Murder in Cormyr - Chet Williamson [52]
I thanked the butcher, and he waved a pleasant good-bye as his wagon creaked away. His story didn't clear Rolf, but at least it gave a reason for Spoondrift's malevolence.
I sighed and looked at my list. I would get no more out of Lukas Spoondrift. Farmer Bortas was next, but I had already talked to him. Bryn Goldtooth, the halfling, was the last on the list, except for myself, and I headed over to his shop.
24
Bryn Goldtooth was getting ready to close up for the day. He was not involved in the furious preparations that occupied the other inhabitants of Ghars, since he was not a member of the Merchants Guild. His shop was a buy-and-sell-and-trade place where you either found exactly what you were looking for, or nothing at all. It was a labyrinth of dimly lit narrow aisles, where a stuffed leucrotta head might sit between a pair of gold candlesticks and an assortment of used cranial drills.
And since his stock came from his customers rather than from wholesale merchants, he felt no sense of brotherhood with the guild. Besides, it would have curdled his halfling blood to give money to human merchants and receive nothing in return except an intangible membership.
While I had never patronized Diccon Piccard, I had bought things from Bryn Goldtooth. I think he gave me better prices because I had told him about my halfling blood. No purchase or trade was ever made without his looking up at me, winking, and saying, "We halflings have to stick together, eh?"
But he showed no mercy on full-blooded humans. He lived to out-bargain them, and when one left his shop dejected, having lost the best of a deal, his day was made. Apparently he had had a good day, for he greeted me cheerily and didn't even look disappointed when I told him I had not come on business but to ask him about his recent experience with Dovo.
He laughed merrily. "I can't tell you a single thing about that, my boy! When I saw that man standing there with his glowing face and his swinging axe, I wasn't going to hang around. I just booted Bupkin in the side and we tore off down the road, and I didn't look back until I was safe in Ghars."
"That seems to have been the reaction of most people, including me," I said, unashamed to admit it.
"All but one," Goldtooth said. "Looney Liz."
"Elizabeth Clawthorn? I was going to go and visit her."
"You do that. All us sane people light out, we see a ghost. But old Liz was too crazy to run, she was. Least that's what she said when she come in here trying to trade a dead cat for a linen tablecloth. Needless to say, I didn't make the trade. 'Course maybe she didn't run because she's too ancient. Can you imagine that old crone going any faster than her usual creep?"
"Did she see any more than we did?"
"You ask her about it on your way home. Maybe it was just another one of her stories. She's a queer one-sometimes she seems as right as rain, and other times you'd swear she's got a turnip in her head instead of a brain. Speaking of turnips, I took half a bushel in trade today. Now I don't know if you're a turnip eatin' man, but I could make you a deal…"
As it happened, I was not a turnip eating man, and got out after spending only three copper pieces on a two-year-old journal that happened to have an installment of a Camber Fosrick story I had never read. Unfortunately it was the third of four, so I had no idea what came before or how the mystery would end, not unlike my present situation.
The sky was beginning to darken, so I hastened south out of Ghars. A mile's ride brought me to the small, ramshackle cottage where Liz Clawthorn lived.