Scholar's Plot by Hilari Bell Read Free Book Online

through the gates. The friends at the lecture had already said that they’d taken pity on Benton because he was alone. So they went to see Benton and Kathy, and the truth came out.”
    “What, they couldn’t have lied?”
    “Kathy might have,” Michael said, though I’d have thought her a bit young to stand up to a High Liege investigator. “But Benton … he’s a worse liar than I am, Fisk. Or than I was, before I met you.”
    Despite his glower, I wasn’t offended by the implication that I’d taught him to lie. He’d needed those lessons. A lot.
    “But why do they think your brother would want to kill this Hotchkiss person? Or have you kill him? Who was he, anyway?”
    Michael hesitated again, but we’d nothing better to do. So I learned that Hotchkiss had been the university’s head librarian, and how Michael’s brother had been framed.
    Unlike Michael, who was somewhat skeptical about the importance of an original dissertation, I had no trouble understanding why it was something a man might cheat, or even kill for. Though it didn’t sound like Benton was the type.
    Michael went on to tell me young Kathy’s theory, about the project providing a motive to bring Benton down. I wondered if the jeweler might have been part of that project, though as Michael told me about it, I didn’t see how. The jeweler didn’t have Gifts — unless you counted the ability to infuse bits of glass with real magic. Most people wouldn’t consider that a Gift, though I wasn’t so sure.
    I could see how a research project, particularly a well-funded and important one, might give someone a motive for murder. But not to murder a librarian who’d had nothing to do with it.
    I was making that point, when the door at the top of the stairs opened and a stranger in a guard captain’s uniform escorted a young woman down the steps.
    It took me a moment to recognize Kathy, though she was still thin, and brown as a sparrow. Maybe the difference lay in the ease with which she handled her full green skirt, though she didn’t sport as many petticoats as most noblewomen wore. More likely it was the tailored fit of the leather bodice, but she looked all grown up — astonishingly grown up — until her spectacles slipped, and she pushed them back up in a gesture I remembered from all those years ago.
    “What, money and power aren’t motive enough to kill for?” Her voice was deeper than it had been at fourteen, a woman’s voice. Which I suppose was also to be expected.
    “It would be,” I said. “If Master Hotchkiss had been involved with the project in any way. As it is…”
    No one had any motive to kill him, except brother Benton.
    This realization struck everyone at the same moment, and Michael and Kathy stiffened.
    “We haven’t yet made a case against anyone, for Master Hotchkiss’ death,” said the captain pleasantly. “The only thing we know is that Profess — Master Benton Sevenson was almost certainly attending the lecture at the time of his death.”
    “How do you know that?” Michael asked. “The time he died, I mean?”
    “We can’t be certain,” the captain said. “But it looks like he was leaving for the lecture when he was killed. After dinner, in his front hall, dressed to go out. And he was killed by a blow to the front of the head, as if he surprised someone coming in. I don’t suppose either of you noticed anyone else lurking around the campus?”
    “A few students,” I said. “Walking on the paths.”
    “No one suspicious,” Michael agreed.
    “So it seems you two are my best suspects,” the captain said.
    We probably were. For a wonder, Michael said nothing.
    “You shouldn’t tease them,” Kathy said. “They’re scared enough as it is.”
    “We are not,” said Michael. “We’re innocent — well, I’m fairly sure Fisk is innocent — so if you’re an honest man, we should have nothing to fear.”
    Actually, an unredeemed man should be afraid of any guardsman, anytime, anywhere.