Two hours later, Eastern District Police Station, morgue.
The rain stopped, and the blue-black night sky in the distance was filled with the whiteness of dawn. Arthur's body has been found, and Arthur's red hair is vaguely exposed under the white cloth wrapped in the body. It is cold, damp and stiff.
The agents from the Bureau of Investigation have not arrived yet. Ed stood straight and silent, as if time had stopped.
With a quick and wet pace, someone finally arrived.
Different from the "Mr. Eaton" Ed expected, the young lady in front of him had a pair of beautiful deep emerald green eyes and eyebrows like night shadows. She wore a pair of pitch black knee-high boots, white satin breeches with buttons on both sides, and a black and gray double-breasted coat that was draped around her body like a cloak.
But at this moment, her eyes were filled with light red bloodshot eyes. Her hair was soaked by the rain and stuck together in locks. The water droplets flowed along the dark gray scarf and onto her black and gray double-breasted coat.
Her eyes swept across Ed, and she went straight to Arthur's body, slowly uncovered the white cloth covering his forehead, and then gently covered it again.
Ed saw that her fingers were trembling slightly, and it was obviously not the best time to talk to her at this time.
So he looked at the door, where a second footsteps came:
The man who walked over looked a little bit older, with narrow and slender cheeks, and deep, deep eyes, as gray as the clouds on an autumn night. The nose is as sharp as an aquiline, the short hair is parted to the side, the beard is cleanly shaved, and the gray sideburns are left to the earlobes.
"Bernard Eaton, Criminal Investigation Consultant. That's my other assistant over there, you can call her Quinn. She rarely talks to strangers when she's depressed. I hope you'll forgive her."
He took off his black gloves and stretched out his rough and slender palms, as if giving Ed time to introduce himself.
"Edgar Waikolo, I'm sorry about Arthur..." Ed shook his hand, and the other person's palm was much warmer than he imagined.
"Arthur is an adult and he knows what he should do." His tone was calm and expressionless, as if a machine was running precisely and mechanically, "What happened?"
"Someone forged your telegram early this morning and asked us to go to the police station. We got into a rental carriage and were attacked. Arthur injured his knee during the melee, and he sacrificed his life to cover me."
"It seems that Arthur didn't understand the situation... Each of us can be sacrificed in this case, but he can't." Eaton closed his eyes. At this moment, he looked more like a tired old man with gray hair on his temples:
"Quinn, you will be responsible for the safety of Mr. Waikolo and take him back to the detective agency..."
"Wait, there is one more thing, Mr. Eaton -" Ed mustered up the courage to stand up:
"I think I know who the murderer is."
"What?" The voice came from Miss Quinn, with doubt in her tone.
"This is not a terrorist incident, and it has nothing to do with the banquet. The so-called 'cannibal secret cult' is just a cover-up trick planted by the murderer to attract people's attention."
"This is a business dispute, a naked attempt to seek wealth and murder." Ed's voice was clear and strong, like iron nails piercing the ground.
Eaton nodded and motioned for Ed to continue.
"The mysterious appearance of the group of ghouls, the controller who hanged himself, and the imprint of the banquet can indeed easily lead the mind to the extraordinary realm subconsciously. It was not until the appearance of forged telegrams and rental carriages that the murderer was exposed."
"But where did those ghouls come from? How did the controller escape the ghouls and get home?" Miss Quinn asked.
"The ghoul I encountered in the underground tunnel that night was skinny and hungry, as if it had been locked in a cage for a long time. I thought there must be some way to buy such a 'ghost creature', right?"
"Yes, the underground black market occasionally trades a small amount of ghouls for material extraction, private research, underground fighting, and other purposes." Mr. Eaton confirmed Ed's suspicion.
"That's right." Ed looked out the window, and the crimson morning glow had already filled the sky:
"...The walls of the subway are reinforced with reinforced concrete, like a solid underground fortress. It takes no one day to dig through. If the murderer wants to enter the underground tunnel, in addition to walking in from the subway station stairs or emergency passage, there is another way. The path is optional - the fan blades of the vacuum fan."
"Due to their huge noise, giant vacuum fans often need to be installed in sparsely populated areas and connected to pneumatic ducts." However, in the face of nearly a thousand horsepower of steam power, anyone can only be minced by the fan. But if someone sneaks into the control room and turns off the vacuum fan..."
"So the murderer is the controller?" Miss Quinn frowned, looking confused.
"No. He is a scapegoat. What the murderer wants is for the controller to return home alive and then die in a bizarre way to swallow up all suspicion."
Ed continued: "The murderer set the clock forward one train shift, about fifteen minutes. The controller thought he had waited for the last pneumatic subway and got off work on time - but it was actually the second to last train, so he I turned off the vacuum fan in advance and got off work on time as usual.”
"When I entered the control room, I happened to bump into the murderer setting the clock back to its original position. As an extraordinary person, he easily killed me, and then fled the scene while the ghoul attacked the carriage... As for the so-called banquet, Their symbols have not been patented and anyone can use them, right?”
Ed looked at Eaton as he spoke. He originally wanted to see a look of surprise or approval in the other person's eyes, but the other person still had that calm and focused expression. He could only continue sadly:
"Originally this was a perfect plan. But the other party didn't expect that an ordinary maintenance technician would come back to life. After learning that I was still alive, the other party obviously messed up and even forged a fake telegram to trick me into leaving the detective. They were intercepted and killed on the way."
"... I think he must be afraid that I will reveal some key clues, which is really unnecessary - he doesn't know that I suffer from amnesia and can't remember the appearance and identity of the murderer at all."
Having said this, Ed took out a piece of change from his pocket and threw it into the air:
"Who has the wherewithal and skill to forge telegrams? Who stands to benefit from the closure of the pneumatic subway? Who has easy access to license plates for rental carriages?"
Snap, Ed closed his palms, kept the coins in his palms, and imitated the driver's tone when he went to the detective agency the day before:
"We only make a small fortune, and Mr. Floyd is the one who makes a fortune."
Upon hearing the last name, Miss Quinn just woke up from a dream:
"What should we do now? Should we organize a team to raid his mansion?"
Mr. Eaton finally spoke. Although he was speaking to Miss Quinn, he looked at Ed:
"I'm afraid Floyd will not sit still and wait for death. What's more, we have no direct evidence that he is related to this incident."
"Are you just waiting for him to get away with it?" She bit her lips, her eyes burning.
Ed walked up to Arthur and held his cold, bloody palm:
"Given the heavy price we have paid, I thought Mr. Floyd would be interested in this little 'raise'..."
