The Twelfth Night Murder by Anne Rutherford

millstone. The master would be deeper inside the workings of the place, supervising the grinding and bagging, and putting together the larger orders for transport to great houses, and smaller towns in the countryside. He would have less time than his wife, and possibly insufficient business experience to attend to the more delicate matters of dealing with the public.
    Suzanne approached the proprietor’s wife, who greeted her with a wide, sunny smile and said, “Good day to ye, mistress!”
    “Good day to you as well.”
    “How much flour can I get for ye?” She absently swiped and slapped her clothing, as if suddenly aware she was covered in white powder. Everyone and everything here had a thick or thin dusting of it, and her apron was covered with dry flour as well as damp smears.
    “I’m afraid I haven’t come for flour today.” Nor any day, for Sheila did all the cooking and procuring. It had been years since Suzanne had not had a cook, and even before that she’d also had no kitchen and bought most of her food prepared by street vendors. “I come to ask about a murder that happened near here three days ago.”
    “Which murder? There’s been three nearby of late.” She spoke with confidence, as if she knew everything about all of them and only needed clarification so she could sort them out.
    “A boy in a blue dress.”
    The woman nodded in a
say no more
fashion. “Oh yes. That one. Everyone’s talking about the boy who drowned.”
    Suzanne’s heart fell. Plainly this woman didn’t have the facts, and might tell her anything to appear in the know. But she pressed onward, in hopes of gleaning a tidbit that might shed light. “What do you know about him?”
    “Oh yes, everything, I vow. We get the gossip in here, and so there’s nothing I can’t tell you about what happened. They found him just below the bridge, don’t you know. Caught up in the flotsams at the bank, he was. Floating facedown, they say. Wearing a dress prettier than mine.” She gestured to the flour-permeated linen work dress she wore, and her smile widened at her own jest.
    “He drowned, you say?”
    “He certainly did. They say he drowned when he fell over the side up thataway.” She now gestured toward the upstream side of the bridge. “He was pushed, they tell me. Right over the side, then
kerplunk
, straight into the water. Died instantly, they say.”
    “I thought you said he drowned.”
    “Right. He drowned instantly.”
    Even had she not seen the stab wounds on the victim, Suzanne would not have thought it likely he’d simply been pushed over the side like that, and nobody drowns “instantly.” The few spots where throwing him over might have been possible had a wall high enough to make it difficult to shove an unconscious body into the river, and never mind tossing a kicking, screaming boy over it. “Who told you this?”
    “Everybody knows it. ’Tis all over.”
    Suzanne wished she could eradicate all information from the earth that was “common knowledge.” She replied, “So it was some patrons who came in here and told you this?”
    The woman nodded.
    “Do you know of anyone who saw it happen?”
    She thought that over for a moment, then shook her head. “No. Like I said, everyone knows what happened. I figure the constable has got the culprit all locked up by now.”
    It was easy for the public at large to assume things were being taken care of, and that everything they heard was truth, for their lives were narrow enough that most things in the world could be categorized as someone else’s job. Only those whose job it was to collect details and make sense of them cared whether what they heard was true and plausible. She said, “I’m afraid he doesn’t. I’ve been charged with collecting information about what happened. I wonder, is there anything you could tell me firsthand? Where were you that night? Could you have been here after midnight three days ago?”
    The woman shook her head. “Afraid