"Did you find out anything about how the murders are accomplished, or...?"

"Our research into the object of his fixation was strange and incoherent; when we asked him about it, the parts resolved into a complex set of firm beliefs around the murders. The king from the play he obsesses over, he says, caused them; he claims he can summon the heralds of that king, massive flying things, to kill people; he says this is how he killed his family. It seems like this belief of his goes back a few years."

"He additionally admitted involvement in the deaths of five people in the town of Clare Melford shortly before he was brought here, although his explanation for how the murders happened is... similarly strange."

"I... feel horrified that I missed this."

"It's the sort of thing you would only spot if you had time to talk to friends of friends of friends of his, and didn't have much else to do."

Terrence shrugs. He has the inclination to reassure Aarons that it was hard to find but he can't find it in him.

"He doesn't seem particularly... open about things, in addition to the things he says being obscure and disjointed. We had to come across all the individual pieces on our own, I doubt if we hadn't he would have brought it up on his own."

"Well, that is why I hired you."

"What details can you tell me? I don't want you to violate anyone's privacy."

"He ran with a surprisingly violent crowd. And he-- wanted people to join him in going to dangerous locations, without telling them that it was dangerous."

Why are we even having this conversation. Inaaya stands awkwardly behind everyone else, holding her notebook and not participating.

"I suppose we can tell you about the people who are already dead."

"There's... a surprising amount of them."

"There was a farmer in Clare Melford he paid to let him build a circle of pillars on his land. We had already been coming across depictions of monstrous birds but a lot of the substantial information about them we found out there."

This seems awfully close to telling Aarons about supernatural stuff.

Yes Sal is mentally debating whether to bring up William Way like at all.

"What happened?"

This poor guy has no idea how deep this goes.

"We talked. I can't say he liked us much. He and Roby hadn't got on at all. I think he thought we were working for him."

Terrence shrugs a little helplessly. He's not saying much. The group hadn't talked about how much to tell Aarons - he was so focused on maybe winning here - but he's not inclined to tell Aarons things that could incriminate them or Roby. He thinks the others probably shouldn't be either but hey, he's been wrong before.

But Aarons does seem sympathetic, at least, kind of looking for the truth, so that's something... "...We're not certain on Roby's intent there," he throws in, for the sake of participating in the conversation.

Deflect deflect deflect "And then there was -- well, I suppose Mr. Way didn't tell us much, but among other things he was able to direct us to Roby's manifesto, which revealed a deeper and stranger obsession with the King in Yellow that we'd realized. --Though I didn't read it, I only talked to Way, Oscar did the reading."

"...I am not sure of the relevance of the farmer?"

WHY ARE WE EVEN HAVING THIS CONVERSATION.

"Roby and his friends threatened him, and had apparently caused other trouble, too." He's not going to mention he died, on account of not wanting to get arrested himself!

"And that is how we found out about some of the stranger parts of Roby's belief system. I'm sorry, it was all rather disparate bits of information until it was all collected together."

"I'll listen."