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“ARE you a complete moron?! I can’t believe you! What could’ve possessed you to carelessly approach the target you were supposed to be keeping under surveillance?!”
The windows rattled with the force of Claudio’s right hand slamming down on his desk as he shouted. Two other employees, named Bruno and Angelo, who sat a short distance away, quickly averted their eyes from the terrifying sight of Claudio glaring down at Samael, who stood on the other side of the desk, bowing deeply to his boss.
“…I’m very sorry, sir.”
“You would normally never do something this foolish. So why now?”
“Director, you’ve seen the report on the Narve family. It was only a single page, with nothing remarkable to note. They seem to be an ordinary noble family. I believe they are unrelated to the case at hand, so on my own authority, I made the decision to speak to the young lady myself before closing the investigation.”
“Is that really all?”
Realizing, based on the tone of Claudio’s deep voice, that he’d been seen through, Samael let the stiff expression he’d been maintaining fall from his face.
“She’s always hiding behind either her father or her brother, trembling, like some kind of terrified little animal… So when I saw her eating her lunch all alone in a dismal corner of the gardens that hardly gets any sunlight, I couldn’t help myself. She reminded me so much of my shy little four-year-old daughter who struggles to fit in with others that I just couldn’t bear to leave her like that…”
Samael somehow deepened his bow even further. Claudio plopped heavily back down into his chair, muttering, “Trembling, hm?” Then he folded his arms and sighed, finally giving Samael permission to raise his head. “As you know, this case involves nobles with no common factors. The more ordinary they seem, the more suspicious it makes them.”
“Even so, the entire family seems to do nothing but travel back and forth between their home and their jobs at the Architectural Institute, rarely going out. Their movements are so predictable that it almost seems foolish that we bothered keeping them under surveillance these past two weeks. The son, Bernard, occasionally attends evening parties with his friends, but the Earl and his daughter never leave the house except to go to work. And no one ever visits. Even the supplies their servants purchased at the market were nothing more than a reasonable amount of daily necessities for a household of that size.”
Claudio cupped his chin as he thought over Samael’s report. Then he spoke…
“The first sign that something’s fishy is that the report is only one page long. If you investigated any typical peasant family, you’d surely turn up more than that. I can only assume, based on this, that they must be hiding something.”
“You make a good point, sir,” Samael responded, agreeing with Claudio’s observation.
“Um…” Angelo spoke up hesitantly, now that he’d determined Claudio’s ire had abated somewhat. He had big, round eyes that drew people in and a fluffy mop of blond hair.
“What is it, Angelo?”
“I understand why the sickly daughter never goes out, but isn’t it suspicious that the Earl never attends any social events? Even if he is working in a government office, as a titled lord, isn’t he socially obligated to attend such functions?”
Claudio’s eyebrows drew together in response to Angelo’s question. Samael waved his hand in a pacifying gesture and muttered, “There, there,” to Claudio, then glanced over at Bruno, sitting beside Angelo. Bruno had straight black hair, cut neatly to his shoulders, and long, narrow black eyes. While Angelo had his cheek propped up on his hand with his elbow on the desk and was scratching his head with a pen, Bruno sat primly with the good posture of a gentleman, a slight tilt to his head giving away that he didn’t understand the reason why Samael was looking at him.
“Now that you mention it, I’ve never seen Earl Narve at any society events,” Bruno said.
“I see, you young folks must not know. I guess that nowadays it’s become something of a taboo subject…” Samael turned back to Claudio, who narrowed his eyes irritably and gestured to Samael, bidding him to explain. “You’re aware that it’s quite difficult in this country for nobles to obtain a divorce, correct?”
“Of course. The process is tedious, and it’s difficult for couples to come to a mutual agreement due to concerns about appearances and division of assets. So many couples stay married, even if one or both have lovers or even illegitimate children,” Bruno responded carefully to Samael’s inquiry.
Essentially, so long as the family name was protected, both parties were free to cheat as much as they liked, and it wasn’t uncommon for nobles to unofficially move in with their lovers.
“More than ten years ago, an aristocrat chose to go through that troublesome process to officially divorce his wife: Earl Narve. The wife then remarried the commoner who’d been her lover. At the time, this scandalous story spread throughout high society, and because it was all anyone was talking about, Earl Narve stopped attending social events ever since.”
“I see… I’d heard about cases of nobles divorcing, but I didn’t realize that Earl Narve was one of them,” Bruno said. “I can see why he wouldn’t want to be around people much after that.”
Angelo, who’d been listening along intently without interrupting, followed Claudio’s lead, crossing his arms and frowning. “I could see how such treatment might cause someone to come to resent this country’s nobility… Even if the Earl isn’t involved, it’s possible that after being shunned from society, the siblings may have been tempted by some nefarious organization…”
Claudio glared at Angelo, and he quickly unfolded his arms and gave a little laugh, acknowledging that he may have overstepped.
“…Enough is enough. Bring the girl in for an interrogation. Her brother, too.”
The three men nodded, acknowledging Claudio’s order.
“At the same time?”
“I doubt we’d be able to have a very coherent conversation with that odd girl by herself,” Claudio said.
“Indeed.”
“It seems she might have a severe form of social anxiety, if you ask me,” Angelo said.
“What was someone like that even doing at that ball in the first place?” Claudio asked.
“No idea. Let’s ask her that, too, after we bring them in!” Angelo chirped.
Bruno leveled Angelo, who was swinging his right arm around suddenly, full of excitement, with a look of respect. He was frankly impressed that the other man dared speak to the director like that.
Claudio grabbed the report on the Narve family off his desk and roughly tore open the cover. Why had a lady who spent all her time holed up at home, rarely ever going out, chosen to attend that ball in particular? And considering her and her brother’s suspicious behavior in that corridor, as well as her unnatural shaking…
Claudio slammed his finger down on Ophelia’s name written on the page.
Just what are you plotting, Ophelia Narve?