Author's Note: Obviously, I had to dig really deep to write a story about Richmond. It's quite hard to spy on a spy, so to speak, but it can be done. Fortunately, I was able to uncover one of his more famous escapades, and thus came up with an easy, erm, "report".
Pinkerton's Proudest: The Tale of Richmond
It was the kind of Thursday that made you wish that Thursdays were never invented, the kind you saw whenever things were at their darkest. It was a bleak Thursday morning in Radat, and would probably stay that way all throughout the day--dark and rainy, and really gritty. Really gritty. It was a nasty, filthy, smoking sort of day that made you depressed just to think about it, the kind that made you want to bundle up in an overcoat, light up a weed, and forget about Thursdays or rain.
I was working my usual precinct, nothing fancy. I do whatever I can to get by, make a living, see the world. It's not always an honest job, and it's definitely not the glamorous one that all the novels make it out to be, but it's the profession I chose. Like I said, it was a dark and dreary Thursday morning, the kind you can't help but hate, and on this particular dead-end day, I got a call to come in and investigate one of my simplest yet most difficult cases.
I had to take a carriage outside of Radat, and went as far as South Window, but I figured that the desperate plea in the letter I got was worth it. There was this broad, see, and she had heard of how effective I was in ways of investigations--but then again, a lot of people hear about you in a place like Radat, specially in the more undesirable locations. Anyway, this broad had a case for me, and since the pay was good and she sounded really distressed, I decided to take a bit of my time to check things out.
Se didn't give too many specifics about the case, but I knew it concerned a childhood sweetheart of hers, the kind that most women'll refuse to admit they liked. I heard that he was this real sweet guy, a real pansy if you ask me, and that he wouldn't hurt a fly, and so on and so forth. My constitution sure was challenged on the way there, and I figured it would come under vicious attack even later into the day. The fog and rain of this endless dark Thursday sure didn't help any.
I got to Radat with time to spare, but I found my client waiting at our prearranged site anyway. She ran over to me as quickly as possible, with this helpless look on her face, and begged me to help her out. I says to her, "Hey, sweetheart, ya got Richmond right here! There ain't no case I can't handle!" But then, she says that the police have already looked into the case, and they already got some kind of conclusion. So of course I had to wonder, if it's all wrapped up, why ask me?
She then goes into this blubbery tirade about how they're mistaken and her boyfriend's innocent and all this trash. I just let it slip into one ear and out the other, but just to show that I ain't all apathetic, I says to her that I'll do my best, and that she don't have to worry no more. I says to her, "Take me to the scene of the crime, missy, and I'll see what I can do." So she does.
It wasn't as nasty as I was hoping it would be, and just from a brief observation, I could already tell why the cops closed it so suddenly. There was a body of a middle-aged man there, her boyfriend's father, and a cudgel right next to his head. I also noticed that the fatal blow had been right smack dab on the back end of his skull, almost where the neck meets the head. He looked to have been bludgeoned to death, most likely from the rear or when his back was turned. Yeah, definitely murder.
I says to the girl, "What's the whole story on this?" And so she begins talking, and I take out my pencil and pad and start writing. Her story was this big long mess that had her, her father, her boyfriend, and her boyfriend's father all mixed up together, but I tried my best to make sense of it. Her boyfriend had had a little talk with his father, who must've been angry or enraged about something, and the two were arguing like cats, and the boyfriend had raised his hand as if to strike the father, but got out of there before anything could happen.
She also says that the boyfriend heard his father screaming a little while later, and came rushing back to see him near death. The father muttered something about a rat and died, and that's the last we see of him. The girl also said that her boyfriend took that cudgel with him when he went to see his father, like he was gonna smack him with it or something. In a nutshell, this was the case. Patricide. Man! Gonna be one of those days.
Of course, the cops said that the boyfriend killed his father, because of the argument and the weapon and the injuries. I honestly can't blame them, because it looked just like that to me, as well. But this girl kept on telling me that her boyfriend was innocent, and that he was gonna be tried and executed if there wasn't some new testimony or evidence claiming otherwise. The case looked hard to crack, but then again, she did have Richmond on her side! So I says to her, "Don't you worry, lil' lady! I'll have this case solved before tomorrow!" (Of course, I said that while it was almost dawn, so I had all day to work)
I then dismissed the girl (not without asking if there were any other clues or interviews I needed to know about) and set about my investigations. What she had to give me was vague at first glance: the father had a definite way of calling his son, a kind of call found only in Harmonia. The son was also thought to be away in Zexen at the time, and it was only through coincidence that he heard his father calling. Then there was the matter of a rat, and some grayish sort of object, probably an animal or a cloth, that the son claimed to have seen at the scene of the crime.
Like I said, it wasn't much to work on, but my hours were short and the day wasn't getting any brighter, but at least it wasn't raining. Sure was chilly, and it stunk a little in that overcrowded town. My payment was going to be worth all this trouble, if I solved this case (is there any doubt??), and besides, I can't stand to see pretty girls crying.
Once I was alone with the body, I began to piece together all the tiny bits and pieces of the evidence. In my line of work, it's oftentimes the tiniest bits of scrappy clues that can turn the tide of a crime. Even something so minor as, say, a cigarette ash, can turn the case around. ……Speaking of which, I found a small puff of ash lying quite close to the body in question…
I instantly collected a sample of the ash and stored it away. I then decided to further my search and look for a butt, and to my joy I discovered the tip of a cigar discarded not too far from the ashes. Upon extremely close examination of the cigar (one must have the eye of an appraiser if one wants to investigate anything), I discovered that it had not been chewed off like most cigars would. No, it was cut--no teeth marks--but by a very blunt edge. I could instantly surmise that whoever had left this cigar here was obviously a smoker, and owned a blunt penknife. Insignificant, you say? Not to me. Minor clues like this help me narrow down the suspects.
But I couldn't very well go and interview every smoker with a weak penknife now, could I? Still, it was a start. I made my way back to the body after collecting the clues and examined it a second time. I noticed, after looking at it very closely, that it was indeed lying face down, so whoever had attacked him had to strike him from behind. From what the girl had told me, the son was facing his father, and could not strike him then. But then again, he also said that he ran back to his father after hearing a scream, and could have attacked him then, or any other time he turned his back.
But then I noticed the precise spot where the fatal wound had struck. The mortal bruise was on the left side of his skull and not the right. Insignificant? Hardly. During my interview with the girl, I had asked which hand her boyfriend used most, and she said that he was right-handed. She even went so far as to say that his left arm was injured from an earlier accident and had to be put in a sling.
The word Aha! quickly comes to mind.
Now, I could already tell that whomever had struck this man was left-handed, and that it was possible that he was a smoker of a certain type of cigar, and had a dull penknife (I say it's a man because I know very few women who smoke that kind of cigar, or who own any kind of penknife, dull or not). In my interview, the girl expressed that her boyfriend was not much of a smoker, but he did carry penknives for those certain rare occasions, but even with this, I could already say that it was not the son.
Now, believe it or not, but I quickly began to be glad that it had rained. South Window was layered with cobblestone and asphalt roads, to my great pity (footprints are a key clue in crimes, and it's much harder to track them down on stone roads), but after the brief shower of rain we had gotten, the tracks were much more defined. I donated my attention to these next, and followed them around for awhile.
Aside from the obvious boots of the cops I found, I also saw the shoes of several other people, many of them pretty close to the body. I discovered prints that led from where I found the cigar ash, and prints that suggested that whoever had killed the man had actually came back for something--possibly the gray material the boyfriend mentioned. These same tracks also had one of the feet more stressed into the pavement that the other, suggesting a limp. The tracks from the cigar to the body (and back again for the material) all belonged to the same man, so my theories were being sewn together real well. I jotted all this down on my pad, noting that the criminal was a left-handed man who smoked, had a limp, and wore what I guessed was a gray scarf, and whom had a dull penknife in his collection.
I knew right then and there that it could not have been the boyfriend, and that the girl was right on the money, but I still had to find out who did this. There was also the matter of a "rat" to consider (the boyfriend said that his father muttered something about a rat before dying), but at first, the cops thought it was just delirium. Ha, but I knew better, almost from the moment I pieced together these clues.
The man's definite style of calling his son was Harmonian in nature. Only they use that certain call; nobody else does. Okay, so this guy was Harmonian. So? Well, if I remember correctly, there was a famous group of highway robbers called the Ballarat Crew a few decades back. Their biggest heist was robbing a convoy of carriages that were transporting gold from the holy kingdom to Highland, and nobody caught them for it, though two of their company had been killed in that heist. If my theory was correct, the old man was really muttering Ballarat, but his son only caught the last syllable.
Whoever had killed this man was a former member of the Ballarat Crew--and unless I was mistaken, he knew this dead old man very well. After all, who else could recognize a member of that gang except for another thief? I knew right then that I had my man, and that only his name eluded me. After gathering my clues all together, I decided to go back to the girl for some further investigation. She was wearing some pretty fancy jewelry for somebody who lived in a place like South Window--heck, she didn't even seem to care that her expensive dress was getting soggy in the rain--so I could only assume that her family was pretty well-off. How, you might ask? I think I had a pretty good idea
When I went back to the girl and told her what I found, she darn near hugged me out of joy. I smiled and told her that she never had a thing to worry about, and that Richmond always got his man. But after she read over the clues I had written down, she got really depressed, like she was experiencing mood swings or something. I asked her what was wrong, and she quietly told me (what I had suspected for some time) that the man who matched all the descriptions I had written down was her own father.
Now, I had to wonder why this old geezer wanted to kill that other guy, and my first thought was some blackmail thing concerning his previous occupation. This was partially true, but it was more of a "righteous cause" than anything else. The girl's father came in just then, with his limp and gray scarf and pencil in his left hand, and as quietly and calmly as possible, confessed to everything and spilled the beans for me.
The old man was the father's acquaintance back in their thieving days, so he had known about the heist and everything. But unlike the man who was now dead, this guy wanted to change his ways, so he used the gold he had stolen to amass a fortune and secured his place in South Window--probably a wise idea, since no Harmonian police officer would've bothered to look in a place like this. Anyway, the old man said that his daughter and her boyfriend were really super-close--I'm talking marriage here in a year or so--but he didn't approve of such a union. In fact, the only person really liking the pair was the old dead father (though I suspected that the girl and her boyfriend had something like marriage in mind).
The girl's old man said that he really didn't like this other old guy--I'm talking hatred here--and that he would do just about anything to be rid of him. The old geezer was a real bad influence, and he didn't exactly like the idea of his daughter marrying somebody of the same gene pool. So I said, "Well, I guess I understand that," and then he confessed to sneaking up on the old guy after he was arguing with his son, and smacking him with the cudgel he found on the floor (the son must've dropped it, I guess). The old man screamed, yeah, but this guy must've left his scarf there as he was running. Must've gotten it back when the son wasn't looking.
After he confessed to everything, I made him sign a few papers, with the girl as my witness, and I told him that I'd never let anyone see this unless it was real crucial (like, if the kid really was gonna die). I figured that, since he's about to kick the bucket anyway, I might as well let him die in peace and not have all this trouble on him. Anyway, that was what closed my case. I got paid what I was promised, and the son was released some time later without my intervention. The girl's old man died a few months later, and I guess it all ended happily, since it's quickly becoming a possibility that these two young'uns are gonna get married.
But the rest of their affairs were none of my business. I just took my pay and went back to Radat, and waited with patient anticipation for the next case to challenge me.
The End