44
“So you can see the problem,” said Seelka Syrne. “You might say it’s urgent.”
Mick saw the problem alright. There, sitting in the little area behind the post office counter where they kept all their stamps and scales and whatnot, was Connor Perry, the postmaster. Only, not just one Connor Perry. Six of him. Half a dozen identical copies. Same face, same clothes, and the same grouchy look, as though doing their job was a burden.
It was such a strange situation, that for a while there, staring was all Mick could do. Logic was a carriage bound for a different station, and right then, he didn’t have enough gold to buy a ticket for Rational Thought Central.
As strange and creepy as it was to have six Connors staring at him, none of them looked threatening. In fact, they weren’t talking at all anymore. They each seemed resigned to their fate. When Mick had first entered the post office they’d all yammered on at him, insisting they were the true Connor. They’d done the same to Seelka. But after a while of yelling and getting nowhere, they’d shut up, one by one.
“Well?” said Seelka.
Mick had known Seelka and her family since he was a boy. His father had been good friends with hers, Wahid Syrne, and both families would often go to each other’s houses for dinner. Seelka was a lot younger than Mick, so they’d never really had much in common. He liked her well enough, though.
“I don’t even know where to start,” he finally said.
“You don’t?”
The worried look on Seelka’s face taught him something, right there and then. The lesson was that when people called out a sleuth or a guard, what they were really doing was handing over responsibility of the situation to someone better equipped to cope. Despite how he felt, he needed to show a strong presence in front of her.
“Don’t worry. I know what we’re going to do here,” he said. “Just need to decide the order of proceedings. Can we have a word outside?”
Just before leaving the post office, Mick flipped the sign from ‘open’ to ‘closed’. Out in the open air, the temperature had taken on a chill. Seelka, who’d forgotten to grab her coat, stood there hugging herself. Mick took off his wolf cardigan and handed it to her. It looked way too big wrapped around her, like she’d accidentally grabbed a garment fit for a half-giant.
“You better tell me everything you know, and we’ll go from there,” said Mick.
“Well, there’s six of him, like you saw. When I got back from my rounds, they were waiting here for me. They started yelling all at once, I couldn’t even hear myself think. I locked them inside and came to see you. Y’hear about this kind of thing happening, don’t you? Only, not here in ‘hampton. Con’s been acting strange lately, sure. Not overly so, but a little bit. I wonder if it’s something he ate…no, can’t be. Can food make you copy yourself?”
Her thoughts were going this way and that, giving him an insight into how she was feeling. Such a discordant crashing of several thoughts all at once was typical of a witness, according to Starter Sleuthing. When people were worried or scared, they didn’t proceed in a logical manner. It was the sleuth’s job to direct the witness’s thoughts through targeted questioning.
“Let’s start at the beginning. When did you last see Connor on his own, as his regular self?”
“This morning, just before I left for rounds. Call it…ten o’clock?”
“Okay, and what time did you find six of him?”
Seelka thought about it, then said, “Ten to two this afternoon.”
“So we know that whatever happened, it was between ten in the morning and two in the afternoon. Any idea where he’s been today?”
Seelka shook her head. “We’ve both been covering the delivery routes lately, only I don’t know which route Con…I mean Postmaster Perry… picked up. The route maps are behind the counter, and I don’t want to go near the six of him to check them.”
“Very wise. I think I had better have a word with each of the Connors.”
“Be careful.”
“Careful’s my middle name.”
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Mick’s magical knowledge wasn’t extensive, but he’d given himself a basic grounding in it as a part of his quest to build up a healthy supply of general knowledge. Not the practice of it, mind. Just a general background. He guessed he probably knew as much about magic as he did about sailing, knot tying, spotting which fungi were safe to eat and which would dissolve your insides.
There were spells that mages could cast to create temporary duplicate copies of a person, but they cost a king’s ransom. He couldn’t see any reason someone would spend that kind of gold just to create six copies of a small town’s postmaster, then set him loose with no apparent purpose to it all.
This left another kind of spell: illusion. For a much cheaper price and way less effort, a competent mage could easily create five illusory copies of a person. But again, the question was, why do it to a postmaster? Putting aside picking Connor as a choice of copy, why just send all the copies back to the post office? Besides that, illusions didn’t last very long, and they didn’t seem as real. They also didn’t have a definite physical presence, yet each of the Connors seemed to be flesh and blood.
“The whys and where’s don’t matter at the minute,” he told Seelka. “First thing is to find out which of them is the real Connor. We can decide what to do about it from there.”
“But they all say they are.”
“Well, that’s why you called out a sleuth, ain’t it? I’ll have a little chat with them. After that…I don’t know. We can maybe call a mage out here, but they’ll be a long time in coming.”
Mick decided to set up an impromptu interviewing room in the post office supply closet, where hundreds of envelopes, stamps, and rolls of parcel tape were stored on its half a dozen shelves. The whole room reeked of stamp glue. In the middle of the closet were two boxes filled with spare mail sacks, the kind with shoulder straps that made them easier to carry. He brought in two chairs and placed them as far apart as the closet would allow.
One by one, he began conducting his interviews with the Connors. It was a lengthy process, because he had to bind each of them by their wrists before stepping into the closet with them. They didn’t look dangerous, but then dangerous things didn’t always wear a sign. Best to be careful.
He began his questioning by asking each of them questions relating to working as a postmaster. Things Connor Perry would know without a sweat; the current prices of first and second class stamps. Delivery times. The price for sending a parcel that weighed a certain amount. Each of the copies passed his quiz, though, including the trick question he included at the end.
“And what about a third class stamp?” he asked. “Does such a thing exist?”
Each Connor nodded and said, in exactly the same tone of voice, “It’s called delivering it yourself. Doesn’t cost a penny.”
After conducting a first round of interviews he was none the wiser, so he started again. This time he asked them personal questions about Connor Perry. Mick didn’t know the man that well but he’d had some dealings with him, and almost everyone in Sunhampton had shared a small talk or two with each other, this being a small place.
He asked all the questions he could think of; he asked them what beer Connor liked to drink at the King’s Head. What artificery he had recently paid Lewis Cooper to do for him. Finally, he went back into the post office main hall, grabbed a dogeared book from behind the counter, and asked each Connor roughly what page Connor had read up to. They all passed without a hitch.
He wasn’t even an inch closer to finding the real Connor. Conducting twelve interviews had earned him some decent experience toward getting his Simple Interrogation skill tree, but that didn’t help with the problem of Sunhampton having half a dozen postmasters.
Done with talking to them for now, he escorted the last Connor back behind the post office counter and left the six of them there while he went to speak to Seelka. They all yammered and hollered at him, just like before. Each of them insisted they were the real Connor, and that they were tired of all this and just wanted to go home, and why wouldn’t Mick believe them? Couldn’t he see the truth?
“You know me, Mick,” said one of them.
“You know me!” replied another.
Mick went outside and shut the post office door behind him.
“Saints alive, that was an experience,” he told Seelka.
“It gives me the creeps.”
“There any chance it might be better having six postmasters? It’d make deliveries go a lot quicker.”
“Mick!”
“I know, I know. Look, I need a place to take them while I figure out what to do. The last thing we want to do is let them loose. At least when they’re together, we can keep an eye on them. Talk to them.”
“I hate the idea of leaving the real Connor in there with them.”
Mick nodded. “What about if we take them all to Connor’s house? That way, the real Connor is in his own home. I’ll keep watch over them.”
“All night?”
Mick didn’t relish the idea of sitting in Connor Perry’s living room all night staring at half a dozen copies of him, but he had the Stakeout Stamina ability now. That, coupled with a cup or two of coffee, ought to see him through.
“All night,” he said, nodding. “We just need to get them there, though. Best to bind up their hands so there’s no funny business. We’ll wait here just a little longer. Midnight, maybe. Don’t want to risk anyone seeing six Connors walking through town. I should be alright on my own, though. You go home.”
“No, it’s okay. I’ll stay,” said Seelka. “I owe Mr. Perry that much. I just feel so bad for him. You know, it just occurred to me. How handy would it have been if Mr. Perry had a dog? Or if even one of us had one?”
“Animals can’t really tell a good mimic and its target apart,” said Mick. “They trialed it using dogs from a station in Full Striding. Twelve trained dogs, and the best of them only picked out the mimic less than half the time.”
“Oh, well.”
It was a long, long night, sitting in Connor Perry’s living room with the real postmaster and a bunch of copies staring back at him. He told them not to talk, and they mostly adhered to that. Problem was, when one of them talked, they all started up. Above it all, though, Mick felt sorry for the real Connor Perry, and wanted to make him – whichever of them he was – feel comfortable.
“How about a brew?” he said.
All six Connors replied that yes, they’d love a cup of tea.