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Turgon took a long puff of his long pipe, using that time to ponder the most fitting words to describe the grisly scene that lay before him. In the end, he decided on: "This is… most heinous."
Finrod Felagund, his best friend for four Ages of the world, dead. Again. His body left naked, chained, and blindfolded. Locked in the cellar of his own home. Forced to kneel, suspended even after death had claimed him by the iron fetter clamped around his throat.
Turgon looked to his companion standing beside him and said, "It must have been horrible for you."
Finrod Felagund, clad only in the drab shift and slippers of the freshly Returned, his golden hair unbraided and unadorned, nodded solemnly. His eyes were wide, fixated on the sight of his own body. "Yes. Awful."
Stepping forward into the windowless room, lit only by the soft glow of crystalline lamps set into the walls, Turgon said, "We must get to the bottom of what happened."
"What? No, you don't need to do that," Finrod said. "I really only needed to borrow that spare key I gave you so I could get back in here. You didn't have to come along with it."
Turgon drew his pipe up to his lips once again for another puff. "I'm glad I did. You shouldn't have to face the scene of your own murder alone."
"My own murder," Finrod repeated.
"Well, yes," Turgon said. "It's really very fortunate that Námo let you Return so quickly. Judging by the condition of your… I'll come right out and say it, your former body, it can't have been more than an afternoon since it happened."
Finrod drew his lips tight. "You would be right. Námo and I agreed that it would be best for everyone that I spent as little time as possible in the Halls."
Turgon nodded. "I've always admired your resilience, Ingo. We may not have found your body for some time, otherwise." Shifting his focus back towards the scene, he added, "We'll have to tell your father."
"I see absolutely no need to tell my father about any of this."
"Finrod, you were slain in a most gruesome manner — a manner that I can't help but notice is awfully reminiscent of your first death. Look at you: chained hand and foot."
"Mmhm."
"Stripped of all clothing and dignity."
"Yes, that too."
"In the dark." Turgon glanced around at the permanent wall installations illuminating the room, then at the blindfold covering the body's eyes. "Or, in a metaphorical dark."
"Sure." Finrod's voice grew ever more strained.
"Entirely at the mercy of your captor."
Finrod responded to that with only a choked noise. Turgon looked over at him in alarm, and saw that he had grown deeply flushed. Of course he would be flustered — Turgon was forcing him to relive the experience of his death yet again. It must have been harrowing.
"Apologies," Turgon said, bowing his head to demonstrate his sincerity.
"No need." Finrod nevertheless still refused to meet Turgon's eye.
"The point being," Turgon concluded, with a momentary pause for another momentary puff, "that this seems to be a death scene designed specifically to torment you. And if so, there could very well be a serial murderer at large in Valinor as we speak, threatening the safety of the public, who could do the same to anyone else at any time."
Turgon spared a moment to shudder in sympathy, a rippling that pulsed through his very core. Then he studied the door they had just entered, as it was the only means in or out of the room: it sported matching keyholes on both sides. "And whoever did this stole your key as well, if they locked it from the outside before fleeing. The lock is compromised; you'll have to have it changed."
Finrod gave Turgon a flat look and said to him, "Turno. Everything is fine. If you must insist on staying, you can help me clean up, at least." With that, he strode towards himself.
"Wait!"
Only a few steps away from his own body, Finrod looked back and did indeed wait for Turgon to continue.
Turgon rushed to explain, fishing around in his robes for a spare sheaf of parchment and pen while he did so, "I know the sight must be distressing to you, but at least allow me to catalogue the scene before we do."
Gesturing towards his chained and naked and dead self, Finrod asked, "Do you really feel the need to catalogue this?"
"Yes. Preservation of evidence is of the utmost importance if we wish to have any hope of apprehending your slayer."
Finrod's hand rose to pinch the bridge of his nose. It must have been a painful thing to confront, even if Námo had deemed him fit to Return alarmingly soon. Turgon decided to stop bothering him so directly until he was ready to speak of it on his own. He finally located his ring-bound booklet of parchment and accompanying pen, and outlined the course of the investigative process on the foremost page:
INQUIRY OF THE MURDER OF FINROD FELAGUND:
1. DOCUMENT CRIME SCENE
2. WITNESS STATEMENTS (INCL. DECEDENT)
3. IDENTIFY SUSPECTS
4. ???
5. JUSTICE
Procedures firmly in place, Turgon stooped to inspect Finrod's body. No detail could be spared in this endeavor. He had only gone so far as to label the top of the corresponding sheet with the date and approximate time when he heard the soft sound of clinking metal. Turgon looked up from the page and said, "Ingo. What are you doing. You can't be tampering with the crime scene."
"Sure I can," said Finrod, fiddling with the shackle around one of his wrists. "It's my crime scene."
A moment later, the shackle fell away, and Turgon caught a glimpse of something glinting in Finrod's living fingers. He hadn't yet bothered to put on any jewelry since his Return. Turgon asked, "Finrod, where did you find that?"
Finrod paused and raised the tiny key aloft. "This? It was on the floor next to my knee. My dead knee."
"Diabolical," Turgon muttered to himself, scribbling down the information as quickly as he could. The killer had left the means of Finrod's escape within reach! But poor Finrod would have had no hope of seeing it there with the blindfold he'd been forced to wear. What cruelty.
Turgon next turned his attention to the blindfold itself. It was green with gold embroidery, but the particular design was impossible to discern while folded upon itself and tied. After taking note of the specific knot used to secure the fabric around Finrod's head, he began to loosen it.
Finrod, from where he was loosening the other wrist shackle, piped up, "I was planning on leaving that there, actually. I fear I'd feel a bit unnerved looking myself in the eye after what happened."
"Of course you would feel that way," Turgon said reassuringly. "I only meant to look for any identifying clues as to the origins of the blindfold."
"Oh, that's one of my kerchiefs," Finrod said. "I have a dozen more just like it, we can toss that along with my body."
So Finrod's slayer had mocked him with his own belongings, corrupting them into instruments of torment. It was nearly as awful as being crushed by Turgon's own tower. He relived those moments on many a restless night, gripped by the unrelenting throes of its pressure. It could be felt, even in memory, across his entire body: his chest, his limbs, a tightness across his long torso and pelvis and down between his legs. There was never any hope of release, save for —
Turgon ignored the tension growing in the pit of his stomach even now to faithfully document Finrod's testimony. His friend needed him.
While Finrod moved on to freeing his own ankles, Turgon inspected the twin devices clamped around each of Finrod's nipples, linked together by a thin, delicate-looking chain. A preliminary investigative report was no place to speculate, though Turgon couldn't help but notice how the teeth on each small clamp resembled a wolf's jaw in miniature. He refrained from dictating this note aloud as he wrote. Finrod's current state was delicate enough already. There was no need to openly recount the more intimate turmoils to which he had been subjected.
Turgon's investigation then travelled downwards, to the exposed Elfhood between Finrod's thighs. It stood erect, jutting out from his kneeling legs, even so many hours after his death. Long ago, Turgon had learned of the post-mortem priapism that could emerge following a swift death, one that was particularly violent in nature. While he had yet to identify the exact cause of death in Finrod's case, this was a significant breakthrough in that process.
This observation also went unspoken.
Finrod said aloud, "You know, we'll have to find somewhere to dispose of my body." He used one hand to hold his previous head aloft by the hair while the other skillfully removed the many pieces of ear-jewelry that his slayer had neglected to remove. "I'm thinking that we take it up into the mountains, find a good volcano, and toss it in, like those hobbits did to Sauron. My father doesn't need two of my bodies lying in state in his palace. It would hardly be fair to my brothers, or to Galadriel, who hasn't even died once as far as I'm aware."
Turgon didn't respond, because it was true that High King Finarfin had exhumed Finrod's original bones from Tol-in-Gaurhoth during the War of Wrath. They currently stood on prominent display in his receiving hall. But with this view of Finrod's subsequent, yet equally dead, face and neck, Turgon noted mottled red marks peeking out from beneath the iron collar still clamped around Finrod's throat. Strangulation seemed to also be a likely candidate for the ultimate cause of his death.
Given that Finrod's ear-jewelry, his most intimate by far, had been left behind, Turgon also gained more insight into the killer's motives. This jewelry had not been claimed after the murder. This was not a burglary turned to a violent end; it seemed to be a crime with a singular, outright purpose.
There was one question remaining, then: where was the rest of Finrod's jewelry? He went nowhere without multiple baubles hanging off each limb. A killer who went so far as to strip rings from fingers and wrists, to debase Finrod so thoroughly in so many other aspects, should have no qualms about stripping rings from ears as well.
Turgon stood to his full height, took another long puff of his long pipe, and surveyed the room in its entirety for any more clues. And there, in a shadowed corner of the room, was a finely woven, neatly folded robe that Turgon knew by sight alone to be one of Finrod's. He approached it and saw a small trove of golden adornments glimmered, nestled on top of the robe itself. A few steps closer, he noticed that the pieces were just as carefully arranged as the robe itself.
It seemed odd.
There was a heavy click, then a clang of iron hitting stone, then a grunt as Finrod presumably hefted the full weight of his dead body. He called over, "We should wrap me up in something. Over there in the corner, near where you're at, there should —"
"Your robes are here," Turgon responded. He inventoried each of Finrod's extensive array of jewelry as quickly as he could, which was no mean feat: a dozen elegant rings for fingers and toes, five necklaces of varying lengths, and another seven ornate bands meant to cling to wrists and ankles and biceps. All of them were of solid gold, Finrod's favored metal.
Then he bent to collect them all into his own pockets to return to their owner, and grabbed the robe itself. When he raised it, it began to unfurl to its full length. Something heavy shifted on one side and clattered onto the ground. A key had fallen out of one of Finrod's pockets. A very familiar-looking key. Turgon had one just like it on his own person.
Turgon looked back at the door, the only way in or out, which had been locked before he'd used his spare copy to open it. Which could only be locked from someone on that side. If this key had been on the inside all along, then the door must have been locked from the inside. And the only person who was inside the room afterwards was…
"Findaráto," Turgon said, voice hollow.
Finrod looked up from where he was manhandling his own corpse into a gentler repose. "Hm?"
Holding the damning key outstretched, Turgon asked, "You did this?"
With a sigh, Finrod let himself slump to the floor and stood upright, shoulders squared. "Yes, Turukáno, I did this."
"How? Why?" Turgon felt himself called to ask the least meaningful, yet most important question of them all: "What the fuck?"
"Because, Turgon, it was so. Hot." Finrod collapsed to his knees to join his body. "Oh, the thrill of it! It's hot beyond measure! Hotter than words can describe! Though I admit you put forth a good effort, yourself — you've died, Turno, you have to know what I'm talking about. My heart pounds, my head spins, I'm swooning all over again just thinking about it."
Turgon could only stare, slack-jawed, pipe dangling from his lower lip. His own heart thudded in his chest, his mind all but crushed by memory. Newly-begotten temptations formed atop them, individual stones to stack upon the all-consuming weight, goading him to —
"So yes," Finrod continued. "Weeks spent sourcing specialty chains and fetters, crafting my own personal dungeon from the foundations up…" He lifted a length of chain off of a hook attached to the wall, and Turgon saw how it could be pulled taut from one angle, and go fully slack from another, allowing the captive to free or restrain themselves with little effort.
Finrod cast his body a rueful glare and added, "And I would have gotten away with it, too, if I hadn't blacked out just before I came."
"Oh," was the only word in Turgon's vocabulary available for use. Then, two more appeared. "I'm… sorry?"
"No need," Finrod said, turning his attention back to his own body, "I'm sure I'll get it right next time."
At that, Turgon spluttered, sending his wooden pipe clattering to the floor. He barely managed to choke out, "Next time?"
"Of course there will be a next time," Finrod said. "I have until the Dagor Dagorath to perfect my craft. And if I should fail again, well, that's why you're holding on to my spare key. Not to mention that Námo and I are on excellent terms by now."
His body arranged on the floor just so, stripped of all of his own instruments of torment and self-titillating ear baubles, Finrod stood upright and stretched out his arms and back. "You know, I'm taller than I thought. We'd be better off using an old rug to carry me out. Fewer questions that way. Oh, and I'd love to change into the garb of the living. Pass me my robe, won't you, Turno?"
Turgon offered both Finrod's key to his personal dungeon and his robes in outstretched hands. When Finrod claimed them once again for himself, Turgon bent to retrieve his still-smoldering pipe from the ground, returning it to its rightful place after a quick wipe-down with his sleeve. Then he reached for his ring-bound parchment and pen once last time. He wrote, at the very bottom of the page:
CASE CLOSED. CAUSE OF DEATH: ACCIDENTAL AUTOEROTIC SUICIDE.
SPEAK TO STONEMASONS' GUILD?