Cheft
With that particular and characteristic rattle the coin that had been spinning on Kenneth’s desk spun to a halt and fell flat. He sighed, reached forward, picked it up and then set it spinning again with a flick of the fingers.
That one bit, along with the other sitting sadly in the tin to one side of the desk, was all that remained of the petty cash. All that remained of almost all the cash, in fact. Petty or otherwise.
Lean times for Canterlot’s local human.
“Do wish these came in smaller denominations…” he muttered, watching as the hefty coin spun its way across the scratched desktop. When he looked like it might be veering too close to an edge he gently corralled it back toward safer pastures.
He had been doing this for some considerable time now. Almost all of the morning, in fact. Debating with himself whether he could justify spending it on a croissant or not. His head said no, that that would be a wasteful expenditure, especially not knowing when fresh income might appear. His gut said yes, because croissant.
So far it was still all up in the air. His lungs were on the sidelines suggesting maybe they could try clipping bits off the coin and see how that went, but Kenneth had never put much weight in the council of his lungs and so this wasn’t really an idea in the running.
Didn’t have anything to clip with anyway.
Out of nowhere (as is their way) the phone then rang and with a speed and dexterity that most would have assumed Kenneth didn’t possess he snatched the coin up in one hand and the receiver up in the other.
“Hello, Horne Investigations - crimes solved and keys cut while you wait,” he said with the smooth ease of one who says this sort of thing into a phone a lot, regardless of whether there was anyone on the other end of the line. There was a pause, and Kenneth’s brow furrowed. “What? What? My God! That’s the most macabre thing I’ve ever heard in my life!” He cried, leaping to his feet.
Slam down went the phone.
“Damn wrong numbers,” he growled.
Still standing, Kenneth tossed the bit up and snatched it from the air before slipping it into his pocket, tucking his thumbs into the waistband of his trousers and then walking over to his office’s small, dingy window.
He looked out on a world of technicolour wonderment and loveliness, a world of bright blue skies and fluffy clouds and things flying or hovering in the air that, by his old standards, had no business flying or hovering in the air.
Much to his irritation, it made him feel better, as it always did. He had to look away, returning his attention to his office so he could get his grumpiness going again. He grabbed his mug and took a swig, grimacing and only then looking at what it was he’d just drunk.
It had been tea, once. Yesterday, perhaps, if he was being optimistic.
Fortunately for Kenneth he was pulled from further speculation on just how long the tea had been sitting around gaining age and experience by the phone, which rung again. He lunged, nearly tripping and slamming face-first into the desk but managing to save himself at the last minute and so instead only landing on top of it and semi-winding himself..
“Hello, Horne Investigations - crimes solved and invisible mending,” he said, trying his best not to wheeze down the phone.
A pause.
“Will I accept a reverse charge call? No I most certainly will not- the palace, you say? Which palace?”
Another pause.
“Oh, the palace. Um, of course. By all means.”
A brief (though expensive, for to a man running on fumes and cashflow you could count on one hand all things are expensive) phone call later and Kenneth was off and out the office, pausing only to pull on his coat and make sure he was wearing trousers.
Which today, for a change, he was.
-
Celestia, in a palace and behind a palatial desk, regarded Kenneth in unreadable silence. She had been doing this for a good few seconds since the guards had shown him in, and though it really had only been a good few seconds it felt like much longer. This was because having a big magical horse stare at you could make any amount of time feel longer.
“When you said you’d be here as quickly as possible I rather expected you sooner,” she said once she felt sufficient time had elapsed to emphasise her point.
“I was waylaid,” Kenneth said.
Celestia raised an eyebrow.
“Oh?”
The eyebrow could have shaken the confidence of many, but Kennth was not one of them.
“Yes,” he said.
He did not elaborate, because what had waylaid him had been breakfast. All at once he became acutely aware of the croissant crumbs on his shirt and surreptitiously brushed them off, not so surreptitiously that Celestia didn’t immediately spot him doing it.
It had not made sense to Kenneth to show up for a prospective client on an empty stomach. This both his brain and his gut had been able to agree on (his lungs had remained silent). And besides, he was going to be getting paid soon.
Probably. Maybe. Hopefully.
“What appears to be the problem?” He asked in an effort to get things moving.
Celestia stared at him a little longer to keep him stewing, then magically hovered a plate in from the sidelines. The plate was bare. It settled in front of her and Kenneth looked at it.
“That’s a lovely plate,” he said.
“I imagine you say that to all of the mares. This is the problem: when I left the room this plate had a slice of cake on it. When I returned to the room it did not. Do I have to explain this problem to you or can you see why it might be a problem?”
“Cake theft,” Kenneth said, gravely.
“Indeed,” Celestia said. Kenneth scratched his chin, squinting at the plate now, appraising it as a clue and a vital piece of evidence.
“So you called the keenest mind available,” he said, nodding to himself.
“I did. But they were busy.”
“But they were- you know, I should have seen that one coming, I set myself up,” Kenneth said, having managed to be about half a second behind her on delivering the punchline.
“The keenest mind would have seen it coming,” Celestia pointed out.
“Well the second keenest mind is a little slower on the uptake, but he still gets there.”
“Second keenest is a bit generous,” she said quietly but not anywhere near quietly enough that he couldn’t overhear. That had rather been the point. Putting his hands to his hips he frowned at her, the hard kind of frown. The ‘I don’t have to be here’ sort of frown.
“Would you like this crime solved or not?” He asked.
“Of course. Sorry.”
He eyed her a moment longer (this proclivity of theirs for trying to stare people down went both ways, it seemed) then, once happy she’d been eyed long enough, produced a notebook, flipped it open and dabbed his pen on his tongue. He had no idea why he did this or even if he was supposed to, but habits were habits.
“Could you describe the cake for me?” He asked.
“Well it had moist layers, a rich filling of buttercream and jam, a thick layer of icing and…”
She looked at him furiously taking notes, his tongue poking out the corner of his mouth.
“...it’s a slice of cake,” she concluded. Kenneth scribbled out whatever final thoughts he’d reached, clicked his pen and then tucked both it and his notebook back into his jacket.
“Hmm. So it would appear from your description. It’s not much to go on,” he said.
“I have a picture, if that would help.”
Over floated a photograph of a slice of cake. Or, rather, a gratuitous selfie Celestia had taken over herself with a foreleg wrapped around the plate on which the slice of cake sat. She looked ecstatic. The cake looked like cake, much like how she’d described it. Exactly how she’d described it, in fact. Kenneth looked the photo over for a moment before holding it up.
“Do you take pictures with all your slices of cake?” He asked.
“Not all of them, no,” Celestia said, in tones that made it clear that she would not be elaborating, now or at any point in the future.
Kenneth wasn’t sure if this made it a better or worse habit, or whether it changed nothing at all. Either way, he supposed that a photo was better than no photo. He tucked it into his pocket as his first clue.
“Alright, I’ll do it. Now, my fees are very reasonable and we can maybe discuss some kind of, ah, royal discount depending on how things go but I’m also going to have to talk about expenses for a case like this and-”
“I will pay you five bits now, and another five when you either return with the cake or the guilty party,” Celestia said, cutting him off and pushing an adorable coin pouch across the desk at him.
“Six now,” Kenneth said.
“Three now, three later,” Celestia said, removing two coins from the pouch. Kenneth’s eyes widened and he frantically waved his hands.
“No! Go back!”
“You’re not very good at haggling.”
“Five! Five is fine. I can work with five. Five is perfect. That’s my rate, in fact,” Kenneth quickly lied. This worked for Celestia.
The two coins clinked back into the pouch, which was then cinched shut again.
“That’s fortunate,” Celestia said.
-
Not long after this Kenneth strode handsomely from the palace and back out into the sunshine.
“I wanted a case, and for my crimes they gave me one,” he said to himself, his face set in a mask of seriousness, his eyes narrowed. He raised the teacup to his lips, started sipping, then blinked and looked down at what it was he was doing, namely sipping out of a teacup he had entirely failed to notice that he’d lifted from the palace.
“Oh bugger,” he said, looking around to see if any guards were about to pounce. None did so, after waiting a few moments in apprehension, Kenneth shrugged and finished sipping, smacking his lips in satisfaction once he’d finished. He then pocketed the teacup.
It was a nice teacup.
With that done he stood and considered what his next move might be. He reflected that he didn’t have an awful lot to go on, but while that might have discouraged lesser detectives he simply allowed himself to view it as a greater challenge - a greater challenge that would make his eventual cracking of the case all the sweeter.
That did still leave him somewhat lost as to what his first step should be. He thought back to his training, remembered he hadn’t had any formal training, and so thought back to what he usually drew on in times of doubt: gut instinct (his reliance on the judgement of his internal organs continuing unabated).
His gut told him that it wanted more pastries but, failing that, he should find the closest, seediest looking bar or other such den of iniquity, enter, and start poking around. Both of these seemed good ideas to Kenneth, but since was a professional he decided to put the latter first in order of priority.
Kenneth walked for five minutes, keeping an eye out for seedy looking places. Unfortunately most of the places he could see were positively family-friendly - some of the proprietors even waved at him! Not what he needed at all. It got so bad he considered simply skipping town with the five bits when he finally a more likely spot: tucked away in a corner, in a state of slight disrepair, and no-one waving at him.
Perfect. He headed over.
It would of course be highly unusual to find the suspect in the first place he visited, obviously, so he wasn’t banking on that. But, according to all the books he’d read and films he’d seen, it was very easy finding information and clues and such in seedy drinking establishments. And even if his suspect wasn’t there (and they wouldn’t be, he knew this, he wasn’t relying on this) then the place would no-doubt be packed to the gunwales with ne’er do wells and miscreants and the like which he could manfully lean on for information.
It was a no-brainer, really, so it suited him perfectly. In he went.
Inside it was much, much nicer than the outside. Immaculate, spotless, cozy and inviting, the place made him instantly feel more relaxed and at home. It was also more-or-less deserted, with only a pony in the corner, a pony mother and pony baby (whatever one of those might be called), and a pony behind the bar. And Kenneth.
No miscreants or ne’er do wells.
“Ne’er do oh well,” Kenneth said to himself, shrugging and heading to the bar, which he realised was actually more of a cafe counter because this was actually a cafe and not a seedy bar after all. It would have to do.
“Hi! How can I help you?” The pony behind the counter asked, her overwhelming friendliness another strike against the place being considered a properly disreputable dive. Still, Kenneth felt he should still play his part as best he could. Leaning on the counter (he had to kneel to do this) he cast a deliberate eye over the other patrons and only then looked to the counter-pony.
“I’m here on official business,” he said.
“I don’t believe you,” she said immediately and without missing a beat.
Kenneth frowned and pulled the teacup out of his pocket.
“Would someone not on official business have a teacup like this?”
He held it up so that its royal provenance was obvious. The pony looked the teacup over.
“I don’t know. Maybe,” she said. “I can certainly imagine circumstances where someone not on official business could end up with a teacup like that. If they’d stolen it without realising and then put into their pocket. Then again, giving out teacups as some sort of identifying token is the sort of thing Princess Celestia would do, especially if it was for a joke. Are you part of a joke?” She asked, tapping her thin in thought as she worked through the possibilities.
“I’ve often felt like I am,” Kenneth said, re-pocketing the teacup. The pony looked Kenneth over.
“I don’t know what to make of you,” she said.
“Well then, you’d best take me seriously just in case.”
“Okay. I will,” the pony said, then after a pause: “...for now.”
Kenneth gave her a nod of thanks and then pulled the photograph out of his jacket pocket.
“What do you know about this cake?” he asked, holding it up for the pony to see.
“Is that Princess Celestia?” She asked, pointing.
“We’re not talking about her, we’re talking about the cake,” Kenneth said. The pony’s pointing hoof moved ever-so-slightly.
“Looks like a nice cake,” she said after a moment.
“Is that all you have to say?”
“Yes? If you want to ask questions about cake you’re probably better off asking Merry.”
“Merry?”
He did not know anyone Merry.
The pony - continuing what she’d been doing - pointed some more, this time past Kenneth and over his shoulder, towards the corner.
“Merry Berry. The writer, editor and publisher of Cake Fancy magazine. He’s over there. He’s always over there…” she said, the last part somewhat darkly.
Kenneth looked. There was indeed a pony in the corner, though whether he was always there he couldn’t personally say.
He was too busy enjoying the rosy glow of his good luck to care much either way. Cake Fancy magazine? While on a case about cake? These kinds of coincidences could only mean he was on the right track and could only be the product of his keen, subconscious instincts.
“Thanks, gut,” he said quietly to himself. In response his gut gurgled, which he took to be a friendly acceptance of the praise but was in fact just caused by the close proximity of a plate of Chelsea buns the other side of the counter.
“Are you going to order something?” The pony asked, eyes flicking from Kenneth’s (loud) gut to his (quiet) face. She could sense a hungry customer.
“I’m here on business,” Kenneth said.
“If you don’t order something I will have to ask you to leave.”
“You wouldn’t!”
“Try me,” she said bluntly, staring him down. Kenneth tried to stare back but couldn’t keep it up and wilted in short order. “What’ll you have?” The pony asked.
“Uh tea, please,” he said sheepishly, for while he’d already had some tea after having subconsciously ~~stolen~~ borrowed some from the palace he knew it was physically impossible to drink too much tea.
“Does this look like the sort of place that serves tea?”
“Yes,” Kenneth said bluntly.
The pony blinked at him.
“Alright, you called me on that one, fair enough. What kind?” She asked.
“Surprise me.”
And so she slapped him.
“...I meant with tea. With your choice of tea,” Kenneth said, a hand to his cheek.
“Oh. Sorry. I’ll be right back.”
Red-faced, off she went to do that.
In the event, she brought back a cup of coffee.
“That certainly is surprising,” Kenneth said on taking it.
“I thought so.”
With that spot of dirty business concluded Kenneth moved towards the corner.
“Merry Berry of Cake Fancy magazine?” He asked Merry Berry of Cake Fancy magazine who looked up from their portable diatype.
“Yes that’s me! Writer, editor, publisher, cartoonist-in-residence, and proud subscriber! Were you looking to subscribe? You’d get to be number two on the list! No? That’s okay! I’m just happy to talk about Cake Fancy! Not to be confused with Cake Fancier magazine, of course! They, uh - that’s the one about Celestia’s hooves…”
Kenneth, blindsided and bewildered by this torrent of a response, was momentarily lost of for words. Then he clocked the bit about hooves.
“Pardon?” He asked.
“I’d rather not have to repeat myself,” Merry said, his rictus grin twitching.
An awkward moment passed between the two of them.
“...right. Well,” said Kenneth.
“They don’t need subscribers,” Merry said, with perhaps just the slightest hint of bitterness.
“We are moving on. Look at this picture,” Kenneth said, taking the photograph out again and again proffering it. Merry bent over the table to have a better look.
“Ooh, Celestia, Ooh, cake!”
“Recognise that cake?” Kenneth asked.
“Recognise it? I know that cake! I’m intimately familiar with that cake! That’s a Delamain Sponge! It’s Celestia’s favourite, don’t you know! I know because I know every single type she eats and in what volumes and have worked it out with my sophisticated statistical model! And it’s this one! I know what day and time he has it, too, and when she leaves the room. I can hardly wait to try it. I can almost taste it…”
Merry seemed at this point to realise what he was saying, or at least realise the effect of what he was saying was having on Kenneth.
“When I finally manage to obtain a slice for myself, I mean. Not anytime soon. I don’t have a slice now. They’re very exclusive,” he said, matter-of-factly.
“I see,” said Kenneth.
“Someone like me would have to steal one to get one!”
“I see. Again.”
A longer awkward moment.
“Yes. Now if you excuse me I must go to the little colt’s room.”
Merry hopped down from the table and left the room at speed, going through a door in the back. Kenneth watched him go with calculating eyes. A more trusting, less inquisitive mind might have missed them, but Kenneth had noticed a few subtle hints that perhaps this Merry Berry was acting suspiciously.
Examining the diatype gave no clues, as Kenneth had no idea how to operate a diatype and only the foggiest idea what one even was. This left only one option: to follow Merry, and hope he did something incriminating on the way to (or on the way back from) the khazi. Taking his coffee with him Kenneth also went through the door in the back, casual-like.
Through the door he found further doors. Some of these were clearly the toilets, but some were clearly not. One was ajar. This was obviously the one he should investigate, Kenneth thought. The toilets were too obvious, no way Merry had gone in there, where he’d said he was going to go. No, he’d gone through the slightly-open door marked ‘staff only’.
“Trespassing is terribly naughty behaviour, Merry. A man might - oh, hello,” Kenneth said, coming up short when he found that the storeroom he’d entered (for it was a storeroom) did not contain Merry but did, in fact, instead contain two very burly, very perplexed looking ponies who were at that moment heaving crates and stacking shelves.
Quite why a small, cozy cafe needed two beefy boys to do their stocking was unclear, but Kenneth wasn’t in the business of questioning these sorts of things. At least not when he wan’t being paid for it. He’d question anything for the right price.
Behind him, Merry exited the toilet and (merrily) headed back towards his table.
“You ain’t meant to be back here,” one of the burly ponies said, taking a step forward.
“Here on official business, just need to ask you a question about cakes,” Kenneth said smoothly, not-so-smoothly forgetting that he was still holding a cup of coffee and, in his fumble to retrieve his photograph, somehow managing to fling the cup and its contents at the two stockroom ponies.
Fortunately by this point the coffee had cooled somewhat, so they were splattered with only lukewarm coffee as opposed to scalding coffee. Not that this seemed to improve their mood much.
“Now lads, I’m sure-” was all Kenneth managed to say before they descended upon him.
-
Kenneth was back in front of Celestia’s desk. He was ruffled but not bruised, as being set upon by ponies was rather like being pelted with handfuls of marshmallow. The hooves were more of a consideration, but really they were only like being pelted with handfuls of stale marshmallow. Altogether not an ideal experience, but not one that would leave you pissing blood.
“You look ruffled,” Celestia said.
“Just another day in the rough-and-tumble life of Equestria’s second keenest mind,” said Kenneth proudly, tapping a temple. Celestia blinked at him. “Ahem, yes, well. I feel I may have found a suspect, if not the actual culprit!”
An eyebrow raised. It was Celestia’s. It was Celestia’s eyebrow that raised.
“You have?” She asked.
“Yes!” Kenneth said, before launching into a vivid and highly distorted recap of his big day out.
This took some time.
“-and then Merry vanished, and I found some chaps who were presumably his goons, and then they beat me up. All of which suggests to me a guilty conscience,” he said, wrapping up, then remembering one more thing: “Also something about your hooves. A magazine about your hooves, maybe? I forget. I think that came up.”
A moment passed as this additional fact settled itself. Celestia decided not to comment, as she had publicly committed to never acknowledging the existence of Cake Fancier (despite being a subscriber (under a pseudonym)).
“I have a confession to make,” she said.
“You’ve been breaking into my office to touch my things and move all my furniture half an inch closer to the window?” Kenneth asked. Celestia was honestly caught off-guard.
“What? No.”
“Twilight Sparkle is actually half a dozen ferrets sewn into a purple sack?” He ventured, feeling this at least was a slam-dunk. It was the way the girl moved - very ferret-reminiscent. And had anyone ever seen her in a room with ferrets? No. Suspicious.
“Stop trying to guess,” Celestia said.
“Sorry.”
Celestia composed herself.
“I ate the cake,” she said.
“You ate the cake?”
“Yes.”
Kenneth considered this. Then:
“I found the culprit,” he said, pointing at her.
“Very good, well done,” she said. His arm dropped.
“So this whole thing was… what?” He asked.
“Funny?” She ventured.
“...that might depend on where you’re standing.”
Kenneth considered this.
“It’s funny from over here,” said Celestia, pointing down.
“Alright then,” Kenneth said.
He moved over and stood next to her, turning around to look back at where he’d just been.
“It does seem a little bit funnier from over here,” he said.
“I did say.”
Exactly five seconds went past.
“Can I get paid now?” Kenneth asked.
-
A good while later - a few weeks, let’s say - Celestia was laid out luxuriously on a lounger, sunglasses on, basking in her own golden radiance. This enjoyable experience was interrupted and spoilt by a shadow.
“Ahem,” said the shadow.
“Yes, sister?” Celestia asked, not moving. Luna levitated two objects around, though, what with all the golden radiance (i.e. sunshine) Celestia couldn’t see what they were.
“Two things,” Luna said. “One, a receipt for ten bits to a ‘Horne Investigations’ and two, a flyer from Horne Investigations claiming ‘As used by princesses!’ and boasting of a one-hundred percent success rate in royal cases. How are these linked and how is this your fault?”
Celestia was silent.
“There was a slow day,” she said.
She then moved the sun so she wasn’t in a shadow anymore.
