Silent Intrigue

The Investigator

Silence winced as Mrs. Colbert bound up his hands. She wasn't even pretending to be gentle. He let his hands fall into his lap when she was finished and stared down at his feet. The horrible image of Yosef hanging in the tree had turned his stomach. He still wanted to be sick. But that wouldn't help anyone.

Motion caught his eye and he hurried out of the cooking helps way when he was waved away. He didn't get far. Only to the windowsill where he had always sat with Francois, where he curled up and stared out the window. This dream had turned into a nightmare. They had already blamed him for Francois. He knew they would blame him for Yosef too.

He curled his fingers into his palms and winced at the pain. But it helped to focus him. Break through the fog and dispair so Silence could begin planning his next move. If the others couldn't find the one killing off Sophia's family, then he would find the culprit. No one would look twice at him. He could go anywhere and they would brazenly speak their minds because they thought he wouldn't understand.

He would find the killer. And they would pay for what they had done.

First thing he did, was to carefully go through his memories. Look for a motive. Francois's death had been brutal. Angry. Who might have been mad at Francois? Silence remembered the lights and shadows the night before the horse-masters death and let his eyes close in disappointment. If only he had been a little more curious...

He took in a sharp breath and forced his eyes open again. He couldn't think like that now. People who were mad, and stood something to gain. Pierre had been mad. But he didn't gain anything. The stable boys were the ones to benefit from Francois's death.

Yosef had been investigating the murder. Perhaps he had been getting too close to something? But the last person Yosef had been in an altercation with was him. The death had been cleaner this time, though with no less anger. The killer had wanted both men to suffer as they died. Revenge?

Silence sighed and hopped off the windowsill, slipping down to the servants hall and to Yosef's room. The hall was deserted, curiosity serving to take them all out of Silence's way for a few moments. He slipped into Yosef's room and took in the place. The bed was disheveled. He had been taken from here, dragged down the hall and outside, where he had been killed. The killer was strong then. Likely not a woman.

Silence slipped over to the footlocker and quickly opened it, his eyes scanning the contents. It was neat, with the little leather bound book Yosef had been collecting facts in for the murder still sitting on top and intact. Silence grabbed it up and flipped it open, his eyes scanning the pages and memorizing everything Yosef had gathered so far.

It wasn't much. And it was a little skewed by discrimination against him, as the newcomer and the one to find the body. Silence didn't care. It was more than he had started with.

He closed the book and put it right back where he had found it, closing the lid of the locker and slipping back out of Yosef's room. He shut himself up in his own room and sat on the edge of his cot, mind turning over each shred of information and trying to figure out how it all fit together. So far, the best suspects for either murder were himself, and Pierre. He wondered if that said something, or simply meant the killer was good at taking advantage of arguements to throw suspicion onto others.

Two days later and Pierre had talked to everyone in the house. Silence cooperated as much as he was able, which seemed to help the rest of the staff relax around him. Sophia said something about Pierre's little experiment to prove Silence couldn't lift Yosef's body getting around the house too. Silence supposed that was probably a good thing too. If he was physically incapable of committing these murders, then that took his name off the list and left only Pierre.