In the bustling cafe, the dim orange firelight is very conspicuous. Ed lowered his head to avoid the rickety kerosene chandelier, and sat on the table in the corner with the dinner plate in his hand.
Most cafes in the East District were like this, so he had nothing to complain about at such a price.
"The case you talked about during the day..."
Before he could sit down on his butt, Quinn's breasts reached forward. Her eyes were frighteningly green at night, but luckily he had gotten used to it.
"You still want to hear it?"
"As for the specific modus operandi, you haven't finished telling me yet."
"oh--"
Ed lowered his head to melt the milk and sugar into the cup, and stirred the coffee with a teaspoon. Although drinking coffee at night seemed a bit inappropriate, he was used to the stimulation of coffee:
"He first strangled Mary unconscious, then covered her with a curtain and killed her with a dagger so that there would be no blood on her body. The dagger was nailed deep enough that he could just pull the curtain off and cover it on the canvas to fake it. A supernatural delusion.”
"But you said you could still hear Lady Mary complaining before going out. Where would he have time to take action?"
"He fabricated his alibi. He made me think that Lady Mary was still alive until the two of us went out. In fact, she had been killed long ago-"
"After the music part of that cassette, there is the audio that he had already recorded. It must have been taken from the clips of daily quarrels. Although there will be some distortion, it is enough to pass through the door and look real."
People with common sense would deliberately avoid an awkward couple's quarrel like this, or at least not stick to the door and eavesdrop carefully. Tasved made good use of this.
"So that painting is fake?" Quinn asked.
"I don't know. Buck's reaction to it is very unusual. I think the authenticity of the work is worthy of study. But at least Mr. Taswide doesn't know about it, or in other words, he doesn't care."
"Don't care?" This time her expression finally looked a little surprised.
"This is the art of the art trade. It doesn't matter whether it's real or fake, what's important is that you paid £7,000 for it, spread the horrific story, and then a murder actually happened. So it's easy for you to It can be resold for £10,000 to anyone willing to pay for the story."
"Tasvid killed his wife, just for three thousand pounds?" Quinn rarely commented on cases, but this time she looked very contemptuous.
"No, no, of course it's more than that. Let me remind you again: his full name is Tasved Boone, and his father-in-law is Jonard Boone. Do you understand?"
"...are they incestuous?" She was silent for a moment, and finally managed to choke out a sentence.
"Ahem -" Ed put down the coffee in his hand and wiped his mouth, "He is not an ancient elf royal family. In Laeria, incest marriages have long been banned."
"...This was a bridal marriage. According to Tasved's confession, his original surname was Landau. Mr. Chouinard took a fancy to him - perhaps because of his business talent, so he betrothed his daughter to him , but the child must take the mother’s surname, which is commonly known as the ‘son-in-law’.”
Such marriages were quite common in the context of the Industrial Revolution and the colonial boom in the New World. The traditional military aristocracy had to unite with the emerging bourgeoisie to find a way out, and small businessmen like Tasved who made their fortunes from scratch also needed a rich and powerful investor.
"As the business gradually grew, the power of the traditional military aristocracy also gradually declined, and Tasved no longer needed the support of his father-in-law, not to mention that he and his wife did not live in harmony. Obviously, he has been looking for opportunities to use a A 'less ungrateful' way to divorce your wife..."
"What a beast." Quinn made the plate squeak with her fork, then put half of the grilled sausage into her mouth.
"okay……"
Ed took care of dinner first. He wiped his lips with pieces of bread, stuffed them all into his mouth, and stood up:
"I have to go back to the hotel base quickly. Charlotte still needs my help to take care of her."
To be honest, he had underestimated his appetite. He was only seven-thirds full from this meal, but it was enough.
"Wait..." Quinn stopped Ed, "How on earth did you come up with this step?"
"You really want to know?" Ed smiled.
"nonsense."
"Give me the grilled sausage on your plate," he said, pointing to the half sausage left on Quinn's plate.
Quinn rolled her eyes at him, then dropped her plate angrily on his empty plate.
"Cookies, the answer is cookies."
"...that biscuit jar suddenly reminded me of the original case, remember? The 'Subway Massacre'. Freud wanted to fake this incident into a mysterious incident, just to get the Royal Society to invest in the pneumatic subway. Get out of Silvermist City.”
"Do you remember that case?"
"Of course, if you only had a few months of memory in total, your memory would be as good as mine."
Ed raised his fork again and was about to stick the sausage in, but Quinn beat him to it and brought it to his mouth:
"Okay, I changed my mind. Goodbye."
"..."
…
The man curled up in the corner of the bed, looking sideways at the void in front of him, where there were originally peeling white walls.
He once had a name and a glorious and prosperous family. But now he often forgets and only occasionally remembers.
He has almost completely lost his eyesight, but he can always see strange lights.
Light makes all the difference. Light reveals the elusive and confusing nature of things, reveals his place in the world, shines and then dies.
He talks to the doctor about those increasingly painful lights. Doctors told him to remove part of his brain so his pain would be lessened.
This made him feel restless, and his intuition told him that things were not going to be good.
The physical pain is bearable. What really made him feel so painful that he couldn't breathe was another thing——
She was fading, dying, like everything else in the world - even after everything he'd given.
With a creak, the door opened. A faint black outline of terror appeared in front of his eyes, and he could make out that it was the outline of a nurse.
"Someone came to visit you."
He reluctantly let out an unpleasant neigh, and the nurse took this as consent and turned and left.
Golden, bright light emerged from his eyes. Like an avalanche, the continuous buzzing sound drowned out all the sounds in the world, and the space split into countless small fragments. The sky, the earth, the ocean, and all the colors swirled in front of his eyes, surrounding the figure in front of him.
He remembered this person, he kept searching for that name in his mind, the only person in the world who could understand him, the only person who could understand his words——
"Buck." He sat up with zombie-like joy.
