"You're right," Tal acknowledged, and turned back to the woman's body.
She was dead, and he was unsurprised to find that the woman had been stabbed as viciously as the very first victim he'd seen. She had probably died instantly; the amount of blood soaking the dock and her clothing indicated that the knife-sharpener had used his blade with brutal expertise.
Although it seemed to him that the better part of an hour had passed, he knew it had only been a few minutes, and the crowd was still milling about in panic. He took charge of the scene at once, getting the crowd settled, separating out witnesses from those who only knew thatsomeone had died, and eventually dispersing all those who were not direct witnesses. He also gathered up a few level-headed volunteers.
"You and you," he ordered, picking two large, steady-looking fellows. "You two go north and south along the river, and see if you can't find the constables patrolling this district."
He turned to a smaller, soberly clad man, plain and ordinary. "You go to the station and alert the constables there."
All three nodded, and went briskly off on their assigned errands. That left him with four more, all dockworkers, who should know this area. "You see if you can't find that knife," he told them, although he knew it was a hopeless quest. The mysterious, vanishing blade was going to vanish again, and there wasn't anything he could do about it. "You saw him throw it away; something about it may tell us why he went crazy that way."
The four looked at him a little oddly, but began their search the moment he explained that he was a constable. He dealt with the murder scene a few moments later, draping the girl's body with a tarpaulin given him by a barge-man.
At least this time I saw it, and I know exactly what it looks like, he thought bleakly. I can describe it to knife-makers, armorers, smiths—there can't be that many knives like that in this city. I can check with secondhand stores and have people keep a watch for it. Maybe I can track it down that way, or at least find out what kind of a knife it is.
Or he would—if this wasnot some strange cult of murder and suicide, with special ritual blades of their own. There were not many things more secretive than a religious cult, and doubly so in a circumstance like this one.
Still, someone has to forge these things. I'll check with smiths.
By the time the local constables arrived—more than a bit annoyed that an apparent outsider had so cavalierly taken overtheir crime—he had all of the information that really mattered to him. The girl was local; she cleaned and gutted fish at one of the salting-houses. The knife-sharpener was new; no one had ever seen him here before. The orange-girl, the candy-monger, and the fellow with the feathers were all locals as well, and knew the fish-cleaner by sight.
"Everyone knew her," the orange-girl sobbed, weeping messily into her apron. "She was always singing, whistling—so cheerful, her voice so pretty, we always told her she ought to go for a Free Bard—"
Tal froze inside, although he knew there was no sign of his reaction on his face. There it was, the music connection again! What was going on here?
He patted the girl on the shoulder, trying awkwardly to comfort her, then turned to the newly arrived constables. "I'm sorry to have barged into your territory like this," he began, knowing that if he apologized immediately, the new arrivals would stop being annoyed and start being grateful that he had done all the preliminary work for them. "I would never have, except that I know from my own experience that if you don't take over in a case like this, there's a panic. Wild tales spread like a fire in dry grass, and the next thing you know, you're getting reports of a wholesale massacre of fishwives. And if you don't herd all these people together at the start, they'll manage to wander off on their own errands before you can get any sense out of them."
He handed the man he judged to be the most senior his own notes. "Here's what I've gotten, sir, and I hope it will be of use to you," he continued, as frowns softened to reluctant approval. "The ones who swore theyhad to go, I got addresses for in case you have to do a follow-up. Any my statement is in the pile as well, and my own address."
"Oh, we know where to find you," the senior constable replied, with more approval showing when Tal made no mention of getting credit on the report, or indeed having anything to do with this other than be a witness. "You can go ahead and go now, if you like. We can take it from here."
Tal turned to go, and the candy-monger, with a display of honesty that was quite remarkable, handed the package containing his shirts back to him, undamaged except for a bit of dirt. "You tried, sir," the sad-eyed little man said. "Most wouldn't have done that for her. Thankee."
Tal nodded, accepting the compliment in the spirit intended, and tucked his package under his arm, but his mind was elsewhere, planning the report he was going to write for Captain Rayburn. He had several cases now, including one with an impeccable eyewitness in the person of himself. Now the Captainmust believe him!
Enthroned in splendid isolation behind the walnut bulwark of his desk, Captain Rayburn gazed down his long, thin, aristocratic nose at Tal with mingled contempt and disbelief. "Would you mind telling me what you were drinking when you wrote this bit of imaginative fiction?" he asked sarcastically. "I'd like to get hold of a bottle or two myself."
Tal considered any number of possible responses and confined himself to a civil one. "You can't argue with the facts, Chief," he replied. "All the murders are in the records; they were all committed with the same kind of weapon, which always disappears."
"They were all committed with aknifelike object," the Captain corrected. "We don't know what that object could be, and there is no evidence that it is the same or even a similar object in any two of the murders. The instrument of death could have been a file—or a piece of bar-stock—or an ice-pick—or, for that matter, an icicle! There is nothing connecting any of these murders except your half-toasted idea that the victims were all musicians of a sort, and that is too absurd to even credit. There isalso no trace of magic involved in any of these deaths, and theyhave been checked by a reputable Priest-Mage."
Tal clamped his mouth shut on the things he wanted to say, for there was no point in going any further. Hewanted to point out that the examinations of the wounds of the victims showed identical characteristics consistent only with a triple-edged blade, and remind Rayburn that none of the weapons had ever been recovered, much less identified. He wanted to tell the Captain that the Priest-Mage was less interested in finding traces of magic than he was in getting his unpleasant task over with as soon as possible, and that this particular man was hardly as reliable and reputable as Rayburn painted him. He wanted to say all of these things, but he said none of them.
The Priest in question is in his position because he is out of favor with the current Bishop, and liaison with the constables is the lowest position a Priest-Mage can have. But I'm not supposed to know that. Rayburn wants this thing covered up, and it suits him to pretend that the man is careful and competent. The only question is, why is he so intent on covering this up?
"I hope you aren't planning a new career in sensational storytelling, Constable," Rayburn continued, tapping the pile of papers with his index finger, "because this is too far-fetched to attract any publisher."