“I’m questioning the innkeeper. You’ll write it down.”
“That’s why you brought me?”
“Why else do you think?”
I’d thought nothing else, but not that, either. “I’ll remember what you say and I’ll write it when I get home. I’ve a good memory. Will that do?”
“It’ll have to do. Now, where’s the man?”
He might have been anywhere under that roof. I looked into the Common Room for him first. It was emptier and quieter than before and I heard familiar voices, but not his. “Not in there. Maybe in the kitchen or the stable or a cellar.” Charon the cat listened.
“Find him, then. Why else do you think I brought you?”
I was wondering that somewhat more. But I went hunting and found him first shot and brought Cousin Gottlieb into the kitchen. The Common Room was lit by fire; the kitchen was consecrated to it. The hearth was the biggest in Basel, stretching the whole wall and all ancient stone. Four fires had space in it. All the pots and cauldrons were blackest, and the ironmongery of spits and braces and hooks that held them in the flames was blacker. Everything had been heated in such innumerable fires then cooled to bone by hours as immeasurable as the kettles that nothing was left but essence and hardness. And of everything Gustavus was the hardest, standing in the center pillar-like, Hephaestus in the pits of Olympia.
Cousin Gottlieb took a chair. Kitchen maids as tough and heated as the stews they were stirring ignored us. They were chopping meat and their cleavers flashed and the table shook with every blow. Cousin Gottlieb ignored them.
“What do you want, Master?” Gustavus asked in his voice of coals.
“I am Inquisitor,” he answered like dust, and then I knew why he wanted his questions recorded. The council had chosen him to manage the Inquiry. I felt very sorry for him; and I felt sorry for Basel.
“What are your questions?” Gustavus bowed his head in respect. He knew the Inquisitor’s power. And Gottlieb knew it, too.
“Who was Knipper?”
“He was a man.” His answer wasn’t frivolous but profound.
“What was his life?”
“To drive his coach.”
“Why did he die?”
“Because his life ended.”
Cousin Gottlieb preferred proper beginnings. He found these answers satisfying. “Was he family to you?”
“He was no kin.”
“Was he to anyone?”
“Only he would know.”
“Then we won’t. And you employed him?”
“We were partners.”
“And the other inns, as well?”
“The four inns. We had an arrangement.”
“What are the four inns?”
“The Broken Shield in Strasbourg. The Fiery Arrow in Freiburg. The Roaring Lion in Bern. This.”
“Who’ll drive the coach now?”
“Someone else.”
“Do you grieve that he’s dead?” I doubted Gottlieb was asking after the innkeeper’s well-being.
“No.” And for the first time, Gustavus answered more than he was asked. “He was ill-tempered. I’ll be glad for a less troublesome driver.”
“Did you see him the evening when he came in from Bern?”
“I saw him.”
“What did you see of him?”
“That he’d come.”
“And who killed him, then? Was it Willi?”
“Ask him.”
“He’s in jail in Strasbourg. It was someone here in the inn who killed Knipper. This is where he was seen, and where the trunk was, and where he was put in the trunk. Whose trunk was it?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t seen the trunk.”
“It’s at the Watch barracks. Did it belong to one of the passengers?”
“Ask them.”
“They’re not here. Who carried the trunks to the rooms?”
“Willi did.”
“And who carried them back to the coach in the morning?”
“Willi did.”
“Was the trunk ever opened?”
“I don’t know.”
“To put him in it, it was,” Gottlieb said. “Did it come on the coach? Was it from Basel instead? Was it anywhere besides the inn? Was Knipper anywhere besides the inn? Tell me everything you know!”
“I haven’t seen the trunk. I know nothing of it.”
“Would you, if you did see it?”
“I don’t know.”
“I haven’t seen it, either, yet.” Gottlieb fell silent and his silence lasted more than a minute. I waited patiently, and Gustavus, not patient or impatient, just stood. The cooks never stopped. The cleavers, lifted high, fell to the table and cut by their own weight. I didn’t know what beast it had been, four-legged surely, and the women seemed to have no end to their hewing. “Who were the passengers in the coach when it left?”