His short, thick hand dangled limply. Red blood dripped from the clear bite mark between his thumb and forefinger.
“And this bite mark, it would be perfect as evidence. What do you think?”
Who would people suspect the most? She added in a whisper.
“And you seem to be mistaken. Sadly, this guy isn’t dead. At least, not yet.”
Ariella lightly shrugged her shoulders.
Lizzy couldn’t refute her words and just ground her teeth.
She was bristling with anger, feeling unbearably disgusted, but she also knew that the only way to survive this crisis was to cooperate with Ariella.
“…What are you going to do?”
Lizzy, suppressing the surging emotions, asked for a plan in a calmer voice.
“We need to create a suitable culprit. The person who killed David will be someone completely unrelated to Bedford.”
Ariella groaned and grabbed David’s arm, pulling his body up the stairs. Lizzy, while racking her brain, naturally grabbed his other arm and helped.
‘The person who killed him.’
That meant she was going to kill David, who was still breathing, in some way.
Lizzy was surprised that Ariella, whom she had once thought was endlessly soft, could be someone who could kill someone.
But that surprise was purely about Ariella’s change, not about the idea of ending the life of a living, breathing person itself.
She felt no qualms about killing someone else to save herself.
“You’re not going to make me the culprit after saying that, are you?”
“You know that if I were going to do that, I wouldn’t need to use such a troublesome method. It would be much simpler and faster to just call the servants.”
Lizzy couldn’t find anything to say this time either and shut her mouth tightly.
Cooperating with her enemy was still terribly awful.
She felt humiliated by the thought that all she could do was obediently follow Ariella’s instructions, but no matter how hard she racked her brain, she couldn’t think of a way to get through this predicament alone.
Ariella completely ignored whatever expression she was making and lightly waved her hand towards the people approaching from the end of the hallway.
Amira and Adam were hurrying to help her. It was a completely different attitude from Lizzy’s maid or bodyguard, who didn’t even think of checking on their master despite the commotion.
“…What about my bite mark?”
Lizzy’s voice sounded somehow more vicious as she spotted Adam.
“Well, that’s simple.”
Ariella smiled brightly at her and replied.
“The bite mark can be covered up with a bigger, deeper bite mark.”
What followed proceeded smoothly.
Adam moved David’s corpse-not-corpse to a carriage without being seen, and Amira quickly erased the bloodstains splattered here and there in the hallway and on the stairs.
They seemed quite taken aback by David’s state, but they finished the job without any delay.
The servants subtly appeared just as all the work was finished.
“Wh-What happened?”
Stanley, the butler who had gone to Ariella to ask her to stop David, asked with wide eyes, and Ariella calmly replied.
“Thanks to you coming at the right time, I was able to stop David. David had a slight conflict with Lizzy, but he turned away grumbling when I appeared. Lizzy is safe, so don’t worry.”
“Then where did Master David go…?”
“Well, seeing him leave in such a frenzy, I suspect he went to the entertainment district again. But why are you asking me? If the guards are doing their job properly, they would have confirmed that the young master of this house went out.”
“Y-Yes, of course. I heard from the guards that the young master had gone out, but I didn’t know where he was going, so I wondered if you had heard anything. I apologize for the many impoliteness at this late hour, Miss.”
Stanley answered hastily, looking very flustered.
In fact, the security at the Bedford mansion was extremely lax today.
The guards were snoring when David returned home, so it was clearly a mistake that he, as the butler of this house, had failed to properly supervise them, and he would have no excuse if he was reprimanded.
It would be a disaster if even Duke Bedford found out about this mistake. Thinking so, Stanley lied as if he had heard it separately from the guards.
After that, Lizzy and Ariella returned to their rooms, and Stanley finally went to the guards and asked if they had seen David go out.
“I saw Henrik driving the carriage out of the mansion. I thought he might be in that carriage.”
“Ah, I saw it too. I thought, ‘He’s going to Salisbury again at this hour.’”
“But isn’t it strange? Which door did the young master come out of? I didn’t see the young master coming out…”
“Hey, you! You must have missed it because you were dozing off!”
Stanley, who had been listening to the guards’ words in silence, suddenly burst into anger.
“The young master who ran away has returned, and you didn’t even know he came back because you were dozing off, and you didn’t even notice him leaving again, do you think the master will stay still? Keep that tactless mouth of yours shut!”
“Yes, yes. Butler Stanley.”
The guard, who had never dozed off, felt extremely wronged, but he also knew that it would be troublesome if the words were conveyed to the Duke, so he quietly agreed and moved on.
Having confirmed that David had gone out again, Stanley sighed in relief that the situation had been roughly settled.
It was a pity that he couldn’t keep David at home, but he still thought that it was a great achievement to have ended with just this, considering that he was dealing with a very angry David.
‘Now I can rest easy and go to sleep.’
Bedford’s excellent butler, Stanley, thought so and smiled contentedly.
He had no idea that terrible news would be delivered to the mansion in just a few hours.
Rattle, clatter!
With a loud noise, a small carriage stopped on the street.
The coachman, Henrik, got off the driver’s seat and looked around the street for a moment.
In this most remote alley in Salisbury, there was no one to be found. The road was damp, and there was a subtle earthy scent, as it had rained briefly during the night.
A cool night breeze brushed against the back of his neck, and Henrik shuddered for a moment, then clenched his teeth as if he had made up his mind and opened the carriage door.
As the black door opened, something poured out as if spilling. It was a person.
“Eek!”
Henrik, who reflexively caught the man’s body, gasped in surprise. Then, he threw the fallen man roughly onto the damp ground.
Thud!
Henrik squeezed his eyes shut as he heard the sound of his head hitting the stone floor.
He felt a brief moment of guilt, but it was only for a moment, and Henrik remembered the atrocities that this man, David, had committed against him.
For that reason, Henrik left David on the street without saying a word of apology and got back into the carriage.
“Giddy up!”
With the sound of the horse’s cry, the black carriage slipped out of the alley.
Only after the carriage had completely disappeared from sight did a person standing behind a pile of garbage inside the alley slowly walk out.
Under the dim streetlights, the face of a young man who had lost his sister a few months ago was revealed.
The young man, Milo, stood silently in front of the fallen David and looked down at the face of the guy who had killed his sister. It was hard to tell whether the face, covered in blood and devoid of life, was dead or alive.
It was a pity.
He wished that guy was conscious. He wanted to see him screaming in agony with his own eyes.
But he knew how rare it was for a commoner like himself to have this opportunity. He was in a position where he could only be grateful to the nobleman who kept his promise.
‘So I have to keep my promise too.’
It was the moment he thought so and clenched his fist inside his pocket.
