Cora stuffed the feathers into her coat pocket. It was no accident that these two colours had been left like this on Finnuc’s body. The laces used to stitch the murdered Wayward storyteller’s lips together, that Finnuc had used, had been black and white. That act was a message that the Wayward election story should be silenced, and surely this was the same: Finnuc was the one now robbed of his story. A loose end, tied up, marked with the colours of the election.
Stitcher Lett left the barn and joined Cora by the coach.
‘I’ve seen all I need to. Heartsbane killed the four of them, administered in the soup.’
Cora had never heard of it. ‘This is when you tell me it’s hard to come by,’ she said. ‘I could do with a lead.’
‘Sorry to disappoint you, Detective. Heartsbane is one of the most common poisons in Perlanse – both duchies. Well, not common as a poison. As a tool.’
‘A tool?’
‘All kinds of uses for Heartsbane,’ the stitcher said. ‘It thins liquids.’
‘People’s insides too, by the look of it,’ Cora muttered.
‘Dyers use it,’ Lett said, ‘and those in the laundries. Ink-makers too.’
‘Ink is poisonous?’
‘In Perlanse it can be,’ Lett said. ‘Only the finest Perlish ink, of course.’
They shared a smile.
‘If you’re looking to kill someone quickly and quietly then Heartsbane is a good choice,’ Lett said. ‘Odourless until the purging starts.’
‘By which time it’s too late to do anything about it.’ Cora spat. ‘The poison used to kill my prisoner, his driver and two constables is easy to come by and could be in half the houses in East Perlanse. That’s what you’re telling me.’
‘I am, Detective.’
‘No Latecomer’s luck for me.’
‘What had he done, the Casker?’
Would the stitcher believe Cora if she told her? An unforgiveable crime that Cora herself was still trying to understand.
‘You read the pennysheets?’ Cora said.
‘When I can. The Fenestiran Times usually.’
‘Then you already know.’
Lett’s eyes widened. ‘That’s him? The man who killed a storyteller?’
Cora’s silence was enough.
‘He deserved to die,’ Lett said.
‘Someone clearly thought so.’ Cora stared hard at Lett, who seemed to remember that she was talking to the detective trying to find the killer.
‘What do you want done with the bodies?’ the stitcher said quickly.
‘The driver and the constables need to be taken back to Fenest. Far as I know, they’re all from the capital, their families there. Wrap them and put them on a cart to Bernswick. Commission will pay for it. I’m sure there’s a form, and Perlish ink to write it.’
‘And the Casker?’
Cora fumbled with her cuff. ‘Do whatever you do to dead prisoners in Perlanse.’
Lett was about to tell Cora what that fate was when the doors to the inn opened. Jenkins crossed the courtyard, her constable companions in tow. Lett told the local officers to help her in the barn. None looked pleased, and Cora didn’t blame them.
‘Well?’ she asked Jenkins.
‘No one knows anything about a broken nose. No one saw him arrive or leave. No one saw him at all apart from the woman with the flowers.’
‘Any locals in there?’ Cora said, nodding towards the inn’s brightly panelled doors.
‘One or two. They didn’t recognise the description.’
‘Which leaves us without a lead on him.’
‘’Fraid so, Detective,’ Jenkins said, her voice heavy.
Cora smoked while she thought. The man with the broken nose had known where to find Finnuc, and found a way to murder him quickly, with an inn full of people only a courtyard away. But that man could be anywhere by now. Better to go back to Fenest and investigate from there: that was where this case began, and where it would surely end. If Tennworth truly was a Chambers, as Finnuc had suggested, then she would be in Fenest for the election.
‘It’s time we went home, Jenkins. We’ve more than enough waiting for us there.’
Including having to face Chief Inspector Sillian with the news that the person arrested for the murder of a storyteller was now dead himself.
*
They were untying their horses when they heard a shout from the barn, then Lett was in the doorway waving to them.
‘Detective – wait!’
Cora and Jenkins hurried over.
‘There’s another one,’ Lett said, ‘hidden at the back. A constable saw it when he was moving your lot.’
‘Another feather?’ Cora said.
‘Another body.’
*
The constables were huddled at the far end of the barn, their backs to Cora.
‘Move!’ she shouted.
The row of blue jackets scattered to reveal a deep drift of straw topped by a wooden pallet. A hand was just visible, clutching the pallet’s edge. A hand raw with blisters. And the face, when the constables lifted the pallet and pushed back the straw, was as Cora suspected it would be: his nose was lumpen, squashed sideways into his cheek, just as the serving boy Elis had described. Cora ordered the Perlish constables to wait outside.
The man bore the same signs of forceful purging as the other victims, but worse, if that were possible. His skin was purple and hard as stone when Cora touched it. One of his eyes had left its socket and lay, deflated, on his cheek.
‘This one yours too?’ Lett the stitcher said.
‘He is now,’ Cora said.
‘Why does he look in a worse state than the others?’ Jenkins asked.
Lett held a cloth to her mouth and nose and leaned close to the man to look him over. ‘Drank the Heartsbane neat, I’d guess. No sign of the soup near him, not like the others. Ah – there it is. His hand must have locked round it.’
She used the cloth to ease something from the dead man’s hand, then turned to Cora with it. A small dark bottle. More of a vial. Cora made to take it, but Lett moved it out of her reach.
‘I’d keep away from this, Detective. Not unless you want your flesh to end up like his.’
‘He did this to himself?’ Cora said.
‘I’d say so. From the looks of it, he lay down in the straw, pulled the pallet over him, and drank. There’s the “how”. The “why” I leave to people like yourselves, Detective.’
‘I’ve got a start on that,’ Cora said. ‘Give us a minute, Stitcher?’ When Lett had gone, Cora turned to Jenkins and spoke quickly. ‘My guess is this man was told to end his own life once he’d carried out the killings. Finnuc was a loose end. Once he’d been taken care of, there couldn’t be any more.’
‘Told to do it?’ Jenkins said, in all but a whisper.
‘Tennworth has a habit of getting people to commit horrific acts on her behalf. She had Finnuc Dawson kill the Wayward storyteller and mutilate his body. Help me check the pockets, but don’t touch any of his skin. If the poison’s still on him, you’ll know about it.’
Carefully, they went through his clothes. The dead man wore narrow-legged trousers, the kind Cora had noticed on the men and women in the inn and which weren’t cut with pockets. His jacket had two, and his shirt one, but none of them held anything – no papers, no keys. Not even a handkerchief.