Well Dead

XXI. Agricultural Differences

“But he’ll come back.”

“Who cares? I’ll dodge him somehow. Holy men who live a life of solitary prayer in the forest have many calls on their time. Talking to God, fasting…” he bit from an apple and chewed energetically.

“Now back to you my friend, you and your reason for coming here. Am I right in thinking it has to do with your inquiries about this dead peasant?”

“Yes. Bertram, I…” Harun faltered, then it came out suddenly: “I don’t now what to do.”

“Take another apple,” his host suggested. “What’s the matter, exactly?”

“The murder cannot have been committed by anyone.”

“Why, that is a novel idea, certainly. And a very simplifying, from your point of view. You can forget about the whole business and return to your usual daily routine.”

“But I cannot do that! The murder must have been committed by somebody!”

“That, if my knowledge of Greek has not forsaken me, is what is called a paradox. An ancient principle of Greek philosophy. Just the right thing for you, I would have imagined.”

“It can be fifty philosophical principles for all I care! A man is dead, and admiring the difficulty and the theoretical interest of the circumstances surrounding his death is not getting me one inch closer to finding his killer!”

“And that is what is called practicality. A useful skill, though difficult to learn if one has not practiced it. Yet perhaps we two can help each other out. That is why you have come, if I am not mistaken.”

“You are not.”

“So why exactly is there no one who could have killed this man?”

Harun told him. Perhaps with a little less detail included about Wenzel and his discovery than one would expect, considering the guard’s part in the proceedings, but it was a truthful enough account as accounts go.

“Difficult,” Bertram granted when the scribe had finished. “You have not been able to find anyone with a motive for the deed? Anyone?”

“As I’ve told you, of the four people which could have done…”

“No, I’m not talking only about them. Is there someone other than these four people who could have a motive for murder?”

“What if there was? He could have nothing to do with it? I have proven that.”

“My dear friend, what you have proven is that you’ve landed yourself in a nice pickle because you’ve made and error somewhere and can’t figure out where exactly.”

“Do you mean to say there is somebody I’ve overlooked outside the circle of these four? Who?” Harun demanded.

“I did not say I knew where your error lay or what it was. I only observed that you must have made one.”

“Ha!”

“Which means in my humble opinion,” Bertram continued indifferently, “that you should be wary of relying absolutely on your own conclusions. Perhaps you should consider that you actually have to start all over again.”

Harun stared at the recluse as though he had declared the world to be cubic.

*~*~*~*~*

“'Start all over again'. It’s all very well for him to talk, sitting there in his snug little cottage with nothing to do but watch the sun sink and rise again. I cannot be wrong. I simply cannot be! I am a man of logic!”