After we got to our inn, I went to sleep while some of the others went out to start the investigation. Their stories about what happened are pretty muddled (I am obviously the story-teller for the group), so other than something about Prihelm and a whore-house (don't ask), there was only one thing of major significance that they found: a bloody handprint in the alley where Michelle Aucoin was killed. The thing that was so interesting about this handprint was that even though the hand was obviously a child's, the print was found eight feet up the wall! Obviously, something fishy is going on. Unfortunately, they weren't able to tell if the handprint was Michelle's or not, and none of us can remember if she had enough blood on her hands for the print to have been made or not. The other question is this: why is there a single handprint in the first place? I'm not sure if this question has occurred to any of my compatriots, but I think it's probably worth keeping in mind.

Well, so skipping the rest of the evening's events (mostly because they're not worth recording), I'll pick up the thread of my story with what we've seen today. The first thing we decided to do was to go talk to the constable and to examine the body. The latter was being kept in a store room near the old barracks. I say was being kept because it mysteriously vanished overnight! In my experience, body's just don't do that! It's very freaky.

It wasn't hard to see how the body got out: the window (well out of reach of a normal child, and I could only reach it by standing on Prihelm's shoulders) was broken. Most of the glass was on the outside of the building, though a few shards were in the inside as well. The door to the room was still locked when we got there, which means that the window was the only likely place of exit, although we can't rule out the possibility that someone picked the lock, broke the window, absconded with the body, and locked the door again. The window was large enough that even Prihelm could have fit through.

The others spent much of the day in conversation with a few of the natives (Merf in particular apparently had an interminable number of questions): the only things of interest that they learned, as far as I can tell, is that all the victims have been young girls between the ages of 8 and 11. All of them were small for their ages; about a dozen have died over the last year; the bodies have missing parts. Four more vanished in the six months prior to that; the villagers thought at the time that these kids were eaten by swamp creatures, but now they're not as sure. Also, about eight months ago, there was a plague that mowed through Port d'Elhour, killing roughly twenty children during the month that it was here. Curiously, all these children, as far as we can tell, were girls. It seems evident to me that someone has it in for the young female population of this city!! I hope none of us are young enough...

While the rest were spending time in these enjoyable pursuits, I was attempting to both ingratiate myself with some of the locals and see if I could pick up any information from perspectives of the average people. Alas, these people are even more unfriendly than the people of Marais d'Tarascon! Even though the officials know that we didn't commit the murder last night, and it's scarcely creditable that we had anything to do with any of the earlier murders, the people of Port d'Elhour seem to blame us for their tragedy. I'm not used to being a scapegoat for someone else's problems, and I don't like the way these people are looking at me: they seem to be just waiting for an excuse to tar and feather the lot of us, and I don't look forward to having to deal with a mob or a riot. Suffice it to say that I learned nothing constructive from talking to the locals...

Well, so after a quick lunch, I talked Merf around to realizing that it would probably be more constructive to try to first solve the mystery of what happened to Michelle's body than to talk to every random citizen we found, collecting more and more information but taking hours and hours to dig up the few useful tidbits we could. The group went back to the barracks, and we shortly thereafter hit paydirt! Not of the kind I like to hit, certainly, but we got some useful leads out of it nevertheless.

Not long after we'd started to look around (finding nothing), we heard a series of piercing screams! We dropped everything and ran as fast as we could in the direction the screams had come from, but we got there about thirty seconds after the third scream had cut off in the middle. As we arrived, our worst fears were confirmed: we'd been too late to stop another murder, and there was no sign of the murderer. The body (one Marie) was in an alley; we were at the only entrance, and there were no entrances to the sewers in the immediate vicinity. Though I went up the wall to look around, I didn't see anyone, but this isn't entirely surprising, since the entrance to the alley wasn't really visible until we were right on top of it. In other words, the murderer had had a clear avenue of escape.

Forgive me if I don't describe the body in much detail; it was an absolutely horrible sight! Too much so for Haley and Prihelm, as the former went into hiding and the latter took off like a shot, bidding fair to be back in Marais d'Tarascon before nightfall. The poor girl had lost both her left arm and left leg to an incredibly clean cut and had a small knife stuck through her mouth. Searching through the alley, we found the following things: a spool of thread of some kind (very tough and hard to cut, and fading almost to invisibility from a certain angle), a bloody footprint (more on that in a minute), and a message written in blood on the wall of the alley. The message was rather high up, written in a very shaky hand (as if the person wasn't very good at writing; he or she certainly wasn't very good at spelling!), and read something along the lines of "you persue yer own deth."

The footprint was that of a right foot (or more accurately, that of a girl's shoe, which from the size belonged to a girl of age eight or nine years) and found near the entrance to the alley. Marie had no shoe on her right foot, but the shoe would have been too small for her. At first, I concluded that the shoe belonged to the murderer, but now I'm not so sure. First, we must again ask ourselves why there was a footprint, and why only one? And given that the killer had been doing a pretty brisk business in hacked off limbs, it's not hard to imagine him or her having access to the right shoe of a nine year old girl. While the message on the wall would suggest a younger child, judging by the attrocious spelling and the horrible handwriting, that might very well be a trick to throw us off. I must remember to point this possibility out to the rest of the party when I have a chance.

We first decided to investigate the thread. There's only one tailor in town, so we went to talk to him. After some brief flirting with Haley, he remembered making this thread for the local wizard, Julian Rooden. Apparently this thread is made of some magical material, will not burn, and once used to sew, will not cut or tear. Julian had it made about one year ago, in quantity about one hundred spools, and the tailor had it delivered to Julian's house out in the swamp by one of the local errand boys. Though he had been a common sight around town, the tailor doesn't remember seeing Julian for about six months;we'll have to question him at some point. Unfortunately, we don't have the time to talk to him this evening, since I have a plan for tonight.

It struck me that is's possible (perhaps not very likely, but at least possible) that someone or something will try to take Marie's body as well. So we're going to put it in a locked storage room which we will then observe all night long. Some of us (Leighla and probably a few others as well) will watch from hiding outside the storage room, and I will watch from hiding inside the next room over(I'd better have some company, too... Haley would be ideal for this, I think). My place of concealment ought to have some way for me to see inside the room where the body is being kept. My personal feeling is that nothing much will come of this (the killer already has at least some of the body parts), but I believe it is certainly worth at least trying. And while we're watching, I can take the time to look over the knife, as well.

This entire thing disturbs me a lot! We've been here for one day and already two young girls have died! And we're not much further along in solving this mystery than we were yesterday. We have the lead of the thread, true. And we know that the murderer must be literate and probably very strong or with possession of some magical means of severing limbs (while I'm no expert on this, I imagine making a clean cut all the way through a leg, bone and all, must be rather difficult), but other than that, I don't think we can conclude anything for certain. And there are so many questions still to answer. Why is the murderer doing this to begin with? Why sever limbs and take them? Why target only young girls? What does the plague have to do with all of this? Were the four girls who vanished in the latter parts of last year also victims of this killer? Why does the killer leave these prints behind for us, and are these prints those of the killer himself or just false leads? What happened to Michelle Aucoin's body? And most importantly: what kind of twisted sicko would do this to begin with? Sometimes being a hero just doesn't pay off!