Chapter 6: The Live Body considers the Gs

Oranna was discovering that she hated Gildenstan Goldie, after all what kind of man gives all thirty of his children names beginning with G?

She had made good progress snooping about and generally spying on the state of affairs of the Goldie Mansion. Thirty might have seemed an unusual number, but shewpogs often had quite large families, they just didn’t often have the cushy and safe life that the Goldie children did.

Generally in Elcon denizens tended to get eaten by things. Being eaten was one of the prime causes of death in Elcon, though considering that dying of old age wasn’t something that usually was possible in Elcon, that wasn’t too surprising.

Case in point Goldie’s first wife, from which he had seven children, was tragically eaten by killer vegetables, a clutch of cauliflowers. Oranna could sympathise having lost loved ones to ravenous foodstuffs herself.

Goldie’s children then could be divided into two camps, the elders, born to Vreed, who had been an orange shewpog with blue hair. All of the elders were adult shewpogs. Of the elders that fit the witness testimony of Dalbert Bluevert there was three that stood out to Oranna.

There was Golbassy Goldie, who had a habit of wearing obscuring hooded robes and was never seen without her nose stuck in a book. Gildenstan actually had a library, being a filthily rich person. Books were quite a valuable thing in Elcon. She was generally unfavoured by the rest of the family due to being more than a bit solitary, though Oranna wondered if the disfavour came before the reclusiveness. Supposedly even Gildenstan did not think much of her.

Gorm Goldie was certainly didn’t spend his days in idleness, but it was debatable that what he did was much better. The blue curtain haired menace was notorious for crashing parties and secret high stakes games of this and that. He was also infamous for cheating at these high stakes games that ran the gamut from cards to strange games played with ball bearings and mechanical cabinets, part of the infamy was it was always clear to whoever played against time that Gorm was a big fat cheater, but they could never figure out how he had cheated.

Gagger Goldie, was very simply a boasting liar. He frequently hired adventurers and went out on trips with them. When he returned he would always have a tall tale of epic deeds he performed. The deeds were always exaggerated retellings of what the adventurers did. Truthfully, he had a reputation as a scaredy cat in the mansion, and his siblings and the servants never tired of playing pranks that frightened the life out of him.

The youngers, those born to Serelotte were more than twice the number of elders, though they were all quite younger than the elders. Indeed many were so young that they were not considered suspects by Goldie and Oranna simply didn’t think of the possibility of any of them being involved.

Among those that however did fit the vague possibility, four stood out.

Glory Goldie, who’s hair was in six horns, was quite independently successful with a business in designing and selling clothes. Clothes were of course more often worn by the rich or city dwellers in Elcon. Most denizens were quite adapted to the cold of Elcon, but warming clothes weren’t exactly what Glory dealt in. No, she was on the cutting edge of Elconic fashion. She was mainly on the cutting edge due to how few were in the business. There was a lot of irregular differing body types in Elcon, and many were reluctant to get into clothes making due to the belief that it could drive one mad. Some even believed that clothes themselves made people go mad.

Though really they need not have worried. Sanity wasn’t exactly a strong requirement to life in Elcon.

Elcon also had a lot of folktales of clothing coming to life and eating people or using their wearers as puppets. Many denizen didn’t believe these tales, or at least said they didn’t. This however, unlike the belief about clothes driving people mad, was totally true. It wasn’t often that clothing came to life though, and you were usually safe if you had a lot of different clothes and burnt your old ones.

Was Glory wearing the clothes or did the clothes wear her?

Gordon Goldie was unlike Gagger, not a boaster. Gordon you see had a hobby. That hobby was hunting all manner of beasties with various crossbows and what was technically siege weaponry. He was quite good at it, and his trophies could be seen scattered around the mansion. He was from the point of view of a shewpog very handsome, and his lion mane like hair was quite admired. He had a bad habit of roping the unwilling into helping him on his hunting trips.

Gail Goldie was one of two of Goldie’s children that actually seemed to help with the running of things. She had a fine eye for value and unlike the majority of Elconic denizens knew her way around numbers. She was frequently found going on shopping trips with her mother, but she always would take notes as they went around from merchant to merchant.

Finally there was Gilgamush Goldie, the heir apparent. Gilgamush was a sharp business man, if Goldie always got his money’s worth, then Gilgamush was one who would get more than his money’s worth. It was said that negotiating with Gilgamush caused letter denizens to break out in a cold sweat and forget the proceedings and wake from their stupor the next morning to the nightmarish reality of a ludicrously onesided deal or contract. Everyone agreed that nobody was better suited than he to carry on as the head of the Goldie Dynasty, which Gildenstan had started.

Some wondered if it really counted as a Dynasty if it had started with Gildenstan, but it was unlikely they would have said this anywhere near the mansion of the Goldies.

What bothered Oranna most about the whole situation was what possible motives any of the suspects had for the theft and why if any of them had done the deed had they stuck around.

“Mistah Snaps is right, this all stinks” She muttered.

She was so busy thinking about what she had learned and about the possibility of someone trying to frame one of the children of Gildenstan that she didn’t notice whatever it was that cast the rather large looming shadow over her.

It was a massive and grizzled white bear, what particularly stood out was his bronze medal eye-patch and a red quilted top hat that looked like it had been in one fight too many. He wore a pair of fancy black shorts with shiny bronze buttons on them, with brown leather braces over his shoulders.

He was glaring at Oranna with his one good and quite fierce eye.

“What are you doing here?” He growled.

Oranna’s nervousness was broken a bit when she remembered that the bear was the one who had tossed herself and Tough Snaps in a sack and brought them to the mansion, then she thought about it a bit more and got nervous again.

“I-I came here with the inspector, Tough Snaps, remember you shoved us both in a sack!”

The bear paused for a few moments, thinking about it. After a tense silence a look of recognition came over his face.

“Oh yeah, hey aren’t you from the Most Wanted? What were you doing in a dead beat place like that? My missus and kids always liked you guys, cried for weeks when you stopped appearing”

Oranna really hoped that one day she’d never have to say what she was going to say, though she wondered how so many people knew about her old band or claimed to be fans and yet didn’t know what happened.

“The rest of the band were eaten by killer sausages” she explained flatly.

“Ah the Building 14 incident, funny that…”

Oranna looked at the bear agast, quite appalled and hurt.

The bear panicked.

“A-ah! I didn’t mean that it was funny that your band got eaten by killer sausages, I just mean it was kind of the end of your career while for it shot me up into Golds’ good graces, I helped protect him”

The bear paused, thinking about what he said, he realised it wasn’t much better.

“Yeah, it was the end of my career, it took me ages to be able to pick up my instrument again” Oranna muttered discordantly, tears forming in her eyes.

The bear panicked a bit more, then a stroke of inspiration hit him.

He pulled out a frilly pale blue handkerchief.

“Hey, sorry about all that, My name’s Wrute Pushpaw, can you sign this? My missus and kids were big fans, I’m sure they’re waiting for your solo comeback”

Oranna began crying. Wrute didn’t know what to do, as it happened he didn’t need to do anything, and he’d have likely been better off not doing anything from the beginning.

“You got something I can use?” She asked between sobs.

Wrute wordlessly took out a fancy pen, he was clearly getting paid well for his job.

Oranna managed to calm down shortly after putting her sign on the handkerchief.

Wrute scratched the back of his head bashfully.

“Now, what was I doing again?” He wondered.

He looked at Oranna, who didn’t know what to make of the look she was getting.

“Oh yeah, that’s right” Wrute said.

Before Oranna knew what was happening Wrute had hoisted her up on his shoulder, she thrashed and kicked to get free, but the strength of a musician fox was not really comparable to that of a bodyguard bear.

“W-what are you doing? Where are you taking me? Actually forget that, just put me down!!!” She wailed.

“She said she needed a few live bodies” Wrute replied ominously.

Oranna stopped thrashing. “Wait, what did you just say?”

“She said she needed a few live bodies” Wrute repeated ominously.

Oranna began thrashing more vigorously.

“HEEEELLP HEEEEELLLLLP!!!!!” She screamed.