«Snuff! I was looking for you!» he called. «He's done it! He's done it!»
«What?» I asked him.
«Did himself in. I found him hanging when I returned from my foraging. I knew he was depressed. I told you…»
«How long ago was this?»
«About an hour ago,» he said. «Then I went to look for you.»
«When did you go out?»
«Before dawn.»
«He was all right then?»
«Yes. He was sleeping. He'd been drinking last night.»
«Are you sure he did it to himself?»
«There was a bottle on a table nearby.»
«That doesn't mean anything, the way he'd been drinking.»
Larry had halted when he'd seen I was engaged in a conversation. I excused myself from Quicklime to bring him up to date.
«Sounds as if your anticipation was right,» I said. «But I couldn't have calculated this one.»
Then a thought occurred.
«The icon,» I said. «Is it still there?»
«It wasn't anywhere in sight,» Quicklime replied. «But it usually isn't, unless he takes it out for some reason.»
«Did you check where he normally keeps it?»
«I can't. That would take hands. There's a loose board under his bed. It lies flush and looks normal, but comes up easily for someone with fingers. There's a hollow space beneath it. He keeps it there, wrapped in a red silk bandana.»
«I'll get Larry to lift the board,» I said. «Is there an unlocked door?»
«I don't know. You'll have to try them. Usually, he keeps them locked. If they are, my window is opened a crack, as usual. You can raise it up and get in that way.»
We headed for the house. Quicklime slithered down and followed us.
The front door was unlocked. We entered and waited till Quicklime was beside us.
«Which way?» I asked him.
«Straight ahead, through the door,» he said.
We did that, entering a room I had viewed from outside on an earlier inspection. And Rastov hung there, from a rope tied to a rafter, wild black hair and beard framing his pale face, dark eyes bugged, a trickle of blood having run from the left corner of his mouth into his beard, dried now into a dark, scarlike ridge. His face was purple and swollen. A light chair lay on its side nearby.
We studied his remains for only a moment, and I found myself recalling the old cat's remarks from yesterday. Was this the blood he had referred to?
«Where's the bedroom?» I asked.
«Through the door to the rear,» Quicklime replied.
«Come on, Larry,» I said. «We need you to raise a board.»
The bedroom was a mess, with heaps of empty bottles all about. And the bed was disheveled, its linen smelling of stale human sweat.
«There's a loose board under the bed,» I said to Larry. To Quicklime, then, «Which board is it?»
Quicklime slipped beneath and halted atop the third one in.
«This one,» he said.
«The one Quicklime's showing us,» I told Larry. «Raise it, please.»
Larry knelt and reached, catching an edge with his fingernails. He found purchase almost immediately and drew it gently upward.
Quicklime looked in. I looked in. Larry looked in. The red bandana was still there, but no three-by-nine-inch piece of wood with an eerie painting on it.
«Gone,» Quicklime commented. «It must be somewhere back in the room, with him. We must have missed it.»
Larry replaced the board and we returned to the room where Rastov hung. We searched thoroughly, but it did not seem to be present.
«I don't think he killed himself,» I said finally. «Somebody overpowered him while he was drunk or hung over, then did that to him. They wanted it to look as if he did it to himself.»
«He was pretty strong,» Quicklime responded. «But if he'd started in drinking again this morning, he might not have been able to defend himself well.»
I relayed our conjectures to Larry, who nodded.
«And the place is so messy you can't really tell whether there was a struggle,» he said. «Though, for that matter, the killer could have straightened some furniture afterwards. I'll have to go to the constable. I'll tell him I dropped by, found the door open and walked in. At least, I'd visited here before. It's not as if we'd never met. He won't know we weren't that well acquainted.»
«I guess that's best,» I told him. Returning my gaze to the corpse, I said, «Can't tell from his clothes either. Looks as if he'd slept in them, more than once.»
We moved back to the front room.
«What are you going to do now, Quicklime?» I asked. «You want to move in with Jack and me? That might be simplest, us closers sticking together.»
«I think not,» he hissed. «I think I'm done with the Game. He was a good man. He took good care of me. He cared about people, about the whole world.
What's that human notion, compassion. He had a lot of that. It's one of the reasons he drank a lot, I think. He felt everybody else's pain too much. No. I'm done with the Game. I'll slip back to the woods now. I still know a few burrows, a few places where the mice make their runs. Leave me alone here for a while now. I'll see you around, Snuff.»
«Whatever you think is best, Quicklime,» I said. «And if the winter gets too rough, you know where we live.»
«I do. Good-bye.»
«Good luck.»
Larry let me out and we walked back to the road.
«I'll be going this way, then,» he said, turning right.
«And I'll be going this way.»
I turned left.
«See you soon for the follow-up on this,» he said.
«Yes.»
I headed home. «And you will lose a friend», the old cat had said that, too. It had slipped my mind till now.
Jack was not in, and I did the rounds quickly, leaving everything in good order. Stepping outside then, I located his spoor and tracked him to Crazy Jill's.
Graymalk watched me from atop the wall.
«Hello, Snuff,» she said.
«Hello, Gray. Jack is here?»
«Yes, he is in having a meal with the mistress. He ran low on supplies and she decided to feed him before their trip.»
«Trip?» I asked. «What trip?»
«A shopping trip, into town.»
«He did say something about being low on necessaries, and needing to visit the market soon… .»
«Yes. So he's sent for a coach. It should be here in an hour or so. It will be exciting to see the town again.»
«You're going, too?»
«We're all going. The mistress also needs some things.»
«Shouldn't we stay behind to guard the places?»
«The mistress has a very good daylong warding spell, which she will share. It will also capture likenesses of attempted trespassers. I understand that a part of the reason we are going this way is to see whether anyone tries such a thing. Everyone will see our coach go by. On our return, we may learn who are our most important enemies.»
«This was decided recently, I take it?»
«Just this morning, while you were out.»
«This may be a good time for it,» I acknowledged, «with the big event only a week from tomorrow, and in light of the way things have been going.»
«Oh?» She rose, stretched, and jumped down from the wall. «There are new developments?»
«Walk with me,» I said.
«Where?»
«To the vicarage. You said we have an hour.»
«All right.»
We left the yard, headed south.
«Yes,» I told her as we went, «we've lost the mad monk,» and I recounted the morning's events.
«And you think the vicar did it?» she asked.
«Probably. He seems our most militant player. But that's not why I wanted to visit his focus. I just wanted to learn the location of the room where he keeps Lynette a prisoner.»
«Of course,» she said. «If he has the Count's ring and the Alhazred Icon as well as the pentacle bowl, he could do some pretty nasty things between now and next week. You said they mainly increased his technical prowess, and I thought you meant for the ceremony. But he could hurt people with them right now. I asked the mistress.»