Their investigation had been half a game until then. Even as they searched for clues to Lotho's whereabouts, none of the hobbits, not even Frodo, truly believed he had come to harm. But now someone was dead--not Lotho, but it seemed obvious to them all that there must be a connection between his disappearance and Daisy's murder.
No one had much appetite for dinner that evening, and they sat up afterwards, putting together the information they had gathered, until the hour grew late and Sam told Frodo to go to bed. Frodo went, but tossed miserably through the night.
He dropped off only once, and dreamed of Hobbiton in ruins. In his dream, he stood at the foot of the hill beneath Bag End, looking up; the green slopes and familiar gardens were torn up and muddy, and a dozen ugly, ill-built wooden sheds with tar roofs cluttered the hillside. When he turned, he saw to his further horror that the bungalows in Bagshot Row were gone, replaced by a gravel pit. The hedgerows along the old lane had been torn up and the tall row of chestnut trees too was gone. Even the Party Tree had been cut down! There were piles of rubbish everywhere, and the sky was dark and overcast with plumes of black smoke.
Frodo went up to the house. The flower beds that lay beneath the windows had been trampled into mud, but the sheds were set so close to Bag End that they blocked the sunlight in any case; no flowers could possibly grow. The bench by the door had been broken into a pile of rubble, and the round door itself was hanging loose on its hinges, its green paint faded, dirt-spattered, and scarred. The bell-chain dangled loose.
He heard Sam's voice nearby him: This is worse than Mordor!
And he started awake with a soft cry.
Sam immediately woke as well. "What it is?" he asked as he sat up and quickly gathered Frodo into his arms. "It's not-?"
"No," Frodo answered. "I'm all right, Sam. It was nothing but a silly dream." Nevertheless, the horrific images from his dream remained with him as vividly as if they had been real, and he took comfort in the security of Sam's embrace; he nestled closer and shut his eyes, but knew he would not sleep again this night.
"I want you to stop this investigating, Frodo," Sam told him sternly. "You're pushing yourself too hard and getting close to one of your bad spells, and I won't have it. It's gone beyond us now. It's not just Mr. Lotho being missing anymore--it's murder. We ought to leave it to the shirriffs to find out who killed poor Daisy. It's their job, not ours."
Frodo sighed. He knew that Sam was right. He didn't want to push himself into another bad spell--and yet he was reluctant to give up when the matter was so important. It was murder. If he could do something to see justice done for the dead girl, then he had to do it.
When he opened his eyes, he saw that a grayish light was visible outside the window; it must be near daybreak. Leaving Sam's arms, he got out of bed and pulled on his robe. He went into the kitchen, Sam following drowsily, and found that his cousins were also up.
"Couldn't you sleep either?" Frodo asked them.
"No," answered Merry. He was crouched at the stove, poking the low, red embers back into flame. "We've been lying awake for hours, and thought it was about time for breakfast."
"We might as well have it early," Frodo agreed, "especially if Sam's to ride up to Needlehole to see the Puddlesbys."
Sam stared at him. "You still want me to go?"
"Yes, of course. I will stop the investigation, Sam, if you'll do this one last thing. Your errand is more urgent than ever now."
"But I shouldn't leave you," Sam protested. "Not after the bad night you just had. What if you have another of your spells while I'm away?"
"Sam, I want you to go," Frodo insisted. "You're the only one of us who knows the Puddlesby family. They'll talk to you as they wouldn't to strangers. If there is a connection between Lotho and Daisy's death, then we'll tell the shirriffs what we've learned, and I will have finished. Will you do this, please? I'll be all right while you're gone. I'll rest."
"We'll look after him and see that he does," Merry promised.
Sam didn't like it, but he could not refuse Frodo's request; he could never refuse Frodo anything. "All right," he consented reluctantly, "I'll go, but I'm not leaving without having a bite of breakfast first--and seeing you have some too." He shooed Merry away from the stove to get started.
After they finished their breakfasts and saw Sam off on his journey, the three remaining hobbits sat around the kitchen table talking.
"Did Lotho do it?" Pippin wondered. The question had been in all their minds since the night before; they had skirted the idea during their discussions, but no one had said it so bluntly before. "I hate to think of any hobbit committing murder. Oh- I know," He glanced from one cousin to the other. "We've all seen worse. Done worse. But this was a harmless girl, killed for no reason. Can there be such evil in the Shire? I can't imagine any hobbit being so deliberately cruel, not even Pimple."
"If what Ted Sandyman told Sam is true, I believe it," said Merry. "A hobbit who'd want to run everything and clutter up the Shire with all kinds of gears and machines might very well get rid of a girl he was fond of if she stood in his way. Remember Isengard, Pip? Can you imagine the Shire like that?
Pippin imagined it, and shuddered.
"You never saw Isengard, Frodo," Merry turned to him and explained. "It was a wretched place. Saruman had cut down all the trees and burnt them to power filthy machines that fouled the water and spit black smoke into the air. He'd made what was once a garden into a pile of metal and sooty muck."
"Like a little piece of Mordor," Frodo murmured. "I did see the Shire like that, once, in a vision." He had never forgotten the horrifying picture he'd seen in the Lady Galadriel's mirror. His dream last night had surely been an echo of it, perhaps brought on by the things Sam had said about Lotho's plans.
Was that vision a portend of what might be if he failed in his quest? Frodo thought so. He'd been greatly relieved when he'd come home last autumn to find that this dreadful future had not come to pass; the Shire was as green and unchanged as the day he had left it.
He was so lost in his own thoughts that he ceased to follow his cousins' conversation, until he heard:
"You know they never found him."
"Found who?"
"Saruman."
"I thought he was dead!" cried Pippin. "We saw him fall from the tower."
"You didn't hear what Treebeard was telling Gandalf afterwards? No, you were too busy wanting to get your hands on that magical seeing-stone again. Saruman fell, but when they went looking for his body in the water, they couldn't find it! He just disappeared. And then that sneaking, nasty snake of a Man who was with him escaped from the tower in all the excitement, and no one knows where he's gone to. They might've run off together."
"Yes, but without his powers, Saruman couldn't do much harm."
"He could still do harm," said Frodo. "It doesn't take a wizard's powers to work great evil."
"Do you think Pimple was planning to do the same here--tear down the trees, put in those machines, and make everything filthy?" asked Pippin.
"I can only think that he doesn't realize what he's doing," Frodo answered contemplatively. "He wants to be in charge of things, put in 'improvements' and remake the Shire into what he thinks it ought to be, but he hasn't seen his ideas to their true ends... as we have."
They were jolted then by a loud rap on the front door, and a strident voice cried out: "Frodo Baggins! Answer the door! You can't hide away. I know you're in there!"
It was Lobelia. No one was surprised that she'd come to bother Frodo, only that she had taken so long to do so.
"I'll go," Merry offered, rising from his seat at the table. "I promised Sam I'd look out for you, Frodo, and nothing's more likely to give you a bad turn than facing Lobelia."
He went out to meet her, closing the door behind himself. "Good morning, Aunt Lobelia! What brings you here so early in the day?"
"Merry Brandybuck!" Lobelia spit the name. "I thought you were in gaol. It's a fitting place for the likes of you. Now let me by! I mean to see Frodo." She raised the umbrella that she always carried, rain or shine, and brandished it as if she meant to skewer him if he dared stand in her way.
Merry stood his ground. "Frodo is too ill to receive visitors," he informed her.
"'Too ill,' my foot! He's no more ill than I am. I know for a fact that he's been to Dora's a half-dozen times this past week."
"Twice, actually," said Merry. "What d'you want to see him about?"
"Never you mind, nosy! That's my own affair."
"It's my affair too. I'm looking after Frodo, seeing that he isn't disturbed during his recuperation, and you'll have to tell me what your business is before I decide whether or not you can see him." He had no intention of allowing the vicious old biddy near Frodo, but he was curious to hear what she was after and knew that Frodo would wonder too.
Lobelia fumed, but soon realized that Merry was not going to let her pass. "I want to know what you boys are up to," she snapped resentfully. "I hear you've been making mischief, going around town and trying to dig up all sorts of ugly gossip and lies about my Lotho. It's his doing, isn't it? He's the one behind it, and I mean to put a stop to it. If Frodo Baggins thinks he can divert attention from himself by looking for scandals to blacken my son's name, then I tell you he thinks wrongly! I won't stand for it."
"We weren't looking for scandals," said Merry. "We were looking for clues to Lotho's whereabouts. Frodo wants him found just as badly as you do... although not for the same reasons." He smiled. "But if you want it stopped, then you'll be happy to hear that Frodo's decided to stop this very morning." He was surprised to see how eagerly Lobelia's expression brightened at this information.
"Then he knows where Lotho is?" she cried. "Has he known all along? I vow that if he's responsible for what's happened to Lotho-"
"Rubbish," Merry replied. "You know perfectly well he isn't. You only told the sherriffs so because you want to make trouble for him." He was being obnoxiously rude--which was not how he'd been brought up to treat old ladies--but there was really no other way to deal with Lobelia. "If I were you, Auntie, I wouldn't go around accusing anybody of making away with Pimple. You ought to be more worried about who he's done away with himself."
She gaped at him. "What do you mean by that, Merry Brandybuck? What sort of dirt have you dug up?"
"Well, it was his sweetheart, wasn't it, who was strangled? Did you tell the shirriffs about that?"
Lobelia's mouth popped open, then closed again.
"And what about you, Aunt Lobelia?" Merry pressed on. "If this Daisy Puddlesby was going to marry Lotho, doesn't that give you a mighty good reason to put a stop to it?"
"How dare you, you- you-" Lobelia sputtered furiously, but could not think of anything bad enough. At last, finding no words to express her outrage, she swung her umbrella at Merry's head--he ducked quickly to avoid the blow--and then she turned and stormed away.
After Lobelia had gone, Merry returned to Bag End's kitchen.
"You got off lucky, Frodo," Merry told him. "Seeing Lobelia Sackville-Baggins is enough to give anyone a bad turn."
"What did she want?" asked Frodo.
"To tell you to stop digging up stories about how awful her son is. I told her that we'd stop looking for him."
"Does she know where he is?" Pippin wondered.
Merry shook his head. "I'll wager that she has no better idea of where Pimple is than anybody else. Now that I've spoken to her, I'm quite sure she doesn't know what's going on either."
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