Okay. We don’t have much time left. I need to get to why I really came here.
“Listen, Jill…I came here today to ask you a question. Has Prince Dale asked you any questions?”
“Oh, no. We just talk.”
“I see. Well, what does this talk entail, exactly? Could you give me a general idea of what you can remember?”
Jill’s answer did not surprise me. I had my doubts that Dale would reveal anything central to the mystery to her, but Dale might have predicted that Eric or I would come talk to Jill to try to get a clue. And there was the possibility that he had embedded this hint somewhere into their “talks.” Hence my asking Jill to relay what Dale had told her.
“We talked about you and about Mother, about why I felt so sad, and about Lord Jade… That’s all.”
I see. So they talked mostly about matters relevant to her.
I wonder what sort of things she told Prince Dale…
Since I had no idea what their conversations were like, I was curious to know what he’d told her to cause her to repent.
But that’s not the most pressing matter right now.
“Jade Berklein… What sorts of things did you both say about him?”
“You want to talk about…Lord Jade? Well, he was Prince Dale’s friend. Prince Dale said they often dined together with Duke Algrene.”
Jill proceeded to tell me about Dale’s friendly relationship with Algrene and Berklein. I knew about that already. I also knew that Algrene was quite friendly with House Berklein as well.
“Prince Dale also told me that he and Lord Jade both helped back an ice cream parlor.”
“Oh, neat…”
That might be the link between Dale funding the ice cream shop and its owner selling Berklein the Death Poison papers. Perhaps it was during this exchange that Berklein found out the ice cream shop owner needed cash and that was what had prompted him to offer to buy the documents.
But I couldn’t exactly say this was news to me. It was something we could have found out easily with a bit of digging of our own. Still, the fact that they had talked about Berklein at all tugged at my thoughts. Maybe Dale wanted to deliver a coded message about his connection with Berklein.
“Anyway, this isn’t something I spoke about with Prince Dale, but…”
“Hmm?”
“I’m sure you know how everyone in Carol’s family worships Lord Jade, right? Well, I think they worship Prince Dale just as much. Lord Jade and Carol’s family both spoke of how Prince Dale would make the ideal king.”
Jill’s friend Carol was a member of the Almer family, Berklein’s most ardent supporters. And now I learned that the Almers also worshipped Prince Dale.
What did all of this mean? I had a feeling I might need to speak with Berklein to find out. While I’d never had a proper conversation with him before, I had the feeling that was just what I had to do.
When Eric wrote me the pass to give to the dungeon warden, he gave permission for me to visit anyone in the dungeon. Perhaps he had foreseen something like this arising. He was always very thorough…
I spent the rest of my thirty minutes talking with Jill, getting as much information as possible out of her. When it was time to say goodbye, I promised I would visit her again, then returned to the dungeon warden and had him arrange for me to visit Berklein.