"Not that it couldn't be natural causes," a gas leak, something else poisonous, sheer bad luck-- "But it is deeply strange. Would give anyone the creeps."

"The creepiest thing is that they all had these identical looks on their faces. Looks of joy."

"...yep. That's creepy. And we can hope it's unconnected."

"Still. Two sets of mysterious deaths we don't understand... I have an old copper's intuition here that they're all connected somehow. Not that we could prove anything."

"That intuition is worth a lot. As much as I hope it isn't-- if you think there's a good chance, I'd trust you that there's a good chance. Roby's potential release has caused a bit of a flap among the bohemians." --which technically he is helping to stir by investigating. Whoops. "If anything relevant to the case comes out, I'll let you know first."

"Thank you, Mr. Jing. I hope you have better luck solving these murders than I did."

"Thank you for your help as well, Detective."

Meanwhile--

Terrence goes knocking at the Royal Society trying to find Best or Carla. 

Everyone says basically the same thing about Ben Best. He was a hard worker, incredibly kind, a devout Christian, interested in British gods, and he disappeared a few years ago and no one has heard of him. Oddly, everyone seems very convinced that he was single.

Dammit. The single thing is definitely weird though. 

Terrence puts on his metaphorical detective hat. Maybe this guy... doesn't want to be found.      

Alternatively, maybe he died somewhere. Both are strong possibilities. Crack detective work, he thinks to himself. Very helpful.

Someone suggests that Terrence go drinking at the Royal Society pub; maybe alcohol will loosen a few tongues and turn up some gossip, if nothing else.

He's less interested in getting drunk than he used to be, ever since he read the book and his life changed, but old habits run deep, and it's hard to dismiss the appeal and sense of the suggestion. He thanks the offerer, checks out his last few dead leads, and then heads to the Royal Society pub that evening. He orders an ale and more snacks than he needs so that he can offer them to anyone he wants to chat with - a bit of grad school social strategy.

It turns out there is not a lot of gossip available here either, but it is very nice to spend some time catching up with people.

A tall, sharp-faced man says, "you spilled my drink!"

"I did not," says Terrence automatically, looking at the guy.

"You calling me a liar?"

Terrence abruptly pauses to reconsider his tack and situation. "Well, I'm simply saying that I'm not a drink-spiller. Take it easy, man, have some cheese." He gestures at the platter in front of him.

"I don't want your cheese! Do you want to take this outside?"

...Everyone else is edging away from this tall sharp-faced man who seems to have no idea how one behaves in the Royal Society pub.

"No, thank you. Are you certain? It's good cheese. Look, uh - " Terrence fishes a few coins out of his pocket. "Get yourself a new drink on me."

The man swings and punches Terrence in the face.

OW. FUCK. OW. FUCK.

Terrence collapses off his chair. His nose feels like it's crunched somewhere up near his frontal lobe, and it's spewing blood.

The tall sharp-faced man shows Terrence a knife. "I know what you're up to," he says, "and if I see you again you're dead."

Terrence's hands fly to his face. He sees the knife. He hears the man. He whimpers.

"Oh god," someone says, "are you okay?"

"Um," he says, eloquently. "...Um. I, uh. I." Terrence is shaking. Also, his voice has gone up like an octave. "I should, um. ... Who was that?"

"I don't know. I've never seen him before," the person says. "We need to get you to a hospital RIGHT away."

"yesplease."

Someone calls an ambulance.

Terrence is bundled into it and immediately faints.

Man, the Royal Society pub sucks.

The next morning, Terrence wakes up feeling a little better. The doctors tell him not to get into fistfights at the bar and discharge him. 

Not everything hurts - it's really just Terrence's face - but it feels a little like everything hurts. He has bruises from hitting the floor and shuffling from his bed to his desk chair lights up some of those to a degree that's really, objectively, disproportionate with the actual amount of damage. Tremendously unfair.

He sits at his desk, pushes papers out of the way of the typewriter, and puts in some fresh paper. He'd... intended to work on his essay, but he's gotten the bulk of it written and really needs to be in his right mind to hone it into the rhetorical saber it needs to be, and frankly, he just doesn't have that in him now. He ends up kind of lazily writing up some thoughts thus far from reading British Gods. He ties it into his own knowledge on other historical beliefs and even to modern beliefs - in things like God, or moral purpose, or the stock market - and how it's the nature of people to ferociously assign names and desires and intent to invisible forces around them. He doesn't make a value judgment about the usefulness of this work, just observes it.

It's not a good piece. It's 80% rambly and poetic and ungrounded, and 20% radically over-factual. But it's fun and distracting to spin up.