Chapter 17: The Will of Gildenstan Goldie

“If you had told me a few days ago that I’d be on my hands and knees together with Golds himself tearing through one of his offices…” Tough Snaps narrated.

Gildenstan Goldie, a shewpog who held a great mass of wealth, and would surely surpass the town of Cozzlanga, threw a bundle of papers over Tough Snaps’ head. A few inkworms landed on Snaps’ head, but he quickly brushed them off before they could bleed words into his mind, one speech problem was quite enough for him.

“LOCK TAKE ALL THIS JUNK! Where is it? Where did I leave it?” Gildenstan growled.

Tough Snaps looked at the moulding fungus supported towers of paper that dwelt in the office, eyes peeped back at him angrily.

“We had looked through three offices so far, and without finding what we were looking for, I was beginning to wonder if the culprit had moved the safegolem” Tough Snaps mused.

Gildenstan swatted a tentacle that had tried to drag him into the depths of a ruined cabinet.

He snorted derisively.

“You needn’t lose heart Mr. Snaps, the golem is far too heavy to move, well, far too heavy to be moved by someone other than itself.” Gildenstan explained.

“I wondered just how large of a golem he was talking about, then I wondered if it was as large as the pile of papers and other stuff sneaking up behind him” Tough Snaps said.

Gildenstan turned around just in time to see the gaping maw of the mound before he was swallowed whole. Tough Snaps was left alone to stare at what passed for the eyes of the mass.

“If you had told be a few days ago that I would witness Golds being eaten before being eaten myself, I would have called you a…”

Tough Snaps stopped as he heard a curious rustling from the leafy (paper leaf, mind you) pile. He ducked shortly afterwards, barely avoiding having his head impaled by a glittering blade made of jewellery. The blade swept up and then around, the paper and detritus were blown apart by the blade, revealing Gildenstan, not a bit of his jewellery on his person, gripping one end of the blade of wealth.

Behind him was a statue of stone, a being in the form of a cube, a long rectangular nose drooped down its face. It clutched its knees with its angular hands, hands without arms. Its chest was a chest, which was what you might have expected considering it was a safe golem.

“This was a dead end lead, the eyes and mouth of the golem were gone, It was too much to expect that our culprit had left them alone… though, from how old this room was, just how long ago had the culprit found out that Golbassy was Golds’ true heir?”

Gildenstan looked about the office that was teeming with savage life. He sniffed.

“This is about a week’s worth, it is the paperweights really, you leave them around for too long and they start breeding, things all go downhill from there” he said.

“I decided right then that paper work was a faerie child sent to cause all denizens suffering.”

Gildenstan pried the golem’s hands open. The chest opened, no sign of a lock, within was a simple bottle, the top of it had little holes and hovering in the middle of it was a glowy golden glob.

“The golem has been rendered completely useless, of course” Gildenstan announced.

He picked the bottle up.

“You were once sand, I made you glass, be sand again” he commanded.

The glass sloughed off turning into sand and pour on and off Gildenstan’s hand. He grabbed the glowy thing with his other hand and swallowed it.

“Well, I didn’t expect to have that small bit of my will back”

“I waited patiently for Golds to tell me what this all did for the investigation”

“Well, I have my doubts for about this plan of yours, but this helps narrow down who the main suspects are. We’ll grill the servants about who has been past or in this room the days before the day before yesterday, but apart from that…”

“Only a few would have been able to deal with the golem in that way, that was the impression I got”

Gildenstan nodded. “Yes, so that means the prime suspects are Gilgamush, Gail, Gordon, Glory and perhaps Gorm, of my children, they would have the abilities to do what was done here”

Gildenstan began striding out of the room.

“I called out to Golds as he left, as one thing had been bothering me, why wasn’t Gilgamush his heir?”

Gildenstan did not turn back.

“I’ve told you far too much already, don’t you have any fear? Are you not afraid that I might silence you and your friend forever at the end of this case?”

“Golds had a point, why was I being so brazen? But there was something that wasn’t sitting well with me, if he was going to groom his heir secretly, why wait until Golbassy? As for being afraid, I was getting the feeling that Golds wasn’t that kind of villain”

Gildenstan laughed.

“Not that kind of villain eh? Then what kind am I? Well, I must be one, if I’m going to tell you what I’m about to. How can Gilgamush be my heir if I’ve not seen him in years? I was grooming someone before Golbassy, you aren’t a complete fool Mr. Snaps, I’m sure you can figure it out”

“The thing that leaped out at me first, was if Golds hadn’t seen Gilgamush in years, who was the shewpog everyone thought was Gilgamush? A replacement? Had this replacement come to resent his position?”

“He is indeed a replacement, though, perhaps he is Gilgamush, after all, it was Gilgamush who sent the replacement, who gave up his name, truthfully part of my heart is afraid that the Gilgamush who left is the one who has orchestrated these events, to spite me and have further revenge” Gildenstan said.

“So Gilgamush found out he was being groomed to be heir, and didn’t like that, so he left. He left a position a lot of people would go for, heir to such a wealth”

“Wealth became nothing to him, as soon as he discovered how easy it could be to give to others or take from them, it had little meaning to him” Gildenstan said.

“I can’t say I was thrilled to hear about yet another possible player in this game, but I now had to wonder what the original Gilgamush might do, with Golbassy running about the town. I just hoped that Oranna would be ok out there, she was a musician, not a scrapper” Tough Snaps narrated.

“Don’t worry, I’m sure that the person you hired will be more than up for the job, he seemed to be a perfect fit for our purposes. Though I admit, your plan doesn’t really require you to be good at figuring things out, do you always look for such ways to solve your mysteries?” Gildenstan asked.

“I just told Golds that really, most of the time, there was just too many possibilities, getting the culprit to out themselves or the mystery to unravel itself was usually a good plan. Since Golbassy was running around, I was counting on the culprit trying something. We could almost just sit back and wait.”