Terry Newman - Detective Strongoak and the Case of the Dead Elf

So it was my turn to shrug. ‘Some people just don’t like goodbyes.’ After all, I’d had more than my fair share and I’d never got exactly fond of them. Taking another jolt of coffee, I put down the mug and reached for the security of my pipe resting in the ashcup. Something was making me edgy. Painful Memories or was the coffee simply too strong?

Just put it down to the weather and move on, Nicely. ‘I can afford to pay you, Detective Strongoak. I have some savings.’

‘We can talk money later,’ I replied, convincingly dismissive. ‘I offer special good-neighbour rates.’ I paused for a moment, hoping that didn’t sound suspect and scratched my chin.

‘Thank you, Master Strongoak.’

I got up, decision made and topped up our cups. ‘One thing I insist upon, call me “Nicely”. All that “master” business went out when my forefathers traded in their pickaxes for steam hammers.’

‘Nicely. I like that. It suits you. Is it your proper name?’

‘My proper name has rather more consonants than folk, other than dwarfs, can get their tongues round.’

‘So, why ‘Nicely’?’

‘Well, I could tell you, but then I’d only have to go and make you swear a blood oath with your lips sewn by spider silk under a sickle moon … and we all know how tiresome that can get!’

‘I think we’d better leave it then, thank you, Nicely.’ She relaxed a little and laughed for the first time. It was an attractive laugh, like water falling in a cave lit by magic torches.

I needed to lay off the weed and find me a lead. It didn’t pay to get too sentimental.

First I reached in the drawer to get out the papers that made it all legal – next I would concentrate on obtaining the necessary background concerning young Perry Goodfellow.

Magic torches, bah!

The sun was dropping over the Third Level wall by the time Liza had left. I poured the last of the coffee into my mug and went to the window, watching the sightseers and lovers making shadows on the battlements. I bit the brew – the coffee was too strong and too stewed. I poured it into the basin, watching it drain down the hole and begin its long journey to the bay. Tonight there would be a few fishes sharing my insomnia.

My wagon was in the smiths, having its shoes changed. There was also a small steam leak that I just couldn’t locate. The condenser was struggling but she was losing power on hills, so I just had to bite the bullet and lay out the big buckskin to get her fixed. In the end, and in the vain hope that some exercise might burn off the caffeine and use up some surplus energy, I decided to exercise the beggar’s nag and walk down the Hill to Old Town.

Tidying the desk by sweeping the contents into a drawer, I picked up my jacket, hung the ‘Back Much Later’ sign on the doorknob and shut up the store. I took the lift to the lobby. Old Jakes was on reception and we had a quick word, concerning the optimal watering of geraniums and the pros and cons of mulching, before I headed out into the late-afternoon heat.

If I was to get to the bottom of Perry Goodfellow’s disappearance, his last place of employment sounded like a good place to start. I wasn’t sure what I was looking for but hopefully it would be big and obvious and preferably have ‘clue’ written on it in large letters.

The walk gave me some time to review the facts regarding the life and career of Perry Goodfellow, as Liza Springwater had just related them to me. Liza and Perry had met on the beach at the Gnada Peninsula the summer of the previous year. They had been strolling-out ever since. Perry worked at an inn as an odd-job man and runner. The duties could not have been too onerous as he seemed to spend most of the time surfing. The picture Liza had brought with her, now sitting in the top pocket of my suit, showed a tanned, relaxed individual with curly black hair. It was taken on the beach. Under one arm he carried a surfboard, in his other hand he held a gold chalice. This, I was reliably informed, was the Gnada Trophy, the big prize of the surfing season, and he’d beaten an elf called Highbury to win it. The Gnada Trophy had disappeared along with Perry and this was upsetting various surfing folk. To be frank, it could have been a giant’s eggcup for all I knew, but a job’s a job.

Passing through Black Guard Bar – the unofficial entrance to Old Town – after a quick word with a helpful local, I soon found Perry’s inn. Although Fourth-Level, it was on the right side of the Hill. It also had all the right timbers in all the right places, and anywhere else it would have been called The Dragon and Ring , or something equally folksy. Here, with admirable constraint, the sign declared it to be simply The Old Inn .

At the tail end of a hot day the lobby was a cool drink of water. A large ceiling fan irritated little piles of dust with each slow pass, but they lacked the energy to commit and settled happily after every sweep. Large wooden pillars supported massive wooden beams that could in turn have supported the odd army or two on the upper floors. Small, densely stained glass windows leaked in the evening sun; the light concealing as much as it illuminated. Although the place had obviously seen better days, it had escaped the rampant modernisation that had ravaged higher-level inns more effectively than the goblin hordes had ever managed.

The reception was empty. I hit a bell to no avail, whistled for a short while, then wandered through to find the bar. Empty tables greeted me but I noticed an aproned figure, bent over, stacking shelves with fresh bottles. I shouted a well-pitched hello. On hearing me, he straightened up, and up again, and even when he reached the rafters he did not so much stop, as throw a curve down the rest of his body. To say I was surprised to see one of the Tree Folk working in a Fourth-Level inn was something of an understatement. I had occasionally seen one of the tall, unmistakable figures striding around the Citadel, but mostly only visiting on business. They still lived in their northern forests, or what the logging industry had left of them. With their unbelievably long nut-brown limbs, craggy weather-beaten faces and huge bushy heads of hair, the colour of copper beeches, it was easy to see why many superstitious folk took them to be real live talking trees. Not the dwarfs of course, they never would have fallen for something so stupid – well, not recently anyway. The Tree Folk remain one of the strangest of the many different Citadel inhabitants.

‘Ho hum,’ he said slowly, that being the only way that Tree folk do things. ‘I must tender you an apology, there is no receptionist to assist you at the moment. The manager enjoys a … ah … lie down in the afternoon and portions of the evening. Are you after a room for the night? If it is light refreshment or a drink that you require, then I should be able to be of some service.’

His voice was polished ebony, dark and smooth, but with incredible weight. To listen to him was to hear the wind blowing on and on through the branches of a forest that covered half the world. He continued, ‘I am afraid you have caught us … somewhat distant from our best. We are … ho hum … as you might have realised, somewhat short-handed.’

‘Well,’ I said, climbing onto a barstool, ‘as getting caught short is something we dwarfs generally get accused of, I’ll just go with the drink for now.’

‘Excellent notion, I must say. Very good, very good indeed. What would be your fancy, Master Dwarf?’

‘Let me have a look here,’ I responded, picking up the drink roster. This had not escaped the more depressing aspects of modernity. The list was depressingly hearty, playing on the fashion for all things pastoral. It contained more types of foaming flagons than any sensible drinker could ever require, all harking back to an earlier age that probably never existed, and the endnotes were punctuated by more ‘thees’ and ‘thous’ than you would hear at a village idiots’ convention. I put it down with a sigh, and did my best to look the barkeep in the eye. ‘And what would you recommend, Tree-friend?’