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Unlike the other two rooms you have been in, the ceiling of this one is open - that is to say that the beams and the floor are exposed. Closer inspection reveals that nails have been hammered into the beams - on the sides and bottoms - as well as the bottoms of the floorboards, and it is from these nails that the forest of sausage links are hanging from. You rake your eyes back and forth, walking from one side of the room to the other ... when you finally notice something, just shy of the center of the room. Screened by the sausage and amongst the burdened nails is a solitary and empty hook, mounted into the underside of a floorboard. There are thin holes drilled into the floorboard around it too. In the light, they look pretty damned deep. They might just go all the way through ... though if that was the case, wouldn't there be at least some light coming through them? You try to get the candle in closer to see more of the holes, but you don't see anything you haven't already. You then take the candle away, thinking that you might just have missed the light - but that doesn't pan out for you either.
Concluding that it is possible that there could be something covering the holes from the top - or something stuffed inside of them - you return your attention to the hook, and now looking at it for the second time, you notice almost immediately that it simply doesn't have the same glint that the cast iron nails have. Is it made out of lead? If it was, then that would be damning. A hook amongst nails could be explained away, as could random holes in a board. But a <span class="mu-i">lead</span> hook? No, that cannot be hand waved away. Of course, you don't have the best view of it - and mounted into the floorboards as it is, even with your gangling limbs, you cannot reach it. Not with your hands at least...
Working quickly, you set the 'stick down on the floor in front of you - on a flagstone, not on grass - and then you gingerly pluck the candle off of the 'stick and set it down on another stone, one underneath the hook. You then take the 'stick up in your left hand, and with it, you are able to reach the hook. With the base of the 'stick, you press into the hook firmly as you can. You feel it give a little, but you are not sure if it has kept its shape and you have just pressed it halfway out of its mount - which would prove that it wasn't lead - or if you have managed to deform it - which would prove that it was. You get the candlestick out of the way, so you can see - but as you have it upside down, and you are holding it in your sore arm, you are not as deft as you might otherwise be - and in the process, you end up knocking a link of sausage clean off of a nearby nail. In an unfortunate stroke of luck, instead of falling onto the floor with a slap, it silently falls onto your left arm - and it is all you can do to not drop the damned 'stick. With no place else to put them at the moment, you drape the links around your neck, then get the candle back on the 'stick.
