Murder in the Alley

Rhode finally came to his senses. He stared wide-eyed at Lieutenant Drake. "Excuse me... Lieutenant Drake, why are you bullying a beggar...?"

Lilia shouted too, "Yeah! Put him down right now!"

Lieutenant Drake waved Rhode off, signaling him to stay out of it, but did not stop what he was doing. Then he asked coldly, "Talk. What are you planning, gathering all these beggars here?"

The middle-aged beggar shook his head desperately.

"So you won't talk?" Lieutenant Drake's helmet hid his expression, though his eyes were probably vicious by now. Still holding the beggar up, he slammed him hard against the wall again.

Then Lieutenant Drake threw the beggar to the ground and crouched down, asking with a sinister smile, "Come on, talk. Are you plotting something criminal? Or have you already done something you don't want anyone finding out about?"

The beggar gasped for breath as he stared at Lieutenant Drake in terror, muttering over and over, "We haven't done anything wrong. We only came over to ask for money when we saw the mage..."

"Stop scaring him!" Lilia could no longer hold back. She ran over and planted herself between the beggar and Lieutenant Drake, spreading her little arms wide.

Rhode could hardly bear to watch either. He walked slowly over to Lilia's side and said to Lieutenant Drake, "I'm not trying to interfere with your duties, but I don't see how this solves anything. Why don't you tell me what actually happened?"

Lieutenant Drake studied Rhode for a few seconds, then pointed toward the other end of the alley and said:

"There was a murder over there this morning. Five people died."

"Oh? A murder? Could you tell me about it?" Rhode perked up at that.

His days of studying since coming to Durnholde Keep had been quite fulfilling, but just a little... boring.

As someone who had watched hundreds of episodes of Conan, he had actually stumbled across a case here. Suddenly, his inner gossip-no, his inner detective-blazed to life.

Lieutenant Drake had taken off his helmet, revealing brown hair, blue eyes, and a resolute face. He was quite handsome.

He was briefly taken aback by the hint of excitement in Rhode's voice, but still said, "Your assistance would certainly be most welcome, though most mages don't seem to like getting involved... If I may ask, which Magic Tower do you belong to?"

"My name is Rhode. I'm the vice president of Audric's Tower."

"President Rhode! Forgive my manners." Lieutenant Drake bowed slightly.

"I'm Rhode's first assistant!" Lilia piped up.

"Greetings, First Assistant." Lieutenant Drake smiled and bowed to Lilia as well.

"Lilia, stop fooling around. The adults are talking." Rhode gave Lilia a pat on the head, then turned to Lieutenant Drake. "Please tell me about the case, Lieutenant."

If the murders had happened that morning, everything had probably been cleaned up by now, leaving no crime scene to speak of. He would just have to listen to the lieutenant.

"The case is actually quite straightforward. Someone broke into a house and committed murder," Lieutenant Drake said. "An entire family of five was killed in their home. The neighbors heard no sounds of a struggle. They only discovered what had happened when they went over for a visit this morning."

"Then why do you suspect them?" Rhode pointed at the beggars.

"It must have been a group effort to keep all five from putting up a fight." Lieutenant Drake cast a contemptuous glance at the middle-aged beggar on the ground. "And these beggars have been roaming around here for days. They could have observed the family's movements and had the opportunity to commit the crime."

"What about the motive?"

"Robbery, of course! These beggars..."

"Then what valuables were missing from the house?"

"Well..." Lieutenant Drake hesitated, but went on. "That's one thing I find rather puzzling. The house looked as though it had been searched, and we don't know exactly what was taken, but some coins and other things were left untouched."

"Roughly how many coins?"

"They were just an ordinary family of commoner merchants. There were about fifty or sixty silver coins in the house."

"They're beggars. Why wouldn't they take those silver coins?" Rhode pointed at the beggars again.

Damn, does this place not have a police department? Do they just leave investigations to soldiers? He can't even follow such simple logic!

Lieutenant Drake said, "It's not that I haven't considered that, but I thought they might have taken something more valuable and left the silver behind to throw us off..."

"But they're still here, begging me for money." Rhode shook his head. "If they really did it, they could have left the city at once, gone somewhere nobody knew them, sold that valuable item you mentioned, and started new lives."

"Well..." This time, Lieutenant Drake had nothing to say.

He knew Rhode had a point.

He had simply assumed that these lowlifes would commit such a crime, so he had started beating them right away to force them to confess to the "truth" he wanted to hear.

Rhode asked again, "Are there any other unusual details you should tell me?"

Lieutenant Drake replied, "Hmm... They all died from a sharp weapon piercing their bodies, but we still haven't found the murder weapon."

"What's unusual about that?" Rhode asked, puzzled. "A murderer wouldn't necessarily leave the weapon at the scene."

Lieutenant Drake said, "True, but the strange thing is that there wasn't much stray blood at the scene either. Normally, when someone commits a murder, the weapon leaves drops of blood on the floor."

"I see..." Rhode looked thoughtful.

"That's why your help would be most welcome, Master Rhode." Lieutenant Drake smiled slightly. "You mages always have some strange magic that can uncover things we tend to overlook."

"But I don't need magic to tell you right now that these beggars didn't do it." Rhode pointed at his head. "Apart from the reasons I already gave, there's no way so many of them could have rushed in and murdered everyone without making a sound. This must have been the work of one or more expert assassins."

"Assassins? You mean experts of the rogue class?" Lieutenant Drake frowned.

If they were rogues who could use Stealth, dealing with them would be much more troublesome.

"Of course, they could belong to another class..." A thought suddenly struck Rhode. He turned to the middle-aged beggar. "Sir, what's your name?"

"I... My name is Katel."

"All right, Katel." Rhode looked him in the eyes and asked, "You said earlier that we mages were all good people. Is that because a mage gave you alms?"