A Slip Twixt Cup and Lip by Kathryn Ramage

"Lady Iris Took!" the innkeeper echoed. "Dead, in my inn! Now how she'd come to be here? And that was never the North-Thain she was calling her husband."

"No," said Frodo. "He was her lover." Florisel Pumble-Took, a cousin from one of the lesser branches of the Took family, and former land-agent of the North-Thain. He ought to have recognized those Tookish features right away, but he'd never expected to find the two of them here. "They ran off together from Long Cleeve over a year ago." It seemed far more likely that, after that ugly business of the attempted poisoning of the Thain, the two had left the Shire months ago. He wondered where they'd been, and what they'd been up to, during that time. And what had brought them to Budgeford?

Carefully, he stepped into the room to look around. The window was open. Some drawers of the wardrobe were likewise pulled opened and left empty, but others were shut; when Frodo checked, he found that the closed drawers still contained articles of lady's clothing. Florisel must have taken his own things--and hastily too, by the look of it--and gone out the window just as Rolo Bindbole had. There was a small, round table with two chairs set before the fire, and a kettle containing some cool water sat on the hearth. There'd been a fire burning last night, but all that remained of it was a dull warmth emanating from the ashes in the grate. "They didn't come out to dine last night," he said. "Did they eat in here?"

"No, Mr. Baggins. That is, they was accustomed to take their dinners here in their room, in private-like, but they didn't ask for nothing to be brought them last night."

There were no plates set on the table, only a teapot, a small pot of honey, and a half-drunk cup of tea. Another cup lay on its side on the floor beside the bed, as if it had fallen from the lady's hand. A shaft of sunlight from the open window fell on it, highlighting the pottery glaze and certain smudges on the glossy surface.

"Have you touched anything in this room?" Frodo asked.

"Only her--the lady--to be sure she was beyond help. She's cold as a stone."

"What about that cup?" Frodo nodded to the one on the floor; Mr. Noakes reached down to pick it up. "No--don't! Leave it where it lies. Lock the door to this room, and we'll wait for the chief shirriff to arrive."
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