The detective is dead, I did it.

Chapter 31 Nobles Who Treat Human Life Like Grass

Li Ang walked back to his room along the corridor.

When the door was opened, Charlotte was sitting on a chair by the window, holding a cup of black tea, with her legs crossed, her skirt slightly lifted, revealing white stockings on her calves.

She glanced at Li Ang, but didn't get up. Instead, she put down the black tea in her hand and placed her hands crossed on her knees.

"Did you find anything?"

"A little bit." Li Ang sat down opposite her. "I walked around the entire mansion and chatted with the maids, and I discovered something rather strange."

Tell me about it.

Li Ang sat down in the chair opposite her and recounted the information he had gathered while strolling around the mansion.

First of all, there are very few young maids in the mansion; they all arrived in recent years. Apart from that, there are mostly older servants.

Then he also told Charlotte about the witch's artifact in the collection room.

He didn't mention Helena at all.

He could explain his previous discoveries as clues he could see in objects and information he extracted from the maids.

However, he couldn't directly tell the detective about Helena's witch identity.

After all, the clue on the other person's body was something only he could see, and there was no way to explain it. In Charlotte's understanding, his ability could only see objects, not living people.

Charlotte put down her teacup after hearing this, her brows furrowing. "That is indeed a bit strange."

She tapped her knee with her fingertip. "Logically speaking, the proportion of young maids in aristocratic mansions shouldn't be this low. Maids with less than three years of service should usually make up more than half, since most nobles need maids to maintain appearances."

From a certain perspective, maids can also be seen as one of the face of the nobles.

The more maids a nobleman had, and the younger and prettier they were, the more prestigious the nobleman's status was.

A nobleman whose mansion is filled with elderly maids will only invite ridicule from others, who will speculate that he has some kind of quirk.

Unless you're as indifferent to what others think as Charlotte.

For example, the maids in her mansion were all older and very skilled at their work, each of them doing the work of several maids.

Of course, she also paid her maids several times their usual wages, and did not exploit them to the point of exhaustion.

"You also think there's a problem?"

Charlotte leaned back in her chair. "That fat, big-eared viscount is probably hiding something from us."

Li Ang leaned forward and lowered his voice, asking, "Could it be related to cult members?"

Ever since he was chased for two blocks by the Church of the Primal Lord, he now sees everything as cult.

The suspicious maid looked like a cult member, the fat-headed viscount looked like a cult member, and even the rose bush in the garden looked like it was planted by a cult member for a sacrifice.

"It's unlikely." Charlotte shook her head, dismissing his idea. "I investigated his background before we came."

According to Charlotte's investigation, the Viscount's father was just an ordinary man who had worked for the East India Company, where he amassed a huge fortune.

No one knows how it was accumulated, but it certainly wasn't through any legal means.

Of those who returned from the East India Company, practically none were clean. Charlotte knew this perfectly well.

After returning to his country, he spent money to buy a viscount title and used money to pave the way, accumulating a lot of connections in London's official circles. After his death, he passed the title to the current Viscount Cavendish.

After inheriting the title, the other party behaved like a typical nouveau riche nobleman, indulging in extravagance and disregarding the lives of his servants.

Every year, quite a few servants died at the Viscount's hands. Eventually, the Ministry of Public Security couldn't stand it anymore and issued a warning, after which he became more restrained in recent years.

The main difference is that the maids have a different status. They are nominally legal and free citizens of Great Britain and are protected by law.

Unlike the lowly people in the slums, who can be buried anywhere outside the city after they die.

Therefore, if a law-abiding citizen dies suddenly, a formal investigation process must be followed, and the suspect will be punished according to the investigation results.

Although the punishment was only a few dozen pounds for Viscount Cavendish, it was a real hassle for the police department to have to go through an investigation every time.

Yes. It's not that I can't stand their disregard for human life, but rather that I find the process of going through all the formalities too troublesome, which is why I stepped in to issue a warning.

But their warnings did have some effect; at least in recent years, no new murders have been reported to the Viscount.

It wasn't until the other party lost the gemstone, all the guards of the mansion were arrested and imprisoned, and a few unlucky ones couldn't withstand the torture and died, that a new murder case occurred.

However, because the case involves the famous detective Charlotte Holmes, those people have not opened an investigation yet, but plan to wait until Charlotte finishes her investigation before taking action.

It was for this reason that Charlotte deduced that the Viscount had no connection with the cult.

The body of the deceased servant was examined and found to be the result of normal torture and death, not consistent with the characteristics of a cult's sacrificial ritual.

Moreover, the cult would not allow the Viscount to waste human lives like this; every life is a precious sacrificial offering to the cult members.

If they saw the Viscount killing his servant so casually, they'd probably turn redder than an apple.

After listening, Li Ang sighed, "What a pity."

"What's a pity?"

"It's a pity he's not a cultist." Li Ang's tone carried a hint of regret. "If only he were a cultist, I could..."

Although he didn't finish speaking, Charlotte understood.

According to the Detective Association's regulations, a cult member can be killed on the spot without a report being filed.

For Li Ang, killing one cult member yields more experience than killing ten ordinary criminals, and he bears little psychological burden.

"Stop thinking about all that nonsense." Charlotte picked up her teacup, took a sip, and put it down again. "You just said there's a witch's alchemical artifact in the collection room?"

"Yes. It was in the corner, and I noticed it with my abilities. I wanted to pick it up and examine it closely, but I was afraid of any side effects, so I just touched it briefly."

"A witch's tool..." Charlotte muttered thoughtfully.

"By the way," Li Ang seized the opportunity to ask the question that had been lingering in his mind for a long time, "what exactly is a witch?"

"A bunch of crazy people who study life sciences, you'd better not get involved with them in any way."

Charlotte slowly explained to Leon from a long time ago.

In the distant past, long before the profession of detective existed, and long before the world was shrouded in the aura of the church, a group of people began to explore the mysteries of life.

They studied the various effects of herbs, dissected animals to understand their body structure, and recorded various human ailments and attempted to treat them.

They left no names, no organization, just scattered scholars, both men and women, filled with curiosity about life itself.

At that time, no one called these people witches.