3492 A Mattress Of Life And Death
on February 23, 2022
Characters: Cadugan, Captain Ajira, Captain Lilianne Carruthers, Lexa Dumas, Lucas Greyfort, Sulaaf al'Shamshir
Location: Abbey of St. Aldwin the Skilled
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If Sulaaf find a new clue, the Captain is going to eat her hat
I was expecting the mirror to be a magical one you can walk through or something.
Reminder: There’s no magic in the abbey.
Not that I wasn’t thinking the same thing, anyhow.
In theory, I might even suggest that an anti-magic field needs a source of magical energy to work properly, and might misbehave when the surrounding world gets too low.
But I don’t think that would fit the mystery genre this story is going for.
She’s still accusing Maula
I must have missed 60 Minutes.
t!
Sure. We haven’t seen anything that would change her mind.
Her previous investigation has led her to that conclusion, there’s not enough new evidence to point to somebody else (yet), and she is doing her job as she sees fit. This works with her character and the circumstances as we know it/them, and she’s attempting to do as requested, which was to show how she got to the conclusion she did. It’s not as if she’s using personal knowledge of Maula, like the Duke boys (still chortling over that reference!) or out of character knowledge, like us or like many fictional detectives.
She did walk back the name, which to me is more support for her integrity. One of the numerous reasons I love this comic is that people aren’t 2D, and often neither are circumstances. I LIKE that she started to say Lady Bloodhand (and extra points for still referring to her as Lady), and stopped herself. It really annoys me as a reader when characters are obviously changing their minds on important things just to wrap things up or make it easier on the author (unless done with humor).
> She did walk back the name, which to me is more support for her integrity.
Yes! Thank you for catching that (because I’m kind of proud of it).
She continues to believe she is correct, but is maintaining an open mind and a respectful discourse. People struggle, but most do their best.
Rich and I had a discussion about Maula’s title. I pushed for Queen, because I thought it sounded cooler, and she might still be entitled to use it – but Rich was a stickler for propriety. He was right, natch.
t!
"Here, I’ll demonstrate everything I did and give the impression that someone else did it."
Ugh.
t!
Searched a lot of places in my time. The first rule is to put everything back exactly where you found it, unless you want them to know you searched or you confiscated something they’d miss, then just stack it all neatly in the middle of the bed.
Nobody here is an expert searcher like you are, but I think most of us knew that anyway.
t!
"Ah, ha! Someone removed the tag from the mattress that you’re not supposed to remove under penalty of law! That’s the real crime here! Quick, search everyone for the missing tag!"
That could be someone’s tag-line. Or a case of tag, they’re it.
As I understand it, Taurenil did have a fan on the bed, until the linen ruined it. But it should be no surprise when the sheet hits the fan.
Okay, some of these puns are going to the mattresses.
But the Abbot just said (last strip) that the victim moved the armoire herself, every time she stayed with them… So why does the Captain think that the murderer moved it??
I think it was moved from where it was moved before.
I think Eolhin’s point is that by what we learned in the last strip, the Captain’s search team found the armoire in the exact spot Taurenil usually left it – which then leaves open the question of how she could know, in this strip, that it had been moved by someone else in between.
This is the result of miscommunication between myself and Richard, in the manner I described the scene.
I’m trying to figure out what to do about it.
t!
I was reading it as "The armoire was moved from its original spot, and the mirror was also moved along with it." Leaving two mysteries: why did the interloper move the armoire, and was their reason for placing the mirror behind the armoire related to Taurenil’s reason for always doing so?
This could be resolved by seeing signs that the armoire had been moved after the murder had happened. The freshness of the scuff marks, overlaying scuff marks made days earlier, say. "We know that Lady Taurenil moved it, but there are signs that both it and the mirror were moved and hurriedly replaced."
In any case, muddling when the mirror was moved does not… reflect well upon the authors.
I personally miss having actual firearms here. No one was caught rifling through the dead lady’s belongings. Which leaves a few theories shot.
CLARIFICATION/CONFIRMATION:
1) Taurenil always put the armoire in front of the mirror.
2) The person who searched the room (after Taurenil’s death but before Carruthers’ search) moved the armoire, and put it back – but not precisely enough. When in the previous strip Carruthers says, "In this position," she is setting up that the position was off, and she noticed.
t!
Somehow, I am expecting someone to say "Jinkies" or "Yoiks!" At least they have not split up to look for clues.
Not yet!