Isn’t that like putting the fox in charge of the henhouse?
"Mort set a trap that could bring my father down."
The connection between the Finance Minister and Heinlein came to mind at once. I had known that the Finance Minister, while under house arrest, had made contact with Heinlein through some channel. What if that had been the trap?
"Were you the one who put Heinlein in the east in contact with the Finance Minister?"
"That was the trap, Baron. I had no idea what sort of man this Heinlein was, only that he had ties to my father going back many years. And that my father had drawn up plans to kill me!"
So Adelbert had tried to turn the tables on a father who was plotting to kill his own son, using that plot as his justification. Hiring mercenary captain Schlieffen to eliminate Heinlein had been about fabricating evidence as well.
Hmm, a power-mad father who planned to kill his son, and a son who calculated the risks and schemed to drag his father down for good. The son’s plan was considerably more gentlemanly than the father’s, at least.
"But there was a variable. You, Baron."
As it happened, I was the one who uncovered the link between Count Palatine Heinlein and the Finance Minister and turned the east upside down. When that news reached Adelbert, he rushed to set his plan in motion...
The situation spiraled out of control, far beyond anything Adelbert had anticipated.
"So the Finance Minister was poisoned in the middle of all that chaos?"
"I had no intention of killing my father! But before I could lift a finger, he was poisoned, and I was shoved headfirst into the disgrace of being called a patricide. And that isn’t even the most outrageous part!"
Adelbert suddenly stripped off his shirt.
I wondered what had gotten into him, but then I saw the scar across his back. Someone had stabbed him from behind. Judging by how shallow the wound was, he had survived by sheer luck.
By whom, exactly?
"That ungrateful son of a bitch tried to kill me too!"
"...Inspector General Mort?"
The situation kept growing more complicated.
Mort, who I had assumed was a loyal confidant, had betrayed Adelbert and tried to kill him? It really was one unimaginable turn after another. The dog he had raised had savagely mauled its own master.
Then again, I’d had a vague sense that Mort was the type who could stab a man in the back without much trouble if he ever set his mind to it. Konrad von Mort was, after all, a schemer with a conspiratorial streak.
Still, I had assumed Adelbert kept him fully under control with a leash named Elsheimer. In the end, though, the moment his master fell on hard times, Mort showed his true colors.
Now I could understand why things had gotten so tangled.
Mort had written the script with Adelbert as his instrument, and then carried it out himself.
"So that’s why you mobilized the inspector unit and went tearing through the slums."
"Where else in Breisburg could anyone hide but the slums?"
Before Adelbert could even find Mort, who had fled after the failed assassination attempt, the duchy’s army suddenly began attacking the slums, and everything fell apart. Without meaning to, I had wrecked Adelbert’s plan myself.
"I resent you, Baron. But I hate Mort far more."
A heavy silence settled over us. I still couldn’t work out Mort’s motive. What did he stand to gain by eliminating the Finance Minister and Adelbert? And what about the Viscount Neunil family?
"Why did you bring in the Viscount Neunil family?"
"The Neunils have long coveted the Administrative Minister post held by the Count Dickmeyer family. They are a house that produced Grand Duke’s Guard commanders for generations, a house that once enjoyed Altringen’s favor. And yet..."
He gazed at me intently. I knew that story as well, how the Neunils had been pushed aside by Streit. It must have been maddening for them, but they weren’t foolish enough to lay a hand on a prince’s house.
Shoved aside by Dickmeyer and Streit, Neunil had set its sights on Reinfeldt, which was reeling badly at the time. They approached Adelbert and joined the plan to oust the Finance Minister.
Adelbert knew their aims, and he understood better than anyone that each side intended to use the other. A relationship of mutual exploitation. That is the world of nobles.
"Was Neunil’s kidnapping of Bodo Werner part of the plan as well?"
"Bodo Werner? My apologies, but I know nothing about that."
So Adelbert had played no part in Bodo’s kidnapping.
"Bodo is my retainer. Not long ago, he was taken by men presumed to belong to the Viscount Neunil family. That’s why I asked the Capital Sentinel Command to strike the slums first."
"...Everything fell apart because of one retainer’s disappearance?"
Adelbert seemed utterly hollowed out. Judging by his reaction, he clearly had nothing to do with Bodo’s kidnapping. Which meant the Viscount Neunil family had acted entirely on its own.
"What I do know is that they regard Bodo as the Child of the Magnolia."
"The Child of the Magnolia? What is that supposed to mean?"
I explained what I knew about Administrator Schafen, Neunil, and the Child of the Magnolia. It was a separate affair from the plan to entangle the Finance Minister with Heinlein and eliminate him.
"The magnolia is the symbol of Elsheimer, but Bodo Werner? Wait, Werner is..."
As if something had dawned on him, Adelbert looked deeply shaken. Puzzle pieces from an affair he had never once considered were coming together into one vast picture, and he let out a deep, anguished sigh.
"I see. So that’s why Amalia, that poor girl..."
"Have you realized something?"
Adelbert’s emotions churned in a tangled swirl of sorrow, anger, and hatred.
"Baron, you must keep this secret. For that girl’s honor, if nothing else!"
"I will keep it secret. What happened to the viscountess?"
"Amalia did not die of illness."
He squeezed his eyes shut and went on.
"...She died in the slums."
She died in the slums. That carried a great deal of meaning. For a noblewoman to die in the slums meant her death had been anything but ordinary. And yet the question remained.
Why had she died there?
"Until now, I never knew the reason. But after hearing what you’ve told me, I finally understand. Bodo Werner, and the Child of the Magnolia. Werner is the given name of Viscount Elsheimer."
"Werner von Elsheimer!"
So the investigator had been Werner von Elsheimer.
Isn’t the Elsheimer family the one that oversees the tax collectors?
What a coincidence. Elsheimer and I had crossed paths in more ways than one.
Damn it! Why hadn’t I realized something so simple?
I knew that name.
To be precise, I first learned the viscount’s given name when I saw his signature on the investigation into the embezzlement case in Radensdorf. I’d had so little interest in Elsheimer that I hadn’t even known it until then.
And people are usually called by their family names rather than their given names anyway.
Only three people call me Wolfgang, or Wolf.
Hilda, Cavalry Commander Pensler, and my late grandfather.
Hmm, it’s funny that Cavalry Commander Pensler made that list.
The reason I had thought nothing of Bodo’s family name matching Elsheimer’s given name is that family names are inconsistent things to begin with. They’re often taken from the names of regions, duplicates are common, and frequently there’s no connection at all.
Take the Konstanz family of Rosenheim and the Dorsten family, for example. So I had let it pass, never imagining that a twist like this lay hidden underneath.
Viscount Elsheimer, who had supposedly ruined his health and died in the brothel district, had fathered an illegitimate child, and that child was Bodo. The story was that Bodo’s mother had given him a family name taken from the viscount’s given name.
I had always wondered why a child of the brothel district had a family name, and now I finally knew the truth. And considering Bodo’s wretched fate, it was absurd beyond words.
"Amalia... she was truly a lovely, pitiable girl."
"What was your relationship with the viscountess, Count?"
"She was like a younger sister to me, a girl I looked after in Viscount Elsheimer’s place. I had promised to find her a husband myself. And yet... I never imagined she would die so senselessly."
The viscountess’s tragic death had dealt Adelbert a heavy blow.
Had the two of them simply been close? Adelbert wasn’t lying, but my gut told me there was something more fundamental buried underneath.