And All Manner Of Things Shall Be Well

Disclaimer: I don't own FMA, I just like to play around in it's world and annoy the characters for awhile.

After-beta: ShiniLuv

"If you have two left feet, stop making a public spectacle on the dance floor" - Cretan proverb

Chapter Eight: In which the plot thickens

By the time Mrs. Ravensworth had returned with his guest, Ed had time to tuck his shirt back in, sit up, and look halfway presentable.

"Colonel Elric, I presume?""

"Colonel Bond, you presume correctly."

They shook hands while golden eyes appraised grey-green ones. Colonel Ian Bond looked as suave as Fuhrer Mustang had warned. Fully a head taller than Edward, he was athletic and slim in full evening dress. A fleeting thought what would he be like to spar with? flashed through his mind. Next to Bond's beautifully pressed black pants and jacket, white shirt and scarf, but bare headed, with closely cropped black hair, Ed felt like an underdressed hick.

But he did his best to be a good host in offering Bond the liquor and cigars. "Only a small whiskey and soda for me, I'm just stopping briefly before going to dine at my club."

Edward opened the doors of the cabinet beneath the sideboard and puzzled over the selection of glasses, different glasses for each type of drink? It doesn't make sense! He didn't know which one to pick.

"You don't indulge, do you?" Bond had him pegged.

"Hmm, no" The glass conundrum still puzzled him. "I used to, briefly, a few years ago, but I haven't a head for alcohol."

Bond nodded in approval, it took a strong man to admit he didn't drink, and an even stronger man to deliberately turn his back on it despite the social pressure to fit in. He paused in his ruminations long enough to point out the correct glass, and then show Edward how to make the whiskey and soda.

"You keep 'country hours', I see" Bond said while sipping his drink - Ed had put in too much soda, but Bond didn't mind, he needed to keep a clear head tonight. "Pardon?"

"You dined early" Edward had the distinct feeling he was way in over his head where local customs were concerned. "Oh that", he waved his metal hand. "Mrs. Ravensworth had dinner ready early, and I hadn't eaten all day."

He would have explained further, but Bond made a dismissive wave of his own. "It's quite all right, I know all the details. I wouldn't be a proper spymaster if I didn't." Again Edward had the uncomfortable realization he was feeling his way around in pitch darkness. "I guess the letter of introduction Ambassador Pankhurst wrote won't be necessary now."

"She did? What a sweet woman! May I see it anyway?"

Edward went to his coat and fetched the stack of six letters; back in the drawing room, he sorted out the one with Bond's name on it, and passed it over, along with a letter opener.

"Hmph, has she ever met you?"

"Very briefly, just long enough to say 'hello'".

Bond shook his head in wonderment, "She speaks in glowing terms of a man she barely knows." Ed's fingers itched to grab the letter back and read with Ambassador Pankhurst had said; he had an anxious feeling about what exactly Roy had told her. But to his dismay, Bond folded the letter and stuck inside an inner breast pocket.

He started an instant later when Bond leaned forward and tapped the remaining five letters. "What are the names on those?" Ed had to struggle to focus his eyes on the first name. "F.F. Machus." The lack of sleep - he hadn't slept - more like dozed on the ferry and in the hospital - was beginning to catch up to him.

"Poor bugger's dead."

"HUH?!" Edward was fully awake now. "Dead?!"

"He was found a week ago, hanging by the neck from a bell rope over at the church of St. Emma's. There was a suicide note nearby, but it all looks a little too neat. Personally, I suspect murder!"

Ed sucked in his breath and considered his next question. "Is he connected to you?"

"Him? No, he was an assistant to the Queen's social secretary, very minor functionary."

Now Edward recognized the Queen of New Britain was a ruler similar to the Fuhrer of Amestris; the only difference being her power was constrained by a Parliament, which had more say than the Parliament of his country. Bond interrupted his wool gathering. "What's the next name?"

Another effort to focus his eyes: "Remigius Youngbeck."

"Dead too."

Ed said nothing and waited for Bond to elaborate. "He was thrown from his horse while riding, and he had the bad luck to be impaled on the sharp point of an ornamental sculpture. He was a member of Parliament, ironically, he represented this district." Still a coincidence, but a small suspicion was growing. Edward turned to the third name.

"Dorothy Woolfe".

"Oh, her death was particularly nasty. She was knocked down by a car while crossing the street - with the light, mind you - and she was dragged along under the bumper till a truck in the opposite lane ran over her head. The unfortunate woman was a secretary to the Secretary of the Minister of Transportation."

"Edmund Ameche?" Ed was dreading the reply. "Dead as well. He was at the opening of a new metal fabricating shop, and he was having the safety features of a massive punch press demonstrated." Bond paused and sipped his drink, his throat was getting dry with all the talking.

"It worked perfectly when the shop foreman demonstrated it by putting his head underneath the punch head - it stopped like a clock - but when Mr. Ameche did so..." The mental picture made Ed wince. This was looking less and less like simple coincidence.

"Was he involved with the government too?"

"He was a manufacturing executive, under contract to supply tanks to our army."

Edward held up the final envelope: "Oliver Comstock?"

"He was found the day your arrived, someone had put him in cement overshoes and dropped the poor man into the river." Bond smiled gently at Ed's confused glance. "A batch of cement is mixed in a metal tub, and the ah - 'victim' is forced to stand in it until it hardens. Generally, the tub is then tossed off a pier, or overboard a boat deck into deep water."

He paused for another sip of his drink. "But Comstock was killed in a particularly cruel way. He was placed near the river's edge just as the tide was coming in, so he drowned by degrees."

"No one heard his cries for help?"

Bond shook his head. "He was in an isolated industrial area, plus he'd been bound and gagged. It was an awful way to die, and he wasn't found until the tide had gone back out."

Edward suddenly felt like a drink himself. After selecting a small glass from the cabinet, he poured in a very small measure of brandy. He didn't drink it right way, but just sat rolling the glass between his hands while trying to make sense of what he'd just heard. Five untimely and rather bloody deaths: three could be chalked up as tragic accidents; one murder made to look like suicide, another one particularly vicious. A question occured to him.

"What was Comstock's connection?"

"To the government, none at all actually, he was an apothecary's assistant."

Edward silently worked his jaw. Five people, four connected with the government, two in minor posts - he thought of another question. "Was Youngbeck an important member of Parliament?"

"Actually, not at all. In twenty years sitting, his only contribution was once shouting 'shut that window!' at a Parliamentary page." Curiouser and curiouser. An MP for an integral district who never did anything of consequence; a manufacturer who did do important business; and the last, a man who didn't even have nodding acquaintance with the government. And yet his death showed the most malice aforethought.

And what, if anything, did these people have to do with the events of this morning? Thinking hard, he put the glass up to his mouth and took a cautious sip.

Through the tears of the resultant coughing fit, he saw Bond get up, and felt him thump him between his shoulder blades, then taking Ed's glass before he dropped it. Like that morning, fire burned down this throat and up his nose while he coughed.

"You all right, Colonel?"

Ed coughed a few more times before straightening up, clearing his throat, and pulling out a handkerchief to wipe his streaming eyes.

"Bond, there's one missing." The spymaster raised two carefully groomed eyebrows at this statment.

"You."

Author's note: Hmmm, my little plot bunny has turned off the main "slice of life" trail, and started hopping down the "murder mystery" trail. O.K. bunny, I'll follow along for a while, but if this turns out to be a dead end, you're hasenpfeffer! n. a high seasoned stew of marinated rabbit meat

I am also taking a break of a few weeks from this story so my writing can get caught up. In the meantime, I'll finish posting the next two chapters of "The End Is The Beginning"; and then comes another Alphonse-centric story set between episode 51 and the Conquerors of Shambala movie. This one will be a lot cheerier! I promise!