The Study in Silver (The Wolflock Cases Book 5) Read online

  Case 5. The Study in Silver

  By Rhiannon D. Elton

  The Wolflock Cases, 5. The Study in Silver, by Rhiannon D. Elton

  First Edition published June 2017

  © 2017 Rhiannon D. Elton. All rights reserved.

  All rights reserved. This book or parts thereof may not be reproduced in any form, stored in any retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise—without prior written permission of the publisher, except as provided by Australian Commonwealth copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, at “Attention: Permissions Coordinator,” at the address below.

  [email protected]

  Cover compiled by Rhiannon D. Elton

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Dedicated to Mr O’Brien for teaching me about higher forms of thought that show that justice is not always about what is legal. What is right is not always what is written by bureaucratic authorities.

  Chapter 1, No Accident

  Parihaan was dead.

  Very dead.

  No one could survive with their neck bent like that.

  Wolflock felt as if he had turned to stone. As if he was a painting, frozen in time, and the corpse of Parihaan was a critic staring blankly through him. Her golden eyes sliced through him in a way she would never have been able to accomplish in reality. For a long time he stood in terrible mixture of horror and fascination. He took everything in but at the same time his mind buzzed like static, preventing any conscious thought. Finally, as he heard footsteps on the deck above him he was wrenched from his sick trance.

  “H-help!” He croaked and clutched the wall, feeling dizzy. “Help! Somebody! Help!”

  The heavy footsteps stopped for a moment and then thundered down the stairs towards him. Grogen ran to Wolflock and instantly saw that something was terribly wrong.

  “Lad? What is it? What’s the matter?” He said with a gentle urgency.

  Wolflock couldn’t speak. He just looked back down the stairs and then had to look away, closing his eyes tightly.

  Grogen followed his glance and gasped.

  “By Houl....” he breathed and brought Wolflock’s thin frame into a powerful bear hug.

  Although it was suffocating, Grogen’s arms were so broad that Wolflock felt as if he was safe from the horror down the stairs. All too soon the giant Corshman gripped him by the shoulders and looked worriedly into his sharp blue eyes.

  “I need ye to go to ye room, lad. Get to ye room and stay there. I ‘ave to get the Cap’in.”

  Wolflock gave a quick nod and watched as Grogen thumped back upstairs.

  That brief moment of comfort from an adult left Wolflock feeling somewhat more himself. Although he couldn’t muster any words amidst the shock of what he’d seen he couldn’t help but glance around at the floor. The dust was thick along the edges where no one stepped. He could see the imprint of his own shoes and Grogen’s knee from a moment ago, as well as two other sets oddly angled and smearing the thick layer of grey dust, spilt particles of herbs and woodchips from rough crates and barrels. It was as if they’d moved in haste. He noted that one set looked like heels to the wall and one odd one beside them with the toe to the wall. As if he was seeing the scene, he saw one person with their back to the wall and the other forcing them against it. The person with their heels to the wall had quite fine shoes. The nails had made clear imprints in the dust and were tiny and close together. The sole of the shoe was cleanly cut and even had a particular pattern that was geometrically floral. The other set were more roughly made, the soles being worn and flat and the larger nails set more broadly apart. Three were missing. Two from the inner left arch and one from the right heel. His heart beat painfully hard in his chest as he followed the slight hints of the trail leading to a rough wiping motion of dust on the opposite side of the landing.

  The person against the wall had shoved the other. They’d been fighting.

  He looked at the railing on the landing. The crew coming down here would normally carry something up and down the stairs, like a barrel, crate or sack, so the dust should have been thicker on the rough wooden railing as they barely ever used them. But Parihaan had held onto it as she stumbled up and down the stairs while retrieving her drinking alcohol. But the dust wasn’t completely absent and Wolflock noted a large patch rubbed away with two smaller patches beside it. Had the person who had been shoved nearly fall over the edge of the landing?

  In his mind he ran through what would have happened had they not. They would have had to move forward to their aggressor again and return to the scuffle. He looked back to the edge of the descending stairs, careful not to look at Parihaan’s body. A small black headed nail laid there. It was a shoe nail. Recently pried from an old shoe judging by the wear on the head and the fresher leather that had fused to the iron. The leather stuck to the nail had an odd zigzagging pattern as if it had been wriggled out slowly.

  His gut told him that if he looked at Parihaan’s shoes he would find a perfect fit for this nail. But this meant that Parihaan hadn’t been alone when she died.

  This also meant that someone had pushed her.

  Wolflock heard heavy footsteps from the top deck and knew that Grogen would be coming back down with the Captain. He shook his head and exhaled deeply. He had to get back to his room. He had to be away from this site. His hands felt clammy and his skin tingled as if he was falling asleep. he held onto the railing and pulled himself upstairs a little more strongly than he had felt when he first came down to the hull. He realised his whole body was shivering as he made it to the guest cabin deck and he nearly ran headlong into Grogen.

  “Get ye ta bed, lad!” Grogen pressed with concern. “Ye look like a ghost's walked through ye!”

  Wolflock could only nod. He didn’t even raise his shaky blue eyes to meet the Captain or other crew.

  As he passed, Captain Blutro held him on the shoulder, “I’m going to come and talk to you right away, Mr Felen. I know it’s difficult but your memory is best now while everything is fresh in your mind. Stay in your cabin and I’ll be there shortly.”

  He nodded again and sat on the edge of his bed. Still shivering, his mind was whirling like a blizzard.

  Who would quarrel with Parihaan so fiercely that they would resort to killing her?

  Surely if it was an accident they would have called out for help right away... but they just left her there...

  Wolflock had no love for the horrid woman but he couldn’t shake how wrong the whole situation was. He couldn’t get the image of her amber eyes staring up at him like that. They glared and pierced through him like nothing he’d seen before. It was like she was judging him and he failed. His stomach was sick.

  “Lockie!”

  Wolflock jumped up in fright at the noise.

  Mothy smiled at him sympathetically from his door, holding a cup of herbal tea.

  “Grogen told me what happened. I made you tea. Sit down. It’s going to be alright. You’ll be fine.”

  Wolflock couldn’t really make sense of what Mothy just said, but he accepted the warm tea and took a sip. His hands shook so badly that he spilt a mouthful down his front.

  “What’s happening to me!?” He breathed, feeling his gut twist like worms made out of air.

  Mothy took his hands and held them firmly. He’d never noticed how firm Mothy’s slender hands were. />
  “It’s shock. Ma taught me how to help it. Take a deep slow breath for one, two, three, four, five; and hold, one, two, three, four, five; and out, two, three, four, five. And again...”

  Mothy made Wolflock follow him for five long rounds of this, talking him through every step and not letting go of his friend’s hands. Wolflock felt cold, but his mind was settling like a pile of leaves falling back to Earth after a dog had leapt through them.

  His hands had nearly stopped shaking and he took the tea again, feeling relieved from its warmth. Mothy saw this straight away and put his blanket around his shoulders.

  “You’ve never seen something like that before?” Mothy asked gently. Wolflock could see that he’d done this quite a few times by how expertly he soothed him.

  Wolflock could only shake his head. A few sweat dampened bangs falling in front of his eyes.

  “It’s alright,” Mothy soothed and hugged him tightly.

  Something about that brotherly hug melted Wolflock and he exhaled, coming back into a relative relaxation.

  “I’ve seen a few dead animals and I’ve been to funerals, but nothing like that...”

  He felt Mothy nod next to him.

  “You’ve seen that before though, haven’t you?”

  His happy friend sighed and hummed.

  “Aye... I have. A few times. It was common to see creatures die when I was growing up. People and animals. The slavers killed the weak and elderly for fun. Sometimes they’d leave the bodies in the cages for weeks. The stench was unbearable...”

  Wolflock pulled away and looked into the sad smiling face of his friend.

  “Parihaan didn’t smell...”

  “They only smell after a few days. After a few hours they go all stiff like stone.”

  It was clear to Wolflock that Mothy didn’t want to talk about it, but he found the knowledge of the process behind it made it less terrifying and numbing.

  “She’s with the Great Mother now. Houl will open his gate and let her through. She won’t have any more of the pain that made her drink and she’ll take her knowledge back to the Great Mother and be happy. She drank because of her heartache. She lived with lessons she couldn’t learn and refusing to learn them made her the flawed being she was. Now she is one with the Mother and her unconditional love will heal her.”

  Wolflock sighed and sipped the tea again. Its soothing warmth caressed his scalp and stomach at the same time.

  “Aye...” he nodded slowly. “May she rest and be healed of all the Earthly woes that became her.”

  Mothy smiled gently, happy with Wolflock’s words.

  “Thank you for being here, Mothy.”

  “You’re welcome, Lockie.”

  They sat in silence for a time feeling the gentle roll of the ship from front to back until Captain Blutro knocked on the open door. He looked very sombre and Aujin seemed to hang a little lower around his shoulders.

  “Mr Felen, may I have that word with you now?” Wolflock knew he was only asking to be polite.

  He nodded.

  “I need you to walk me through everything in detail. I just want to confirm that this was an accident.”

  Something itched at Wolflock’s brain at the word “accident” but he nodded and inhaled.

  “I went downstairs to... to...”

  Why had he gone downstairs?

  His mind flashed back to talking to Yifi in Slavidus’ room, seeing Haatji come from the crew quarters talking to Geagle at Parihaan’s door and then flying down to find...

  “I was investigating what you asked me. I found how the alcohol stayed on board... I also found that Parihaan had more stashed away. When I found she had escaped passed Geagle I thought that she was likely to be in the hull. It’s the best hiding spot for anything on the ship. I went down to find her and... and then I found her like that...”

  The Captain nodded and let Wolflock finish.

  “As far as I could see, she went downstairs to get what was hopefully her last barrel, but she was already poisoned and dizzy from what she’d consumed earlier. It looks like she got to the landing in the hull and fell backwards down the stairs. We’ll prepare the body and keep a lock of hair for the family...”

  That didn’t sound right to Wolflock. If Geagle had said to her to “give it up” when he was outside her room, wouldn’t that mean that the drinking alcohol was in her room with her?

  “Get some sleep, you two. The crew are bringing the body up to treat on deck, so please be warned to stay out of the halls until her spirit follows.”

  Mothy gave Wolflock a last squeeze of the shoulder to see if he would be alright.

  “I’m well, Mothy. I’ll see you in the morning.”

  Mothy nodded with a knowing smile and went to his room next door. Wolflock had a sneaking suspicious that his friend would sleep a little more lightly in case he was needed. In truth, Wolflock felt as if his ego was a little damaged from his reaction to the body and made a personal promise to desensitize himself to that once they got to Mystentine and were able to study it properly.

  Wolflock removed his shoes and socks and began unbuttoning his shirt when Grogen and Hognut carried up Parihaan’s body on a stretcher made of two long poles and some sail cloth. Wolflock thought he was better prepared for this now, but the sense of hollowness emanating from the corpse was chilling. There was no peace. No resting feeling. Just a hollow sucking sensation as if she died still needed more. It was a strong belief through all of Puinteyle that the ghost of a recently deceased person followed the body. The more recently deceased, the closer they followed. As time grew on, the cords between body and spirit lengthened. There was a lot of lore about ghosts in various provinces, but all stated that if the ghost still needed something, if they had unfinished needs, they would stay in between this world and the next until they truly became nothing... or worse.

  Wolflock couldn’t look away as Parihaan was taken upstairs. Her skin was so pale now and her body laid peacefully on the stretcher. Her limp hands folded over her stomach and her wide amber eyes stilled stared from a head that was turned too far to be natural. He couldn’t shake the thought that this was all wrong. The hand on top of the others had dark red around the nails... Was it blood? And why did her cheek look swollen? Had someone hit her before she died?

  They passed with Parihaan’s body, but the image stayed in Wolflock’s mind for many lingering moments.

  What did this all mean?

  Chapter 2, Who did it?

  He tossed and turned in his bed. Nothing could bring sleep to his mind. It wasn’t adding up. Nothing was making sense. How could he be the only one to see this? He’d seen the scuffle footprints on the landing in the hull. He’d seen the signs... the shoe nail on his bedside table, the footprints, the swollen cheek, the red on the nails... He knew that she had taken a barrel down to the hull and been stopped...

  Before dawn broke over the mountain pass, Wolflock had to put things in order. He sat up and uncovered his lamp so he could write.

  He needed a timeline. Mothy had said that a dead body didn’t become stiff for a few hours, so if the crew had been able to put her limp body on the stretcher, then she couldn’t have been dead for long.

  At sundown everyone was at dinner. Not long after he had slipped away to experiment with the drinking alcohol. He’d then gone back upstairs to find Parihaan assaulting Mothy and Haatji came to help. The Captain had set Geagle as guard for the door while they went downstairs to throw the contraband overboard. It was hard to tell how much time had passed while he’d been poisoned, but he assumed three hours since the passengers had started to make their ways to bed and had seen the whole debarkle.

  It had taken another half an hour or so to finish talking to Hognut. Then a little less than half an hour in the Captain’s quarters reading logs. Perhaps just under half an hour in Slavidus room too and only a few minutes talking with Haatji and then Geagle.

  Approximately four and a half hours... But Parihaan was killed within the
last one and a half.

  Who would want to kill her though?

  Haatji was his first suspect as they had always fought, but she seemed too dignified to perform such an action... Regardless, he was still going to speak to her first.

  Geagle’s heart had been broken by Parihaan and he may have pushed her down the stairs and then gone to the top deck to create an alibi for himself.

  Nü could have a vendetta against her because of her abhorrent advances on Mothy and her father.

  Nan Ji could have wanted to silence her due to her continued unwanted advances and insults to his late wife.

  One of the crew may have done this out of sympathy for Geagle. They all had better access to the hull... He would have to check the size of their feet and see if they matched the footprints in the dust.

  Even the Captain was a suspect. He hated drinking alcohol as it killed his brother. He was also very set on stating that this was an accident even though Wolflock was quite adamant that it wasn’t.

  He had to look at the facts though, and to do that he had to examine a few things... things he doubted anyone would approve of him doing.

  He made a list of his evidence too, sketching out the footprint patterns he’d seen downstairs and also the shoe patterns on a separate paper so he could compare them around the ship. The swollen cheek needed to be checked for hand print patterns of any kind, Parihaan’s nails needed to be checked for blood. He needed to examine her corpse...

  He still had a little headache from the drinking alcohol he’d had yesterday evening, but unable to sleep, he put on his shoes and a fresh shirt to see what the crew had done with the body. He hoped that they hadn’t yet thrown it overboard...

  As he moved quietly up the stairs, the dark morning kissed him with a chilling breeze. Moving deosil around the edge of the deck he found Grogen and Hognut carving symbols into stones that they laid around Parihaan’s body. She had been placed on a tarpaulin on a bed of salt, her face covered by a black cloth and several candles circling her.