Mathilda reminded me a lot of grandma Popillia. Same small, withered frame, same elegant dignity and calm demeanour. This old lady would have made a fine Roman matron. Despite being shackled to her chair and being closed into an interrogation room with two powerful young men, twice her size, she didn’t show any sign of fear.

I pointedly ignored her and continued examining my small log with great interest, shearing a chunk off here, cleaving away another there. The chips were accumulating in front of me on the table, and neither Mathilda nor I spoke. Jim looked at us from the side, leaning to a cabinet.

I got bored with the silence first. I slowly, carefully laid the wood and the carving knife on the table, then looked into the old woman’s eyes.

“Why have you cursed all those children?” I asked.

“I did not,” she answered calmly.

My fist slammed into the table.

“Don’t you fucking lie to me!” I bellowed, showering her with gobs of saliva. “You want to bring down the mayor, don’t you? You cursed the children so that people will blame him and turn away from him! You want revenge because you are not running this town anymore!”

Mathilde calmly weathered my ire. She didn’t even raise her voice.

“Oh, so he told his new henchmen about that. Well, I won’t deny it. My husband was the mayor for fifty years in this town. We never had any children, so the town was our everything. Westwater was a poor, desolate place half a century ago, but we, me and my husband, turned it into the town you see now. Yes, it pains me that that corrupt, fat parody of a mayor now squanders away the results of our hard and diligent work. Maybe I would even curse children if I thought that would bring him down. Never liked the little brats anyway. But I cannot cast spells. I cannot put curses on anyone. And so, I am not the one who did it.”

“I wonder, who do you think did it then?” I asked as threateningly as I could manage in a low voice. “Ysabel? The one who feeds the poor and clothes the orphans? Elizabeth? The girl who is even afraid to go outside of her courtyard? Do you think she could assemble the bravery for that? Or Ysabel the malice?”

She shrugged.

“Answer me, bitch!” I shouted, showering her once again with my spit.

“I am not paid to do your job, young man,” she said, slight annoyance creeping into her voice. “That is something you should investigate. But no, I don’t know whether any of them did that. Frankly, I don’t even care. Knowing how much of an idiot our dear Captain Angheri is, I wouldn’t be surprised if he only arrested three innocents and let the real culprit away. I told the other idiot, Schultheiß that he should promote Morreio instead, but of course, he wouldn’t do that. An honest and competent watch captain would be a bother for a corrupt worm like him.”

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

“Oh? Is that so?” I asked in a sweeter, silkier tone. “And if that competent and honest man would be right now at your house?” my voice grew harder. “Searching for forbidden, occult volumes? For sacrificial candles? For pentagrams drawn in blood?!” I was bellowing again. “What would he find?! What would he think?!”

Mathilda’s lips twitched slightly. Then she broke out in a smile. “I would imagine, he would find nothing, and think he just wasted hours on a meaningless task.”

“Morreio!” I shouted. The sergeant, who was very obviously not searching Mathilda’s house at the moment, stepped in and looked at us with an expressionless face.

“Sir?” he asked respectfully.

“Take the trash out. Throw her back into the cell and let her rot away with her sins.”

“Sir,” came the answer. He opened the old woman’s handcuffs, and firmly, but gently led her away.

----------------------------------------

“You weren’t doing your part at all,” I complained.

“Because it’s still fucking stupid,” sighed Jim. “I was cringing just by looking at you. Hearing all that stupid stuff you were spouting almost made me braindead. Had I opened my mouth I probably would have vomited on the table.”

“Come on! My acting cannot be that bad!”

“It is worse than bad. If you started taking lessons from Rhodarr now, in a century or so you would reach the level where you stood a chance to be selected for Mother’s Day performance in kindergarten.”

“I have no idea what either of those things is, but I feel like I am being insulted.”

“Good gods, you are a quick one!”

“From the tone of the conversation, I presume you did not find out anything of import?” asked Beldrak, stepping inside.

“Oh, we found out plenty of things. Now we know with absolute certainty that Arnold is a terrible actor, that the old matron has remarkable composure, and that she really hates the mayor.”

“Truth to be told, I am inclined to believe her at least on that account. The performance we have been seeing from the mayor and the captain hasn’t been stellar so far. Did you see how shoddy the equipment of watchmen is? For Quirinus’ sake, the sword of that Velario fellow was rusty! Morreio does seem more competent than any of them. At least his weapons had a proper look.”

“Incompetence is not a crime,” pointed out Beldrak. “And even if it was, we are investigating another case, and at least two innocent lives, maybe three, depend on us finding out the truth before tomorrow sundown. So maybe start taking this seriously.”

“Beldrak,” I said slowly. “I think, with that sentiment, you would make an excellent good-cop. Would you be willing to…”

“No.”

“Just once?”

“Forget it.”

“What have you found out?” asked Jim.

“Nothing of import either. Schultheiß was constantly whining about a lost monocle, and how expensive it was to replace it. The captain is a bumbling idiot, and Sergeant Morreio is more or less running things around here by virtue of being the only member of the watch who is actually willing to work. He was the one who insisted on arresting Ysabel, even though the mayor tried to stop that.”

“Ysabel starts being more and more my main suspect,” the tiefling muttered. “Trying to get off the hook with the help of a corrupt official? Hushing things up with powerful friends? Sounds shady.”

“An innocent might also try that,” I argued.

“She might,” nodded Beldrak. “But I agree with Jim that Ysabel’s case looks worse and worse with every passing hour.”

“Maybe we should talk to her?” I proposed.

“Talk first to Elizabeth,” suggested Beldrak. “The poor girl looks like she is half-dead from fear. If you can get anyone to talk with your ridiculous performance, it will be her.”