Chapter 88: I’m The New Investigator

They took me down to the basement of the mansion, where they had built some kind of prison for criminals, which was weird. Why would there be something like that under a mansion?

I stayed calm and didn’t try to fight my way out. Escaping would be easy for me, so I wasn’t worried about that. The problem was that I wanted to keep my identity and continue the mission. Escaping would basically mean aborting it.

But if things started getting complicated, with a chance of me getting stuck without a way out, of course I would act before that to keep myself safe. I’d take my safety over finishing this mission any day.

"Is this really necessary?" I asked Robert, who was standing with the guards. "You know it wasn’t me."

Robert held firm.

"It’s only to be sure, of course. You were the last one hired, so naturally you end up being a suspect."

They led me to a cell, cuffed me, and threw me inside. It was a filthy cell. I even had a cellmate: a rat.

Two guards stayed near the cell, making sure I didn’t try anything suspicious.

Well, with nothing to do, I sat in the corner of the cell and waited. Just waited. They brought me food a few times and, to my surprise, I was released the next day!

Robert came to the cell to talk to me in private. He even told the guards to leave us alone.

"There was another murder," Robert told me, his tone gloomy. "This time it was that guard we were suspecting."

"What?"

I was surprised, both because there had been another murder and because the guard was the target. I didn’t think he would be.

"And since you’re locked up, I’m certain you’re not the culprit. But I want to ask something more of you. Will you take over the investigation and find the killer, even if... even if it turns out to be my boss?"

That cleared up a lot of my doubts. Robert seemed like a good guy, someone who wasn’t involved in his boss’s schemes.

The offer was too good. Just the idea of doing something more interesting than taking care of plants already got me excited.

"I accept, of course," I answered. "I’ll do my best to find the culprit."

Robert opened the cell and took off my cuffs.

"First go to your cabin, take a shower and change your clothes, then we’ll talk. You’re filthy."

I had only spent one day in that cell, but I was so dirty I really needed a shower. I even had to piss on the floor of the cell, so imagine the state I was in.

I did what he asked and met Robert at the entrance of the mansion.

"The guard was murdered inside the mansion, in the same wing where the maid was killed. They were often in the same part of the house, so maybe that’s how they met and started having an affair," Robert explained as we walked through the mansion.

A lot of eyes turned toward me. Practically all the staff already knew I was in charge of the investigation, and even if they didn’t agree with it, Robert’s word was what mattered.

We went up to the second floor on the wooden stairs and headed to the bedroom wing. The guard’s body was lying in the hallway.

I walked over and crouched down to examine it. It was my first time being an investigator, and even though I had read and watched a lot of stuff about it, doing it in real life was a whole different thing.

But my sharp senses would help me a lot in this investigation, no doubt about it.

"How did he die?" I asked.

There was a doctor in the mansion who had been handling the details about the bodies and the murders. Robert handed me a paper with all the information written down, including the other murders.

"They were all killed the same way. Some kind of piercing weapon. The doctor believes it’s something like a dagger, like the ones found in rifts or made by skilled blacksmiths."

"So it’s not made of a common material?"

"Probably not. The gardener and the maid were weaker, but the guard had the power of a B-rank hunter, and his body was still pierced easily. That means the dagger isn’t ordinary."

Robert was a sharp guy, no doubt about it.

Even knowing how each victim died, that didn’t help me much in finding the killer. Anyone could wield a dagger like that, and the killer wouldn’t be dumb enough to leave the weapon out in the open for me to find.

But there was something. Robert, and whoever else was handling this investigation, were focusing way too much on the crime scene, which was normal, but I couldn’t ignore WHERE each of the victims went before they died.

The mansion was big, but it was locked down. Nobody was leaving through the gate, and nobody had come in. Except me, of course.

I stood up and looked around the body, but found nothing. No object left behind by the killer. The only thing I could see were traces of mana. They were faint, almost gone.

Not because the person who left them was weak, but because they were skilled!

The murder had happened only a few hours before I got to the scene. The mana traces should have been more abundant, easier to notice for a trained eye, but they were almost gone. The killer had fine control over their mana, which let them use a lot of their strength without needing much mana at all.

"I’m going to check another place," I told Robert.

"May I ask where?"

I decided to share what I had in mind with him. Robert was the one who got me out of the cell and put me on the investigation, and he seemed to trust me.

"What connected the people who died?"

Robert frowned.

"Well, at first, only that they worked in the same part of the house, and like you pointed out, they were having a secret romance. But they didn’t know each other beforehand, and they didn’t have much daily contact to talk, I believe."

"Right. But remember what I told you, Robert. Unlike everyone else, I saw the two of them sneaking around kissing near my cabin, and I think you and me, and Joyce too, since she overheard our conversation, are the only ones who know about that secret romance."

"Both victims went near my cabin at night before they died, only a few days earlier. What if, when they went there to kiss, they ended up seeing something they shouldn’t have, and that’s why they were silenced?"

I was pretty confident that was the case. It was the most plausible thing. There were too many coincidences. Right after they went to that part of the garden, they turned up dead? I didn’t believe it was by chance.

If it was only one of them, maybe, but both? No way.

Robert had so much on his mind that he hadn’t even remembered that detail.

"True, you have a good point. Tell me if you find anything over there. I need to calm everyone down and get this body out of here."

I said goodbye to him and went to my cabin, or rather, near it. I tried to remember that night when I saw the two victims kissing, hidden behind one of the trees not far from my cabin.

It was dark, and I was sleepy, looking at them for only a few seconds. So finding the right tree was harder than I had imagined, especially with so many around.

That part of the garden was more... rustic? If you can call it that. It was full of trees and denser bushes, almost like a small forest inside the property itself. From what Joyce had shown me, the gardener usually didn’t take care of those plants.

But what if the old gardener had decided to? That would already link all 3 victims to the same place, which made me even more confident that something was there.

I went from tree to tree, standing in the same spot the two victims had stood, looking at my cabin window and trying to figure out which tree was the right one based on the angle I saw that night.

It took about 10 tries, but I finally found the right tree. It was exactly the same one I had seen that night.

I looked straight at the tree, trying to find anything strange. Nothing. It was exactly like a normal trunk. I felt kind of stupid staring at a tree trunk thinking I’d find something extraordinary...

I crouched down next to the tree, searching for anything. The grass was tall and dense, but after pushing it aside a bit, I found something. It was a handkerchief, the kind people use to wipe off dust.

I created a glove using the cube and picked up the handkerchief. It was white, with nothing written on it. It definitely belonged to the maid who died, the one who had been kissing the guard at this very tree. At least that confirmed I was looking at the right tree.

I stored the handkerchief and started exploring the surroundings. There was definitely something in that little forest, close by, that caused the deaths of those two employees.

But what did they see that night?