Case One, Chapter Five: The Gallery
Daring’s first impression of the August Gallery of Art was that it looked more like a small fortress or a large mausoleum, or at least an imitation of one, than a museum. The three-story building was made of a reddish-brown slate, with carvings of faces decorating the rooftop, glaring down at the visitors beneath. A set of glass doors bordered by a stone column on either side provided an entrance.
She and Phillip pushed through the glass doors and entered the lobby. The interior was almost entirely colored white: white tile floors, white stone columns, granite floor-to-ceiling water feature that made the brightly colored stones at the bottom stand out like a mustard stain on a dress shirt, and white ceiling. Some simple, decorative portraits from various time periods and styles were placed along the walls, introducing visitors to the gallery. A small line was forming in front of the receptionist’s desk.
“Here’s the plan,” Phillip said to Daring in an undertone as they slipped into line. “We need to get into the offices where the vics worked and find more information about them.”
“Right,” Daring nodded. “How about you let me take the lead in getting us in there?” She smirked and nudged him. “I think I’m a bit more qualified for the job.”
"You sure?" Phillip asked, frowning slightly.
"Don't worry," Daring replied. "It'll be like a Hayana Pone adventure, getting into some temple or mercenary headquarters."
"Never liked those stories," Phillip muttered.
They reached the receptionist, a young mare with a strawberry red-blonde mane who graced them with a wide smile.
“Welcome to the August Gallery of Art! Two adults?” she asked.
“Yes, please,” Daring said with a friendly smile of her own. She glanced over at Phillip while the receptionist prepared two white bracelets and drew her tail over his jaw, causing him to flinch in surprise.
“Thank you for paying for this, honey,” she cooed. “I so love art. This is the best birthday present ever!”
Phillip had just enough time to give her a venomous glare before the receptionist looked up. “That will be thirty bits, please,” she said.
Phillip handed over the requested price and the receptionist placed the bracelets on their right wrists. “Enjoy the gallery!” she said, waving them off as they walked past through another set of doors into the gallery proper.
“Would it kill you to smile?” Daring asked Phillip as they walked down a hallway lined with portraits. “If you don’t play along, ponies are going to get suspicious.”
Phillip glared at her. “Why should I need to play along with anything?”
Daring rolled her eyes. “You have much to learn.”
They pushed through another set of doors and entered a grand room. A massive skylight set in the ceiling provided illumination, which fell on a circle of statues in the center of the room. Faust, the first Princess of Equestria, and her two daughters Celestia and Luna were replicated here in seven-foot tall marble, every detail of their forms faithfully displayed. They smiled benevolently upon the visitors as they perused the exhibits. Ponies constantly flowed in and out of the room, examining and commenting upon the sculptures. The clicking of hoofsteps mixed with the constant low buzz of quiet conversation. A small tour group walked past.
“And here is the centerpiece of the gallery: the Three Princesses,” the guide announced through a plastic smile. “Carved in celebration of Celestia and Luna’s ascension to the throne of Equestria and becoming alicorns in 1313 AE, six hundred and thirty six years ago…”
Daring forced herself to tune her out. “C’mon, sweetie,” she purred, looping her foreleg through Phillip’s. “Let’s go looking for ways in.”
He scowled at her but said nothing as she guided him out of the room and into a hallway, the walls of which were lined with pre-historical artwork—crude portraits of berry dye on early parchment and papyrus.
"Look at that," Daring said, admiring a huge painting on an ancient sheet of papyrus, the edges eaten away by time and rot. The image depicted several ponies in the act of gathering a harvest of wheat, cutting and chafing the golden rods and baking them into bread which they placed at a massive feast. "You think the ponies who painted this knew that hundreds of years later, ponies like us would be looking at it, learning about who they were and what they were like?"
"Stay focused," Phillip replied curtly.
Daring scowled at him. "You just have no appreciation for history."
As they rounded a corner, examining the paintings on the wall and the little informational plaques, Daring spotted a door marked “Employees Only.” A bored-looking security guard, a pale cream-colored unicorn with a dusty blonde mane and a five o’clock shadow across his jaw, stood sentinel in front of the door. Her eyes panned over to the security crystal opposite him, set up high on the wall. The telescope-like tube slowly panned back and forth across the hallway; the pupilless icy blue eye swept over her, transmitting her image to a central security center. She tried not to shiver as the smile wavered on her face; a quick mental calculation told her that it took about ten seconds for a single pan of the crystal. The guard barely blinked at them as they passed. She studied the door handle and found that it was protected by only a very simple lock.
Abruptly, she slipped and stumbled into the security guard, knocking them both off-balance. “Oh, sorry!” she giggled, adding a slight slur to her voice. She climbed up the unicorn’s body to get back to her hooves.
The guard shoved her off him and she stumbled into Phillip, still giggling and swaying on her hooves. “Sorry about her,” Phillip said, glaring at Daring. “She’s an idiot.” He quickly guided her out of the exhibit while the guard was distracted with smoothing out his shirt. Daring stuck her tongue out at Phil as she recovered her footing.
The two of them passed the hours making a careful sweep of the gallery, journeying through the history of art from the Three Tribes era, to the formation of Equestria, the reign of Faust, and the ascension of Celestia and Luna all the way up to modern era, all to keep up the illusion of simply being visitors enjoying the exhibits. During their visit, they spotted several more “Employees Only” doors, each of them monitored by a security crystal, a guard, or both.
“You have any idea on how to get inside the offices?” Phillip asked as they descended back to the ground floor.
“A dozen. Each of them as half-baked as the last.” The tantalizing scent of cooked hay doused in ketchup caught Daring’s nose and she realized that they had wandered by the cafe, and a glance at the clock overhead told her that it was already almost lunchtime. “Say, speaking of baked, I’m hungry.”
“Daring…” Phillip said in a tone that made it very clear that his patience was running thin.
“Aw, c’mon, sweetie,” Daring cooed, leaning against him and fluttering her eyelashes. “It’s my birthday. And besides, you can’t think on an empty stomach.”
Phillip closed his eyes and took in a deep breath. “Is everything I do with you going to be like this?”
“Yup,” Daring said with a massive grin.
And so, a few minutes later, the two of them were feasting on their lunch: two paper cups of black coffee, a pair of greasy hayburgers and a couple of carrot dogs. Daring was spreading out a collection of condiments on her burger: ketchup, mustard, relish, onions, and garlic.
“How can you eat all that?” Phillip asked as she licked her lips.
“Where I grew up, you couldn’t afford to be picky about food,” Daring stated.
“Or about dental hygiene,” Phillip dryly commented, watching as she took a bite of her overflowing burger. “I can already smell your breath from here.”
Daring chewed her burger, turning a thought over in her mind.
Phillip took a sip of his coffee and grimaced. “You getting any ideas?” he asked, biting down on his carrot dog.
“I think I’ve got a plan,” Daring said, lifting up the top bun on her burger. “That first door we passed,” Daring said. “You think that guard is still there?”
“None of the guards have changed shifts yet,” Phillip stated.
“Cool,” Daring grinned. She scooped up some of the garlic and onions in her wing. “Let’s go somewhere where we won’t be seen for a bit.”
Quickly finishing their meal and tossing the trash into a trash can, the pair pushed through another set of doors and entered a small enclosed garden populated with topiary bushes, bushes of flowers spanning every color of the rainbow, and elaborately carved fountains. Daring sat down on a stone bench and spread out her wing, examining the onion rings and garlic cloves.
“I need some paper,” she said, holding out her hoof. Phillip took a hoof-sized notebook out of a vest pocket, tore off the top sheet and handed it to her. Daring cut up the garlic and the onion with a pocketknife she pulled out of her front pocket and dropped the pieces into the paper, then pulled against her mane. A quick cut with the knife gave her a small hoofful of her mane, which she dropped into the paper as well. She then bunched the paper up, then tugged a hair tie out of another pocket and tied the bundle up with it. Finally, she plucked a match out of a matchbook in an inner pocket and slipped it into the hair tie to act like a fuse.
“One stink bomb, ready to go,” Daring smirked, tucking her makeshift weapon into an inner pocket.
“You sure about this plan?” Phillip asked as she stood back up.
“No,” Daring admitted. “But that’s where the fun comes from.”
They walked back into the gallery, passing through the main room. The three Princesses smiled down upon them as they walked across and up the hallway with the pre-historical artwork. There were only a few ponies in this section, perusing the proto-artwork. The same guard was standing in front of the “Employees Only” door, shuffling his hooves and yawning as he scratched his jaw. Daring watched as the surveillance crystal panned towards them, then back away.
Taking out her lighter, she lit the match on her stink bomb, then slowly rolled it out into the hallway, next to the guard. The flame danced and shimmered, then the paper itself began to smolder, producing a thin column of blue smoke that spiraled up into the air like a ghost. Within seconds, an indescribable, overwhelming odor filled the hallway: the burning hair, onions, and garlic mixed to produce a dreadful stench that clung to every available surface.
The security guard was unfortunate enough to be right next to the source of the stench. He coughed and gagged as he looked around for the source of the odor. Other ponies cleared out of the hallway, retreating from the stink bomb like it was an enemy attack. The security guard spotted the stink bomb and quickly snatched it up with his magic, extinguishing the flames, but the stench remained, clinging to the walls and to the pony’s coat and shirt. He quickly staggered out of the room, retching violently.
Daring watched the crystal until it swept away from them, then she and Phillip sprinted up to the door. Grasping the handle, she took the keys that she’d pickpocketed from the security guard earlier and inserted one into the lock. Her luck held: the key was the correct one. Opening the door, she ushered Phillip inside, then entered herself, closing the door behind them. All this was accomplished before the surveillance crystal had a chance to see them.
They found themselves in a small carpeted hallway leading to a large workspace. There was a small cluster of cubicles, each with a name tag attached to them, and a number of large easels and worktables with scattered equipment like paintbrushes, bone folders, spatulas, tweezers, and lamps. Nopony was in sight. All was quiet.
Hearing hoofsteps, Daring and Phillip pressed themselves against a wall. A trio of ponies walked past, all of them too engrossed in their own conversation to notice any intruders. “Feels awful empty without those five around,” a young orange unicorn mare was saying to her companions as they walked past.
“Yeah,” one of her friends, a chubby blue earth pony, agreed. “Shifting Tone’s been gone for two days now. I sure hope she’s alright.”
“Me too,” the third member of the group, a tall green unicorn with a salt and pepper beard, sighed. “With them gone, all the fun went out of the work here.”
Daring and Phillip waited until the group had passed out of sight, then proceeded forwards. Phillip circled around the cluster of cubicles, identifying Scribbled Note’s cubicle. The little workspace was littered with papers and notes scattered everywhere, tacked up on the walls and stacked on the table. Each of them was covered in the same neat, looping hoofwriting. A single photograph of Note dressed in bright blue robe and mortarboard, smiling from ear to ear and embracing her father, was a harsh reminder that only days ago, a living pony with a life and dreams of her own had been here.
“So what exactly are you looking for?” Daring asked quietly, keeping watch as Phillip began to quickly rifle through the desk.
“The vics were all killed for a reason,” Phillip replied. “There may be a clue here.” He opened up a bottom drawer, then frowned. “Somepony’s been through this one.”
Daring glanced over. There was a stack of manila folders inside the drawer, and they and their contents had been scattered around haphazardly within the drawer, folders yawning open as if they had been opened and then stuffed back inside with the notes inside scattered around everywhere.
Phillip reached inside and plucked out a small clump of curly mane hairs. They were a light aqua blue color. He sniffed the hairs, then tucked them into his vest and continued his search.
“None of the other drawers have been ransacked,” Phillip muttered. He took out one unlabelled folder and opened it to find that it was empty. “Whatever’s in here went walkabout. Whoever went through that drawer knew what they were looking for and where it would be.”
The duo continued their search, examining Aesthetic Tone’s, Gentle Brush’s and Pristine Touch’s cubicles. Phillip discovered that each of their desks had been searched, and files had been removed from their drawers.
“They were all involved in something,” Phillip concluded, speaking more to himself than to Daring. “And one of their coworkers hasn’t been to work since they died.”
“She could be sick or something,” Daring offered.
Phillip walked over to the cubicle marked “Shifting Tone” and paused at the entrance. Daring looked over his shoulder. There was a photograph tacked up on the cubicle wall, depicting a pale cyan unicorn mare with a curly blue mane, smiling and hugging a dark brown unicorn stallion with a white mane. Phillip took the hairs that he’d found in Scribbled Note’s desk out of his pocket and held them up. They were a match to the mare in the photograph.
“And she might not be,” Phillip said, entering the cubicle. The small workspace was decorated in color photographs of paintings of flowers and nature scenes, and the desk was a study in organized chaos, with books, folders, and notebooks scattered about everywhere. Daring spotted one thick tome near the top of the stacks, the pages well-worn from being read so often. The book’s title was, Magical Plants: Care, Environments, and Usage.
Phillip began to search through her drawers, and to the surprise of neither, there was an empty folder in her lower drawers. “So either she’s the next target…” Phillip said.
“Or she’s the killer,” Daring said, eyeing the botany tome. Her eyes suddenly spotted a flash of color on the floor. “What’s that?” she asked, crouching down. She plucked out a photograph that had fallen on the ground and slid partly underneath the table. The picture depicted a necklace lined with golden coins, each of which had a hole in the center and was embossed with arcane symbols. An intricately carved jade fox was attached to the necklace.
“Good onya,” Phillip praised her, taking the photograph. “This might be what this is all about.”
“We’d better get out of here before somepony finds us,” Daring said, looking up.
“Too right,” Phillip nodded. The two retreated back to the door that they’d entered through. Daring took a small hoof mirror out of one pocket and inserted it under the door, using it to scan the hallway outside. Even through the door, they could both smell the remnants of the stink bomb.
“All clear,” she reported. Phillip pushed the door open a crack and peeked through the gap, watching the surveillance crystal. Once it had turned its gaze aside, he pushed the door open and they both darted out through the door and around the corner.
Once they were safely out of sight, Phillip paused to take a breath. “Bonzer job, Daring,” he nodded. “Your blood’s worth bottling.”
Daring had to pause while she tried to translate his idiom. “Thanks,” she said with a grin. “You’re not so bad yourself.”
“Detective Finder,” a voice suddenly interrupted them. Both of them looked up to find themselves facing a tall, rotund unicorn stallion. This pony had a light blue coat and silvery hair like gossamer. His pale bluish-gray eyes twinkled behind his gold-rimmed glasses. He wore a pressed black suit and tie, immaculately clean. His cutie mark was a silver statue of a pony rearing up on its hind legs. He was accompanied by two burly nondescript earth ponies that were wearing dark suits and sunglasses. They stood on either side of the stallion, menace oozing from their stony expressions.
Phillip and Daring both had to take a moment to recover from the shock of suddenly facing this pony. “Charlie Silvertongue,” Phillip greeted him coldly.
Charlie August Silvertongue studied Phillip carefully, ignoring Daring. “May I ask what you are doing here?”
“I like art,” Phillip replied curtly.
“Really?” Silvertongue asked, raising his eyebrows. “I did not take you for the type to appreciate art.”
“Maybe you don’t know him that well,” Daring cut in. “And besides, since we paid to be here, maybe you could be a little more grateful.”
Silvertongue’s eyes panned over to study her. “Miss Do,” he nodded politely. "Allow me to welcome you back to the free world, and thank you for your patronage. Could I tempt you with a private tour of the gallery?"
His voice felt like a cheese grater against her ears. Daring gritted her teeth, fighting to keep her wings from instinctively spreading open. Silvertongue’s bodyguards both stepped forward, sensing that their master was in danger.
Phillip put a hoof on Daring’s shoulder, staying her. “Do the names Scribbled Note, Aesthetic Tone, Gentle Brush and Pristine Touch mean anything to you?” he asked.
"Yes," Silvertongue nodded quietly. “They were all employees of mine; good workers, with good families. They worked in restoration. I was deeply saddened to hear of their deaths.”
“I’m sure you were,” Phillip growled.
“Your wallet probably wasn’t, though,” Daring added. Phillip squeezed her shoulder in warning.
“And if you and your new partner are on the case, I am certain that the killer will be caught and brought to justice,” Silvertongue said mildly, choosing to study a portrait of Starswirl the Bearded on the wall.
“Case won’t solve itself,” Phillip grunted, starting to guide Daring around the ensemble.
“Before you go, I want to tell you both something,” Silvertongue called, not looking away from the painting. “In this city, you either bend or you break. Not knowing when to yield is the most dangerous thing here.” He turned and faced him, his polite smile never wavering. “That’s a word of advice you should both take to heart, Mr. Finder and Ms. Do.”
Phillip and Daring both glared at Silvertongue, then glanced at his two bodyguards. The hulking behemoths leered at them, tilting their heads to the side in unison to loosen their neck muscles with a sickening series of cracks and pops.
“Run along now, Mr. Finder,” Silvertongue said, turning back to the painting. “We both have important work to do.” He sniffed the air. “And I believe that both of you need a bath. Have you been rolling in garbage?”
Their hearts thudding heavily in their ears, Phillip and Daring passed in between the two goons. As they walked down the hallway, Daring turned around and waved at Silvertongue with a false, cheery smile. “See you around, Chuck!” she called in a parting shot.
Silvertongue’s calm expression turned into a mask of fury for a moment, but Daring had only a moment to enjoy it before Phillip grabbed her foreleg and dragged her along behind him. They hustled out of the lobby and out the front door. The taste of the sun-kissed fresh air as they exited was as sweet as honey on their tongues, and they both breathed it in deeply, trying to settle their tremulous pulses.
Phillip gave Daring a glare as they walked back down the steps. “We paid?”
“Well, okay, you paid,” Daring admitted. “Now, c’mon. We got a lead to chase after.”
There was a phone booth at the bottom of the stairs. Phillip entered the booth and opened up the attached phone book, running his hoof down the names. “Shifting Tone,” he reported. “Nineteen Painter’s Way—Daring, wait!”
His cry of protest went unheeded as Daring seized him underneath his forelegs and flapped up into the air. Ponies on the sidewalk stopped and stared as she carried her protesting cargo over the city’s rooftops, towards the farmlands of the north.
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Heh, love the AN at the end.
Also, I'm just wondering, Charles August Silvertongue? Sounds like a certain Sherlock Holmes character I know... That name alone makes me worry...
I truly wonder what the receptionist has been taking, seems to be strong and working pretty well too.
Do you have any personal experience on that stink-bomb mentioned, seems pretty detailed to be "just a coincidence"
8236941
You wish. None of the mischiefs of my youth involved a stinkbomb. I actually had to look up instructions on how to make a stinkbomb online. I did want it to be actually somewhat realistic!
They hired her for her bubbly personality and because she looks good.
8236592
Charlie was a minor antagonist from the original series. I always wanted to do more with him but never could weave it well. I promoted him to a primary antagonist for the reboot. (For a while anyway. You'll meet the real primary antagonist in a few chapters...)
8236952
Don't have to guess who that might be...
8236952
"She looks good"
Of course, how dumb of me. Of course she'll be there in that case...
8236943
Okay, I admit there were better ways of putting that. For that comment, 8173615 I apologize.
I do have one major concern over this chapter: it seems to me that the mechanism and period of the security crystals’ surveillance could be made much more explicit for the reader. Are the images from the crystal going to a central location? And would not the actions described result in some manner of prompt response from one watching the crystal? Is Silvertongue that response? It feels to me that this could have been clearer from character dialogue, either before or during the office raid.
Other than this concern, the chapter is very well-written and soundly constructed. Daring and Finder’s relationship as curmudgeon-and-apprentice is fun to read, particularly when Finder lapses into his own dialect. It can be tricky to do character voices in dialect, but I think you pull it off without being obtrusive.
A few granular observations:
-I like this punny banter, but being an human being, I have no personal experience with what cooked hay smells like per se. I have used dishes of cooked hay in my own work, but always with some further description to help the naïve reader gain a better mental impression of just what I intend: for example, “the dense, tantalizing scent of hay fries in chili sauce”.
-I think that this slang usage breaks the immersion of the reader, but that is perhaps personal taste talking.
8331884
I have this sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach that tells me that you're going to be a harsh critic. But the thoughts are appreciated: someone's got to catch my mistakes!
The surveillance crystals work by magically transmitting an image to a central location, where they can be viewed in real time or previous recordings can be viewed. A central system in the police precinct appears in a later chapter. However (I thought I'd made this clear), Daring and Phil weren't caught by the crystals.
You do have a point about the delayed response to the stink bomb, but...okay, I don't have an excuse for that. I guess they all just wanted to stay away. Sue me.
Charlie wasn't a response to that. He just "happened" to be in the museum at the time and bumped into them.
Your suggestions have been noted and taken. I appreciate the work you put into this, and am flattered that you think so highly of my work!
Fun!
8333396
Daring agrees. Phil begs to differ.
Uh oh...
I'm honestly not sure if such a bomb would work the way you described, especially if garlic and onion were fresh...
Curiouser and curiouser...