Murder in Cormyr (8 page)

I had, after all, taken quite a step in the past twenty-four hours—from being an errand boy to being a government-licensed criminal investigator. Perhaps, using what Benelaius had already taught me and what I would learn from this experience, I could make it my career when I received my freedom a few days hence.

But my first duty in Ghars was the mundane one of returning Benelaius’s book to the library. I glanced at the name on the binding and saw that it was another deadly dull treatise on natural science—The Internal Structure of the Brachiopod by Professor Linnaeus Gozzling of the University of Suzail. Dreadful stuff, but Benelaius gobbled it up by the

double handfuls.

It was just after four by the time I lumbered into Ghars, plenty of time to return the book before the library closed. The library was just a large room that had been tacked on to the town hall years back. It held a gloomy assortment of material, mostly books over fifty years old, and none of the recent thrillers about Camber Fosrick, else I should have lived there.

No, the place leaned more toward history, which was the particular passion of the librarian, Phelos Marmwitz, whose personal collection made up half the library’s holdings. There was also a decent section of natural history, philosophy, and other dry subjects, a smattering of imaginative literature, and drawers filled with dry and crumbling antique maps of Cormyr and environs, many of which were drawn in great detail but were very much out of date.

As I entered the dark, dingy room, the smell of mildew struck me, and as always I feared for those books against the damp outer wall. “Good afternoon, Mr. Marmwitz,” I said, but the thin, wizened old man waved his hands in the air and made a hissing noise through his teeth intended to shush me.

“Please, quiet,” Marmwitz said in a stage whisper with a voice as dry and papery as his books. “We have a patron.” And he pointed with a bony hand to a corner near one of the small windows.

A patron was a rarity, and I was surprised to see that it was none other than Grodoveth, king’s envoy and ladies’ man, though not too hot at the latter. He looked up at me for a moment, apparently saw nothing worth further consideration, and plunged back into his reading.

I set the brachiopod book down on the counter. Marmwitz opened it suspiciously, glanced at the due date as though he

had expected it back years before, then with a nod acknowledged grudgingly that it was on time. I couldn’t resist. “Get anything new in lately?” I asked him.

He gave a proud little smile. “A town history of Juniril,” he said. “A splendid volume, published forty years ago. Been looking for it for ages.”

“Forty years ago,” I mused. “Not too new. Still no Camber Fosrick mysteries, eh?”

His face shut up like a clam sucking lemons. “We circulate only serious literature here, young man.”

“Ah, right. I forgot.” I turned to go out, when I remembered that Benelaius had asked me to query Grodoveth about seeing any highwaymen. I wouldn’t have done it in the library, but I didn’t know if I would see the man again, and there was another reason, too.

“Mr. Marmwitz,” I said quietly, “I want you to know that I do what I do now at the behest of my master Benelaius and with the authority of Mayor Tobald.” Then I turned to Grodoveth, who still had his nose buried in his book. “Sir,” I said in a normal tone of voice, which boomed loudly in the quiet room, “I wonder if I might have a word with you.”

I thought Marmwitz was going to become apoplectic. I turned back to him. ‘This will only take a minute, Mr. Marmwitz.” Ignoring Marmwitz’s stammering protests, I went to Grodoveth’s table and sat across from him.

He slammed shut the book he was reading, covered its spine, and glared at me, making me wonder if he had somehow found an erotica section and was annoyed at being discovered. ‘What is it?” he asked brusquely.

“I was wondering, sir, if you may have heard of the death of one of our residents.”

“Who?”

“Dovo. The smith’s assistant.”

“Why would I have heard about it?”

I shrugged. “I didn’t know but that it might be the talk of the town by now. Anyway, sir, he was killed south of town, near the Great Swamp, and my master asked me if—”

“Who’s your master?”

“Benelaius, sir. Used to be one of the War Wizards of Cormyr?”

“I’ve heard of him. What’s he want?”

“He wonders if you, in your travels about the realm, might have heard of any bands of brigands who would kill their victims in that manner.”

He looked at me slyly. “What manner?”

“Oh, I forgot to say. He was beheaded, sir. With an axe. We think he was pretending to be the ghost that’s supposed to haunt the swamp.”

“Ghost?”

“Yes, sir, the ghost of Fastred.”

“Listen, I don’t know anything about any brigands who cut people’s heads off, and I couldn’t care less about ghosts. Now why don’t you get out of here and let me read in peace?”

I could take a hint. Thanking him for his cooperation, I left the library, to Marmwitz’s great relief, but I waited outside until Grodoveth left a few minutes later. Then I went back in. I wanted to see what book there could possibly be in Ghars’s library that would make someone cover it up.

Mr. Marmwitz was not pleased to see me, but I gave him a friendly grin just the same and went over to where Grodoveth had been sitting. The book was no longer on the table, but since Grodoveth hadn’t left with it, it still was there somewhere. He had probably put it back on the shelf, but I thought I’d ask Marmwitz just the same.

“Sir, your pardon,” I said softly, “but as part of my… investigation on the behest of Benelaius and Mayor Tobald, I should like to know in what subject area the gentleman who just left was reading.”

Marmwitz looked crankier than I ever hoped to get, but he answered. “Local subjects.”

“Ah. And does Grodoveth take out many volumes on that subject?”

“He takes out no volumes at all. Only residents of Ghars may withdraw books.”

I nodded thoughtfully and went over to the section on local history and folklore. Most of the books were very old, and I saw that my master had copies of a good many of them in his library. Then I realized that I could tell which books had been taken off the shelf because of disturbances in the dust. For all his fussiness, Marmwitz was not a superlative housekeeper.

Nearly a dozen books had been removed and replaced, and I took them all to the table and perused them. Most of them fell open readily enough, as is the case with old and brittle volumes. I supposed Grodoveth had never learned of the proper and gentle care of books, the very first lesson Benelaius taught me. For every one of these volumes opened to a passage or chapter about either the historical or the legendary Fastred.

There was a wealth of information about the brigand, and apparently Grodoveth had read it all. Yet he had said he wasn’t interested in ghosts. He was lying about something, that was for sure.

“Mr. Marmwitz,” I said, “you don’t have a lot of people using the library, do you?”

His instant sorrow showed that I had struck a nerve. “No, and more’s the pity. Days go by when no one comes in at all. Mr. Grodoveth has come in occasionally during the past few

months, but our daily traffic is tragically minimal.”

“That is a shame,” I said, catching the fly with honey. “This really is a grand repository of information. So when did you say Grodoveth started coming in here?” All right, so I wasn’t very good at smooth transitions, but I was still learning.

Marmwitz didn’t bat an eye, however. “My, let’s see, it must have been, oh, back around Tarsakh or so.”

Tarsakh. Five months before. And at least two months before the recent flock of ghost sightings had begun. So why was Grodoveth, the king’s envoy, looking into the matter of Fastred’s ghost before that ghost, in the person of Dovo, began to make his reappearances?

It didn’t make any sense to me. Either Grodoveth could see into the future, or he had something to do with the phony ghost, or it was one amazing coincidence. Maybe, I thought, Benelaius would be able to make some sense out of it.

I thanked Marmwitz and cautioned him not to say anything about my curiosity. Then, before I returned the books to the shelf, I copied down their titles and the page numbers to tell Benelaius. I would have withdrawn them, but I didn’t want to start Grodoveth wondering where they had gone if he should return to the library the following day. Odds were that Benelaius owned most of the books anyway.

Next I went over to Aunsible Durn’s smithy. The establishment had no name, for it was the only smithy in town. Indeed, a man would have been a fool to have opened a smithy in competition with Durn, for his skill was tremendous, and he was always busy.

The only sign of his trade was what looked like an ever-glowing lump of coal that hung from a curved rod in front of his smithy. It was actually a bumpy globe of red glass inside

of which some wandering mage had placed a continual light spell. Durn must have paid the bargain rate, for the light constantly waxed and waned, though it never quite went out.

Durn was too busy to talk at the moment. It was near closing time, and in the absence of his late assistant, Dovo, he had a backlog of work. Besides the horse he was currently shoeing, two other riders waited with their mounts, so that it was nearly seven o’clock when he wearily set down his tools.

I had stayed out of the way all the time, listening to Durn’s conversation with his clients, which was minimal. He was a man of few words in the smithy and never once asked me what I was doing there. But when he was away from the anvil, he was among the most garrulous of men.

As the last client led his newly shod horse out of the smithy, Durn finally acknowledged me. “And what do you want, Jasper?”

“A word or two, Aunsible Durn, about Dovo.”

Durn shook his head. “I don’t know what grieves me more, his death or the fact that I have been without a helper all day long. Come upstairs and have a cup of tea with me.”

We climbed the round staircase in the corner of the smithy, up past the second floor lofts where Durn stored his supplies, and stopped on the top floor, a modest apartment where Durn lived alone. As he brewed a tea that reeked strongly of seaweed, I explained my mission to him, and we talked about Dovo.

“He was a good worker, for all his other faults,” Durn said. “The gods know I missed him terribly today. Yes, he would be off at the taverns roistering away, but never when there was work to be done. Still, I pity his wife and children. He paid little attention to them when he was alive, and now they shall not even have the comfort of his salary since he

is dead. Though perhaps,” he added roughly, “I can help in some way.”

“You heard he was playing the ghost?”

Durn gave a snort of disgust. “Aye, just like him. Always on the lookout for a prank or a jest. He tried that here the first week he worked for me. Put a burr under his friend Argys Krai’s saddle. When Argys mounted, the mare went crazy and threw him off. I let Dovo know in no uncertain terms”—Durn pounded a fist into his palm—”that type of behavior would not be tolerated in my smithy. He never gave me trouble after.”

“Did he ever say anything about the ghost to you?”

“He said he saw it. In fact, I believe he was the first one— setting everyone up for his little joke. Must’ve been, oh, back in Mirtul, four months ago. Told me, and probably everybody in the tavern, that Fastred’s ghost had come out at him one night while he was riding home from the Swamp Rat. Said it took a great swing at him with its axe, and showed a cut in his cloak to prove it. Got a lot of mileage out of that story, he did, and made everyone nervous enough that they were ready to see a ghost even without him pretending to be one. Guess somebody didn’t think it was very funny.”

‘True enough,” I said. “I know that he was quite a hand with the ladies. Is there anyone you can think of who might have wished him ill?”

“Husbands and suitors, you mean? T’would be a long line, I fear. I know little about the details of his romances. That was another thing I told him right off to keep out of the smithy. If his philandering lost me customers, I would let him go. But that never happened.” Durn shrugged his heavy shoulders. “People here have little choice. They either come to me or ride all the way to Hultail, and the smith there is… well, no artist with an anvil.”

The tea was finished steeping, and he proudly presented me with a cup. I took a sip. It smelled like seaweed but tasted like… decomposed seaweed. I smiled and nodded anyway and made myself take another sip.

“You know,” Durn said after nearly draining his cup with one long, scalding swallow, “there is one lad who Dovo had a real rivalry with—that Rolf. Rolf the Roofer, Dovo always called him.”

‘Yes,” I said. “The one who’s got his cap set for Mayella Meadowbrock.”

‘That’s him. A stout worker, but an ill-tempered sort. Gets in fights nearly every week. His father was in the other day and told me he worries about him. Nearly beat a fellow to death over in Thunderstone. The other fellow started it, but Rolf sure enough finished it.”

“Did Dovo ever mention him to you?”

“Oh, yes, told me he enjoyed playing up to Mayella just to drive Rolf wild.” Durn cocked his head. ‘You think maybe he drove Rolf a little too wild?”

The thought had certainly occurred to me. “Possible, I suppose. What was Dovo’s manner in the smithy like?” I asked. “Did he get along with customers?”

‘Yes, most of them. Some he rubbed the wrong way with his joking. When he found someone’s weak spot, he’d play on it, you know? Then I’d have to… take him in hand a bit.” His eyebrows raised as though he had just thought of something. “Just the other day in the smithy he had a run-in with the king’s envoy, what’s his name?”

“Grodoveth?”

“That’s the one. His horse had thrown a shoe, and we were putting one on, when Dovo starts asking the envoy a lot of questions about what he’s seen on his journeys, just

run of the mill questions, but with an edge to them, almost as though he’s making fun of the man.

“Well, I finish the shoeing, and Dovo is leading the horse out while the envoy’s paying me, and something happens, the horse stumbles a bit, and this Grodoveth suddenly goes mad. He clouts Dovo on the side of the head, knocking him down, and then stands over him. If he made another move, I was ready to help Dovo, but he didn’t. He just said, ‘Be careful how you treat my horse, boy,’ and that was all.