With Mrs. Finch’s burrow projects squared away and the children back in the village, Dorro refocused on the murder of Wump.
A little after supper, Dorro ambled through the village, watching his fellow Thimble Downers begin to rebuild their homes and lives. He reached his destination and knocked. A minute later, a face peeked out of the door and invited him in.
Very discretely, Dorro asked the gentleman if he could spare a few minutes for a walk. It would be very beneficial, he assured the gent.
Very beneficial, indeed.
* * *
A short time later, the pair returned to the burrow, but this time, two Halflings were waiting for them—Sheriff Forgo and Mr. Timmo.
“Good evening, Winderiver. Mr. Crumble,” said the lawman.
“Bah!” was the Dwarf’s only response, as he angrily stormed past Forgo and Timmo, and into the burrow he rented with his brothers and son.
“That went well, Winderiver,” smirked the Sheriff. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”
“We’ll find out,” offered the bookmaster as he entered the burrow. There, sitting around the table, was the sullen Dwarf, Wump’s former wife Aramina, and his brothers Flume, Two-Toes, and Magpie, all of whom were perplexed by Crumble’s surliness. They had just finished their own suppers and were finishing it off with mugs of ale, to which they added drops of belladonna to boost its potency to levels Dwarves found pleasurable and relaxing
“I’m sorry to upset you, Crumble, but I thought it best to be honest.” Dorro was standing and wringing his hands, Forgo and Timmo beside him. “I think it’s time we told your brothers.”
“Told us what, Mr. Dorro?” asked Magpie. “And please, you and the Sheriff come have a beer with us.”
“No thank you—I need to keep my head clear at the moment, Magpie. Gentlemen, I’ve come here tonight to talk to you all about Wump, your recently deceased brother. I believe I’ve solved his murder and am fairly sure you won’t like it.”
“It was that Fibbhook and Bindlestiff, wasn’t it, sir?” barked Two-Toes. “One of ’em is dead, but the other is still on the lam. I couldn’t believe the porky fellow eluded us today. But we’ll get him tomorrow, and when we do, I’ll string him up right then and there from a stout pine branch!”
“Actually, if you do that, Mr. Two-Toes, I’ll have to arrest you for murder,” coughed Sheriff Forgo. “I’m the law around here and administer punishments according to our own laws, thank you.”
Two-Toes said nothing, but looked embarrassed. He put another few drops of belladonna into his beer and took a sip.
“If I might keep going, gentlemen, I think Bindlestiff is no doubt mixed up in this crime, but not as the murderer. No, that person was to remain a mystery to me, but I figured it out—or close enough—today and just now told your brother my suspicions.”
“And they’re completely bollocks!” yelled Crumble. “The accusation is pure fantasy.”
“Come now, Crumbly, calm yerself down,” cooed Aramina. “Let the nice Halfling finish talking.”
“As I said, there have been several details of Wump’s murder that bothered me, among them the condition of the corpus when we found it all those weeks ago.”
“What details, dare we ask, Mr. Dorro?” queried Magpie, tugging on his beard.
“First, there was the fact that Wump had suffered many broken bones during his demise, yet … yet he had no open cuts or wounds. How could he have so many internal injuries, yet nothing on the outside.”
“That’s beyond us, Mr. Halfling.”
“Is it Magpie?” Dorro coughed to clear this throat. “Actually, once you all told me about a method of Dwarf punishment for thefts. I believe you told me the if you caught a Dwarf making a theft, you’d put them in a leather bag and beat them with rocks, punches, or anything hard. Am I recalling that correctly?”
There was silence in the burrow, while Wump’s brothers looked casually about the room.
“Certainly, if Wump were put into such a bag—even if he were actually beaten to death—you’d never find open wounds. Instead, his corpus exhibited a strange collection of broken bones.”
“This is madness!” roared Crumble. “Ye can’t be seriously suggesting that my brothers here killed our brother Wump. That’s patently absurd. If you were anyone else, Mr. Dorro, I’d have me sword out.”
“D’ya want me to take care of him, Crumbly?” leered Aramina pulling out her hand axe. “I can do it quick ‘n’ nice, y’know.”
“No, of course not, you silly cow! Put that blade away.”
Now Crumble was really angry, not only at Aramina and his brothers, but also himself for letting things get this far. “Tell me, lads—tell me this is Mr. Dorro’s mad lark!”
Sadly for the Dwarf, neither Magpie, Flume, nor Two-Toes was able to do that. Instead, they sipped their tankards and looked at the foamy tops absently. At last, Two-Toes stood up awkwardly, looking like a child who got caught stealing an extra piece of pie. Crumble’s face was one of shock, while Aramina was simply bewildered; she knew it was time for her to put her axe away and remain quiet.
“I know this is difficult, Crumble me brother,” began Two-Toes, “But y’see, we had to do it. Even if you now have us killed or exiled, we had to do it. Wump had become wicked. Awful and terrible and wicked! We knew what we had to do.”
“What could Wump have done?” cried Crumble. “Sure, he was sometimes a greedy bugger, and his personality was flinty.”
“Oh, don’t I know it … and I was fool enough to marry him!” cackled Aramina.
Now it was Flume’s turn to stand up. “But Crumble, our brother had grown so greedy that he wanted your money.”
“My money?” said Crumble aghast. “I have only my claim in Gildenhall. And I haven’t worked that mine for years. Sure it contains some gold, silver, and minerals, but was it worth murderin’ about?”
Magpie rose, “But brother, it wasn’t just the gold; he wanted to kill you! He made plans—written plans, and we found them, in a letter.”
“To whom?” Crumble was looking sadder by the second.
Two-Toes’ voice echoed throughout the burrow. “To that villain Bindlestiff! Why it was that scoundrel who made the deal with Wump to import the black stones from the north. And in that letter, they discussed the fact that the stones would make yon Halflings sick and die—and both would make piles of money.”
Flume continued, “He and Bindlestiff also made plans to work your claim in Gildenhall—Wump keeping the gold and silver, and the ores and black stones he’d send south to the smeltery. Both fellers would be rich as kings in a few years. Wump had gone crazy with the gold fever!”
“Remember brother,” added Magpie, “It was Wump that secured us these jobs at the smeltery. He brought us down here to keep an eye on the operation and work out them long-term plans with Bindlestiff. They were both up to their necks in the evil!”
“Ah ha!” called out Crumble, pulling himself to his full height, “There’s one flaw in your accusations, brothers—Wump couldn’t get my claim if I died. According to our laws, it would have gone directly to young Orli, with you fellows as the guardians.”
Magpie began to quietly weep. “But Crumble, in Dwarf law, who gains control of an inheritance if the last son in a family dies?”
“That’s easy,” laughed Crumble, feeling he had the upper hand at last, “Why everything goes to … his father’s next brother. And that would be Wump.”
All three brothers now approached Crumble and laid hands on his shoulders. “I’m sorry, brother. But it’s all here in this letter.” Slowly Flume fished it out of his pocket. “Wump and Bindlestiff plotted to kill Orli, too, and then take control of your claim. It’s all here in Wump’s own handwriting, sloppy as it was.”
“Lemme see that,” said Aramina sharply. “I knew his handwriting better than anyone.” She snatched the pages away and scanned them. She nodded and also put a hand on Crumble’s shoulder. “He was a no-good rotter, that ex-husband ’o mine. If I’d known about this plot, I’d-a killed him me’self!”
Crumble sank onto a wooden stool, his face in pure shock. A few words slipped out.
“So … how did you get him in the leather sack? Wump was a beast and was stronger than any of you, even combined. I can’t imagine it.”
* * *
“Maybe I can be of assistance here, Crumble.”
It was Dorro, speaking softly from the back of the burrow.
“You see, your brothers are very crafty fellows and knew not only how to break bones without any evidence of it, but also how to put him into a deep, dreamless sleep from which he’d never return. It’s something I’ve been puzzling over since you arrived in Thimble Down—the belladonna drops you put into your beer to kick them up a notch. Of course, belladonna is terribly poisonous to Halflings, but only mildly so to Dwarves, hence the small narcotic effect you get when adding it to your ales. Yet if one were to put a dramatic amount into a glass of wine, why, you’d even render a Dwarf unconscious.”
There was silence, as Dorro kept going.
“And that’s what your brothers did, Crumble. On the night the children were caught breaking into Bindlestiff’s office, they also found the letter—I recall you saying you went for a long walk, Crumble. That is perfectly in keeping with the timeline. As you were out, they had time to offer Wump a jolly glass of wine, or more likely honeygrass whiskey, one laced with a potent dose of belladonna. I’m sure it was followed with laughs and pleasantries, as your brothers wanted to remember the Wump they knew as youths—fun, silly, and jolly, long before he turned greedy and evil.”
“Shortly, he fell asleep, probably right there on the bench where Aramina is sitting. Your brothers carried him out back, sewed him into the leather bag, and carried him to the roof of Bindlestiff’s cave. In his already-weakened condition, his heart rate lowered dangerously by the dose of belladonna, your brethren committed the final act of this grim play. They beat Wump to death with rocks and sticks and whatever they found—a fitting death for a thief.”
“At last, they cut him out of the bag, laid his broken, but unbloodied corpus in a nook on top of the smeltery, and quietly returned home before you returned. It was in its own dark way, a brilliantly conceived murder.”
Crumble sat there with Wump’s letter to Bindlestiff in his hands and began scanning its lines. In short order, he found the part about his own murder, as well as Orli’s. He dropped his head and began to wail and moan at the utter tragedy of it all.