Don't Ask, It'll Hurt If You Know - Chapter 19
I thought he would investigate properly after I said that, but to my surprise, the inspector just asked the servants a few questions before concluding it was suicide.
“This wasn’t suicide, she was murdered.”
Though I had planned to stay quiet since criminal investigation was the inspector’s domain and interfering might complicate things, I couldn’t hold back any longer.
“This maid was murdered. Please find the culprit.”
The inspector heaved a deep sigh at Chloe’s assertion.
“Lady, you shouldn’t speak so carelessly about things you don’t understand.”
“I think you’re the one speaking carelessly, Inspector.”
Chloe tilted her head askew and asked.
“Making conclusions about suicide without proper investigation. Is that really acceptable?”
“I didn’t fail to investigate, there was no need to investigate. It’s clearly suicide.”
“Why?”
“Ah, really…….”
When Chloe kept pressing for answers, the inspector scratched his head in annoyance and gestured with his chin toward the body the guards had taken down.
“If this were murder, there would be signs of struggle, but as you can see, she’s clean. Proof that the maid wasn’t attacked.”
“Just because there are no signs of struggle doesn’t mean she wasn’t attacked. She could have been drugged unconscious.”
“Where’s your evidence of drugging?”
What a foolish question. Chloe asked mockingly in return.
“Do you have evidence she wasn’t drugged?”
“That’s…….”
“I have evidence she didn’t commit suicide.”
Chloe approached the dead maid’s face, knelt down on one knee, and pointed to the rope marks clearly visible on her neck.
“Every human has survival instincts. Even someone determined to die would struggle at least a little in their final moments, but her neck is too clean. There are no rope friction marks at all.”
“……!”
The inspector’s eyes widened as if finally realizing something.
“Her fingernails are clean too, and most importantly, there’s nothing in this room she could have used to climb up. To tie a rope to that high ceiling and hang herself, she would have needed something to stand on…… but looking around, there’s nothing.”
Go ahead, try to argue against that too. Chloe’s gaze toward the inspector carried that meaning.
“…….”
The inspector glared at her with eyes mixed with irritation and anger, but that was all. His lips remained sealed as if glued shut.
To think such an incompetent person was an inspector. Suddenly worried about the empire’s future, Chloe shrugged and spoke to the guard who had come with him.
“Please call another inspector. This time, a qualified one who will investigate thoroughly.”
* * *
The new inspector who arrived was younger than the previous one but overflowed with enthusiasm.
“Don’t worry, Lady! I will definitely catch the culprit!”
……This time the enthusiasm might be a bit too much.
Still, since catching the culprit would be good for her, Chloe left him with words of encouragement and returned to her room.
She sat in her vanity and wrote down everything that had happened since her riding accident in chronological order.
“So many things have happened in just two days.”
The problem was that all these events ended with question marks. Not a single period had been placed.
Among the numerous mysteries, what she was most curious about was ‘how did I end up in Bianca Lloyd’s body?’
“It must have been dark magic for sure.”
Though Chloe was a complete novice when it came to magic, she immediately recognized that the magic circle she saw then was evil dark magic.
After all, magic that uses the blood of living creatures could only be dark magic.
She needed to know what kind of dark magic it was to look into ways to break the spell, but the magic circle, which was the only clue, had vanished without a trace.
“And the maid who presumably cleaned that room thoroughly was murdered.”
Which meant the culprit who killed the maid didn’t want what happened in that room to leak out.
This simultaneously meant the culprit was closely connected to the magic circle, so finding them was essential.
“But why did the culprit stage the maid’s death as suicide and leave her there?”
They didn’t need to go through such trouble, disposing of one viscounty’s maid should have been easy.
Moreover, it was too sloppy for a staged suicide. There were many signs of murder that the first inspector would have found if he had investigated even slightly diligently.
“……Could it have been intentional?”
The thought crossed her mind that perhaps they deliberately left the maid’s body there as a warning to herself, or rather, to Bianca. Chloe gripped her fountain pen tightly.
Until now, Chloe had thought Bianca was a ‘victim’ like herself. She had assumed Bianca was an unfortunate sacrifice caught in someone’s evil scheme, but now it seemed that might not be the case.
Bianca Lloyd might be working with the culprit who killed the maid.
‘It’s too early to jump to conclusions.’
