Conclusion: Katebet’s Chosen One
To the curious bystanders at the Coltyptian department of the university a peculiar scene presented itself: Under utmost physical effort two constables dragged out a unicorn stallion enchained with cuffs and a magic-restraining bracelet screaming bloody murder at all the surrounding ponies. It took the constables almost five minutes to bring him under control and a helping hoof from Inspector Lestride himself to dump the raving stallion into an urgently called paddywagon.
But while the crowd was just making big eyes as the wagon’s barred doors were slammed shut, there was one stallion who wasn’t watching out of sheer curiosity. Sherlock Hooves flashed a grim yet satisfied smile, tipped his head over his eyes so he wouldn’t be recognized so easily and trotted away. There was nothing for him to do at the university anymore…
-<0>-
“Well”, Sherlock welcomed me when I returned home. He had aligned his armchair to face the door so he could catch me right when I entered the room. “That got a little out of hoof today, wouldn’t you agree, old sport?”
My friend knew the score, so to speak, as he near always did. No ‘good evening’, no ‘where have you been all day, Trotson?’ and no ‘how’s the investigation doing?’ either. And I knew Sherlock long enough that I shouldn’t have been bothered by his greeting anymore, or better the lack of such a one. Just him calling me ‘old sport’ somewhat bugged me for I figured it as a slight jibe that I had run a little out of form lately.
“To you this murder investigation may have been a game, Sherlock”, I thus replied. “But to me this wasn’t just some kind of exercise!”
Sherlock didn’t let himself get worked up by my words, after all we used to have more hot-tempered contentions already during breakfast. “But it was”, he smiled. “An exercise for your brain, Trotson. And one you’ve excellently mastered, I want to add. Not as efficient as possible but, given how circuitous your mind at times works, it nevertheless was a remarkable accomplishment.”
“Only you manage to make a compliment sound like an insult, Sherlock”, I sighed. Then I added to winkle out of him how his own approach at this case would have been: “We’ve talked to Silver Blaze this morning and he told us you had consulted him about a possible motive? So I take you’ve solved this case from out of our living room. And, of course, very much quicker and better than Lestride, Miss Star and me, haven’t you?”
To my not inconsiderable surprise, Sherlock slowly shook his head.
“No, my dear friend, this time I have to admit my defeat. I indeed was ahead of you, but I’ve made a curcial mistake, and I fear that costed me the victory now. If I had taken the observation of Adder Stone in my own hooves instead of delegating it to Inspector Lestride, he could still be alive and the culrpit would've been arrested much earlier. But who could expect Lestride to be ill all week? However, I’m gentlecolt and sportstallion enough to accept it without complaint… If you agree to share with me the last part of the story I couldn’t get to know, that is.”
My friend took a seat in his usual armchair and looked at me invitingly. I went over to the mantelpiece to fetch our pipes and tobacco.
“And what would that be?”, I wanted to know.
“What happened when you confronted the culprit? I was lucky enough to observe the outcome, nevertheless, it’s what happened before that would interest me.”
“Alright”, I said and took a seat while Sherlock turned back his own armchair to its usual position. “Let me shed some light onto the latest and -hopefully- last incidents in the case of the Revenge of the Sphinx.”
-<0>-
In the end, our way naturally led us back to the Coltyptian Department. Under the pretext of being journalists wanting to consult him for his opinion on the latest ‘mummy-murder’, Inspector Lestride easily managed to get in contact with Dusty Trail. With good reason he withheld his position as Inspector, though.
Dusty Trail appeared as a hoofsome, slate-grey, young unicorn stallion with all the enthusiasm of youth. He really seemed to enjoy the interview with us – we were his audience.
“So you’ve read my articles in the Times. What do you think of them?”
Inspector Lestride and Miss Star visibly struggled to keep calm. Knowing why we really were here, it wasn’t easy to control my temper either, but I managed to bring forth a half-hearted “They are interesting.”
“Oh, thank you!” Dusty Trail exclaimed. “I’m glad they receive so much approval. Under the pledge of secrecy: I’m not a real journalist, you know?”
“You don’t say…”, Miss Star grinded. It very much spoke for Mister Trails ego that he somehow misinterpreted this barbed remark for disbelief.
“Unbelievable, I know, but it’s true. I’ve studied archaeology, Coltyptology as a matter of fact.” He pointed towards a framed university degree on the wall. “And that’s most likely what distinguishes my articles from the ones of the other journalists: They convince through the power of truth!”
“And what is the truth, Mister Trail?”
“The truth is, Miss”, he replied to Miss Star’s question enthusiastically. “That the old Coltyptians had discovered the secret of eternal life! What we call magical science isn’t but a foal’s play compared to the knowledge of the Coltyptians. Just compare the Royal Palace and the great temples of Abydos-Olim; of course there can’t really be any comparison in the first place!”
Trail paced over to the big desk in this room laden with old books and antiques. On the tabletop, several occult items, mixed with a pool of jars and flasks and several small, mummified objects and canopic jars outclassed even the chamber of horrors in Silver Blaze’s display. The scientist fetched one of the preserved specimen from the desk and presented that macabre burial object to us.
“This is the mummified body of a cat”, he exclaimed. “It’s a matter of fact that the old Coltyptians were able to bring the dead back to life. The task to which I dedicated my life is to rediscover these secrets. We have to find the key to the old secrets, the key that will bring these souls from the past back to life!”
The would-be journalist fetched a bundle papyrus papers with strange hieroglyphs from and placed them on the desk, then his magic unearthed a small, inscribed chest from a drawer of his desk, golden with an eye-symbol on the lid. He opened the chest and placed the Colytptian necklace from inside around his neck. The golden pendant showed a stylized pony’s face with ruby eyes.
Next to me I heard Miss Star inhale sharply, she seemed to have noticed something. Inspector Lestride looked at her, but said nothing. Mister Trail, who apparently hadn’t noticed anything strange, started to crumble tannic leafs into a jar and blended them with green and yellow liquids which he heated under constant occult mumbling. He seemed to be uncertain, though, how he was supposed to drench this reviving brew to the ancient cat mummy. Despite our tension, we were a patient audience but we futilely waited for the cat to mew. However, this failure didn’t really discourage the passionate searcher Trail:
“Well, let’s call it a quit for now, I will find the correct composition yet. I’m on the right track, I know it. It’s only a matter of time. After all, this secret has been buried for thousands of years. I’d have to expect that it will still take me a lot of time to unearth it. But I know this is my mission, I’m the chosen one!”
“Mister Trail”, Lestride now piped up before Dusty Trail could gush any more about his passion. “I believe this is enough.” He turned to Midnight Star: “Miss Star, your opinion?”
“I’m no expert similar to Doctor Stone”, she said, pointing towards the chest. “But, Inspector, if you’d look here, next to this golden eye, we can see the same symbols on the lid of the chest as on the sarcophagus. No doubt, chest and necklace belong to Katebet’s treasure.”
“Inspector?”, Dusty trail remarked, looking up from the papers. The realization made his facial features slip.
“Inspector Lestride, Palace Court, Department for Murder, to be precise”, Lestride confirmed with a lopsided sneer. “Mister Dusty Trail, you are under arrest for suspected art theft and threefold murder of Professor Apocrypha, Mister Scriptoria and Doctor Adder Stone!”
“No!” Mister Trail screamed with a snapping voice. “You can’t arrest me! I didn’t steal the necklace! SHE bestowed it to me!” His eyes almost literally sprayed sparks while he shouted at us. It became clear he wasn’t conscious of any guilt. “I’m Queen Katebet’s chosen one, she WANTED me to have her magical necklace, to uncover the secret of immortality!”
“And what about the three stallions you’ve murdered?”, Miss Star shot back before the Inspector or I myself could stop her.
“Murdered?” Trail laughed at her. “Murdered? They were but insolent fools who were a bar for my queen’s divine plans! They had to be eradicated! It was nothing but a minor sacrifice for the incredible power I’ve been granted! I will be a god among mortals!”
At this moment, two constables the Inspector had brought along charged into the room, alarmed by Trail’s outburst. He was wrestled down and arrested on the spot, although I should add: Not without a fierce fightback. But whatever power he thought to gain from Katebet’s necklace, it didn’t help him against two guards and Inspector Lestride…
-<0>-
“After all”, Sherlock stated after I had ended my report. “The murderer did have at least one thing in common with the mummy: They were the only ones present at every murder – except the victims, of course.”
“Certainly, Sherlock, but with that you’re just stating what is openly visible”, I replied. “But now that you know my part of the story, I would like to hear how you solved this riddle.”
“To perceive the very same thing, namely what is openly visible, is just the most important, Trotson. Alright, I will tell you how I approached this case: From the start we had two circumstances that yet simplified the case essentially.”
“And they would be…?”
“First, we don’t find in the modus operandi any indications that more than one culprit was involved. And second, given the first two crime scenes themselves we are able to narrow down the number of suspects, don’t you think?”
I nodded. “Opportunity and motive. The murderer had to be a pony that was both at the excavation site and on the ship.”
“Precisely. As consequence I next requested a list of the passengers that had boarded the Celestial Star in Coltypt. From this list I took that among Adder Stone and Scriptoria, Dusty Trail also had been a passenger on this passage, the very stallion responsible for all that annoying gossip about the mummy, and the one who had reported about the murders. Well that made him suspicious, but naturally, it didn’t make him the murderer yet. But at this point and lacking any further information, I had a certain theory: Did you know Her Majesty’s secret service is on the track of a smuggler ring that on a large scale sells Coltypt’s cultural heritage on the black market?”
“No, of course not!” I exclaimed. “While the secret service apparently includes you in their investigation, they certainly don’t include me… So they really suspected Doctor Stone?”
“Him and Professor Apocrypha, yes. Time will show if Equestria has lost two great archaeologists or just two savvy traffickers… Where the one doesn’t necessarily exclude the other, of course… However, it won’t surprise you that I at first assumed a smuggling-related motive, an opinion, by the way, which was shared by our friend Silver Blaze. That’s why I wanted Palace Court to have a close eye on Doctor Stone.
And while his death (a third murder in exact the same manner) made clear that Dusty Trail had to be the culprit, I still was in the dark about the true motive. Smuggling or maybe rather a personal one? I went to the Royal University earlier to get things straight. But you’ve beaten me, my friend; when I arrived Trail was already being arrested.”
Sherlock casted down his eyes and turned his attention towards his pipe that had gone out meanwhile.
“As for his motive”, he eventually continued, still half in his own thoughts. “Did he really think to fulfil the will of Queen Katebet? That’s interesting. Was he really insane? Maybe Silver Blaze was right and the treasure is cursed after all: To drive a weak mind mad on sight, and to force them to slay all other grave desecrators. Or maybe it was the perspective of all the riches and all the fame he now would never get that drove Dusty Trail to murder, more knowledgeable ponies than us two will have to determine that, now.”
“But either way”, I added because I had the feeling that I had to contribute something to his trail of thoughts. “I think it is safe to assume that Dusty Trail has never overcome that his theories have always been derided and that in the end they had chosen Scriptoria over him. I believe the base of a motive is established therewith, don’t you agree, Sherlock?”
“I do, my friend, entirely even.” Amusement was playing in my friend’s eyes as he raised his head. “You’ve completely seen through this case. As I told you: You really didn’t need my assistance, did you?”
I withstood the urge to object and took the compliment as it came. It had been a day full of intellectual effort for me and I was glad I could shelve the case for now; so I replied what Sherlock wanted to hear from me:
“Agreed, Sherlock”, I sighed. Admittedly, the case had been solved quite simple, after all…
-<0>-