While his cousins were finishing their breakfasts, Frodo went out to explore the Prancing Pony. How would any member of the troupe reach the rooms that had been burgled? Could anyone else have come in from outside the inn during the night?
The inn was built as a square around a cobbled courtyard, entered via an archway that opened onto the high street before the town square. A double wooden door could be closed and barred over this entrance; Frodo made note to ask Mr. Butterbur if it had been shut last night. The front door was within the arched passage, to the left as one entered, and the offices and public rooms were on the ground floor in the front and the forward part of the west wing. The rooms for hobbits were behind, separated from the public rooms by a door. The back of the inn was dug into the side of Bree Hill; the hobbit rooms overlooked the courtyard and the windowless rooms on the other side of the corridor were used for storage and wine cellars. Rooms for the Big Folk were on the floor above. Only one other door besides the front door led out of the inn, a side door on the western side that opened into an alley.
Frodo looked at the rooms the other hobbits were staying in first. Mr. Grimmold was also lodged in this part of the inn, in a snug little room to himself, the only room on the outer side of the building. Frodo peeked in, but the circus manager had already gone and taken his belongings out.
The room where Pippin and the circus lads had spent the night was next. This was the same room that Frodo, Merry, Pippin, and Sam had been given on their first visit to Bree, but hadn't slept in. When Frodo had last seen it, the beds had been turned up on their sides and all the bedding shredded by the sharp swords of the Black Riders, intent on killing them all. Today, the room was only as messy as the occupation of five careless young hobbits could make it. The beds were unmade, and clothes lay scattered. The Trufoot brothers had gone, but Dorryk and Nob were still gathering up their things to pack as quickly as possible.
"Well, you've heard all about it, Mr. Baggins. We've got to be off right away," Nob lamented. "Mr. Grimmold says we can't even stop for a proper breakfast!"
"Where are you going to go now?" Frodo asked them.
"Some cousins of mine let us have the use of a field," said Dorryk. "It's the same one as we had the magic-lantern show in last night, and they won't mind if we camp there for a day or two--as long as they don't hear about the lies told against us and believe them! If you want us, Mr. Baggins, and can't find the place by daylight, ask for Kitswillows."
After they had gone, Frodo examined the room. Although these rooms were meant for hobbits, they did not mimic the curved, tunnel-like walls and round doors and windows that were key features of Shire architecture; the walls went straight up, the corners were squared, and the windows tall, mullioned rectangles with rounded tops, but the furniture was of a comfortable size. After being so long among the much taller Men and Elves, Frodo found it pleasant to be in a room where everything did not tower over him.
As Pippin had said, the door creaked. There were four narrow wooden beds, two near the door and two others near the windows. Pippin's bed was obviously the one with his pack and yesterday's clothes lying on it.
The windows were in a bay with a wooden seat below; by climbing onto the seat, Frodo found that the latches on the windows were within easy reach. He swung open one casement to look out into the courtyard. Even a hobbit who wasn't a professional tumbler could easily jump down a few feet onto the cobblestones below.
In the courtyard, the circus waggon sat by the stable doors; the horses had been brought out to be hitched to it, along with the circus's other horses, ponies, and carts, and the pack of trained dogs. Although the troupe was assembled to depart, Mr. Butterbur apologetically insisted that they turn out their belongings before they left. Some protested, but Mr. Grimmold, determined to prove that his people were carrying nothing that wasn't theirs, agreed with him and had all their baggage brought out for inspection. He also invited the stable-lads to have a look in and under the waggon to be sure no stolen property was concealed there.
The stable made up the entire eastern wing of the inn on the ground floor, and there were more rooms on the two floors above it; the room Frodo and Merry were staying in was at the top and front of this section. There was no direct access to the stables from the guest rooms, and visitors to the inn must go out the front door or one of the doors that opened onto the courtyard and walk across to the stable entrance. Two stairways led from t one in the common room and the other at the end of the back corridor.
Frodo shut the window and left the room to look at the other rooms on the ground floor. All had the same windows, and would be just as easy to get in or out of. If the Trufoots or other members of the troupe were the burglars, he could understand why they would not touch these rooms, since their friends and fellow-travelers were lodged within. What reason would another thief have to pass them by? And what about the other guests at the inn? Had they been burgled too?
Next, Frodo went up the back stair to the rooms immediately above the stable. The party of dwarves were staying there, and were just getting up, hearing the commotion in the courtyard below. They were alarmed when Frodo told them about the thefts upstairs, and hastened to check their packs to assure themselves that none of their own property had been stolen in the night. But they were remarkably close-mouthed, even for dwarves, when he asked if they had anything valuable with them.
Last, he went up to see the rooms where the thieves had struck. On the top floor, there were three doors along the hallway on the side of the building overlooking the courtyard; the door to his own room was at the very end, up three steps and around a corner. The only door on the other side of the hall bore a heavy padlock, locked, and Frodo concluded that it must be used for storage.
"What are you doing there?" a sharp-toned voice asked behind him.
Startled, Frodo turned to find the woman from the missing couple standing in the doorway of the middle room. The man, presumably her husband, was in the room. Both regarded him with suspicion.
"I'm just having a look around," Frodo explained. "Mr. Butterbur has asked me to investigate these thefts."
"Did he?" the woman said doubtfully. "And who are you, exactly?"
"Frodo Baggins is my name, of Hobbiton in the Shire. I'm a professional investigator."
The man's expression brightened. "Of course--you're the one the other little fellow, the blonde one, was telling everyone about last night." He lay a hand on the woman's arm. "You didn't stay up to hear the stories, dear. He's solved murders for the King. I suppose we ought to consider ourselves lucky you happened to be here, Mr. Baggins, but there doesn't seem any doubt about who's broken into our rooms."
"Although why the innkeeper is letting them go off without calling for the local constable to arrest them, I can't imagine," added the woman.
"There really isn't any proof," Frodo explained. "They don't have the stolen items with them, Missus-?"
"Wetleaf," said the man. "I'm Elvar and this is Irida. We've come up from Tharbad."
"And you and the people in these other two rooms all came to Bree yesterday?"
"Yes, that's right," Mr. Wetleaf answered. "Everybody told us this was the place to stay 'til we settled ourselves in."
"Would you mind if I had a look at your room?" Frodo requested. He wanted to see all three, but thought it better to wait for Mr. Butterbur before he went into the other two.
The couple exchanged glances. "No, not at all," said Mrs. Wetleaf. "Look about all you like." She and her husband stepped out of the way to let Frodo enter.
The ceiling in here slanted downward on the western side beneath the roof, though not as sharply as in the gable room where he and Merry were sleeping. Instead of the small diamond-shaped window of the gable room, the rectangular windows here were the same as the ones downstairs, and set in a sort of box with a seat at the end of room; the roof was raised slightly over them to accommodate their height. There was one large bed, made up, two wooden chairs and a table; the couple's traveling bags sat on top of this.
"You locked your door last night?" Frodo asked, "but left the window open?"
"Yes, that's right," replied Mr. Wetleaf. "'Twas so warm last night, and we never thought anybody could come in that way, not so high up!"
"What was taken?"
"A little purse with some gold and silver, the money we meant to pay our way with, and more besides. Some trinkets that belonged my wife. An old cloak of mine."
This last item sounded the most unusual to Frodo. The other stolen property had some value, but what would a thief want with an old cloak on a warm summer night?
Mr. Butterbur came upstairs. "I see as you've got started in your investigating," he said when he found Frodo with the guests he'd been searching for.
"Yes, I thought it best to begin right away. Has the troupe gone?" Frodo asked.
"No, not yet. It seemed to me it'd be best if they stay on awhile longer. Mr. Grimmold's agreed to stop and let his people have a bite of breakfast. You two ought to go down and have a bite yourselves," the innkeeper offered the Wetleafs. "After such an upset as you've had this morning, it'll do much to settle you." It seemed that Mr. Butterbur considered a good meal the best solution to any problem. "I beg your pardon for the trouble you've suffered in my own house. I promise you, there's never been such thefts here before. I never saw anything like it, not since that bad business when those terrible creatures with their black horses and black robes came in that one night and tore up the room you and your friends was meant to be sleeping in, Mr. Baggins. You remember."
Frodo remembered it well, though he couldn't help noticing with amusement that the Wetleafs were much more alarmed by this tale than they were by the theft.
"That was when you took up with that Ranger-fellow, Strider," Mr. Butterbur also recalled. "A bad lot himself, I would've said, but it turns out he was somebody important."
"Yes, he was the last heir to the old northern kingdom. He's the King in Gondor now, you know."
"So you said before, Mr. Baggins, and it seems the oddest thing to me. Think of it!" No matter how often the innkeeper heard this same news, it was difficult for him to connect the disreputable character who used to wander the wilds and occasionally visit his inn with the great King who ruled far away in the south. The fact of it constantly befuddled him.
Frodo went to look out the windows. It was a straight drop of at least thirty feet. There were no ladders or trellises on the wall below the windows to be climbed, and the roofs of the lower wings of the Inn to the north and south weren't within easy reach.
Butterbur came over to join him. "You see how it is, Mr. Baggins. Only a trickster or tumbler could get in and out!"
"Yes, I see..." Frodo had to agree, and leaned farther out the open window to peer at the stones paving the courtyard a dizzying distance below. He wished he'd thought to examine the courtyard earlier, before the caravan had been brought out, for any sign of how someone could have scaled this wall. But he soon consoled himself with the observation that there had been dry weather lately and the cobbles were too hard to take any impression. Even the multitude of boots, bare feet, paws, and hooves that had tramped around the waggon left no marks.
He stood up on tip-toe, then climbed onto the window-seat to see if there was any means of getting in from other directions. The windows of the rooms on either side looked to be the same, with a squared dormer around the windows, and a gap of about three feet between each. If all the windows were open, it would be possible to swing from one to the next. It might even be possible to enter a window from the sloping part of the roof...
He tried to swing the window casement out as far as it could go to see, but the casement stuck and would not be budged. Frodo looked down, and noticed a scrap of brightly colored cloth wound tightly about the iron screw in the hinge. With a struggle, and with Mr. Butterbur holding onto the back of his waistcoat to ensure that he didn't tumble out the window while the Wetleafs watched anxiously, Frodo pulled it free.
He had seen this same polka-dotted pattern of red, yellow, and blue only yesterday, on the clothes the Trufoots had worn during their performance in the square.
Mr. Butterbur recognized it too. "There," he said. "That proves it! It must've been them!"
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