It had seemed a long shift in the wards; a young boy had been enabled to keep his leg after nigh severing the bone in a dangerous accident on a roof, but I had seen the death of a docksman brought in on a rough stretcher, a broken rope and the mangling of his chest and organs from a heavy chest of stonework supplies. Montaron's overcoat had been flung in the doorway, and inside Toby the bull-pup was not the only one who greeted me.
"The game's afoot!" Xzar said. "The fair sex, of course, being your department—"
I cannot deny a certain experience of women over several nations and at least three discrete regions. Nor, indeed, being one.
"On the case of the murdered herbalist: Montaron has discovered a lady who may have been one of the last to see her."
Inspector Aegisfeld had commissioned Xzar upon the discovery of Missus Cragmoon's body; the process of excavation had revealed only a suggestion that the murderer was a man, dark-haired, and familiar with the underworld in which his victim had operated. He had caved in her skull and left the body sinking deep into that red clay from an overturned layer in the earth.
Our route took us to the shades and shadows of the Bridge, past hawkers in ash-pits plying hot sausages of troubling composition and into the alleys that adjoined the nobler estates as the sharp division from day to night. They lived on the refuse of such places, and served the nobles by containing it. Rose Bouquet, in the dim light of an overhead lamp-post, might have been named for the scarlet crown of hair that flowed across her bare shoulders like livid fires; closer, she was a tall gaunt woman in ragged red, thin and sallow as if a victim of recent illness.
"What d' ye want? No time unless I'm paid for it." Xzar offered her a coin.
"You knew Missus Cragmoon, didn't you? Dead Missus Cragmoon. We seek the puzzle of the cause; would you tell us when you saw her last?"
Miss Bouquet requested another danter. "Third or fourth day of Flamerule," she said. "Can't rightly remember which."
The body was located on the ninth day; and today the thirteenth.
"Evening or morning, Miss Bouquet?" Xzar said.
"Were morning." Rose Bouquet crossed her arms. "Came to my crib and talked a bit. She wasn't a bad old stick."
"And talked about...?"
"How it's bloody cold for Flamerule." The lady shivered, her arms clutched around herself. "Same things your type talks about with your friends, I don't doubt."
"You have been ill lately, haven't you?" I said. "I work in the mercy hospital. If you'd like me to say a brief prayer..." I raised a hand toward her. Then she startled like a trapped cricket and jumped a step back.
"You're one of those Order types, aren't ye? Something about the eyes. Staring! Judging folk! I won't have that. No, you keep away from me. Even the likes of they look down on those like us. I'm done with this." Rose Bouquet clutched her grip on her gold. "Just you keep away when folk know you're worse than the common guards."
"Then there are many who have failed in their duties toward you, Miss Bouquet. The hospital is intended to serve all who come to its doors." I had seen women of a similar profession to her. "Missus Cragmoon, I take it, was kinder to you when you were ill."
The wary look did not fade from Rose Bouquet's eyes. "I'd eaten something I shouldn't. Bad meat or something. She gave me a nice willow tea."
"Yellow," Xzar said in an undertone, and I did not need that to notice that the sallow tint of Rose Bouquet's skin and eyes was not only light—and could not be the lingering effects of only food-poisoning.
"Have you continued to have trouble eating?" I said.
"I've never eaten much. I'm right as rain, I tell you. Not a thing wrong with me." She shifted a hand to her hip.
I signalled to Montaron and Xzar to move back from her. "Or pains...here?" I said, pursuing it and pointing to the liver. Something in Miss Bouquet's gaunt posture and glitter of yellowed eye was like one or two other cases I had seen.
"I don't see that's any of your business, but if ye tell me what mess to grab from the seller that's fine and I won't oblige myself to take your advice." For a few moments we spoke of symptoms as healer to patient; passings and sensations.
"Dandelion tea will soothe your liver complaint," I said, for that was the usual meaning of the yellowing of skin. "It came upon you suddenly, and Missus Cragmoon helped you to treat it."
"It wasn't her fault! Came and helped me, she did, and gave me a mix of her own that smelt like castor. Wasn't nice, that, but helped me get up again."
"And was it tansy or pennyroyal she gave you, Rose?" I said baldly, for she had described it clear enough at last.
She grew paler below the light. "Thought you holy ones were against such things. Would want to haul me off and have me prisoned for it; and if she were alive her too, though she was a good old body who never hurt anyone in her life. What if I did, my lady?"
My order serves life. And yet women who induce such things do not do so without reason; and that reason becomes compassion for them. "I am not here to condemn that, Rose. Did Missus Cragmoon give you the preparation in the first place?"
Officially, preparations of tansy or pennyroyal or slippery elm, those that loosen blood and destroy unformed life, are barred for the women of Amn; and when they come ill to the wards they cannot tell the full truth. In the hands of careless herbalists they can kill or harm for life when the dose is wrong in the slightest, a danger far from the wounds encountered in battles. One could imagine revenge for such an accident—or murder.
"No. She only helped me after," Rose said, shaking her head firmly. "She helped me in the morning, and then she went."
"Did she give such preparations to other women, Rose?"
"Sold mostly nara," Rose said, "healing herbs, guril, willow—and, sometimes those, if you needed it and when she was careful. Never harmed nobody."
"Black lotus?" I said; for in fact Montaron had found traces of the herb hidden in her cottage.
"Things that people want to take, think of it what ye will," Rose said. "She never harmed nobody. She was angry when I told her I'd bought from that Brassus Clem; he said it was the same as her but he got it wrong, and she helped me through it. So you see she wasn't killed for anything she sold."
"Lotus kills slowly," I said, and inwardly thanked Selune that Aegisfeld had secure custody of Missus Cragmoon's supplies. "It seems...easy, a relief." I had searched countless tomes on the numbing of pain when coming home from the wars. "But it hurts you in body and mind. I don't mean to preach, Miss Bouquet; it's only that I've seen it." I gave her another danter. "And she said nothing of her plans for the day?"
"No, indeed. By all means find the dirty dog who did her in," Rose Bouquet said, and held her head as high as a red dragon.
"I couldn't have told she'd taken pennyroyal without her being dead," Xzar mused. "A good reason for a healer's advice here. The fourth is a likely day for Miss Bouquet's statement; Missus Cragmoon's rival Brassus Clem as chief suspect for confronting him upon her trade; Monty...?"
"Heard the name," Montaron said simply. His face was more wrinkled than its norm today, his hair greyish and his walk slow as if he was an old man. Not only the shadows but disguises were his forte in disappearing and redirecting; in another life I believe he could have made a fortune on the stage, so accurate his imitations of others. Gnome, dwarf, male, female, in a few moments and with but a few supplies of cloth padding and greasepaint Montaron could fade to another identity easily as into the shadows.
"Fits the description of what we're looking for, Xzar. Small problem: he's been dead a threeday. Carriage accident. Still filling the old gossips."
"And his...family, sibling, leman or beau, business associates?" Xzar said. "Such a coincidence. I don't trust coincidences."
"His woman were supposed to be upset. Should I find out more?"
"Very much so," Xzar said. "Especially where the body is buried."
—
On our return the heavy cream-coloured envelope pinned to the wood of the door with a silver nail was addressed to Xzar; and sealed with a rich seal of black and royal purple.
Will call upon you at twelfth hour tomorrow. Luncheon will not be required. —V. A. deV.
—