Chapter 31 Case File 1: Botanical Garden Mystery (13)
Holly and the butler had been ruled out as suspects, and everyone's attention immediately focused on Whipson and Peramine.
Andrei had a wicked smile on his face: "Do you two have anything to say?"
He clenched his right hand into a fist and pointed his thumb at the skeleton behind him. "Let me introduce to you all. This scary-looking skeleton is a lich. She can sense the scent of your emotions. She'll know if any of you are lying just by smelling it."
Whipson panicked immediately. He raised his hands and admitted, "Wait, I was the one who delivered the magic dish, that's true! But I just saw a red light flashing outside through the crack in the door, and I got upset so I got up to check it out!"
"For some reason, the servants didn't respond. I was worried that no one would deliver the magic dish and it would affect the harvest of the nightshade flowers. So I quickly went to the basement to get the magic dish and hurried to the greenhouse to deliver it."
"If that's the case, why didn't you hand it over to Holly?" Andre asked.
"It was the middle of the night, dark and cold outside, and I didn't want to stay in the botanical garden for even a minute longer. I put down the magic vessel, knocked on the door, and came back." Whipson spoke quickly. "The reason I kept it a secret was because of what happened with Holland! I was afraid of being mistaken for the murderer!"
His emotions were extremely mixed and chaotic. Jiang You took a deep breath and dry heaved in disgust.
Whipson: “??!”
Andre glanced at Jiang You with a half-smile, then looked at Whipson and said, "Let's go to the botanical garden and recreate the situation."
After a day of hard work, it was almost dusk. The botanical garden was just behind the mansion, separated from it by only a low fence.
The basement was near the back door of the mansion. When everyone came out of the back door, they saw the golden afterglow of the sunset shining on the treetops, dyeing all the trees, flowers and plants a golden and red beauty.
"It's beautiful, isn't it? The sunset here!" Aunt Wolf Talia exclaimed. "It's been over ten years, and I still remember the sunset here. It's so beautiful!"
Jiang You's thoughts lingered for only a second on the beautiful sunset. As she followed the others into the botanical garden, her eyes couldn't help but glance towards the woods on her left and the fields on her right. Wow! What did she see? To her left! Cherry trees, apple trees, pear trees, peach trees, grapefruit trees, greengage trees, black plum trees, bayberry trees... Countless and diverse fruit trees, planted in various categories, formed dense forests!
Look to the right! The vast fields are neatly divided into plots, and seasonal vegetables and fruits are planted in an orderly manner.
Juicy little greens, amaranth, asparagus, lettuce, spinach, and all sorts of green vegetables she couldn't name thrived on the ridges of the fields. Climbing cucumbers, bitter melons, loofahs, pumpkins, and green beans climbed neatly on the bamboo lattices, some blooming, others already bearing small fruits, heralding the impending harvest. Strawberries, requiring meticulous care, were planted in the greenhouses, their branches already laden with large, bright red fruits...
I don't know what the tarpaulin is made of, but it shimmers with rainbow light in the sunset. It doesn't look like an industrial product like plastic, but rather some kind of magic or alchemical product...
Looking further out, she could vaguely see rice paddies, soybean fields, and even more magical and non-magical plants from another world that she couldn't recognize.
The air is filled with the power of natural magic. As a lich, she can identify several types - temperature control, humidity control, soil moisture control... It is almost comparable to the precise control of off-season planting technology in modern greenhouses!
She clenched her bone claws, and the soul fire almost burned her non-existent eyebrows: "Is this heaven?!"
—It was saved, her brewery was saved! No more scraping around in her backyard to find ingredients! As long as she could help Andre solve this case, with Aunt Wolf's connections, she wouldn't have to worry about kidnapping Holly, the small supplier!
The look in her eyes when she looked at Holly also changed instantly, becoming passionate, kind, and benevolent!
Before, Andrei had inexplicably called her over, and she'd been whetted by Aunt Wolf's half-finished gossip, so she'd come to join in the fun with a purely gossipy mindset. But now it was different. This was a supplier! A supplier of countless vegetables, fruits, and magical plants!
All delicious foods in the world come in two varieties: meat and vegetables. If you had a botanist with a botanical garden as your supplier, wouldn't that mean you could dominate the food industry? As the saying goes, "A good cook cannot cook without rice." No matter how many recipes or how good the sauces are, you still need the ingredients!
Even if this family uses as much plastic as disposable biodegradable lunch boxes, it doesn't matter, as long as they can grow delicious fruits and vegetables and don't cheat their business partners...hiss, she has already started to miss the blanched choy sum from her hometown!
Add a tablespoon of salt and a tablespoon of oil to the boiling water, then add the juicy green vegetables and boil for ten seconds. Remove from the heat, then pour a sauce of minced garlic, soy sauce, and oyster sauce over them, then drizzle with a little hot oil! The familiar sizzling sound will instantly fill the air with fragrance, and the aroma will spread far and wide!
Of course, if you prefer something light, you can skip the last step of adding oil and just add soy sauce for a wonderful taste... Well, she has to make soy sauce first, then make oyster sauce... And then she has to see if there are any creatures like oysters in this magical world...
Wait! She had forgotten that the most crucial step was to solve the "small" problem of not being able to taste! Auntie Wolf's taste translator was certainly useful, but it was nothing compared to actually eating the real thing yourself!
The more the skeleton thought about it, the more excited he became, and a faint fire of excitement ignited in his soul.
Jericho: "...Master, that skeleton looks like it's about to catch fire."
Andre: "Well, don't worry about her."
He walked straight to the edge of the flower bed. There was no corpse in the middle of the flower bed. A large area of flowers in the center was flattened, but their outlines could still be vaguely seen.
Andre looked up in the direction of the mansion. The nearest building was the tower. He looked at Pertmin and asked, "Can you see the flower bed from the tower?"
"It's certainly possible during the day and on moonlit nights." Pertmin, understanding the meaning behind Andre's words, was quick to the music. "Not on a double moon. On such nights, you can't see your hand in front of you. The moonlight tonight is still very dim. You'll see when you go upstairs."
Andre nodded, and he led everyone to the real first scene. This was the deep forest with dense trees. If it was a double moon night, it would definitely be pitch black and full of ghosts.
"Then the question arises," Andrei said, "This is the real location where the murder took place. If the body was simply dumped here, it would be concealed and easy, and difficult for anyone to find. Why did they specifically move the body to the flower bed?"
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