PALMER’S PLIGHT.
Mibbet was annoyed since the first sighting of the phantasm, formerly known as Farmer Palmer Rosalind, had not stopped screaming, and it wasn’t like she needed a pause to catch her breath or anything.
“Come on in, I’d offer you a cup of tea or something, but for obvious reasons, we don’ have any milk, or tea, or biscuits, or intact cups for that matter, now what kin I do you for?”
At the unexpected welcome, Rosalind actually forgot to keep screaming (Much to poor Mibbet’s relief. The nonstop scream in soprano range had been, to her, at the least far more unsettling than the incredibly welcoming deceased person.)
“Please, if you ever do that again, remember to pause for breath; I know you don’t have to or anything, but please, so I don’t have to imagine imploding,” mumbled Mibbet to Rosalind.
Before too long had passed, the spectral seed grower was joined by a secondary spook. Evidently, his wife. The pair flopped down in the remains of an old sofa. (Everybody else, of course, carefully ignored the fact they were sitting half in, half on the damn thing, details like that were bad for one grasp on reality after all.
“Sorry to trouble you two, but we were wondering why the scarecrow related shenanigans.”
At that, the Farmers expression darkened. “If you want to know that, perhaps you should ask the person responsible, not me; I’m more’n happy to stick around here with Muriel. My killer, on the other hand....."
“Killer? They said you died in an accident.”
“that’s a clever accident,” replied Palmer, quickly detaching his noggin to prove the point. “My head got lopped off; I was quite attached to it too. I know it wasn’t the most handsome, but it was mine. Plus, an accident don’t normally stuff ya, mount ya, or leave you attached to a scarecrow frame in the middle of a field,” He grumbled.
“Yeah, that doesn’t sound particularly accidental to me either,” conceded Mibbet. “So you know who did it?”
“Of course, I do, but I can’t tell ya.”
“Why not?”
“Rules, where would we be if the dead went round solving their own murders willy nilly? It just isn’t done. Rules say the best I can give you is a vague hint and, of course, haunt the hell outta them if they turn up here. But they hide in the scarecrows and corn, and in case you hadn’t noticed, there’s no shortage of either round these parts, so finding the bastards isn’t easy.”
“Yeah, we’d noticed. So what can you tell us?”
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“They did it for the land, that’s all.”
“Still a fairly solid clue; I’m betting they’ll try their best to chase us off if we start looking into it .”
“Maybe.”
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Errol was less than chuffed to hear they were headed back to Nopesville of the many webs; he really wished he could find an excuse to sit around with the ghosts. They had been nice and even offered him a cup of tea (admittedly, the leaves they had managed to scrape together looked far past their best, and it had been served in a chipped bowl instead of a cup, but it was the principle of the thing.
Now, rather than sitting around calmly nursing tea that was further expired than his erstwhile hosts, he had to go into a town full of cobwebs and a potential murderer. (At this, Errol came to the sudden realisation that maybe his definition of safe and of normal had shifted just a tad since meeting The Princess, and his common sense seemed to have jumped ship rather than deal with the results of this dramatic change in standards.)
But for now, he had work to do; he never thought there would come a day when he would consider whether he actually needed to protect The Princess from a murderer or protect the murderer from The Princess. But he was quickly finding himself facing just that scenario.
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Mibbet quickly made her way back to the village and unleashed the full force of Rosalind until she gained access to the Headman’s property records. As soon as they entered the records office (see also shack full of papers), they had been practically buried under an avalanche of loose documents, assorted crud, and ancient welcome banner (there is always one of these, usually in such a state that looking at it is enough to make you feel unwelcome and unclean, it is a rule.) Shifting through them and the last will and testament’s of pretty much the entire village was to put it as politely as possible no mean feat. (Not that any of them were feeling particularly polite in the middle of the pure preponderance of piled paper purgatory.) But they started to pore through as fast as they could. Eventually finding an empty space where the records for ownership of the Palmer family farm should be.
That would have been somewhat fishy if it wasn’t for the records office (shack) being a pure abomination unto Ordurlee. Half the papers here were obviously used as impromptu coasters at some point. The others felt like they must have been stored away by a particularly drunk tornado with sticky fingers. Receipts were piled up seemingly at random, and to make matters worse, the “village records office” also had a news scroll section, featuring news scrolls going back decades, again sorted using the “throw it in and see where it lands” filing system. (On the plus side, there were no cobwebs in here, Much to Errol’s relief. It seemed the local spider population's reaction to Crypye the gargantuan had involved rapid relocation)
Mibbet was rapidly starting to ponder whether to introduce her own revolutionary filing system to the village (she called it the throw a fireball into the bloody place method.) When she noticed something outside. The shed was almost completely surrounded by scarecrows.
The killer probably didn’t expect what happened; next, Rosalind may have had an incredibly strong sense of nope when it came to ghosts, spectres, ghosts, ghouls, and things that go bump in the night.
But her approach to things that scared her (once she processed that they weren’t going away, that is) was much akin to that of a rhino. So she grabbed choppy, took control with Mibbet's approval (she wanted a fight too after all this mess, dammit,) and went in swinging.