Cooking with Wild Game (LN) - Volume 19 - Chapter 4.1

Group Performance: The Castle Town Incident

1

This incident occurred a little over three months ago, just a few days after the people of the forest’s edge and the nobles of Genos worked together to expose the crimes of Count Cyclaeus Turan and his brother Ciluel.

“This has certainly ended up being quite the unbelievable mess,” Polarth lamented, standing at the room’s entrance.

As he listened to the noble talk, Kamyua Yoshu was crawling about the room. Meanwhile, Leito watched over his mentor from a few steps behind.

They were in the castle town, in the manor of a noblewoman with ties to the house of Daleim. Apparently, it was officially known as the house of Viscount Alphan. Spread out atop a thick reddish-brown rug was the effective head of the house, Dame Mateela.

A noble lady who had taken her last breath.

The silver dagger she kept in her bedroom for protection had been stabbed deep into her ample left breast. As of this morning, her life of fifty-eight years had come to a close.

“To think that robbers would manage to break into this mansion... Why, I’m shocked to hear that there even are any thieves in the castle town to begin with! I myself was sleeping just two rooms over. If things had gone differently, it might have been my life that came to an end instead. Just imagining it is enough to send a chill down my spine.”

“So, Lord Polarth, you were invited here to the Alphan manor for dinner, and ended up staying the night?”

“Indeed. My father and elder brother had difficulty dealing with Mateela, so such duties were always thrust upon me.”

“Such duties...?”

“Though this is no place to be saying these things, Mateela was an excessively stern woman, making it quite tiring to try to converse with her. And she compounded that with a stubbornness that led her to always believe herself to be in the right, refusing to bend in her opinions regardless of whom she might have been dealing with.”

“Ah, I see,” Kamyua Yoshu replied as his tall figure stooped further down and continued to crawl along the floor. At that, Leito’s gaze shifted from his cloaked back to the noblewoman’s corpse.

She most certainly did not have a peaceful final expression. Her face, every bit as plump as Polarth’s, was twisted with anguish and regret. The dagger must have pierced all the way to her heart. As a result, her white nightgown was stained with a huge amount of blood. It was a truly gruesome death. And the corpse had suffered another even gorier wound. The noblewoman’s right hand was missing from the wrist down.

“Mateela wore the apatite ring that served as proof of her nobility on her right ring finger. That must have been what the thief was after,” Polarth remarked while taking care not to look inside the room. “As you can see, she had quite an ample figure. I recall her once mentioning with embarrassment that at some point it had grown stuck and she could no longer remove it.”

“I see. But if they were after the ring, then just cutting off a finger rather than the whole hand would have sufficed.”

“Ugh, regardless of whether it’s a finger or a hand, I want no part of it! May whatever fiend desecrated her corpse in such a manner meet a fitting end.”

“I couldn’t agree more,” Kamyua Yoshu said with a nod, remaining kneeling as he moved over to the bed.

They were currently in Mateela’s bedroom. Right beside her corpse stood a huge bed, atop which was a dark red stain. Taking that into account, had she been stabbed while in bed and then fallen to the floor?

After carefully looking the bed over, he gave the red stain a scratch with his fingernail.

“Hmm... With this much blood loss, I suppose there was no need for doctors,” Kamyua Yoshu casually remarked, blowing the chunk of blood off of his nail. Even at a gruesome murder scene like this, he really was just the same as always.

Leito and Kamyua Yoshu had spent the previous night in the post town. In the near future, the aloof bodyguard was set to escort a noble named Welhide back to Banarm. In order to discuss the arrangements for that, he had been invited to the manor for noble visitors where Welhide was staying.

Deciding to stop in and say hello to Polarth before returning to the post town, they had paid a visit to the Alphan manor in the morning. But Leito never would have dreamed that they would come across such a commotion when they did. The manor’s servants and guards had been scrambling this way and that downstairs, without having even draped a cloth over the poor noblewoman’s remains. The pair of visitors had passed through the manor’s gates just moments after the gory incident was discovered.

Knowing no fear, Kamyua Yoshu left the bed and crawled over to the corpse. Then he poked at the lady’s plump arm and remarked, “Hmm, not much time has passed since her death.”

With a small sigh, Leito kneeled down beside Kamyua Yoshu.

“What is it, Leito?”

“Would it be all right for me to touch the dame’s remains as well?”

“It’s not up to me to decide, but why?”

“Because I’m your apprentice.”

“Hmm. I can’t quite say I follow the logic.”

Constantly watching Kamyua Yoshu’s aloof grin out of the corner of his eye, Leito carefully reached out toward the corpse’s arm. It was girthy, with a significant amount of fat. Touching it, Leito could feel that it had lost its elasticity. But sure enough, beneath that he could sense a faint warmth remaining from when she was still alive.

The noblewoman’s soul must have remained here in this world all the way up to the break of dawn. Pulling his hand back, Leito prayed in his heart that her spirit would find peace.

“Lord Polarth, would it be all right if I confirm some things about the surrounding circumstances?” Kamyua Yoshu asked, finally rising to his feet. “This morning, Lady Mateela’s granddaughter Lady Nicola visited this bedroom and discovered the corpse, correct?”

“Yes, so it seems.”

“And the bedroom window was left wide open, with no signs that the thief might be hiding in the room?”

“Indeed. And there has always been someone watching the room ever since, so surely a thief must have broken in through the window and exited the same way. It is a small mercy that Lady Nicola did not also encounter the fiend.”

“Hmm... And a servant was standing by in the antechamber from last night to this morning, so no one could have entered this bedroom from elsewhere within the house, yes?”

“Correct. That much is certain, as it is necessary to pass through the antechamber in order to reach this room from the hallway. Well, I suppose that wouldn’t be the case if the servant were to have drifted off, however.”

“But this bedroom is located on the second floor, so I can’t imagine it would be simple to sneak inside. From what I saw, there didn’t even seem to be any footholds on the wall.”

“Yet no other possibilities come to mind. If only she had locked the window before going to sleep, this never would have happened.”

At that, Kamyua Yoshu walked over to the window.

The wooden fixture opened wide toward the outside, and beyond it was a lush green garden and a brick wall. Because the top of the wall wasn’t very high, metal spikes were placed along the top. Without a good bit of preparation, it would surely be impossible to scale it in order to gain entry to the manor grounds.

Kamyua Yoshu pondered some more. “Hmm... Lady Nicola’s visit to this room was around the time they rang the second bell of the morning?”

“Yes, that is what I was told.”

That was about when Kamyua Yoshu and Leito had arrived at the manor, and less than half an hour had passed since then. Caring nothing for the tragedy that had occurred, the morning sun shone brightly through the window.

“The road would have been packed with people.”

“Hmm?”

“By the second hour of the morning, the town is already bustling with activity. If you climb the wall of a manor at a time like that, you’re certain to catch some attention,” Kamyua Yoshu said with a grin as he strolled over to Polarth. “Lord Polarth, could you tell me once more about the state of affairs since last night? This might be a more complicated incident than it first appeared.”

◇

Mateela had been in a bad mood ever since dinner. Polarth recounted that he felt bad for her family, having to put up with her grouchiness day in and day out.

At the time, her only family in the house of Alphan had been her two granddaughters. They were the first daughter of the previous head of the house, Tetia, and the second daughter, Nicola. Officially, Tetia was simply the eldest daughter of the house, and Mateela was her guardian. Tetia would eventually take a husband of appropriate lineage, and that person would officially inherit the title. According to the laws of the Western Kingdom of Selva, women could only temporarily be recognized as the head of a house.

“Not just anyone shall do to inherit the name of Viscount Alphan,” Mateela had a habit of saying frequently.

In the Western Kingdom, the rank of viscount was granted to offshoots from the houses of dukes and counts. The house of Alphan was one such offshoot from the house of Daleim... In fact, Mateela herself was the younger sister of the previous Count Daleim.

In other words, Mateela was Polarth’s great aunt. Because of that, even though he was the second son of her parent house, he still had trouble handling the difficult-to-please noblewoman.

“Well, the house of Daleim itself only has a history of a hundred or so years, so I don’t see any reason to go about acting all puffed up. But whenever I said such things, she would lambaste me with the harshest lecture you can imagine, so last night I just behaved myself and ate my dinner.”

The dinner in question had involved quite the fine assortment. A dried karon milk and reten oil fried dish for the appetizer, a soup using lots of milk fat, a fuwano dish using thin slices of karon brisket, a vegetable dish dressed in mamaria vinegar, and a kimyuus torso stuffed with herbs and vegetables for the meat dish. The chefs certainly pulled out all the stops when a member of the house of Daleim was visiting.

“You took a wife from an offshoot of the house of Saturas two years back, did you not, Lord Polarth?” Mateela had asked as the dinner was coming to a close.

“Yes, from the bloodline of the current head of the house’s granduncle. She’s too good for someone such as myself.”

“It must be quite difficult to marry someone from the houses of Genos or Turan, even as a member of the main house of Daleim.”

“Indeed. Still, not forming ties to the house of Turan seems to have worked out for the best now.”

The house of Turan had lost its powerful leader, Cyclaeus, and was currently working feverishly to get back on its feet. And besides, if Polarth had taken a wife from the house of Turan instead, he surely would have found it difficult to assist Kamyua Yoshu in his plan. After all, they had stood alongside Duke Genos and the people of the forest’s edge in order to take Cyclaeus down.

When she heard Polarth’s words, Mateela had replied, “That’s true...” with a deep sigh.

Mateela was a talented woman who had served as the assistant head of the second largest place of study in all the castle town. Thanks to her bloodlines, combined with her success in that job, she had been granted the title of “dame.”

Because of her decent love of gourmet food, she had grown rather plump, but that only served to enhance the dignity of her overall appearance. On top of that, she had an extremely strict personality, and greatly valued discipline and morals. Secretly, Polarth found it quite difficult to imagine how she must have responded to the news of the fall of Count Turan.

“Lord Polarth, I’ve heard tell that you were a leading figure in those events. Might you be able to form a deeper connection to the house of Genos in the future?”

“Ah, no, that would be beyond the means of someone such as myself. My father and elder brother will be the ones to take steps in that regard.”

“You have such a great accomplishment to your name, and yet you would step aside?”

“Rather than stepping aside, I would say I’m currently enjoying the work of selling massive quantities of poitan in the post town. After all, that is a serious job linked directly to the prosperity of the house of Daleim.”

“I see. I had hoped that if you forged a new bond with the house of Genos, it could lead to a favorable introduction... It seems I will have to talk to the head of the house of Daleim directly.”

As he bit into the sweet baked fuwano brought out as the final dish, Polarth tilted his head. “Oh? My apologies for asking, but are you seeking an introduction for a marriage? Lady Tetia will surely be able to find a good match soon, so I don’t believe you have anything to worry about.”

“No... My worries are not for Tetia, but rather Nicola.”

There seemed to be a disquieted look in her eyes. As for her granddaughters, they just kept eating silently. The first daughter Tetia cast her gaze downward sadly, while the second daughter Nicola turned aside, looking uninterested.

“I wish to have the man who will be Nicola’s husband become the next head of this house. That is what I am thinking about, Lord Polarth...” Mateela stated in a voice as firm as stone.