"Sam!" Frodo cried. "Where have you been all this time? We missed you at dinner."
"Did you now?" Sam replied. "Well, I was helping them out in the kitchens, asking questions o' the maids like you asked me to. I sat down to supper with them--'twas more comfy than sitting amongst the fine folk."
"Oh, Sam." Frodo was momentarily jarred out of his sense of awkwardness; he felt ashamed at the snubbing his friend had received, and despised the North-Tooks for it. "What did they tell you?"
"I had a good, long chat with Miss Tilsey, and she told me why she don't like Missus Persifilla," Sam reported. "She said as how Mr. Alamargo's son, Hilbarus, was in love with Missus Persifilla when she was a Miss and wanted to marry her, only she married Mr. Alhasrus's son instead."
"Yes, yes, we know all about that," said Merry, who was trying to behave like his usual self even though he too realized that Sam must have overheard his remarks to Frodo. "It's old news."
Sam stared at him. "And d'you know about Mrs. Scrubbs and her ladyship too?"
"What about Mrs. Scrubbs and her ladyship?" Frodo asked.
"I don't know exactly, but there's something," answered Sam. "I had a talk with Mrs. Scrubbs after the maids took the dinner off to the dining room. She'd tell me all about these North-Tooks, whatever I asked, but she wouldn't tell me nothing about Lady Iris."
"Come outside and tell me about it," Frodo invited, and took his friend by the arm to lead Sam across the room in the direction of the window. "I'd love a pipe before bed-time, wouldn't you? Merry, why don't you go find Pippin and make it up with him? If there's anything important you ought to know about, I'll tell you both tomorrow."
While he wasn't at the moment eager to go after Pippin, Merry was glad to leave Frodo to deal with Sam alone. After he'd gone, Frodo took Sam out onto the hillside outside his room. As twilight settled over the vale of the Long Cleeve, they sat down on the grass under a cluster of trees, smoked their pipes, and talked.
Sam told Frodo him about Lady Iris's visit to the kitchens after tea, and her private conversation with Mrs. Scrubbs. "The girls say as she does it a lot, and they have tea and such like old friends. But Mrs. Scrubbs won't say a word about her ladyship, nothing good nor bad. When I asked, she wouldn't tell me how long ago they met, or if they knew each other afore Mrs. Scrubbs came to work here. But I reckon they did. Mrs. Scrubbs didn't tell me that, but the maids say they guess as how her ladyship knew Mrs. Scrubbs afore she came down from the north end o' the Cleeve, when her first husband was alive. Maybe even when her ladyship was a girl."
"Before she married Rosaldo Pumble?" Frodo wondered.
Sam nodded. "Lacy remembers her--Mrs. Scrubbs, that is--let it slip once she'd come from up that way, not meaning to."
"I'd be interested in knowing more about Lady Iris's past," said Frodo, and lay down on the hillside to consider the darkening sky overhead through the branches of the trees. He blew a puff of smoke up toward a gap in the leaves, but it dissipated before it reached its target. "Her life before her first marriage seems shrouded. There's a mystery there--whether it's part of our mystery, I can't yet say. You'll have to press Mrs. Scrubbs, Sam. If you can't wheedle it out of her, maybe I ought to go and ask her myself, or ask Lady Iris."
Sam also told Frodo about Tilsey's theory of why Persifilla would want to poison the Thain.
"I suggested something similar to Hilbarus," said Frodo. "He took great offence at it."
"He would, wouldn't he?" Sam replied with his pipe clenched in his teeth.
"Yes, but it sounded to me as if he were more afraid I'd suspect her than himself. He warned me off questioning her. I wonder if she's the one he's trying to protect?" Frodo propped himself up on one elbow and turned to his friend. "It must be. The only other people he seems to care deeply about are his brother and sister, and they've no motivations for murder that we've discovered."
"Maybe Miss Diamond did it to keep from being pushed to marry Mr. Pippin," Sam joked. "Maybe she wants to marry Isigo as much as he does her."
Frodo chuckled. "The Thain wouldn't stand in their way. But listen, Sam: Hilbarus knows or suspects the same thing as Tilsey does. He knows Persifilla's ambitions at least as well, but he loves her enough to overlook them." He told Sam about his conversation with Hilbarus, and Merry's with Persifilla and Ulfidius. He also repeated the key points in his chats with Florisel and Mrs. Goodwood.
Sam snorted. "Not a nice lot o' hobbits, are they?"
"No..." said Frodo, and drew in on his pipe thoughtfully. "Any one of them could've tried to kill the Thain. Things like this used to shock me, Sam. I used to be horrified when I saw these dark spots in the Shire, and realized what respectable hobbits were capable of. Now I accept anything as possible. And I wonder: did this sort of thing go on just as often before you and I began to investigate, and simply went unrecognized? The deaths would be taken as natural, or tragic accidents. A young lad drowns in the river. A lady disappears and everyone assumes she's fled with her lover. A very old hobbit sickens and dies. No one would think it murder, and the murderer got away with it." He moved a little closer to Sam and rested his head on Sam's shoulder. "It isn't a pleasant thought."
"But it's a good thing you're here to look into 'em now when they happen," answered Sam. "The murderers don't get away with it so much anymore. Though I wish we wasn't here, looking into this one."
"I know, Sam. The North-Tooks have been horrid to you."
"I don't mind that," Sam said. "It's the troubles that've been rucked up since we came here. That Miss Di, and Mr. Pippin... You wouldn't go back to Master Merry, would you?"
"No," Frodo answered, then tried to make light of the question. "Only if you gave me up first, Sam."
"I wouldn't!" Sam insisted. "Not ever. But he'd have you back, if Mr. Pippin got married to that Miss Di. I heard him say so."
"Sam, he was joking."
"Maybe he said it like a joke, but he meant it."
"It won't happen," Frodo assured him. "Even if Pip and Di marry in the end, it'll be a marriage in name only. Neither of them wants to be a true and proper husband or wife. At most, they would have the sort of arrangement that you and I and Rosie have, and that's worked out very well."
Sam looked unconvinced, but said no more about it. Instead, he set his pipe aside and slid one hand under Frodo's chin to tilt his head up and place a kiss firmly on his mouth. Frodo understood; he was going to have to work hard at showing Sam that he had nothing to worry about as far as Merry was concerned.
Placing his hands on Sam's shoulders, Frodo gave him a push; he caught Sam entirely by surprise and sent him sprawling onto his back. He pinned Sam by lying atop him, breastbone to breastbone, and gave him a kiss before he said, "Listen to me, Samwise Gamgee: It will not happen. And do you know why? Because I adore you. I love the way your arms feel around me when you hold me tight. I love the way you smell like flowers and fresh earth and pipeweed, and sometimes just a little taste of ale." He gave Sam another kiss, then went on more seriously. "I love you because you insist on looking after me when I don't want to be looked after, and because you've never hesitated to stand by me even when you don't approve of or understand the things I do. You don't always approve of me, Sam. Don't deny it. It's true. I can see how I disturb you sometimes with my shocking behavior."
Sam couldn't deny it, especially since he well remembered the last time Frodo had pounced on him like this amid a grove of trees.
"You blame Merry for that, don't you?" asked Frodo. "You think he taught me to behave this way?"
Sam couldn't deny this either.
"Merry did teach me a few things, it's true, but mostly he let me find out about myself. He let me be shameless--and all that means, my dear Sam, is that I can't feel ashamed of who I am. I had odd thoughts, ideas, deep inside me that I didn't know about. Things that nice, respectable hobbits aren't supposed to think about at all even when the lights are out. But I've thought about them. I've tried a few. And I've begun to wonder if most nice, respectable hobbits have the same kinds of feelings inside them. Not all the secret things hobbits are capable of are dark and nasty and hateful. Some can be really quite pleasant, as I'm sure you know."
"Well..." Sam conceded reluctantly.
"I did look very pretty in Angelica's clothes, didn't I?" Frodo prompted. "You told me so. Would you object very much if I were to do the same again sometime?"
"You couldn't go borrowing Angelica's dress again."
"No, that's true. She'd wonder what I wanted it for," Frodo grinned. "But there are other dresses. If you promise, dearest Sam, to stop behaving like a farmer chasing trespassers off his property every time Merry comes near me, I promise not to remind you that he and I were ever more than friends. And I will make it up to you. Tonight, I will give you the most exquisite ravishing..."
Sam looked more alarmed than pleased by this prospect. "Not out here?" It was a fine evening, and many windows of the Thain's Hall were open. Who knew what they might overhear?
"No, not here," Frodo reassured him. "Nothing shocking, not tonight. It'll be just as you like. Promise, Sam?"
"Promise."
"Very well then. Have you finished your pipe? Good. Let's go in to bed..."
He was about to give Sam another kiss, when the silhouette shapes of two figures walked out of a door in the slope below them--not the Thain's front door, but some exit farther south. Frodo quickly climbed off his supine companion and crouched low in the grass, waving a hand for Sam to be silent and watch with him. As the pair headed down the unlit path to the garden gate arm in arm, he could see that one figure was male and the other female. Under the shelter of the willow trees that surrounded the gate, they stopped and embraced, then the male figure went out and walked away. The women turned and went back into the Hall. It must be Florisel, Frodo decided. Who else would be leaving the Thain's Hall at this hour? He could also guess who the lady was. But then he'd doubted already that Florisel was telling the truth when he'd said that his feelings for Iris were brotherly.
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