Death and the Emperor

Book 2 Chapter XV: Investigations

If you deliver an opinion at all, it is mere stupidity not to do it with an air of conviction and well-founded knowledge. You make it your own in uttering it, and naturally get fond of it. -- George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss

Experience had taught Nimetath that no crime was unsolveable. Wait long enough, and search hard enough, and something was bound to come to light. That was the natural order of things.

All the same, she was startled when the Emperor and his wife barged into her office the morning after the murder, babbling about bracelets and clues and possible suspects.

"Quiet, please!" Nimetath shouted. Kilan and Qihadal stopped trying to talk over each other. "Now, please sit down, have a cup of tea, and we can discuss this quietly and calmly."

As soon as they were seated and she had poured out three cups of tea, she turned to them and raised an eyebrow. "Now, your Majesties, what is this about?"

Kilan looked at Qihadal. Qihadal frowned and took a ruby bracelet out of her pocket.

"We think this may be a clue," she said in her oddly-accented Carannish. "Last night I stood near the table when the lights died. Someone pushed me aside in the dark, and this fell at my feet."

Nimetath leaned forward in her chair to get a better look at the bracelet. "It might be a coincidence, or it might not. Either way it needs investigated. Has it been handled much?"

"I picked it up," Qihadal said.

"And she handed it to me when she told me about it," Kilan added.

"Damn. That means it will be hard to distinguish the original owner's fingerprints from yours. The police may be able to do something about that, though I have sincere doubts about their competency and thoroughness."

Nimetath grimaced at the memory of several cases the police had botched. The trouble with the Carannish police force was that in cities and well-populated areas, they tended to recruit from younger children of aristocrats. These people had no chance of inheriting of marrying well and saw joining the police as an easy way to make a fortune and become respected. The few competent policemen and policewomen were outnumbered and hindered by the multitudes who simply couldn't care less about their jobs.

In villages and rural areas, where there were fewer nobles in search of a fortune and where the majority of the police were farmers' or merchants' children who knew and honestly cared to the community where they worked, the police force was both more competent and more feared by criminals. But in cities...

Someone needed to do something about this situation, Nimetath knew. Perhaps when Kilan saw how badly the police bungled this case, he would realise this himself. But in the meantime there was a murderer at large.

"After it's searched for fingerprints I'll send it round all the jewellers' shops in the city. If no one recognises it I'll look further afield. I'll even send a notice to all the guests at the ball, saying that a ruby bracelet has been found and asking the owner to claim it. If the murderer lost it, they're highly unlikely to come forward. If it was a random guest who has nothing to do with the case, they'll want their property back."

~~~~

Keeping the story out of the papers was like trying to stop the sun rising. It was utterly impossible. Within hours the entire Empire had heard of the murder. Nimetath was inundated with reports her spies had heard of countless suspicious people who just might be involved. Sorting out the genuine reports from drunken exaggerations was enough to drive her to despair. And just because this case wasn't complicated enough, it happened a week before the Festival of the Year's Ending. Countless strangers had arrived in the city over the past month. The murderer might be any of them, and it would take a year to question them all.