Chapter 230 Case File 3: The Mysterious Shadow at Rose Villa (6)
"Let me guess, the sponsor is very dissatisfied with your decision?" Andre guessed that Little Bone, as a lich, and himself who followed her should be the biggest variables in the entire party.
"I don't know," Yadra said. "I've never met the sponsor, and I don't know if he came to the party. He never told me anything about it. Then again, I don't even know if 'he' is a man or a woman. I just subconsciously feel it's a man... But even if he didn't come in person, he must have sent someone! The person who knocked me unconscious and put me in this cage must be him or one of his men!
"While imprisoned here, I pondered quietly in the darkness for a long time, and finally came to a conclusion - the financier planned this gathering with the intention of killing everyone he wanted to kill and then pinning all the blame on Madame Butterfly. Our troupe, or rather, me, who plays Madame Butterfly this time, is his chosen scapegoat!"
"Do you know who knocked you unconscious?" asked Jiang You.
"I don't know. I had just received the news that the third body had appeared and was rushing to the front hall when someone hit me hard from behind." Yadra showed Jiangyou the bump on her head. "But on the way to this place, I vaguely woke up once and saw the figure of a tall man. But I was too confused at the time and couldn't recognize who it was."
While they were talking, Andre finally unlocked the cage. He opened the iron door and let Yadra out.
"Let's go, we have somewhere else to go," he said.
"Where?" asked Yadra.
"The ice cellar below... or should I say, the morgue."
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There were three dead, but only two canvas body bags lay quietly in the ice cellar. This was not surprising. Because the flames of the last body were difficult to extinguish, and it had broken into countless pieces, Andre was unable to collect the body in the rain, so he could only examine it and hurried back.
"That means Baron Chandler's body and Victor Van Neumann's body should be placed here," said Jiang You. "Baron Chandler was a fat man, so it shouldn't be him."
"What do you mean it's not him?" Andre looked at Xiaogutou in confusion as he swiftly opened the canvas bag that wrapped Victor's body. Strangely, what was revealed in the canvas bag was not Victor's face, but a male puppet servant that Andre had never seen before.
Takumi Yuu searched the doll and pulled out a name tag. "I think we've found our missing butler, Luke."
"This is what happened..." Detective Takumi Yuu slowly came online, putting on a 'mystery show' attitude. "The murderer strangled Victor, which was probably unplanned. Victor himself was not on the guest list; he got the attached letter from Vivian. Therefore, he should not have been on the sponsor's assassination list. But he died anyway. Victor must have witnessed something, such as catching the murderer killing Baron Chand, or seeing the murderer dressed as a woman.
"Perhaps Victor didn't realize who killed Baron Chandler at first, but later came to his senses and figured out the murderer's identity. And the murderer somehow knew about this... Maybe Victor thought he had evidence against the murderer and wanted to make a deal with him?"
"It's possible." Andre nodded. "Victor's upbringing by Baron Neumann has made him gloomy. His low self-esteem has only made him arrogant. If that were him, he might overestimate his abilities and see this as an opportunity to make a name for himself."
"So the murderer easily strangled him, moved Victor back to his room, forged a suicide note with forged handwriting, and faked the scene of his own hanging... Unfortunately, no one believed him. When one plan failed, he came up with another. He reused Victor's body, poured an alchemical potion on it, threw the burning body from the roof, and even put his own golden hair on the body to make it look like he had been murdered."
"So, the murderer is still Valentine." Andre snapped his fingers and followed Jiang You's reasoning: "He has always had the token of the puppet butler Luke, which allows him to enter and exit the secret passage freely. First, he used the hot spring secret passage to kill Baron Chandler, and later used the secret passage to steal the body. When stealing the body, in order to prevent people from quickly discovering the body in the body bag, he stuffed Luke's body into it to make up the number."
The body of the puppet butler was dilapidated, with obvious signs of decay and leakage. It was probably naturally damaged due to age, and was taken away by Valentine for recycling.
"Valentin must be connected to the sponsor," said Jiang You. "The sponsor has the guest list, so Valentine knows who to ask for the covering letter. Even if Mrs. Duran didn't give him the covering letter, he would definitely be able to find a spare covering letter from the guest to attend the party. Who would suspect that the attendees had the covering letter? They were not on Madame Butterfly's invitation list!"
"Valentin even went so far as to bid for the cover letter at Baron Neumann's estate, pretending he wasn't invited," Andrei echoed. "This is to further cement this fact in our minds."
"I dare say that Baron Chandler wasn't on Valentine's assassination list at first. He wanted to target someone else, and the Baron's sudden murder was probably due to that notebook. Valentine bought the notebook, read its contents, and discovered that it contained a secret that he had to bury immediately. So, he rushed to the kitchen and asked me for nuts... No, he should have gone straight to the storage room, because the location of those two bottles of white pepper was also very suspicious!"
Takumi recalled, "I hadn't noticed the white pepper on the top shelf before! There's no way a glass bottle of this kind of seasoning should be kept in that place!"
"That's what really puzzles me. Why would he ask you for nuts?" Andre asked. "Doesn't that completely expose him?"
"Hehe!" Jiang You's jaw cracked, and she smiled widely. She pulled out a bag of peanuts and then a bag of almonds from her skull. "Because, when I saw that Baron Chandler was allergic to nuts, I put away all the nuts in the storage room! That way, no one would accidentally take them and eat them! If he didn't bring the nuts in first, he would have had to ask me for them."
She muttered, "Honestly, when I first heard that Baron Chandler had died, I thought Vivian had given him fried peanuts! I know which customers took which nut products!"
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