1

I almost welcomed the news of a new murder similar to the others. Of course, I didn't show this feeling, but I felt even better when I realized that this time, probably still remembering my threats from the last time, the Watch had not made a mess of my crime scene: everything was in its place.

This time, I had the feeling that I was finally going to solve the mystery that had been occupying my brain for the past few days.

The dead man was found by his housekeeper, hanging from a beam of his home by a strong rope. The good lady had immediately fled the scene screaming and the Watch had intervened, securing the scene of the crime.

The victim was Securis Stultus. His empty gaze, hardly more intelligent than when he was alive but clearly less friendly, contemplated those who entered the small house he owned in a very ordinary part of the city.

Despite the share he was to receive annually from the gold of their association and despite his pension as former head of the Guards, the man seemed of a spendthrift nature that had not allowed him as great a success as his comrades. This was evident in the ordinary appearance of his house and in the pile of miscellaneous objects, most of them useless, that occupied it.

The housekeeper assured us that he was a good man, very generous, and that she was in no way responsible for his murder. He had even lent her large sums of money on several occasions, without ever asking her to return them.

My keen eye immediately detected the usual clues. A cord closed the dead man's right hand, certainly holding a piece of paper in it.

On the ground, at her feet, a circle of now too familiar objects surrounded an axe with a broken handle. I saw a quill pen, a bread knife, a lantern, a compass and an apparently empty purse.

I ordered a Watch agent, Sergeant Thorg Rubis, to go and get me a stepladder high enough to reach the deceased. He came back with the object, but accompanied by Moïra.

I threw a furious look at my colleague who made discreet signs to assure me that he had nothing to do with it and that she had followed him. If that was indeed the case, he could have refused her access! Captain Obsidian's smirk informed me that there was indeed a plot on his part and that the unfortunate sergeant had received instructions.

But other visitors were arriving on their heels. In full, the five other assistants of the funeral wake were there. Leaving the captain to manage their arrival, I went up to the corpse and removed from his hand the poem that was indeed there. I also discovered a surprising deformation of one of his pockets, which turned out to be a small carved chest like those of the other times.

“Detective!” Mr. Magister ordered. “Tell us what happened.”

Going down to their level, I signaled to Doctor Alun, who had just entered, to take care of the dead man. Me, I would make sure that the living did not disturb my crime scene too much.

“You claimed that this case did not concern you. But it is now clear that it’s indeed you that this mysterious murderer has it in for.”

The scholar gritted his teeth, but did not reply. There was some whispering within their group, then Mr. Malevolum rather impolitely demanded that I read them the documents I had just found. Although I didn't appreciate his manners, I complied, carefully observing the audience's reactions.

Six dwarves on the dead man's chest...

And one more gold!

The axe has been hung up...

And one share less!

They shifted uncomfortably, but did nothing more suspicious. So, I moved on to reading the paper in the little chest, as I had done the other times:

Stultus, I am very glad to see you again.

Do you remember our discovery in the mountains?

Do you remember when you remained silent while I was being killed?

We hope to hear from you again, where we are.

Looking suspiciously at the next five “Dwarves”, I urged them to tell me the truth:

“Okay. What's this story? I know you all know something you haven't told me.”

“You're making it up,” protested Mr. Magister, trying to remain polite. “We don't understand this charade at all, except that it's the work of a madman. It's probably a way to divert your investigation from the real suspect. A false lead.”

“However,” I affirmed, “I'm sure Mr. Stultus would have many things to tell me, if he weren't dead. From the little I knew him; he had always been a man who answered honestly and without thinking too much... I have the impression that if he's the victim this time, it's to silence him, to conceal what you're hiding from me.”

They all began to protest at the same time, in an inaudible cacophony. Inwardly, I still wondered. On the one hand, the murderer was leaving us clues about their motive. On the other, they were eliminating the one who might have inadvertently divulged the truth? I concluded that the murderer wanted their victims to understand their intention, but without me understanding it myself. For what reason?

“If you have nothing to tell me,” I replied, “then go out, go home and take precautions. I think the killer will not stop there and that you are all, potentially, their future victims.”

I then turned my back on them and concentrated on the clues. Moïra was circling around, now that the body had been unhooked and placed in the opposite corner of the room.

“Don't touch anything!” I ordered her.

But, continuing her gesture, she picked up the compass. Sheepishly, she put it down and tried to apologize.

“I… I just wanted to set the time.”

“It’s a compass, Miss Marble,” I sighed, “not a watch.”

“Yes, yes, that's what I meant. But it doesn't point north. I guess you have to wind up its mechanism or something like that...”

Not having time to waste explaining to her how these devices worked, I pushed the young woman aside with a little more rudeness than courtesy allowed.

The compass was indeed not pointing north. Taking it in my hands, to understand this phenomenon, I immediately saw the needle return to the right position. I knew it was the right position, because my advanced sense of directions constantly reminded me where the cardinal points were in relation to where I was in the city.

Putting it back in place, I noticed that the compass was now pointing towards the purse. Lifting it, I noticed that it was not empty but filled with a large piece of lodestone: a mineral used to make magnets and therefore having the property of disrupting compasses.

Had there been a similar oddity the previous times? I ordered a Watch agent to go and check the evidence from the previous murders, then I sat down on a chair and remained motionless, to the astonishment of those who did not know me.

“What is he doing?” asked Mr. Magister.

Mister Malevolum sneered: “The inspector is broken, it seems...”

He corrected himself and scowled, casting an uneasy glance at the corpse of his late friend. There was no reason to laugh. Moïra felt obliged to explain to them:

“Shush: Mr. Goldeneye is thinking. We must not make any noise. You know, he has a very good memory, so when he concentrates like that, it's because he remembers what he saw before, with great clarity and...”

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

“Miss Marble!” I growled. “Could you be quiet?”

She stammered a few confused excuses for a moment before understanding, from my annoyed look, that she would do better to keep quiet. Once calm had returned, I closed my eyes and projected the memory of the previous crime scenes into my thoughts. As the images became clearer in my head, I murmured.

“Yes. The compass from the first time didn't point north... It pointed... The one from the second time, although it had been moved, also seemed slightly disturbed by something... Had there also been magnetite in that pile of objects? Ah, there you go… I see… The first time, the compass pointed to the shovel… The shovel… The object pointing to the second victim… Could it be…”

I opened my eyes again and looked at the five survivors of this old mining association. Five survivors and five remaining objects. A compass, a quill, a knife, a lamp, and a purse… Who was which object? Who was the purse? Who was the next victim?

If I didn’t formulate these questions out loud, I could see that the fragments of my deductions, the ones I had expressed orally, had been enough to give the other people in the room these same thoughts… Except perhaps Moïra, who had a perplexed look.

The pickaxe and the shovel had been eliminated. This probably referred to their identity as miners. The axe. The weapon of a warrior, of the former head of the guard… The remaining objects were less obvious. Did the purse designate the richest person in the group? The one who had formerly managed their finances, whoever it was? The banker, Mr. Somnum?

I was leaning towards Mr. Somnum, but I only mentioned it to the captain. He could think of nothing better than to contradict me, betting on Mr. Felix, who was the richest of all, or Mrs. Magister, because in many households it was the women who managed the expenses and therefore held the purse strings. I admitted that his reasoning seemed correct: we had no idea of the murderer's thoughts or their motives.

We searched the house, discovering in particular the ladder that the murderer had probably used and a large sum of money, which had not been stolen, indicating that the killer was not destitute or had not bothered to search the premises. We also questioned the neighbors who could tell us nothing, except that there is a lot of traffic in this neighborhood and that Mr. Stultus would easily open the door to anyone who knocked at it. No clue on that side: this character was undoubtedly the easiest to assassinate of the three.

After a careful examination of the body, Doctor Alun finally found that the cause of death was not strangulation. A dart had been fired at close range into the neck. Despite the damage caused by the rope, the hole was still visible. It could be assumed that the killer had entered the house under some pretext and had shot the unfortunate man in the neck, preventing him from screaming and beginning his agony. A second dart had been fired at the heart, very cleanly, without bloodshed, one of the victim's handkerchiefs having been used to immediately stop the bleeding.

I understood this as a sort of mark of respect for the victim, to spare him a long agony. This increased my suspicions about the survivors, who were his friends.

As we left the scene, I ordered Sergeant Rubis to discreetly follow the group of future victims and report their actions to me before they dispersed.

I learned that all five of them went to Mr. Somnum's, who had a villa in the city center, not far from his bank. They didn't stay there too late and then went their separate ways, each going home, it was assumed.

Magnetized stones were also found in the clues from the last few times, one on the shovel, the other on the rusty axe. Thus ended the third crime.

2

The day after tomorrow, an agent was waiting for me on the doorstep to take me to the place where Mr. Somnum had died.

The murderer had not been idle: two murders in three days. Was he speeding up his movements? Was he afraid that I was on a trail? Was this a result of my discovery of the lodestone?

The evidence hit me: that was it. Now that the mechanism of his clues was known, the victims most certainly knew who was next, which, for some obscure reason, was the killer's intention. They had to know what object each of them represented!

Probably warned by servants charged with monitoring the case, the four survivors were already there. I glanced around and saw no trace of the Moïra: she was probably still asleep at that time, or passing back and forth “by chance” near the main post of the Watch, where my office was.

Mr. Somnum had died in his villa, sitting at his desk, in the middle of his paperwork.

He was a quiet man, who never hurried but always finished his work one day or another. He was well organized, with a large table for mail marked urgent, and a huge chest for those that did not have that mark.

His personal servant, a certain Sam Tallow, was in one hell of a state, which was perfectly understandable with the death of his master.

“At first,” he said between two fits of tears, “I thought that Master Somnum had fallen asleep, as often happens to him at any time. You see, my master is... was...”

And after another fit of tears, the servant continued:

“My master was narcoleptic. He would nod off regularly, fall asleep for a few minutes, then wake up suddenly, in order to continue his task. At first, I thought he was still taking one of his naps, so I didn’t disturb him. But, passing back and forth by his office, depending on the tasks I was finishing, I noticed that his pile of letters to read was no longer decreasing. Worried, I tried to wake him up…”

“Why did you try to wake him up?”

“Well, those are his instructions. He hates... hated falling asleep before finishing the pile of ‘urgent’ mail. He said it gave him nightmares to fall asleep for good without finishing his work. Since he wouldn't wake up even though I shook him, I tried other methods...”

I noticed that the deceased's hair and beard were still dripping with water and that the table was soaked. The servant, who was nevertheless competent, had pushed aside the letters his master was reading before splashing him with water. He blushed, however, when he saw my gaze fall on the puddle and justified himself:

“He allowed me... well... I mean... I knew him well and he wouldn't have been the type to get angry with me, even if this method had successfully woken him up. I even made him swallow one of those new tubes of vitamin tablets that we had received…”

The detail caught my attention and my gaze fell on a cardboard tube from which a few small round tablets were still sticking out.

“Is that it?” I asked. “Had he ever taken any before?”

“Yes… Yes, that's it. It's a sample sent by the Royal Society of Chemistry, one of the most important societies in the Chemistry Guild. The master has been buying drugs for narcolepsy from them for a long time. We received this tube in the evening mail, a new stimulant that they were offering exclusively to one of their best customers… and my master tried it right away…”

The word “poison” circulated quickly in the room. Old Doctor Alun, who had just entered, merely took a quick look in the corpse's mouth before nodding. Contrary to his habit, he made no comment. I learned later that he knew Mr. Somnum well, who had consulted him on several occasions. He was doubtless greatly distressed by his death, but did not show it.

The murder seemed to me at first quite different from the previous ones. The corpse was not holding anything in its hands and there were no objects out of place lying around.

I began to examine the letters surrounding the corpse. I seized the one praising the new medicine. It seemed quite official. Tallow told us that it was the first letter his master had opened: he always opened the letters from the Royal Society of Chemistry first, in the hope that they would tell him that they had discovered the miracle cure.

Turning to the victim’s friends, I asked them if they were aware of this fact.

“We don’t have to answer you!” the notary replied.

Raising his hands in a peaceful gesture that earned him the wrath of the previous one, the scholar spoke:

“Everyone knows. It’s not limited to us: it’s common knowledge. Pera, since we became rich, has invested large sums of money in this company…”

I heard voices from outside. A voice I knew well, insisting to the doorman that she be let in.

While part of me was happy about this opportunity to keep Moïra at a distance, the pragmatic part of me sighed and I left the crime scene to head for the entrance. The doorman, a good-natured man with a gray beard, probably in his fifties, looked at me hopefully:

“Mr. Policeman, there is a young lady outside who demands to come in. She even claims to know you. If she doesn't, can you send one of your officers to force her to stop her racket?”

“Unfortunately,” I sighed, “I'm going to need her. Open the door for her...”

When the door opened and she saw me on the other side, the young woman's angry little face lit up with a big smile. I had to admit that, whatever her expression, she was still very cute.

“Miss Marble,” I said, “follow me.”

Without giving her time to answer, I returned to the scene of the crime. There, I grabbed the letter from the Royal Society of Chemistry and showed it to Moïra.

“You told me you knew the Chemistry Guild well? So, tell me if this letter is authentic.”

Surprised to be entrusted with such an important task, she stared at me with her big blue eyes, as if convinced that I was playing a bad joke on her. I wondered myself if that wasn't the case. Then, she focused on the sheet.

“It's their seal... The filagrams are authentic... Unless there's an excellent forger, the paper is real... On the other hand... I don't really know why; I don't have the impression of seeing a real letter from this society. My uncle sometimes exchanges with them and, they generally use a better register of language... There's even a spelling mistake there... and another one here... Such a respectable guild would never use a secretary who makes such mistakes...”

Of course, I could have noticed it myself. Taking the sheet from her hands, I looked at it as the light from one of the lamps in the room shone through. As I had begun to suspect, the sheet was more transparent towards its center, as if it were thinner there.

“That’s right,” I grumbled, “the culprit used an authentic document, but scratched the ink, and thus thinned the sheet, in order to rewrite a message…”

Returning to the mail table, I quickly scanned it and discovered two suspicious letters, because they were marked urgent, without having the sender’s address. There was a letter and a small package.

Without much surprise, I discovered that the letter contained the poem and that the small package contained a small chest with a message. So, I read them to the assembled audience:

Five dwarves on the dead man's chest...

And one more gold!

The purse has fallen asleep...

And one share less!

“The purse has fallen asleep?” I commented. “It seems that this bad poet has lacked imagination more than usual.”

Mister Malevolum retorted to my remark:

“Well, maybe they lacked time... Me, I would have found something to put on.”

“I didn't know you were a poet.” I retorted.

The man looked at me maliciously before replying:

“Well yes, I am one, in my spare time.”

“Can I hear some of your verses then?”

“No.”

The answer was categorical. His reaction seemed suspicious to me and two leads came to mind. Perhaps he was the author of these lines, and therefore also of these crimes? Or perhaps he simply had a critical nature that could not help but try to contradict me?

Before I could read the contents of the small chest, a Watch agent suddenly burst into the room: they had just found where, this time, the clues for the next murder were.