Never Trust a Dead Man (11 page)

"
Alden?
" Farold said, giving a little bat hoot, "
Alden Thorneson?
"—even though there was only one Alden in the village. "What makes you think anybody would talk to him? I don't think even Thorne would be happy to see him back, good-for-nothing bully that he is. No body likes him. Even more than nobody likes you. Why, I could tell you stories—"

Elswyth groaned—loudly. "I'm sure you could," she said. "But I'd have to charge
you
six months for every yawn, too." She gave a great yawn, then smiled sweetly and said, very demurely, "Excuse me." Turning to Selwyn, she asked, "So, is this Alden Thorneson your choice, or just a passing thought?"

Selwyn hesitated as Farold shook his head frantically. He probably shouldn't go around looking like someone about whom he didn't know important things. "What kind of stories could you tell?" he asked Farold. "Tell me one thing, the worst"

Farold concentrated for a moment. "All right. He burned down Holt's smithy."

"That fire was caused by a lightning strike during a storm," Selwyn said.

Farold just looked at him.

"Wasn't it?" Selwyn asked.

Elswyth said, "Just because a fire starts during a storm doesn't mean the storm caused the fire."

"Exactly," Farold said. "The old biddy makes sense." He wrinkled his large bat nose, obviously begrudging even this praise, and added, "Sometimes."

Elswyth bared her teeth at him.

"Still..." Selwyn said, unwilling to believe that anybody could be that destructive. Holt had lost everything in that fire. "What makes you say Alden started it?"

"The two of them never got along. Alden liked to think up ways to torment Holt, like the time he poured grease on the firewood Holt kept out back, so that when Holt went to use the wood, the fire smoked and stank, and it was near impossible to tell which pieces had grease on them and which didn't, so Holt ended up having to cart the whole load away and chop new. Holt was always complaining to Thorne about one bit of nuisance or another that Alden was causing, and the more Holt complained, the more Alden plagued him."

Selwyn was about to say that this was little more than the kind of thing that had gotten
him
accused of killing Farold, when Farold continued, "But the night of the fire, I was coming home late from the tavern, dodging from one doorway to another trying to keep at least a bit out of the rain. I saw Alden coming out of the smithy, with no light on behind him to indicate it was late business he was up to. It never occurred to me he was doing worse than bending horseshoe nails, but he must have put a hot ember someplace where it smoldered halfway through the night, till just about the time the thunder and lightning started. And then..." Farold waved his wings, indicating the blacksmith's shop going up in flames.

"It might have been more of the usual baiting he was up to," Selwyn pointed out. "And just coincidence about the timing."

"Except," Farold said, "then why was it—when I confronted him—he was willing to pay me not to tell anybody I'd seen him?"

Elswyth gave a hoot of laughter. "You blackmailed him? The obnoxious little bat is a blackmailing bat?"

"No," Farold said. He readjusted his wings. "I just ... accepted money from him ... not to tell anybody what I'd seen."

"No wonder he left town," Elswyth said. "To get away from making payments to you."

Selwyn didn't find this nearly as funny as Elswyth did. "You knew he started that fire, and you didn't tell anyone?"

"What good would it have done?" Farold said. "By then the smithy was already destroyed. It wasn't as though I could have prevented it."

"But you knew it wasn't the act of God everyone supposed it was," Selwyn said.

Farold shrugged. "I loaned Holt the money to get started again."

Elswyth said, "No doubt from the money this Alden Thorneson paid you."

"Yes," Farold said, as though he didn't find anything wrong with this.

A new thought came to Selwyn. "And what of Thorne, did he know?"

"About the fire or about the money?" Farold asked, sulky because of Selwyn's accusing tone.

"Both," Selwyn said.

"Yes," Farold admitted.

"So Thorne could have wanted you dead—to protect his family's reputation, to prevent you from asking for more money."

"No," Farold said. He thought about it "Well, maybe."

"Another suspect," Elswyth said. "I'm so pleased for you."

Selwyn knew better than to take her at her word. "Well," he said, "all things considered, I don't think I want to be disguised as Alden. But who else is there? Nobody else has left Penryth in the last ten years."

Farold thought for a moment "That's not true," he said. "Kendra left."

"She's a girl," Selwyn objected.

"She's Orik's daughter," Farold said.

Selwyn couldn't see the point of that comment "Which would make her a girl," he pointed out.

"Which would make her a tavern girl," Farold said. "People are always telling their problems to tavern keepers and tavern girls. What better person to be, if you want people to open up and tell you things?"

"She's a girl," Selwyn repeated, getting louder.

"You said that already," Farold told him. "She's a girl people like to talk to."

"That's why her mother sent her to the convent at Saint Hilda's," Selwyn said, "so the nuns would teach her not to listen to everything people said to her."

Farold shrugged. "Just think about it," he advised. "Alden Thorneson comes swaggering back into town from being a robber baron or pirate king or whatever other life he's made for himself, and Kendra comes back to work at her father's tavern. And they both ask, 'So, what's new?' Who are you going to talk to?"

Selwyn squirmed, knowing Farold was right. "What if Kendra comes back while I'm impersonating her?"

"Her parents sent her to be educated by the nuns," Farold said. "You think they could educate her in six months? She's no more likely to come back than Alden is."

Elswyth said, "It
can
be done, in case you were wondering. With the right instructions, I could make you look like a girl."

"I don't know...," Selwyn said.

Farold and Elswyth both sighed.

"Well, then, who?" Elswyth demanded.

There was no one else. Which Elswyth could no doubt see from his face. She grinned wickedly. "Last chance to pee standing up," she warned.

Elswyth made Selwyn climb back over the wall into the garden to fetch one of the clay pots he'd accidentally dumped when he tipped the wheelbarrow. He was certain that the witch of Woldham would be watching and would once more send her broom after him, but the night was silent and he even successfully hoisted the bucket up from her well to fill the pot.

"The pot isn't dark enough to reflect," Selwyn said once he'd brought it back to Elswyth.

"I can magically enhance it," Elswyth answered.

"Well then, why didn't you just magically provide the water?" Selwyn asked. "And the pot, too, for that matter?"

She smacked him on the back of the head and didn't bother to tell him why.

She got a small fire going, and something brewing on it. "Tell me about this Kendra," she said then. "What does she look like?"

"She's very pretty," Farold said.

"How did I guess you'd say that?" Elswyth muttered. "Try to be more specific. How old is she and how tall? What color hair and eyes? Is she fat or thin?"

"She's a bit older than Farold and me—," Selwyn started.

"She's eighteen years old," Farold interrupted.

"Light brown hair," Selwyn said.

"Dark blond," Farold corrected.

"Curly but not too curly," Selwyn continued.

"Down to about here." Farold fluttered halfway between Elswyth's shoulder and her elbow.

The image of Selwyn's reflection shifted as Elswyth dipped her hands into the smoke that rose from her simmering pot. Selwyn tried to concentrate only on the image and not on his own changing form. His body tingled and pulled and contracted. It had been much less disconcerting last time, to have the changes wrought while he was under the water of the stream, and to just step out and find the deed done. For the first time he realized that Elswyth had done him a kindness then—his near-drowning notwithstanding.

What am I doing?
he asked himself as his features shifted, sure that this was his biggest mistake so far.

Farold was either very observant or quite good at making up details. For the most part, Selwyn let him have his way when he insisted on the exact texture of Kendra's hair and how she parted it just slightly to the left of middle and that she had a slight—though becoming—bump on her nose and that her fingers were long and slender. But finally Selwyn put his foot down. He put it down when Farold said, "And she's got bigger...," and held his wings out in front of his chest.

"Now see here," Selwyn said as Elswyth made the correction. "Put those back to the size they were before."

She made his bosom smaller.

"He needs more," Farold assured her.

"No, I don't" Selwyn folded his arms in front of himself, partly for protection, partly to hold himself in. "Maybe smaller, even."

Farold snorted. "Bigger," he insisted.

"Smaller," Selwyn countered.

Elswyth sighed. "This is taking forever. Last change or I charge you an additional six months. Look over at the reflection, not down at yourself. Now, bigger or smaller?"

"People will notice," Farold warned. "They'll wonder, What did those nuns at Saint Hilda's
do
to Kendra?"

Selwyn looked at his reflection in the water of the clay pot Somewhere along the way Elswyth had changed his pilgrim's robes to a dress, and now he tried to pull the bodice up higher to cover more. He closed his eyes and pictured Kendra the last time he had seen her, which had been early spring. Selwyn remembered her sitting in the back of Orik's wagon, wearing a light spring dress, blowing kisses at the young men gathered to see her off to the convent of Saint Hilda's. There had been a lot of young men, for Kendra was very well liked. He squinted through his eyelashes at the reflection and tried to think of the image as Kendra, not himself. Reluctantly, he muttered, "Slightly bigger," and closed his eyes again quickly before Elswyth could do it.

"There," she said. "And here's some free advice: Try not to trip over your skirt, and try to remember not to walk like you're stepping over the furrows in your father's field."

"All right," Selwyn muttered.

"Hey!" Farold said. "He still has his own voice."

"That's because I
disguised
him," Elswyth explained testily. "I didn't change his inner essence."

"And please don't," Selwyn said. It was bad enough to
look
like a girl.

Elswyth said, "If I did, it would cost you another three years."

"I'm sure I can manage," Selwyn said.

"Oh, I'm sure you can, too," Elswyth agreed, but she was laughing.

"What about me?" Farold said. "Aren't you worried about people in the village recognizing me as the pilgrim's French killer bat?"

Selwyn was tempted to tell him not to come back to the village—that he was more trouble than he was worth. But he remembered how Farold had been the one to tell him about Merton and the knife, and about how Thorne had known Farold was blackmailing his son. That was two more people who might have killed Farold whom Selwyn would never have known to suspect Farold
might
come up with more important information. And he was right: People would be surprised enough to have Kendra turn up—suddenly and without notice. She definitely shouldn't have a bat as a companion.

"Six months to turn him into a dog?" Selwyn asked Elswyth.

She held her hands apart to show a size not quite the width of a hand. "A tiny dog."

Selwyn scratched behind his ear, a habit he had when thinking, and was momentarily disconcerted by all the hair he found on his head. A dog that tiny was sure to get stepped on. And it might be convenient to have Farold know how to fly. "Maybe a little songbird?" he suggested. "In a cage? That's something Kendra might bring home as a remembrance from the nuns."

"Cage?" Farold squawked.

"For your own safety," Selwyn assured him.

"Six months," Elswyth said. "Gather some sticks for me to make the cage."

After a night's rest in the woods, Selwyn and Farold once again parted company with Elswyth and set off for Penryth: Selwyn—a young man disguised as a young woman—who had to concentrate on every step so as not to trip over his long skirt; and Farold—a dead man in the body of a bat disguised as a goldfinch—who was working very hard to get a goldfinch's song out from between what were in reality bat lips.

"Less whistle," Selwyn advised, "more twitter."

"Drop dead," Farold grumbled, without a trace of birdsong in his voice. He clung to the side of the cage, ignoring the hanging swing Elswyth had made, which she had insisted a bird would love. He added, "You're making me seasick, swinging this cage back and forth, and back and forth"—Selwyn stepped on the edge of his skirt and stumbled and Farold continued—"and up and down—"

"And over the hedge and down the hill," Selwyn threatened.

"At this point, it would only be a kindness," Farold moaned.

"Shhh," Selwyn said.

"Pardon me for not suffering quietly enough to suit you," Farold said.

"Shhh," Selwyn repeated more urgently. "Someone's coming."

From the direction they were heading came the rumbling of cart wheels. Selwyn looked up from his feet and the dirt road, taking note of his surroundings for the first time in a long while: He was closer to the village than he had realized. This would be the fields of Raedan and his brother Merton that he was passing.

His first inclination was to dive into the bushes that lined the road, to postpone meeting anyone, though the whole purpose of being disguised and returning to Penryth was to be among people. Besides, what if whoever was coming had heard him talking? And that was a double-edged question, for what if whoever was coming had recognized his voice, or Farold's?