Murder in Cormyr - Chet Williamson [30]
"T’was at the beginnin' of spring. Dovo was the first, though he lied about it. The twenty-seventh of Mirtul it was. That merchant from Arabel espied it on the twelfth of Kythorn. Mayor Tobald seen it the night after the flower festival-that was the twenty-first of Kythorn. Kythorn the twenty-seventh 'T’was Diccon Picard. Then on the eighth of Flamerule Loony Liz spotted it; Flamerule"-he paused for a moment, ticking through the days in his head-"twenty-first it was when Lukas Spoondrift seen it. Then nobody seen it again until Farmer Bortas and his wife on the sixteenth of Eleasias! And the last was Bryn Goldtooth, the halfling, on… ah, yes, the twenty-eighth of last month!" Shortshanks cried triumphantly. Then he gave a dwarven smirk. "Comin' back from the Swamp Rat he was. Swore he'd never go on that road after dark again."
I shook my head admiringly. "Your memory, Shortshanks, is as impressive as the brews you serve. I take it that, uh, your trade has increased since the late Dovo's little pranks began?"
"Best thing that could've happened to the Bold Bard," he said. "Got to where folks didn't like travelin' the swamp road after dark, and that was just fine by me." Then he sighed. "A course, now that the ghost's a phony, more folks'll probably be goin' to the Swamp Rat again."
"I wonder," I mused. "There may not be a ghost out there now, but there is a murderer."
He didn't smile, but his mouth didn't curve down as much as usual. "Aye," he said quietly. "Seems there's a bright side after all, then."
15
Though Shortshanks's information was given at lightning speed, still, like all great sleuths, I was able to retain it. How? Simply by writing frantically with a charcoal pencil on a piece of paper under the bar, while watching the dwarf as he spoke.
I feared, however, that I might not be able to decipher my blind scribbling later, so while the names and dates were fresh in my memory, I wanted to polish my scrawl so that I wouldn't wonder later if some number was an eight or a nine.
I walked to the back of the common room and went through a battered door into an enclosed walkway that led to the necessary room of the tavern. In the privacy of the small, unpleasant chamber, a guttering lantern provided enough light to see what I had written. A few characters and numbers were barely legible, but I corrected them and emended the list so that it now read:
Mirtul27-(Dovo 'Kythorn 12-Arabetmerch, 'Kythorn 21-Tobald Kythorn 27-'Diccon Ticard 7la.me.mk 8-Liz Clawthorn Jtamerute 21-Lukas Spoondrift T.kasias 16-farmer (Bortas wife Tleasias28-'Bryn QoCdtooth Tleint 16-Jasper
Well, that was a start. Toward what and for what purpose, I wasn't sure, but at least it would show Benelaius I had been on the job.
I tucked the piece of paper in a pocket over my heart, but the pencil slipped out of my hands and rolled under the door to a small closet that I assumed held cleaning materials. I opened the door and saw a bucket on a rope, a broom, and a pile of rags. The pencil had rolled under the rags, so I reached under and felt around for it. I found the pencil, but I found some other things, too.
And what I found first was moving.
It was soft and furry, and when I felt it pour over my hand I leapt back with a yelp, nearly falling onto the necessary seat. But it was only a nest of young mice, old enough to run but too frightened to leave their first home. I sighed in relief and resumed the search for my pencil. And that's when I found what really got my attention.
Beneath the rags was a hat and a cloak, not new but not ready for the rag pile either. The cloak was far too large for me, as was the hat. They were rather nondescript garments save for one thing-there was an ornament on the hat made from a feather and a sigil of the smith's guild, and I had seen Dovo wear it many times.
If this wasn't a clue, I wouldn't have recognized one if it bit me in my buttocks. I rolled up the cloak and hat and put them under my own cloak. It made a lump, but I thought that I could get through