“An unauthorized meeting?” Prin blinked in confusion at Hobbs and Crow. As though he could barely comprehend the meaning of their words.

“And she was never seen again after that.” Crow said, still with the intense eye contact with Prin.

“We’ve established.” Captain Thompson said dryly. He very pointedly looked at his pocket watch.

“It was her party. I’m sure everyone wanted to talk with her.” Valor said quite sensibly.

“No, someone made a special point of following her to her private chamber. You might even say sneaking along behind her.” Crow said pointedly. “Do any of you know who that might be?”

“I-“ Prin began.

“I confess.” Valor interrupted him. “It was me.”

Captain Thompson looked from Crow to Prin, from Prin to his son, and back again. He took Valor’s arm. “He’s confused. He gets like this sometimes.” He said.

“I wanted to see her. To talk with her privately.” Valor persisted. “About my future. Wasn’t Freya supposed to be a great seer of fates?”

Dru snorted. “She sure didn’t manage to see her own fate, did she?”

“Maybe she did.” Prin said quietly. “And that’s why the party . . .” No one paid attention to him.

Wrena shot Dru a horrified look. “It’s not funny. None of this is funny.”

Dru shrugged, as if to say, anything can be funny if you put your mind to it.

“You followed Freya to her office?” The way Hobbs said this, implied he knew exactly who had followed her, and wasn’t sure how much to humor Valor in case he knew something. Maybe a little.

Prin must have realized it too.

“Not personally.” Valor scoffed.

Captain Thompson eased his grip on Valor’s arm, tilting his head to the side, curious where he was going with this.

“I had to send someone on my behalf, of course. But he came right back.” Valor said.

“Now wait just a second here.” Dru said loudly. “Do you think someone witnessed her receiving the animal, or it actually attacking her? And just didn’t think it was any of their business to say anything about it? You did say it was an animal attack.”

“We said it was like an animal attack.” Hobbs clarified.

Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

“Everyone was saying there would be a surprise.” Elwin added, afraid his silence thus far might seem odd or suspicious in some way. What might he be saying in this meeting if he really did know nothing? “Maybe it was supposed to be some sort of animal.”

“An exotic creature.” The captain said thoughtfully. “It would be just like her to do it too. To impress everyone.”

“I talked to her assistant.” Dru said. “She implied the surprise was something kinda dangerous and she was worried about it. This would fit. A tiger.”

She smiled, the entire mystery being solved, and herself having helped. She looked at her cousin.

Wrena still glared at her.

“If it was actually a tiger, then where did it go?” Hobbs asked, looking around to see who would solve that one, since they were all so damn smart. Or maybe he was looking to see who was concealing a wild beast behind their back.

“We’ve already come to the conclusion that the killer was actually a person.” Crow said patiently. “Although maybe there was a point to making the body look that way. Maybe to conceal evidence or throw us off.”

“It certainly has worked in throwing you off.” The captain snorted. “Since you’re here wasting your time right now.”

“Sometimes you have to turn over a lot of rocks to find a worm.” Hobbs said.

“To catch a big fish with?” Crow asked him.

“Exactly.” Hobbs said, satisfied, not realizing he was being poked fun at.

Under other circumstances it would have been easy to find all this very amusing. Elwin guessed.

“Go fishing on your own time.” The captain said. “Because you’ve about used up as much of mine as I’m willing to give.” He tapped his watch. “One more question.”

Hobbs opened his mouth, but Crow elbowed him, giving him a pointed look. Didn’t seem like he was authorized to have the last word.

“If this is the last one then I had better make it count.” Crow said, in a mock thoughtful tone.

“Quit yer stalling.” Captain Thompson admonished.

Crow looked Prin dead in the face and said. “All I want to know is how you got her out of there last night, and why you returned her this morning.”

Prin blinked at him, the picture of wide eyed innocence. To his credit, he didn’t portray that he knew anything about the disappearing and reappearing corpse.

“That’s two questions.” The captain said dryly. “And I think you’re scaring my kids. This ends now.”

“But I haven’t gotten my answer.” Crow protested.

“This is so ghastly, I can barely believe any of it’s true.” Wrena leaned towards Dru, who had begun fanning her again.

“How and why?” Dru asked them. “That’s about all of it. You boys really don’t have a clue. Shall we cut up your steak and wipe your butts for you too, while we’re doing your job for you?”

“No, there’s also who, but we already have a pretty good handle on that one.” Crow said steadily.

“Mmm hmm,” Hobbs nodded. “Wait, we do?”

“I said, get out of here.” The captain said firmly. “The rest of you.” He motioned to the others. “Can go back to your rooms or whatever it was you were doing. I’ll make sure they see their ways out.”

“Alright, fine.” Hobbs said. He slid out of the bench and stood up. A more uncomfortable and ungainly motion was hard to picture.

“We will be back.” Crow said. “To conduct a few individual interviews.”

“The hell you will.” The captain said, at this point full on scowling at them.

Wrena had stood up, and practically fled to the door leading into the rest of the house, Dru close behind, heedless of the bottleneck being caused in the doorway.

“We’ll be back for answers to our questions.” Crow said. He stood up and brushed off his suit with his hand, sweeping away invisible crumbs from the snack he wasn’t offered.

Valor sighed.

Elwin didn’t think anything of the slight sound, but glanced his way anyway, wondering what sort of interesting parting remark he might be preparing to give.

So, he wondered if he was the only one looking at the boy when he twitched, and fell suddenly to the ground in an ungracefully heap.