Darren Craske - The equivoque principle

'So…why do you not tell me of the night's adventures? I would so much like to hear of them. Make sure you begin at the beginning, dear, if you don't mind,' said Destine calmly. 'And do not leave out any tales of fisticuffs, for I am far from squeamish and you know how much I love to hear tales of you clobbering bad people.'

Quaint nodded, reluctantly giving in to his companion's request. He regaled her with the night's visit to The Black Sheep tavern, and Destine hung on his every word.

'And whilst Jeremiah, Ruby and myself worked the floor downstairs, Yin and Yang searched the landlord's residence. I was actually hoping that they'd find something…incriminating, some titbit of explanation. But aside from a lot of unpaid bills, bad debts and a few bawdy love letters to a beau named Mary, the twins found nothing. However…downstairs in the bar, the landlord told Ruby and I that an Irishman had given him money to pass the drugged whisky to Prometheus,' Quaint said. 'The landlord had never seen him before, or since.'

'We have been here for only two days and already we have made an enemy who is prepared to kill,' Destine said, resting her top lip upon the ridge of her cup. 'Things move fast in this town, Cornelius.'

'Yes, well…Prometheus has always had a knack for attracting trouble, hasn't he?' Quaint said, recollecting more than one occasion when he'd either had to fight, bargain or plea for Miller's life in one country or another over the years.

'And how many times has he truly been at fault? He cannot help the way he looks, Cornelius. Prometheus is certainly no lover of conflict. Some people are magnets for trouble, whereas others seem to seek it willingly, like a wasp to jam,' Destine said, catching Quaint's eyes. 'Sound familiar?'

Quaint tried to look innocent, playing with the buttons on his shirt. 'Not really. The only connection that I'm pinning my thoughts on is that this bloke was apparently Irish, as Prometheus himself is. Perhaps this is what triggered the conflict?'

Destine nodded. 'Probablement.'

'Which beggars the question: how do you pick an argument with a mute? And if you wished to…would you do so with one who looked like Prometheus?' chimed Quaint.

'And why not use a knife or a pistol rather than poison?' agreed Destine. 'You know that I am extremely sensitive to the emotions of others, Cornelius, and I know that it is usually emotion that is the trigger for murder. As you can testify; emotion and common sense are not mutually exclusive-or need I remind you of your tryst with the Hungarian premier's wife a few years back?'

A smile (and one that balanced the delicate line between amusement and embarrassment) skirted briefly across Quaint's face, as his memory recalled the incident to which Destine referred. 'That was years ago, but even now my lower back still aches on a cold day. Duchess Ariadne took a fancy only to my stage magic and illusion, Madame, not to me. She had such spirit, and such a voracious appetite!'

'You may paint that particular mental picture for someone else, Cornelius, I am a lady, and do not forget it,' Destine said, sipping her tea. 'We need to speak to Prometheus again. We need to try and find the connection, if there is indeed one to be found.'

'The police said there have been two other murders the past few nights, oddly enough, all since our arrival. To me it's nothing but coincidence, but to the police…it's too much of coincidence to be one. Tell me, Madame Destine, oh great and wonderful reader of fortunes, what does your foresight tell you about this chaos? I mean, all this has just come from nowhere, as if we have stepped into a theatre performance half-way through an act. Something must be at its root, but what is it?'

'Ah, Cornelius…what a question, and therein lies the mystery,' Destine said with a thin smile, crows' feet sparkling at the corners of her eyes. 'The answers are well concealed, and my feelings tell me that these murders are more than just random street crimes.'

'This killer is unconventional, would you agree?' said Quaint. 'So to apply conventional reasoning to him is pointless. We went to an awful lot of bother to get information last night, and I know it means something, but I just don't know where it takes us.'

'The truth shall be revealed in time,' said Destine. 'To get the right answers you have to ask the right questions, and of the right people. I have no facts to offer you, Cornelius, merely suppositions and propositions. As to why this man attacked Twinkle when his argument was with Prometheus…we may never know. Perhaps Twinkle was his target, and somehow Prometheus got involved. When he saw Prometheus lying in the gutter, perhaps he wanted to remove the only witness, and turned on Twinkle, or…'

'Or what?'

'Or perhaps he knew exactly what he was doing,' said Destine. 'Perhaps it was not his intention to kill Prometheus-merely to achieve that which in fact has transpired-to incapacitate him, and implicate him whilst he freely murdered and mutilated Twinkle. A decoy for the police to focus upon.'

Quaint rubbed the back of his head in frustration. 'What would make someone do such horrors to a complete stranger?'

Madame Destine sipped silently at her tea. 'You are of course working on the assumption that this person was a stranger. We have no confirmation that this is so.'

A chilling thought danced across Quaint's mind, and he clamped his eyes shut, trying to deny his imagination the chance to entertain it. Could this killer be someone from his circus? Quaint knew his people, and surely not a single one of them would harm-could harm-someone like Twinkle in such a maniacal fashion. It was abhorrent. Could a monster be hiding within his family undetected?

'As I said, my dear…emotion is a powerful master,' continued Destine. 'There are two emotions that men most commonly kill for. One is jealousy, the other, revenge. Both of these emotions inhabit the negative end of the wide spectrum of human emotion, and can blind a man to what is right and what is wrong. He can be tempted by them…tainted by them, blinded by their power.' She leaned back in her chair, and stared deeply into Quaint's dark eyes. 'I warned you about starting down this road, Cornelius, and yet again you choose to ignore me. I pray that more deaths do not come, and yet I know within my heart that they most certainly will.'

Quaint pinched hard on the bridge of his nose. It was by now very early in the morning, and his body was on the verge of collapse. His wracked emotions were making short work of his strength. 'Well, so far there's been a murder a night for the past three nights. I just hope there's another murder tonight,' he said.

'Cornelius, what a thing to say!' Destine scolded.

'Think on it, Madame. If there's another killing whilst Prometheus is locked up, that exonerates him, does it not?'

'And if there is not another murder-tonight or any other night? What then do you think the local police shall do?' Destine asked, folding the corners of her lace veil between her fingers. 'They will simply say that they have caught the perpetrator, which is why the deaths ceased. I suspect that they are ill-equipped to handle the complexities of a case such as this, Cornelius. I know I advocated restraint to you this afternoon, but I fear that if we place Prometheus's fate in their hands he may be hanging from his neck by the end of the week.'

'Is that my governess or my fortune-teller speaking?' Quaint asked.

Destine smiled. 'Perhaps a little bit of both. Did you not say that you knew the police commissioner? Can we not enlist his aid?'

Quaint swept a hand through his obstinate hair. 'Oliver? Well…it's been a long time, Destine. I don't know how much pull I'll have with him these days.'

'It is an avenue worth exploring, is it not? Our only avenue, in fact.'