8 Options

"Help? No." Delion answered lightly, even with a half laugh.

But afterwards describing why he doesn't need help so Jingo doesn't run off the moment he gets an opportunity. "But since you are a friend of William's, he will find it comforting if you are at his wife's funeral."

Able to puzzle out where Delion is going with this, Ambers tagged along by adding. "You can come with us, I know you need rest but as you can see the situation is sensitive. You can sleep in my house along with Delion for the night."

"I guess old William could use some comfort." But to make this situation a bit more troublesome, Jingo asks. "Is the funeral today?"

Usually funerals aren't done in a rush, so according to some basic logic it should be held tomorrow.

Able to lie because it's constantly required in his line of work, Delion calmly butchers. "They are holding it now at 4pm, Jenny insisted for her mother to be buried before dark."

"That's a bit weird." Jingo pointed out, but is too drowsy to put up a fight about this. "It is what it is, let's go."

It's only about 2pm right now so this is more and more believable, especially since Jingo seems to have a proper track of time for some reason.

Throughout the way back to the village the conversations were pale and short. Jingo is far too sleepy to hold a conversation and he is practically dragging his feet through the cold snow.

As for Delion and chief Ambers, they can't really debate decisions or exchange detailed thoughts about this new and horrifying investigation since Jingo is right near them.

This hunter is still not crossed from the suspect list as a murderer, in fact Delion has gotten more suspicious.

As for the body, it has been hidden in the bushes. It would take a lot of effort for a passing by human to notice the body, unless they can smell it which could be the case tomorrow.

Is it favorable to leave a dead body like this? No, most definitely no. But William could quite possibly have been murdered and tossed from that high spot, to make it appear like an accident.

And since there could be a murderer, it would be a stupid idea to just carry the body and give Jingo the chance to dissapear forever.

As eye witnesses they have to clear this case up, because just granting old William a funeral and letting the case slip wouldn't be enough to let his soul rest in peace.

...

They have led Jingo to the village and have told him that due to some last minute preparation difficulties, it can take another hour or so until the funeral starts. While in fact the body is still on her bed, the funeral will be hosted tomorrow.

Delion has been left with Jingo in Amber's house, watching him sleep and most necessarily since this is a quiet room he can think everything out.

He has memorized everything Jingo has said from the camp and up until now in the village and his words don't link.

Any normal person would have skipped these very important details and figure Jingo as innocent, but Delion isn't one to be that clumsy.

As a start, Jingo explained that old William left the camp about 'half an hour ago.'

That bit of information is either oddly too specific or completely random and out of a sudden.

Why is it odd? Well because Jingo was and still is tired as hell. The moment he would curl in between a sleeping bag, he would crash asleep.

Him having a proper track of time would be nearly impossible in this case, not to mention he answered at the first call and most importantly William crashed the ground roughly 10 minutes before they found Jingo.

Second and most importantly, William dropped from a height of 100 fucking feet in complete silence.

Young or old, if you fall from such height knowing that death will follow, one would most likely scream in panic.

This opens up another topic which tags along three options of what could have happened. The first option is that William might have actually committed suicide!

As Jenny said the fights between William and his wife have become too common, what if he ended it at this age because of that? This could explain the silent drop.

The second option is that old William was slaughtered by Jingo for some kind of unknown reason and to fight off suspicion he dumped the body over the cliff to pretend like it was an accident, afterwards he [Jingo] snuck back into his tent and pretended as if nothing happened.

This could explain how he had track of time, murdering someone and falling sound asleep after is no doubt hard to do.

But there is one thing that almost completely crosses this option out, William had no wounds on him. Well not any cut or stab wounds at least.

Since there aren't such wounds, Delion figures that Jingo could have used poison to make the old man drop dead. For that, he [Delion] will need to go interrogate the camp.

He understands that Jingo won't be able to hide any poison now that he is here in Blenar. But yet again there might not be any poison at all, which makes this situation more complex.

The third but most unlikely, due to old age William just suddenly died there in the camp. The November night can be blistering cold, it can take an old man victim with ease.

And to fight off any unnecessary suspicion, such as being called and punished as a murderer without actually murdering someone, Jingo dropped the body off that height to make it appear as an accident or suicide.

As you can see, the options are limitless and it's hard to narrow everything down without putting his hands in deeply in each option. That of which can open up other theories of what might have happened.

It is a headache and you can only imagine how fast Delion's mind is going at the moment.

He has seen many cases of murder and suicide before but this one has very small traces that even he as a experienced detective could have over looked.

His [Delion's] best option now is to head back to the camp over 8 kilometers away tomorrow and hope to find something that can uncover the mystery of William's death.

Well that and carry William's body back here.

With chief Ambers as an eye witness yesterday, they can't really accuse Delion as a murderer.