Chương 192: The Detective Three

Several weeks ago. He didn't want to be here, and the person sitting across from him didn't want him here either. They both knew it, and they also both knew that this was out of both of their control. It was actually a good thing that they were both aware of where they stood, it meant that even if they didn't speak things aloud, there was a mutual understanding. They could work with this, be civilized and even helpful to one another so that they could both go on to do their own thing.

"So, what have you learned so far, Detective Mallory?" Chief of Police Alfred Longview asked. Longview was a rather portly man, though he carried himself like someone who'd once been in much better shape. He was probably tall when he wasn't slumped into a well-worn office chair, and his broad shoulders had probably made him an impressive man before a decade behind a desk had trimmed off the muscles and padded on the fat. He was nobility, though not important nobility. That was a good thing.

Important nobility didn't make it to the seat this man was in. That was too much power. But non-nobility didn't make it there either, because they didn't have the right contacts and hadn't shaken the right hands.

"Slow, as expected," Mallory admitted. He shifted in his own seat a little. Behind him, past a glass door, was the main office of the city Nineteen police headquarters. Some three dozen desks with detectives and functionaries hard at work. It created a certain kind of noise, one that he found rather pleasant. The clacking of typewriters, men talking, the occasional laugh.

"Slow, huh?" Longview asked. He worked his jaw.

"Well, what do you have so far? Maybe we can help you along." And get him out of their hair, went unsaid.

"I'd appreciate that," Mallory replied.

"It's been a minute since I was back home. After this case I think I'll take some time off to relax a little." A lie, but an easy way for him to let Longview know that he didn't want to be here any longer than necessary either.

"Mhm," Longview said, it was just a grunt, but it was enough.

"So?"

"Right," Mallory repeated.

"So far I haven't had very much to follow."

"Really?"

"Perhaps I was a little crude there. It's more like I have too much to follow. The nobles that have passed on were not without rivals and adversaries. They had long histories, businesses in many sectors, and they were... nobles. They were ambitious at times." Longview nodded. He knew what Mallory meant.

"In that view, I haven't yet discovered anyone within the nobility with a clear motivation to want to kill all three victims. One or the other, certainly, there are business rivalries and old grudges, as is normal, but nothing that overlaps."

"Annoying," Longview said.

"So, what's your next step?"

"Widening the search. That was always going to be the next step. It's rare that I'm brought in for a case where someone was standing there with a smoking wand." The police chief chuckled.

"Fair enough, I suppose. So, anything we can help you with, then?"

"Maybe," Mallory said.

"I employed the services of an expert in pharmacology, to assist as best he can with the post-mortem investigation. The man I hired seemed to have a good reputation, a higher-ranking member of the local guild of pharmacists." At the officer's nod, he continued.

"Now, I'm no expert in the use of poisons and the like, but I've solved a few murders where they were used, and I have a gut instinct for that kind of thing, as you can imagine. The results came back... interesting." Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

"I'm not sure I like interesting," Longview said. Mallory chuckled darkly. Interesting was why he was called in.

"The pharmacist was able to identify some amount of a toxic chemical in the blood of one of the victims. Erspell was poisoned. Milo... may have been poisoned as well, though the signs were less clear." The chief sat up.

"Poisoned? Are you certain?"

"No," Mallory admitted.

"I asked the Count's family about the count and his wife's state prior to their departure. I even spoke to a few others who were at the gathering, the birthday, and it seems like there was nothing amiss." Longview shifted in his seat.

"So, what, are you suggesting that Baron Erspell and Baron Milo were poisoned, and that the Count and his wife were a mere accident?" Mallory paused, then shook his head.

"I have no proof of anything with regards to the count, but my gut tells me that he was a target as well. The issue, as I said, is that I can't find anyone among the nobility that would specifically target those three."

"Not in the nobility, no."

"So, someone outside of the nobility," Mallory said.

"I've noticed that City Nineteen has a rather substantial slum."

"Tsk. Yes. No good lazy idiots who are leeching off the good portion of society. Look, detective, I'll give it to you straight. The city doesn't want to look bad in front of its peers. Nineteen has had a tough few years, but we'll pull through. Recruitment numbers on the force are up at an all time high, and with the nobility spooked, money is finally moving in the right direction, but that doesn't mean that the city hasn't had issues before."

"Do tell," Mallory said. If the man wanted to speak, then he'd let him. He activated a few skills. Small, subtle ones, that would give him a good hint as to whether or not the man was lying. The kind of skill that was passive and unintrusive, because the more active lie-detection spells would be somewhat obvious, and if the chief had any sort of enchanted gear on him, he might notice. Better to avoid making foes within the force. He was already unpopular by dint of being an outsider.

"There's two factions that I don't care much for that have butted heads with the nobility," Longview said.

"And as you've likely noticed, the city's nobility are themselves split."

"The old and new money," Mallory said. The man nodded. It was a common enough occurrence, though Mallory was surprised to find that old money still had some sway so far from the older cities where the 'older' factions had had hundreds of years to entrench themselves.

"The two noble factions can put aside some of their differences when their own are being attacked," Longview said.

"Right now, there are two groups I think you ought to look into. The first are the dungeon guilds. The delvers have been acting up lately." Mallory nodded, but even as he did so, he was calculating probabilities and motives. Erspell, Milo, and the count had... little to do with the city's two major dungeons. They'd have tangential links, because as nobles they had their fingers in several pies, but none of their links were direct.

"And the other?" he asked. Longview sneered.

"The Union."

"City Nineteen has a union?" Mallory asked. There were a few guilds that weren't all so different from a union in truth, but very few cities allowed an actual union to exist. That would be allowing an amount of control to slip from the hands of the industrialists and into the hands of the workers. That could lead to a destabilization of an entire city. Though he supposed that this city was already less-than-ideally stable.

"Are there many local unions?" he asked.

"Only the one. Ratesco's. And yes, they are like rats. You can't stomp them out. We've been fighting them for years now, though last year they were particularly active. They're a little more quiet now, since the last riots."

"I see," Mallory replied. He thought for a moment, picking his next response carefully.

"Might I request some assistance, Chief Longview?"

"With what?" the man asked, a bit of suspicion slipping into his voice.

"I'd like access to the news from the last... two... maybe three years. Copies of every journal and newspaper that report on City Nineteen, and perhaps access to your own records. I suspect that if this union does have something to do with the murders I'm investigating, then there might be a hint left behind that I can track backwards." Like a motive. If something like a union did plot and execute the assassination of three nobles in one night, then they'd have a reason for it.

He wasn't so naive as to imagine that a group like that might not have reasons to dislike certain nobles. And if they planned on acting violently again, then having their... casus belli, for lack of better terms, laid out, may well allow him to puzzle things out when the next murder occurred.