I had seen or heard many strange things in my time that I could not explain: I’d witnessed a regiment of skeletons march through the desert night, but was warned from stepping too close to examine it clearly; a good friend of mine was convinced that he saw a woman with snakes for arms killing a trader in Locco by strangulation, though I could not satisfy my own curiosity on the issue. But was it possible for someone to tamper with the fabric of our worlds, to transport a body through walls, and could the gods have permitted such treacherous acts in their own temple? Sometimes I found it most difficult to bring together the mysteries of the world with my desire for reason.
All I could think was that whoever had killed Lacanta was simply very smart. That the key had been found on the inside of the door was still a problem for me.
Leana brought over the royal pontiff, the king’s private priest, who had been involved in the procession that night. A slender man with something of a goat-like face, he told me that, as a rule, there were several copies of the key so that the temple would be free for anyone to worship, whenever they liked. He told us it was well known that these copies were kept in various offices, and disappeared to find one. I recalled how there had been an urgency to open that door so that the festivities would happen at precisely the right time and that the soldiers were too impatient to wait.
The pontiff returned several minutes later in possession of two keys, but said that he had expected to find a third. ‘I have no idea where it could be. I’m always misplacing them though!’
The key was a curious point but it did not resolve the problem that it was still impossible to get Lacanta inside the temple in such a short space of time – merely a matter of minutes from when she was last seen – with so many of the guests watching the point of entry.
Was the key merely a decoy, something designed to deceive people after the murder?
Next to the temple were smaller chambers, formal reception areas, a library, and various meeting rooms. I had to request that some of the rooms be unlocked, and since no one person possessed the key to all of the rooms Leana spent just as much time finding the necessary member of staff as I did exploring the rooms. The whole process was time-consuming and took us the better part of the day. Still, as Leana commented, today was at least more relaxing, despite having been in the presence of the king.
There were fourteen rooms down one long, echoing corridor, not too far from the temple, and while we rooted around the area we frequently received many anxious or suspicious glances from the royal staff. I was impressed at the sheer number of people who passed us: clerks, servants, soldiers, priests, trading officials from around Vispasia. It was an incredibly busy building. Even on the night of the murder, there were hundreds of people present.
So why had no one witnessed anything happening that night?
Everyone had of course seen Lacanta mingling with guests, and plenty of people had seen her corpse, so what had happened in those precious, final moments between? Had she been ensconced with a lover, or been involved in some heated discussion?
Away from the temple were smaller rooms, private quarters perhaps, and a kitchen. Next to the kitchen was a room I took to be a pantry at first, but noted a large number of plates stacked to one side with food in gradual stages of decay. When we unlocked it and entered we disturbed two rats, which scurried past us and out into the corridor, scaring the male cook in the next room. There wasn’t much in the room, simply a strong smell of food that had gone off. However, on the far wall, next to a stack of discarded hessian sacks, was an engraving of an upright hand with an eye in the centre of the palm.
It was the offering of Light, a symbol of Polla’s brother-god Ptrell. He was a rare god indeed, barely worshipped this far west. I hadn’t seen it at all in the city, so what was it doing here in a room buried within Optryx? Who had taken the time to engrave the symbol of Ptrell into the wall? It appeared to have been done recently, too.
Somehow, perhaps because of his association with Polla, discovering this symbol seemed to reassure me. I felt, through him, Polla might be trying to tell me that I was on the right track, to tell me to keep looking.
Invigorated by this sign, we headed to Lacanta’s room, which was a good deal more pleasant, as it had been aired and incense had been lit to rid the place of the stench of death.
‘Incense, just like in the temple,’ Leana observed. ‘Except that could have been as part of an offering.’
‘What if that incense had not been part of an offering at all, but an attempt to rid the temple of the smell of death, just as it has been in this room?’ I remarked.
‘You mean not sacrifice, but it could be the act of a…’ she searched for the word, ‘calculated killer?’
‘Not of a calculated killer. Corpses do not give off a smell immediately and a calculated killer would have known that.’
Leana stepped towards me. ‘So it could be their first killing, and they were trying to hide their tracks, even though they had no need to so soon?’
‘Exactly. Or it could have been a distraction for whoever was to investigate the case. Or people might have been encouraged to believe it was a religious killing. The incense could mean something or nothing, such is the curious nature of this crime.’
‘What was it you said to the king,’ Leana said, ‘about missing objects?’
‘When I first came in this room, because of a space in the dust on one of the tables…’ I marched over to the small piece of furniture. ‘This one, in fact. It looked as if an object had been removed from it. Now, not a trace of evidence remains.’
‘You think it might be significant?’
‘Everything could be significant at the moment,’ I sighed. ‘At the time I was too preoccupied with her corpse and the royal physician to contemplate the situation. I should have paid more attention. If there was something missing, we’ll probably never know. Judging by its shape I assumed it might have been a book or a storage box. Much like the one missing from my father’s room – though in that case I have a suspicion it was the base of a statue that might have been sold. Anyway, whatever it was, it has been moved.’
‘In the night, the killer might have gone back to her room to remove something,’ Leana speculated. ‘Or one of her lovers might have come back to take an item that they thought could make them look guilty.’
‘She certainly led a complicated existence.’
I continued searching around the room and decided to take a closer look at some of her reading material, which was in the far corner of the room, up on a high shelf. There were four large books piled on top of each other, as I remembered the first time, volumes in blue or green leather. I lifted each one down in turn and opened them up. Two books were on Detratan mythology: famous classics that most of the wealthy homes in Tryum were rarely without. It took a while to make out the writing on the spine of another since it was so old; but when opened it was revealed to be on the natural wildlife that could be found in a coastal province called Destos, which I remembered fondly from my childhood as a rural holiday area for the rich. It seemed to have been read many times. Inside a book of plays there was a hand-drawn map containing the sketched names of places – it was difficult to work out where, but it might have been important because the paper was reasonably fresh and potentially drawn by Lacanta herself. In fact, the lines and symbols didn’t seem unlike those in Senator Divran’s study.
Was Lacanta interested in the dark arts? I put the paper in my pocket while no one was looking.