Over the twenty-four hours that followed, I kept a close eye on the the various players with whom I shared First Class. Loelle came out for meals but seemed to spend much of her time resting, either asleep or merely at peace. I had conducted a brief search and discovered that her cargo was five cabins down from ours, safely stowed. It consisted mainly of finely tanned leathers, boxes of furs, linen and several cases of completed clothing. Hoping to reaffirm the dates that her husband had been delivering, sure that they provided the alibi she needed, I performed a little light-fingered reconnaissance into the Notary’s cabin while he ate his breakfast. Sure enough, the dates matched up so that, even had she travelled with her husband on his supply route, she would have been in Rida during the first two murders and still in Zar for the third.
Jef’nerin apparently preferred to spend his meals in his cabin, for I did not see him leave once during the day. For hours I turned the problem around in my head; what was his final project? In the past he had successfully kept his business ventures a secret from me. I had been aware of a shadowy figure behind several of the criminals I had apprehended, but he had never made a formal appearance and I had only been able to garner the faintest suggestions about his manner. To have Jef’nerin laid out for my study like this was… unheard of.
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