37
A private sleuth wasn’t usually likely to get much cooperation from a magistrate, but Mick’s tokens had been issued under Full Striding’s training program. This, along with his position as Sunhampton’s head guard, meant that he had success in getting a warrant to search the cottage.
He arrived there three days later, along with Lill Gill. After writing to the Full Striding Guard Commission requesting assistance, it was Lill who they’d sent. He was happy to see her, since they hadn’t spoken since she’d helped him get on the training program.
Lill had already managed to earn her Deduction skill tree, and she was a hair away from her Forensics token, too. Stealth & Tracking was where she stumbled; she told Mick she was about as subtle as a horse wearing tap shoes.
“No need for any subtlety today, at least,” he told her. “All I need you to do is go around the back of the cottage and stand by the door in case our friend decides to leave.”
“Got it. What if they fly away?”
“No, Lill. The carriage driver isn’t a bird. They’re just feeding ‘em.”
“How’d you wind up with this case, anyhow?” asked Lill.
“Not much official business for a ‘hampton guard, so I had to make my own. Set up a little private sleuth shop. Got an office on Bishop’s Way. There’s a corkboard in there and everything.”
“Ooh, fancy. Is it not a bit of a conflict of interest, going private while you’re the town’s head guard?”
“Checked the regulations,” answered Mick. “Nothing stopping me, not as long as I declare it when my cases turn criminal. Just like I did with this. If they’re not criminal, then it’s nobody’s business.”
“What sort of cases do you get in a town like Sunhampton?”
“Well, all kinds of stuff. This one, for instance, seems to me to cover three of my cases. There’s also a strange imp statue someone hid inside a wall. While back, probably mentioned it, a fella’s pig went missing. It’s all happening.”
“In Lundy, someone once stole the welcome sign. Caused a scandal like you wouldn’t believe.”
“Why’d they do a thing like that?”
“I was bored,” said Lill. “And any self-respecting guard officer’s child has to go through a rebellious phase. Don’t worry, I put it back a few days later, no harm done.”
Lill’s left foot suddenly disappeared into the ground with a squelch. When she pulled her boot out, it was covered in mud.
“Ought to have told you,” Mick told her, “It gets a little peaty here after it rains.”
Up close, the cottage looked even more run down. Not only was it falling apart piece by piece, but the whole thing was covered in bird poo. There was so much of it that he wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that the walls weren’t white at all, and that if you scraped off the dried droppings it was an entirely different color underneath.
As he stood at the front door, it would have been a lie to say he didn’t feel at least a little bit nervous. Nevertheless, he knocked on it using the guards’ knock –three firm raps in rapid succession. Loud enough so they couldn’t be missed.
He was waiting a while. Long enough that he would have said nobody was home, if it wasn’t for the smoke coming from the chimney. Then, there was a commotion behind the door. He thought the suspect might make a run for it, and was glad he’d brought Lill.
Instead of that, the front door opened. “You have to be joking me,” said a voice.
He echoed the sentiments right back. Standing there was a lady named Lena Coarty. She had brown hair that was graying here and there at roughly the same rate as Mick’s, and narrow, crafty eyes that always seemed like they were staring right into you. At the same time, her face inspired a strange kind of trust, if a person was foolish enough to let it. It was her smile, maybe. Warm, yet not too overly so, since that would have seemed suspicious. She got the balance exactly right. Her whole expression just had this weird, almost ethereal honesty that you couldn’t quite pinpoint, yet you felt it more strongly the longer you looked at her. The trick, Mick knew, was not looking for too long in the first place. Don’t let her beguiling ways take effect.
This wasn’t his first encounter with the lady, after all. Not so long ago, Lena Coarty used some sort of artificed steel wire to steal energy from the Sunhampton lumbermill, which she used to power tinkered machines in an illegal mining operation she had set up outside of town. Lewis Cooper had been the one to find the operation, and Mick had, in turn, traced it to Lena. He had been especially proud of that since it had been his finest piece of work as Sunhampton’s guard.
Whatever surprise Lena had felt, she’d already recovered herself. “Mick Mulroon, what a pleasure. Come in and I’ll put the kettle on.”
This wasn’t the welcome he’d expected, not even before he’d known it was Lena, but Starter Sleuthing said the number one rule about interrogating perps and questioning witnesses was that if they were already talking, you let them carry on. Lena had invited him in, so why not take the opportunity? He needed to be careful, though.
“Mind if my partner joins us?” he said.
“The lady who was standing outside my back door? She’s already in the kitchen, Mick. Come on. I’ll have to ask you to take your boots off at the door, though. I’m very houseproud.”
“Houseproud?” he said, wondering exactly what part of this decrepit house could inspire, or was the result of, pride.
“Sorry, but a host’s gotta have rules. My dad, he always impressed I should keep a clean house.”
Yeah, and once I’m not wearing boots, you’ll put yours on and make a run for it.
“Sorry, but I’ll be keeping them on. I’m not here on a social call.”
He showed her the warrant to search her home. Lena read it twice, then handed it back to him.
“That certainly takes the sugar out of a nice visit,” said Lena. “Don’t get many friends calling on me out here. And since you and I go back a little, I thought it was nice you came knocking. Oh well. I’ll still make you a coffee, though. I’m not a monster.”
He followed her through the hallway and into the kitchen where, true to Lena’s word, Lill was sitting on a stool by a counter and blowing on a coffee mug to cool it. There was the faint smell of cooked bacon in the air. It made him feel hungry; all he’d had time to eat today was a couple of slices of toast. Unfortunately, if his nose was a true guide, this particular bacon was long-since eaten.
“Do you take sugar?” asked Lena.
“Two, please,” said Mick.
“Oat milk for you, isn’t it?”
“…that’s right,” he said, raising an eyebrow.
“The more you know, Mick. The more you know.”
While Lena was making the coffee, Mick took out his notepad and hastily scribbled a few lines. Then he showed it to Lill. She read it, her forehead creasing either from frustration at trying to decipher his penmanship or the contents of the note, which amounted to a warning.
Don’t look at Lena in the eyes for too long at a time. ‘Criminal’ isn’t a recognized class, but you can get illicit tokens. Just be careful about staring at her too long.
Lill made a ‘Give it here’ gesture to Mick with the fingers of her right hand. He passed her the pen, and she wrote, I know.
Humming to herself, Lena turned away from her refreshment counter and passed a mug of coffee to Mick. “There we go. One nice, hot cup of coffee for the fella who put me in jail.”
As much as he could use a coffee, it occurred to him that the last thing he ought to do was accept a beverage made by the person who he’d sent on a free vacation to a zero-star jail resort. He’d just have to leave the coffee well alone, and make sure Lill didn’t drink hers, either.
Lena took a seat so she was across the counter from them. It made for a nice impromptu interviewing desk, actually.
“It’s a pleasure to see you, anyway, Mick,” she said. “I’m out of jail, as you can see. Thank you for that, by the way.”
“Any time.”
Lena sought his eyes with her own. Mick didn’t want to stare into them, nor did he want to give her the satisfaction of looking away. He felt like it’d weaken his position. So, he stared at a fixed point just above her, so he was still looking in her general direction as he spoke.
“We need to chat about the birds,” he said.
“Oh? That’s funny. It’s become something of a hobby for me. Nice bit of bird watching, of an evening. I spread seeds in my yard to encourage them to come, and then I mark down in my little book all the different species that I spot. Glass of wine, nice blanket on my lap. It’s fun, yet relaxing.”
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
“Nice excuse. Doesn’t explain the jewelry.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Lill slammed her hand down on the counter, surprising both Mick and Lena. “Cut the crap, lady! If I don’t hear the right words out of your mouth in ten seconds, I’ll drag your arse all the way through the moors and throw you in a Striding jail myself. And let me tell you, darling, you’ll never see the light of day again if I can help it.”
Mick found himself feeling a little apprehensive of his friend now. Lill didn’t just say tough words – it sounded like she meant them, even if deep down he knew she was just adopting the ‘nasty, nasty’ approach covered in the ‘Interrogation Personas’ chapter in Starter Sleuthing. She’d overcooked it, sure. But then, she was equally as practiced in interviews as Mick was. Better acting and more nuance would come with experience.
Lena, as a career scoundrel, was far too long in the tooth to be fazed. “The aggressive routine is best reserved for someone showing signs of fear,” she told Lill. “If a suspect looks agitated or anxious, it might be the crack that breaks the dam. Used on someone like me, it’s like throwing a stone at the moon and expecting it to fall.”
Some of this sounded familiar to Mick. Took him a second or two to pinpoint why, but then he realized that he’d read it in Starter Sleuthing. Had Lena read that book, too? If the criminals in Easterly were reading Starter Sleuthing to get ahead, maybe he ought to seek out Starter Crime, or something.
He decided to take back control of the conversation. “Explain the carriage to me. Why do you drive it to Perentee every Monday morning at eleven o’clock?”
“Is that illegal?” asked Lena.
“Not as such.”
“Explaining it doesn’t appear to be covered in your warrant, either. I think I’ll keep my private journeys private, thank you.”
She had an answer for everything, and she sure knew the law and its procedures. Mick felt he was trying to paddle up a ravine using a paddle made from soggy pages of Starter Sleuthing. He didn’t even have the Interrogation skill tree, yet he’d put himself up against a career criminal who most likely had some kind of illicit token that protected her in such questionings.
This was why apprentice sleuths worked with a mentor, damn it. Mick’s ‘mentor’ was Sammy Lee, who was more interested in damned wagons and carriages than helping him out.
No, this wasn’t working. Lena was way too canny for a couple of apprentices to turn over. The way he saw it, he could either press on and look even more foolish, or try something else.
“I think we’ll take a look around now, Ms. Coarty. I’ll have to ask you to stay with my partner here.”
“Not drinking your coffee?” asked Lena.
“Apologies, but I’m not thirsty.”
“Well, can’t let it go to waste,” she said, and took a gulp of the beverage she’d made for Mick. “Never a single coin must you waste; that’s how I was brought up. I even reuse teabags.”
That was a skinflint step even Mick had never resorted to. As much as he admired a fellow money miser, he wondered how a person could be so careful with their own coin, yet willing to steal hard earned valuables from other people. He found himself wondering about Lena’s background, her family, where she’d grown up. He’d already researched this, back during the illicit mining bust, and found nothing. Wherever she’d gotten her start in life, it had left no trace in Easterly’s grand chronicle of history.
Leaving Lill and Lena in the kitchen, Mick began searching the house. All he needed was to find a piece of jewelry or two that they could link to the thefts in Perentee and Sunhampton, and then they could close the curtain on this show. Forget talking, forget nice questions. An illicit necklace or stolen brooch was the ticket.
This was the crux of it; actually finding something. It wasn’t enough that he’d seen a pigeon with a pearl necklace. Finding some jewelry was essential. The carriage, the seeds, the birds – those were all circumstantial things. But add them to discovering stolen goods here in the cottage, and this whole case would slam shut like a tavern door after closing time.
He made a careful search of the kitchen, living room, and then the upstairs rooms. Finding nothing, he checked them again, and then went out back to start looking in the yard.
At some point, the cottage’s backyard might have looked nice. There were certainly vague hints that an old owner had tended to it, perhaps even had a vision for its aesthetic direction. ‘Rustic’ was the tag Mick would have pinned to it, if pressed. In the corner, for instance, there was an old wagon wheel that had been sanded and varnished, and it had creeping lavender growing through the spokes. Nailed to a wall there was a beaten, red sign that read, ‘Hawthorne Pottery.’ You could pick old signs like that up at antique stores for five or so gold a piece. Ma had half a dozen of them.
The yard’s purposefully rustic days were long gone, though, and now the whole place was covered end to end in dried bird droppings. The area was so white with droppings that looking at them for too long was like staring into snow and getting snow blindness. Bird dropping blindness – was that a thing?
Another delightful feature was that the yard was filled with random junk. Wheelbarrows, watering cans, disused shelves presumably taken out from the house and dumped here, old paint cans with solidified paint inside. There was more rusty old crap here than in Sammy Lee’s scrapyard.
Mick set his sleuthing kit case down on a sodden, overturned armchair and took out his gloves. There were two pairs: paper thin gloves for handling evidence, and thicker gloves for…well, general glove use. Judging these to be padded enough to protect him from stray metal edges and the like, he began poking around.
Twenty or so minutes later, he had nothing. Going back into the house, he asked Lena to go sit in the living room while he conferred with Lill. Lena was surprisingly obliging. Smug, even. She went into the living room, sat on a couch, and picked up a book .
“Checked pretty much everywhere,” he told Lill. “Thought there being so much junk in the yard might be a good cover, but I’m coming up empty.”
Lill said, “Have you tried knocking on walls, finding hollow spaces, and that kind of thing? Floorboards, too. I used to hide tobacco from my mother underneath a loose floorboard in my room. Don’t do it anymore, though.”
“The smoking, or the hiding?”
“Both,” said Lill.
“You mind having a look for hidden spaces, since you’re the expert?”
“Most certainly.”
“Thanks. Second pair of eyes, and all that. You might see something I missed.”
While Lill checked inside the house, Mick went back into the yard. There was just something he couldn’t shake about it. He’d seen the birds disappear over the roof and presumably land here, after all.
Opening the artificed case that Flo had given him, he searched through his sleuthing kit and took out his forensic equipment. There was his fingerprint dusting set, a magnifying glass with low-level artificery for clue highlighting, charcoal and parchment to take rubbings, and a few chemical vials he’d bought from Janey Morgan, which would react to certain substances.
The first thing he did was to grab a watering can, fill it from the water pump, then dilute a single drop of silverite into it. Then, using a paint brush from the kit, he began spreading the silverite solution over the bird crap-covered yard. The way he figured it, if the birds were bringing jewelry to the cottage, then they’d swoop into the yard and release the necklaces, rings, and bracelets onto the ground for Lena to collect.
Only, he made a rough covering of the yard with the solution, yet there was no sign of it coming into contact with silver. He sat down on the overturned sofa. Then, feeling the seat of his pants get damp from its soddenness, he stood up and began pacing. The yard didn’t make for a good pacing area, though. Not like in his office. There was too much junk to avoid.
Okay, so if there’s nothing out here, then Lena must meet the birds in the yard, take the jewelry from them, and store it inside the house.
Heading back into the house, he found Lill sitting in the living room with Lena. They were laughing like old friends. Mick began to get a sinking feeling in his gut that Lill had stared into Lena’s eyes too long and fallen under her charms.
When he conferred with her out in the hall, though, she seemed her usual self.
“Just passing the time, is all,” Lill said. “The nasty, nasty approach doesn’t work with her. So I thought, if I get her thinking I’m all nice and friendly, maybe she’ll slip up.”
“Good thinking, but I wouldn’t count on it. You searched this place, then?”
Yup, she’d finished checking, she told him. She’d done a full sweep of the house, which meant they both had now, and she’d also used an acoustic knocker from her own forensics kit to find hidden spaces. Nothing.
Mick felt so frustrated that he could have hit a wall, if he didn’t have such a respect for interior decoration and an unwillingness to cause damage that might need a tradesperson to fix. After all, as rundown as the cottage was, he could hardly come in here as either a sleuth or a town guard and start breaking stuff.
Besides, he wasn’t the type to hit an inanimate object like that. Whenever he felt tense or angry, he’d just go for a nice run around ‘hampton. Clear it all right out of his head. No chance of that right now, though. Better to just focus on the case. Stay practical.
He was about to say something, then thought better of it. He gestured toward the kitchen. Lill followed him there.
“It’s getting late,” he said, “and we’ve searched the place. The warrant doesn’t cover us setting up camp here. We’ll have to clear out soon.”
“Well, what can we do? We tried.”
“I saw the damned birds bring jewelry here, Lill. Saw it with my own peepers.”
“Let’s haul her into the station. I’m sure we’ll be able to find something we can arrest her for, if she’s as bad as you’re making out. Then we can get her talking.”
“Believe me, if there was something obvious, I’d be happy to. But she’s too clever for that.”
Lena Coarty wasn’t so clever that she’d gotten away with the whole mining operation, though. He needed to remind himself of that. Mick had been the hero of Sunhampton for a little while afterwards. People had nodded at him in the street, they’d bought him beers at the King’s Head. Only, he knew the truth. He had caught her, yes. He’d worked hard to do so. But it had been as much about Lena getting cocky and slipping up, as it had about his own investigative prowess.
This time, though, she’d held the better cards. However she had done this whole thing, she’d done it well. He was going to have to call this quits. Mark the score between them as one each.
He supposed it wasn’t a complete loss. He’d still get experience for the sleuth work he had done. It was just that using your skills was all well and good, but solving a mystery or closing a case boosted your experience way more, according to Starter Sleuthing. After all, you could get enjoyment from reading half a book, but nothing compared to finishing it and finding out how the story ended.
Just before giving it all up and telling Lill they’d better go, he went back into the yard one last time. Daylight was fading now, which would make it even harder to spot anything. Out here on the Lackney moors, it could get real dark real quickly. If it wasn’t for this cottage, there wouldn’t be any light for miles around.
Mick opened the artificed sleuthing kit and took out his glow lamp, which he lit and set atop a wheelbarrow. Then, after assembling all the equipment he needed next to the lamp, he made one more forensic sweep of the yard.
This time, he used dusting powder on the yard walls. The powder was a special, alchemical kind which should reveal not just fingerprints, but other strange markings, too. The way he saw it, there might be a safe hidden out here somewhere. It wasn’t beyond the means of someone like Lena to have a safe concealed inside a stone wall, and then maybe even enchanted for perfect camouflage.
When the powder revealed no fingerprints on the walls, he wondered if perhaps it was built into the ground. So, he paced the yard, sprinkling dusting powder in heaps here and there. Using a thick bristled brush, he spread the powder methodically, covering square sections of the yard one at a time.
And then, he found something. He grinned, feeling so pleased with himself that he almost dropped his brush. He sat down on the ground, despite the bird droppings, and stared at the scene he’d uncovered.
Lots and lots of little bird claw prints, right there on one section of the yard. It was in the north eastern corner, and without the dusting powder, it didn’t look different from the rest of the yard at all; it was just as encrusted with bird droppings.
Only, when Mick pressed down on the part where the bird claw prints were concentrated, the ground tilted like one of those traps he’d read about in his dungeon adventure stories. Just like that, a little square of yard tilted on an axis, revealing a space underground.
Mick stood up, feeling happy despite his knees aching. It was time to have another word with Lena Coarty.