Never Trust a Dead Man

Vivian Vande Velde

• Publisher: HMH Books for Young Readers
• Year: 2008
• eBook ISBN: 9780547351667

This winner of the Edgar Award for Best Young Adult Mystery is "an entertaining blend of fantasy, whodunit, and comedy" ( School Library Journal).
 
When Selwyn, a farmer, is accused of murdering his rival, Farold, he is sealed in the village burial cave with Farold's moldering corpse to await starvation—or worse. Worse comes along quickly in the form of a witch who raises Farold from the dead. Selwyn thought he disliked Farold when he was alive, but that was nothing compared to working by the dead man's side as they search for the real killer.
 
"Murder, magic, salacious secrets, and sparkling wit immediately pull the reader into this engrossing medieval whodunit . . . universally appealing and difficult to put down." — Kirkus Reviews
 
"A tongue-in-cheek medieval farce and a supernatural mystery." — Library Journal
 
"An entertaining book that will attract both fantasy and mystery readers." — Booklist

Eighteen

The crowd didn’t disperse from the tavern until long after dark. After a week with no customers, Orik was so full of himself Selwyn had a hard time resisting the urge to push him facedown in a tub of ale—especially since he was, in Selwyn’s estimation, the most likely suspect for having murdered Farold.

Finally Bowden and Holt announced it was time to take Selwyn’s father and settle him down for the night in the smithy. Hours spent no more than a room’s length away from him, and Selwyn had not had the chance to speak more than that one offer of a drink. Tomorrow, he thought. Somehow he would arrange a way to see him privately tomorrow. His mother, too, he made plans to talk to. When she had come to bring the prisoner his meals—escorted by Bowden’s loud and bossy wife—she had looked pale and drawn, and had such dark shadows under her eyes and at her cheeks that Selwyn had had to look away. Surely, tomorrow morning, Bowden and his family could have no objection to Kendra paying her a visit.

But for tonight, finally they were all gone: his parents and their guards, the customers, the lingerers. It was time for cleaning up.

Wilona said, “I can do it myself, Kendra. You’ve had such a long day—walking from Saint Hilda’s, catching up on all the news, fetching and serving without a break between the afternoon crowd and the evening. On your feet all day.” She patted Selwyn’s hand. “You need a rest.”

“No,” Selwyn assured her, “I’m fine. I’d prefer to stay up a bit longer.”

Wilona looked ready to settle in next to him.

“You go to bed, Mother,” he said—he hoped Kendra called her “Mother” and not some girlish pet name. “Really, you should. You’ve been working hard: cooking and cleaning and making things run smoothly all day.”

“This is not our daughter,” Orik roared, which nearly caused Selwyn to stop breathing. But then Orik gave him a swift hug and continued, “This is some hardworking girl the nuns have substituted for our Kendra.”

“Oh, Orik,” Wilona complained in a tone of both exasperation and love that reminded Selwyn of his own parents and nearly broke his heart.

Orik kissed Selwyn on the forehead. “Welcome back, girl,” he said. “Welcome, from the bottom of my heart.”

“Thank you, Father,” Selwyn said awkwardly, feeling guilty now for wanting to drown Orik in his own ale. But don’t get sentimental toward him, he reminded himself. The fact that he loved his family was not proof that he hadn’t murdered Farold. It was, in fact, a good, strong motive.

As Orik headed back toward the section of the house behind the tavern, Wilona said, “Let me help you, Kendra. I insist. It will give us a chance to talk together.”

A chance to talk together was not anything Selwyn looked forward to. He smiled as sweetly as he could manage and said, “I’d like that. Truly. We do need to talk. But not tonight, Mother. After all the noise of today”—he gestured vaguely—“my ears need a rest.” That didn’t come out sounding the way he wanted. “My mind needs a rest And my voice.” He cleared his throat to remind them of Kendra’s supposed cold.

He wasn’t making much sense, but Wilona said, “I know. I understand.” And she also kissed him on the forehead. “If you’re sure.”

He nodded.

The door had no sooner closed behind her than Farold started, “Well—”

Selwyn whirled on him, with a frantic finger to his lips.

Wilona reopened the door. “Did you call after me, dear?”

“No, Mother,” Selwyn said, noisily pushing one of the benches up against the wall. “Unless you think I sound like wood scraping on the floor.”

Wilona blew him a kiss and shut the door.

Selwyn held up a warning finger to Farold.

Farold sighed—several times, loudly—as Selwyn wiped down all the tables, benches, and stools, then swept the floor. Selwyn refused to talk until he had gathered up the cups and plates and brought them into the kitchen, which had the whole width of the tavern to separate him from the room where Orik and Wilona were either asleep or trying to sleep. Then he brought Farold’s cage into the kitchen, too.

“Quietly now,” Selwyn said as he began to clean the dishes, “what have we learned?”

Farold said, “That we probably should have had Elswyth make your bosom smaller.”

Irritated, Selwyn smacked the wet rag against the side of the cage, splattering Farold with sudsy water. Then, “Shhh,” he warned before Farold could sputter a complaint. “I learned,” he said, “that it’s amazing nobody killed you a long time ago.”

“What?” Farold asked innocently. “Who have you been talking to? Is somebody spreading lies about me?”

“What’s this about demanding back the money you loaned Holt—money you got from blackmailing Alden and his father, Thorne? Suddenly you had to have that money back after less than a year, instead of the two you promised, because you wanted it to impress Anora?”

“Oh,” Farold said.

“‘Oh,’” Selwyn repeated. And, when Farold didn’t continue, “That’s a fine defense you offer, Farold.”

“I don’t need to offer a defense,” Farold said. “I’m the dead man, remember? Not the suspect.”

“We’re not talking about who murdered you. We’re talking about you being a nasty, worthless creature.”

“You know, I can leave whenever I want,” Farold warned him. “People don’t shout at you in the afterlife.”

It was a worrisome thought, no matter what. “You get me feeling all sorry for you and concerned about your bruised feelings, then I learn that you’re so thoughtless, you would demand Holt pay you back when you knew that would have ruined him.”

“It wouldn’t necessarily have ruined him,” Farold said. Grudgingly he added, “It might have hurt a bit. But I needed the money. I couldn’t very well marry Anora and ask her to move into my little room under the stairs. And we couldn’t all move into Uncle Derian’s room or ask him to trade rooms with us: ‘Excuse me, Uncle Derian, could you move from the big room at the front of the house and up off the street, to the cubbyhole right next to the machinery?’ The only way was to build on a new room, and it had to be furnished. With Uncle Derian never marrying, there hasn’t been a woman living at the mill since my parents died.”

“You have—had—a lot of money coming in from the mill,” Selwyn pointed out. He had a sudden thought. “Didn’t you? Or has the mill been in financial trouble since you took over the running of it?” Maybe, he thought, DERIAN had killed Farold. Derian, living at the mill, certainly had a better opportunity for it than Merton or Orik or Thorne or Holt, or even Linton, who had been Selwyn’s first suspect. If Farold’s mismanagement was causing the mill to lose money . . . and maybe he had refused to turn it back over to Derian . . .

But Farold was shaking his head. “No,” Farold said, obviously offended. “The mill made more money this year under me than any year previously.”

“Well, if you had so much money, why did you need what you’d loaned Holt?”

“Because Derian is still the owner. The money from the mill is his.”

Selwyn thought how his father had been willing to help clear the new field when there had been the possibility that Selwyn might marry Anora. But families were different, and if Derian hadn’t been willing to advance the money to Farold, Selwyn supposed he could see how Farold would panic and turn to Holt. Though Anora, he was sure, would have understood and wouldn’t have demanded luxurious accommodations. She was too sweet and kindhearted to allow harm to come to anyone on her behalf, even indirectly.

“All right,” Selwyn said, “so not Derian. That leaves Orik, who thinks you’re the father of his unmarried daughter’s child . . .” He held out his thumb to begin counting.

“And Wilona, for the same reason,” Farold pointed out.

Selwyn’s immediate reaction was to say no, but he thought about it. The murderer had stabbed Farold in the back during the night, apparently counting on his being asleep, on his not putting up a fight. A woman, not being as strong as a man, may well have chosen this kind of a sneak attack. “Maybe,” he acknowledged, and counted off his forefinger. Then he went on, “Or Holt, so he wouldn’t have to pay you back the money he owed you. Or Thorne, to make sure you didn’t tell people what you knew about his son. Or Alden, for blackmailing him—”

“Alden?” Farold hooted. “Alden is a wonderful suspect if you don’t mind that he doesn’t live here anymore. Come back from God-knows-where to kill me nine months after the fact, then disappear back into the night without a trace?”

“Maybe,” Selwyn insisted, but he put down the finger that represented Alden. Then he put it back up as he resumed counting. “Linton, so the mill would pass down to him—”

“Always a stretch,” Farold observed.

Selwyn ignored him and switched to his other hand, ending with six. “And Merton.”

“Why would Merton want me dead?”

“I have no idea,” Selwyn said. “But he’s the one person besides you who knew about the knife.”

Farold didn’t argue.

“There wasn’t anybody else who knew about the knife, was there?”

“No,” Farold said.

“So why would Merton want you dead?” Selwyn asked.

“I already told you: I don’t know.”

“I thought you might have remembered something you failed to tell me before. Like with Alden and Thorne and Holt and, to a certain extent, Kendra. Is there?”

“No,” Farold said grumpily. “You’re adding more and more possibilities, but nobody for whom all the pieces fit. And you’re not getting any closer to proving anything.”

“I know,” Selwyn grumbled. “Tomorrow we’ll have to find some excuse to take a look at your room—see if we can learn anything there.”

“We can try,” Farold said. “But I doubt, after almost a week, that we’ll find anything.”

Selwyn thought he was probably right, but he only said, “In the meantime, I’m going to let you out of your cage.” He unfastened the twine that held the door, which was really an enchanted bit of vine tied on pieces of sticks. “Try flying around the houses of the suspects. Maybe you’ll see or overhear something.”

Farold fluttered around the room to stretch his wings, then sat on top of the cage. “Oh, that’s very likely,” he said with exaggerated enthusiasm. “At this hour what I’m likely to see is people sleeping, and what I’ll overhear is snoring.”

“I’ll leave the cage door open so you can get in and out,” Selwyn said, ignoring his sarcasm. “Maybe you’ll learn something tomorrow. Try to stay out of people’s way. If anybody asks, I’ll have to say you escaped. But Kendra is so well liked that everyone will try to recapture you for her. Still, make sure you check back with me regularly so that we can tell each other what we’ve learned.”

“So what you’re saying,” Farold said, “is stay around people so I can watch them, but keep away lest they see me. And all the while keep coming back here, where everybody will be trying to catch me to impress you.”

Selwyn smacked the cage with the wet rag again, and Farold took to the air. “Just go,” Selwyn told him. “Keep out of the ale barrels.” He opened the back door, then went to get the basin of wash water to dump it.

The first thing he noticed when he stepped outside was that Farold had not flown away but was perched on the open door, chirping a bad imitation of a goldfinch song. Then Selwyn saw why. Anora, too, was just emptying a basin of wash water into the alley. He had not seen her in the tavern today; he had not seen her since the day he’d been dragged out of her father’s house to the burial cave.

Now, even though she had her back to him, at first he couldn’t get his voice to work. This turned out to be good, because in that extra moment he remembered to disguise his voice. “Hello,” he said in the throaty whisper that—if it didn’t exactly sound like a girl’s voice—at least didn’t sound quite like a man’s.

Anora whirled around, which caused a good amount of the water she was pouring out to end up on his feet and legs. Hastily she righted the basin, though there couldn’t have been much water left inside. She must have been too embarrassed to respond to his greeting, for she just stood there, looking at him in the alleyway that was lit only by the candlelight spilling out from both their doorways.

His kind, beautiful Anora. The sight of her left Selwyn breathless. Suddenly everything was clear to him: Farold was a terrible helper-companion-investigator to be saddled with. Sweet Anora would be much more help in solving the crime and proving his innocence. He knew he’d have to be careful, so as not to frighten her. But he was sure, once he explained all that had happened, she would be eager to help him.

He turned so that he could dump out the water he carried without splashing her, and at the same time he started to work out what would be the best way to tell her all that he needed to tell her.

Without warning, a bucketful of cold, greasy water hit his back. Selwyn gasped in surprise and whirled to find Anora had upended her basin over him. And he’d been wrong: There had been a significant amount left in the bottom.

Even Farold was stunned into silence, his beak parted but his song cut off midchirp.

“What—,” Selwyn started, forgetting to disguise his voice, but cold and surprise made it go high all on its own.

“How dare you come back?” Anora spit at him.

She knows who I am, he thought. And she believes I’m the one who killed Farold.

The thought that she didn’t believe in his innocence left him speechless. It was another fortunate delay, for she continued, “You slut, you harlot, you worthless piece of garbage.”

“But . . .” Selwyn had no idea where to go to from there.

Anora swung her basin, hitting his arm. “Why didn’t you just stay away, Kendra?”

Selwyn caught hold of the edge of the basin as she started to make a second swing with it. “What are you talking about?”

“‘What are you talking about?’” Anora mimicked in a cruel singsong. “Don’t play innocent with me. Your mother told my mother all about you. I know where you’ve been.” She gave up trying to wrest the basin out of Selwyn’s grip.

“When?” Selwyn demanded, for Wilona had spent all day helping in the tavern, and Anora’s mother had only come in for the briefest moments, while escorting his real mother when she brought in meals for the prisoner. “When did our mothers talk?”

Apparently Anora guessed what Selwyn was thinking. “Not today, stupid,” she hissed. “More than a week ago. Your mother was so pleased with herself, saying you might be coming back home from the convent soon. And when my mot...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Contents
• Copyright
• Dedication
• One
• Two
• Three
• Four
• Five
• Six
• Seven
• Eight
• Nine
• Ten
• Eleven
• Twelve
• Thirteen
• Fourteen
• Fifteen
• Sixteen
• Seventeen
• Eighteen
• Nineteen
• Twenty
• Twenty-one
• Twenty-two
• About the Author