Volume 2 - CH 5.1

—monologue 4—

Serves you right.

I tried my best not to show it on my face. I had to appear sad, surprised, shocked.

Fortunately, no one seemed to notice. I feared that I might have screwed up, but it seems that my worries were unfounded.

After hearing what he said last night, I could not allow him to live any longer. I have my own plans, and they were on the way.

I’ll kill the other guy as well.

The only one stealing that thing and driving away is me. Not them.

Not them.

Chapter 5: A Secret Sleeps in the Forest

It was a little past noon when a carriage arrived at the valley where the nameless village was located. It had come from Horovitz, a town at the foot of the mountain, and had climbed the steep, thorn-covered mountain road.

The village was so disturbed by the unexpected death of the guest that it suspended its Midsummer festivities. Villagers, including the village chief, had gathered in the dining room of the gray manor for a discussion. When a young man standing guard on the turret noticed the carriage, he lowered the drawbridge with the others to welcome the new guest.

A foppish young man with blond hair and blue eyes, clothed in a fine silk shirt, silver cuffs sparkling on his wrists, struck an arrogant pose as he looked up at the drawbridge.

Slowly he crossed the drawbridge.

The young men on lookout watched the new guest from above, dumbfounded by his strange hair shaped like a bent drill.

In the gray manor, Victorique de Blois used the commotion to sneak into a room that was off-limits to outsiders. The new guest was, in fact, Grevil de Blois, and he came here in pursuit of his petite and beautiful, yet mysterious little sister.

She found herself in a room down the dark first-floor hallway—the study where the murder took place twenty years ago.

The study was quiet.

Dust had accumulated on the bookshelves and desks, and sunlight streaming in through the half-open, blue velvet curtains had tarnished the floorboards in places. No one had entered the room in some time, it seemed.

Victorique gently opened the door and stepped in. She coughed as her small and light footsteps caused dust to rise. Holding her breath, she surveyed the study.

It was a small room, furnished with a writing desk, a huge bookshelf, and a large chair with curved legs. An iron candlestick sat on top of a chest. The desk, chair, and everything else was big and lavish for such a small room.

A long display shelf had been built into one of the walls, and inside the glass-fronted cases were a variety of antique weapons, presumably used by knights in the Middle Ages. Heavy spears made of iron and sharpened oak branches, long swords, among others were crammed into the shelf.

Next to it was a large grandfather clock. The fact that it was working indicated that it was being maintained. The pendulum was swinging idly. The dial was old and faded, but still discernible.

Victorique stopped and stared at a spot on the floor.

Her small lips parted.

“There was a body lying here.”

Her gaze shifted a little.

“And gold coins lay scattered over here.”

She closed her eyes.

“Why was there a pile of gold coins on the floor? There must be a reason. There must be. This is a fragment. A fragment of chaos. It will form a part of the whole piece. Think… Think!”

Her green eyes slowly opened. She glanced back at the door.

“And Cordelia came in,” she mumbled. “Opened the locked door. There was no one else but her. The time was supposedly twelve o’clock midnight, but it’s not completely established. Then Cordelia found the body. What about the window?”

She scurried to the window, raising dust in her wake. She flung the curtains open, and dust billowed like smoke. She looked out the window and shook her head.

Outside was a sheer cliff. She could hear the muddy stream rushing past far below.

“Not here,” she murmured. “They didn’t pass through here. The culprit must have gone out the door. A murder took place in what should have been a completely ordinary study.”

Victorique clenched her pearly teeth. “Mom!” she mumbled.

“What are you doing?” said a soft and gentle voice.

Victorique gasped and turned around.

Harminia was standing there. She had opened the door without a sound. The maid stared down at the little intruder with a reproachful look. Victorique pursed her lips tight.

“Elder Sergius forbade anyone from entering this room,” Harminia said.

“Why is that?” Victorique asked.

“Why, you ask?” Harminia cocked her head, perplexed. She looked like a broken doll.

“Perhaps because there are things he doesn’t want other people knowing?” Victorique continued.

“What do you mean by that?”

“There is another truth hidden in the incident that took place in this study.”

“Heavens, no!” Harminia laughed.

Her chuckling continued for a while before Victorique cut her off. “Sergius is a man who does not allow objections. I assume that no one could voice their opinion on his decisions as village chief, and that still continues to this day. But I wonder… Perhaps he forbade me from entering the study because deep inside, he feels that his theory was wrong? Or there are things that he doesn’t want others to know about. Am I wrong?”

Harminia’s laughter grew even higher. Eventually, her voice trailed off, and her pale, ghostly face showed signs of fear.

Her eyes bulged, the pupils hollow and blank, as though peering at nothingness. Red capillaries ran across the whites of her eyes. Shaking her head, Harminia let out a deep breath.

“What’s the matter?” Victorique asked.

The maid took another deep breath. “Actually, something’s been bothering me for a long time. I couldn’t really say it before.”

Victorique watched her intently.

Slowly Harminia approached her with silent footsteps. “I was in this manor the night of the incident,” she said in a low, reverberating voice. “I remember what happened that night and the subsequent commotion. But I was only six years old at the time. I was terrified of Cordelia and the crime she committed. When I was asked to accompany her during her fever dreams, I refused. I was scared. When the criminal was finally banished from the village with only a few belongings, I felt relieved. Afterwards, I got a fever. That’s how scared I was of Cordelia, of the criminal’s presence.” She then went silent.

The whites of her eyes grew wider, and the pupils moved. It was hard to tell where she was looking. She bent down and brought her face close to Victorique’s cheek.

“But even after Cordelia was banished, the misfortune didn’t follow her out of the village. Over the next twenty years, the village changed little by little. It somehow lost its colors, like a lonely painting in black and white. And fewer children were being born. The misfortune remained in the village. Then a horrifying thought occurred to me. What if…” She did not continue.

“You think the criminal might still be in the village?” Victorique asked.

Harminia’s mouth was shut tight.

“Elder Sergius made a valid point,” the maid continued. “It was easiest to believe that Cordelia was the culprit. The door to the study was locked from the inside, and only Elder Theodore and Cordelia had the key. There was no one else inside. No one but Cordelia would have been able to stab Elder Theodore. Of course, there are things we’re not sure about. We don’t know about the gold coins scattered on the floor, or the fact that everyone had varied testimonies about the time. Nevertheless, the fact remains that Cordelia was the closest to being the culprit.”

“Hmm…”

“But!” Harminia suddenly exclaimed, her eyes bulging even further. “As I grew up, I realized that there was something wrong with this scenario. Elder Theodore was stabbed in the upper back. The dagger was said to have been buried to the hilt. But Elder Theodore was a grown man, while Cordelia was a fifteen-year-old girl. They had different heights.”

With a bright smile, she put her hands together, raised them up, and swung them down from above as hard as she could. For one chilling moment, an invisible dagger glinted in the sunlight and pierced the afterimage of a man who had died twenty years before.

“She would’ve done it like this. But why did Cordelia go all the way behind Elder Theodore? Since she was shorter, she would have to exert a lot more effort to bury the dagger deep into the hilt.”

“That’s right.”

“If I had to stab a man bigger than me, I would do it like this.”

Harminia held the invisible dagger in front of her belly and charged straight forward. Her eyeballs moved, and she tilted her head.

“See?” she said, looking at Victorique.

“I agree.”

Harminia suddenly turned quiet.

“Who killed him?” Victorique asked.

“I don’t know. I just thought that something was wrong.”

Harminia said no more and hurried out of the study. Victorique was left alone in the room, watching the maid as she went away.

“A peculiar way of stabbing someone,” Victorique murmured. “Gold coins scattered about. And the varied testimonies about the time…”

She shook her head. Sunlight pouring through the window made motes of dust in the air glitter. The only sound was the slow, rhythmical, ticking of the grandfather clock’s pendulum.

Click!

The grandfather clock started chiming.

Victorique’s eyes grew wide. She listened to the sound. A tinge of red touched her cheeks, and her expression brightened. She opened her small lips to say something.

Suddenly, a flapping of wings came from outside. Victorique looked up and glared out the window, annoyed for having her thoughts interrupted. Several white pigeons were flying past, soaring into the leaden sky.

Victorique’s expression turned somber. She was thinking.

Her emerald eyes quivered, eyes that burned, like green flames ablaze, yet somehow strangely cold.

Slowly, her eyes narrowed. Several seconds ticked by.

Victorique raised her head. A cold look of pure conviction was on her face.

“The Fountain of Wisdom has spoken to me. All the fragments have been reconstructed!”

She turned to the door of the study, and her face clouded over.

“But how do I prove it?”