Saturday, the biggest day in Covent Garden.
Vendors stocked up on goods to sell for a whole week and drove toward the garden market in their horse-drawn wagons or ox-drawn carts.
Along the way, Mi Gao saw at least 5,000 transport trucks, among which there were many small vendors, some carrying plates and some carrying baskets.
In fact, the Garden Market has expanded to the extreme, covering an extremely large area. It can almost be concluded that it is the largest market of this era:
From Long Acre Street to Strand Street, from Fort Street to Bedford Street, southeast, northwest, and extending at least several hundred yards in each direction.
"On every road leading to the market, there is almost nothing else to see except vegetables. The sidewalks are paved with piles of vegetables, either waiting to be sold to customers or waiting to be taken away by trucks.
The stone pavement is dyed green by the leaves trampled by shoes. Walking further inside, you can find bags of apples and potatoes, and bundles of broccoli and rhubarb. The area to the east is almost covered with hills of cabbage and radishes. Blocked. "
After retracting his gaze, Mi Gao had already completed the draft in his mind. This was his new habit——
Due to the influence of the master, the little boy will carefully observe the things he sees in life every day, and do it quickly and accurately.
After all, this is the most basic skill for detectives and investigators, and it must be practiced frequently.
"Brother, what do you want to buy today?"
"A dozen radishes, four pounds of the freshest lamb, half a basket of peas, and half a basket of broccoli."
The chat content is extremely simple.
If you want to ask why, it is naturally because the regular customers are very familiar with each other.
I saw the young man named Bob sorting out the things that Mi Gao wanted in a few seconds. During this period, almost not a second was wasted.
"Seven shillings and fivepence, right?"
"That's right, it's not like you don't know that our store's prices have always been like this."
Bob is an entrepreneurial boy. According to what he said, he created job opportunities for himself. He first worked for stall owners for free, then helped fetch things, and later helped pull goods——
In return, you get four nutritious meals a day.
A month ago, the stall owner completely let go of his trust and handed him the whip that symbolizes authority. He can help sell goods and look after the bullock carts.
And this guy is also very good at doing business. Other stall owners either refuse to do small-scale transactions, or sell some small and damaged goods to individuals. A large number of high-quality goods adopt a competition mode, and senior buyers take the goods for processing. .
Only this store has high quality and doesn't care much about shipment volume.
Of course, the unit price will also rise relatively.
But today was different. After Bob took the money from Mi Gao, he tapped it quickly and said with a smile:
"The owner is not here, so I can take charge. Seeing that you are also a regular customer, and the royal family members are visiting London today, I will charge five coppers less."
With that said, a few coins were stuffed back into Mi Gao's hand.
"Big shot? Princess Helena and Princess of Wales..."
Obviously, Mi Gao had heard about this for a long time, but he didn't know exactly when they would arrive.
"Yes, since the Queen's assassination, everyone has been worried that this city has been abandoned by the royal family, but after nearly seven days, there is finally a result."
When talking about the princesses, Bob became particularly talkative. He interrupted Michael and talked endlessly, even specifying when and which station the princesses would arrive at.
"If you are right, the place where the special train stops is not far from here. You can see them in half an hour." Mi Gao was a little excited.
The adults at the lowest level are used to seeing darkness and injustice, and they don't have much respect for the royal family. It can even be said that they are resentful, and they are also intended to be incited, or in other words, passively awakened.
Children from the lower classes, and even the middle class and aristocrats, all have a kind of admiration for the queen and her children.
When he first met Lu Li, Mi Gao went to buy dinner and liked to buy the kind of tin box of mashed potatoes with the national flag and royal emblem printed on it.
It is not difficult to see from this that he is actually a traditional patriot. Even though he lived a very difficult life, he had to go to the streets day and night to shine people's shoes.
"Take a good look at it for me, and tell me when you come to buy groceries tomorrow. We really can't live without people here."
There was helplessness and loss in Bob's tone.
Instead of watching the excitement and expressing his patriotic feelings, the street boy who had just lived a good life decided to stay by the stall and let his new friend who had just met but was familiar with him go and have a look and tell a story for himself later.
In this way, Mi Gao left the market in a hurry.
Before that, in order to prevent the vegetable basket from breaking during the process, he spent some money to buy a large reinforced basket from a stall run by an Irish woman——
These women wear the instantly recognizable, loose-fitting robes that are clipped underneath to reveal thick petticoats and boots, and wear bonnets made of velvet or straw on their heads.
There is no doubt that this is the Irish woman.
Before receiving relevant teachings, Mi Gao would not summarize this phenomenon at all.
Therefore, Lu Li is indeed a good teacher. In addition to strengthening his apprentice's body, he can teach many things.
Of course, he didn't know that his beloved disciple didn't go home immediately after buying groceries, but sneaked to the train station to join in the fun.
"looking at what?"
On Baker Street, Duke, who was temporarily living on the second floor of the clinic, walked up to Lu Li and yawned.
Immediately afterwards, there was movement downstairs.
Pan Ming, Bai Yu and others found a way to rent a high-priced apartment on the street. If they didn't have any tasks or personal schedules, they would come here on time every day.
"Relevant information about the Tully Street fire incident has been compiled." Lu Li opened the file package and said while sorting the papers, "Part of it was sent by Officer Wensley. Although Scotland Yard is not involved in this case, They’ve been paying attention.”
"What about the other parts?"
Duke slowly arranged the cup and poured in the hot water that Mi Gao had prepared in advance.
Then there is the coffee can, which contains ground coffee powder. It is not worth the price of gold, but it is not cheap either.
"morning."
"morning."
They greeted each other familiarly and sat down, sipping the fragrant coffee and waiting for Michael to bring back the bread sticks and all the ingredients needed for the day.
"The other part was provided by Yang Yuanyuan. I have to say that she is really good at collecting intelligence."
Lu Li kept stirring with a metallic spoon, and at the same time, he couldn't help but admire.
The document provides detailed information about the fire case in a clear and organized manner. It not only draws a context diagram, but also specifically marks the source of the information and gives varying degrees of evaluation.
Some field explorations, or relevant evidence found, are marked in blue.
Some claims can find more than three witnesses, but there is no physical evidence to support them, so they are marked in green.
If one or two people insist on a certain statement that lacks evidence and does not make sense logically, they will be marked in red.
Frankly speaking, Yang Yuanyuan is much more professional than Scotland Yard's intelligence officers and recorders.
"Then you read it first, and then circulate it in order. After you have read them all, you can express your personal opinions."
As he spoke, Duke poured two spoons of milk and one spoon of sugar into his coffee cup.
Silence returned to the second floor again. Everyone was waiting patiently and looking forward to taking action as soon as possible, allowing themselves to relax and move around after nearly a week.
[At five o'clock in the afternoon, workers in the warehouse are preparing for the suspension of goods trading on Sunday. The goods to be traded in the City are stacked next to the Thames next to London Bridge, near the intersection of Borough High Street and Tully Street. at.
It was discovered that a warehouse named Scoville was filled with jute, saltpeter, grease, soybeans, and spices (ginger, pepper, cochineal, and red pepper).
Not far away is a cotton warehouse, followed by a row of wharves (hay wharves), and below are the attendants' wharfs, used for trading in sulfur, grease, saltpeter, jute and paint]
[When the fire started, almost everyone left because they were off on Sunday. No one knew where the source of the fire was. In just a few minutes, the fire spread to the surrounding area. Especially when passing through the cotton warehouse, the red flames quickly rose. Channeled and directly swallowed up the hay wharf and the attendant wharf]
[The logs that stored the grease split and spilled into the river, igniting fires in the water. A brewery owner named Hodges acted as a firefighter before the London Fire Department intervened.
Then several manufacturers of combustible goods, such as Price Candle Company, stepped in to help.
About twenty minutes later, the private fire brigade was all assembled. They had five fire trucks and were unable to put out the fire.
At around 6:40 p.m., a professional team arrived at the scene, and water fireboats were also dispatched. However, the water level was too low at that time and the fire pumps could not work at all. The progress on the ground was not optimistic either. A large amount of grease flowed onto the street, igniting flames as high as ankles (this is from the account of a surviving firefighter).
When a spice warehouse full of chili peppers caught fire, the smoke emitted a strong pungent smell, blocking the view and forcing the fire fighters to retreat...]
The next step is to change the strategy.
Firefighters began spraying water on nearby buildings and streets to stop the fire from spreading, but their efforts were in vain.
Starting from Chief Braidwood, the team members began to sacrifice one by one.
After eleven o'clock that night, the house at the front of Tully Street started to catch fire. Behind it was the oil depot, which contained tens of thousands of barrels of tar, and liquid flames flowed out.
At this point, the fire reached its peak and the entire neighborhood was forced to be abandoned.
At three o'clock in the morning, with the help of people from all walks of life, the fire was controlled within an area.
Only passers-by and vendors were as happy as if they were celebrating a festival. They sat in a good position in the distance and watched this visual feast, which can be called:
Group obsession.
The crowds were fighting crazily to watch the excitement and grab a seat. Every window sill, roof, and top of the tower, wherever they could stay, was crowded with people.
The open fire lasted for at least ten days, and from time to time a huge flame suddenly shot into the sky. Capitalists, regardless of size, all suffered heavy losses.
[But the poor benefited from the fire. Men and women from almost all nearby neighborhoods, with their children, jumped into the unfired sections of the river to collect the grease floating on it.
It didn't take long for the shipowners to react and were busy collecting precious oils. They were extremely diligent and unwilling to stop for a moment.
Meanwhile, the Dukes and Councilors visited the still smoldering ruins and ordered the survivors of the fire brigade to exhume the body of the chief.
It was at this stage that the mass madness ended. People crowded every path leading to the ruins, waiting silently for the body of the upright gentleman to be transported out...]
After reading it patiently for about half an hour, Lu Li breathed a sigh of relief and handed the document to Duke who was next to him.
To put it bluntly, he did not find many valuable clues, but he only had a clear understanding of the ins and outs.
At first glance, there may not be much suspense about this tragedy. It is most likely that a temporary worker lacked safety awareness and threw away the cigarette ashes or cigarette butts that were not completely extinguished, and it happened to be not far from flammable materials.
However, in this current world where spiritual waves are returning, you can tell with your toes that things are by no means simple, and there must be some big secrets hidden there.
But... where should I look for clues?
The fires that lasted for several days and nights, with the help of various combustibles and explosives, burned most of the area to red ground.
Then, there was another heavy rainstorm, washing away any remaining clues.
Thinking of this, Lu Li couldn't help but feel a headache. No matter how powerful an investigator is in investigating a case, there must be a direction in which he can work hard.
As for using cheating devices and traveling back in time and space again, it won’t work either——
The mysterious pocket watch can take the user back to the past up to twelve hours, and to the future in the same way.
First go to the original fire point and take a look. If there is an area such as a basement, there may be a certain chance of finding something.
at the same time.
Duke, who quickly browsed through the documents, was amazed. He really admired Yang Yuanyuan. Her ability to collect information was rare.
In order to verify certain claims and make the conclusion more convincing, the girl made a special trip to the court.
From the time the fire broke out until now, the courts have been filled with people accused of theft for pulling grease from the water. In the eyes of impartial judges and respected capitalists, although the grease has flowed into rivers and sewers, it still belongs to the owner.
A second-hand dealer was accused of buying more than a ton of such grease from residents. The legal owner of the grease was very practical and sold it on the street and in the market.
This confirmed one thing. There were supernatural factors involved in the fire, but there were also physical factors involved. The opponent was not as exaggerated as imagined, and could burn several blocks and the Thames River for days and nights.
While everyone was thinking and discussing, the princess train arrived at the Financial City Railway Station.
It has been a week since the last assassination of the Queen, and the public appearance of the main members of the royal family has too much significance.
Therefore, as soon as the train stopped, the crowd immediately burst into enthusiastic cheers, especially someone in the front row shouted that they saw Her Royal Highness the Princess, and the high emotions of the onlookers boiled over again.
"Take off your hat!"
the men shouted.
"She is coming!"
the women shouted.
Everyone rushed forward as far as they could, waving hats and handkerchiefs, and jumping up and down to see the princess.
Mi Gao, who was holding the basket, used his body advantage to squeeze to the front. He was only a few steps away from the princess.
