The house was locked, with no sign of a forced entry. The body was found by a neighbour who had a spare key to the house, normally used at times when watching the house if Antterland was away. This woman noticed that mail deliveries were being left outside the main door.

Two features of the death could not be explained.

The time of death had been calculated with an error allowance of about one hour on either side. However, the neighbour who held the spare key, and another woman who worked in a local restaurant a couple of hundred metres along the road, both reported seeing Antterland leaving the house and locking it up two hours later. That is: he was seen between one and three hours after he was killed. He was carrying a large shoulder bag, one they had seen him using before. He did not speak to either of them, but this was not at all unusual. (Frejah’s account had not mentioned the singular fact of Antterland being seen alive after the murder.)

The other feature was that when Antterland’s bank and other financial records were examined he was found to have virtually no money. Audits of his accounts discovered that all his wealth had been converted to cash on the morning of the day he died. There was no trace of the cash, either inside the house or anywhere else that it might have been concealed. The large shoulder bag he was seen with was never located. (Again, Frejah did not include this in her story.)

Because of these unexplained and inconsistent matters a murder investigation was launched.

A vagrant who had been seen in the area at the time of Antterland’s death, name of Stodson, known on the street as Stod, was arrested and held on suspicion. When questioned he boasted unconvincingly but also unwisely that Lew Antterland was a friend, his best friend. He maintained his innocence even under sustained questioning. A heavy drug user and an alcoholic, Stodson was in poor physical and mental health and while being questioned about Antterland’s death he collapsed. He died later in hospital. There was no evidence to link him to the crime.

With no other possible suspect, and all the evidence pointing to Antterland’s injury as self-inflicted, no matter how extraordinary the circumstances, an inquest court found the death to be occasioned by suicide while the balance of the mind was disturbed.

Because Lew Waller Antterland was a manorial vassal in fief to a demesne lord from the island of Dearth, two detectives from that island arrived to oversee the investigation.

But Frejah said she was sent to Salay Hames alone. Two separate archives reported in factual terms that two Dearth officers went to investigate. Who was the other? Frejah’s partner and mentor, Serjeant Jeksid?