a drink or three in him. Tells the most blood curdling stories though.

“Yes, man like him would. He's just got a mind for it is all. They make themselves sick after a while and retire to get a quiet life.”

“Sick?”

“Yeah, they can't stop thinking about whatever case they're working on to the point that it begins to ruin their lives, children and marriages and jobs fall by the wayside as they do everything that they can to catch that one person that got away. Sad really but obsessive personality is one of the things that makes for a really good detective.”

We sat for a bit longer just talking. There was a student protest happening and we watched as the entertainingly colourfully dressed young students walked past to the age old marching song of protests everywhere.

You know the song. It goes:

“What do we want?”

“Dum-de-dum.” (This bit changes according to the protest)

“When do we want it?”

“NOW!”

I have taken part in several of those marches in the past. Mostly because it's a fairly good opportunity to meet girls.

Eventually Captain Wyber managed to turn up.

Now Captain Wyber is a good man and if you find him in any tavern or bar then buy the poor man a drink. But the poor man has had a rough life and has served more faithfully and seen more horror than any one else that I have met.

Yes more horror than Kerrass.

The reason I say that is that Kerrass sees atrocities that are committed by monsters. It is in their nature to do the things that they do whereas men like Wyber see things that sentient creatures do to each other every day. He's also among the smartest men that I've ever met. Not book smart although he can read and speaks several languages and can swear convincingly in several more. But he sees things that you or I would miss. Then he puts the patterns together.

To put it another way I was sat in a pub once enjoying a few drinks when Wyber walked up to the girl that I was hitting on. We were enjoying the game, there was no way I was going to be successful and we both knew it but it entertained us both and for that matter we were still friends for a while until she was forced to leave the university because her father had found her a husband. Wyber walked up to her and started drunkenly leering at her and pawing at her without ever touching her. I saw but didn't hear him say something between drunken lechery, my friend said something about getting the poor man home and we left.

Losing all pretence of drunkenness, Wyber led us across the road to a patch of shadow where we waited until a large group of young sailors left the pub, looked up and down the road before grumbling “having lost her,”.

Turns out that my friend had spurned the advances of one of the sailors two nights ago. He'd gathered his friends while the ship was still at anchor and went looking for her to “teach her some manners.” Wyber had been enjoying a quiet drink, saw the situation and had headed it off.

In short don't judge the book by it's cover.

He's short, maybe 5ft 3in tall, naturally inclined to be heavy set due to the vast amounts of time eating street food and drinking poor quality alcohol. His greying hair is long and unkempt although still short enough to fit under a helmet and he sports a bristling grey moustache. He is old for his mid to late forties and his face seems drawn and pallid. He completes the effort of looking like a tramp by wearing clothes according to comfort rather than fit, fashion or cleanliness. His wife died some years ago and he has long since despaired of finding another woman who would put up with him and now he spends his days fishing, playing chess against anyone foolish enough to challenge him and drinking himself to death. He still does the odd bit of work for the watch when they get stuck though and he resists any efforts (including mine) to get him out of Oxenfurt and into the country away from the things that are driving him mad.

“Now then Cap'n,” I said as he turned up.

“Oh, Flame curse it Coulthard, if I'd known it was you I wouldn't have come. Scruffy little oik like you.” He sniffed hugely.

“I didn't know it was you you scruffy bastard. This is Kerrass.”

Kerrass stood up and shook the offered hand.

“Witcher eh? What you doin' hanging round with this little shit?”

Kerrass smiled.

“Trying to keep him alive generally.”

“Must be a tough job. Never met a snot like this one,”

“He's getting better at it.”

“Is he now? Well you wouldn't think it to look at him.”

“Some men just aren't born to be as handsome as us,” Kerrass' smile was getting broader and more genuine.

Wyber considered this.

“There's some truth in that,”

We all traded insults for a short while and I was able to forget the business that had brought us all here. We bought Wyber some brunch before going somewhere more private where Kerrass handed him the notes. It was two sheets of paper with my fathers precise handwriting, dates, places and names.

He didn't look at them for too long.

“Yes I'd heard that the old man had died. Poor sod.”

“You knew my father.”

“Only a little. Contacts me out of the blue he does, with a few of these names and numbers. Some of the earlier ones at least. I notice that he's added a few though.”

He sniffed again before producing a huge handkerchief and blowing his nose loudly.

“Never found out why he cared though your dad. Don't suppose he told you before he died did he?”

Wyber peered at me over his papers.

“Alas no,”

“Damn, I hate mysteries.”

“Why did you become a cop then if you hate mysteries?” Kerrass asked.

“Precisely because I hate them so much. I want to eradicate them from the world.”

Wyber looked up and down the list again before tossing them on the table in disgust.

“I hate mysteries but real mysteries are actually quite rare. You don't find them very often, even in police work.”

“Why's that?”

“Investigations go like this. If someone has something stolen you go down the local fences and start kicking things over until they give you a name. Money, food and some other things just get stolen and there's rarely anything that you can do about it. Sexual assault is a matter of finding out who fancied the girl and doesn't have an alibi or a quick run of the local perverts. You'd be surprised to learn that even scum have standards and they can't wait to dish the dirt on kiddie fiddlers and rapists. Murders?”

I was surprised. He was drinking but drank in sips rather than the gulps that I was used to seeing him swallow.

“Murders are interesting but are often the easiest to solve. You both understand that I've worked as far as Novigrad?”

We both nodded.

“Well, to be honest, most murders are committed in the spur of the moment, when a person finds out that their significant other is playing around or the victim has recently wronged someone. When you find a dead man with a woman standing over him with a poker bent at right angles, tears in her eyes and screaming something about “He promised me...” then there's only so much you can do to stretch that investigation along past lunchtime. Likewise when you find a known criminal dead then it's a matter of finding out which gang was operating in that area, that night and you soon find that you've got your man.

“These murders though. These murders were always interesting.”

“Interesting?” I was appalled.

“From a professional level.”

He reached for the notes and pulled them back towards him.

“I could never figure them out. They're obviously connected as they have so many things in common with each other and yet in many of them, we caught the guy.”

“Really,”

“Oh yes, beyond a doubt. But their similarities. All young people, all physically attractive or at least they were before their killers got at them.”

He sniffed again and took another drink.

“All of them were mutilated horribly and often sexually. They had also, all of them been raped multiple times, yes including the men.” He caught my look and grinned bleakly at me. “Yes, men can be raped as well.” There was some evidence that they had been held in captivity and the bodies had been dumped in the places that they were found. All of them.”

“Can you tell us anything else?” Kerrass asked.

“Certainly. The first one that I heard of that fit that pattern in the local area anyway happened when I was twenty five. I'd joined the watch out of the army, had solved a few things with help from superiors and I thought I was the shit. The victims father told us that she was missing, sixteen years old, real pretty as they often are being free from menial labour and living on the road with caring parent figures. Went missing in a village north of here while daddy was selling his wares. They assumed that she had been kidnapped by son of local lord but he was well alibi'd. Then it was thought she ran away to be with someone and the case wasn't really pursued.”

He had another drink.

“She was eventually found in one of the horse stables on the edge of town. It's not there anymore as they pulled it down afterwards. Groom found her the next day. She'd had all her teeth pulled out, we know that because although there was no bruising around her mouth, the teeth hadn't been beaten out as that amount of damage would be obvious. She had been raped repeatedly by objects as well as male members and was internally damaged. She had been whipped, bound, mutilated and generally abused. Poor lass. In the end she had died because she had been skull-fucked. We think it happened while she was alive.”

Another drink.

“To make matters worse, there were...bits of her missing. It was the first time I threw up at a crime scene.”

He paused for a long time.

“We didn't find that killer. The next time it was a similar circumstance 2 years later. This one in fact.”

He pointed at another name.

“Similar situation and similar injuries but this time there were signs that she had fled her attackers through some trees so it was suggested that she had escaped to be chased down and recaptured.”

“What about the name between the two?”Kerrass asked.

“Not my beat I'm afraid, I know nothing about that one.”

Kerrass nodded and gestured to continue.

“We caught that bastard and we took great delight in watching the mewling fuck have his neck stretched. He'd been watching and following the girl about at the town where her father had been working. He was a merchants son who thought he had been treated badly by his father and had wanted to “take what he deserved.”

“The next one was a man. Poor kid was raped to death until he, quite literally, burst. Medic said that he had split before bleeding to death internally. He had also been castrated with his own member forced down his throat post mortem.

He looked down the list.

“All of these were the same. Young kid, out by themselves, relatively few people to care for them or watch out for them. Few people give a shit when people like this go missing or get murdered horribly. Sometimes we caught the bastard that did it. Sometimes we didn't. Sometimes we caught the murderers scout...”

“The scout?” I asked.

“Yeah. They send a guy to look for someone suitable. The scout is often poor as muck, starving, desperate or just plain greedy. Once one turned himself in crying of the shame of it after he'd heard about the murder in the pub. He had a knife and was cutting himself as punishment while he confessed making sure that we had everything written down. He signed his confession and then hung himself as punishment in his own cell saying that he deserved death and would see to the matter himself to save us the trouble. Another poor sod who had been taken advantage of by an entitled prick with more money than morals.”

He looked at me. “No offence Coulthard.”

“None taken. I've recently had my noble privilege thrown in my face by the world.”

Wybers face softened a little before hardening again.

“The bastard that did that one was so wealthy he was beheaded rather than hung. Too good for him I thought.”

Another drink.

“The other difference was the mutilations. They were all whipped and beaten but sometimes it was with objects, sometimes with flails, lashes or whips. Also the levels of expertise varied.”

“What do you mean?”

“One lucky girl was beaten with a heavy rope. Cracked her on the back of the head and the impact broke her neck. Everything else happened after she had died. Others were kept alive for hours, some for days we think.”

“But the similarities are the same.” Kerrass prompted.

“Oh yes. The victim is attractive, poor, with few people to miss them, certainly no-one of influence. They are beaten, flogged, restrained in some way before being mutilated with their eyes being put out and their teeth being pulled out before they are raped repeatedly until they die from that or from other injuries that are performed during or post those rapes.”

“Did you ever think that these killings might be ritualistic?”

“Course we did but what kind of ritual? Also there were no accompanying magical events that went with them. Once, the watch could afford a Sorcerer to come and look at the bodies and when he had finished puking up his breakfast he told us that there was no vestigial magical presence that he could see or recognise.

Also the bodies are always dumped elsewhere. In the river or the cess-pits or the pig pens. We never find the place where the death took place and the killers, when we do catch them refuse to admit where they took place. Even under... persuasive methods.”

“Interesting,” Kerrass mused.

“That's one word for it.” Wyber scorned. “Anyway. They are connected but we could never figure it out.”

“Why did Lord Coulthard contact you?”

“Buggered if I know, I was hoping that you could tell me.” Wyber shifted his weight and scratched himself. “He got in touch with the current commander who put him onto me. I wrote down what I knew and sent it off.”

“Is there anything else that you told him that you haven't told us?” Kerrass asked.

Wyber considered for a bit. “No. Just a note that if he does figure it all out that he should let me know. Same goes for you by the way. Let me know yeah?”

We both nodded.

“But,” Wyber added. “I'll add this warning. I'm an old street copper, and sometimes you get this feeling you know? Like you should just leave it all alone and let someone else deal with it. Of course that's when men like me dive in with both feet but for you Witcher, or you young sir? Stay out of it. This has got the feeling of a rabbit hole that goes deep and far. I know that sounds cryptic and as though I'm keeping things from you. I'm not, but it's just a feeling. I told him that too.”

“When did you send him this information?” Kerrass asked.

“Few months back. Why?”

“Because he only died recently.”

A strange look came over Wyber then. A cross between curiosity, hunger and a strange kind of self-loathing.

A friend of mine was a fisstech addict. He eventually managed to get to the medic who gave him some herbs to help wean him off the stuff and after a few months he managed to get himself straight. He came back to the university to take up where he had left off just before I left to find Kerrass. He was fine, had lost a little weight but was roughly his old self. It was just that when we went out he would drink milk or heavily watered wine and every so often he would pale and get a look very similar to the one that Wyber was wearing now before he would insist that we all leave and escort him home. It would always turn out that there was fisstech nearby. How he knew? He didn't know the answer to that and the rest of us never asked.

We thanked Wyber by buying him a bottle of whisky and he left.

We sat in the bright sunshine and watched the throngs of people walk past. Colourful, beautiful and wondrous in their variety.

I felt cold.

“Kerrass, do you know what's happening?”

Kerrass just looked at me.

“You do don't you. You know what happened.” I was not asking questions.

Kerrass sighed. “This is why I warned you about my taking the job. I don't know. But I'm pretty confident. Details aren't in place yet but I'm pretty sure.”

“Tell me,”

“No,”

“Dammit tell me,”

“No,” he insisted. “I will tell you the lot when it's done.”

“Fuck you Kerrass.” But there was no strength behind my anger. I found that I was tired. Locked into the habit of going on.

The Watch came looking for us. We were taken to Edmund''s rooms first and if I had to imagine what Edmund's rooms in Oxenfurt were. If I'd laid out, point by point, what Edmund would have looked for in a set of rooms in a city such as Oxenfurt I would have chosen almost the complete and total opposite of the building that we were taken to.

It was relatively small, out on the outskirts of Oxenfurt, well away from the university and the amenities of the centre of town. There was even an outside toilet for crying out loud meaning that Edmund would have had to get out of his nice warm bed, put some clothes on if it was cold (he insisted on sleeping nude and would entertain himself by “forgetting” to put some clothes on in the morning) and run down through the mud and probable rain if he needed the toilet urgently. Of course there might have been a chamber pot but even so, despite the obvious evidence that there was more to Edmund than I had previously thought possible, I couldn't imagine him living with that stench for more than a minute or two.

It was a small house, that stood out by itself in the end of the island that Oxenfurt stands on. Largely timber construction with the odd bit of stone at the base. There was also no chimney, meaning no fire, meaning that it would be freezing cold at the height of winter. The owner was an oldish fisherman's widow whose husband had been lost at sea some years ago. Another shock was that the poor woman had obviously been beaten down by life and as a result she walked with a stoop, had a squint and was less than attractive to a man like Edmund.

By her own admission she made her living by fixing fishing nets, renting her upstairs room to students of the poorer persuasion and off the charity of her husbands former shipmates who still felt a sense of responsibility towards her. She was the kind of a woman who never complained about things, would wear an extra scarf if it was cold rather than burn some more firewood and would rather starve than admit she was hungry. When asked about this she told us that there were plenty worse off than she was and that she had no cause to complain.

She also kept pigs in a small fenced off enclosure near the house.

We spoke to her briefly about her tenant but she told us that he had his own entrance up a set of steps to the side of the house and as a result she had very little idea of what he would get up to or when he would arrive other than the fact that the rent had been paid promptly, without complaint and up front to the tune of six months. She also expressed some surprise that such a fine lord would want to rent such a small room from a woman such as herself. I couldn't agree more but didn't want to say that out loud in front of her.

We climbed the stairs, greeted the young watchman who was stood “on guard” although Kerrass later commented that the poor lad was clearly asleep on his feet and was being hazed by his fellows.

The room itself was just as underwhelming as the rest of the situation. A small bed that wouldn't have looked out of place in a monastery although the sheets and pillows looked a little more expensive. A bedside table with a copy of “The Holy Flame” on it that looked as though it had been well read, over and over again, the pages stained and crinkled. There was also a wash stand with a basin and jug standing on top of it. A chamber pot under the bed that looked as though it had never been used. A wardrobe and chest of drawers.

That was it. If we were hoping for clues this place looked as though it was not going to provide us with what we wanted.

Kerrass walked in and scanned the room.

“Well shit,” he said after a while and scratched the back of his head. “I don't suppose you've got any ideas?”

“Not me.” I told him. “If this hadn't been the place where we had sent his letters and other things for years then I would assume that he didn't live here. Where are the flowers and things so that he didn't have to smell the stench? Where are the masses of clothes all over the floor? Why would he live here where, with all due respect to the land lady, he might as well be sleeping outdoors?”

Kerrass smiled at my joke.

“Let alone where are all the letters that you kept sending him.”

I smiled at that. “You are not wrong.”

We stood there for a minute looking at the ceiling, the walls and the floor whilst at the same time trying not to look at each other.

Kerrass spun on the poor unsuspecting watchman who had brought us here.

“And there's been nothing removed?”

“No sir,”

“Nothing added?” Kerrass asked hopefully,

“No sir,” The watchman seemed a little smug. Enough so that I wanted to punch him.

“Were there any personal effects?”

“No sir,”

“What about the rent?”

“Paid for for the next two months sir.”

Kerrass nodded and then sighed.

“Ah well. I suppose we'd better do this properly.”

We set about the place.

Kerrass propped his sword up in the corned, pulled his medallion out and held it by the chain as he examined the ceiling, walls and floor minutely. In the meantime I had the dubious pleasure of examining the things that were still here. The chamber pot (sorry to go on about it but it does kind of stick in the memory) was clean and made out of a relatively cheap tin. The bed itself was a sturdy wooden frame with some planks across it making up the bed itself. What passed for a mattress was filled with straw and it had been wrapped, presumably by Edmund, by several large and fluffy sheep skins in an effort to make it more comfortable. I could find nothing of interest or particularly lumpy in the mattress.

The blankets were rich and thick and they were the one thing in the room that was wealthy in appearance. They were well made, sturdy and although not particularly decorative were certainly warm. Again, I could find nothing that wouldn't normally be found in a blanket.

We moved the bed aside so that Kerrass could examine that patch of floor.

The wash stand was next, four legs and a top. Basin and jug were made out of the same cheap metal that the chamber pot had been made of. I suspected that if I tried to I would be able to bend it or damage it with my fingers.

The bedside table was similar to the wash stand in that it was simple to look at.

I had a look through the book of scriptures. They were the kind that you could find in any small book shop or that get handed out by missionaries in the optimistic hope that people will read them rather than use them for toilet paper. I guessed that it had probably been left there by some previous tenant and Edmund had never bothered to get rid of it. Having said that I did check the spine for hidden papers, read a few bits that were known to me to make sure that it really was a book of scripture and flicked through the pages to make sure that there wasn't anything hidden between pages.

The chest of drawers then got moved before it's contents, including the drawers were emptied onto the bed.

Spare socks, underwear and shirts greeted my efforts. The drawers themselves failed to have anything stuck to the back or the bottom and the main body of the thing was just a shell and annoyingly free of secrets for me to find.

The wardrobe contained two cloaks and a pair of trousers. They were well made enough to have probably have belonged to Edmund. There was also a pair of old boots in the bottom of the wardrobe that were caked in dirt. Another thing that chimed with what I knew of Edmund. He would rather go out and buy new boots rather than clean an existing pair of boots. That's if they were even his. They looked rather cheap for a pair of Edmund's old boots.

I laid them out for Kerrass' inspection when he was done.

He looked at it all thoughtfully from a distance before diving into it all with his medallion in hand. I watched feeling my own frustration mount.

“Is there anything in all of this that stands out to you?” He asked.

“Plenty. None of this feels right.”

Kerrass grunted.

“This isn't a room where someone lives. This is a room where someone comes to stay occasionally. Does that fit with your brother?”

“It might, but no not really. He might depend on finding someone good natured enough to keep him in hearth and home for a certain amount of time but for extended periods? There's just none of the normal....detritus that comes with Edmund's long term residence.”

Kerrass grunted again.

“Kerrass?”

“Mmm?”

“You've read the will. Did father disown Edmund, or was he going to?”

Kerrass put down one of the cloaks that he was examining minutely and stared into the middle distance.

“I did think of that. You're thinking that your father disowned your brother or put him on some kind of notice and as a result your brother was active in your fathers death?”

“That's what I'm dreading.”

Kerrass nodded. “Look, I can't say that you're right or wrong. But I can discount that motive. There are provisions in the will for him predeceasing Edmund and all kinds of conditions and sub-clauses to keep everything safe. Barnaby is going to have to spend some time putting together a draft to declare who gets what and under what circumstances because as far as we know Edmund didn't leave a will or an heir.”

I felt relieved.

“Did Edmund kill Father?”

Kerrass looked at me for a long time. “I don't want to answer that.”

“Please Kerrass... I,”

Kerrass held up his hand to stop me.

“I know Freddie. It's eating you up worrying that your brother killed your Father. I've been here before with other people who long to find that some monster was responsible for someone's death and not their nearest and dearest.”

He blew out a breath, as he picked up one of the mud encrusted boots. “You've even been with me on some of these things and so you know that it doesn't work like that. I think that your brother was involved in some way. That is almost certain but we don't know to what extent, on which side or why. He could have been trying to save your father, he could have been trying to protect something or Edmund could have found out something about those murders and was working with your father to sort them out.”

“That sounds a little far fetched to me if I'm honest.”

Kerrass looked at me with some sympathy.

“To me as well, I'll be honest. But what little I know of your brother from what you've told me and what I've gathered from other sources is that your brother was not capable of coming up with the plan that killed your father by himself. He was too impatient, too headstrong and...too lazy. He would want a simpler, easier, more certain method rather than the chain of events that led to your fathers death. There is someone or something else involved here but...”

He threw the boot at the wall with a sudden snarl.

“Damned if I can think of...”

He stopped, mid sentence.

“Kerrass?”

“Shh,” he took a deep sniff, shut his eyes and sniffed again. “Do you smell that?”

“Smell what?”

Kerrass got up and walked over to the boot that he had thrown against the wall. Some of the mud that had been caked onto the side had flaked off, the dust from it floated through the air. Carefully Kerrass picked up some of the dirt, crumbled between his fingers and sniffed it. Before picking up the boot and the area where the mud had broken away. He turned back towards me, eyes blazing and holding the boot like it was the holy flame itself.

“Pig shit,” he said.