by Guy Antibes
Sam nodded. “Can I have the pollen sample?”
“Gladly,” Darter said. “I almost forgot I had it.” She gave the packet to Sam who handled it with his handkerchief.
~
Sam showed the chunk of pollen wrappings to Banna Plunk. Emmy licked his hand after. He didn’t want to know why his dog did that.
“This is a cross-section of the shroud?” Banna asked.
Sam nodded.
She looked at it closer. “Can I use your spyglass?”
Sam retrieved it and gave it to Banna.
“We will have an impromptu lesson on pollen-making since you have no experience,” she said, looking at the scrap of pollen through the gold-colored lens. “Mmm. I would have never thought gold would produce such an effect. I can see the pollen more clearly.” She looked up at Sam. “Maybe not as clearly as you, though.”
“Is this an advanced use of pollen? It seems tougher than the pollen shrouds I’ve seen in Baskin.”
“What were they like?” Banna said.
Her question was so casually innocent that Sam had to believe she knew nothing of the Baskin City Guard killings during the winter. “Flexible, waterproof, and each layer stuck to the previous one, like what butchers use to wrap meat. I had to use my gold-tipped wand to split the pollen open. It was like a cocoon.”
“Interesting. A cocoon you say? Wollians wrap their dead with pollen and stack them in ossuaries. The toughness of the pollen allows the body to last indefinitely in the underground ossuaries. Perhaps we should show this to your friend Desmon?”
Sam left Banna’s cabin and found Desmon among a group of idle sailors.
“I have something to show you,” Sam said.
“Anything to relieve the boredom,” Desmon said. “I’d rather be back on shore.”
Sam thought he sounded like Banna talking about boredom on the ship. They walked to Banna’s cabin.
“Is this familiar, Wollian?”
Desmon’s eyes widened at Banna’s reference to his birthplace. He took the scrap of pollen and looked at it.
“A burial shroud. Where did you get this?”
Banna pursed her lips. “Can you duplicate this?”
Desmon narrowed his eyes, his face filled with suspicion. “Is this a test of some kind?”
Sam shook his head. “No, it is research. The harbormaster was wrapped in this stuff.”
“You don’t think I did this.”
“No. I don’t know why you would kill the Harbormaster of Carolank and wrap him to a dock support for all to see,” Sam said.
“That is a message,” Banna said, “for all to see, as you said. A warning or something.”
Sam realized that Banna was right. He was sure Commander Eshing would come to that conclusion. Sam wasn’t too versant in warnings to have picked it up, but Banna would know more about such things.
Desmon held out his hands and concentrated. A thin, blue pollen fabric appeared and grew at one end as the sailor created a pollen sheet.
“Something like this?”
Banna leaned forward and took what Desmon had made and folded it to the size of the scrap Sam had taken from the Harbormaster’s wrapping. She stretched it and took a knife to it.
“Just as tough. Do yours always come out blue?”
Desmon nodded. “I’m not in the habit of making shrouds.”
“The color means something?” Sam asked.
“People can make pollen into most colors in small quantities, but when a lot of pollen is made quickly, it comes out colored, and the color is always the same for a specific person. In Toraltia, pollen generally comes out a variation of the color of straw, so you probably didn’t notice. In Wollia and Polistia, colors are brighter and more pronounced, like this,” Banna said. “A magician can make whatever they want because they make pollen differently than everyone else, at least that is what my father thinks. I only know it works that way. Desmon couldn’t have made this dark green pollen. It would have come out blue, like this.” She lifted Desmond’s shroud sample.
“I thought that people just made pollen in different colors because they could. Women’s veils have different colors,” Sam said.
“The fabric is very fine, and veils take a long time to create. As I said, in Toraltia most people make a light yellow kind of pollen, so it is easier for them to color. It would be harder for a Wollian to make something light yellow quickly.”
Except for Banna, Sam thought. She could probably make one in seconds using her magic. “Is this as tough as the shroud?”
Banna handed it to him. “Try to cut it.”
Sam took the pollen. It didn’t soften so quickly. He took his small knife and tried to cut through the pollen and nodded. “It is very tough.”
“Where did you learn to make this?” Banna said.
Desmon shrugged. “It was part of my training in school,” Desmon said. “Many Wollians learn how. It isn’t the kind of pollen-magic that is instinctive.”
“I thought as much.”
Sam fondled the blue pollen while Banna asked a few more questions about Wollian burial practices. During their conversation, he took off his spectacles, and it disappeared from his sight, but not from his touch. Now he could feel the fabric become more pliable. When Desmon left, he tossed it next to Banna.
She snatched it up and ran her hands along the fabric. “You softened this up where you touched it?”
Sam nodded. “It took longer than it does for other kinds of pollen objects.”
“Pollen-magic changes as you move from place to place in the world and from person to person. I’m sure you know some people do better than others. It’s not just will, but innate talent,” Banna said. “Whoever made the shroud has quite a bit of talent, more than Desmon.”
“How can you tell?”
“The layers. Look at Desmon’s piece and then examine the dark green one. The layers are very uniform on the shroud, and the technique speaks of greater control. Desmon’s fabric varies in thickness.”
“So Desmon wouldn’t be a suspect?”
Banna shook her head. “It would be difficult for him to make a different color and vary the thickness unless he is a pollen magician, and he isn’t. I can tell by how he produced his sample.”
“Could you duplicate the green shroud?”
Banna raised the corner of her mouth in half a smile. “Of course, but then I don’t rely on producing pollen by concentration. I think you’ve had enough of an education in pollen for today, and I am sure Captain Darter would like to know what we’ve discovered. Go and tell her.”
Sam took both scraps of Wollian shroud pollen to Captain Darter.
“This is what I have found,” he said, showing her the pollen, protected within folded pages. He told her the gist of his discussions with Banna and Desmon Sandal.
“A Wollian, then?” Darter asked.
“Perhaps. Or a pollen-artist at a high level,” Sam said. He hesitated to use the term magician at this point. The only living magician Sam knew of for sure was Banna Plunk. “At least we can let Desmon off.”
“If Commander Eshing accepts Banna Plunk’s explanation.”
“The color thing? You don’t believe it?” Sam asked.
“Oh, I believe that. Everyone who has traveled extensively has experience at that. No, I’m talking about the layer control, as you described it.”
Sam pulled out his spyglass and gave it to the woman. “Look at the layers for yourself using this. Pollen can be seen more clearly.”
Captain Darter spent a moment looking at both samples. “I wouldn’t have believed it, but you are right. I can see the difference. It is still conjecture.”
“I can only assemble facts and give my interpretation.”
The captain sighed. “Let us hope it is enough. Why don’t you head to the guard office and tell Commander Eshing what you just told me.”
Sam nodded. “Do I need to take Banna Plunk with me?”
“Not yet,” Darter said, �
�but take the two samples.”
Chapter Nine
~
A fter asking directions twice, Sam stood on the steps leading up to large, open double doors to the guard office. The building reminded Sam of the Baskin Royal Constabulary main office where he had worked with Dickey Nail, except it was bigger and more ornate.
He entered the large lobby. A guard sat at a counter literally overseen by an officer sitting at a desk on a platform four feet high. He recognized the Carolankian theme.
“I’d like to see Commander Eshing,” Sam said to the man at the counter.
“He is—”
The officer sitting above called down. “I’ll escort you.” He climbed down from steps that Sam couldn’t see. “You are the boy snoop from The Twisted Wind?”
Sam nodded. “I have something to add,” he said.
The man’s eyebrows rose. “Already?”
“Please take me to him.”
After a look sideways and a grunt, the officer led Sam upstairs to the next floor and then down a hallway and down other stairs below the main level to a basement. The Carolankians made their guard office out of stone, where the Baskin Constabulary was all wood and plaster inside. Sam guessed the Carolank guards had a bigger building budget.
The temperature turned cooler as they walked into a windowless room. Bright lamps filled the large space with light. On a raised platform lay the body of the harbormaster. He was a big man with a neatly trimmed salt and pepper beard and longish hair half gray, half brown.
Eshing looked at Sam, his hand holding his chin. “Smith, isn’t it?”
“Sam Smith. I have some information about the pollen used to wrap the victim.”
“Well?” Eshing said, a little impatiently. “Out with it.”
Sam took the two samples out of his coat and laid them on the table. “The dark green came from the shroud that wrapped the harbormaster to the beam. The blue sample came from a Wollian sailor on board The Twisted Wind.”
“There is a significance?” Eshing asked.
“Wollian funeral practices include wrapping the body in a very tough pollen shroud. Whoever killed the harbormaster either knew how to make a Wollian shroud or had someone with them to bind the harbormaster to the dock support.”
“So?”
“It is a clue, Commander Eshing. Making pollen shrouds is not a common technique.”
Eshing stared at the body for a few moments. “Do you have that down, Undershot?”
“I do, sir. Can we have the samples?”
Sam blinked. He had forgotten to document the samples in his notebook which he would remedy as soon as he returned to the ship. “Certainly. The blue one is a bit softer than the dark green. I, uh, had it close to my gold tip.”
“That is all right. You cut the dark green piece with gold, didn’t you?”
“I did,” Sam said, nodding.
“Record that as well,” Eshing said.
“What would they do in Baskin?” Eshing said.
Sam guessed it was some kind of test. “It depends on what investigator was assigned to the crime. Dickey Nail and I would come up with a plan. I had to write mine out, but Dickey instinctively knew what to do, most of the time.”
“So what would you do next?”
“A Wollian is involved,” Sam said, “so the motive for the killing might be from an international group rather than someone from Carolank.”
“Or a Carolank with international connections?” Eshing said.
Sam nodded.
“That much is obvious.”
“I was taught to start with the simplest reason and go from there,” Sam said.
Eshing actually smiled. “I agree. Do you know how to determine the cause of death?”
“As I said at the scene, the victim had blood pooling at his feet.” Sam’s eyes drifted to the still bloody feet of the corpse. “I doubt he was strangled, but we had a multiple murder case where the murderer tried to make it look like the victim was killed one way when he was really murdered in another.”
“They didn’t have you running after pickpockets, did they?”
Sam shook his head. “Chief Constable Baskin assigned me to his best snoop, so I got to trail after Dickey Nail, and I learned more than I thought I would.” He looked at the corpse again. “He was stabbed?”
Eshing nodded. “That he was. Four times in the back.”
“Perhaps someone lured him down below the floating dock, and a confederate did the knife work? No bloodstains on the dock?”
Eshing pulled back his lips. “No, but he could have been wrapped in pollen.”
“Which would have to have been removed and redone with the Wollian-style funeral shroud,” Sam said. “Is that too complicated?”
“It isn’t simple,” Eshing said. “What would you do next?”
“That’s easy. Trace the harbormaster’s movements to determine when he disappeared. The floating dock makes it more difficult to determine his time of death,” Sam said, guessing a bit, maybe too much. “If he was strapped to the permanent part of the dock, the level of the tide might have told us something. Maybe the murderer or murderers didn’t want to deal with the tides.”
“A simple approach,” Eshing said. “What about the phony manacles?”
“Ah. Are they here?”
Eshing snapped his fingers, and one of the guards in the room produced the manacles. They had been cut off.
“Not as tough as the shroud, I must say,” Eshing said. “They look authentic, except for the fact that is solid pollen.”
Sam stepped to the body and removed the sheet that covered the man’s arms. Bruising still showed around the man’s wrists.
“He was alive when the murderer or murderers applied the manacles,” Sam stated the obvious, but he said it to help him to remember to write it down on his forgotten notebook.
Sam nodded. “Also, we should look at the harbormaster’s house for clues.”
“What kind of clues do you think we would find?”
Sam was getting tired of Eshing’s questions, but he could hardly complain. “Letters, receipts, odd personal possessions, things out of place.” Sam shrugged. “I wouldn’t know until I surveyed his house. We could look through his garbage to see if he prepared dinner to determine if he was alive last night. I don’t know what else.”
“Seems to be a good idea. I’ll have the snoop sergeants find out where the man ate and drank to see if someone saw him. We already know he has no family in Carolank. No close family at all, as a matter of fact.”
That might be important, Sam thought, but with no information, he couldn’t begin to know.
“Return to the lobby. I will be with you presently,” Eshing said.
Sam followed one of the guards back up to the second level and then down to the lobby. He took a seat and waited until Eshing walked down the stairs, holding a folded piece of paper in his hand.
“I have his address. Follow me, Smith.”
Sam walked behind Eshing and two other guards as they paraded through the Carolank harbor to a tall, skinny building facing the sea at the very end of a row of buildings retreating back towards the city.
‘Harbormaster’ announced the purpose of the building on a sign over the front door. “He lives upstairs,” Eshing said when he ducked inside the building. Sam inserted himself at the commander’s side.
“Keys to the Harbormaster’s flat.” Eshing extended his hand, palm up.
The clerk’s eyes were red. It looked like she had been crying recently as she dropped the keys in his hand. “Two flights. There is a title plate on the harbormaster’s door. I will miss him,” she said, sobbing.
“Smith, you stay here and keep company with the lady while we start upstairs.”
Sam watched the three men ascend the stairs.
“May I borrow a few sheets of paper and a pencil or pen?”
“A pencil will do? Pens can get messy at the counter,” the young woman said. “You are with the guard?”<
br />
“Consulting. I know a bit about pollen,” Sam said.
The girl gave him pollen paper.
“Do you have any real paper? I may want to keep what I wrote for a while.”
She bit the inside of her lip. “Harbor—” The woman looked alarmed. “I suppose he won’t care, will he?”
Sam shook his head, trying to look sympathetic since he’d never met the man. He wrote down little reminders on the paper, so he could remember to write about the manacles, the wrists, and the pollen samples.
“What are you doing?” the young woman asked.
“I write notes down while I am on an investigation.”
She nearly smiled. “Aren’t you a little too young to do this?”
“I was a snoop apprentice with the Toraltian Constabulary for a year,” Sam said, exaggerating his time in Baskin a little. “By the way, when did you last see the harbormaster? This morning?” He purposely gave her a false time.
“Oh, no, he headed up to his flat at his usual time of six hours in the afternoon.”
Sam wondered if the woman knew his after-hours habits. “Did he cook in his flat?”
She shook her head. “He sent me home right on time last night. He usually changed his clothes and spent his evenings in one of the local taverns when I left promptly at quitting time.”
“How do you know that? Did he ask you to go with him?”
She colored a bit. “Once or twice, if he entertained a female captain. It wasn’t unusual for him to eat out with visiting captains and their wives to discuss business over a meal.”
“What kind of business would he discuss? In general terms, I don’t want to pry,” Sam said. He could tell she was close to tears, but she was giving him good information.
“Berths on the docks. Most captains prefer to berth on the floating portions. The Harbormaster would listen to their requests before assigning a place.”
Sam cleared his throat. “Did he ever ask for an honorarium for helping?”
The woman gasped. “How did you know?”
“I didn’t,” Sam said. “It seems to be a pleasant way to make the request and provide the honorarium.”
“You mean bribe?” She said. “I know what he was doing. When I worked late, it was generally to keep the door open and call down when a visitor arrived. He didn’t make me stay.”
