Chapter 10
The aroma of freshly baked bread filled the entire room. I gently tore a piece of pastry along its delicate layers and picked up a butter knife.
As I generously spread luxurious butter over the soft, pristine interior of the bread, its rich, savory flavor seemed to spread through my mouth already. Savoring the warm, wholesome scent of grains, I took a sip of fragrant tea.
Crackle.
With a delightful sound, the crisp inner crust broke apart. The creamy butter melted between the countless layers of dough, blending beautifully with the bread’s moist, chewy texture, as though it were still glistening with morning dew. The combination was almost unbearably exquisite.
Mmm. What a peaceful morning.
It was a little early for brunch, but I was sitting by the window as the morning sun rose, waiting for the warm sunlight to pour in while enjoying a gorgeous spread of—
Crash! Bang! Clatter!
“Let go of me!”
“Ma’am!”
“I brought him here! I’m the one who brought him here!!”
…Hmm. Koreans ran on rice, after all. Maybe not being able to eat a bowl of white rice was giving me a headache.
My pleasant mood vanished in an instant, and I mechanically chewed and swallowed my bread.
“Detective Ariel!”
People needed proper meals to get through the day. And here I was, eating bread first thing in the morning…
“Please come out! I’m begging you!!”
Sigh.
“I caught the culprit!!”
Better to get to work than choke on my food…
I trudged down to the first floor, where the elderly woman spotted me and rushed over as though she’d just found her savior.
“Detective!”
Her disheveled hair, tightly clenched lips, and thoroughly rumpled clothes all bore unmistakable signs of a fierce struggle.
I glanced at her briefly before turning my attention toward the door. A young man I’d never seen before was standing there, breathing heavily and glaring at me with open hostility.
Well, I can already tell how this is going to go.
I’d told her to bring her son-in-law here, and she’d literally dragged him over by force. Somehow, I’d had a bad feeling from the moment she’d told me not to worry.
The old woman, whose face was once again drenched in tears, clutched my arm as though it were a lifeline and practically screamed in desperation.
“Detective! That’s him! He’s the man you told me about! He’s the one who killed my daughter!”
Judging by how she’d suddenly started addressing me so formally, she must have been incredibly desperate.
Ugh. I hate melodramatic soap operas.
Suppressing an inward sigh, I approached the young man and spoke.
“So you’re the son-in-law.”
“Are you that crazy woman?!”
“Seems that way.”
“What?”
“I don’t know exactly what the elderly lady has told you, but it seems you’ve already received a rough explanation. So I won’t bother going into unnecessary details.”
“You told her to drag me here?!”
“I don’t particularly like standing around. Why don’t we go inside first?”
I gestured toward the reception table we’d recently installed in the office, inviting him to sit down and say whatever he wanted.
The man glared at me irritably and slammed his hand against the table.
Bang.
“You told this old hag that I killed my own wife, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Of course I didn’t! What the hell are you— What?”
“I said yes.”
“Are you insane? If you’ve got evidence that I killed her, then show it to me! When the hell did I ever kill my own wife?!”
“There is plenty of evidence. I simply don’t have it with me right now.”
“What the hell are you talking about?! Are you playing word games with me? You crazy bitch! You’re trying to frame me for murder!”
Pfft.
“You’re laughing? You’re actually laughing?!”
I’m sorry to say, but I couldn’t help it.
I’d discreetly asked Henry about some of the local customs yesterday, and I was looking forward to putting that knowledge to good use.
Thanks to that, Henry had even asked me if I’d lost my mind. But who cared? As long as I solved the case, everything was fine.
“Today marks the third day since the victim, Emma, passed away. If her funeral was conducted according to the customary practices of the common folk, yesterday would have been the final day of mourning. In other words, today is the first day since Emma’s funeral concluded.”
“So what?”
“Under normal circumstances, how do you think a husband would react after his wife died?”
“Are you trying to say it’s suspicious that I came to see you a day after my wife’s funeral? Is that the evidence you’re trying to shove in my face?!”
I rose from my seat and walked over to stand beside him.
“You spent last night away from home, didn’t you?”
“W-What…?”
I quickly seized his right wrist and lifted it, meeting his eyes directly.
“The red food stain on your shirt cuff must have gotten there during yesterday’s meal. Surely, you didn’t have breakfast before coming to a detective agency at seven in the morning, already furious enough to tear the place apart. And if you’d gone home and slept, why would you put on the same shirt with a food stain on it again?”
“My wife died! I didn’t want to go home! So what?!”
“Oh dear. It seems you haven’t quite understood what I’m getting at. If I were you, the first thing I’d have done was remove that handkerchief, neatly folded and tucked into your breast pocket.”
“……!!”
I swiftly pulled the handkerchief from his breast pocket and waved it through the air a few times.
“A floral perfume. The sort of fragrance women tend to wear.”
“…I bought it recently. Turns out I accidentally bought one meant for women, so—”
“There’s a faint smell of sweat on your clothes. Your eyebrows haven’t been groomed, and your skin is covered with small scratches. There’s even dirt ingrained in your hands, probably from working in the fields. You don’t seem particularly concerned about how you dress, either. In other words, you’re not the sort of person who has much to do with perfume or cosmetics.”
I folded the handkerchief neatly again and tucked it back into his breast pocket.
“Yet this handkerchief, in particular, carries a distinct chemical floral fragrance. That suggests someone accustomed to dressing up and taking care of their appearance carefully folded it and slipped it into your clothes for you.”
“You bastard! My daughter is dead and buried, and you’ve been fooling around with another woman?!”
The old woman grabbed the man’s clothes and erupted in fury.
Apparently, he hadn’t anticipated this turn of events when he came here. Flustered, the man struggled to push her away.
With everyone’s attention elsewhere, no one would find it strange if I stared into empty space for a moment.
So, quietly, I summoned my status window.
Status Window. Tell me what the man did the last time he met his affair partner.
[Early this morning, Hans, the husband of the deceased Emma, headed to his family’s grain storage shed.
Inside the shed, where the grain harvested throughout the autumn had been stored after countless hours of backbreaking work in the fields, the harvest was piled high.
And then…
“Ah, Hans…”
“Mia, I love you. You’re the only woman for me.”
The two were busily moving their hands while exchanging lines straight out of a third-rate romance novel. It was an unbearably embarrassing sight to behold.
They were clinging to each other as if they couldn’t bear to be apart. Honestly, they might as well have dropped dead right there.
Just then, a loud shout rang out from outside the otherwise quiet storage shed.
The piece of trash known as Hans, who had been working his way toward the climax, seemed to recognize the familiar voice. He abruptly sprang to his feet, cracked the door open, and peered outside.
Beyond the door, the elderly woman who had hired the detective was sitting on the dirt ground, wailing. She had absolutely no idea what was happening inside the shed.
“Where on earth has that bastard gone?! Oh, my poor daughter! She’s been wronged! How am I supposed to bear this injustice?! Oh, you miserable son of a bitch! You worthless bastard! I’ll kill you!”
Hans, that son of a bitch who’d been tangled up naked with his mistress Mia, tossed her the thin blanket they’d shoved aside and hurriedly scrambled into his clothes.
Then, fumbling with his trousers, he hastily composed himself, opened the door, and tried to sneak away without being noticed.
“Darling! Where are you going? What about me?”
“Just stay here for now. I’ll go see what’s going on.”
Smack.
“I love you, baby.”
Ugh.
Poor Mia, who hadn’t quite grasped the situation, gazed at Hans with concern, completely unaware that she was the other woman in an affair.
“Could that old woman outside be your mother-in-law? Should I hide in here?”
…It was a truly ambitious collaboration between a shameless bitch and a shameless bastard.
“I’m sorry, Mia.”
“More importantly, you did dispose of the pit cord properly, right? It would be a disaster if the mages analyzed its composition.”
“Don’t worry. The city guard has already closed the case as a suicide.”
Mia and Hans had both been involved in Emma’s murder. To keep their affair from being discovered, one of them stayed hidden in the storage shed while the other slipped outside.
If Hans could make it home without incident, his affair would remain a perfectly concealed crime!
Would the whole sordid affair really be buried without a trace?!
“You! You little—!”
Fortunately, Hans’s attempt to escape was cut short when the old woman spotted him. His face immediately turned deathly pale.
“Oh! M-Mother-in-law! What brings you all the way out here?”
“I’ve been looking everywhere for you, you bastard! Get over here! We’re leaving right now! There’s somewhere I need to take you!”
“Why are you acting like this?! Mother-in-law, have you lost your mind?”
“I said we have somewhere to go!”
“Has this old woman gone senile?! Let go of me!”
As I watched anxiously, wondering whether the elderly woman could possibly overpower a fully grown man, our dear old lady suddenly drove her leg between Hans’s two legs!
THWACK!
“Guh!”
Something crunched.
“That’s what you get for refusing to come quietly when I told you to!”
Grabbing Hans by the hair, the old woman dragged the bastard all the way to the waiting hired carriage. She then succeeded in forcing him into it and bringing him straight to the detective agency.]**
