34

Soon, Chris Crier arrived at the town plaza dressed in a brown coat and holding a huge, brass bell. He rang it twice, then shouted out the day’s news in a deceptively loud voice. Mick was impressed; he didn’t know he had it in him. Must have been one of his abilities as a fully-classed town crier.

Near eleven, Mick headed over to woodland west of town, where the black carriage was supposed to arrive. This wasn’t much of a woodland, really. More of a small grouping of pines. It wasn’t hard for him to find tracks in the mud from where the carriage usually parked up.

He took a position a good distance away, out of sight by but so he still had a good view. From this vantage point, he waited and watched. Sure enough, a black carriage rolled up to the woodland outskirts, parking right where the mud tracks ended. The driver wore all black and had their hood up. They limbed down from the driver’s compartment and skirted the carriage, annoyingly putting them out of Micks’ eyeline.

The carriage itself was fancy. Too fancy to be transporting goods or anything like that. Glossy black panels that caught the daylight, huge wheels made from the finest wood and polished to perfection.

Nothing whatsoever had happened for a little while, lulling Mick into a false sense of security. He was surprised, then, when something did happen. Birds swooped down from every angle, dozens upon dozens of them.

Without warning, the carriage driver flicked his reins and made the horses turn around, slowly heading away from the woods.

Mick got up, rubbed his aching knees, and started off in the carriage’s direction. A glance to his right told him that the birds weren’t up to much; they were just eating something from the ground. The carriage was the bigger prize; he just wanted to see where it went.

He only managed to follow it for maybe a minute or two, though, before the driver urged the horses into a quicker pace, and the vehicle was gone, just a black spot on the horizon taking the answers along with it.

There was nothing he could do about this but come back better prepared next Monday. In the meantime, he had plenty to be doing. What he really wanted was to earn his Observation skill tree, and the observing he’d already done with Flo’s milk bottles and the black carriage had helped.

Checking on his skills was as easy as pie. All he had to do was tap his token bracelet, and the words came spilling out in the air, visible only to him. He hadn’t actually earned any skill trees yet, though, so all it showed him was his progress towards them.

Skill Tree: Simple Observation

The ability to watch a person or place for long periods of time, and also to study a scene and pick out important details on a smaller scale.

Progress toward skill tree:

Practice surveillance on a case, or observe a detail that is hidden or easily missed [7/25]

On Tuesday morning, Mick made his way to the Tillwrights’ farm. He liked the Tillwrights. Alister, Jonathan, Samantha, and Jane had inherited the farm from their Pa, old George Doley-Tillwright. They had come from the city, and they would probably admit themselves that country life had suited them like a pigeon wearing a suit of armor, at first. Now, though, they were ‘hamptoners through and through, and their farm was as healthy as a ripened peach.

Jonathan Tillwright made Mick a cup of coffee in the farmhouse kitchen. On the table was a birdhouse he was in the middle of mending. It was a sophisticated structure, as bird houses went; three floors, underfloor heating from a tiny glow stone. The damn thing was better than Mick’s house.

“Thanks for coming, Mick. I know it can’t be high up your list, worrying about a few birds.”

“A mystery is a mystery” said Mick. “What’s going on?”

“Well, they’re acting strangely. You know how I keep my birdhouses outside?”

Mick nodded. “Saw ‘em. Very nice, they are.”

“Thanks. They’re all occupied. Got some sparrows, bluebirds, a woodland pigeon family, couple of blue tits, a beautiful little chickadee. I’m the premier bird landlord in these parts, Mick. No sooner do I nail one to a tree, then a new bird comes to visit.”

“Nail one to a tree?”

“A birdhouse.”

“Oh, of course.”

Jonathan took a seat in front of Mick and cupped his hands around his coffee mug. “Only, they keep disappearing. All of them, flying off as a flock. Different kinds of birds messing around together. You don’t see that kind of behavior usually.”

Mick sipped his coffee and said, “I’m wondering if maybe you need a ranger or a…” he tried to remember the name for a bird specialist. He was sure he’d read it once and stored it in his dusty old memory palace. “…ornithologist.”

No sooner had he said it, though, then he admonished himself. Why was he trying to give away work? The tougher and more novel a mystery, the more experience he’d get. Don’t start giving good experience away, he admonished himself.

Besides that, coins were coins. He needed to stop trying to talk himself out of cases. He supposed he was only being honest with a prospective client, but still, it wasn’t a smart thing to do financially or professionally.

“I don’t want to start getting rangers and other folks out to the farm,” said Jonathan. “All that disturbance and such. No, forget that. You’re local, and your card said you’re a sleuth. So…”

“Okay then. Describe this odd behavior for me. Apart from them all flying off together, what else is there?”

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“The flying’s the big one, Mick, because that’s how it starts. They fly off, they’re gone all day, and then they come home. Sometimes, they bring stuff. All kinds of things.”

Jonathan approached the table and leaned toward Mick, whispering now, “Rings, necklaces, coins. I keep them in a box, Mick. I want to give them back to people if I could find out their owners, but I’m worried for the birds.”

Mick had never heard of birds stealing stuff before. Maybe magpies liked to pocket things from other birds’ nests. He was sure that was a thing. But thieving jewelry and bringing it back to the farm?

“I’m the head guard here,” said Mick. “How about you give me the box of jewelry, and I’ll see about reuniting them with their owners? I’ll leave you out of it. As for your birds, well, I reckon I need to track one of these birds of yours. See where it goes. Leave it with me, Jonathan, alright?”

“Got it.”

“Oh, by the by. I charge hourly for my time, and the client pays expenses. I’ll give you time sheets, receipts, everything. We clear on that?”

“You do the sleuthing, I have the gold. Not lots of it, but I can pay.”

“Can’t promise how long this’ll take, or if I can even solve it. But I won’t mess you around, and I won’t quit until your budget starts getting skinny, alright? If we get to the point you can’t afford to carry on, just tell me and we’ll see what we can do.”

Jonathan nodded. “Will do.”

“Okay. Let’s take a look at the culprits.”

The birds lived in the trees just by the farmhouse. Specifically, in the many birdhouses that Jonathan Tillwright made for them as a hobby. Houses of all shapes and sizes, colors ranging from pink to red to blue. There was a house that looked like a cathedral, while another he’d made resembled a theater with a little stage out front that birds could perch on. As well as that, he’d set up feeders here and there which he filled with corn, and little pedestals that caught rainwater and made pools for the birds to drink from. These damned birds were living in luxury, that was for sure.

“I best be off,” said Mick. “I’ll keep you updated.”

“Got it. So long, Mick.”

Back at his office, Mick decided it was time for some deduction, which was another of the skill trees he needed to earn. It wasn’t just enough to observe things, after all; a sleuth needed to work out what they meant, follow threads of thought, make connections.

He had bought a corkboard from Joe Phillips’ general store, and he nailed this to a wall of his office. It took up almost all the space. On one part of the corkboard, he started pinning little slips of card. On them were keywords, things to jog his memory about a case. Birdhouses. Flying as a flock. Stealing objects – metal.

Once he had maybe a dozen pieces of card pinned up, he started pacing up and down in front of the corkboard, letting his mind loose.

The birds are stealing rings, necklaces, shiny things. These are valuable things, but nobody’s mentioned it to me as head of the guards.

Logically, it followed that if no thefts had been reported, then the jewelry that the birds were stealing were ones that people wouldn’t miss. Maybe jewelry kept in jewelry boxes that were never opened, or in drawers they never inspected.

But this made it seem even stranger, because it suggested not only an intelligence in the birds that Mick had never thought they’d be capable of, but a sense of planning, of intent. This couldn’t be right.

Then, though, his mind made a couple of connections. Didn’t Percy Tattersall say he kept finding bird droppings in his house, but no sign of birds? And Douggie Fernglass had told Mick that he thought he needed more sleep, because he kept hearing birdsong with no birds in sight.

They’re sneaking around, the damned winged vermin. Creeping around town and stealing from people with their little greedy beaks.

Might they also be responsible for stealing Flo’s milk bottle lids, too? Could be. The lids were made from shiny metal. Maybe the birds were clever to a point, but also couldn’t tell which pieces of metal were valuable and which were worth less than a copper coin, so they just took everything in sight.

The next Monday, Mick got to Perentee with more than enough time to get a better vantage point in the woods outside town. Now that he knew exactly where the black carriage would stop, he could risk getting nearer, setting up shop behind a half-rotted oak stump. It was tall and thick enough to hide him from view, yet there was a small hole in the middle that he could look through.

That hadn’t been his only preparation, though. He had brought a friend along with him today. Big Jimmy, a chestnut colored horse belonging to Farmer Barnes, who owned several acres between Sunhampton and Perentee. Jimmy was a handsome horse and a well-trained, well behaved bloke, and by all accounts he could gallop like the best of them if there was need.

It was as he waited there in the woodland, leaning against the stump while Jimmy was a little way behind him out of view, chewing a tuft of grass, that he became aware of birdsong. Not such an unusual sound in a place like this. Only, if you spent as much time as Mick had lately thinking about birds, your ears began to get attuned.

Sounds like a lot of them, he thought. A heck of a lot. And different kinds of birds, too. Or at least, different kinds of songs.

It looked to him like he wasn’t the only one waiting for the black carriage. Might these birds be the ones from the Tattersall farm? Were they also the Sunhampton jewelry thieves?

After a little more time went by, he fancied a coffee. As he went to unscrew the lid of his flask, he paused. No sense letting out the smell of coffee into the air. What if the carriage driver had an especially attuned nose, and he sniffed the hot bean aroma? No, better play it safe.

His patience was rewarded not long after, when the black carriage once again rumbled into the woodland, before slowing to a stop in the exact same place as before. This time, Mick was positioned so he could see the driver as they hopped off the driver’s seat. Not their face; they still wore a hood that covered most of their head, and their bulky coat didn’t give much away, either.

What he did see was them take a little tub from a shelf on the driver compartment, unscrew it, then throw something around on the woodland floor. As soon as they did, birds swooped down from every direction, just as they had last Monday. And again, just as the week before, the driver climbed back onto their carriage, took hold of the reins, and urged their horses on.

Mick gave them a bit of time to get a little out of sight, then dashed over to the birds. There were so many of them. Sparrows, pigeons, wrens. A few of them squared up and fluffed their feathers as he approached, but most of them were too interested in their woodland buffet to care about his presence.

“’Scuse me, ladies and gents, pardon me,” said Mick, as he knelt down and scooped up a little jar full of what they were eating. He held the glass jar up to his eyes. “Seeds. Just seeds. Huh, how about that?”

Without any time to make deductions, Mick sprinted back over to Big Jimmy and climbed onto his back and urged him on in the direction the black carriage had gone. Jimmy moved at a trot and then a brisk clip, deftly avoiding knotted tree roots and divots on the woodland floor. Mick made him hold course, only giving him scant directions when he was veering off a little. As a competent yet nowhere near expert horse rider, he was wary of interfering too much.

He and Jimmy kept a healthy distance back so that the black carriage stayed as a mere dot in the distance. They followed it ten or so miles north of Perentee, then east in the direction of Tattershaw Brook, before turning west and then northwest. Soon, they were in an area known as the Lackney Moorland, a vast plain of heather and sphagnum moss that went on for more miles than Mick could count. He hadn’t been here often; once for a school trip when he was eight, and then ten years later when he, Spruce, and Lee went camping.

Just when he thought the ride might never end, a house loomed into sight. A little cottage that might have been nice if it had been treated a little better, but even from this distance he could see that it had been battered by the fist of time, then given a kick in the stomach for good measure. Heck, the damned roof looked like it had half collapsed.

There, the driver brought their black carriage to a halt. Mick brought Jimmy to a halt, too. Not much cover here. They’re sure to see Jimmy if I hang around too long, he thought.

Weighing it up, he decided the key thing was making sure the carriage driver didn’t get suspicious. So, after taking out his paper map and making a mark on it, he set off back home.